lewrockwell--2020-11-03--Populism’s Prophet: A Chat With Pat Buchanan

Liberal commentators and many conservatives were shocked when an outspoken populist defied the Republican Party establishment and won a devoted following on the right with his attacks on free trade , foreign military interventionism , and insecure borders .
This presidential contender had never before held elective office , and critics denounced him as an extremist .
But this isn ’ t the tale of Donald J. Trump—it ’ s the story of Patrick J. Buchanan , whose campaigns in 1992 , 1996 , and 1999–2000 previewed the direction conservatism would take some twenty-five years later .
As a former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ syndicated columnist , and a bestselling author , Buchanan has been for more than five decades a prophet and exponent of what is now called national conservatism .
In this interview with the young libertarian writer Atilla Sulker , conducted in July , Mr. Buchanan reflects on his experiences and applies the wisdom he ’ s gleaned as he looks ahead at the reconfiguration of American politics in the wake of the “ woke ” cultural insurgency and the impending crack-up of the Democratic Party ’ s progressive coalition .
—ed .
Atilla @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very distinguished career—working as a speechwriter and assistant to President Nixon , and as White House communications director under President Reagan .
Which one of these very interesting jobs did you enjoy the most ?
Pat Buchanan : I couldn ’ t say which I enjoyed the most , but I spent far more time with and was far closer to President Nixon , whom I joined in January 1966 , three years before he was elected .
That ’ s the presidency about which I ’ ve written two books .
Reagan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with him and I was at the Reykjavík Summit .
I think it would be hard to pick or choose , but I think—since I ’ ve written the two books about him—I would say I ’ m much closer to Richard Nixon .
The Death of the West : ... Patrick J. Buchanan Best Price : $ 2.12 Buy New $ 12.46 AS : In the Nixon Era , there were a number of other very politically ambitious people involved in the administration .
People who instantly come to mind are Henry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cheney .
What was it like to interact with some of these people ?
PB : I didn ’ t interact that much with Cheney and Rumsfeld when they were with Nixon .
They were not in the White House until Gerald Ford came in and I was on my way out .
The interactions with Dr. Kissinger—I had an interaction with him on the plane coming home from Shanghai when I felt the communiqué with communist China was horribly written from the standpoint of the United States .
And I said so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , had a little bit of a personal confrontation .
But I ’ d prefer not to go into a lot of stories and anecdotes about Henry .
He and I were contentious because I was a hawk on Vietnam and a conservative—and concerned about our political coalition with the conservatives .
And Henry was much more tuned in to the Harvard background he had and to that crowd , and to Georgetown .
So we had some disagreements , but that ’ s ancient history now .
AS : Looking at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Reagan and Gorbachev , recounts the 1985 Geneva Summit with the Soviets .
You took over the position of White House communications director not long after David Gergen ’ s departure .
What was going through your mind during those initial negotiations with Gorbachev and what made you more of a hardliner than Secretary of State George Shultz and some of the more pro-negotiation people in the National Security Council ?
PB : Well , I was a hardliner before I came into the Reagan White House .
And the Geneva Summit came @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in my two years there .
When I went to Geneva , I basically agreed that we ought to go—Ronald Reagan wanted to talk to Gorbachev .
And he had told me once , when I first went in with him , that he had wanted to talk with a Soviet leader , but , he said , “ Pat , they keep dying on me.
” Brezhnev had died .
Chernenko had died .
Andropov had died .
And now we had Gorbachev , and the president was anxious to speak with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the summit with the president , and I thought it went very well .
I wasn ’ t at the house where they talked , but the president came back to the house after he met with Gorbachev at the first gathering .
And he came back , and he had his arm in a sling as though he ’ d been beaten up by Gorbachev , and we all laughed at it because it was a joke .
Suicide of a Superpowe ... Patrick J. Buchanan Best Price : $ 1.50 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it [ the summit ] had gone off successfully , and when we flew home I felt that Reagan had come off far better than Gorbachev , because with that meeting at the house , where it was very cold , Reagan came down the steps in his suit coat and helped Gorbachev out of the car , and Gorbachev got out and he had on this big old overcoat and hat .
And so Reagan sort of looked like the superior host for the affair , and he came off very well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Reykjavík—which was a far more dramatic summit—which was called in 1986 on a few days ’ notice .
I was there with him at Hofdi House on that final day and flew home with the president after the thing blew up .
AS : While we ’ re on the Reagan years , another hardliner in the administration was your old colleague Richard Perle .
In a 2007 documentary , he visited you at your house and interviewed you about the state of the Iraq War then , and he tried to convince @ @ @ @ @ @ @ response , you called his foreign policy “ neo-Comintern.
” How did people like you and Perle diverge on foreign policy after the collapse of the Soviet Union ?
PB : Well , I remember after it was over—the Cold War , when we knew it was over and the Soviet Empire was breaking up in Eastern Europe , and the countries were becoming free and independent of communist control and Soviet control , and the Soviet Union was breaking apart—at that point I said that this is an epochal event : that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dominated my political and public career for thirty years , was over .
And if the Russians are going home , we should go home , and NATO should be turned over to the Europeans , and they should now begin to defend themselves , since it was not the Soviets [ anymore ] , it was Russia , and they had lost an entire empire—six nation-states in Central and Eastern Europe , and they had lost fourteen republics to independence—that it was simply not a Cold War situation anymore .
We did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ought to be defending themselves in Europe .
So many of my friends wanted to basically—which they succeeded in doing—make America what they called the exceptional nation .
They wanted a “ new world order.
” They wanted the United States and Great Britain to—you know , they bought into the theory that this was the end of history .
That democratic capitalism was the wave of the future and the United States should basically lead the world to that destiny .
And to me , what the victory in the Cold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a traditional American foreign policy of America First .
And so that ’ s what caused—one of the motivations that drove me to running against George H. W. Bush for the Republican nomination in 1991 .
AS : You brought up democratic capitalism .
I want to ask you a little bit about that while we ’ re on the topic .
What do you make of this sort of Ayn Rand conception of capitalism , this hyper-individualism , and how do you distinguish it from a more traditionalist free-market economic order ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Matt Best Price : $ 11.29 Buy New $ 11.69 PB : Well , Ayn Rand [ had ] an ultra-libertarian view of the world and of society and of how the world ought to work .
I don ’ t share it at all .
I ’ m much more of a traditionalist .
I ’ ve got the social doctrines of the Catholic Church , where we are basically a community—people look after one another , and we ’ ve got obligations to each other .
We are a community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Family , community , country , neighborhood , church , and all these things are important to me .
And they ’ re not to some of those who worship at the altar of unvarnished or uninhibited capitalism .
So I was never of that tribe .
And I ’ ve always had some sympathy for unions and collective action on the part of people to make society more just and equitable .
That always had an appeal to me , and it really affected me when I traveled the country back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these factories and companies shutting down and moving abroad , jobs being lost , people being laid off , families going through hellish conditions .
And I went back and studied and found that the nineteenth-century Republican policy of protectionism and making America first—making America great , putting our country first , and basically Americans depending upon one another for the necessities of life—was far more important and far more correct than depending upon foreign countries like Japan then or China now [ for ] the needs of our national life .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people together and to bring people to trust one another and to rely upon one another .
Again , the idea of individualism or these corporate institutions that have no allegiance or loyalty to anything but the bottom line , that never appealed to me .
AS : There ’ s a book called The Politics of Individualism by Lawrence Kohl in which the author describes the societal views of the two political parties during the Jacksonian Era , the Democrats and the Whigs .
The Democrats tended to be less in favor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Whigs were more individualistic and favored an active government .
What you just said sounds a lot like what Jacksonian Democrats were saying against the Whigs .
Do you see Andrew Jackson as sort of an ideological predecessor to paleoconservatives and people like yourself ?
PB : Well , Jackson was Scotch-Irish , I believe , and my father ’ s family is from Mississippi , and he [ Jackson ] was the hero to those folks in those years .
He was the victor of the Battle of New Orleans .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ history .
He was the father of Jacksonian democracy .
His war with the Second National Bank of the United States I found fascinating .
And I think the idea of Jackson as an individual , as a soldier , as one who put his country first and spent his whole life trying to protect , expand , and grow the United States and prevent its disruption—a lot of these aspects of him had great appeal to me .
And I think if you asked about a president I admired , he ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Power Grab : The Libera ... Chaffetz , Jason Best Price : $ 9.54 Buy New $ 18.06 AS : Do you think President Trump is similar to Andrew Jackson ?
PB : Well , I just think they ’ re different men .
Jackson was first and foremost a soldier and a fighter .
But they ’ ve got the idea of putting the country first and looking out at foreign countries and foreign lands as challengers , rivals , and adversaries .
I think that aspect , that vision , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the world as well .
AS : I want to transition to the current political scene .
Many millennials and people in Generation Z support these things like the managerial state , the toppling of statues , transgenderism , as if they were nothing .
What I ’ ve noticed is that only a small percentage of them are actually on the far left .
The rest are peer-pressured by this small group of leftists into supporting these things .
They ’ ll get called out for not being “ woke , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cultural trends .
Why do you think genuine critical thinking is so hard to find in young people nowadays ?
