Mr. Heneghan, this is a berserk button of mine, but I find this is an extremely simplistic, pro ruling elite statement.
I and most of my family could be labeled as part of left since the beginning, if earlier, of the 20th century. Pro union, pro worker, pacifistic or antiwar, anti-poverty, anti-child labor, pro freedom of speech, civil rights supporting, religious, even at times patriotic and America first. What part of all this do you find offensive?
Unless of course, you prefer those family members who patriotic citizens of the Southern Slaveocracy? Although, unlike our current (Neo)liberal Elites, they were willing to put their bodies, their lives, right in the line of Northern bullet and cannon fire.
Rather than lumping at least forty percent of the American nation of the past one hundred and fifty years with the current, corrupt, evil minded, empty souled neoliberal leadership of the ruling scum, who are liberal or leftist, in name only, you could... rephrase that?
Alternatively, you could choose an alternative self-definition and accept that the Left has left you. That's sort of what I've done. Left and right are only words, and not particularly useful ones at this point—nothing worth getting worked up about. The underlying ideas are what matter.
Also, because I Stand with Ukraine™️, it's important that bombs signed by Democratic senators kill Russians in Moscow before we turn to NC. Flooding is bad, but those Ruskies arent going to kill themselves.
The two have nothing to do with each other. Ukrainian aid is coming out of the military budget. That's not where FEMA money is appropriated. (FEMA is under Homeland Security)
Yes and no. The military is a sacred cow when it comes to the budget. There is less money for DHS because we direct so much of it into a miliary which is well in excess of anything necessary to defend the United States, but I have a suspicion that if we did redress excessive defense spending the Republicans would just push that we just further cut taxes.
True. Ultimately, the total budget is what it is. Spending more money on any one item either requires cutting something else on another budget line, or raising taxes, or more deficit spending. Its all connected.
Yes, Andrew, and recall that for Katrina, when FEMA couldn't handle the severity of the situation, the military AND WALMART WAS called in. But that was black folk. White folk in a Red State? Why, let them die en masse. As Hillary has recently and emphatically re-iterated, any GOP voter is a "deplorable," and apparently, deplorables are expendible, and can be left to die. Now Haitians, no, no financial limits there--let them come and ruin our little cash-strapped, depressed towns and villages, especially if they're in JD's state. Maybe we should drop some Haitians in Western NC flooded areas to get Homeland willing to help the area rebuild and have the stranded be rescued.
What next? Central Bank Digital Currency with negative points earned according to skin color, religious afficiliation, and party afficliation. AFter that, gulags and firing squads (never have seen a Communist regime without one--essential features of running a polltical/economic system that defies God's plan for mankind and human nature as we know (which is endowed differently in terms of giftedness--see Caitlin Clark, almost had her right eyes scratched out in the first 2 minutes of the last pre-play off WNBA games. But, of course, CC and her fans are the racists. Talk about projection. I'm boycotting the WNBA until the beat-downs of CC stop. But we're all going to be on the receiving end of beatdowns going forward (of various types--not being hired, being held back, last in line for the knee-replacement, etc, passed over, or finally--the "FINAL SOLUTION") if we go Commie, and Commiela is a Commie pretending not-to-be.
I know, Jon. But the majority of the people who could not get out of Katrina's way were black. And the overwhelming majority of people who could not get out of Helene's way are white. Private do-gooders who are trying to pluck people up by small crafts are being threatened with arrest. Imagine there are 20,000 stranded Haitians in the Ashville now. Do you think the response would be more forthcoming? I do. And this is the problem. We can look forward (once Medicare gets extended to all, including illegals, and Kammie will do that and more if it is in her power), skin color is going to be a big factor in who gets helped in what order. It is theft. We citizens have paid into the Medicare system, but we are going to be placed at the end of the line. If CBDCs are enacted (and they're coming on like an onrushing train), we will be given social scores, as are the Chinese citizens. And that score will determine one's life. Christinas, pale-skinned, cisgendered will not fare well in the new cultural Marxists system that will be imposed.
I think WW3 is probably going to be ushered in in order to declare Marshall Law and a need to seize gun for "our safety." Everything will be done under the guise of "public safety" and "health and safety" (just like the Jacobites in Revolutionary France). We've seen how this movie plays out. There will be mandatory vaxxines which will harm health but be touted as "safe and effective." There will be penalties for noncompliance, and Christianity is going to be noncompliant. China allows Catholicism only insofar as it gets to RUN the seminaries, appoint bishops (or approve the Commie Pope's pick--everything has to be approved). There are "approved" churches, but unapproved house churches will get you beat up and maybe imprisoned. See Jimmy Lai re: freedom of the press. Gone. BTW, Jimmie Lai could have escaped probably. He deliberately stayed, and is probably going to be in the gulag until death. For the Uygers, it is death, death camps, slavery camps.
This is what another stolen election will ultimately bring us--maybe not on Day 1, but when enough biased corrupt judges are put in place (see Merchan and Engoran as sample "judges"), we will be stripped of all our rights and freedoms.
"This is it. Make no mistake where you are. You're going no further, until its over and done (a free and fair election), which we will not get" (Kenny Logins). Kammie is a frontman for Soros and Obama (bad dudes at heart), as was Biden, the deadhead.
I don't believe there will be any kind of social credit system- the great najority of Americans would simply ignore such a thing the way we do speed limits. We are a disorderly rather cussed people in most things. Our culture tends to the small "l" libertarian (and hence libertine).
Nor will there be "Medicare for all". Big Insurance isn't going to give up its cash cow.
Congress makes decisions about money. At this point, it’s just debt, but there is way more thought put in Ukraine than what ends up in FEMA. It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. It starts with my taxes…
Well Bush Jr had the sense to call in the military and Walmart when FEMA wasn't up to the job after Karina. But Biden figures "this is MAGA country, so to Hell with them."
Jon, money is fungible. Funds allocated for one thing get re-appropriated by this lawless bunch, and even the "unlawless" bunch. It is absolutely criminal that Americans are being left stranded without food, water, shelter, nothing, and are being told "sorry, it went for those Haitians who are going to help wreck Red America impoverished towns and help steal the election." Then don't ask for taxes from Red America. No taxation without representation. Who is representing these people's interest? No one. It's the Haitians we care about. White America? They can go to Hell--those privileged white tax-paying, law abiding "deplorables." Why, we don't deserve to live, we're that deporable..
The fungibility of funds is limited, by past Supreme Court decisions. Presidents can shift money around a bit within departments but that's about it. As an aside to Charlie Rosenberg below this is how Trump was able to take some DoD money and use it for the wall, on the (not ureasonable) excuse that the wall was for the defense of the nation. And there was still a lawsuit over it (which in 2023-- yes, that late-- was dropped as moot).
And the Feds are obstructing private initiatives to help the deveststed. Isn’t it alleged that during the Holodomor the Bolshevikd thwarted all efforts of local people to assist their fellows? Are you finally appreciating the nature of the people we are dealing with? And doesn’t it burn you that for 40 years the Republicans aided the empowerment of these people?
Having been part of some private initiatives (instigated by left-wingers who didn't want to get entangled with government funding), I observed that there were efforts, in the spirit of a United Way mentality, to "coordinate" all public and private initiatives in the name of efficiency and avoiding "duplication of services." Of course the best purpose of private initiatives is to find those areas that government aid is not reaching, and fill the need, while also advocating for people who are NOT getting what they legally should be getting. I once helped design a leaflet on aid people in a disaster area were legally entitled to, and a FEMA staff person ran out to say "We're not doing that here, whey are you telling people this?" (Eventually they recognized what the law said and began providing the enumerated resources.)
I relate to them too. I thought it was boring. Then I read Doctor Faustus and liked that even less. The one work by Mann that I liked was Death in Venice. It’s not only short but it’s not freighted down with intellectual pretension.
Another reason the Biden administration has given Western North Carolina the back of the hand is that the region heavily leans Republican and I suspect they would like to see as many residents leave the area without voting. North Carolina is politically in play and the fewer Republicans that can vote, the better for Harris/Walz.
One thing to remember about FEMA (or any federal agency, for that matter) is that it approaches disaster relief the way a dog approaches a bone: everyone else stay away. It is about acting like a dog marking off territory and anyone else is an interloper. And given that most of the media is in the tank for the Democrats, anyway, this is a non-event.
Regionally that’s true, though Asheville itself is VERY blue. I might be wrong, but I see this less as a direct ideological choice to ignore a largely white region than it is a naked calculation that the cost per person of helping many this region is just too high. That in and of itself is evil, but it is an older evil than the current racist obsessions. Anyway, FEMA (and all of HHS) should be disbanded. It is unaccountable, incompetent as to its core mandates, and seems to serve primarily as another slush fund conduit of federal grant dollars to ideologically aligned leftist organizations.
