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Senator Elizabeth Warren
317 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C.
Dear Senator Warren:
As a constituent, I have noted with interest your suggestion that you will “take a hard look” at running for president in 2020, even as you campaign for reelection to the Senate next month. Forgive me for saying that I interpret that comment to mean “I’m in.” Forgive me, as well, for my presumption in offering this unsolicited — and perhaps unwanted — advice on how to frame your candidacy.
You are an exceedingly smart and gifted politician, so I’m confident that you have accurately gauged the obstacles ahead. Preeminent among them is the challenge of persuading citizens beyond the confines of New England, where you are known and respected, to cast their ballot for a Massachusetts liberal who possesses neither executive nor military experience and is a woman to boot.
Voters will undoubtedly need reassurance that you have what it takes to keep the nation safe and protect its vital interests. And yes, there is a distinct double standard at work here. Without possessing the most minimal of qualifications to serve as commander-in-chief, Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016. Who can doubt that gender and race played a role?
So the challenge you face is an enormous one. To meet it, in my estimation, you should begin by exposing the tangle of obsolete assumptions and hitherto unresolvable contradictions embedded in present-day U.S. national security policy. You’ll have to demonstrate a superior understanding of how events are actually trending. And you’ll have to articulate a plausible way of coping with the problems that lie ahead. To become a viable candidate in 2020, to win the election, and then to govern effectively, you’ll need to formulate policies that not only sound better, but are better than what we’ve got today or have had in the recent past. So there’s no time to waste in beginning to formulate a Warren Doctrine.
Of course, the city in which you spend your workweek is awash with endless blather about a changing world, emerging challenges, and the need for fresh thinking. Yet, curiously enough, what passes for national security policy has remained largely immune to change, fixed in place by two specific episodes that retain a chokehold on that city’s policy elite: the Cold War and the events of 9/11.
The Cold War ended three decades ago in what was ostensibly a decisive victory for the United States. History itself had seemingly anointed us as the “indispensable nation.”
Yet here we are, all these years later, gearing up again to duel our old Cold War adversaries, the Ruskies and ChiComs. How, in the intervening decades, did the United States manage to squander the benefits of coming out on top in that “long twilight struggle”? Few members of the foreign policy establishment venture to explain how or why things so quickly went awry. Fewer still are willing to consider the possibility that our own folly offers the principal explanation.
By the time you are elected, the 20th anniversary of 9/11 will be just around the corner, and with it the 20th anniversary of the Global War on Terrorism. Who can doubt that when you are inaugurated on January 20, 2021, U.S. forces will still be engaged in combat operations in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and various other places across the Greater Middle East and Africa? Yet in present-day Washington, the purpose and prospects of those campaigns elude serious discussion. Does global leadership necessarily entail being permanently at war? In Washington, the question goes not only unanswered, but essentially unasked.
Note that President Trump has repeatedly made plain his desire to extricate the United States from our wars without end, only to be told by his subordinates that he can’t. Trump then bows to the insistence of the hawks because, for all his bluster, he’s weak and easily rolled. Yet there’s a crucial additional factor in play as well: Trump is himself bereft of strategic principles that might provide the basis for a military posture that is not some version of more of the same. When he’s told “we have to stay,” he simply can’t refute the argument. So we stay.
You, too, will meet pressure to perpetuate the status quo. You, too, will be told that no real alternatives exist. Hence, the importance of bringing into office a distinctive strategic vision that offers the possibility of real change.
You will want to tailor that vision so that it finds favor with three disparate audiences. First, to win the nomination, you’ll need to persuade members of your own party to prefer your views to those of your potential competitors, including Democrats with far more impressive national security credentials than your own. Among those already hinting at a possible run for the presidency are a well-regarded former vice president and possibly even a former secretary of state who is a decorated combat veteran and chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Although long in the tooth, they are not to be dismissed.
Second, having won the nomination, you’ll have to motivate voters who are not Democrats that your vision will, in the words of the preamble to the Constitution, “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” In this context, motivation should start with education, with, that is, disabusing citizens of the conviction — now prevalent in Washington — that “global leadership” is synonymous with a willingness to use force.
Finally, once you enter the Oval Office, you’ll need to get buy-ins from Congress, the national security apparatus, and U.S. allies. That means convincing them that your approach can work, won’t entail unacceptable risks, and won’t do undue damage to their own parochial interests.
To recap, a Warren Doctrine will need to appeal to progressives likely to have an aversion to the very phrase “national security,” even as it inspires middle-of-the-roaders to give you their vote and persuades elites that you can be trusted to exercise power responsibly. All in all, that is a tall order.
Yet I think it can be done. Indeed, it needs to be done if the United States is ever to find a way out of the strategic wilderness in which it is presently wandering, with the likes of Donald Trump, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, and James Mattis taking turns holding the compass while trying to figure out which way is north.
1 + 3 = You Win
A strategic paradigm worthy of the name begins with a tough-minded appraisal of the existing situation. There is, to put it mildly, a lot going on in our world today, much of it not good: terrorism, whether Islamist or otherwise; unchecked refugee flows; cross-border trafficking in drugs, weapons, and human beings; escalating Saudi-Iranian competition to dominate the Persian Gulf; pent-up resentment among Palestinians, Kurds, and other communities denied their right to self-determination; the provocations of “rogue states” like Russia, Pakistan, and North Korea; and, not to be forgotten, the ever-present danger of unintended nuclear war. As a candidate, you will need to have informed views on each of these.
Yet let me suggest that these are legacy issues, most of them detritus traceable to the twentieth century. None of them are without importance. None can be ignored. If mishandled, two or three of them have the potential to produce apocalyptic catastrophes. Even so, the place to begin formulating a distinctive Warren Doctrine that will resonate with each of those three constituencies — Democrats, the general public, and the establishment — is to posit that these have become secondary concerns.
Eclipsing such legacy issues in immediate significance are three developments that Washington currently neglects or treats as afterthoughts, along with one contradiction that simultaneously permeates and warps any discussion of national security. If properly understood, the items in this quartet would rightly cause Americans to wonder if the blessings of liberty will remain available to their posterity. It’s incumbent upon you to provide that understanding. In short, a Warren Doctrine should tackle all four head-on.
Addressing that contradiction should come first. Its essence is this: we Americans believe that we are a peaceful people. Our elected and appointed leaders routinely affirm this as true. Yet our nation is permanently at war. We Americans also believe that we have a pronounced aversion to empire. Indeed, our very founding as a republic testifies to our anti-imperial credentials. Yet in Washington, D.C. — an imperial city if there ever was one — references to the United States of America as the rightful successor to Rome in the era of the Caesars and the British Empire in its heyday abound. And there is more here than mere rhetoric: The military presence of U.S. forces around the planet testifies in concrete terms to our imperial ambitions. We may be an “empire in denial,” but we are an empire.
The point of departure for the Warren Doctrine should be to subject this imperial project to an honest cost-benefit appraisal, demonstrating that it leads inexorably to bankruptcy, both fiscal and moral. Allow militarized imperialism to stand as the central theme of U.S. policy and the national security status quo will remain sacrosanct. Expose its defects and the reordering of national security and other priorities becomes eminently possible.
That reordering ought to begin with three neglected developments that should be at the forefront of a Warren Doctrine. The first is a warming planet. The second is an ongoing redistribution of global power, signified by (but not limited to) the rise of China. The third is a growing cyber-threat to our ever more network-dependent way of life. A Warren Doctrine centered on this trio of challenges will both set you apart from your competitors and enable you to take office with clearly defined priorities — at least until some unexpected event, comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall or the attack on the Twin Towers, obliges you to extemporize, as will inevitably happen.
Here, then, is a CliffsNotes take on each of the Big Three. (You can hire some smart young folk to fill in the details.)
Climate change poses a looming national security threat with existential implications. With this summer’s heat waves and recent staggering storms, evidence of this threat has become incontrovertible. Its adverse consequences have already ruined thousands of American lives as evidenced by Hurricanes Katrina (2005), Irma (2017), Harvey (2017), Maria (2017), and Michael(2018), along with Superstorm Sandy (2013), not to mention pervasive drought and increasingly destructive wildfires in a fire season that seems hardly to end. It no longer suffices to categorize these as Acts of God.
The government response to such events has, to say the least, been grossly inadequate. So, too, has government action to cushion Americans from the future impact of far more of the same. A Warren administration needs to make climate change a priority, improving both warning and response to the most immediate dangers and, more importantly, implementing a coherent long-term strategy aimed at addressing (and staunching) the causes of climate change. For those keen for the United States to shoulder the responsibilities of global leadership, here’s an opportunity for us to show our stuff.
Second, say goodbye to the conceit of America as the “last” or “sole” superpower. The power shift now well underway, especially in East Asia, but also in other parts of the world, is creating a multipolar global order in which — no matter what American elites might fancy — the United States will no longer qualify as the one and only “indispensable nation.” Peace and stability will depend on incorporating into that order other nations with their own claims to indispensability, preeminently China.
And no, China is not our friend and won’t be. It’s our foremost competitor. Yet China is also an essential partner, especially when it comes to trade, investment, and climate change — that country and the U.S. being the two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. So classifying China as an enemy, an idea now gaining traction in policy circles, is the height of folly. Similarly, playing games of chicken over artificial islands in the South China Sea, citing as an imperative “freedom of navigation,” exemplifies the national security establishment’s devotion to dangerously obsolete routines.
Beyond China are other powers, some of them not so new, with interests that the United States will have to take into account. Included in their ranks are India, Russia, Turkey, Japan, a potentially united Korea, Iran (not going away any time soon), and even, if only as a matter of courtesy, Europe. Recognizing the imperative of avoiding a recurrence of the great power rivalries that made the twentieth century a bath of blood, a Warren administration should initiate and sustain an intensive diplomatic dialogue directed at negotiating lasting terms of mutual coexistence — not peace perhaps but at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.
Then there’s that cyber-threat, which has multiple facets. First, it places at risk networks on which Americans, even tech-challenged contributors to TomDispatch like me , have become dependent. Yet deflecting these threats may invite “solutions” likely to demolish the last remnants of our personal privacy while exposing Americans to comprehensive surveillance by both domestic and foreign intelligence services. A Warren Doctrine would have to ensure that Americans enjoy full access to the “network of things,” but on their own terms, not those dictated by corporate entities or governments.
Second, the same technologies that allow the Pentagon to equip U.S. forces with an ever-expanding and ever-more expensive arsenal of “smart” weapons are also creating vulnerabilities that may well render those weapons useless. It’s a replication of the Enigma phenomenon: to assume that your secrets are yours alone is to invite disaster, as the Nazis learned in World War II when their unbreakable codes turned out to be breakable. A Warren Doctrine would challenge the assumption, omnipresent in military circles, that equates advances in technology with greater effectiveness. If technology held the key to winning wars, we’d have declared victory in Afghanistan many moons ago.