PB : Well , I think a lot of this—I ’ ve written an awful lot about it—is a product of the 1960s .
I think this revolution—sexual , cultural , racial , and many other ways—has captured a significant slice of America ’ s young .
And the teachers in the public schools and in the colleges and in the universities were converted to this way of thinking .
And I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the West and in Suicide of a Superpower , how all the institutions that transmit ideas and culture—from the media , to Hollywood , to the universities , the academy , the public schools—they ’ ve been converted to this way of thinking .
And what you ’ ve got is basically an ideology or political religion which is in its early stages of conquest and is extraordinarily militant and intolerant .
And I think people are simply going along with what they see as the revolution and the future .
And I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a difficult time getting through it .
My book Suicide of a Superpower—the subtitle is Will America Survive to 2025 ?
And I just took that year as sort of a projected year in the future when I thought the country could very well come close to coming apart .
And I think if you take a look at that—along the lines of race and culture and morality and ethnicity and geography and various other factors—America is ceasing to be really one nation and one people .
And we ’ re becoming sort @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an empire , rather than a people and a nation .
And I think that ’ s happening rather rapidly , and the sharpening of the divisions are between the traditionalists—I remember growing up , America was a good country and a great country , and we ’ re proud to be a part of it , and we should continue it , and it was overall the greatest experiment in the history of man , and we were fortunate to be part of it—and those who now are coming to believe , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ belief , that America was born in sin and crime and hatred and genocide .
And so they ’ re coming to hate the society and the country as it is and how it was constructed .
Their whole idea is basically to convert it to this new ideology , this new way of thinking , which is much more fair and just .
It ’ s a movement with religious aspects to it , in terms of the fanaticism and the zealotry .
AS : A few months back I was at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Culture War ” tour .
He used a lot of generic conservative talking points from people like Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire .
Yet he did not even once mention the culture war in his speech .
This is the guy welcoming drag queens into the conservative movement .
Why is he using a term that you popularized without once mentioning what you talked about in your now famous speech ?
PB : [ Laughs . ]
He may be on the other side in the culture war , if he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what I believe is abhorrent behavior !
In terms of homosexuality , et cetera , I hold to a traditional view on that .
But again , this goes back to the acceptance of and the embrace of homosexual activity , gay marriage , and the rest of it .
That ’ s the result of a conversion to a new way of thinking about morality .
And at root , what it says is that basically all sexual morality that is consensual and above a certain age is morally good or morally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his or her views on society in this regard .
But I think when you get to a situation where you have no religious basis for your community , and no moral basis of the community upon which all agree , and you disagree on the most basic things , you don ’ t have a country anymore—you have more of a mall of people of different beliefs , different cultures , and the rest of it .
If you take conservatism to where you celebrate transgender sexual activity , quite frankly you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ movement I was in .
Or you don ’ t believe the same things I believe .
And you may call yourself a conservative and you may be regarded as a leader of the conservatives , and I realize that ’ s out there [ laughs ] , but that ’ s not me !
AS : I remember at one point in his speech , Kirk said something along the lines of “ us conservatives preserve traditions and values that we care about.
” But I guess we care about different traditions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , one thing that I ’ ve been against is the idea that it ’ s all about economic man , and that the economy and the structure of the economy is all-important , in the redistribution of material goods and the rest of it .
My belief has always been , on that aspect , that the economy is of course vitally important , but the economy is subordinate to the nation .
And what is important is the nation and the people and the country .
And what are the economic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that stronger , more united , and more one nation and one people , and thus relying upon one another .
So there are differences there .
AS : Nowadays , many neocons like Bill Kristol and Carly Fiorina are rooting for Joe Biden .
Several Bush 43 alumni are as well .
These are the same people who are always afraid of scrutinizing the left .
What does this tell you about this ilk in the Republican Party ?
PB : Let me say this .
All the anti-Trump groups , their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to help bring down Trump and elect Joe Biden .
And they could bring a Democratic Senate .
And then they believe history is going to record they did a wonderful thing and they will inherit the earth .
I think they ’ re sorely mistaken .
I think if they ’ re responsible for destroying this presidency or ending this presidency , [ then ] the remnant , if you will , the Republicans and conservatives who stood and fought afoot , that went down to defeat with Trump—they [ Never Trumpers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those folks [ the remnant ] around to their own point of view .
So I think that their role now is essentially destructive .
And the transfer of authority and power to Joe Biden and his party—which is now increasingly dominated by a radical left , almost neo-Marxist party culturally—I think that ’ s something that they ’ re going to have to answer for , if they ’ re successful .
But I don ’ t think anyone ’ s going to stand up and congratulate them as America ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump has already gutted the establishment GOP .
People like Bill Kristol are still out there , but they only hold so much relevance .
We see people like Tucker Carlson significantly rising in ratings .
People are talking about a 2024 presidential bid with him .
The way I see it , there ’ s a decent chance the GOP could die within the next few years .
Do you think there ’ s a chance that a real conservative party could rise out of the ashes ?
PB : Well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my book , I believe demography is destiny .
And if Texas goes the way of California demographically , it will go the way of California politically .
I do think that this revolution that we ’ re going through right now—social , cultural—is very strong .
It ’ s captured a far larger share of America ’ s young than it did when I was writing statements for Richard Nixon about the Columbia takeover in April of 1968 .
It has converted an enormous slice of the country .
Trump won , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we put together in 1972 and 1980 and 1984 and even in 1988 .
And so demographically the great silent majority is passing on—and a lot of it has already passed on .
And a significant slice of the younger generation is , as you described it earlier , caught up with being “ woke ” and is temporarily , I think , on the other side .
So where does it all go ?
I wonder if a traditionalist conservative party , such as the kind that I would like to see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But I do think this : I think the Democratic Party is going to come apart .
That coalition is going to come apart because what holds it basically together is really , as someone described , the Democratic Party is a coalition of warring tribes held together by their common anticipation of common plunder .
They want to get their piece of action out of it .
And I don ’ t know that they can all satisfy each other .
And so I wonder—a new political configuration could come about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ party being a national , dominant party , or Donald Trump being a majority party , I think the best shot at maintaining that , of course , would be a Trump victory .
But I do think that if Trump loses , there will be an enormous remnant of the country which will be so profoundly dissatisfied with where we ’ re going that it could in effect politically kind of split off .
Whether it could create a new majority party , I ’ m not sure .
I do think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2022 off-year election would be a wipeout of the Democrats and Biden , because I ’ m really not sure they can hold that whole thing together .
The Best of Atilla Mert Sulker

Liberal commentators and many conservatives were shocked when an outspoken populist defied the Republican Party establishment and won a devoted following on the right with his attacks on free trade, foreign military interventionism, and insecure borders. This presidential contender had never before held elective office, and critics denounced him as an extremist. But this isn’t the tale of Donald J. Trump—it’s the story of Patrick J. Buchanan, whose campaigns in 1992, 1996, and 1999–2000 previewed the direction conservatism would take some twenty-five years later. As a former Nixon and Reagan staffer, a longtime syndicated columnist, and a bestselling author, Buchanan has been for more than five decades a prophet and exponent of what is now called national conservatism. In this interview with the young libertarian writer Atilla Sulker, conducted in July, Mr. Buchanan reflects on his experiences and applies the wisdom he’s gleaned as he looks ahead at the reconfiguration of American politics in the wake of the “woke” cultural insurgency and the impending crack-up of the Democratic Party’s progressive coalition. —ed.
Atilla Sulker: You’ve had a very distinguished career—working as a speechwriter and assistant to President Nixon, and as White House communications director under President Reagan. Which one of these very interesting jobs did you enjoy the most?
Pat Buchanan: I couldn’t say which I enjoyed the most, but I spent far more time with and was far closer to President Nixon, whom I joined in January 1966, three years before he was elected. That’s the presidency about which I’ve written two books. Reagan was historic. I was at Geneva with him and I was at the Reykjavík Summit. I think it would be hard to pick or choose, but I think—since I’ve written the two books about him—I would say I’m much closer to Richard Nixon. The Death of the West:... Patrick J. Buchanan Best Price: $2.12 Buy New $12.46 (as of 06:40 UTC - Details)
AS: In the Nixon Era, there were a number of other very politically ambitious people involved in the administration. People who instantly come to mind are Henry Kissinger, Don Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney. What was it like to interact with some of these people?
PB: I didn’t interact that much with Cheney and Rumsfeld when they were with Nixon. They were not in the White House until Gerald Ford came in and I was on my way out.
The interactions with Dr. Kissinger—I had an interaction with him on the plane coming home from Shanghai when I felt the communiqué with communist China was horribly written from the standpoint of the United States. And I said so and told him so on the plane, had a little bit of a personal confrontation. But I’d prefer not to go into a lot of stories and anecdotes about Henry. He and I were contentious because I was a hawk on Vietnam and a conservative—and concerned about our political coalition with the conservatives. And Henry was much more tuned in to the Harvard background he had and to that crowd, and to Georgetown. So we had some disagreements, but that’s ancient history now.