OK, but do recall that when Maria hit Puerto Rico Trump dragged his feet about getting funds released to help. Criticized for it he went there are tossed some paper towels out to the audience.
He has this weirdly wicked countenance. A sort of looking-down-his-nose-at-us deplorables semi-straight face, with a lie ready to roll off his fork tongue.
The devastation in Western North Carolina is far from general. Some areas are flat on their back. Others were barely affected. I have a Facebook friend who lives in the town of Robinsonville. (She's someone I went to school with; she had a crush on me back then. We reconnected twelve years ago and she moved down there in 2022) I noticed her on Facebook Messenger a couple days ago and messaged her to see if she was OK. Yes, and her area was unscathed.
Well, glad she's unscathed, but others had everything they owned except the clothes on their backs swept away, and to be told "money gone (on illegals and Ukraine, we can extropolate)" is hard to swallow. I hope this awful team loses. It will only get more intense under Harris/Walz.
I'm aware that some places had massive damages, and others escaped. My friend mentioned the destruction in Asheville too.
It's the same here, but just locally. Houses and businesses on the water suffered severe flooding while most of us came through with no trouble. But our highways are all intact and outside the beaches things are back to normal. The GOP is lucky that Speaker Johnson didn't go along with the government shutdown thing. The optics of that would be pretty bad in light of the disaster.
Not coming through in a disaster is always a politically bad move. Some Democrats thanked God for Hurricane Sandy because it allowed the Obama administration to shine a month before an election.
I think the "Biden limited resources" on purpose might have been true in Palestine, OH. But for this NC Helene tragedy, I'm leaning towards sheer incompetence.
In defense of Harris, it's not really her job to lead the administration's efforts--I don't recall Dick Cheney anywhere near Katrina's aftermath or Harris playing a big part in any of the previous hurricanes. But it was Biden's job. And he is simply not up to the job of being president. It's a disgrace. The Republican leadership starting with McConnell should be calling for the 25th amendment every single day.
The connective threads of your stories today (feckless approach to helping the desperate souls stuck in the path of Helene--and in other prior storms) and manifest failures of our education system are an uncaring leadership group and the quest for money above all else. As you note, their morals or sense of what life is about are utterly bereft of duty and care for their fellow man.
And politically, the contrast between "orange man bad" and the Biden/Harris group is stark. Trump was there Monday with supplies, and Franklin Graham, and working with Elon Musk to get Starlink connections for desperate, cut off folks. Kamala was at a fundraiser and staging photos while Biden was at the beach. Seems like they finally woke up today--6 days into a terrible disaster.
It seems as though they can't even imagine what it would be like to be alone, stuck in high hollers with no roads, or on roofs to escape rising waters and watching people dead in trees. It calls to mind many OT books.
Do you remember what happened during COVID with Franklin Graham? Samaritan's Purse was ready to set up hospital tents in Central Park (remember, this was supposed to be The Black Death, so the staff thought they were putting themselves in danger) and were turned away because homophobia. Barack Obama, I mean Bill DeBlasio, told them to go away. These people are simply incapable of thinking about anything but politics. Nothing but power has any importance for them.
The joke of course is that COVID turned out to be less threatening than the flu to 70% of the population. The Navy hospital ship sailed away without having filled one bed. As for the old people, Sonny Boy saw to that.
And today I understand that NC Gov Cooper (D) is hampering rescue efforts, including not granting (supposedly required) Title 10 authorization for the guard. A lot of rescue pilots are private and funding their own ops.
I am a physician on a Disaster Medical Assistance Team (Georgia), and I can attest that there never seem to be any funds.. We work under the auspices of HHS, not FEMA, but the bureaucracy is the same. I had to buy my own uniform as there was no money available for the government to provide official clothing. Our annual national conference was severely curtailed due to lack of funds, and on our monthly conference calls, the lack of money available for emergencies is a frequent topic.
It's what I said above, John. Nothing is of any importance to the Left except politics, not the art of living in a polis, but exercising power. We have to understand what they're about before we can engage them.
Just understand that they are sociopaths, and if you become a hindrance to them, they will want you dead. It's not even necessarily a hatred thing, but rather the inconvenience you now are to their "self-actualization".
Well, given that a lot of migrants are around, do you want them at a Welcome Center or sleeping on the streets, begging outside every Starbucks, lying in wait in every alley, and generally make the entire city unlivable?
There's an argument to be made that this is why we shouldn't have let them in, and should deport them soon. But doing nothing with people who are here isn't an option.
If you had to leave your home and your community to make room for refugees from, I don't know, let's say Sudan, I'm sure you'd be taking them flowers, right?
Sadly, the Republicans have never succeeded in defunding any part of the government in my forty-five years as an adult. The federal colossal goes on and on, one large honey pot for government leeches.
This just isn’t true. State level Republicans defund social services all of the time. They’re less successful at the federal level, but it all adds up over time. Austrian economics has rotted the brain of these people. Or they’re just evil.
Republicans are plenty socialist when it comes to bailing out the Wall Street banks and making sure that executives receive colossal bonuses. And yes, the bailout is still ongoing. On a monthly basis the fed continues to buy up toxic assets on a he banks’ balance sheets and exchange for fresh, clean cash. Back in the 60s some Cubans used to ask Castro, “when will the revolution be over”, his response, “never, the revolution is permanent” Similsrly, the bailouts are permanent now. They will never end, enriching Wall Street all the way,. Now, that’s socialism you can bank on.
The issues are all systemic issues, you would need a systemic solution (ie government) to address any of them. Letting the government shrink proportionally to the population and GDP from the New Deal times to now is responsible for 90% of our problems. That doesn’t mean “socialism”, it just means going back to new deal liberalism and perhaps a social democratic system.
The government hasn’t shrunk. Do you actually think the problems we face are caused by lack of government spending. There is something fundamentally unserious about that. I have my differences with RD - not as concerned about Sasquatch, Leprechauns and demonic UFOs - but his invoking Philip Rieff is exactly right. We are in a death culture. I don’t really think social democratic wealth transfers are going to solve much in the context of a hedonic , solipsistic culture which expects all its fantasies to come true. These include - to quote the Kinks- boys will be girls and girls boys- and we can import the entire third world into the US and expect to have a US.What Hemingway said on bankruptcy is on target - gradually , then suddenly.No FDR isn’t coming back- good thing.No trying to pretend we’re Denmark - Denmark isn’t even Denmark. I find Spengler a bore. But civilization do rise only to decline and ours isn’t going to hold and to quote Led Zeppelin ,the levee is breaking- if only drip after torturous drip.
Disaster aid is not socialism. eighteen hundred years before Marx the Romans sent help to the survivors of Pompeii-- and Nero even provided assistance to the many people made homeless in the Great Fire in Rome (an of course blamed the Christians for it)
Edit: No, not "1800 years" More like almost two thousand years.
Of course it is not. As you might have read, I believe Congress should reconvene and pass a relief program for southern Appalachia right now. The other items of big government bother me, especially excessive "defense" spending. Education departments that don't educate. Energy departments that don't create energy. That sort of thing.
Do you really think these people are readers of Mises or Hayek or could lucidly discuss the socialist calculation debate or the concept of marginal utility? Perhaps Republican hacks at a state level brandish Murray Rothbards Man , Ecmomy and State like Margaret Thatcher with Hayeks Constitution of Liberty and say this is what I stand for. Oh come on! We’re lucky if they have some vague understanding of supply and demand, what inflation is and what monetary supply is. You’ll notice most politicians of all stripes seem to barely have any grasp of the simple stuff let alone more complex theory. I have next to no idea why the FEMA response here seems to be bungling but it’s virtually a law of government that when an agency doesn’t get things right, it claims it’s starved for funds. You have a problem, you try to use it to your advantage.State agencies always say they’re starved for funds.
Total government spending in the US is about 37% of GDP. This is lower than a lot of European nations, but it should be more than adequate. Whatever the influence of Austrian economics, it hasn’t resulted in dramatic spending cuts. You can argue that we are spending on the wrong things, but I think that is Rod’s point.
Good point, though I’d wonder what those numbers are like at a state level. Regardless, subsidizing the lifestyle of suburbanites probably accounts for a lot of said spending. I’d imagine European population density makes that money go much further than it would here.
Who was influenced by Austrian economics? Maybe Alan Greenspan. Monetarism has had a little more influence . I think Bernanke claimed to be influenced by the Friedmans depression book. But really it’s all made up.
Yep, gutted it and then acted surprised at what happened. Now that I’m confronted with it day in and day out, it’s hard to conclude it’s anything but pure evil on the part of our GOP overlords.
This was a bipartisan thing. The de institutionalization movement came out of a lot of things. It was influenced by R.D.Laing(“ Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world”).