Finally, there is the dangerous new concept of offensive cyber-warfare, introduced by the United States when it unleashed the Stuxnet virus on Iran’s nuclear program back in 2011. Now, as the Trump administration prepares to make American offensive cyber-operations far more likely, it appears to be the coming thing — like strategic bombing in the run-up to World War II or nukes in its aftermath. Yet before charging further down that cyber-path, we would do well to reflect on the consequences of the twentieth century’s arms races. They invariably turned out to be far more expensive than anticipated, often with horrific results. A Warren Doctrine should seek to avert the normalization of offensive cyber-warfare.
Let me mention a potential bonus here. Even modest success in addressing the Big Three may create openings to deal with some of those nagging legacy issues as well. Cooperation among great powers on climate change, for example, could create an environment more favorable to resolving regional disputes.
Of course, none of this promises to be easy. Naysayers will describe a Warren Doctrine of this sort as excessively ambitious and insufficiently bellicose. Yet as President Kennedy declared in 1962, when announcing that the United States would go to the moon within the decade, some goals are worthy precisely “because they are hard.” Back then, Americans thrilled to Kennedy’s promises.
Here’s my bet: This may well be another moment when Americans will respond positively to goals that are hard but also daring and of pressing importance. Make yourself the champion of those goals and you just might win yourself a promotion to the White House.
The road between now and November 2020 is a long one. I wish you well as you embark upon the journey.
Respectfully,
Andrew Bacevich
Andrew Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of Twilight of the American Century, which will be published this November.
You really should address this to President Trump if you want any results before 2025.
Yes, but what does this have to do with proving blacks are inferior?
Get with the program already.
You provide enough proof of that every time you open your mouth.
I agree. But Bacevich was a Trump basher during the election so you have to question his real intentions. What anti-neocon wouldn’t have loved what Trump was at least saying?? After the election Trump capitulated to the neocons, but that might say more about the power of the neocons to control rather than Trump’s sincerity.
Isn’t that what you’re here for?
Wow. Just finishing this article was a chore. Andrew Bacevich is incredibly long-winded, pretentious, and uninteresting. What is he here?
Americans are not going to elect a hard-left Harvard professor with zero executive experience who denies her white heritage. Not enough time has passed since the last one.
Dear Senator Warren
Whatever you do don’t take the advice of this pompous , overly verbose guy in love with the sound of his own words…..or your audience will walk out of boredom before you ever get to the point.
The USA was, in my opinion, a peaceful country from the moment it refused to ratify Versailles, and introduced neutrality laws.
After WWI there was revisionism, after WWII revisionism was suppressed until the present day.
The beginning of the end of the peaceful era was 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt became president, and began, as his friend Sol Bloom writes in his autobiography, ‘preparing the USA people for war’.
The preparations took a lot of time, Pearl Harbour was at the end of 1941.
Sol Bloom, ‘The Autobiography of Sol Bloom’, New York 1948
Daresay blacks themselves have done a mighty good job of stepping up to the plate there.
The one saving grace of Democrats is that–like Republicans–they’re constitutionally unable to learn a single thing from their colossal blunders.
Both parties always claim that their error is in not being true enough to themselves, when in fact their error is their inability to be anything else.
What is the point of this letter? An excuse to push your book? I’m sure Elizabeth Warren is well aware of the issues outlined. I hope AB’s new book includes a chapter on mass immigration, which was oddly omitted from the letter, because if you want to talk about ” The Twilight of the American Century,” look no further than the demographic transformation, and racial balkanization, of the country. How is the US going to compete with a China that is over 90% Han Chinese? Or even Russia? How many American cities are even recognizably American anymore? We can’t even control our own borders.
Warren is going to run and be destroyed by the hyper-racialized base of the Democrat Party. There’s no way the Democrats let someone like Warren (Hillary 2.0) go up against Trump anyways; they’re the party of victim groups and Warren is the low white woman on that totem pole.
Nationstates, US confined views of the world, single individual because of stature (President) to make a difference, climate change (itself a hijacked concept, the real problem is toxicity, and that relates to economics and in the first place military, growth economy), ignoring population, it’s dynamics, immigration between others as a consequence, class divergence (elites globalizing, the masses confined to local ghettos), …there is a conventional series of dogmas under the refreshing suggestions. Laying a foundation upon permafrost. Do not count on Russia, China, and their attributing to delve deeper.
Bad as it seems, the world needs world government, and the bad rap on it, the “Soros” scheme is just a matter of the policies that go under the banner. Anything that matters, toxicity, global population policies, the eu-genic, not-obtrusive new half possibilities of biology, Artificial Intelligence, and for now just and precise data recollection and interpretation, that exceed a single brain analysis, are tools that scream for global practices. The planet, regardless of the US, that’s the real dongle.
Historic arguments, models, the pace of lore (analysis and the inclusion of it’s variables seems not to have exponentially grown in this article), it all is irrelevant, we require associative thinking and a mindset of “opportunism must be ultimately ethical”. The human race must leave room for the liberal pet project re-ajusted. Biodiversity. Beyond the human race, humanity reducing it’s footprint, keep the buldozers and F35′s at the parking lot, and give some room to the three hundred species of mammals we lately extinguished between other insects. Living on a trash-ball shows in all corners.
Ultimately, to interrupt towing the wagons with ignored loads of problems and solutions, what is the obsession (religion is similar in calling in God at any intersection) with the importance of a nominal president. Trump after all, just in front of any dead brain is a “live” illustration that presidents do not matter much.
In all, an analysis into the thin air of convention. The “run-up” has started.
Was there any mention of Israel, Zionists or Jews in general? If not, why is this advice worth heeding?
When she claimed to be an American Indian, Elizabeth Warren committed fraud to gain preferential treatment in her career and she seems to be too stupid to just drop the claim, apologize and move on.
Looking at the current Dem presidential field, being a grifter does not seem to be a bar to being a leading Democrat presidential candidate, but being another whiney white women is probably a bar to being elected, as shown in the 2016 presidential go around.
So save a stamp, Andy.
Anyone who thinks that Americans actually get to choose this or that candidate is woefully uniformed.
We vote on those selected by the FED, those TBTF Wall Street Casinos and Israel. ALL recipients of these never-ending wars brought on by the Israeli masterminded 9/11 False Flag.
Gifted? Yes, if you’re referring to Lizzie’s ability to lie her way into Harvard, then the Senate, using her faux Native American DNA.
If she wants to be selected to run for POTUS, Lizzie will have to refine her views on Israel, mainly go back to her 2014 view–when Israel was carpet-bombing the world’s biggest concentration camp, Gaza–where she was blubbering that Israel has the REICH to defend itself, instead of her most recent views, that kinda, maybe supports Palestinians:
If Lizzie does a sufficient amount of groveling to King makers Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban, she might get picked by our Overlords to run for POTUS.
Black prove that on their own every single day, very effectively at that.
2700 words and no mention of zionism, the gravest threat to “national security.”
Climate change? You have to be kidding. The Greatest Scam in any century. Get real!
Two points, Senator Warren:
1. Freedom of navigation relates to cargo ships, not to warships. It’s the height of hypocrisy for the USA to send warships into the South China Sea while screaming propaganda about freedom of navigation. The only country that has restricted freedom of navigation through the South China Sea was the USA, to cut off supplies to Japan to force Japan into war.
(Of course, that does not excuse China’s insolent claim to sovereignty over a channel between other countries.)
2. There’s no such thing as cyber warfare. Again, nothing but propaganda. Computer security and network security have been issues from the beginning, cracking/hacking and intruding always issues. That’s why there are passwords, firewalls and intrusion detectors. Always, keep your computers secure.
If there is such a thing as cyber warfare, someone please describe it to me.
A putative President Warren would help this country immeasurably by drastically loosening our ties to the Only Democracy In The Middle East.
A Warren-Blumenthal ticket in 2020 would win overwhelminingly in New England simply for rewarding stolen valor. Nationally any ticket with her name on it goes down like Mondale.
All these issues–permanent war, illegal migrant invasion, racial tensions, a runaway deficit, an endlessly biased authoritarian media, a full speed 24/7 attack on whites and Christians, etc, etc, etc–are not the real problems of America, they are the symptoms of the one real problem that America does have and that is a government that has been occupied by the Jewish/Israeli/Zionist cabal to serve their own interests at America’s very great expense.
Warren’s nomination would be a gift to Trump. Frankly, I don’t think she would ever get elected as she simply comes off as incredibly weak and scatter-brained, but I’m sure those very qualities are the source of any appeal she might have to the Jewish mob on Capitol Hill.
In a few years, giraffes will be extinct in the wild unless some really drastic action is taken:
http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/11/19/giraffes-are-poachers-newest-target/
I hope to God that Bacevich meant this as satire. Elizabeth Warren is nothing but a sillly old woman. She does not have a single qualification to be president of the PTA, much less the nation. As for Trump being “unqualified”, all that shows is that the author does not know what it takes to be president. The first qualification, Andrew, is having the guts to talk back to the morons who are intent on wrecking the country. Weak and easily rolled? Thank God Bacevich was never my unit commander. Trump is cunning, devious, and a master of waiting for the right moment.
As for describing Joe Biden as a “well-regarded” former vice president and John Kerry as a “decorated combat veteran”, oh, for God’s sake. Biden is a gaga wannabe violator of little girls and Kerry apparently earned his “decorations” through a shaving cut.
Elizabeth Warren needs to go back to her wigwam and stay there.
Hell yes, trading one globalist puppet for another is always the right answer. An ass for an elephant will surely “get er done”. God bless “Murica” and pass me another Bud Lite, the football games about to start.
Liz Warren is a joke. Surviving as a liberal in Massachusetts doesn’t make one qualified to serve as president.
It makes one qualified to pour coffee at Starbucks.
It’s worth mentioning I have as much Native American DNA in my blood as Liz Warren. I breathe the air of North America deep in to my lungs. My best friend growing up was Native American. I’ve been to many pow wows growing up. In fact, based on my credentials, I have even more Native American in my blood than Liz!
And I never lied about being a Native American to get preferential job consideration!
I used to like Bacevich, but this shows how full of B.S. he is these days. Trump won because he’s a white man? No, Trump won because he’s rich and because the Democrats ran the worst possible person largely as an affirmative action candidate.
You forgot to mention she is also the member of an underprivileged racial minority. To boot.
“What is the point of this letter?”
I sense political aspirations of his own.
It’s not satire. Colonel Basevitch is a political liberal who supports legal homo marriage…..and importing millions of nonwhite LEGAL IMMIGRANT Democratic Party Voters. His son was killed in action in Iraq…..for no good reason.
