43 thoughts on “Triskaidekaphobia”

1. Great episode, Z.

   I hate to break it to you, but what people call “love” is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. It hits hard, then it slowly fades, leaving you stranded in a failing marriage. Break the cycle. Rise above. Focus on science.

   – Nikola Tesla

   • And that’s how you get Idiocracy.

2. The biggest mistake Sessions made was recusing himself. He essentially pre folded in anticipation of howls from media and libs, as all Republicans do. That being said, he gets an incomplete grade in my book to date. He has been guiding a ton of behind the scenes efforts and lining up grand juries in relation to the IG Report. Let’s see that before we toss him on his butt. It’s due in May.

3. Feel sorry for President Trump. What a horrible, thankless job that is.

   Surrounded by enemies and mainstream media constantly trying to ruin the man’s life.

   He hasn’t been perfect but will continue to get my support . Just wish more people would feel the same. The man is truly surrounded by evil.

4. I look forward to Friday mornings just for your podcasts. Thanks Zman. Or should we call you “Zionman”? LOL!

5. This is a test.

   • …of the Emergency Comment System. This is only a test. Had this been an actual comment you would have been instructed to blame the Jews.

     • HAHAHAHA
       Stop, stop, you’re killing me!

6. It’s true that the margins for retail have always been meager, and Amazon is no exception. But retail isn’t Amazon’s money maker, cloud services are. AWS skills are one of the hottest tickets in IT today.

7. Sasse wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground in an art/antique gallery. LOL. He’s a techie.

8. A question: In this tangled web of federal security and law enforcement agencies, where does the DHS fit in? You don’t hear about it any more; you hear about the FBI, the CIA, even the NSA; what’s cooking over at DHS? Does it actually exercise any kind of authority over the other agencies? Is it – like ‘Obamacare’ – something which doesn’t really exist outside the offices in DC, but won’t ever quite go away, because it’s just kind of ‘there’, the way the helium reserve is (perhaps only in fable) still maintained?

   There are a number of commenters here, as well as the Z-author, who keep up with this stuff. I’m just asking.

   Just for fun, Trump ought to propose renaming this ghostly excrescence of the glorious Bush years ‘the Department of Motherland Security’, just to troll the Russia-collusion crowd, if they know their history at all.

   Or – if he’s really up for a brouhaha – the Dept of Fatherland Security. My God, that would be a riot.

   Or maybe it wouldn’t. No one seemed to notice that Obama’s re-election slogan was “Forward!”, the exact equivalent of Mussolini’s old motto “Avanti!”

   One of the many unwelcome aspects of cultural decay to us connoisseurs of human folly is the decline of irony.

   • Pretty much immigration, border security, coast guard, secret service and natural disasters(FEMA). Their chief was just removed this week by Bolton. Mark Bradman over at Conservative Treehouse had something on it a few days ago.

   • https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/homeland-security-database-would-track-journalists-media-influencers-report/ar-AAvzXl3

     This is what they do. Make the Homeland safe from Americans.

9. Weren’t the Templars arrested on Friday the 13th, and later burned at the stake?

   • Apparently their fortress in Paris was where the royal treasury was kept up until the time when the king did them in. The treasury was then moved to the Louvre. The Templar’s fortress was informally called “the Temple” because of who it belonged to and ended up being the same place where Louis XVI and the queen were kept under guard after the failed attempt to flee Paris. Moved there from the Tuileries palace. Both buildings no longer exist, but there’s a movement to try and rebuild the Tuileries, which is also where Napoleon lived.

     Eventually I’d like to learn a bit more about the monetary transition as I think something similar might be necessary in the future.

10. My favorite moment in the #Metoo warlock hunt was when I was browsing for books, and I saw “Brave” a book about the Weinstein-molested formerly-attractive actress Rose McGowan. Well, I thought, it’s nice that the author of her biography decided to praise her for her bravery. Then I looked closer to see the author’s name: Rose McGowan. I started laughing uncontrollably. What kind of insane narcissist titles an autobiography “Brave”? A man who was a daredevil aviator who served in two wars wouldn’t have the hubris to title his book “Brave.”

    • The man you describe would title his autobiography “Hold My Beer” and I would read it.

11. I like your table-flipping plan. Session has been Trump’s biggest mistake so far. Firing Sessions can’t happen soon enough.

    I think Trump should go back to his original plan and bring in Chris Christie. Christie is a brawler and would make life miserable for deep state types in the FBI and DOJ.

    http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2017/11/chris_christie_would_have_made_a_better_consiglier.html

    • Fatboy is a gun banning crook. The East Coast Ahnuld.