, Thomas Szasz ( Myth of Mental Illness )Peter Breggin( “ Only in psychiatry is the existence of physical disease determined by APA presidential proclamations, by committee decisions, and even, by a vote of the members of APA, not to mention the courts.),
and yes Foucault ( see Madness and Civilization). The mentally ill were at times defined as political prisoners anattitude common on the New Left and among some libertarians. Your law and order conservative tended to be round them up and put em in happy dale.But there is another very important factor here , the increasing medicalization of psychiatry. If all you had to due is prescribe anti depressants and anti psychotics, you didn’t need institutions. If someone developed tardive dyskinesia from their schizophrenia drug, just give them something for that.On top of that and partly because of all of that , there are real legal barriers to involuntary commitment ( I do know a thing or two about this). So you can blame cheap o Republicans till you’re blue in the face but this is not a simple matter of, they won’t spend enough to solve the problem.
There’s also been a consensus to cut the taxes of the wealthy, defund social services, and spend money on horseshit. Its all benefited the rich at the expense of everyone else. The problems all flow from the incentive structure of the leisure class.
Anybody remember Hurricane Katrina, and how the media was all over that story? Could it have had anything to do with the fact that the president was a Republican, and the people affected were mostly black? Nah, that's just right-wing paranoia.
It’s not that this generation won’t notice the green light on Daisy’s dock. It’s that they won’t cross the bay to find her. They’ll just look up her OnlyFans.
Great update on FEMA. Imagine if any of our major “news” channels actually still did journalism and dug into the multiple levels of this failure.
My gggg-grandfather, Archibald McMahan, had a large mule farm in East Tennessee bordering the Great Smokies (1820s-1850s). Across the high mountains was North Carolina, the parts that in present day have been hit by Helene. Archibald and his seven sons drove mules over mountain trails, for sale, and to bring supplies for trade.
We are back to that.
(My family, south of Knoxville in East Tennessee, is fine. )
Glad to hear your family is okay Linda, the Knoxville area really did get spared the worst of this one—and credit where credit is due, the TVA appears to have done a reasonably decent job of controlling the water levels coming through the Tennessee valley (though I find myself wondering whether this contributed to some of the flooding further east).
Your family must be pretty close to where we are. Somewhere in Blount County? We live just outside of Maryville.
I wrote originally to compliment the TVA but erased what I typed to be concise. Mistake.
But wow - I did not know where you were!!! Just wow.
We are a Maryville family. This is since the days of my grandfather, "Doc" Duggan (navy medic). Then several more generations going back into Sevier County in the Jones Cover area, from the 1780s (before it was Sevier County.)
Our family business, Duggan's Men'[s Store (Later Duggan Clothing) opened in the 30s when my grandfather took care of the family during the depression. It closed only about 2010 (Walmart), so if you have been in the area a while you may have heard my mother's last name - Duggan. I can tell so many stories. My remaining cousins are in Rockford which as you know, it "just outside Maryville" - so....suspense...dying to know....can you say more about where you are near Maryville (not the street of course but...something)?
Wait, did I say something wrong? "Doc" is an affectionate title for chief medics on ships. My former neighbor, an army colonel and medical doctor (chief doctor for a unit in Iraq at one time), assured me I have that correct. I was not pretending it was a doctor, hence the quote marks. Gramps was called "Doc" for the rest of his life after his service - I am not sure too many people knew his given name was Daniel.
Yes, I know Gramps was a hospital corpsman. (His ship was mainly stationed in Guantanamo, 1920s.) And yes, I heard Obama talking about the dead.
No, you called them "navy medics." Navy medics are not called "navy medics." And again, we are referring to the enlisted. Doctors are entirely another thing, and are referred to as "doctors."
He was enlisted. He became a medic. He was in the navy. That is what I meant. I don't see what is wrong with "navy medic". As you saw - I want to say just what he did, exactly. Hospital corpsmen have many medical jobs. ""Navy medic", "medic in the navy", potato, potahto. I did not say "navy medic" was a job title. Ah well. I do not think you should disparage my accurate description of my grandfather's work as I did not pretend it was a job title - it was a description. Do you know a medic (description, not job title of today) on a ship is called "Doc"?
Gramps'' military records from 1921-22 use the word "medic" so there is nothing wrong with what I said. The colonel I talked with would have told me if it was offensive to say that today.
PS - Judge Duggan is a distant cousin - I see you are a lawyer. He descends from the "lawyer side" we descend from the "educator side", (Robert and Daniel, law "side"and teacher "side" were two of the original Duggan brothers.) My Gramps's sisters and uncles were almost all teachers. Gramps' father was Superintendent of Blount County Schools, a very long time ago.
Small world! You’re roots are far deeper here than are mine, we moved back in 2019 for a job in Knoxville so I’m not as tied in with the super local as I might otherwise be (I am an in-house corporate lawyer, which means my practice tends to not be very locally oriented). The name Duggan does sound familiar; I’ll have to ask my wife about the store as she grew up here (Maryville High School graduate). I know Rockford well, we’re real close to that area (you are probably familiar with what used to be called the Jackson Hills subdivision? We’re in that area). If you haven’t been back in awhile, you wouldn’t recognize it. This whole area has been a boom town since Covid, meaning we have a lot of California transplants.
I was back to visit as recently as 2022 (Duggans Rockford, Arnolds Friendsville). They are cousins but my closest relatives other than a troubled sister - I've told her she can contact me anytime, but she does not. Jackson Hills/Eagleton - my cousins, whom visited from infancy, were just up the hill from Broadway Baptist Church until their move to Rockford about fifteen years ago. My various cousins went to either Maryville High or Heritage High or schools in the Eagleton area. Yes, I've seen the huge houses the "California people" and such buy.
Did you come to East Tennessee from another state? How has the adjustment been? (I don't live there and understand pluses and minuses, so I won't get my Ulster Scot blood up no matter what, heh.)
My wife is of Scottish blood, and is very attached to the area, so understood--she still calls me a Yankee interloper when she gets mad, even though I was born south of the Mason Dixon line. I am a transplant to TN, having first moved here when my wife and I got married. My wife lived in Maryville since she was in middle school but when we first got married (actually married at Broadway Methodist in downtown) we moved to Nashville and then back here.
I've both travelled and lived all over the country east of the Mississippi; from the DC area, to the Carolinas, to Boston, to northern Indiana, Ohio, WV, and PA. As for the transition, I really didn't find it any harder than any other place I've had to relocate to. Personally, I love Appalachia (but granted, the greater Knoxville area is a big city version of it) about as much as anywhere I have ever lived. One of the things that is sometimes overlooked is that Appalachian culture really spans all up and down the mountain chain, so in some ways the mountain areas of WV, PA, upstate NY, and even western MA have more in common with Knoxville than Knoxville does with Nashville--though this is truer the deeper into the hills you go and Knox/Blount/Anderson counties are very much transitional areas.
Love it! Especially that you pointed out Appalachian culture is not Nashville!
And that you didn't say Scots-Irish :) I once attended a play at Maryville College where the reason for saying Ulster Scots was explained in detail. But of course, I absolve any who do not know.
I'd even say I've met Appalachians on Cape Breton Island in Canada - one of the most beautiful places I know. Their accent there even has the sound of the old country after hundreds of years.
I was at my home in Clemson, SC when the hurricane hit. I got lucky - no loss of power or internet for me - but most of the town didn't get by so easy. No flooding or anything nearly as bad as what Ashville got, but the roads were full of tree litter and a lot of businesses were closed with no electricity for the next few days.
Helene blew through Thursday night, a lot of businesses were closed all through the weekend, schools closed Friday and Monday, the church I go to closed Sunday... but the Clemson vs. Stanford football game on Saturday night was just as packed as ever - and surrounded by tailgaters, too. There are just things that we in the small-town South are not going to do without. 🤔
Everything runs downstream from the Friend/Enemy distinction.
For the Global American Empire imported migrants are valuable friends because: they help keep wages down and asset values up, which keeps the stock market high and helps stave off recession; they reduce social cohesion and the value of our citizenship aka divide and conquer; and maybe most importantly, they incarnate the idea that the nation-state is antiquated and that humans are fungible meat widgets all meant to be shifted at the behest of global capital, and that the person who just arrived from across the planet is as much a "citizen" as the person whose family has lived there centuries.
For the Global American Empire downscale whites (like those in the path of the hurricane) are an enemy because: they stubbornly refuse to obey their betters and keep spouting "misinformation" and voting for a certain unapproved candidate; they expect a certain level of wages and benefits and input where much more grateful and obedient imported migrants will take whatever crumbs they can get; and most importantly, their political and electoral power is simply too strong and decisive to be tolerated, they have to be tamed as punishment for 2016 and the looming danger of the Orange One.
The worse things get for the Republic, the safer the Empire feels, and our Versailles class just wants to be able to sleep soundly.
Have you seen Taibbi's remarks? They're all over X. He says much of what you just did.