We won the Cold War!!…What does this statement even mean? Post WW2 Foreign Policy=INVADE THE WORLD….INVITE THE WORLD=Native Born White Working Class voted into a White Racial Foreigner-White Racial Foreigner within the borders of America by Chinese “Americans” and Iranian “Americans” to the great joy of the Colonel Bacevitch.
Elizabeth Warren is a repugnant opportunist happy to promote the special interests that own the US….And the job description includes this:willing to exterminate Conservative Slavic Christians in Russia…Eastern Ukraine….and Serbia….
Yes, it played a role. It provided a substantial boost Hillary Clinton.
https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2017/march/trump-clinton-debates-gender-reversal.html
But everyone always knew that. It is is why she and supporters talked about it all of the time.
Warren has shown she is overmatched by simple goading from Trump. After years of taunts from Trump over her use of minority favoritism regarding her self-reported status as a Cherokee, she took a DNA test proving she is 99% white. And then announced this to the world as some sort of vindication. Instead, her actions endangered two progressive shibboleths that “race is a social construct” and “affirmative action helps minorities”.
This article may very well be good advice but would better to be labeled with a generic name rather than hers.
Regarding our foreign policy, it’s is so true most policy makers are reactive and tactical at best. There are few strategic thinkers among them. China is, has always been and will likely continue to be for centuries, a unified culture. Not so with the United States. The closet we came was the post-WWII era after 20-40 years of immigration restrictions. That ended in 1965 and the future of the United States with it. Multicultural empires can never last.
Therefore, the real issue isn’t threats to the United States from without but from within. The dissolution has already begun.
Colonel Bacevitch hates Trump because Trump gave minimal lip service to Native Born White American Working Class Racial Identity Politics. Colonel Bacevitch very much prefers the Racial Identity Politics of Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrette=full-speed ahead with the annihilation of The Native Born White American Working Class.
Colonel Bacevitch is an example of malignancy of the Cold War. At the core of The Cold War Tumor that consumed post-WW2 America was a violent hatred of The Historic Native Born White American Majority Working Class by Corporate Elites. The Soviets weren’t the real threat…Corporate Elites were…and still are…..the threat to the White Working Class. Colonel Bacevitch is ultimately a toady for the Corporate Elites and the future Asian “American” Elites who will rule and govern post-White America….
“You are an exceedingly smart and gifted politician, so I’m confident that you have accurately gauged the obstacles ahead. ”
Evidently not, having just committed a colossal “own goal” and been caught lying, again.
That’s the way it looks. Bacevitch’s comments about Trump ignore the Deep State/DNC coup launched against Trump, in which Bacevitch’s pals were complicit. Far from being “weak”, Trump has proven a great and cunning fighter, unlike the US military establishment.
The answer to Africans poaching is to recolonize Africa by Whites, the only people who care about animals.
The administration would consist of really vicious African police and armies who would hunt down and torture the poachers to death and foreign animal rights activists to protect the animals.
The remains of the executed poachers could be fed to lions leopards and hyenas. That would help protect the critters the predators feed on.
That is very depressing to read. Perhaps a quarantine re. most sub-Saharans from the rest of the world would be a good idea. Also, no aid, medical, food, or otherwise.
They will create Wakanda!
When it comes to taunts as effective political tools, Warren forgets that Trump catapulted to fame solely on his accomplishment of the only person capable of forcing Obama to create a fake birth certificate.
Thanks for the information about freedom of the seas. I learn something new every day I read unz. And thank you Ron for providing this forum
Laws of nature don’t require proof – like the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Get it?
If China is such a threat to America….why are Donald Trump….Colonel Andrew Bacevitch….and the short fat bastard who pushes herbal male enhancement supplements….Alex Jones….enthusiasts for importing Chinese LEGAL IMMIGRANTS onto Working Class Native Born White American Living and Breeding Space?
“Smart and gifted politician?” Is the author being facetious?
Take your Q anonymous nonesense and shove it. Trump is not a cunning-great fighter. Trump is an indictable WAR CRIMINAL and he using the Working Class Native Born White American Teenage Male Population as canon fodder in the Middle East for OUR FRIEND ISRAEL!!!….while he gives multibillionaire Jeff Bezos a tax break…And Trump’s Justice Department is prosecuting young Working Class Native Born White American Males for defending themselves from the violent Antifa Tranny Freaks down in Charlottesville.
First reason to stop reading: the ridiculous notion that it matters who the president is. JFK was the last president who didn’t know he was a puppet ruler. Presumably there were late-Roman partisans who were all like “Libius Severus for Emperor!” Bacevich is out of it like that.
Second reason to stop reading: Threat shit. Bacevich is still brainwashed with this DC obsession to find enemies. China won’t be our friend, it’s a “competitor.” If it’s a competitor, you lost. You can’t compete with your shit kleptocracy. China is claiming indispensability? That’s pathetic, neurotic projection. China’s Five Principles are straight out of the UN Charter. The only incorporating that needs to be done is to incorporate the US into the civilized world. That requires razing CIA, prosecuting its criminals, and ending its impunity.
More Tom Dispatch left gatekeeping.
What is happening in Russia. US, China is only secondary importance.
The other and more dangerous phenomenon is rising.
Small countries all over the world are failing economically and socially.
Particularly in central America, Africa, and Middle east.
This will be a headache for all world.
This will have lead to solution of creation of empires by larger countries.
England leaving EU was a horrible mistake.
When the Neocons say they have Trump’s back, what it means is that they are standing behind him with daggers pointed at his kidneys, lest he make a serious false move.
I found this Basevich article to be completely devoid of iinteresthng points.
BTW, good for the American Indians to reject DNA tests. It is almost making me to wish for Rajiv Khan to return, for analysis, but he was such a supercilious arsehole, though apparently knowledgeable, who cares?
What a ridiculous waste of an article. Pocahontas is now Chief Laughing Stock. Her polical career is over. Her next gig will be as a mascot for the Washington Redskins, Kansas City Chiefs, Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians, or Chicago Blackhawks
Elizabeth Warren…..”Native” American…as a direct consequence of statistical noise…….This “Native” American tart cheated on her first husband multiple times…
All this talk about foreign policy, global warming and cyber-threat as issues that will impact the 2020 presidential election and not one word about the real issue that will determine the election: $$$$$. The deep pocket oligarchs (and agents of foreign powers like Adelson and Saban) will have the most impact on who wins.
And regardless of who actually wins, the continuity of Deep State polices will prevail. As the anarchist, Emma Goldman said, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
Colonel Bacevich
I have some unsolicited advice for you…..
Elizabeth Warren hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of being the next POTUS….for she is an old farting White Female Boomer in adult diapers at a time when the demographics of the US have shifted massively nonwhite majority Democratic Party Voting Bloc…..Your aging White Female Boomer Pinup Girl ain’t gonna win.
But here is who the next POTUS will be:THE MOUSTACHED SHEMALE MOOOOOOOOOOOOCHELLE…..Black Shemale gonna announce a year from now….Blacks will be in a state of rapturous joy!!! at the prospect of Barack back in the Whitehouse……
Modest Proposal:Colonel Bacevich…you really need to give the unsolicited friendly advice to POTUS MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCHELLE!!!!!
Look at democRAT Blumenthal who claimed to be a “Vietnam Veteran”. In fact, “Hanoi” Jand Fonda spent more time in Vietnam than Blumenthal…
Statistical Noise “Native” American Elizabeth Warren’s next big gig will be POTUS MOOOOOOOCHELLE’S UN Ambassor where she will continue to issue the threats of nuclear extermination by Trump’s UN Ambassador the filthy stinking Sihk Whore Niki Haley to European Christian Russia….While MOOOOOOOOCHELLE issues daily threats to Working Class Native Born White American Males…….to the Great Joy!!! of West Point Graduate Colonel Andrew Bacevich…..Your Working Class Native Born White American Tax $$$$$ at work!!!!
It is quite obvious the author is saying that Liz Warren is decidedly unqualified to even consider the possibility of running. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of the use of the language would see that clearly.
Likely the goose is already cooked on climate change. Reducing greenhouse gases now is shutting the barn door after the horses have bolted.
It would require a government with absolute and long term power to adequately address. A lifelong dictatorship rather than our constantly changing system of one side over turning the otherside’s decrees every few years.
Taxes on gas and incentives for solar panels are barely a drop in the ocean. Maybe if we all immediately stopped burning any fossil fuels right this second…maybe we could correct course.
Warren supported Hillary in 2016. In my book this sets her trustworthiness as close to zero as makes no difference. I hope Dems nominate a person not tainted by the support of corrupt mad witch. Otherwise, they have zero chance of getting my vote.
Global warming is a fact. Human contribution to this process is a theory insufficiently supported by the evidence. After all, there were no humans in the Mesozoic era and no fossil fuel burning, but the temperatures were way above current or even projected levels. Case closed.
Not one word here about Israel or Palestine ! Can this writer be taken seriously? I think another jack-off of mental masturbation.
Seems like the Lawrence character……mega smoke and mirrors and never a mention of the real problem in the ME ……
Still glad that UNZ publishes the…..that way the readers can tune in and point it out.
Unfortunately, these topics became taboo among Dems and Reps alike. This is one of the symptoms of the sickness of our political system.
Oh, I’m sorry. This is unz.com. I believe you’re looking for 4chan. Down the hall, second door from the water fountain.
Would Pocahontas have declared Jerusalem to be the eternal capital of Israel? I don’t think so. She won’t be the next president… Donald Trump will be the next POTUS!
Yes, I never said it wasn’t a fact. Just we can’t fix it – it’s too late
There is a big difference between “we can’t fix it because it’s too late” and “we can’t fix it because we don’t know what caused it”. Your post implies the former, mine the latter.
Not going to happen. She’s incapable of doing so. She’ll probably still be bogged down with her claims that her microscopic Native American ancestry prove her to have been truthful all along. Only external events can effect changes in American policies, such as a disastrous lost war, economic implosion, things like that. Otherwise forget it, it’ll be the same-old same-old. News flash: The Messiah will not be a candidate in 2020.
“climate change” an election issue?
No way.
If it’s a real problem, dealing with it at all seriously will require the extinction of most of the human race.
Oy veh.
Uhhhh, excuse me.
But someone making a claim of being native american based on the dna results as reported, is not doing themselves any favors about a realistic view of the world around them.
I was supportive of her views regarding the economy, bailouts and the like — but as chief executive —
Even the Cherokee council won’t vote for her as one of their own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
As for
You’ve left two elements out. One of them the most important in all that.
All good.
“provocations of “rogue states” like Russia, Pakistan, and North Korea”
Huh?
You lost me here.
The main rogue states on the planet are the USA and Israel.
I’d like to see somewhere, and read “Bacevich doctrine”.