      The threat of the deep state isn’t government bureaucrats, or even the political appointes of previous admins that can’t be fired due to the fact that the Senate won’t confirm replacements.

      The threat is in the transnational oligarchs and military-industrial complex. that fund the think tanks like American Progress, Brookings and Heritage. Andrew McCabe will never starve.

      Jeff Bezos’ Amazon has the contract to run the CIA’s IT. You think he won’t abuse access to their infosec?

      • That’s why you fire and replace Sessions while Congress is in recess.

        I didn’t agree with all of Christie’s policies but recognized he was the best we’d ever have for a Governor in NJ. And he fights, unlike genteel Jeff.

        • The problem for Christie is the scandal stuff. It’s bullshit, but it give the GOP cucks and excuse to fold on him. So, he would never be confirmed and therefore would be a lame duck and everyone would ignore him. There are guys who take the law seriously, who would relish the chance to take on the biggest reform effort in American history. That guy would be tasked with restructuring both the FBi and the DOJ.

          If Trump framed it as a reform effort, instead of a pissing match, he makes it much more difficult for the swamp to complain. American’s like reform.

          • I was surprised when Mark Levin shit himself with NeverTrumpism, but he has quietly pulled his head out of his ass since then, and he would not hesitate to fire dozens of apparatchiks at FIB and Justice. He knows the players and their methods well because he litigates against them.

          • Levin is just one more squeaky voiced Israel First piece of Neo-con filth.

        • Jeff Sessions has shown himself the George McClellan of AGs. The resume was perfect; he just doesn’t have the balls to get the job done – at a time when balls, and balls alone, are the top requirement.

          • That’s a great analogy. I’ll be thinking of Sessions as McClellan from here on out.

12. Trump will rue the day he let Mueller be appointed . He should have fired rothstein and Mueller right them . I am sure rince priebus told him not to fire Obama appointees until they could get replacements confirmed. It is easier to put pressure the gop to confirm people if you can point . Trump does not care about his supporters and does nothing to defend them. at the end this will cost him everything.
    also he should quit his bitching about sessions and fire him.

    • Mueller has been a fuck-up for a long time. He botched the anthrax case so badly that one of the two suspects (who was innocent) committed suicide due to the harassment. The other guy’s surveillance detail was so obvious and constant that it basically amounted to stalking. Mueller’s “investigation” of Trump makes a boyfriend stalking his ex look healthy. The Feds had a massive internal sex scandal that involved a lot more than “pussy grabbing” at the Bureau, as well when Obama was regnant, and Mueller’s solution was to sweep it under the rug.

      • But Bob Mueller is a wahr hero, not like Cadet Bone SPur Drumpf!!!

        I’m old enough to remember, and I’m a worthless Millenial, when the left hated the Vietnam War and lauded Clinton for dodging the draft.

      • Mueller was also involved in the framing of four innocent men by the FBI in Boston. That’s the same field office that was working – literally – for the Winter Hill Gang. Mueller also botched the Hell’s Angels case in California, which is what got him sent to Boston, where the FBI deposited all of their screw-ups.

        Imagine John Forbes Kerry as a G-Man and you get Bob Mueller.

        • I’d go in and fire them all, from Jeff Sessions to Wray to Rosenstein, on down the line. A full clean out of ALL alphabet agencies, plus Pentagon, HUD, EPA, IRS, you name it. Anything he can think of, and holds power over, just gut it all, in one night.

          While this mass chaos is occuring, he should pre-emptively pardon Mueller’s targets, then boot the entire Mueller & Co, in one felled swoop.
          One bloody night of long knives, no hints it’s coming, no Hannity tick tock forewarnings.

          As this is occurring, he should tweet it out clearly to the American ppl, why he’s doing this, that he’s given these ppl 18 months to enact his agenda & find Russian collusion & that they’ve accomplished neither goal & are keeping him from fixing problems w/the country & wasting millions of tax dollars, so he’s tired of slowly draining the swamp & most of those positions won’t be refilled but eliminated.
          Fuck em.

          They’re gonna impeach him, anyway, why not take a rats’ nest of these evil bastards down with him? He should also go out of his way to bring down as many of the dirty Congress Critters, on his way out as he can. Party ID be damned.