AS: Looking at the Reagan years—Jack Matlock, in his book Reagan and Gorbachev, recounts the 1985 Geneva Summit with the Soviets. You took over the position of White House communications director not long after David Gergen’s departure. What was going through your mind during those initial negotiations with Gorbachev and what made you more of a hardliner than Secretary of State George Shultz and some of the more pro-negotiation people in the National Security Council?
PB: Well, I was a hardliner before I came into the Reagan White House. And the Geneva Summit came out of the blue, pretty early in my two years there. When I went to Geneva, I basically agreed that we ought to go—Ronald Reagan wanted to talk to Gorbachev. And he had told me once, when I first went in with him, that he had wanted to talk with a Soviet leader, but, he said, “Pat, they keep dying on me.”
Brezhnev had died. Chernenko had died. Andropov had died. And now we had Gorbachev, and the president was anxious to speak with him. And I was in favor of the summit with the president, and I thought it went very well. I wasn’t at the house where they talked, but the president came back to the house after he met with Gorbachev at the first gathering. And he came back, and he had his arm in a sling as though he’d been beaten up by Gorbachev, and we all laughed at it because it was a joke. Suicide of a Superpowe... Patrick J. Buchanan Best Price: $1.50 Buy New $17.29 (as of 01:00 UTC - Details)
But we thought it [the summit] had gone off successfully, and when we flew home I felt that Reagan had come off far better than Gorbachev, because with that meeting at the house, where it was very cold, Reagan came down the steps in his suit coat and helped Gorbachev out of the car, and Gorbachev got out and he had on this big old overcoat and hat. And so Reagan sort of looked like the superior host for the affair, and he came off very well.
I was with him also at Reykjavík—which was a far more dramatic summit—which was called in 1986 on a few days’ notice. I was there with him at Hofdi House on that final day and flew home with the president after the thing blew up.
AS: While we’re on the Reagan years, another hardliner in the administration was your old colleague Richard Perle. In a 2007 documentary, he visited you at your house and interviewed you about the state of the Iraq War then, and he tried to convince you it was going well. In response, you called his foreign policy “neo-Comintern.” How did people like you and Perle diverge on foreign policy after the collapse of the Soviet Union?
PB: Well, I remember after it was over—the Cold War, when we knew it was over and the Soviet Empire was breaking up in Eastern Europe, and the countries were becoming free and independent of communist control and Soviet control, and the Soviet Union was breaking apart—at that point I said that this is an epochal event: that the Cold War, which had basically dominated my political and public career for thirty years, was over. And if the Russians are going home, we should go home, and NATO should be turned over to the Europeans, and they should now begin to defend themselves, since it was not the Soviets [anymore], it was Russia, and they had lost an entire empire—six nation-states in Central and Eastern Europe, and they had lost fourteen republics to independence—that it was simply not a Cold War situation anymore. We did not need permanent American troops defending nations that ought to be defending themselves in Europe.
So many of my friends wanted to basically—which they succeeded in doing—make America what they called the exceptional nation. They wanted a “new world order.” They wanted the United States and Great Britain to—you know, they bought into the theory that this was the end of history. That democratic capitalism was the wave of the future and the United States should basically lead the world to that destiny. And to me, what the victory in the Cold War meant was we should return to a traditional American foreign policy of America First.
And so that’s what caused—one of the motivations that drove me to running against George H. W. Bush for the Republican nomination in 1991.
AS: You brought up democratic capitalism. I want to ask you a little bit about that while we’re on the topic. What do you make of this sort of Ayn Rand conception of capitalism, this hyper-individualism, and how do you distinguish it from a more traditionalist free-market economic order? Trumping Obama: How Pr... Margolis, Matt Best Price: $11.29 Buy New $11.69 (as of 04:05 UTC - Details)
PB: Well, Ayn Rand [had] an ultra-libertarian view of the world and of society and of how the world ought to work. I don’t share it at all. I’m much more of a traditionalist. I’ve got the social doctrines of the Catholic Church, where we are basically a community—people look after one another, and we’ve got obligations to each other. We are a community that works together rather than this hyper-individualism.
Family, community, country, neighborhood, church, and all these things are important to me. And they’re not to some of those who worship at the altar of unvarnished or uninhibited capitalism. So I was never of that tribe. And I’ve always had some sympathy for unions and collective action on the part of people to make society more just and equitable. That always had an appeal to me, and it really affected me when I traveled the country back in 1990 and 1991, seeing all these factories and companies shutting down and moving abroad, jobs being lost, people being laid off, families going through hellish conditions.
And I went back and studied and found that the nineteenth-century Republican policy of protectionism and making America first—making America great, putting our country first, and basically Americans depending upon one another for the necessities of life—was far more important and far more correct than depending upon foreign countries like Japan then or China now [for] the needs of our national life.
The economy ought to be structured to bring people together and to bring people to trust one another and to rely upon one another. Again, the idea of individualism or these corporate institutions that have no allegiance or loyalty to anything but the bottom line, that never appealed to me.
AS: There’s a book called The Politics of Individualism by Lawrence Kohl in which the author describes the societal views of the two political parties during the Jacksonian Era, the Democrats and the Whigs. The Democrats tended to be less in favor of government and more traditionalist, whereas the Whigs were more individualistic and favored an active government. What you just said sounds a lot like what Jacksonian Democrats were saying against the Whigs. Do you see Andrew Jackson as sort of an ideological predecessor to paleoconservatives and people like yourself?
PB: Well, Jackson was Scotch-Irish, I believe, and my father’s family is from Mississippi, and he [Jackson] was the hero to those folks in those years. He was the victor of the Battle of New Orleans. He was the greatest soldier in American history. He was the father of Jacksonian democracy. His war with the Second National Bank of the United States I found fascinating.
And I think the idea of Jackson as an individual, as a soldier, as one who put his country first and spent his whole life trying to protect, expand, and grow the United States and prevent its disruption—a lot of these aspects of him had great appeal to me. And I think if you asked about a president I admired, he’d be right up near the top. Power Grab: The Libera... Chaffetz, Jason Best Price: $9.54 Buy New $18.06 (as of 04:27 UTC - Details)
AS: Do you think President Trump is similar to Andrew Jackson?
PB: Well, I just think they’re different men. Jackson was first and foremost a soldier and a fighter. But they’ve got the idea of putting the country first and looking out at foreign countries and foreign lands as challengers, rivals, and adversaries. I think that aspect, that vision, pretty much informs Trump’s vision of the world as well.
AS: I want to transition to the current political scene. Many millennials and people in Generation Z support these things like the managerial state, the toppling of statues, transgenderism, as if they were nothing. What I’ve noticed is that only a small percentage of them are actually on the far left. The rest are peer-pressured by this small group of leftists into supporting these things. They’ll get called out for not being “woke,” for not being with the current cultural trends. Why do you think genuine critical thinking is so hard to find in young people nowadays?
PB: Well, I think a lot of this—I’ve written an awful lot about it—is a product of the 1960s. I think this revolution—sexual, cultural, racial, and many other ways—has captured a significant slice of America’s young. And the teachers in the public schools and in the colleges and in the universities were converted to this way of thinking. And I’ve written about it in Death of the West and in Suicide of a Superpower, how all the institutions that transmit ideas and culture—from the media, to Hollywood, to the universities, the academy, the public schools—they’ve been converted to this way of thinking.
And what you’ve got is basically an ideology or political religion which is in its early stages of conquest and is extraordinarily militant and intolerant. And I think people are simply going along with what they see as the revolution and the future. And I think we’re going to have a difficult time getting through it. My book Suicide of a Superpower—the subtitle is Will America Survive to 2025? And I just took that year as sort of a projected year in the future when I thought the country could very well come close to coming apart. And I think if you take a look at that—along the lines of race and culture and morality and ethnicity and geography and various other factors—America is ceasing to be really one nation and one people. And we’re becoming sort of a conglomerate, a combination, an empire, rather than a people and a nation.
And I think that’s happening rather rapidly, and the sharpening of the divisions are between the traditionalists—I remember growing up, America was a good country and a great country, and we’re proud to be a part of it, and we should continue it, and it was overall the greatest experiment in the history of man, and we were fortunate to be part of it—and those who now are coming to believe, or at least are acting on a belief, that America was born in sin and crime and hatred and genocide. And so they’re coming to hate the society and the country as it is and how it was constructed. Their whole idea is basically to convert it to this new ideology, this new way of thinking, which is much more fair and just. It’s a movement with religious aspects to it, in terms of the fanaticism and the zealotry.
AS: A few months back I was at an event for Charlie Kirk’s “Culture War” tour. He used a lot of generic conservative talking points from people like Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire. Yet he did not even once mention the culture war in his speech. This is the guy welcoming drag queens into the conservative movement. Why is he using a term that you popularized without once mentioning what you talked about in your now famous speech?
PB: [Laughs.] He may be on the other side in the culture war, if he believes [in] this type of what I believe is abhorrent behavior! In terms of homosexuality, et cetera, I hold to a traditional view on that. But again, this goes back to the acceptance of and the embrace of homosexual activity, gay marriage, and the rest of it. That’s the result of a conversion to a new way of thinking about morality. And at root, what it says is that basically all sexual morality that is consensual and above a certain age is morally good or morally neutral, and no one should impose his or her views on society in this regard.