Say….the Col (Ret) writes one down and presents it to the woman. You know, initiative, being positive and proactive and such.
Say….20 pages, tops.
Actually, just that first thing, before “climate change” would be good enough for some of us here, I guess. True, not more than 10 guys, tops, but probably more readers I hope.
Just this:
Say…a month….10 pages?
Can’t wait.
Bacevich, in his well thought out piece, managed to demonstrate how, by a concerted effort of swiftly moving passengers and chairs to port side, and thus tilting the ship of state to lift the hull breech out of the water, the Titanic was to gloriously sail into NY harbor.
Amazing how naive someone can look when pontificating their entire world view.
Just as a small aside to the above trash can missive; strategically balanced against it, the ‘very intelligent’ Ms. Warren (Cherokee-light) will be finding in her Christmas stocking, a check from AIPAC and Haim Sabam for 50mil, saying blue skies ahead, engine on full throddle.
Back when Bush Daddy ran for President, I thought that I’d make a personal rule that no way in heck do I vote for a CIA Director to run the civilian government. I’ve since expanded that to include any General. Civilian control of the military is too important a concept in any country that wants to be a democracy to put such people in control.
By this point, America is so militarized that its become quite normal for any politician to be attacked when they have not joined the military, gone abroad, met interesting people, and then killed them to enhance the profits of Exxon. And by the way, I do not consider that to be “serving America”, which is far more usefully done with as a volunteer with a big spoon in a soup kitchen.
Thus, I look for candidates who have ‘never served’ in this way, and I’m happy to vote for them. That someone would sneer at a US Senator for not having any military experience is just a sign about how terribly far America has fallen. I’d have expected such for an election to the Reichstag in 1940, but not in any America I’d see in my lifetime.
I’m voting Democrat for Congress because I’m lucky enough that I don’t have one of the many CIA-Democrats running here. Instead I’ve got a Bernie Sanders supporter. Besides which, the incumbent Republican keeps making public statements that he would like to see me dead. He has said he wants me to starve to death, and I think that what he really prefers is if I die painfully from some disease after a hospital has thrown me out into the street for not being a millionaire who can pay their bills. Pretty easy to decide who to vote for in an election when one candidate clearly wants you to drop dead.
Alex Jones favors legal immigration? Well F him.
It was probably in 2006, I was trying to understand the current state of affairs in the U.S economy. Actually I was trying to understand what on earth was going on in my own country, Iceland, but since our experience with “free” markets and private banking is rather short and our language is only spoken by 300K souls, good analysis and deep insight was virtually none existent. Rosy predictions and totally worthless “analysis” from our banks was in no short supply in these days. It’s possible some readers here know how this all ended for us. I was hoping to gain some insights from foreign sources to understand our own situation.
I came across about hour long youtube video with Elisabeth Warren explaining what was going on in the U.S housing market; the sub-prime debacle, predatory lending, and how the loans were sold right away to second or third party, eliminating the risk from the original “lender”. I was very impressed by her analysis and passion for the subject. I remember thinking – my friends in the U.S would benefit if she would be raised to some kind of office or power. At least she wasn’t in the pocket of Wall Street. Her video was also very helpful for my quest and opened my eyes to some things of relevance.
I remember the warm feeling I got when I learned of her participation in politics few years later. Since I try to avoid following American politics [health reasons] I admit I know nothing about her political carrier so far. Still, after reading some of the comments here it seems something she said about her ancestry (even if true) has come to hunt her, and renders her impossible politician, let alone presidential candidate.
Like I said, I know little about her political carrier, but dismissing her over something so small and trivial makes no sense to me. Stupid she is not, and she can rise far above identity politics judging by previously mentioned video. That would be something from the left?!
However, it seems to me you guys need Superman for president. Backed by swarm of angles, the justice league, and a powerful alien race. Who else can push for changes in U.S policy against all the interest groups and the so called deep state?
The Vikings of 1,200 years ago couldn’t fix global warming so they took advantage to establish European style farming communities in Iceland and Greenland.
700 years later when another ice age began the Vikings couldn’t fix the little ice age. So they abandoned Greenland which once more became a frozen wasteland
4, 000 years ago the earth was so cold the Mediterranean peoples built their homes with the main part of the house facing south and west for warmth .
By 2,000 years ago the Mediterranean peoples started building their homes with the main part facing north because the earth had warmed so much
12, ooo years ago the North Sea and English Channel didn’t exist because so much water was frozen in glaciers . Eastern England was connected to western France Belgium and Netherlands . Scotland was connected to N Ireland
Then the earth warmed up, the glaciers melted and the Atlantic broke through and created the North Sea and the channel
At one time the Mediterranean Sea did not exist. Then the glaciers melted and the Atlantic broke through the straights and created the Mediterranean and the Bosporus channel
700,000, 7 million or 7 billion humans, 2018 AD 2018 BC or 200, ooo years ago the earth does what it does.
If global warming is true I can see a great benefit. Heat can be turned off the first of April instead of the first of June. Think of the savings. The vast resources of Siberia and the rest of the near artic can be used. Snow tires will last for decades because they will only be used 2 months.
But global warming is just another liberal falsehood poured into the empty sink that is the liberal brain.
Don’t you mean Winter Solistice stocking? Christmas is now an obscene forbidden word because it offends Jews.
Your local county hospital can’t throw you out into the street. By law, it must care for you without regard for ability to pay.
Actually, that’s pretty much my own opinion, though I do think she’s unfortunately gotten “assimilated” a little from her last few years in the U.S. Senate.
As far as I know, many, many years ago she vaguely said that there was a belief in her family that they had some Amerind ancestry many generations back, which is very common among whites in Oklahoma. So that got mentioned in some Harvard PR document somewhere, which nobody ever paid any attention to, and she never made any major public claim about that.
But the Banksters really, *really* hate her, and they used an ocean of their corrupt money to investigate anything they could possibly find against her. She turned out to be clean as a whistle, but they discovered that long-forgotten Amerind claim, and for years its been broadcast 24-7 on FoxNews to attack and ridicule her, which is absurd. But all the silly right-wingers always fall for that sort of thing.
Basically establishment-conservatives these days all support Affirmative Action, except when they can use it to attack their enemies.
Meanwhile, Steve Sailer used to sometimes claim he was half-Jewish in ancestry and I was always pretty skeptical about that, and that Milo guy also claims to be half-Jewish, which everyone is sure is a lie. So if the Banksters and FoxNews hated them, I’m sure we’d never heard the end of that.
Looks as one of options.
Another could be:
An average American shifts his/her attention from entertainment, shopping and social media into learning how the system really works. After, say, 3 months of that connects with similar minded people around him/her and brainstorm how to make all that right.
For a starter…….
And, another, the most likely: things get worse until they get really bad (for lower 70 % of population).
What happens after that…we’ll see.
Her speech about the mortgage crises selling homes to people who couldn’t make the payments and banks selling the mortgages to second parties who sold the mortgages to third parties was common knowledge all over America at the time
Her speech was common knowledge, nothing special.
Predatory lending wasn’t predatory
The Clinton administration ordered banks to give mortgages to non Whites who had no down payment no jobs and no assets who could not possibly make the mortgage payments.
Non White people whose cash income from welfare benefits was $10,000 a year and had no down payment were given half million dollar mortgages in California.
Had the banks denied these indigent people the mortgages the government would have fined the banks hundreds of thousands of dollars and the liberal legal foundations would have sued the banks for tens of millions more.
Everybody knew what was going on.
Solar heating is just a scam for the solar heating industry. Better insulate your house to save the “ earth’s precious resources” Even better yet, nuclear power which is very cheap and doesn’t deplete Mother Gia and the Green Man’d precious resources
Global warming is just a return to the old pagan earth worship of cavemen
Best way the ordinary person can save the earths precious resources and worship Mother Gia and the Green Man is to go on welfare so as not to deplete Mother Gia’s precious resources by commuting.
I believe she checked the Native American box in her applications to law school and then professor.
That’s more than look at my black hair and colonial ancestry I must be part Indian
Warren isn’t Hillary 2.0 – she’s not a globalist Wall St. type and understands the economic problems of “Deplorables”.
The difficulty is getting the nomination (with Zioglob/MSM hostility), but if she did, she could well do more for Deplorables than Trump ever did (action rather than words) and she would also get the vote of all the “victim groups”, since they’ve nowhere else to go and they’re not going to vote for Trump.
Also, she doesn’t seem to have the blackmail potential of recent Presidents, so altogether she’s not a bad Democratic candidate.
My take on global warming. I remember when all the MSM reporters, news readers and other hacks were sent to be educated about global warming, can’t remember when exactly but it was quite a few years ago. When I saw that I smelled a rat.
I see it like this, the same MSM that ridicules anyone
who questions the JFK and RFK assassinations,
who questions the downing of TWA Flight 800 and the FBI scum who covered up the true story,
who questions the 911 BS story,
who questions US support for Israel.
These same folks demand that I believe them when they spout off about the end of the world because of man caused global warming. These same folks demand that I accept that to save the world I have to support the complete loss of sovereignty of my country to a bunch of global Zionist, elitist scum who couldn’t care less if I and millions like me were killed.
I realize there are a bunch of fools in this country who would willingly give up every liberty they have including all those in the Bill of Rights because these elitists say they should to save the world. That scares the daylights out of me and it should scare you too. Whoever you are.
I find this surprising. Perhaps I didn’t find the sources pouring out this information into the mainstream, but Warren made the key point risk was shifted – a key element in the later financial crisis. Unfortunately I can’t find her video on youtube – as far as I know it was removed years ago. If memory serves me – she was the one who painted the whole picture for me. During this time I followed several financial websites who didn’t.
I also find it strange if the banks were under command of the Clinton administration during the G.W.B years? Let alone their later “explanation” that a “glitch” in a mathematical model was the cause for incorrect risk evaluation for trenches of sub-prime mortgages sold to institutional investors across the globe with similar risk ratings as government bonds!
“Common knowledge” is not the phrase I would use.
Very funny! Of course, if there isn’t yet a quasi-Quansa holiday for the native peoples, there’s probably on planned.
Blacks prove that they’re inferior every day. Sportsball excepted.
Cuba tells fukus to fuck off,
That’s the spirit girls,
Cant stand those insufferable [email protected]#$%^!
Well, that’s certainly possible, though I vaguely recall reading a sharp denial somewhere. My impression is that after she was hired without AA (except for being a female), someone heard about her supposed ethnic background and it was put on some obscure list by a Harvard PR guy.
But it’s all pretty fuzzy in my mind. 99.9% of attacks I’ve against her have just been stupid jokes of the “Pocahontas” type. I strongly suspect it’s just the Banksters paying off the corrupt FoxNews types to stir up their conservatard TeeVee watchers.
