uspol
But he doesn't want to talk about any of this — all he wants to talk about is Obama. And we have to respect that
uspol
@kaia@brotka.st I've gotten so cynical about this stuff, I'm convinced Trump could shoot a guy in the head in front of the white house and be fine
uspol
It happened to a Canadian citizen who was just doing a quick layover in the US on an international flight.
Wow, that's all pretty bad, heads must've rolled, careers must've ended. Right?
Nope. Turns out the people in charge just went "Yeah we did it, and we'd do it again." and a bunch of Hollywood TV shows came out justifying it.
If you're powerful enough, then you only actually get punished for the things you let yourself be punished for, and most of the most horrible things you might have done you can just take refuge in audacity and there isn't much you can do.
Especially since the other powerful people around you probably did the same thing or want to. In the 2024 election, a bunch of the responsible parties for the torture such as Dick Cheney were trotted out and given the red carpet treatment to help try to get a candidate elected -- The Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, in fact.
Meanwhile, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange both get to live in international prison cells -- Snowden in Russia to this day, and Assange in an Ecuadorian embassy for years. Turns out the crime isn't the crime, reporting on the crime is the true crime.
People did vote for Trump in part because they believed he'd be different. On the other hand, they also voted for Obama twice because they believed he'd be different, and only now are we discovering just how wrong that assumption was -- and in the end, Obama just waits out the spin cycle and he'll come out sparkling clean. If Trump outlives his term, he'll end up with the same reputational bleach other presidents did. If he lives to be 90 or 100, by that time he might be celebrated by the establishment left too and by then the kayfabe will have moved on to another, more imminent target.
uspol
There is no punishment depraved enough for the people who inherited that gem, and turned it into what it is today.
I only pray that the rise of AI super-intelligence will be the thing which brings to reality The Judgement from Revelation.
uspol
No, because of a decade of no prosecution.
We'd have to find out what the "beautiful secret" was.
Knowing Trump, probably a hotel he built with a hidden lounge for VIPs.
uspol
@cjd @kaia @sj_zero Meh. The more you read the more you discover the "shining beacon" thing was propaganda from the beginning.
The USA was a place where an ambitious person could get ahead. That was the draw. In Europe, everything worth having was already claimed by someone. In the USA there was plenty of wealth up for grabs.
There no longer is - everything has been grabbed - and that is ultimately what ails the USA.
uspol
@sj_zero @kaia This is why I think he should release everything. If it names him then it names him and he can deal with that. By not releasing it, he'll be punished by the voters in the midterms, by the Republicans (most of whom presumably had nothing to do with it) losing seats.
The more it's covered up the more people assume the worst. Get it out there and either jail people or don't, the files themselves can't be as bad as what people think is in the files.
uspol
It wasn't grabbed, it was destroyed, the well was poisoned. In 1903, two bicycle mechanics had enough free time on their hands to build the world's first aircraft. Think about that for a second, they were bicycle mechanics and they weren't working 3 jobs and struggling to pay rent, they actually had enough time to invent an airplane.
And it wasn't like there was some finite amount of resource that all has been claimed and there isn't any more, even land is pretty plentiful, and they can only keep the housing market pumping by letting in the whole 3rd world and giving a mortgage to everyone with a pulse.
Every year there are more taxes, more lawsuits, more regulations, more cops, more prisoners, more violent criminals, more interest, more fees, and less wages. The government has more or less openly admitted that the entire political process is theatre, the decisions are made elsewhere, and no one will ever be allowed into power unless the actual power structure has sexual blackmail on them.
Like I said, there is no punishment depraved enough for the people who did this.
re: uspol
No punishment is depraved enough.
re: uspol
@cjd @kaia @mrsaturday @sj_zero The Treasury is a front for the Fed, and the Fed is a front for some people who don't want to be in the public spotlight. Identify those people and you know where the problem comes from!
re: uspol
re: uspol
@cjd @kaia @mrsaturday @sj_zero The creation of the Fed was an act of fraud.
Initially you had money that anyone could exchange for silver or gold. Then post-Depression the money could only be exchanged by foreigners under certain circumstances.