But I think when you get to a situation where you have no religious basis for your community, and no moral basis of the community upon which all agree, and you disagree on the most basic things, you don’t have a country anymore—you have more of a mall of people of different beliefs, different cultures, and the rest of it.
If you take conservatism to where you celebrate transgender sexual activity, quite frankly you’re simply not in the same movement I was in. Or you don’t believe the same things I believe. And you may call yourself a conservative and you may be regarded as a leader of the conservatives, and I realize that’s out there [laughs], but that’s not me!
AS: I remember at one point in his speech, Kirk said something along the lines of “us conservatives preserve traditions and values that we care about.” But I guess we care about different traditions and values.
PB: You know, one thing that I’ve been against is the idea that it’s all about economic man, and that the economy and the structure of the economy is all-important, in the redistribution of material goods and the rest of it. My belief has always been, on that aspect, that the economy is of course vitally important, but the economy is subordinate to the nation. And what is important is the nation and the people and the country. And what are the economic rules and regulations you want that make that stronger, more united, and more one nation and one people, and thus relying upon one another. So there are differences there.
AS: Nowadays, many neocons like Bill Kristol and Carly Fiorina are rooting for Joe Biden. Several Bush 43 alumni are as well. These are the same people who are always afraid of scrutinizing the left. What does this tell you about this ilk in the Republican Party?
PB: Let me say this. All the anti-Trump groups, their hope is that they’re going to help bring down Trump and elect Joe Biden. And they could bring a Democratic Senate. And then they believe history is going to record they did a wonderful thing and they will inherit the earth. I think they’re sorely mistaken.
I think if they’re responsible for destroying this presidency or ending this presidency, [then] the remnant, if you will, the Republicans and conservatives who stood and fought afoot, that went down to defeat with Trump—they [Never Trumpers] will never be able to bring those folks [the remnant] around to their own point of view. So I think that their role now is essentially destructive. And the transfer of authority and power to Joe Biden and his party—which is now increasingly dominated by a radical left, almost neo-Marxist party culturally—I think that’s something that they’re going to have to answer for, if they’re successful. But I don’t think anyone’s going to stand up and congratulate them as America’s heroes.
AS: In many ways, Trump has already gutted the establishment GOP. People like Bill Kristol are still out there, but they only hold so much relevance. We see people like Tucker Carlson significantly rising in ratings. People are talking about a 2024 presidential bid with him. The way I see it, there’s a decent chance the GOP could die within the next few years. Do you think there’s a chance that a real conservative party could rise out of the ashes?
PB: Well, as I’ve written in my book, I believe demography is destiny. And if Texas goes the way of California demographically, it will go the way of California politically. I do think that this revolution that we’re going through right now—social, cultural—is very strong. It’s captured a far larger share of America’s young than it did when I was writing statements for Richard Nixon about the Columbia takeover in April of 1968. It has converted an enormous slice of the country. Trump won, but he had nothing like the landslides we put together in 1972 and 1980 and 1984 and even in 1988. And so demographically the great silent majority is passing on—and a lot of it has already passed on. And a significant slice of the younger generation is, as you described it earlier, caught up with being “woke” and is temporarily, I think, on the other side.
So where does it all go? I wonder if a traditionalist conservative party, such as the kind that I would like to see, can gain a national majority again. But I do think this: I think the Democratic Party is going to come apart. That coalition is going to come apart because what holds it basically together is really, as someone described, the Democratic Party is a coalition of warring tribes held together by their common anticipation of common plunder. They want to get their piece of action out of it. And I don’t know that they can all satisfy each other. And so I wonder—a new political configuration could come about. But as for a Pat Buchanan party being a national, dominant party, or Donald Trump being a majority party, I think the best shot at maintaining that, of course, would be a Trump victory.
But I do think that if Trump loses, there will be an enormous remnant of the country which will be so profoundly dissatisfied with where we’re going that it could in effect politically kind of split off. Whether it could create a new majority party, I’m not sure. I do think if Trump lost this election, the 2022 off-year election would be a wipeout of the Democrats and Biden, because I’m really not sure they can hold that whole thing together.
Reprinted with the author’s permission.
The Best of Atilla Mert Sulker


lewrockwell--2020-11-03--The Worst Pre-Election Stock Market Ever

The US stock market is coming off its worst week since March .
It was also the worst pre-election stock market in history .
In his latest podcast , Peter talked about the market , the election and what ’ s likely ahead .
A weak stock market right before election day doesn ’ t bode well for President Trump ’ s reelection , given that he ’ s touted the stock market as his great accomplishment .
Peter has said he doesn ’ t think Trump will win and that the stock market would ultimately sell off on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it would be “ buy the rumor , sell the fact.
” Most people seem to think that regardless of who wins , even if we have a contested election and don ’ t know a winner for days or weeks , it really won ’ t be a problem for the markets because the Federal Reserve will step in and backstop it .
Everybody seems confident that the Fed has their back .
How an Economy Grows a ... Schiff , Andrew J .
Best Price : $ 1.99 Buy New $ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during last week ’ s sell-off .
The NASDAQ had the biggest decline on Friday and is down over 11 % from its September high .
But even with the drop , many tech stocks still have sky-high valuations .
Typically , a big selloff in stocks means a strong bond market , but last week , the bond market was also relatively weak .
Long-term interest rates were up .
Normally , when you see people running to get out of stock , they move into bonds .
Peter said he thinks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ market .
Typically , a surging bond market during a stock market selloff helps mitigate the pain .
When bonds rise as stocks fall , the lower interest rates help stock valuations .
Rising bond prices also offset stock losses for those with diversified portfolios .
But if both stocks and bonds are falling at the same time , you have no gains to offset losses .
You just have losses on top of your losses .
So , I think this is going to be particularly brutal , because not a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of traditional US stocks and bonds .
There ’ s not a lot of investors that have gold or gold stocks that are hedging their portfolio .
I think eventually they will .
As I ’ ve been saying for a while , I think gold is going to be the last safe haven standing and ultimately that ’ s where all the safe-haven money is going to flow.
” Gold also sold off this week .
As we have reported , it looked an awful lot like early March with everything selling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down significantly and it rallied a bit on Friday .
Peter doesn ’ t think we ’ re going to see a significant drop in gold this time around , even if stocks really crash .
The Real Crash : Americ ... Schiff , Peter D. Best Price : $ 3.00 Buy New $ 9.55 Meanwhile , the Fed has already thrown out one lifeline , lowering the limit on its Main Street lending program to small businesses to $ 100,000 .
Peter asked a key question : why does the Fed even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Why can ’ t small businesses just get these loans from their banks ?
Answer : they aren ’ t credit-worthy .
They know they ’ re not going to get the money back because these companies are bad credit risks and so private lenders don ’ t want to make the loans .
Now , why should the government do that ?
If these businesses can ’ t repay the loans , why is the government lending them any money ?
And it ’ s not really a loan .
If you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can ’ t repay it , it ’ s not really a loan , it ’ s a grant , or it ’ s a gift .
But you know it sounds a lot better if you can pretend it ’ s a loan .
But this is all pure inflation .
The Fed is just printing up money and handing it out to small businesses.
” Peter said he thinks this explains the number of small businesses being created in the midst of an economic collapse .
They can take advantage of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government .
Of course , none of this is constitutional .
And it ’ s bad economics .
Peter said the craziest thing is nobody even seems to care .

The US stock market is coming off its worst week since March. It was also the worst pre-election stock market in history. In his latest podcast, Peter talked about the market, the election and what’s likely ahead.
A weak stock market right before election day doesn’t bode well for President Trump’s reelection, given that he’s touted the stock market as his great accomplishment. Peter has said he doesn’t think Trump will win and that the stock market would ultimately sell off on the reality of a Biden presidency – that it would be “buy the rumor, sell the fact.”
Well, apparently they’re not waiting for the fact and they’re selling on the rumors. They bought on the rumor Biden was going to win and now they’re selling on the rumor that he’s going to win, because a Biden victory is not good for the stock market. It means much higher taxes and that is not going to be offset by the Federal Reserve.”
Most people seem to think that regardless of who wins, even if we have a contested election and don’t know a winner for days or weeks, it really won’t be a problem for the markets because the Federal Reserve will step in and backstop it. Everybody seems confident that the Fed has their back. How an Economy Grows a... Schiff, Andrew J. Best Price: $1.99 Buy New $7.20 (as of 11:05 UTC - Details)
The only leg that this market is standing on is the Federal Reserve and money printing. But ultimately, that’s not going to be enough. The market is not going to be able to survive when that is the only support.”
Tech stocks were hit particularly hard during last week’s sell-off. The NASDAQ had the biggest decline on Friday and is down over 11% from its September high. But even with the drop, many tech stocks still have sky-high valuations.
Typically, a big selloff in stocks means a strong bond market, but last week, the bond market was also relatively weak. Long-term interest rates were up. Normally, when you see people running to get out of stock, they move into bonds.
There was no refuge this week because even if you had a diversified portfolio, you were down on your stocks and you were down on your bonds. Yes, your bonds went down less than stocks, but everything went down and nothing went up.”