Do you know about the longshoreman's strike? The contract lapsed in JUNE, and Gina Raimondo, George Will's golden girl, has sat on her hands, from anything I can see. So here's the situation, besides higher prices (still) and the lack of things like coffee and wine that comes from someplace other than Chateau Roundup: the border is open in part because Big Ag wants to keep importing slave labor to pick crops rather than invest in technology, while people who already live in this country, the men on the docks, have to go on strike because they want more money. Are the longshoremans' demands excessive? I don't know. But I do know that something is so out of whack here as to cause vertigo.
There's a lot of beer made right here in Texas. I hear we're getting into the wine business as well, but I am a philistine in that respect. The only three kinds I know are red, white, and sweet.
Yet, we still keep hearing about the 250,000 dollar longshoremen.
Dividend 250,000 by their hourly rate and see many hours they have to work.
My friends son is a longshoremen in Port Newark and he still has to shape up for work like it’s 1954 and it’s “On the Waterfront”.
They have to shape up for years to try to get a permanent spot.
The Bastards destroyed Manufacturing wages and made us import all the crap we need, now they want to destroy the wages of the people who unload all the crap we get from overseas!
Support the ILA, the next job they come for may be yours, no matter what your profession!
Agreed. This could all be solved if the operators would just agree to pay what the workers are asking for.
Another difficulty is having a single contract with all the waterfront employers. The UAW didn't have the same impact, because they negotiate with each auto company separately, and they staged rolling strikes that shut down key components in one or another targeted company.
Here we go again with the panic buying. Nothing is so bad that human folly will not make it worse. That was true even during the Black Death. Someday it may be true during Nuclear Winter.
HEB, a big grocery store chain here in Texas, was really good about putting a stop to that at the start of the pandemic. They more or less established rations and said that people could buy only so much of a given product at any one time.
At the start of the Pandemic I recall seeing a cart loaded as high as it could be with toilet paper.
And up north before major snowstorms I've seen buy so much stuff in carts that I have to wonder if they are prepping for nuclear winter, not a blizzard.
Best memory of that sort of thing though: down here in St Pete when Hurricane Charlie threatened the local Florida Men were all but buying out the nearby booze store.
Mission Hospital is the major medical facility in Asheville. They have no running water and patients are eliminating in buckets because toilets cannot be flushed. The risks of infections and disease are obvious. No functioning water system for weeks to come. Imagine not having water in your house or business for weeks.
"Why Does Washington Seem To Care More About Foreigners Than Americans?"
Rod My Brother,
Most people I talk to are pissed off about this. We have a government that has billions for Ukraine and billions for Israel and billions for illegal immigrants, but when it comes to American people in times of hardship they could give a shit. That means they're stealing from us, our children and grandchildren (or future grandchildren) to line their own pockets with donations and kickbacks and insider trading tips, using our money to fund their pet projects and telling us the American Citizen to go pound sand. No wonder they want to get rid of the First Amendment and the Second Amendment. They want us disarmed and muzzled with a stasi like DOJ that will send Jack booted thugs in the middle of the night to kick down your door and gun you down in front of your wife and kids with a no knock warrant issued by some second rate, half wit lawyer in a black robe.
That's todays upside down America. They (the Ruling Class who pull the strings known as the Deep State) don't give a shit about us. To them We The People are a threat to their power and are to be treated as the enemy. This has become overwhelmingly apparent especially over the last decade. Our government is the biggest threat to American Freedom and Liberty not Russia or China or Iran. We need to wake up and take notice and prepare for whatever these bastards do next.
Same situation here in Canada. Our Parliament is currently on hiatus while several cases of corruption in the ruling party are allegedly being investigation. The consensus seems to be that it is just a stalling tactic by our Prime Minister, who is deeply loathed, to forestall a vote of non confidence, which would trigger an election.
Does Canada have a Populist Party? Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like Canada and UK (albeit on a parliamentary system) have the same kind of two party (uni party) as we have in the U.S. with fake conservatives (and for that matter fake leftists rather than traditional leftists) both deeply beholden to the Globalist system and agenda.
Canada used to have Social Credit, which was a mostly western somewhat socially conservative working class populist party. Not sure it has much influence any more.
I might, but I'm constitutionally pro-choice. I don't consider the moral calculus a suitable subject for the blunt instrument of the law. Roe v. Wade wasn't about whether abortion was a good or bad thing, moral or immoral, medically prudent or dangerous. It was, as constitutional jurisprudence should be, a jurisdictional question: who should weigh those questions? For those with sincere pro-life principles, I suggest "What if they opened an abortion clinic, and nobody came?" This is a subject for winning hearts and minds, not passing criminal legislation. What is going on inside the womb is not suitable for the intrusion of the police powers of the state, not until toward the end of the process anyway.
What I would like to see is three to five political parties, where, e.g., American Solidarity and a more secular labor party could form a majority on certain kinds of legislation, American Solidarity could ally with a more class-conservative party on topics like abortion. (I personally hope the former would achieve a majority and the latter fall short, but that would be up to how people cast their votes).
I agree, actually: I think that abortion should be handled from the demand side, not the supply side. Build a world where no one wants an abortion. I assume that women don't get abortions for *fun*, and that the vast majority of those who choose that option do so under some form of duress (financial or psychological or social or otherwise).
However, if you agreed with the ASP on everything *but* that issue and chose against them because of it, then that would sort of make you a single-issue voter, wouldn't it? I'd say I agree with the ASP's principle on the matter, although I think it is strategically and practically unwise to take on the supply side at the level of law.
No, we have 6 parties? We've had a minority government with a low IQ trust fund baby at the helm. He keeps trying to get someond to prop him up. It's been the "New Democrats" (socialist) for awhile, and now it's the party that only cares about the one French speaking party - le Bloc Québecois). Ruling party is Liberal (Biden adjacent). Opposition is Conservative (Biden- lite), then there's the Green Party and the People's Party of Canada (Libertarian, does not have one seat).
That's disappointing. I guess it's the same here in the States. I hate the Republican Party, and I'm a Republican. I just hate the Democrats more. The Democrats are off the wall, batshit crazy woke/prog/Neoliberal imperialists. The Republicans are corrupt, whores for AIPAC and the defense industry who'd sell out their own Mother for an extra buck. Like Mike Johnson.
Well, tons of destruction in my MIL’s town in NC, but luckily no one has been racist or transphobic.
Why? Who/whom, the way it’s always been with the left. These are not decent people.
Mr. Heneghan, this is a berserk button of mine, but I find this is an extremely simplistic, pro ruling elite statement.
I and most of my family could be labeled as part of left since the beginning, if earlier, of the 20th century. Pro union, pro worker, pacifistic or antiwar, anti-poverty, anti-child labor, pro freedom of speech, civil rights supporting, religious, even at times patriotic and America first. What part of all this do you find offensive?
Unless of course, you prefer those family members who patriotic citizens of the Southern Slaveocracy? Although, unlike our current (Neo)liberal Elites, they were willing to put their bodies, their lives, right in the line of Northern bullet and cannon fire.
Rather than lumping at least forty percent of the American nation of the past one hundred and fifty years with the current, corrupt, evil minded, empty souled neoliberal leadership of the ruling scum, who are liberal or leftist, in name only, you could... rephrase that?
Alternatively, you could choose an alternative self-definition and accept that the Left has left you. That's sort of what I've done. Left and right are only words, and not particularly useful ones at this point—nothing worth getting worked up about. The underlying ideas are what matter.
Also, because I Stand with Ukraine™️, it's important that bombs signed by Democratic senators kill Russians in Moscow before we turn to NC. Flooding is bad, but those Ruskies arent going to kill themselves.
The two have nothing to do with each other. Ukrainian aid is coming out of the military budget. That's not where FEMA money is appropriated. (FEMA is under Homeland Security)
Again, this is Congress's job.
Yes and no. The military is a sacred cow when it comes to the budget. There is less money for DHS because we direct so much of it into a miliary which is well in excess of anything necessary to defend the United States, but I have a suspicion that if we did redress excessive defense spending the Republicans would just push that we just further cut taxes.
True. Ultimately, the total budget is what it is. Spending more money on any one item either requires cutting something else on another budget line, or raising taxes, or more deficit spending. Its all connected.
Yes, Andrew, and recall that for Katrina, when FEMA couldn't handle the severity of the situation, the military AND WALMART WAS called in. But that was black folk. White folk in a Red State? Why, let them die en masse. As Hillary has recently and emphatically re-iterated, any GOP voter is a "deplorable," and apparently, deplorables are expendible, and can be left to die. Now Haitians, no, no financial limits there--let them come and ruin our little cash-strapped, depressed towns and villages, especially if they're in JD's state. Maybe we should drop some Haitians in Western NC flooded areas to get Homeland willing to help the area rebuild and have the stranded be rescued.