          I want CHAOS, not this normalization of Trump as some knock-off Neo-Con who sometimes makes edgy tweets & has occasional nationalistic tendencies.
          Who the fuck wanted Scooter Libby pardoned???
          The same people who wanted that Orthodox meat packer pardoned, that was a tax fraud, and had a warehouse full of illegals working for him???

          Notice how all the PRINCIPLED CONSERVATIVES CONSTITUTIONALISTS were all up in arms about Trump pardoning that human piece of garbage, just completely out of the blue.
          Please also disregard all of the footage from the various synagogues from NY to Israel where people were celebrating this scumbag’s release from prison, as well.

          I’m sure if you asked that sociopathic warmonger, Ol’ Soft Hands Noah Rothman, he’d totally be unable to give you an answer as to why those people were dancing & feasting.

    • Pretty much the first thing the Clinton humidor did was to fire every DA appointed by Bush.
      Trump should have fired every Obama appointee (3,000?) on day one.

13. Our elected officials go to Washington and then represent Washington to us …. tremendously illuminating. I’d never thought of it this way, but I guess this is what’s happened. We are just required to give them the initial pass to the big game. Every two, four or six years thereafter, we do some sort of pro-forma re-certification, which they’ve convinced us to provide using monies fronted to them by the the lobbies, corporations and monied class. It just isn’t working, and you’ve quite elegantly captured why.

    • The 17th Amendment really made a mess of things.

      • It really did throw the whole system out of balance. Pretty much nothing good happened in the late 19th, early 20th century America.

        • Wot? You don’t think the importation of two million assorted yids was anything other than an unalloyed good?

      • The 19th. I’ve been w/Ann Coulter on this for decades. You fellas totally and fully screwed the pooch by giving women voting rights. Why men, (to this day!), do not understand all that is required is telling women, “NO.” There is not one damn thing we can do about it, or there wasn’t, until you allowed us a vote. 😑
        Anyone with common sense could’ve seen that only 20% of women are sensible enough to vote correctly, and that it was a bad idea…
        This whole Constitution thing has turned into a complete clusterfuck, we have something called a “representative democracy,” now that neither represents or is democratic, and the term “free speech,” is a hoot.
        Delete, delete, delete

        • We men can’t seem to stop our criminals from clawing their way to the top, especially after the 17th.

          We honestly thought you ladies would stop yours, because you were so… ladylike.

14. Re Ben Sasse, I’m dumbfounded at how little our elites know about manufacturing and how trade actually works in the real world. It’s astounding to me. Let’s have a quick look at the following backwards, wretched countries that have greater shares of manufacturing as a % of GDP compared to the US (12.2%):

    Belgium (14.3%), Sweden (15.3%), Denmark (15.3%), Italy (16.3%), Austria (18.2%), Switzerland (18.4%), Poland (20.4%), Japan (20.6%), Germany (23%), South Korea (29.3%), Ireland (34.6%)

    From a per capita perspective, most of these countries have higher GDP growth rates, with less inequality and less debt as of % of GDP (with the exceptions of Italy and Japan).

    What astounds me is that people like Ben Sasse, who are globalists in the proper understanding of that term, actually know very little about the globe. It’s just amazing to me. Regarding manufacturing in the US, as you pointed out in the podcast, most manufacturing facilities are actually quite tidy. Most are in the suburbs and are nicely landscaped. It’s not at all like the facilities of the 1950s.

    • Ireland is a tax haven, so I doubt one third of their GDP is represented by products made there. Manufacturing declines as a percentage of GDP as an economy becomes wealthier, and Mexico’s manufacturing percentage is around 35%.

      There is a tradeoff between dynamism and social cohesion. The US has lots of dynamism, but the rewards are flowing mainly to the transnational oligarchs, and to a lesser extent to the upper middle class (10%). Japan has no economic dynamism, despite its excellent hardware tech companies, but it has social cohesion better than any Western society.

      • Maybe the Irish number includes Guinness

    • Sasse was the cover for Dennis Hastert back in the day. Dirty as all get-out.

    • Speaking as a potato nigger, the other thing they have in common is that for the majority of those countries history they’ve been pretty ethnically homogeneos. Irelands national debt is pretty high, Japan’s has been eye watering at times, but its a trueism from our property crash that a homogeneos society is prepared to shoulder more of a tax/debt burden. I think Ibn Khaldhun called it asabiyah. It’s the same with most globalist cant, it tends to shatter when it slams against the human experience

15. The father of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr was once asked if he was superstitious. He replied; “No, on the contrary. I believe that 13 is a lucky number”

Comments are closed.