Peter said he thinks this will compound problems in the stock market. Typically, a surging bond market during a stock market selloff helps mitigate the pain. When bonds rise as stocks fall, the lower interest rates help stock valuations. Rising bond prices also offset stock losses for those with diversified portfolios. But if both stocks and bonds are falling at the same time, you have no gains to offset losses. You just have losses on top of your losses.
So, I think this is going to be particularly brutal, because not a lot of people have hedges that are outside of traditional US stocks and bonds. There’s not a lot of investors that have gold or gold stocks that are hedging their portfolio. I think eventually they will. As I’ve been saying for a while, I think gold is going to be the last safe haven standing and ultimately that’s where all the safe-haven money is going to flow.”
Gold also sold off this week. As we have reported, it looked an awful lot like early March with everything selling off. But gold wasn’t down significantly and it rallied a bit on Friday. Peter doesn’t think we’re going to see a significant drop in gold this time around, even if stocks really crash.
Given where the Fed is, given how much money has already been printed, given how much money is going to be printed, I just don’t think you’re going to see any kind of significant weakness in the price of gold. So, any weakness that you get is going to be a buy signal.”
The Real Crash: Americ... Schiff, Peter D. Best Price: $3.00 Buy New $9.55 (as of 12:25 UTC - Details) Meanwhile, the Fed has already thrown out one lifeline, lowering the limit on its Main Street lending program to small businesses to $100,000. Peter asked a key question: why does the Fed even need to run such a program? Why can’t small businesses just get these loans from their banks? Answer: they aren’t credit-worthy.
They know they’re not going to get the money back because these companies are bad credit risks and so private lenders don’t want to make the loans. Now, why should the government do that? If these businesses can’t repay the loans, why is the government lending them any money? And it’s not really a loan. If you’re loaning money to businesses that can’t repay it, it’s not really a loan, it’s a grant, or it’s a gift. But you know it sounds a lot better if you can pretend it’s a loan. But this is all pure inflation. The Fed is just printing up money and handing it out to small businesses.”
Peter said he thinks this explains the number of small businesses being created in the midst of an economic collapse. They can take advantage of this giveaway and get money from the government.
Of course, none of this is constitutional. And it’s bad economics. Peter said the craziest thing is nobody even seems to care.
Reprinted with permission from SchiffGold.com.


lewrockwell--2020-11-03--America After the Election: A Few Hard Truths About the Things That Won’t Change

The American people remain eager to be persuaded that a new president in the White House can solve the problems that plague us .
Yet no matter who wins this presidential election , you can rest assured that the new boss will be the same as the old boss , and we—the permanent underclass in America—will continue to be forced to march in lockstep with the police state in all matters , public and private .
Indeed , it really doesn ’ t matter what you call them—the Deep State , the 1 % , the elite , the controllers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the police state , the surveillance state , the military industrial complex—so long as you understand that no matter which party occupies the White House in 2021 , the unelected bureaucracy that actually calls the shots will continue to do so .
Battlefield America : T ... John W. Whitehead Best Price : $ 10.95 Buy New $ 18.80 In the interest of liberty and truth , here are a few hard truths about life in the American police state that will persist no matter who wins the 2020 presidential election .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases flourished—under both Republican and Democratic administrations in recent years .
Police militarization will continue .
Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge , police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers to heavily armed extensions of the military , complete with jackboots , helmets , shields , batons , pepper-spray , stun guns , assault rifles , body armor , miniature tanks and weaponized drones .
“ Today , 17,000 local police forces are equipped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , machine guns , grenade launchers , battering rams , explosives , chemical sprays , body armor , night vision , rappelling gear and armored vehicles , ” stated Paul Craig Roberts , former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury .
“ Some have tanks.
” Overcriminalization will continue .
In the face of a government bureaucracy consumed with churning out laws , statutes , codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies , we will all continue to be viewed as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ minor law .
Thanks to an overabundance of 4,500-plus federal crimes and 400,000-plus rules and regulations , it is estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it .
In fact , according to law professor John Baker , “ There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who can not be indicted for some federal crime.
” Consequently , we now find ourselves operating in a strange new world where small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their farms raided , while home gardeners face jail time for daring to cultivate their own varieties of orchids without having completed sufficient paperwork .
This frightening state of affairs—where a person can actually be arrested and incarcerated for the most innocent and inane activities , including feeding a whale and collecting rainwater on their own property—is due to what law scholars refer to as overcriminalization .
Jailing Americans for profit will continue .
At one time , the American penal system operated under the idea that dangerous criminals needed to be put @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protect society .
Today , as states attempt to save money by outsourcing prisons to private corporations , imprisoning Americans in private prisons run by mega-corporations has turned into a cash cow for big business .
In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states , the states have to agree to maintain a 90 % occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years .
Such a scheme simply encourages incarceration for the sake of profits , while causing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ minor , nonviolent criminals , to be handed over to corporations for lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism .
Thus , although the number of violent crimes in the country is down substantially , the number of Americans being jailed for nonviolent crimes such as driving with a suspended license is skyrocketing .
Poverty will continue .
Despite the fact that we have 46 million Americans living at or below the poverty line , 16 million children living in households without adequate access to food , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stamps ( mind you , these are pre-COVID numbers , which have only got worse during this pandemic ) , enormous sums continue to be doled out for presidential excursions ( taxpayers have been forced to pay at least $ 100 million so that Donald Trump could visit his golf clubs and private properties more than 500 times during his four years in office ) .
Endless wars that enrich the military industrial complex will continue .
Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors , corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials , America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country dry at a rate of more than $ 15 billion a month ( or $ 20 million an hour ) —and that ’ s just what the government spends on foreign wars .
That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe .
Incredibly , although the U.S. constitutes only 5 % of the world ’ s population , America boasts almost 50 % of the world ’ s total military expenditure , spending more on the military than the next @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact , the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health , education , welfare , and safety .
Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense .
Consider that since 2001 , Americans have spent $ 10.5 million every hour for numerous foreign military occupations , including in Iraq and Afghanistan .
Police shootings of unarmed Americans will continue .
No @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , religion , or any other distinction used to divide us , we all suffer when violence becomes the government ’ s calling card .
Remember , in a police state , you ’ re either the one with your hand on the trigger or you ’ re staring down the barrel of a loaded gun .
At least 400 to 500 innocent people are killed by police officers every year .
Indeed , Americans are now eight times more likely to die in a police confrontation than they are to be killed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ times more likely to die of foodborne illness than in a terrorist attack .
Police officers are more likely to be struck by lightning than be made financially liable for their wrongdoing .
As a result , Americans are largely powerless in the face of militarized police .
SWAT team raids will continue .
More than 80,000 SWAT team raids are carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans for relatively routine police matters .
Nationwide , SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer , and misdemeanor marijuana possession , to give a brief sampling .
On an average day in America , over 100 Americans have their homes raided by SWAT teams .
There has been a notable buildup in recent years of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies such as the Department of Agriculture , the Railroad Retirement Board , the Tennessee Valley Authority , the Office of Personnel Management , the Consumer Product Safety Commission , the U.S .
Fish and Wildlife Service , and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ war on the American people will continue .
“ We the people ” are no longer shielded by the rule of law .
While the First Amendment—which gives us a voice—is being muzzled , the Fourth Amendment—which protects us from being bullied , badgered , beaten , broken and spied on by government agents—is being disemboweled .
Consequently , you no longer have to be poor , black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in America .
All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class—that is , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As a de facto member of this so-called criminal class , every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent .
The oppression and injustice—be it in the form of shootings , surveillance , fines , asset forfeiture , prison terms , roadside searches , and so on—will come to all of us eventually unless we do something to stop it now .
Government corruption will continue .
The government is not our friend .
Nor does it work for “ we the people.
” Americans instinctively understand this .
When asked to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Americans of all political stripes ranked the government as the number one concern .
In fact , almost eight out of ten Americans believe that government corruption is widespread .
Our so-called government representatives do not actually represent us , the citizenry .
We are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests whose main interest is in perpetuating power and control .
Congress is dominated by a majority of millionaires who are , on average , fourteen times wealthier than the average American .
The rise of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are watching you .
They see your every move : what you read , how much you spend , where you go , with whom you interact , when you wake up in the morning , what you ’ re watching on television and reading on the internet .
Every move you make is being monitored , mined for data , crunched , and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are , what makes you tick , and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear , from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders .
Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets , purses , briefcases , etc .
Full-body scanners , which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane , have gone mobile , with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike—including homes .
Coupled with the nation ’ s growing network of real-time surveillance cameras @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide .
A Government of Wolves ... John W. Whitehead Best Price : $ 1.16 Buy New $ 2.99 The erection of a suspect society will continue .
Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture , the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects .
This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the street and where there is no evidence of wrongdoing .
Making matters worse are Terrorism Liaison Officers ( firefighters , police officers , and even corporate employees ) who have been trained to spy on their fellow citizens and report “ suspicious activity , ” which includes taking pictures with no apparent aesthetic value , making measurements and drawings , taking notes , conversing in code , espousing radical beliefs and buying items in bulk .