What next? Central Bank Digital Currency with negative points earned according to skin color, religious afficiliation, and party afficliation. AFter that, gulags and firing squads (never have seen a Communist regime without one--essential features of running a polltical/economic system that defies God's plan for mankind and human nature as we know (which is endowed differently in terms of giftedness--see Caitlin Clark, almost had her right eyes scratched out in the first 2 minutes of the last pre-play off WNBA games. But, of course, CC and her fans are the racists. Talk about projection. I'm boycotting the WNBA until the beat-downs of CC stop. But we're all going to be on the receiving end of beatdowns going forward (of various types--not being hired, being held back, last in line for the knee-replacement, etc, passed over, or finally--the "FINAL SOLUTION") if we go Commie, and Commiela is a Commie pretending not-to-be.
Republican and Democrat most of them belong to the same class now and protect its interests, mostly in the financial and extraction sectors.
Agree.
As recently as 2012?
Re: verity of the situation, the military AND WALMART WAS called in.
Er, there are white people in southern Louisiana. Even in New Orleans.
I know, Jon. But the majority of the people who could not get out of Katrina's way were black. And the overwhelming majority of people who could not get out of Helene's way are white. Private do-gooders who are trying to pluck people up by small crafts are being threatened with arrest. Imagine there are 20,000 stranded Haitians in the Ashville now. Do you think the response would be more forthcoming? I do. And this is the problem. We can look forward (once Medicare gets extended to all, including illegals, and Kammie will do that and more if it is in her power), skin color is going to be a big factor in who gets helped in what order. It is theft. We citizens have paid into the Medicare system, but we are going to be placed at the end of the line. If CBDCs are enacted (and they're coming on like an onrushing train), we will be given social scores, as are the Chinese citizens. And that score will determine one's life. Christinas, pale-skinned, cisgendered will not fare well in the new cultural Marxists system that will be imposed.
I think WW3 is probably going to be ushered in in order to declare Marshall Law and a need to seize gun for "our safety." Everything will be done under the guise of "public safety" and "health and safety" (just like the Jacobites in Revolutionary France). We've seen how this movie plays out. There will be mandatory vaxxines which will harm health but be touted as "safe and effective." There will be penalties for noncompliance, and Christianity is going to be noncompliant. China allows Catholicism only insofar as it gets to RUN the seminaries, appoint bishops (or approve the Commie Pope's pick--everything has to be approved). There are "approved" churches, but unapproved house churches will get you beat up and maybe imprisoned. See Jimmy Lai re: freedom of the press. Gone. BTW, Jimmie Lai could have escaped probably. He deliberately stayed, and is probably going to be in the gulag until death. For the Uygers, it is death, death camps, slavery camps.
This is what another stolen election will ultimately bring us--maybe not on Day 1, but when enough biased corrupt judges are put in place (see Merchan and Engoran as sample "judges"), we will be stripped of all our rights and freedoms.
"This is it. Make no mistake where you are. You're going no further, until its over and done (a free and fair election), which we will not get" (Kenny Logins). Kammie is a frontman for Soros and Obama (bad dudes at heart), as was Biden, the deadhead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbIxiZ8yGEc
I don't believe there will be any kind of social credit system- the great najority of Americans would simply ignore such a thing the way we do speed limits. We are a disorderly rather cussed people in most things. Our culture tends to the small "l" libertarian (and hence libertine).
Nor will there be "Medicare for all". Big Insurance isn't going to give up its cash cow.
Congress makes decisions about money. At this point, it’s just debt, but there is way more thought put in Ukraine than what ends up in FEMA. It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. It starts with my taxes…
It sounds like FEMA is riddled with small minds, big egos and turf-warriors. Probably as bad as in the days of "Heckuva Job' Brownie.
Quite likely. But still, when the money is all spent, either we stop helping people, or we come up with more money.
Well Bush Jr had the sense to call in the military and Walmart when FEMA wasn't up to the job after Karina. But Biden figures "this is MAGA country, so to Hell with them."
More accurately, those acting behind the scenes, for whom Biden is just a figurehead. We don't have a president, right now.
You're right. It's Obama and Soros running the show. They want another term.
Asheville NC is anything but MAGA country.
Jon, money is fungible. Funds allocated for one thing get re-appropriated by this lawless bunch, and even the "unlawless" bunch. It is absolutely criminal that Americans are being left stranded without food, water, shelter, nothing, and are being told "sorry, it went for those Haitians who are going to help wreck Red America impoverished towns and help steal the election." Then don't ask for taxes from Red America. No taxation without representation. Who is representing these people's interest? No one. It's the Haitians we care about. White America? They can go to Hell--those privileged white tax-paying, law abiding "deplorables." Why, we don't deserve to live, we're that deporable..
Sure money is fungible. That's how Trump built his wall without any appropriation from congress.
The fungibility of funds is limited, by past Supreme Court decisions. Presidents can shift money around a bit within departments but that's about it. As an aside to Charlie Rosenberg below this is how Trump was able to take some DoD money and use it for the wall, on the (not ureasonable) excuse that the wall was for the defense of the nation. And there was still a lawsuit over it (which in 2023-- yes, that late-- was dropped as moot).
And the Feds are obstructing private initiatives to help the deveststed. Isn’t it alleged that during the Holodomor the Bolshevikd thwarted all efforts of local people to assist their fellows? Are you finally appreciating the nature of the people we are dealing with? And doesn’t it burn you that for 40 years the Republicans aided the empowerment of these people?
Having been part of some private initiatives (instigated by left-wingers who didn't want to get entangled with government funding), I observed that there were efforts, in the spirit of a United Way mentality, to "coordinate" all public and private initiatives in the name of efficiency and avoiding "duplication of services." Of course the best purpose of private initiatives is to find those areas that government aid is not reaching, and fill the need, while also advocating for people who are NOT getting what they legally should be getting. I once helped design a leaflet on aid people in a disaster area were legally entitled to, and a FEMA staff person ran out to say "We're not doing that here, whey are you telling people this?" (Eventually they recognized what the law said and began providing the enumerated resources.)
You've had a rich, interesting life Charlie.
<And doesn’t it burn you that for 40 years the Republicans aided the empowerment of these people?>
THIS 100%
I relate to the struggles of really getting into "The Magic Mountain"....
I relate to them too. I thought it was boring. Then I read Doctor Faustus and liked that even less. The one work by Mann that I liked was Death in Venice. It’s not only short but it’s not freighted down with intellectual pretension.
Man, great books are like that even when u don’t like them. Took me 3 times to make it to page 10 of Saragamo’s Blindness and then magic happened !
His novella Tonio Kröger was excellent.
I liked Doctor F a lot but I think it was partly because of my intense interest in music and artistic modernism.
Not me. It had by throat right from the train trip.
Another reason the Biden administration has given Western North Carolina the back of the hand is that the region heavily leans Republican and I suspect they would like to see as many residents leave the area without voting. North Carolina is politically in play and the fewer Republicans that can vote, the better for Harris/Walz.
One thing to remember about FEMA (or any federal agency, for that matter) is that it approaches disaster relief the way a dog approaches a bone: everyone else stay away. It is about acting like a dog marking off territory and anyone else is an interloper. And given that most of the media is in the tank for the Democrats, anyway, this is a non-event.
Regionally that’s true, though Asheville itself is VERY blue. I might be wrong, but I see this less as a direct ideological choice to ignore a largely white region than it is a naked calculation that the cost per person of helping many this region is just too high. That in and of itself is evil, but it is an older evil than the current racist obsessions. Anyway, FEMA (and all of HHS) should be disbanded. It is unaccountable, incompetent as to its core mandates, and seems to serve primarily as another slush fund conduit of federal grant dollars to ideologically aligned leftist organizations.
OK, but do recall that when Maria hit Puerto Rico Trump dragged his feet about getting funds released to help. Criticized for it he went there are tossed some paper towels out to the audience.
Trump brought joy and levity to all his official acts as president. It was awesome!
As I've said in the past, he should have taken over Rush Limbaugh's job as acid-tongued political comedian.
Unfortunately, he's not nearly as eloquent as Rush was.
Asheville is a pimple of blue in a sea of red.
There are a lot of retirees in the Smokies, that's probably it. More than one of my high school classmates have wound up there.
The hits just keep on coming with Mayorkas, don't they?
He has no shame.
He has this weirdly wicked countenance. A sort of looking-down-his-nose-at-us deplorables semi-straight face, with a lie ready to roll off his fork tongue.
The devastation in Western North Carolina is far from general. Some areas are flat on their back. Others were barely affected. I have a Facebook friend who lives in the town of Robinsonville. (She's someone I went to school with; she had a crush on me back then. We reconnected twelve years ago and she moved down there in 2022) I noticed her on Facebook Messenger a couple days ago and messaged her to see if she was OK. Yes, and her area was unscathed.
Well, glad she's unscathed, but others had everything they owned except the clothes on their backs swept away, and to be told "money gone (on illegals and Ukraine, we can extropolate)" is hard to swallow. I hope this awful team loses. It will only get more intense under Harris/Walz.