By contrast, I remember a year or two before she ran for office, someone linked some long YouTube presentation of hers and a longtime WN commenter was saying how great she had done in outlining how the totally corrupt banking-business interests that had wrecked the country.
COL Bacevich has not drawn the correct conclusions from his own failure in Vietnam and his son’s death in Iraq – different races, religions, cultures and genders are not equal, and never will be.
We spent trillions of dollars in those conflicts and thousands of lives. We have spent decades trying to equalize the races and genders within our own country, when they are clearly not equal. The United States as it was founded was the product of white Protestant Anglo men, and there is absolutely no evidence that anybody else can meaningfully carry it on.
Thanks for the heads up Ron.
Figuring out her situation isn’t easy for me. In her 2006 (?) video her views were pretty clear. But since then she is involved in the democratic party with Hillary Clinton giving speeches on Wall Street for considerable sums of money. And then there is the ever revolving door between Goldman Sachs and the U.S treasury – even during Obama years.
And now we have the democrats towing the “war party line”.
Difficult situation, even for “Pocahontas”.
BTW – thanks for very interesting website and your articles. While I remain skeptical you are pushing out great many interesting points and fine thoughts.
-all the best!
Yes, I’ll admit I haven’t paid much attention to her recently, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s gradually gotten “assimilated” into the Establishment over the last few years.
“But Bacevich was a Trump basher during the election so you have to question his real intentions.”
Bacevich demanded Trump’s resignation after his first weekend in office.
For anybody who takes COL Bacevich’s opinion as anything other than that of a bitter, Leftist, anti-American and anti-Westerner, consider his unhinged proposal to import millions of Iraqis:
“That alignment becomes possible if we recognize that America’s obligation is not to Iraq but to Iraqis. As a nation-state, Iraq—awash with sectarian violence and lacking legitimate institutions—can hardly be said to exist. We owe Iraq nothing.
In contrast, we owe the Iraqis whose lives we have blighted quite a lot. We should repay that debt much as we (partially at least) repaid our debt to the people of South Vietnam after 1975: by offering them sanctuary. In the decade after the fall of Saigon, some half-million Vietnamese refugees settled in the United States. Here, they found what they were unable to find in their own country: safety, liberty, and the opportunity for a decent life. It was the least we could do.
The least we can do for Iraqis today is to extend a similar invitation.
At various times, the Bush administration has described US strategy in Iraq this way: As they stand up, we will stand down. At present, a more apt formulation is this one: As we depart, they can come along. To Iraqis seeking to escape the brutality and chaos that we have helped create, the “golden door” into the New World should open. Call it Operation Iraqi Freedom II.
How many Iraqis will accept this invitation is impossible to say. In all probability, they will number in the millions. Accommodating this influx will be an expensive proposition, not least of all because we will have to identify and deny entry to radicals or other potential mischiefmakers.” (“What America Owes The Iraqis,” by Andrew Bacevich, Christian Science Monitor, June 27, 2007)
Whatever oath this man once took to protect this nation and its Constitution, he has clearly abandoned it.
Possibly a compromise on her behalf. The cost of playing the game. If she would stick to her principles openly – she probably wouldn’t be there in the first place.
But she is still there, and playing, perhaps hoping for better days.
I like her and agree with your assessments.
(different anon)
Here’s what I can tell from the Internet:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/warren-explains-minority-listing-talks-of-grandfathers-high-cheekbones/
Personally I had never heard of Warren before the Indian thing. It’s possible it was used in an effort to shut her down, but surely it had not so much impact on her Democratic base? At the time the Boston Globe broke the story (2012 according to wikipedia) it was owned by the New York Times, which might be interesting.
It must be called Immigration-Invasion.
Just ‘immigration’ doesn’t really spell out what is really happening.
Classic Immigration was More of Your Kind arriving. More whites to the US replenished White America. It’s like more Jews to Israel replenishes Jewishness.
But what we have now in the West is Immigration-Invasion. It’s about replacing, not replenishing, the existing population.
If you have a pool of trout and add more trout, it is replenished with more trout.
But if you keep adding salmon to a pool of trout, the trouts will be replaced eventually with salmon.
We must call what is happening Immigration-Invasion. Always add -invasion to ‘immigration’.
That’s funny, I’ve also started to re-evaluate everything I had believed in politically and economically in 2006. This has lead me on a very long and rewarding path of personal ‘enlightenment’ which I am still pursuing. My most useful stops as far as economics was: mises.org
Thus, by 2008, when this book came out about the financial crisis, I was able to understand the event much better.
https://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1539836599&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=meltdown+woods&dpPl=1&dpID=51%2B6yTN167L&ref=plSrch
As far as Ms Warren is concerned, this podcast explains the background very well:
https://itunes.apple.com/de/podcast/freedomain-radio-with-stefan-molyneux/id552010683?l=en&mt=2&i=421954849
You be the judge.
Good luck and have fun on your journey!
Well I am disappointed. I was loving every line of it till I got to the end and not one mention of unicorns or rainbow ponies. What sort of a wish list is it without both these and fairy floss clouds as well?
Ron. Unless ‘they’ get with the program, you’re not even going to hear their name.
Thanks for that.
How clueless would it be to use that notoriously insecure OS for anything that matters, when superior systems are free? And everything is open source, can be checked, and matched with other copies, and the kernel compiled from the source code by the user? The OS mentioned there is only for kiddies, isn’t it? Instead of picture-books?
Okay, lack of professionalism in the professionals is taken advantage of, and that is cyber warfare. It exists. You win.
Which two? Please explain to all of us ignoramuses.
It is one thing to take exception to any proposal to increase even selective Iraqi immigration but your last paragraph is just plain dopey. Or is it just a bizarre way of expressing the feelings aroused in you by someone who was in the armed forces having a conscience and expressing a view you don’t agree with?
Big time…..Alex can’t get enough Chinese LEGAL IMMIGRANTS because once they step on US soil they will all magically support gun rights and the Alex Jones interpretation of the US Constitution…..Although for some strange reason Judge Chen…1st generation…..in his recent ruling against the Trump Administrstion didn’t…..something about Trump being a RACIST!!! and the violation of the equal protection clause….
Glad to hear about your “enlightenment”, chris.
The Mises Institute is a fantastic organization and Tom Woods is a brilliant guy who is unafraid to smash anyone and everyone’s sacred cows with style and class.
Exactly. Many people start out with good intentions, but somehow they always end up with evil deeds.
Trump campaigned and got elected on promises of peace, and I believe he was sincere. Well, where is he now? I guess you have to give him credit for not having start a new war so far, but he seems unable to pull out of the old ones, and his being increasingly surrounded by warmongers doesn’t bode well.
Warren seems to be owned by AIPAC/Israel.
“By contrast, I remember a year or two before she ran for office, someone linked some long YouTube presentation of hers and a longtime WN commenter was saying how great she had done in outlining how the totally corrupt banking-business interests that had wrecked the country.”
I think that was really her strengtha, and maybe it still is.
After the 2008 financial mess I think she came very strongly against bailing out banksters and for using that money to help citizens get their mortgages straightened out, and personal finance generally. She came on the scene as a strong consumer advocate, advocate for the middle class, and I believe that is also her academic area of expertise.
Then, becuase she was intelligent, personable, and a “her,” she was immed. pushed forward faster than might have been the case for a male with similar views.
And, IMO there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that. This is how our system works, for better or for worse. An aspiring politico must know how to use all postiive assets. Maybe that word should be “deploy.” In addition, her personal story was compelling. This woman was an incredibly hard worker. She got where she was with a lot of sweat, studying while raising a family—like Ruth Bader Ginsbury, I may say.
It’s been nearly a decade since I looked into the issue, but from what I remember, the “Minority Mortgage Meltdown” explanation of the 2008 so heavily promoted by Steve and picked up by the conservative MSM turned out to be mostly a hoax.
It’s certainly true there was a huge wave of defaults in very heavily black parts of the country, but the housing prices in black areas were so low, they hardly impacted bank capital. I very vaguely recall that Detroit housing prices *peaked* at something like $20,000(!) then collapsed to maybe $4,000 (please don’t take these figures as correct).
Meanwhile, CA was ground-zero of the Meltdown because homes were so extremely expensive, and has relatively few blacks, with even fewer of them owning expensive homes. So in CA, the issue would have entirely been Hispanics.
However, the highest-default areas have only average numbers of Hispanics and the most heavily Hispanic areas had low default rates. So there seemed no direct connection.
It looked like speculators were the biggest factor behind the Meltdown, with people buying 5 or 7 homes using false claims of income and hoping to make a fortune due to the inevitable rise in prices, until it became less inevitable, and they went under.
Relatively few of the speculators were black or Hispanic, but many of them did seem to be South Asians or Middle Easterners, or something East Asians. So among non-whites, those were probably the major source of the problem, though I do think a large majority were Jewish and Gentile whites.
It’s all very fuzzy in my mind, but I think I once very roughly estimated that something like 20-25% of the defaulted mortgage value probably came from blacks and Hispanics, despite the latter being so heavily concentrated in CA, FL, and other top meltdown states. So it really roughly their share of the national population.
Basically, the conservative MSM hyped the hoax in order to avoid blaming the crooked banks, which made enormous profits then got bailed out by the government.
Not quite.
Microsoft Windows, Embedded, isn’t quite as those O.S.-es found on desktops/servers.
If you want to talk about that we could, but, don’t think this place is a good place to do it.
By “superior” systems you mean, naturally UNIX-like types, from the original and its versions itself to FreeBSD and….hehe…Linux and its zillion distros, I guess.
Sounds good. Except, when you really get into it, it is not.
You CAN check source code, yes. It’s written in C.
Question: have you ever compared C code to assembly for THAT particular processor/chipset?
If yes, not bad. Let’s go a step further:
Have you ever tried to to compare the assembly code line to pure binary? You know, something like 010000110000011110000011………
Let’s go one step further, even:
Have you tried to change one, just one, bit above and then reassemble all that and run it? See what happens…..
Because, at the end of the day, we are talking about electronics here. Just on digital level it gets beyond “source code”.
And the real magic starts when you go a step below, in the real world of analog. Because those bits aren’t really 1 and 0. They are certain level of analog voltage which can fluctuate……..and then it really gets complicated.
And all that just on software level. With current level of IC integration it’s not hard to slip, just in one production line, a slightly modified chip.
I guess you got my point: state sponsored teams working on Zero Day exploits are beyond “open source, can be checked, and matched with other copies”.
And all that not even addressing the most important, as below:
PEOPLE.
You can trick them with ease. Related to that “ignoramuses”.
Industrial plant, for example. A mixture of microcontrollers and end user/server technology. A lot of inter-networking. Takes just one temp employee……………………………..