TLOs report back to “ fusion centers , ” which are a driving force behind the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ analyze , and disseminate information on American citizens .
Government tyranny under the reign of an Imperial President will continue .
The Constitution invests the President with very specific , limited powers : to serve as Commander in Chief of the military , grant pardons , make treaties ( with the approval of Congress ) , appoint ambassadors and federal judges ( again with Congress ’ blessing ) , and veto legislation .
In recent years , however , American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage war , unilaterally kill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of their rights , arrest and detain citizens indefinitely , carry out warrantless spying on Americans , and erect their own secretive , shadow government .
The powers amassed by each past president and inherited by each successive president—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator , above the law and beyond any real accountability .
The grim reality we must come to terms with is the fact that the government does whatever it wants , freedom be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than domestic extremism , more than gun violence and organized crime , the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life , liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us .
This state of affairs has become the status quo , no matter which party is in power .
The government ’ s manipulation of national crises in order to expand its powers will continue .
“ We the people ” have been the subjected to an “ emergency @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security .
Whatever the so-called threat to the nation—whether it ’ s civil unrest , school shootings , alleged acts of terrorism , or the threat of a global pandemic in the case of COVID-19—the government has a tendency to capitalize on the nation ’ s heightened emotions , confusion and fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state .
Indeed , the government ’ s answer to every problem continues to be more government—at taxpayer expense—and less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this : nothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people .
Unless we do something more than vote , the government as we have come to know it—corrupt , bloated and controlled by big-money corporations , lobbyists and special interest groups—will remain unchanged .
And “ we the people ” —overtaxed , overpoliced , overburdened by big government , underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—will continue to trudge along a path of misery .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Battlefield America : The War on the American People , these problems will continue to plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we ’ re the only ones who can change things for the better and then do something about it .
If there is to be any hope of restoring our freedoms and reclaiming control over our government , it will rest not with the politicians but with the people themselves .
After all , Indeed , the Constitution opens with those three vital words , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ founders wanted us to understand is that we are the government .
There is no government without us—our sheer numbers , our muscle , our economy , our physical presence in this land .
There can also be no police state—no tyranny—no routine violations of our rights without our complicity and collusion—without our turning a blind eye , shrugging our shoulders , allowing ourselves to be distracted and our civic awareness diluted .
No matter which candidate wins this election , the citizenry and those who represent us need to be held accountable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of John W. Whitehead

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”—George Orwell
The American people remain eager to be persuaded that a new president in the White House can solve the problems that plague us.
Yet no matter who wins this presidential election, you can rest assured that the new boss will be the same as the old boss, and we—the permanent underclass in America—will continue to be forced to march in lockstep with the police state in all matters, public and private.
Indeed, it really doesn’t matter what you call them—the Deep State, the 1%, the elite, the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—so long as you understand that no matter which party occupies the White House in 2021, the unelected bureaucracy that actually calls the shots will continue to do so. Battlefield America: T... John W. Whitehead Best Price: $10.95 Buy New $18.80 (as of 10:15 UTC - Details)
In the interest of liberty and truth, here are a few hard truths about life in the American police state that will persist no matter who wins the 2020 presidential election. Indeed, these issues persisted—and in many cases flourished—under both Republican and Democratic administrations in recent years.
Police militarization will continue. Thanks to federal grant programs allowing the Pentagon to transfer surplus military supplies and weapons to local law enforcement agencies without charge, police forces will continue to be transformed from peace officers to heavily armed extensions of the military, complete with jackboots, helmets, shields, batons, pepper-spray, stun guns, assault rifles, body armor, miniature tanks and weaponized drones. “Today, 17,000 local police forces are equipped with such military equipment as Blackhawk helicopters, machine guns, grenade launchers, battering rams, explosives, chemical sprays, body armor, night vision, rappelling gear and armored vehicles,” stated Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury. “Some have tanks.”
Overcriminalization will continue. In the face of a government bureaucracy consumed with churning out laws, statutes, codes and regulations that reinforce its powers and value systems and those of the police state and its corporate allies, we will all continue to be viewed as petty criminals, guilty of violating some minor law. Thanks to an overabundance of 4,500-plus federal crimes and 400,000-plus rules and regulations, it is estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it. In fact, according to law professor John Baker, “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime.” Consequently, we now find ourselves operating in a strange new world where small farmers who dare to make unpasteurized goat cheese and share it with members of their community are finding their farms raided, while home gardeners face jail time for daring to cultivate their own varieties of orchids without having completed sufficient paperwork. This frightening state of affairs—where a person can actually be arrested and incarcerated for the most innocent and inane activities, including feeding a whale and collecting rainwater on their own property—is due to what law scholars refer to as overcriminalization.
Jailing Americans for profit will continue. At one time, the American penal system operated under the idea that dangerous criminals needed to be put under lock and key in order to protect society. Today, as states attempt to save money by outsourcing prisons to private corporations, imprisoning Americans in private prisons run by mega-corporations has turned into a cash cow for big business. In exchange for corporations buying and managing public prisons across the country at a supposed savings to the states, the states have to agree to maintain a 90% occupancy rate in the privately run prisons for at least 20 years. Such a scheme simply encourages incarceration for the sake of profits, while causing millions of Americans, most of them minor, nonviolent criminals, to be handed over to corporations for lengthy prison sentences which do nothing to protect society or prevent recidivism. Thus, although the number of violent crimes in the country is down substantially, the number of Americans being jailed for nonviolent crimes such as driving with a suspended license is skyrocketing.
Poverty will continue. Despite the fact that we have 46 million Americans living at or below the poverty line, 16 million children living in households without adequate access to food, and at least 900,000 veterans relying on food stamps (mind you, these are pre-COVID numbers, which have only got worse during this pandemic), enormous sums continue to be doled out for presidential excursions (taxpayers have been forced to pay at least $100 million so that Donald Trump could visit his golf clubs and private properties more than 500 times during his four years in office).
Endless wars that enrich the military industrial complex will continue. Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour)—and that’s just what the government spends on foreign wars. That does not include the cost of maintaining and staffing the 1000-plus U.S. military bases spread around the globe. Incredibly, although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined. In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety. Yet what most Americans fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense. Consider that since 2001, Americans have spent $10.5 million every hour for numerous foreign military occupations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Police shootings of unarmed Americans will continue. No matter what our party politics, race, religion, or any other distinction used to divide us, we all suffer when violence becomes the government’s calling card. Remember, in a police state, you’re either the one with your hand on the trigger or you’re staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. At least 400 to 500 innocent people are killed by police officers every year. Indeed, Americans are now eight times more likely to die in a police confrontation than they are to be killed by a terrorist. Americans are 110 times more likely to die of foodborne illness than in a terrorist attack. Police officers are more likely to be struck by lightning than be made financially liable for their wrongdoing. As a result, Americans are largely powerless in the face of militarized police.
SWAT team raids will continue. More than 80,000 SWAT team raids are carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans for relatively routine police matters. Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances including angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling. On an average day in America, over 100 Americans have their homes raided by SWAT teams. There has been a notable buildup in recent years of SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Education Department.
The government’s war on the American people will continue. “We the people” are no longer shielded by the rule of law. While the First Amendment—which gives us a voice—is being muzzled, the Fourth Amendment—which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents—is being disemboweled. Consequently, you no longer have to be poor, black or guilty to be treated like a criminal in America. All that is required is that you belong to the suspect class—that is, the citizenry—of the American police state. As a de facto member of this so-called criminal class, every U.S. citizen is now guilty until proven innocent. The oppression and injustice—be it in the form of shootings, surveillance, fines, asset forfeiture, prison terms, roadside searches, and so on—will come to all of us eventually unless we do something to stop it now.
Government corruption will continue. The government is not our friend. Nor does it work for “we the people.” Americans instinctively understand this. When asked to name the greatest problem facing the nation, Americans of all political stripes ranked the government as the number one concern. In fact, almost eight out of ten Americans believe that government corruption is widespread. Our so-called government representatives do not actually represent us, the citizenry. We are now ruled by an oligarchic elite of governmental and corporate interests whose main interest is in perpetuating power and control. Congress is dominated by a majority of millionaires who are, on average, fourteen times wealthier than the average American.
The rise of the surveillance state will continue. Government eyes are watching you. They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet. Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line. Police have been outfitted with a litany of surveillance gear, from license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices to biometric data recorders. Technology now makes it possible for the police to scan passersby in order to detect the contents of their pockets, purses, briefcases, etc. Full-body scanners, which perform virtual strip-searches of Americans traveling by plane, have gone mobile, with roving police vans that peer into vehicles and buildings alike—including homes. Coupled with the nation’s growing network of real-time surveillance cameras and facial recognition software, soon there really will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. A Government of Wolves... John W. Whitehead Best Price: $1.16 Buy New $2.99 (as of 10:15 UTC - Details)
The erection of a suspect society will continue. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and frisking people who are merely walking down the street and where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Making matters worse are Terrorism Liaison Officers (firefighters, police officers, and even corporate employees) who have been trained to spy on their fellow citizens and report “suspicious activity,” which includes taking pictures with no apparent aesthetic value, making measurements and drawings, taking notes, conversing in code, espousing radical beliefs and buying items in bulk. TLOs report back to “fusion centers,” which are a driving force behind the government’s quest to collect, analyze, and disseminate information on American citizens.
