Big Wedding II

I'd like your feedback: How much time will pass before Big Wedding II hits us?

And where will it hit? What will be the nature of the strike?

I've said before that I think it will be a mini-nuke in Chicago. Trump has a building on the Chicago river -- the fourth-tallest in the world, and the tallest residential building in the world. The bottom floor, meant for commercial use but presently empty, offers plenty of room for mischief. Depending on the insurance arrangements, the building might be more profitable down than up.

Whatever hits us, it needs to be big. Only a massive shock will short-circuit this nation's natural cynicism. We know who will take the blame: Half the country hates Muslims and all of the country hates ISIS. Those within the conspiracist subculture will believe whatever nonsense Alex Jones tells them to believe, while the mainstreamers will never permit themselves to consider the "Trump diddit" theory (regardless of the actual evidence).

The signals have been clear for some time. Trump has more-or-less admitted that he plans to go back into Iraq to steal the oil.

He'll need the revenue.

It's quite obvious that his economic plans involve a lot of old-fashioned Keynesianism, although Trump would never use the K-word (and probably would not even be able to define it). Massive infrastructure spending -- the common liberal recommendation -- becomes possible only if Congress is compliant, but the Republicans might oppose Der Donald on this score. If they do, there is always the more GOP-friendly route of "military Keynesianism," otherwise known as the Reagan solution. We've all seen the clear signs that Trump wants another arms build-up.

The problem: All forms of Keynesianism require massive deficit spending, especially when conflated with huge tax cuts on the wealthy. Where is the money going to come from? China no longer wants to buy our debt -- in fact, they are girding for all-out trade war.

So Trump needs a war for oil. He needs to relive Dubya's big error.

Trump's adviser Michael Flynn collaborated with Michael Ledeen on a book which outlines how and where this war will be fought. But the book is very old school neo-con in its outlook: Iran and Russia are the chief bad guys.

The Field of Fight details the cooperation between Iran, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the PLO, and Russia. To give but two of many examples, Iran funds Hezbollah, which trains al-Qaeda terrorists. The British found an Iranian terrorist manual in Bosnia that had been used for training militants in Sudan. It detailed the use of sophisticated surveillance devices provided to terrorists by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

This is nonsense. Russia and Al Qaeda -- a.k.a. the Nusra Front -- are enemies fighting on opposite sides in the Syrian civil war. Al Qaeda/Nusra would have overrun Syria by now if not for military assistance from Iran. Being Sunni, the warriors of Al Qaeda and ISIS consider the Shiites of Iran to be infidels.

Flynn can't possibly believe the words he has co-written; after all, his own dealings with Russia are well-known. We now have further evidence of Flynn's Russian entanglements.

U.S. counterintelligence agents investigated National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s communications with Russian officials, the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday night.

Flynn is the first person inside President Trump’s White House whose communications are known to have been combed as part of a multiagency investigation by the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency, among others, into whether Russia’s government secretly helped elect Trump.

The key focus is a series of calls Flynn made to Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 29, the WSJ reported, the day the Obama administration announced sanctions against Russia.

The goal of the probe is to determine the nature of Flynn’s contact with Russian officials and whether it may have violated the law, people familiar with the matter told the WSJ.

But the White House denied the investigation on Sunday.

“We have absolutely no knowledge of any investigation or even a basis for such an investigation,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement to the paper.

Yeah. Right. And the crowds at Trump's inauguration were the largest ever. Period.

Speaking of those crowds: Josh Marshall has provided an interesting chart...

In an earlier post, I said that the inauguration day crowd on the mall looked less impressive than the crowds who come there on any summer's day when the biggest attraction is softball. (The last time I was there to do the museums, the place was swarming.) And now we have data.

The important aspect of this matter -- the thing which right-wing apologists cannot permit themselves to discuss -- was not the size of the crowd but Trump's inane, hyper-narcissistic reaction. All he needed to do was say these words: "True, my crowd wasn't as big as Obama's. Well, maybe next time!" Wink, grin, pointed 'finger gun.'

That's all. Situation diffused. Next.

Instead, he insisted on pretending that reality was not reality. Worse, the Trumpers insist that any news organization which does not validate the hallucinations of Dear Leader must be a purveyor of "fake news."

We've elected a nut supported by incurable cultists.

Why we fight. A political organizer named Keegan Stephan has uncovered what I consider to be the true face of Trumpism.

I went to the Wayback Machine and looked up the actual piece. Here it is. Although Alternative Right is Spencer's website, the actual article is written by Colin Liddell, Spencer's partner. Here are a few choice excerpts:

It strikes me that one of the main things about having a good debate is how it is framed. Get that right and the chances are something good will be the outcome. However, for too long now, when we consider questions of race, especially questions concerning the Black race, we have been framing things in completely the wrong way. Instead of asking how we can make reparations for slavery, colonialism, and Apartheid or how we can equalize academic scores and incomes, we should instead be asking questions like, "Does human civilization actually need the Black race?" "Is Black genocide right?" and, if it is, "What would be the best and easiest way to dispose of them?" With starting points like this, wisdom is sure to flourish, enlightenment to dawn.

But why should Whites even be in a position where we are forced to consider such a possibility? The White race is history's victor. We conquered Africa and the Africans on the sheer merit of the superiority of our race, culture, and society, and in a land that was largely going to waste we built an affluent and modern society capable not only of supporting a large number of our own people but also a vastly larger number of Blacks than would otherwise have been able to survive there. Of course, Black labour helped, but if that hadn’t been there, we would have imported White, Indian, or Chinese labour and have done the job anyway.

As we know, the world is becoming increasingly over-populated, while at the same time vital resources are being rapidly depleted. The world will be unable to support much of its future projected population growth. In fact we are probably heading for a great 'die off' in which hundreds of millions of our kind will cease to be.

With Europeans and some Asians having much less children, most of the population growth leading to this future crisis is projected to come from Africans. This is the race that history and the present example of South Africa proves is least able to take care of itself; a race that has contributed almost nothing to the pool of civilization and which even shows little inclination to stay within the bounds of that civilization; a race that also seems to harbor a potent inferiority complex and savage hatred towards the creators of that civilization; and a race that votes to keep the ANC in power, the very party that helps power their increasingly genocidal attitude towards Whites.

Increasingly, this kind of talk has become mainstream.