Failing that you can buy them. Especially middle management. You know the type: ambition and such.
Failing that you can threaten them. Anybody.
The last, but not the least, PROCESSES and PROCEDURES.
The same stuff thought out, written down and enforced by…ahm…PEOPLE.
That’s just funny. All those passwords written down at the bottom of laptops….
Tell me….assuming you work in some corporate environment…when was the last time you guys did proper penetration test?
Industrial plants are even easier.
One of, ahm, “benefits” of having employees on minimum wages.”Migrant workers” in particular.
IT security. Sure.
And, just one more thing re “cyberwarfare” for those couple of guys around with a bit of perceptive ability. Say……10 % tops.
Take a look at middle management and up in IT related (in any way) industry in West.
WHO are those people. Especially their knowledge about technical aspects of the industry. Those incomprehensible and utterly boring topics as transistors, capacitors, chip datasheets……oh my.
Then….take a look at WHO are the people who, on Internet forums/Web sites, are REALLY good at that. People who write white papers, posts and even help in answering deep technical questions here and there.
Yup…………
What a bunch of stupid replies. They don’t even get it.
Hmm, sounds as though you’re saying something remarkably like the below as succinctly described on pg 4 of a 2003 academic paper.
‘..the immigrants usually serve three main functions: cheap labor to replace native groups; settlement in the ‘frontier’ (periphery); and control over the natives and their land. These dynamics generally result in the maintenance of hegemony..’
Whether in the past it was the Roman colonia, the Irish Plantation, or what the various peoples of Europe are experiencing at present, it would seem to be the same story regarding ‘mass immigration’.
The ideology of multi-culturalism is an attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear (can’t be done) and get people to embrace their own physical, cultural, and economic displacement/destruction as ‘good’ for them.
Regarding the forementioned Irish, they’ve had the misfortune to experience ‘multi-culturalism’ in more ways than one with the 16th century Plantation, their 19th century enmasse predation as wage slaves particularly during the Famine (ie so called ‘cheap labor’, chattel slavery’s monetization, the economic and political basis of the multi-cultural society) and now once again along with the rest of Western Europe with the ‘mass immigration’.
Lest anyone get the wrong idea, the Irish did not see their enmasse predation as wage slaves (ie ‘cheap labor’) by places such as the United States during the Famine (1846 – 1850) as a good and positive thing.
They were losing as many from the Famine each year as from their ‘immigration’, ie 250,000. They saw this predation as a genocidal act of hostility towards them, and not as a helping hand, but rather a hand being placed around their throat and squeezed hard.
The Irish called this predation and resulting large scale depopulation of Ireland ‘exterminatiom’, something they’ve not recovered from to this day, and as documented by The Spectator of London in 1847 members of the British aristocracy in Ireland were being shot for promoting it.
‘Such is the conduct which the Irish incendiaries name extermination.’
http://www.academia.edu/27219183/Between_urban_and_national_Political_mobilization_among_Mizrahim_in_Israel_s_development_towns_
http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/20th-november-1847/12/extermination-and-vengeance
The POV “heavily promoted by Steve” concentrates on plankton and blames the plankton for being plankton totally ignoring possible designs and shenanigans of banking industry who are the fishes. Does he think that mono ethnic higher IQ population would be immune to banker’s shenanigans? Would the outcome be different? Look at Iceland. The outcome was different only after the fact because Icelanders refused to bail out the bankers. Would Sailer blame Blacks and Mexicans for the bailout of bankers ( circa 1 trillion by Bush and another by Obama)?
How banks can change the whole economic system it is instructive to look at financial crisis in Asia. During the financial crisis in Asia the MSM narrative was triumphalist that finally Japan and Korea had to accept the superior America system of running the business. There is a book and film by Richard Werner
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Werner
that demonstrates how the crisis was the result of the long term plan to reengineer the architecture of financial economy in Asia and how it was carried out by the central banks and it completely flew under the radar of people and MSM. And the main point is that the previous system worked very well for people but not well enough for the bankers. The book is
Princes of the Yen, Japan’s Central Bankers and the Transformation of the Economy
and film
I find Richard Werner trustworthy and persuasive. More recently he began to look at banking system and how money is generated and at alternative possibilities. He wrote the paper where he traced where the money come from in particular case of a German bank:
There is a lot confusion about banking and money creation among those who are interested in it while the rest is totally ignorant of it. Perhaps, you, Mr. Unz should take a look at it in the future. It could be the biggest American Pravda story. They do not teach it in economic departments.
NOt ot forget the enclosures, in Scotland, that drove the starving Scottish crofters from their lands and homes in droves, mainly I believe to North America, mainly I believe to Nova Scotia. Oh, yeah, that’s “New Scotland”!!
All that so that British landlords could introduce and have the fun of hunting deer.
Disgusting.
“There is a lot confusion about banking and money creation among those who are interested in it while the rest is totally ignorant of it. ”
See the videos of Richard Wolfe. He will explain it all to you.
Funny coincidence that. How the meltdown states just so happened to be the ones with lots blacks and Hispanics, individuals to whom there is obvious social pressure to issue mortgages to.
Among recent borrowers, we estimate that nearly 8% of both African Americans and Latinos have lost their homes to foreclosures, compared to 4.5% of whites.
http://www.responsiblelending.org/mortgage-lending/research-analysis/foreclosures-by-race-and-ethnicity.pdf
Were I making investments into two different types of business and one failed catastrophically 8% of the while the other failed catastrophically only 4.5% of the time, I know where I’d focus my attention! Why didn’t they?
No, he won’t because he is one of the confused. I watched one of his video about Marxist something that happened to be temporarily free of charge and by the 2/3rd of it I could see that he was just a doctrinaire who had no answers. As long as he stayed within the realm of Marxist phraseology it made sense but this phraseology did not allow some issues to be posed.
Do you have more helpful pieces of advice up your sleeve or ass?
Does Sailer get any cut?
“There is a lot confusion about banking and money creation among those who are interested in it while the rest is totally ignorant of it.”
Agreed.
” Perhaps, you, Mr. Unz should take a look at it in the future.”
I would strongly encourage everybody to do it.
If you choose to do it, Mr. Unz, I highly recommend Murray Rothbards “The Mystery of Banking” and his “The History of Money and Banking in the U.S.” You will probably never look at the subject the same way again.
“It could be the biggest American Pravda story.”
Perhaps. It would definitely be bold though.
Might be a small difference in the scale of the coverage shown to Steve Sailer and Milo and the lady who was the presumed lead Democratic candidate for President in 2020…
Also, and I shouldn’t have to add other reasons, but there’s no implication of doing it to game the AA system the former two cases, nor does it produce such an amusing image as an obviously white woman being labelled “Cherokee” in a photo.
This whole Pocahontas thing is a huge ignorance flag.
A flag of ignorance of the actual demographics of the state of Oklahoma (where my own forebears were teachers in schools for the children of Native Americans).
An Oklahoma native once told me:
“When people visit Oklahoma they always ask, ‘Where are all the Indians?’
And I just tell them: ‘Just look around ya, honey!’”
The point being that a lot of people in Oklahoma have Indian blood.
But it is hard to nail down because there were so many strictures on those with Indian blood entering white society. That is, there may be some cachet to having some Indian blood nowadays, but that was definitely not the situation in the Bad Old Days. There is also a lot of family lore surrounding beliefs that there is an Indian ancestor, so many people might have been told this as children, and their parents may have believed it—and it may even have been true.
So, just lay off the Pocahontas theme in connection with Warren. If you have nothing better to do than obsess about Warren’s DNA, why don’t you go and have your own DNA test. What is relevant about Warren is that whatever DNA she has has made her hardworking and pretty damn smart. When we have a Congress loaded with ignorant know-nothings, we should appreciate the presence of someone like Warren, whether or not we agree with her specific politics.
On the elimination of ignorance front, recall, Native Americans from all over the Southeast were driven west until they ended up on reservations in Oklahoma.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Native_American_tribes_in_Oklahoma
“Do you have more helpful pieces of advice up your sleeve or ass?”
Why do you talk like that?
What is the point?
Why does Ron Unz allow this kind of thing?
The biggest problem with the Unz Review is the really awful tone of so much of the comments/commenters.
Ron poses very interesting issues for debate, but the level of debate—the level of commenters—is far lower than his own. I wonder whether Ron has noticed this.
You don’t know ?!
You wonder ?!
As for banking, that’s a hard one.
Let’s try…..ah, yes….how about usury?
Yes…yes…it’s all about “Satan spawn”. Case closed. For majority around.
Now, for the minority still not quite sure it’s that simple, going deeper into it, well, it looks we get to GREED.
From that stampede in shopping mall with specials to invading and destroying countries.
How to fix that?
Rhetorical question.
This summer’s heat waves and hurricanes don’t prove shit about “climate change”. Neither are unprecedented, and you climate drum-pounders, totally convinced that AGW will absolutely lead to more severe in strength and more frequent hurricanes have no explanation for the 12 year hiatus in major hurricanes hitting the US from 2005 to 2017. The only explanation I’ve seen offered for that is “We got lucky”. Whoa, that’s some pretty serious “science” there.
“He will explain it all to you.”
Unfortunately, when the Superman does inevitably come, his name always turns out to be: Joseph Stalin.
Great post.
If a person wants to have an enhanced understanding of the modern world…study and understand the British Empire.
It’s a long term project I’m still wrapping my head around.
One thing I’ve found is that (being the Empire was quite commercial in its nature) is that contrary to popular thought and propaganda the British Empire would seem to be very much ‘undead’.
Unrelievedly cryptic is a sight better than trash talk.
Lack of perception and social intelligence is slightly better than being plainly dumb.
Is the latest slightly better than being disinterested could be an interesting question.
With time and effort one could work on the first two in the first sentence. Probably on all three.
Good luck, B.T.W.
The race of the borrowers had nothing to do with anything. The real connection to race was the fact that home ownership was already high with whites and Asians who had no need to buy another house. They did, in some lower income areas like Palmdale, exploit the stupidly high prices to refinance themselves into foreclosure but it mostly occurred because they sold out to somebody who eventually defaulted like the house I bought in Palmdale for 100,000 cash with a 438,000 dollar mortgage.
It is simple process of elimination that if most whites already had a house that the borrowers during the bubble would mostly be minorities and young whites just starting out. This was the case of whites in Palmdale getting foreclosed on – young construction workers who found themselves without jobs during the bust.
The banks were not targeting anybody (unless you counted people who could fog a mirror as opposed to vampires) since they were selling the loans off as fast as they could make them. Anybody could get a loan, it was just that blacks and Hispanics were the great untapped market that could not previously qualify for a loan under normal conditions. This is not a targeting of that market.