Government tyranny under the reign of an Imperial President will continue. The Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers: to serve as Commander in Chief of the military, grant pardons, make treaties (with the approval of Congress), appoint ambassadors and federal judges (again with Congress’ blessing), and veto legislation. In recent years, however, American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage war, unilaterally kill Americans, torture prisoners, strip citizens of their rights, arrest and detain citizens indefinitely, carry out warrantless spying on Americans, and erect their own secretive, shadow government. The powers amassed by each past president and inherited by each successive president—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability. The grim reality we must come to terms with is the fact that the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned. More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us. This state of affairs has become the status quo, no matter which party is in power.
The government’s manipulation of national crises in order to expand its powers will continue. “We the people” have been the subjected to an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security. Whatever the so-called threat to the nation—whether it’s civil unrest, school shootings, alleged acts of terrorism, or the threat of a global pandemic in the case of COVID-19—the government has a tendency to capitalize on the nation’s heightened emotions, confusion and fear as a means of extending the reach of the police state. Indeed, the government’s answer to every problem continues to be more government—at taxpayer expense—and less individual liberty.
The bottom line is this: nothing taking place on Election Day will alleviate the suffering of the American people. Unless we do something more than vote, the government as we have come to know it—corrupt, bloated and controlled by big-money corporations, lobbyists and special interest groups—will remain unchanged. And “we the people”—overtaxed, overpoliced, overburdened by big government, underrepresented by those who should speak for us and blissfully ignorant of the prison walls closing in on us—will continue to trudge along a path of misery.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, these problems will continue to plague our nation unless and until Americans wake up to the fact that we’re the only ones who can change things for the better and then do something about it. If there is to be any hope of restoring our freedoms and reclaiming control over our government, it will rest not with the politicians but with the people themselves.
After all, Indeed, the Constitution opens with those three vital words, “We the people.”
What the founders wanted us to understand is that we are the government.
There is no government without us—our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land. There can also be no police state—no tyranny—no routine violations of our rights without our complicity and collusion—without our turning a blind eye, shrugging our shoulders, allowing ourselves to be distracted and our civic awareness diluted.
No matter which candidate wins this election, the citizenry and those who represent us need to be held accountable to this powerful truth.
The Best of John W. Whitehead


lewrockwell--2020-11-03--Friendly’s Restaurant Files for Bankruptcy, Expect Many More

The Ice cream eatery has estimated liabilities of up to $ 100 million and no way to pay them .
Friendly ’ s Goes Under AgainBloomberg reports Iconic Restaurant Chain Friendly ’ s Files for Bankruptcy Friendly ’ s Restaurants LLC , an iconic chain on the East Coast of the U.S. known for its sundaes , became the latest dining institution to go bankrupt amid the pandemic .
The pandemic and lockdown have dragged down sales at restaurants around the world , and led many already-struggling eateries to buckle under debt loads .
Pizza Hut franchisee ’ s NPC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chuck E. Cheese CEC Entertainment Inc. and the U.S. arm of Le Pain Quotidien have sought bankruptcy protection since the Covid-19 crisis started .
This isn ’ t the brand ’ s first brush with bankruptcy .
In 2011 , Friendly Ice Cream Corp. and its subsidiaries , the operator of Friendly ’ s restaurants and a nationwide distributor of ice cream products , had entered Chapter 11 .
COVID restrictions and lockdowns rise in US and Europe , as Trump ’ s rallies are blamed for cases .
The Price of Panic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Buy New $ 28.99 As Mr. Trump toured the country assuring Americans that the U.S. has “ turned the corner ” on the coronavirus , Dr. Fauci looked ahead to the coming winter and declared that “ you could not possibly be positioned more poorly.
” “ We ’ re in for a whole lot of hurt , ” Dr. Fauci said in an interview with The Washington Post published on Saturday .
Mr. Trump , in a battle for re-election and eager to portray the virus as tamed , has preferred the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Scott W. Atlas , who has questioned mask use and offered a number of other contrarian philosophies .
Ordinarily circumspect , Dr. Fauci directly criticized Dr. Atlas in the interview .
“ I have real problems with that guy , ” he said .
Agree with them or not , more lockdowns are coming .
This will be the final death bell for many chains and independents .
The Best of Michael Shedlock

The Ice cream eatery has estimated liabilities of up to $100 million and no way to pay them. Friendly’s Goes Under AgainBloomberg reports Bloomberg reports Iconic Restaurant Chain Friendly’s Files for Bankruptcy
Friendly’s Restaurants LLC, an iconic chain on the East Coast of the U.S. known for its sundaes, became the latest dining institution to go bankrupt amid the pandemic. The pandemic and lockdown have dragged down sales at restaurants around the world, and led many already-struggling eateries to buckle under debt loads. Pizza Hut franchisee’s NPC International Inc., the holding company of Chuck E. Cheese CEC Entertainment Inc. and the U.S. arm of Le Pain Quotidien have sought bankruptcy protection since the Covid-19 crisis started. This isn’t the brand’s first brush with bankruptcy. In 2011, Friendly Ice Cream Corp. and its subsidiaries, the operator of Friendly’s restaurants and a nationwide distributor of ice cream products, had entered Chapter 11.
More Lockdowns
COVID restrictions and lockdowns rise in US and Europe, as Trump’s rallies are blamed for cases. The Price of Panic: Ho... Axe Ph.D., Douglas Buy New $28.99 (as of 05:16 UTC - Details)
Also note Fauci, Warning of Bleak Winter, Draws White House Rebuke
As Mr. Trump toured the country assuring Americans that the U.S. has “turned the corner” on the coronavirus, Dr. Fauci looked ahead to the coming winter and declared that “you could not possibly be positioned more poorly.” “We’re in for a whole lot of hurt,” Dr. Fauci said in an interview with The Washington Post published on Saturday. Mr. Trump, in a battle for re-election and eager to portray the virus as tamed, has preferred the counsel of another pandemic adviser, Dr. Scott W. Atlas, who has questioned mask use and offered a number of other contrarian philosophies. Ordinarily circumspect, Dr. Fauci directly criticized Dr. Atlas in the interview. “I have real problems with that guy,” he said.
Agree with them or not, more lockdowns are coming.
This will be the final death bell for many chains and independents.
Reprinted with the author’s permission.
The Best of Michael Shedlock


The Awful Reckoning

Historians of the future , pan-frying sowbugs over their campfires , will recollect in wonder and nausea the election of 2020 and the attempted controlled demolition of the USA by the Woke Rebellion and its incongruous avatar , Joe Biden , the Holy Ghost of Grift and Gaslight .
All the forces of empire were arrayed in his support , as behind some sacred effigy of an obscure saint in a church processional , and yet all the voting public saw was a pitiful figure ranting at an audience of cars , an old dog barking pointlessly in a parking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then there was Trump… one word , Trump… no honorifics , as the Woke Legions spoke of the hated POTUS… Trump , who violated all their norms , threatened their perqs , and disputed their laughable identitarian shibboleths of racism , sexism , misogyny , homophobia , Islamophobia… the Golden Golem of Greatness summoning the deplorably un-Woke in their ghastly red hats from the hills and hollows by the thousands to hear him speak of “ rounding the corner ” and watch him do that charming dance thing to the disco tunes of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high spirits of it all worked to dispel the Woke curse cast upon him by the legions of angry suburban wiccans , till we arrived at the electoral reckoning of November 3 — and then the real contest began .
Yesterday ’ s Man : ... Marcetic , Branko Best Price : $ 12.00 Buy New $ 13.46 Now what… ?
everybody is asking him , her , and theyself .
Why should anyone believe the polls , given the craven corruption of all other news media branches — and polling is one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden family ’ s overseas “ business ” capers still smolder in the background , though , like a root fire in the piney woods , waiting to burst back into flame .
Turns out the Chinese company the Bidens were courting as “ partners ” ( CEFC China Energy ) could not have been more obviously agents of the Chinese Communist Party ’ s intel apparatus .
Even Hunter knew that — as his deal to build a natgas terminal in Louisiana with CEFC unraveled late in 2017 .
An audio recording @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has him speaking of CEFC exec Ho Chiping ( a.k.a .
Patrick Ho ) thusly : Mr. Ho ended up under indictment by the DOJ ’ s Southern District of New York for bribery and money-laundering .
Hunter had volunteered to serve as one of Mr. Ho ’ s lawyers .
Turned out the Biden family ’ s influence didn ’ t help much .
Mr. Ho was convicted , served time in the same federal lockup in Manhattan where Jeffrey Epstein turned up dead , and was deported to Hong Kong in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of business by its sponsor , the CCP .
But for all those sordid complications , the Biden family walked away with at least $ 4.8 million , funneled through a CCP shadow Company called Hudson West III to Hunter ’ s Owasco law firm bank account .
Hunter Biden Crack Pip ... Buy New $ 15.95 Oh , here ’ s a strange Swamp sidelight to all this : CEFC ’ s main exploit during the Biden hook-up years was the purchase of a 14 percent stake in Russia ’ s oil-and-gas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ circumvent US sanctions on Russia ’ s oil sales .