I'm aware that some places had massive damages, and others escaped. My friend mentioned the destruction in Asheville too.
It's the same here, but just locally. Houses and businesses on the water suffered severe flooding while most of us came through with no trouble. But our highways are all intact and outside the beaches things are back to normal. The GOP is lucky that Speaker Johnson didn't go along with the government shutdown thing. The optics of that would be pretty bad in light of the disaster.
Not coming through in a disaster is always a politically bad move. Some Democrats thanked God for Hurricane Sandy because it allowed the Obama administration to shine a month before an election.
I think the "Biden limited resources" on purpose might have been true in Palestine, OH. But for this NC Helene tragedy, I'm leaning towards sheer incompetence.
In defense of Harris, it's not really her job to lead the administration's efforts--I don't recall Dick Cheney anywhere near Katrina's aftermath or Harris playing a big part in any of the previous hurricanes. But it was Biden's job. And he is simply not up to the job of being president. It's a disgrace. The Republican leadership starting with McConnell should be calling for the 25th amendment every single day.
The connective threads of your stories today (feckless approach to helping the desperate souls stuck in the path of Helene--and in other prior storms) and manifest failures of our education system are an uncaring leadership group and the quest for money above all else. As you note, their morals or sense of what life is about are utterly bereft of duty and care for their fellow man.
And politically, the contrast between "orange man bad" and the Biden/Harris group is stark. Trump was there Monday with supplies, and Franklin Graham, and working with Elon Musk to get Starlink connections for desperate, cut off folks. Kamala was at a fundraiser and staging photos while Biden was at the beach. Seems like they finally woke up today--6 days into a terrible disaster.
It seems as though they can't even imagine what it would be like to be alone, stuck in high hollers with no roads, or on roofs to escape rising waters and watching people dead in trees. It calls to mind many OT books.
Do you remember what happened during COVID with Franklin Graham? Samaritan's Purse was ready to set up hospital tents in Central Park (remember, this was supposed to be The Black Death, so the staff thought they were putting themselves in danger) and were turned away because homophobia. Barack Obama, I mean Bill DeBlasio, told them to go away. These people are simply incapable of thinking about anything but politics. Nothing but power has any importance for them.
The joke of course is that COVID turned out to be less threatening than the flu to 70% of the population. The Navy hospital ship sailed away without having filled one bed. As for the old people, Sonny Boy saw to that.
Here's a link to a story about a helicopter pilot rescuing people being threatened with arrest if he made another flight:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/helicopter-pilot-threatened-with-arrest-after-flying-rescue-missions-in-flood-ravaged-nc/ar-AA1rBns0?cvid=a9296e6e428f4e4b9907d905916904dd&ei=42
And today I understand that NC Gov Cooper (D) is hampering rescue efforts, including not granting (supposedly required) Title 10 authorization for the guard. A lot of rescue pilots are private and funding their own ops.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DAl8mr-PPsH/
I am a physician on a Disaster Medical Assistance Team (Georgia), and I can attest that there never seem to be any funds.. We work under the auspices of HHS, not FEMA, but the bureaucracy is the same. I had to buy my own uniform as there was no money available for the government to provide official clothing. Our annual national conference was severely curtailed due to lack of funds, and on our monthly conference calls, the lack of money available for emergencies is a frequent topic.
Good luck America!
And yet, there is money to build Migrant Welcome Centers!
You’re right not to want politicize everything but something is wrong here and it needs to be publicized and probably politicized.
It's what I said above, John. Nothing is of any importance to the Left except politics, not the art of living in a polis, but exercising power. We have to understand what they're about before we can engage them.
Just understand that they are sociopaths, and if you become a hindrance to them, they will want you dead. It's not even necessarily a hatred thing, but rather the inconvenience you now are to their "self-actualization".
Well, given that a lot of migrants are around, do you want them at a Welcome Center or sleeping on the streets, begging outside every Starbucks, lying in wait in every alley, and generally make the entire city unlivable?
There's an argument to be made that this is why we shouldn't have let them in, and should deport them soon. But doing nothing with people who are here isn't an option.
And also over $12 billion to send Israel so it can bomb its neighbors.
Yes, to bomb their neighbors who want to see them cease to exist.
If you had to leave your home and your community to make room for refugees from, I don't know, let's say Sudan, I'm sure you'd be taking them flowers, right?
There’s never any funds because the GOP is ideologically committed to defunding the government.
Sadly, the Republicans have never succeeded in defunding any part of the government in my forty-five years as an adult. The federal colossal goes on and on, one large honey pot for government leeches.
This just isn’t true. State level Republicans defund social services all of the time. They’re less successful at the federal level, but it all adds up over time. Austrian economics has rotted the brain of these people. Or they’re just evil.
Perhaps some people are not socialist.
Republicans are plenty socialist when it comes to bailing out the Wall Street banks and making sure that executives receive colossal bonuses. And yes, the bailout is still ongoing. On a monthly basis the fed continues to buy up toxic assets on a he banks’ balance sheets and exchange for fresh, clean cash. Back in the 60s some Cubans used to ask Castro, “when will the revolution be over”, his response, “never, the revolution is permanent” Similsrly, the bailouts are permanent now. They will never end, enriching Wall Street all the way,. Now, that’s socialism you can bank on.
There is a reason the working class is increasingly republican. Banks, execs, are huge corporations are solidly blue these days.
The last millenium called. They want their talking points back.
To be fair, the government turned a profit on TARP (which had to be repaid with interest; it was not "money for nothing")
Everything ends - it’s a matter of time.
That TARP stuff was one of W's greatest destructive acts. Up there with the invasion of Iraq.
The issues are all systemic issues, you would need a systemic solution (ie government) to address any of them. Letting the government shrink proportionally to the population and GDP from the New Deal times to now is responsible for 90% of our problems. That doesn’t mean “socialism”, it just means going back to new deal liberalism and perhaps a social democratic system.
The government hasn’t shrunk. Do you actually think the problems we face are caused by lack of government spending. There is something fundamentally unserious about that. I have my differences with RD - not as concerned about Sasquatch, Leprechauns and demonic UFOs - but his invoking Philip Rieff is exactly right. We are in a death culture. I don’t really think social democratic wealth transfers are going to solve much in the context of a hedonic , solipsistic culture which expects all its fantasies to come true. These include - to quote the Kinks- boys will be girls and girls boys- and we can import the entire third world into the US and expect to have a US.What Hemingway said on bankruptcy is on target - gradually , then suddenly.No FDR isn’t coming back- good thing.No trying to pretend we’re Denmark - Denmark isn’t even Denmark. I find Spengler a bore. But civilization do rise only to decline and ours isn’t going to hold and to quote Led Zeppelin ,the levee is breaking- if only drip after torturous drip.
Disaster aid is not socialism. eighteen hundred years before Marx the Romans sent help to the survivors of Pompeii-- and Nero even provided assistance to the many people made homeless in the Great Fire in Rome (an of course blamed the Christians for it)
Edit: No, not "1800 years" More like almost two thousand years.
Of course it is not. As you might have read, I believe Congress should reconvene and pass a relief program for southern Appalachia right now. The other items of big government bother me, especially excessive "defense" spending. Education departments that don't educate. Energy departments that don't create energy. That sort of thing.
Do you really think these people are readers of Mises or Hayek or could lucidly discuss the socialist calculation debate or the concept of marginal utility? Perhaps Republican hacks at a state level brandish Murray Rothbards Man , Ecmomy and State like Margaret Thatcher with Hayeks Constitution of Liberty and say this is what I stand for. Oh come on! We’re lucky if they have some vague understanding of supply and demand, what inflation is and what monetary supply is. You’ll notice most politicians of all stripes seem to barely have any grasp of the simple stuff let alone more complex theory. I have next to no idea why the FEMA response here seems to be bungling but it’s virtually a law of government that when an agency doesn’t get things right, it claims it’s starved for funds. You have a problem, you try to use it to your advantage.State agencies always say they’re starved for funds.
At least 95 % of Republicans don't know who Mises or Hayek or Friedman or Rothbard were.
Of course not !
Total government spending in the US is about 37% of GDP. This is lower than a lot of European nations, but it should be more than adequate. Whatever the influence of Austrian economics, it hasn’t resulted in dramatic spending cuts. You can argue that we are spending on the wrong things, but I think that is Rod’s point.
Good point, though I’d wonder what those numbers are like at a state level. Regardless, subsidizing the lifestyle of suburbanites probably accounts for a lot of said spending. I’d imagine European population density makes that money go much further than it would here.
Who was influenced by Austrian economics? Maybe Alan Greenspan. Monetarism has had a little more influence . I think Bernanke claimed to be influenced by the Friedmans depression book. But really it’s all made up.
And this is also part of the reason we have so many mentally addled people begging in the streets. The GOP signed right on for deinstitutionalization.