The whole thing was driven by the normal free market process of easy money leading to a lowering of standards leading to a bubble and a collapse. The commercial real estate bubble of the late 80s, Black Friday, the junk bond crash, Long Term Capital Management, the Mexican Peso crisis, …….
“The whole thing was driven by the normal free market process of easy money leading to a lowering of standards leading to a bubble and a collapse.”
I must take issue with this statement since it is confusing categories, amongst other things.
Firstly, a “normal free market” would not make “easy money” available to those who are high-risk without an interest-rate correspondent to the risk.
And, secondly, there is no such thing as “easy money” in a “normal” free market. “Easy money” is a result of policies that have untethered the USD from sound money to back the USD up a la Nixon. In other words, the USD is now just backed up by the “Full faith and credit” of the U.S. government so, crank up the presses boys! We’re all dead in the long run!
That is not a “normal” free market; it is a centrally-planned economy bent on profiting off of the debt of naive and gullible people who don’t understand the Federal Reserves schemes.
Sure, that’s a very reasonable perspective, though since whites and Asians were generally much more affluent, I think the price of the homes they bought was considerably higher, hence the banks’ losses were much larger.
But from what I recall when I looked into the issue some years ago, probably the biggest factor behind the Meltdown was very large number of homes purchased towards the end by speculators, who often used straw-buyers to claim to the banks in the docs that they were owner-occupiers. I doubt whether most of the bank lending officers were really fooled, but since they quickly turned around and sold the loans into secularization shops, they did very well from the loan-flow and only the MBS holders (and eventually the tax-payers) got hit.
There were all sorts of stories about someone buying a house as an investment property, then turning around and selling it a year or two later for large profits. Next, the fellow did the same thing with 2-3 houses, making even bigger profits. But then the guy bought 7 homes, the market collapsed, and everything immediately went into foreclosure.
Anecdotally, those speculators were disproportionately Middle Easterners and South Asians, though probably a large majority were Jewish and Gentile whites, with relatively few Hispanics or blacks.
Sure, Warren might not be as bad as Clinton, but she’s no better than Obama. The issue of our time is mass immigration and whether western countries will online to exist. If a candidate is not even willing to address this issue, and I haven’t seen Warren do that, she’s useless and her presidency would be no different that Obama’s lame duck terms. If we can’t stop immigration from Asia or migrations from the global south, its over.
If memory serves me the financial institutions packed the loans together in trenches. Evaluated them with some black box computer model spitting out magnificent risk-ratings enabling them to sell the packages to retirement funds all across the globe. All with the blessings of the rating agencies.
To boot they bought and sold -over the counter- derivatives of all kinds creating (i.e C.D.S) international web of ticking time bombs. Something that drained the trust in the system because no one knew who was nursing these hot potatos on his books. For this reason AIG had to be saved, and it took great efforts in Europe if even small banks collapsed because such event triggered derivatives elsewhere risking domino effects far and wide.
As far as I know, this problem has since only gotten worse regarding the derivative situation. Who created this mess if not the free market?
“Who created this mess if not the free market?”
I hope this is sarcasm.
I am sorry to disappoint you, but it’s not.
I have read quite a bit from the Austrian school of economics and while it gives great insights into great many things, their belief in the pure spirit of the free market, and the honesty of the participants is misplaced. BTW this doesn’t mean I support the current system of central banks or the financial system in general. Far from it, it’s rotten to the core.
Here is the section that you reference:
“Whatever oath this man once took to protect this nation and its Constitution, he has clearly abandoned it.”
How can you argue against this when this man argues in favor of Muslim immigration? Clearly that is a threat to this nation (just look at 9/11, Ft. Hood, the Boston Marathon Bombing, St. Cloud, the Navy Yard shooting, San Bernardino, Orlando, Ohio State, etc.).
I think she has addressed the issue quite clearly:
“This is about children being held in cages, this is about babies scattered all across the country, this is about mamas who want their children back. President Trump seems to think that the only way to have immigration rules is to rip parents from their families, is to treat rape victims and refugees like terrorists, and to put children in cages. This is ugly, this is wrong, and this is not the way to run our country. The president’s deeply immoral actions have made it obvious we need to rebuild our immigration system from top to bottom starting by replacing ICE with something that reflects our morality and values. This moment is a moral crisis for our country. Dr. Martin Luther King said there comes a time when silence is betrayal. We will not be silent. We cannot be silent. We will build a country that reflects our values. That is why we are here.” (1)
“I’m so sorry for the [Tibbetts] family here, and I know this is hard not only for the family but for the people in her community, the people throughout Iowa, but one of the things we have to remember is we need an immigration system that is effective, that focuses on where real problems are. Last month I went down to the border, and I saw where children had been taken away from their mothers. I met with those mothers who had been lied to, who didn’t know where their children were and there was no plan for how they would be reunified with their children. I think we need immigration laws that focus on people who pose a real threat. And I don’t think mamas and babies are the places we should be spending our resources. Separating a mama from a baby does not make this country safer.” (2)
Regarding the selective Muslim immigration ban: “We will make our voices heard all around this world. We have all heard about this order that President Trump has given. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It will be overturned. An attack on anyone for their religious beliefs is an attack on the very foundation of democracy. We will not turn away children, we will not turn away families, we will not turn away people who tried to help Americans. We will not turn away anyone because of their religion.” (3)
“These young DREAMers are in peril only because President Trump broke America’s promise. Years ago America promised that if these young people would come out of the shadows and they would be fully vetted, then they would have the opportunity to go to school here in America, they would have the opportunity to get jobs, to join the military, to become a full part of the American fabric. Here they are, these young people who are part of America, and President Trump said a few months ago, nope, that’s it, we are going to toss them out of the country, and the only ones who can save them from this is Congress. So it’s now Congress’s job to step up. We want to see this happen. We want to see it happen now. The American people want to see it happen. These are young people who are at risk for being thrown out of the only home that most of them know. So I am glad to see this go forward. That’s what we need.” (4)
It seems quite obvious that she supports mass Third World immigration.
(1) https://www.breitbart.com/video/2018/07/01/warren-we-need-to-rebuild-our-immigration-system-starting-by-replacing-ice/
(2) https://www.breitbart.com/video/2018/08/22/watch-warren-laments-treatment-of-illegal-immigrants-when-asked-about-mollie-tibbetts/
(3) https://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/01/29/elizabeth-warren-to-airport-protesters-trump-immigration-ban-illegal-unconstitutional-will-be-overturned/
(4) https://www.breitbart.com/video/2018/01/10/sen-warren-president-trump-broke-americas-promise-dreamers/
BEST ADVICE FOR ELIZABETH WARREN. Hope she reads this for her own good.
Ignore Bacevich: he is Strategic Culture Foundation filler.
You were wrong to rely on Injuns. They rejected and humiliated you. Change tacks.
Your best bet is the #MeToo crowd– they are many and they are loud. Call a press conference and confess the deep, dark secret that has traumatized the whole mitochondrial branch of your family tree ever since your great-great-great-great granny was raped by a Cherokee.
Make your slogan “Give no quarter to rapists!” Add that you hold no grudge against the Cherokee nation. Explain that although the overwhelming majority of rapists are white men, a few — and only very few — may be minorities perverted by the white society.
See if I’m not right.
Absolutely, right, Mr. OEMIKITLOB! No free market has an all-powerful entity setting prices. That’s against the definition. In this case, that entity is the FED, and it sets the price of (use of) money.
Good comment.
With all respect, Mr. Unz, I’m not sure you understand Mr. Sailer’s point on this. I say this, BTW, as someone who was paying close attention to the housing bubble-and-pop during that era, in a location where it was pretty big AND I didn’t read (or very rarely read) Sailer’s writing back then.
The point goes way back, maybe to the late ’70′s. The push to AA blacks (there weren’t many Hispanics back then, period) into loans that they were otherwise being denied started long ago. Everyone with any knowledge of ACTUAL free markets and common sense knew that no banker would turn down a customer who, on average for his “type”, would pay back the loan.
The local bankers knew what they were doing, so it wasn’t about racism. As we all know, that doesn’t/didn’t fly with the SJWs and even the proto-SJWs that were around back then. They wanted equal OUTCOMES. The big banks were coerced over the years by the Feral Gov’t to show better approval ratios (either higher YES/NO for blacks, or higher ratio of blacks/whites than previously). Just jawboning was not going to do it, so the Community something-or-0ther Reinvestment Act and other “anti-redlining” laws were made to hit the bankers in their pockets if they didn’t comply.
That was the start of the problem. I don’t want to speak for him, but I think Steve Sailer doesn’t maintain particularly that the housing crash was so bad just due to the raw NUMBERS of black and Hispanics. The point was that, once this coercion of the banks by Feral Gov into making unsound loans started, plenty of white people got into the act too. The bankers threw up their hands, said “WTF, Joel”*, and gave the 3% down, low-interest (specially ARMs) loans to whomever walked in. This was all helped by the fact that the US Gov, via the FED had forcibly lowered interest rates after the 2001 dot.com, 1.0 bust. It helped everything that housing prices were “going to always go up” (if the last 20 years were any guide in most markets). Nobody would lose, if that stayed true, no matter how just plain financially-stupid the loans were (say, 3% down to a landscaper making $20,000 on a good year, on a $375,ooo McMansion in Temecula, … oh, but the rate may rise, but if you won’t be able to afford payments then, shoot, just sell it at a $80,000 profit, more money than you’ve been making mowing yards for that whole time, even if you undocumentedly cheat on taxes.)
I don’t put all of this on any one presidential administration either. It went from Carter (not sure if Reagan/Bush 88 really said much about it), through Clinton and George W. Bush. They all thought they were doing right, of course.
.
* OK, I misquoted the movie line here, for brevity.
I didn’t want you to think I believe 3 anecdotes explain my whole point, but just to emphasize that I WAS THERE:
1) A guy I worked with had bought 4 condo units in S. Florida just for an investment in ’06 or so. I only worked with him in ’08 when things were going down the tubes. He had already lost his ass, and the units (maybe whole building) weren’t even finished yet. Yes, he took the hit, but a) Our jobs were not high-paying but long-term stable. b) His parents bailed him out, but, per (a), I believe he was going to make them whole.
2) A friend bought a townhouse (TOWNHOUSE! not even a real house) in a medium-sized city for $550,000 in 2007, in a place where there was not the big, big bubble, but still, by 2 years later it was worth $350,000 according to him. He’s rented it out since, which worked out OK. However, when I saw it for the 1st time, before the crash though, I told him “I really wish you showed me this before you bought it. I’m telling you, it ain’t worth this much! ”
3) A friend’s ex-girlfriend bought 2 houses in Arizona a few years before the crash. That was all her lump-sum retirement money from a government job. Prices dropped like a rock, and she probably couldn’t even rent them out. She was bailed out by her husband, as I guess that’s the way now. (My friend is probably glad she’s ex-girlfriend.)