Guess who was one of the lawyers working for Rosneft : Christopher Wray , just before he became FBI director .
And guess who has been sitting on Hunter Biden ’ s laptop since at least December of 2019 .
Oh , the FBI .
And guess what else : the Rosneft files have since been deleted by Mr. Wray ’ s old law firm , King and Spalding .
Now , the question is , will this hairball of grift explode into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re informed that the DOJ opened a money laundering investigation on Hunter Biden a year ago when allegations arose over his $ 85,000-a-month “ job ” on the board of directors of Ukraine ’ s Burisma natgas company , which plum , no-show gig ran from 2014 to 2019 , netting Hunter millions .
Is the DOJ also looking into the CEFC shenanigans ?
The DOJ had FISA warrants on the outfit through the Patrick Ho affair , however FISA predicates and evidence enjoy special legal status and can remain hidden indefinitely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ act of God ( or write-in ballot fraud ) Joe Biden manages to get elected POTUS , how can he possibly be inaugurated with himself and his family tangled up in a grift case that involves the Chinese Communist Party ’ s intel service ?
It flat-out ain ’ t gon na happen .
Mr. Biden will be forced to disqualify himself .
Does Kamala Harris then become Acting-POTUS ?
There ’ s no precedent for a president-elect resigning before he is sworn into office .
No doubt there will be lawsuits over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Supreme Court adjudication .
Profiles in Corruption ... Schweizer , Peter Best Price : $ 17.98 Buy New $ 17.99 At the same time , also look for an all-out Lawfare assault on individual state voting outcomes and the translation of dubiously harvested votes into electoral college alt-delegations .
Lawfare will bring to bear every legerdemain in the trick-bag of legal necromancy to work this scam in the Democratic Party ’ s favor .
But they will not go unopposed by Mr. Trump ’ s lawyers .
And what will it avail the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden gets buried in allegations of criminal misconduct ?
And — not to lard the lily , as they say — what happens if , post-election and before January 20 , Messrs Barr and Durham just happen to finally deliver indictments against the perps of RussiaGate ?
Oh , won ’ t this be a world-beating political mess of all messes ever ?
Think the stock and bond markets will love it ?
Meanwhile , will we be treated to the extravaganza of Antifa and BLM burning and looting in the cities from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ask : How might that not happen ?
They ’ ve been rehearsing for the Big Show all year .
With new Covid lockdowns , the insectile armies of black-clad street-fighters will be anxious to reactivate the social space that Antifa and BLM so nicely afford .
Riots are fun !
Especially when the police are not allowed to effectively intervene to stop them .
Smashing stuff , burning , and looting are fun — like Halloween and Christmas put together !
I ’ ll be voting for Mr. Trump tomorrow in my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from getting its depraved mitts on the levers of government .
I ’ ll chime in with a post-election-day update , right here on Wednesday , though perhaps not at the crack of dawn .
The Best of James Howard Kunstler

Historians of the future, pan-frying sowbugs over their campfires, will recollect in wonder and nausea the election of 2020 and the attempted controlled demolition of the USA by the Woke Rebellion and its incongruous avatar, Joe Biden, the Holy Ghost of Grift and Gaslight. All the forces of empire were arrayed in his support, as behind some sacred effigy of an obscure saint in a church processional, and yet all the voting public saw was a pitiful figure ranting at an audience of cars, an old dog barking pointlessly in a parking lot in the gathering darkness.
And then there was Trump… one word, Trump… no honorifics, as the Woke Legions spoke of the hated POTUS… Trump, who violated all their norms, threatened their perqs, and disputed their laughable identitarian shibboleths of racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia… the Golden Golem of Greatness summoning the deplorably un-Woke in their ghastly red hats from the hills and hollows by the thousands to hear him speak of “rounding the corner” and watch him do that charming dance thing to the disco tunes of his boomer youth, and the sheer high spirits of it all worked to dispel the Woke curse cast upon him by the legions of angry suburban wiccans, till we arrived at the electoral reckoning of November 3 — and then the real contest began.
Yesterday’s Man:... Marcetic, Branko Best Price: $12.00 Buy New $13.46 (as of 03:45 UTC - Details) Now what…? everybody is asking him, her, and theyself. Why should anyone believe the polls, given the craven corruption of all other news media branches — and polling is one of them, of course. The Biden family’s overseas “business” capers still smolder in the background, though, like a root fire in the piney woods, waiting to burst back into flame. Turns out the Chinese company the Bidens were courting as “partners” (CEFC China Energy) could not have been more obviously agents of the Chinese Communist Party’s intel apparatus. Even Hunter knew that — as his deal to build a natgas terminal in Louisiana with CEFC unraveled late in 2017. An audio recording found on Hunter’s fabled laptop has him speaking of CEFC exec Ho Chiping (a.k.a. Patrick Ho) thusly:
I have another New York Times reporter calling about my representation of Patrick Ho – the fucking spy chief of China who started the company that my partner, who is worth $323 billion, founded and is now missing. The richest man in the world is missing who was my partner. He was missing since I last saw him in his $58 million apartment inside a $4 billion deal to build the fucking largest fucking LNG port in the world. And I am receiving calls from the Southern District of New York from the U.S. Attorney himself.”
Mr. Ho ended up under indictment by the DOJ’s Southern District of New York for bribery and money-laundering. Hunter had volunteered to serve as one of Mr. Ho’s lawyers. Turned out the Biden family’s influence didn’t help much. Mr. Ho was convicted, served time in the same federal lockup in Manhattan where Jeffrey Epstein turned up dead, and was deported to Hong Kong in 2019. CEFC was soon put out of business by its sponsor, the CCP. But for all those sordid complications, the Biden family walked away with at least $4.8 million, funneled through a CCP shadow Company called Hudson West III to Hunter’s Owasco law firm bank account.
Hunter Biden Crack Pip... Buy New $15.95 (as of 04:49 UTC - Details) Oh, here’s a strange Swamp sidelight to all this: CEFC’s main exploit during the Biden hook-up years was the purchase of a 14 percent stake in Russia’s oil-and-gas giant, Rosneft, to help China circumvent US sanctions on Russia’s oil sales. Guess who was one of the lawyers working for Rosneft: Christopher Wray, just before he became FBI director. And guess who has been sitting on Hunter Biden’s laptop since at least December of 2019. Oh, the FBI. And guess what else: the Rosneft files have since been deleted by Mr. Wray’s old law firm, King and Spalding.
Now, the question is, will this hairball of grift explode into official proceedings following the election? We’re informed that the DOJ opened a money laundering investigation on Hunter Biden a year ago when allegations arose over his $85,000-a-month “job” on the board of directors of Ukraine’s Burisma natgas company, which plum, no-show gig ran from 2014 to 2019, netting Hunter millions. Is the DOJ also looking into the CEFC shenanigans? The DOJ had FISA warrants on the outfit through the Patrick Ho affair, however FISA predicates and evidence enjoy special legal status and can remain hidden indefinitely.
And, if by some mysterious act of God (or write-in ballot fraud) Joe Biden manages to get elected POTUS, how can he possibly be inaugurated with himself and his family tangled up in a grift case that involves the Chinese Communist Party’s intel service? It flat-out ain’t gonna happen. Mr. Biden will be forced to disqualify himself. Does Kamala Harris then become Acting-POTUS? There’s no precedent for a president-elect resigning before he is sworn into office. No doubt there will be lawsuits over this and they will lead post-haste to Supreme Court adjudication.
Profiles in Corruption... Schweizer, Peter Best Price: $17.98 Buy New $17.99 (as of 03:27 UTC - Details) At the same time, also look for an all-out Lawfare assault on individual state voting outcomes and the translation of dubiously harvested votes into electoral college alt-delegations. Lawfare will bring to bear every legerdemain in the trick-bag of legal necromancy to work this scam in the Democratic Party’s favor. But they will not go unopposed by Mr. Trump’s lawyers. And what will it avail the Lawfare campaign, anyway, as Mr. Biden gets buried in allegations of criminal misconduct? And — not to lard the lily, as they say — what happens if, post-election and before January 20, Messrs Barr and Durham just happen to finally deliver indictments against the perps of RussiaGate? Oh, won’t this be a world-beating political mess of all messes ever? Think the stock and bond markets will love it?
Meanwhile, will we be treated to the extravaganza of Antifa and BLM burning and looting in the cities from sea to shining sea? I would ask: How might that not happen? They’ve been rehearsing for the Big Show all year. With new Covid lockdowns, the insectile armies of black-clad street-fighters will be anxious to reactivate the social space that Antifa and BLM so nicely afford. Riots are fun! Especially when the police are not allowed to effectively intervene to stop them. Smashing stuff, burning, and looting are fun — like Halloween and Christmas put together!
I’ll be voting for Mr. Trump tomorrow in my little bid to prevent the Democratic Party from getting its depraved mitts on the levers of government. I’ll chime in with a post-election-day update, right here on Wednesday, though perhaps not at the crack of dawn.
Reprinted with permission from Kunstler.com.
The Best of James Howard Kunstler