Yep, gutted it and then acted surprised at what happened. Now that I’m confronted with it day in and day out, it’s hard to conclude it’s anything but pure evil on the part of our GOP overlords.
This was a bipartisan thing. The de institutionalization movement came out of a lot of things. It was influenced by R.D.Laing(“ Insanity -- a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world”).
, Thomas Szasz ( Myth of Mental Illness )Peter Breggin( “ Only in psychiatry is the existence of physical disease determined by APA presidential proclamations, by committee decisions, and even, by a vote of the members of APA, not to mention the courts.),
and yes Foucault ( see Madness and Civilization). The mentally ill were at times defined as political prisoners anattitude common on the New Left and among some libertarians. Your law and order conservative tended to be round them up and put em in happy dale.But there is another very important factor here , the increasing medicalization of psychiatry. If all you had to due is prescribe anti depressants and anti psychotics, you didn’t need institutions. If someone developed tardive dyskinesia from their schizophrenia drug, just give them something for that.On top of that and partly because of all of that , there are real legal barriers to involuntary commitment ( I do know a thing or two about this). So you can blame cheap o Republicans till you’re blue in the face but this is not a simple matter of, they won’t spend enough to solve the problem.
There's been a broad consensus in Washington to spend 20% to 40% more than we take in for two decades.
I wish your comment were true.
There’s also been a consensus to cut the taxes of the wealthy, defund social services, and spend money on horseshit. Its all benefited the rich at the expense of everyone else. The problems all flow from the incentive structure of the leisure class.
Well among the biggest horseshit expenses has been endless money pumped into foreign wars and who knows what goes into the internal security state.
I agree with much of what you say but I don’t think social services have been cut. SSD has expanded dramatically in the last 20 years for one.
I don't need to read books; I read Rod's novel-length column every day. No, but seriously: very grateful for this work's quality *and* quantity.
I was thinking that Rod bears the primary responsibility for me rarely reading books!
For me it's just the opposite -- I read many of his recommendations!
I read recommendations from just about everyone here, including you. I'm a slow book-reader though because of the internet.
I've slowed down some with age, but I still can go at a pretty good clip.
I'm now reading Cormac McCarthys "No Country for Old Men." It is a fine read.
Indeed it is!
Well, at least I read your recommendation :) Never the same, as you know.
You make a good point.
recently, Substack released my summer reading numbers.
apparently I read 3.7 million words over the course of 4 months.
Rod’s blog was the main culprit..!
Anybody remember Hurricane Katrina, and how the media was all over that story? Could it have had anything to do with the fact that the president was a Republican, and the people affected were mostly black? Nah, that's just right-wing paranoia.
The media grossly exaggerated the federal role and failures about Katrina, for the pretty obvious purpose of hanging it around Bush's neck. It worked.
It’s not that this generation won’t notice the green light on Daisy’s dock. It’s that they won’t cross the bay to find her. They’ll just look up her OnlyFans.
Great update on FEMA. Imagine if any of our major “news” channels actually still did journalism and dug into the multiple levels of this failure.
I couldn't think of a more damning indictment for this generation; I often despair what effect mass pornography has on the collective imagination.
And will they even know what that reference is from?
To my shame, it took me a while to catch the reference to the green light on Daisy's dock. It kind of proves Rod's point.
<<people are getting insulin by donkey>>
My gggg-grandfather, Archibald McMahan, had a large mule farm in East Tennessee bordering the Great Smokies (1820s-1850s). Across the high mountains was North Carolina, the parts that in present day have been hit by Helene. Archibald and his seven sons drove mules over mountain trails, for sale, and to bring supplies for trade.
We are back to that.
(My family, south of Knoxville in East Tennessee, is fine. )
Glad to hear your family is okay Linda, the Knoxville area really did get spared the worst of this one—and credit where credit is due, the TVA appears to have done a reasonably decent job of controlling the water levels coming through the Tennessee valley (though I find myself wondering whether this contributed to some of the flooding further east).
Your family must be pretty close to where we are. Somewhere in Blount County? We live just outside of Maryville.
I wrote originally to compliment the TVA but erased what I typed to be concise. Mistake.
But wow - I did not know where you were!!! Just wow.
We are a Maryville family. This is since the days of my grandfather, "Doc" Duggan (navy medic). Then several more generations going back into Sevier County in the Jones Cover area, from the 1780s (before it was Sevier County.)
Our family business, Duggan's Men'[s Store (Later Duggan Clothing) opened in the 30s when my grandfather took care of the family during the depression. It closed only about 2010 (Walmart), so if you have been in the area a while you may have heard my mother's last name - Duggan. I can tell so many stories. My remaining cousins are in Rockford which as you know, it "just outside Maryville" - so....suspense...dying to know....can you say more about where you are near Maryville (not the street of course but...something)?
Navy medics are called "corpsmen.", and contrary to Obama's assertion, pronounced "core-men." FYI, from your military guy.
Wait, did I say something wrong? "Doc" is an affectionate title for chief medics on ships. My former neighbor, an army colonel and medical doctor (chief doctor for a unit in Iraq at one time), assured me I have that correct. I was not pretending it was a doctor, hence the quote marks. Gramps was called "Doc" for the rest of his life after his service - I am not sure too many people knew his given name was Daniel.
Yes, I know Gramps was a hospital corpsman. (His ship was mainly stationed in Guantanamo, 1920s.) And yes, I heard Obama talking about the dead.
No, you called them "navy medics." Navy medics are not called "navy medics." And again, we are referring to the enlisted. Doctors are entirely another thing, and are referred to as "doctors."
He was enlisted. He became a medic. He was in the navy. That is what I meant. I don't see what is wrong with "navy medic". As you saw - I want to say just what he did, exactly. Hospital corpsmen have many medical jobs. ""Navy medic", "medic in the navy", potato, potahto. I did not say "navy medic" was a job title. Ah well. I do not think you should disparage my accurate description of my grandfather's work as I did not pretend it was a job title - it was a description. Do you know a medic (description, not job title of today) on a ship is called "Doc"?
Gramps'' military records from 1921-22 use the word "medic" so there is nothing wrong with what I said. The colonel I talked with would have told me if it was offensive to say that today.
Not "Bones"?
"Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a (fill in the blank)!"
PS - Judge Duggan is a distant cousin - I see you are a lawyer. He descends from the "lawyer side" we descend from the "educator side", (Robert and Daniel, law "side"and teacher "side" were two of the original Duggan brothers.) My Gramps's sisters and uncles were almost all teachers. Gramps' father was Superintendent of Blount County Schools, a very long time ago.
Small world! You’re roots are far deeper here than are mine, we moved back in 2019 for a job in Knoxville so I’m not as tied in with the super local as I might otherwise be (I am an in-house corporate lawyer, which means my practice tends to not be very locally oriented). The name Duggan does sound familiar; I’ll have to ask my wife about the store as she grew up here (Maryville High School graduate). I know Rockford well, we’re real close to that area (you are probably familiar with what used to be called the Jackson Hills subdivision? We’re in that area). If you haven’t been back in awhile, you wouldn’t recognize it. This whole area has been a boom town since Covid, meaning we have a lot of California transplants.
I was back to visit as recently as 2022 (Duggans Rockford, Arnolds Friendsville). They are cousins but my closest relatives other than a troubled sister - I've told her she can contact me anytime, but she does not. Jackson Hills/Eagleton - my cousins, whom visited from infancy, were just up the hill from Broadway Baptist Church until their move to Rockford about fifteen years ago. My various cousins went to either Maryville High or Heritage High or schools in the Eagleton area. Yes, I've seen the huge houses the "California people" and such buy.
Did you come to East Tennessee from another state? How has the adjustment been? (I don't live there and understand pluses and minuses, so I won't get my Ulster Scot blood up no matter what, heh.)
My wife is of Scottish blood, and is very attached to the area, so understood--she still calls me a Yankee interloper when she gets mad, even though I was born south of the Mason Dixon line. I am a transplant to TN, having first moved here when my wife and I got married. My wife lived in Maryville since she was in middle school but when we first got married (actually married at Broadway Methodist in downtown) we moved to Nashville and then back here.
I've both travelled and lived all over the country east of the Mississippi; from the DC area, to the Carolinas, to Boston, to northern Indiana, Ohio, WV, and PA. As for the transition, I really didn't find it any harder than any other place I've had to relocate to. Personally, I love Appalachia (but granted, the greater Knoxville area is a big city version of it) about as much as anywhere I have ever lived. One of the things that is sometimes overlooked is that Appalachian culture really spans all up and down the mountain chain, so in some ways the mountain areas of WV, PA, upstate NY, and even western MA have more in common with Knoxville than Knoxville does with Nashville--though this is truer the deeper into the hills you go and Knox/Blount/Anderson counties are very much transitional areas.