Oh, if it makes anybody feel better, these were all white people.
I’m sorry I’m really late to this thread, as I had a lot to say once I read the post (got here in a roundabout way) and admittedly not more than 1/2 the comments yet.
I reviewed Mr. Bacevich’s article this morning on Peak Stupidity with White man send smoke signals to Chief Spreading Bull. (Sorry, guys, I do like the un-PC fun terminology.) The writer starts off great. All of his anti-interventionism is writing that I completely agree with. Then he started in with the Global Climate Disruption(TM) crap, and I got turned way off. It really doesn’t help when the guy doesn’t even understand hurricane season.
The comment section, though, has me very interested in writing more about the causes of the housing bubble/bust (version 1.0), though any solution by the Socialist Chief Warren of the Nations of the upper Massachusetts, will, by definition, be highly unsound. OK, I’ll just say “stupid”. More Socialism will not help problems that were caused by Big Government to begin with.
Can/could the Protestant Anglos “carry it on”? Which ones? The descendants of the White Trash as described in Nancy Isenberg’s fascinating book? The dysgenic breeders whose representation where it mattered got to zero on SCOTUS when, before Scalia J died there were six Catholics on the court and not a single Protestant?
I very much doubt that he argues “for Muslim immigration” in the undiscriminating way your words suggest. Whatever he says it may be justification for saying his ideas are foolish and naive but not for your hyperbolic fulmination.
Maybe undead if you are thinking of zombies! There are only remnants of which the most prominent for most people is the Commonwealth (not even now I think “British” Commonwealth) that involves members of the Royal Family travelling to particular countries, Prime Ministers meetings and the holding of the Commonwealth Games every four years between Olympics. International Test cricket is played by many old Empire countries and it is notable that the 5 Eyes countries are Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom plus (most important of course the United States.
Those British landlords were first and foremost Scottish at the time of the enclosures I think you will find. And the motive was money to be made from running sheep and cattle.
There is a difference between the enclosures in England the later clearances in Scotland.
In both cases a centuries long economic development that resulted in local populations being driven from land or prevented from using it as before for their own sustenance.
Teaching university in Boston can rot your mind.
Once again, here is precisely what he says:
“How many Iraqis will accept this invitation is impossible to say. In all probability, they will number in the millions. Accommodating this influx will be an expensive proposition, not least of all because we will have to identify and deny entry to radicals or other potential mischiefmakers.”
His proposal is to bring in millions of Muslims, and despite a vague allusion to weeding out “radicals” and “mischiefmakers,” he presents no clear plan on how to do this. It is unlikely to be possible in a country like Iraq, and we have already seen time and again how “vetted,” legal Muslim immigrants and their children are incompatible with Western society. In fact, I suspect that COL Bacevich has no plan for vetting at all; he is a bitter Leftist who thinks America is evil and guilty (“the Iraqis whose lives we have blighted,” “the brutality and chaos that we have helped create”), and that it must atone for its guilt by turning itself over to Third Worlders (not that this would solve ANY of the problems of Iraq, mind you – all that really matters to Bacevich is hurting America).
This is not a man of sound mind or conscience who can be trusted on matters of public import; whatever brave defender of our country that he used to be, that man has well and truly left the building.
The self-abnegation of our WASP leadership has indeed been a great tragedy for the USA, and I agree that it is an open question if/how we can maintain this country in any semblance of its historic form. But the Leftist egalitarianism of Warren and Bacevich is certainly not the answer – that is the only point I sought to make.
That pretty much sums up the psychology of an average “prog”.Atonement for guilt.
Digging a bit into it could reveal some interesting facts.
Niceland, as alluded in my previous comment, I too have read ‘a bit’ from the Austrian school, but your description of them naively believing in ‘the honesty of the [free market] participants’ sounds nothing like what they actually say. This is the 2-dimensional, straw man their mainstream critics say about them.
What I believe them to actually say, is to point to the nefarious involvement of central banks in triggering financial booms and busts through their manipulation of interest rates, money creation, and bail-outs.
The central banks are like the apothecarians spiking the punch bowl with viagra and wondering why the dinner party turned into an orgy which everyone condemns with #metoo the next day.
The Austrians don’t say that the bankers are innocent, just that, in the absence of central banks, the system would be self-regulating. The banks would just go bankrupt (it’s where the word comes from!).
That, to me seems very reasonable. If you don’t, consider what a complicated system of controls and incentives, graft and privilege you have to construct in order to allow these bankers to behave as they do today; with the resulting financial and societal ubhevals we are all subjected to periodically.
Even if you yourself would be willing to accept the inherent downward risk of such a system, why should I or your neighbors be subject to it?
The gall, breadth and depth with you pedal this kind of nonsense is astounding. I have my issues with the Pres Clinton and his policies — but if you can find a find a single such order, you are invited to present it.
It’s nonsense and deserves to be called — nonsense. Regulations were eased across the board, but there was no mandate to ignore incomes, employment, down-payments or collateral — none.
Not a single government agency ever made such a demand or had that expectation.
This is an intriguing comment, though a bit opaque. What are these “interesting facts” to which you refer?
Very well stated.
Again, very well stated.
“It’s nonsense and deserves to be called — nonsense. Regulations were eased across the board, but there was no mandate to ignore incomes, employment, down-payments or collateral — none”.
“Not a single government agency ever made such a demand or had that expectation”.
Anon is correct and a simple internet search brings up the facts. I remember it also.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/28/are-the-clintons-the-real-housing-crash-villains.html
https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/09/12/the-brass-standard
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2008/10/what_really_happened_in_the_mo.html
https://nypost.com/2012/07/22/obamas-house-of-cards/
I believe the Washington Post covered it also. I can’t recall anyone that didn’t.
Also, it sounds as if you are equivocating on the word “mandate” but this is just hand-waving and special-pleading. When the Attorney General states they will prosecute anyone who doesn’t cooperate, I believe it reasonable to interpret as a mandate.
It is. For a tiny minority around, apparently.
That too.
Sort of a “ping”, just to see are there any replies. Here you are.
I get the feeling you already know the most of the answer. The golden rule of asking a question in the first place.
And, well, I think you know that the answer would take a lot of typing here. It IS important, I think, but I prefer people doing their own homework. Not you; I have a feeling you’ve already done a lot of it.
The answer is related to a couple of things:
The very concept of guilt. A sin. And, from there that atonement. There is some hard wiring there, apparently. Just look at Christians.
Then, even more interestingly, perhaps, is the demographics of those who feel that guilt.
It’s, almost to a fault, white male Westerners. I am talking about true believers, not the players.
You won’t see the same idiocy with any Eastern European. Or, better, which points to another thing, old school guys there. The new breed of…ahm…..civilized, westernized youth there can get that illness too, but just a bit. Hard to sell them racism against blacks for obvious historical reasons…oh, wait….that “mindset” doesn’t operate on reason. Still, Eastern Europeans aren’t buying it as Westerners. J.Q. works marginally better, but only a little.
And, then, when we analyze Western “guilt drones” (for a lack of better description) one could see the social-economic, even (God forbids on right spectrum) that class element too.
I mean, the true believers appear to be only middle CLASS …hehe….and up. Working CLASS much less. Interesting, a?
So, now we’ve come to the crux:
Easy, comfortable, even pampered life creates SOFT people. No amount of intelligence and education can help there, save rare exceptions.
Say, Spencer.
Or , oh my, that guy they made a movie about and you can watch on Netflix (I haven’t). Because that CLASS can create a MAN, but only if many circumstances click together.
So, the point (if not the full answer) is : deep in their hearts those SOFT people know they don’t deserve, really, the life they lead. That creates both that guilt and fear. A potent combination.
Nothing new. What’s the saying: hard times create hard men->hard men make easy times->easy times create soft men->soft men make hard times->back to hard times create hard men.
History is full of such examples. Hard grandfathers create, softer sons start losing it, SOFT grandsons lose it.
Here we are.
And, and the last but not the least, as recognized resident Hasbara troll, I just MUST:
Israelis don’t make the same mistake. Sort of helps when you are surrounded by people who’d kill you in a minute, too.
But,not all is lost.
If….if we somehow pass the M.A.D. those soft people in West WILL get surrounded by those who don’t like them, in their own neighborhood. Immigration and demographics shall see to it. So..hehe…..hard times make…..
We’ll see.
Everything in your post is just standard boiler plate free market drivel without any analysis of the reality of what happened. NOBODY cared who they qualified for a loan because they never intended to hold the loan to maturity.
That makes everything you say irrelevant.
And besides that, thare is no such thing as “a normal free market”. There have been plenty of bubbles and they were all due to the normal working of the free market. It is just the idiots and morons who have to hold onto their libertarian fantasy’s about markets being infallible that need some boogeyman like the FED for every financial disaster.
just that, in the absence of central banks, the system would be self-regulating.
And this is probably the biggest F-ing stupidity in the history of the world. Even Greenspan has admitted this is not the case.
Think about what happened at every level in the bubble. People who couldn’t previously buy houses and were paying high rents could get a low interest for 5 year mortgage that lowered and fixed their rent for the next 5 years. The loan officer was making 250,000 a year instead of delivering pizzas. The high school graduate office girl was making 1 million dollars a year selling the loans to Wall Street. The rating agencies were making a ton of money rating this trash and handing out huge bonuses to everybody. The managing directors on Wall Street were getting 10 million dollar bonuses. The bond brokers were making millions selling them.
Who was on the other side of that trade to act as a counter balance? Even in that movie about the big short, that company was almost squeezed out of their position. So there was no “self regulation” as there never is when the market runs off the rails as it does frequently. The Fed had nothing to do with starting this bubble or keeping it going.
All bubbles start with seemingly good investments. The rush of new entrants into the market causes everyone to lower their standards to maintain their income stream. Then the bubble really takes off.
Just for your information. Easy money refers to making a lot of money without any real effort. And yes there was easy money at every level of this bubble all the way down to the loan broker who had you qualified in 5 days for a mortgage.
Straw-men, canards, red herrings, genetic fallacy…where does one begin?
How about here?
https://mises.org/library/subprime-crisis
What a perfect introduction and descriptor of your own comment!
Couldn’t have said if any better myself. When you started with: “Even Greenspann” I thought you were kidding; I still think you are, you have quite a penchant for satire!
You’re referencing Greenspan ? The retarded half-wit who couldn’t identify a bubble if if popped on his nose?
I won’t be able to correct your world view for you, suffice it to say that the setting of low to zero interest rates through money creation out of thin air, and the ensuing bail-outs, all purviews of our dear central bank, do play the most significant role in the haunted financial, roller-coaster ride we’re on.