Endless scams!!
What a nightmare. By implementing the tariffs illegally, and now having to unwind them, the Trump administration created over $100 billion of profit for corporations selling foreign products, at the expense of American consumers.
Your refund: $0.00
Apple’s profit: $2.2 billion pic.twitter.com/zuzkFXQ6HB— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) August 3, 2026
“The United States does not have an economics profession. It has…economists who debate properties of models based on assumptions non-reflective of reality and quote one another into prominence…economics like foreign policy, educational policy, medical policy and all other policy is conducted within false narratives. Reality remains unaddressed.” Paul Craig Roberts
In other words, everything is a scam. Recently I heard that in Japan the government has promised to lower the food consumption tax rate from 8 percent to 1 percent, beginning in 2027 lasting for two years (sounds good). A mainstream TV commentator is reported as saying that the gobbmitt would just raise taxes elsewhere and any at rate Japan is amidst a militarism spending spree so tax money is grifted off so elite politicians can fill their pockets while fighting non existent enemies. Japan and China are crucial trading partners, WTF, they gonna have a war?!
wouldn’t be stupider than Estonia
Trump only gets away with this shit because he has a steady stream of revenue pouring in. But what if we all stopped buying?
The Universe is telling us to quit giving money to utility companies that aren’t OUR utility companies and to invest in solar panels. Lithium iron phosphate batteries have incredible energy density and are much lighter than the old lead batteries of yore. Are we listening?
The Universe is telling us to quit giving money to huge grocery chains that aren’t OUR grocery chains and to invest in seeds and gardens and raw materials and food preparation. Are we listening?
It may be time to downsize.
In the information technology industry it is understood, more or less, that there is a tradeoff between security and convenience – the more convenient a transaction, such as a credit card, or a bank login, is … the less secure. And vice versa: the more secure, the less convenient. People who lose their encryption keys and cannot unlock their Bitcoin wallets learn this every day.
McDonald’s is convenient. But it that is not food security.
Whenever I find something that I like the first thing I do is read the ingredients; if I really like it I will try to reverse-engineer the recipe and try to make it for myself. That includes convenience foods. For instance, if you like frozen TV dinners, there is nothing stopping you from making a few chicken pot pies, freezing each slice, stacking them in your freezer and eating freshly made chicken pot pie instead of Swanson’s. If you like chocolate chip cookies, there is nothing stopping you from mixing up a batch of cookie dough, rolling up portions in wax paper and freezing them, so that you can have cookies whenever you want. You don’t NEED Pillsbury to mix the dough and every time they do, they put stuff in there that you don’t want, so why are even buying that crap? Make your own.
Cultivating a garden, sprouting seeds like alfalfa and mung beans, making yogurt, cultivating sourdough are all powerful ways to cut your food costs and increase your food security and grow as a person, too.
Listen to the Universe. Stop giving your money to these huge corporations whose only loyalty is to the stock market. You’re killing yourself. Why do you hate yourself so? Maybe you should turn off the TV.
Give yourself some love. Go soak your feet in a warm water bath. Make a list. Not a bucket list, those are for people who have a year to live. A list of your priorities.
Read a book. Shucks, read a comic book. Read some manga. Listen to some music. Get some pencils and try to drum along. Draw a picture. Browse a cookbook. Think about how to reduce your dependence upon the grid and distant supply chains.
Pro tip: a fifty-pound bag of flour fills about two five gallon buckets. Get air-tight lids. Now you can learn to bake, too.
Never say never. Every food you have ever eaten was originally created and prepared by illiterate peasants. Every device you own was assembled by teenagers who didn’t speak English. What do they have that you don’t? Don’t be afraid to fail. That is how we learn.
If you want to think about priorities, Maslow’s hierarchy is a good place to start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs
I’d like to see a political party that incorporated Maslow’s hierarchies as a platform plank – not the whole stack but a few of the bottom layers, like air, and water, and food, and shelter, and voluntary birth control, too. Things that American civilization depend upon. Freedom of speech. Privacy. Freedom of movement.
Getting clear on what the !@#$ it is that matters to each of us is critical to us making effective decisions of what to do next if we want to consistently make good decisions that move us closer to those(hopeully shared) goals.
My $0.02, YMMV, etc.
ObURL: https://salanave-runyon.org/herbie.html
Excellent rant!
Richard C. The oil industry has a monopoly on energy. China has Energy Diversity.
Thanks for the tip on Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries for solar panels, I’m going to do a quick research on it and report back. Lately we have heard that Green Energy does have its problems in not being totally green, but surely the oil monopoly (the OIC) is not to be relied on, as we can see today with anyone with a brain cell. Also, I heard that countries that have large coastlines could use wave power, that could supply electricity rather than oil and gas.
Chat GBT – my summary:
Lithium Iron Phosphate Batteries are: quite safe from self-explosions;
iron and phosphate are fairly benign and long lived but lithium as we all know is toxic and the mining causes major environmental damage and other downsides to lithium; Overall long term reliance on such batteries is good, China has dominance over some of the elements but other countries also have the minerals.
At least this would remove some of the reliance on the oil monopolies.
On another point: EVs are at least good to reduce toxic fumes in large cities; of course the electricity has to be produced but what if you could do it with wave power and geothermal or whatever instead of coal or oil? City dwellers have traditionally suffered lung damage or other ailments due to air pollution.
Zero Hedge seems to be a cheer leader for the Nuclear power renaissance due to AI Data Centers being the hot investment of late. But I don’t see many articles there doing deep dives on the negative and long term effects of nuclear waste or even regular maintenance of nuke plants. I am not a scientist but a word that comes to mind is: GLIB.