In other words, its a great place to call home.
Love it! Especially that you pointed out Appalachian culture is not Nashville!
And that you didn't say Scots-Irish :) I once attended a play at Maryville College where the reason for saying Ulster Scots was explained in detail. But of course, I absolve any who do not know.
I'd even say I've met Appalachians on Cape Breton Island in Canada - one of the most beautiful places I know. Their accent there even has the sound of the old country after hundreds of years.
I was at my home in Clemson, SC when the hurricane hit. I got lucky - no loss of power or internet for me - but most of the town didn't get by so easy. No flooding or anything nearly as bad as what Ashville got, but the roads were full of tree litter and a lot of businesses were closed with no electricity for the next few days.
Helene blew through Thursday night, a lot of businesses were closed all through the weekend, schools closed Friday and Monday, the church I go to closed Sunday... but the Clemson vs. Stanford football game on Saturday night was just as packed as ever - and surrounded by tailgaters, too. There are just things that we in the small-town South are not going to do without. 🤔
Everything runs downstream from the Friend/Enemy distinction.
For the Global American Empire imported migrants are valuable friends because: they help keep wages down and asset values up, which keeps the stock market high and helps stave off recession; they reduce social cohesion and the value of our citizenship aka divide and conquer; and maybe most importantly, they incarnate the idea that the nation-state is antiquated and that humans are fungible meat widgets all meant to be shifted at the behest of global capital, and that the person who just arrived from across the planet is as much a "citizen" as the person whose family has lived there centuries.
For the Global American Empire downscale whites (like those in the path of the hurricane) are an enemy because: they stubbornly refuse to obey their betters and keep spouting "misinformation" and voting for a certain unapproved candidate; they expect a certain level of wages and benefits and input where much more grateful and obedient imported migrants will take whatever crumbs they can get; and most importantly, their political and electoral power is simply too strong and decisive to be tolerated, they have to be tamed as punishment for 2016 and the looming danger of the Orange One.
The worse things get for the Republic, the safer the Empire feels, and our Versailles class just wants to be able to sleep soundly.
Carl Schmitt?
👍🏽
Well written.
thanks
Have you seen Taibbi's remarks? They're all over X. He says much of what you just did.
Do you know about the longshoreman's strike? The contract lapsed in JUNE, and Gina Raimondo, George Will's golden girl, has sat on her hands, from anything I can see. So here's the situation, besides higher prices (still) and the lack of things like coffee and wine that comes from someplace other than Chateau Roundup: the border is open in part because Big Ag wants to keep importing slave labor to pick crops rather than invest in technology, while people who already live in this country, the men on the docks, have to go on strike because they want more money. Are the longshoremans' demands excessive? I don't know. But I do know that something is so out of whack here as to cause vertigo.
People are beginning to panic buy now. Even toilet paper, a domestically manufactured product.
I'm stocking up on coffee. I suppose I can drink California wine until my hair turns the color of J.D.'s tie.
There's a lot of beer made right here in Texas. I hear we're getting into the wine business as well, but I am a philistine in that respect. The only three kinds I know are red, white, and sweet.
Oh, and at the current hourly a longshoreman can make $81,000 a year. That doesn't sound like a king's ransom to me.
Yet, we still keep hearing about the 250,000 dollar longshoremen.
Dividend 250,000 by their hourly rate and see many hours they have to work.
My friends son is a longshoremen in Port Newark and he still has to shape up for work like it’s 1954 and it’s “On the Waterfront”.
They have to shape up for years to try to get a permanent spot.
The Bastards destroyed Manufacturing wages and made us import all the crap we need, now they want to destroy the wages of the people who unload all the crap we get from overseas!
Support the ILA, the next job they come for may be yours, no matter what your profession!
Agreed. This could all be solved if the operators would just agree to pay what the workers are asking for.
Another difficulty is having a single contract with all the waterfront employers. The UAW didn't have the same impact, because they negotiate with each auto company separately, and they staged rolling strikes that shut down key components in one or another targeted company.
Not sure if I understand why you think it is difficult with a single contract?
Wouldn’t you want to have as much impact as possible?
Here we go again with the panic buying. Nothing is so bad that human folly will not make it worse. That was true even during the Black Death. Someday it may be true during Nuclear Winter.
HEB, a big grocery store chain here in Texas, was really good about putting a stop to that at the start of the pandemic. They more or less established rations and said that people could buy only so much of a given product at any one time.
At the start of the Pandemic I recall seeing a cart loaded as high as it could be with toilet paper.
And up north before major snowstorms I've seen buy so much stuff in carts that I have to wonder if they are prepping for nuclear winter, not a blizzard.
Best memory of that sort of thing though: down here in St Pete when Hurricane Charlie threatened the local Florida Men were all but buying out the nearby booze store.
Mission Hospital is the major medical facility in Asheville. They have no running water and patients are eliminating in buckets because toilets cannot be flushed. The risks of infections and disease are obvious. No functioning water system for weeks to come. Imagine not having water in your house or business for weeks.
"Why Does Washington Seem To Care More About Foreigners Than Americans?"
Rod My Brother,
Most people I talk to are pissed off about this. We have a government that has billions for Ukraine and billions for Israel and billions for illegal immigrants, but when it comes to American people in times of hardship they could give a shit. That means they're stealing from us, our children and grandchildren (or future grandchildren) to line their own pockets with donations and kickbacks and insider trading tips, using our money to fund their pet projects and telling us the American Citizen to go pound sand. No wonder they want to get rid of the First Amendment and the Second Amendment. They want us disarmed and muzzled with a stasi like DOJ that will send Jack booted thugs in the middle of the night to kick down your door and gun you down in front of your wife and kids with a no knock warrant issued by some second rate, half wit lawyer in a black robe.
That's todays upside down America. They (the Ruling Class who pull the strings known as the Deep State) don't give a shit about us. To them We The People are a threat to their power and are to be treated as the enemy. This has become overwhelmingly apparent especially over the last decade. Our government is the biggest threat to American Freedom and Liberty not Russia or China or Iran. We need to wake up and take notice and prepare for whatever these bastards do next.
Same situation here in Canada. Our Parliament is currently on hiatus while several cases of corruption in the ruling party are allegedly being investigation. The consensus seems to be that it is just a stalling tactic by our Prime Minister, who is deeply loathed, to forestall a vote of non confidence, which would trigger an election.
Does Canada have a Populist Party? Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems like Canada and UK (albeit on a parliamentary system) have the same kind of two party (uni party) as we have in the U.S. with fake conservatives (and for that matter fake leftists rather than traditional leftists) both deeply beholden to the Globalist system and agenda.
Canada used to have Social Credit, which was a mostly western somewhat socially conservative working class populist party. Not sure it has much influence any more.
I like the American Solidarity Party—go Pelicans!
I might, but I'm constitutionally pro-choice. I don't consider the moral calculus a suitable subject for the blunt instrument of the law. Roe v. Wade wasn't about whether abortion was a good or bad thing, moral or immoral, medically prudent or dangerous. It was, as constitutional jurisprudence should be, a jurisdictional question: who should weigh those questions? For those with sincere pro-life principles, I suggest "What if they opened an abortion clinic, and nobody came?" This is a subject for winning hearts and minds, not passing criminal legislation. What is going on inside the womb is not suitable for the intrusion of the police powers of the state, not until toward the end of the process anyway.
What I would like to see is three to five political parties, where, e.g., American Solidarity and a more secular labor party could form a majority on certain kinds of legislation, American Solidarity could ally with a more class-conservative party on topics like abortion. (I personally hope the former would achieve a majority and the latter fall short, but that would be up to how people cast their votes).
I agree, actually: I think that abortion should be handled from the demand side, not the supply side. Build a world where no one wants an abortion. I assume that women don't get abortions for *fun*, and that the vast majority of those who choose that option do so under some form of duress (financial or psychological or social or otherwise).
However, if you agreed with the ASP on everything *but* that issue and chose against them because of it, then that would sort of make you a single-issue voter, wouldn't it? I'd say I agree with the ASP's principle on the matter, although I think it is strategically and practically unwise to take on the supply side at the level of law.
No, we have 6 parties? We've had a minority government with a low IQ trust fund baby at the helm. He keeps trying to get someond to prop him up. It's been the "New Democrats" (socialist) for awhile, and now it's the party that only cares about the one French speaking party - le Bloc Québecois). Ruling party is Liberal (Biden adjacent). Opposition is Conservative (Biden- lite), then there's the Green Party and the People's Party of Canada (Libertarian, does not have one seat).
That's disappointing. I guess it's the same here in the States. I hate the Republican Party, and I'm a Republican. I just hate the Democrats more. The Democrats are off the wall, batshit crazy woke/prog/Neoliberal imperialists. The Republicans are corrupt, whores for AIPAC and the defense industry who'd sell out their own Mother for an extra buck. Like Mike Johnson.