Then in the 1970s the French showed up and said hand over the gold, and the USA decided not to redeem its currency any more.
The money is a check you cannot cash. It is a promise to deliver another promise in the future, and that is all.
re: uspol
re: uspol
@cjd @kaia @mrsaturday @sj_zero And to me it looks like the Revolution was about getting out of that debt system. The war of 1812 was the British financial establishment's first attempt to get America back in the cage. It failed.
So the Brits suddenly didn't like slavery any more (it had been fine before that!) and stoked up the slavery issue until America had a war over it and got itself into debt.
It has never really gotten out since.
re: uspol
Actually the US did charter a central bank after 1812, but then Jackson closed it in the 1830s.
re: uspol
@cjd @kaia @mrsaturday @sj_zero And in 1835, someone tried to shoot him but two pistols both failed to fire. Either a miracle or the shooter was just sweaty and got the powder wet.
Funny how people who mess with the debt system attract Lone Gunmen, isn't it?
re: uspol
re: uspol
@cjd @kaia @mrsaturday @sj_zero It's pretty unlikely that bitcoin was allowed to get as far as it has, without them having their hooks in it.
BTC is lousy transaction money, and all the proposals to fix that essentially create a fiat banking system on top of the blockchain.
There are a huge early wallets that have been idle for years.The people who own the Fed probably own those, and will therefore own the Bit-Fed.
BTC would be treated like hard drugs unless they had plans for it.
re: uspol
It might be that they plan to rug the banking system and go back to a quazi-gold-standard
> BTC is lousy transaction money
Not it's purpose
> proposals to fix that essentially create a fiat banking system on top of the blockchain
Yes, but that's okay, because you can never safely lend BTC you don't have, because "I'll take custody please" will bankrupt you. There's no FED to bail you out, so it's back to the 1830s Free Banking era.
> The people who own the Fed probably own those
I don't care if they start out owning everything, they will spend it and then they won't anymore. Unlike the fiat system where they control everything *forever* because they can always print more.
re: uspol
@cjd @kaia @mrsaturday @sj_zero Lending at interest does not create the money to pay the interest. That money only shows up later when the interest is paid and spent.
That is why such a system produces either real economic growth, constant inflation, or a boom-bust cycle. It cannot run at a steady state.
If you cannot create more BTC then you will get the boom-bust cycle. They had that in the free banking era. Other things will then have to be introduced as monetary base.
re: uspol
@cjd @kaia @mrsaturday @sj_zero This would parallel the "monetize both gold and silver" argument that raged during the free banking era. They badly needed more monetary base and they could not mine fast enough. With BTC you will not be able to mine at all, so whoever holds the physical BTC will be the lords of all.
Except the banking cartel won't let it get that far. They would foment a war first, if it came to that. And it might.
re: uspol
re: uspol
@cjd @kaia @mrsaturday @sj_zero Agreed, it least it restrains the government.
However, this is a math problem and we have computers now. We should be able to solve it. There has been deliberate confusion injected into economics. The few who understand the problem are profiting from it.
We need a big discrete event simulation of the economy, so all the proposed alt-money schemes can be tested out.
Econ now is like medicine before clinical trials. Bleeding and leeches.
re: uspol
re: uspol
@cjd @kaia @mrsaturday @sj_zero Then the question becomes how do you put that unit inside of a feedback loop so it maintains a fairly constant value over time, and nobody can screw with it for political and financial gain.
For that you need multiplayer games with human participants and real money up for grabs.
Bitcoin does not have that feedback loop, which means it cannot be the single base of a monetary system for long. With gold and silver, high prices motivated the miners.
re: uspol
https://lotide.fbxl.net/posts/168069
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@sj_zero @kaia @cjd @mrsaturday Ok read that. You're on to the general idea of we need a feedback loop to regulate the money supply.
There are a bunch of alternative money schemes proposed since the Depression. Heinlein laid out one of them in For Us The Living, which initially got me interested in this.
Multiplayer games and discrete-event simulations are the new way to test them out and see what works. Heinlein did not have that.