Mark Blyth and Jim Green: Making Sense of Brazil's 2018 Presidential Election

I must confess to have not followed the political and economic situation in Brazil very much at all over the last few years, for reasons which would be obvious to most regular readers. My priorities were in great demand elsewhere.

This was a particularly interesting discussion, because it ties in what has been happening in Brazil with more general trends world wide, including the United States.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As the Blood Flows - Madness for Your Minds and Hearts

Atë, Goddess of Delusion and Ruin, daughter of Strife and Zeus

"The mood among Germans is really bad.  There is a lot of frustration and verrohung. The common people work and can hardly make ends meet. Envy and resentment are widely spread in Germany.  When both the global financial crisis and the euro disaster come back with a vengeance, things will get pretty nasty.  You don't have to be a prophet to make that prediction. 

You just have to extrapolate the current mood in this relatively crisis-free period. Aside from the old and the dying, most Germans today have never experienced any real crisis."

Lars Schall, To Marshall Auerback on His Essay on German Voters


"Administration and Main Stream Media (MSM) say 'booming', much faster GDP and jobs growth than previous decade, but the reality is an occasional 1 or 2 quarter surge but baseline 2% growth rate trends remain unchanged.

Only growth in the stock market, other Fed inflated assets, and debt. Maybe we should ask MSM what is 'booming'. Official jobs numbers obscure 1/3 of labor force without jobs and not job seeking; job holders are a mix of full and part time; average hourly wages are rising because 'supervisors' (managers) wages are rising but flat for 90%.

Flawed startup jobs guesses (Birth Death Model) added to lift feeble  jobs created.  Payroll tax receipts are falling—  could the tax receipts decline be explained by tax cuts?

Tax cuts have primarily assisted corporations. They have had a negligible effect on payrolls taxes. Weak withholding receipts reflects continuing rise in part time workers and low wage substituting for full time workers.

And keep in mind the little growth that did take place was debt driven. Despite all the 'booming economy' cheerleading, the data shows a flat trajectory for growth at around 2% for the last decade, despite mountains of 'stimulus'.

A chart of the Dow looks rather different, suggesting all the stimulus went into the stock market instead.

The US economy is not booming. It has begun gradual slowdown. Housing and autos slump is just the most visible indicator of broad based downturn-"

Harold Malmgren

And into the pockets of the one percent.  QED

Trump was on the TV after the close, emphasizing that there is indeed a crisis on our border, even though the imminent threat of the caravan is laughable, and easily shown to be made up spin for the election.  They want to scare you into obedience for their own benefit.

He led off his speech this afternoon with the notion that unworthy immigrants are flooding into our country, and straining our resources, greedily and ungratefully taking things that should be used by honest hard-working and law-abiding people.   They are obviously parasites, bringing disease and crime and drugs.

This is the same argument, and similar imagery, that was widely used to prepare the German people for the detention and eventual holocaust of the disabled, and the different, and political opponents, and the Jews.   They were literally depicted as rats, overrunning the productive economy, and draining and poisoning it for those who are worthy.

Most will write this off as nonsense from unscrupulous politicians and their enablers ahead of the mid-term elections.   And that may very well be the case.  Trump is as changeable as the wind in his lying.  And a liar he is, from the beginning.

But like my German friend whom I quote above, there is concern that this penchant for unreasoned anger and accommodating retreat into the lies will lead to much worse things, and likely, blood in the streets, when the next crisis comes.

Glenn Greenwald just delivered a warning about this 'fire in men's minds' from Brazil.

Those who have been looting and rigging the economy for years are backing a campaign to create distractions and set up scapegoats.  Ask yourselves, who benefits from all this?  Who is ending up with most of the money and assets, and dishing out the lies and the pain and division for everyone else?

We in America are insular, and are accustomed to looking down our noses at the problems in the rest of the world, and thanking God for our exceptionalism and national virtue.

Let us be reminded that here, already, because of this filthy hate and these endless lies, we have just witnessed the worst incident of antisemitic murder in the history of this nation. 

And that it was perpetrated by a man who allowed his mind to be poisoned by this filthy rubbish from the alt-media, nurtured in a bed of lies, and stoked to a white hot fire of hate in online commentary.

Let that sink in.   The murders have begun.  Sociopaths may welcome this.   You will not.

This is not who we are.

Pray for the faith and the strength to shun the lies, and remain standing until the end.  And don't spend your time worrying about the speck in your neighbor's eye and their shortcomings;  tend to yourself, and you will have more than enough to do.

If you think you have already reached perfection, pray to God to show you your sins, so that you may repent of them here and now.  And that will keep you busy for the rest of your life.

And in this lies your hope, and a light worth following. 

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Greenwald: Lessons From Bolsonaro's Victory in Brazil

In the video below Glenn Greenwald discusses the recent election of Jair Bolsonaro, and what makes him substantially different from Donald Trump.

But he also ties in the dynamics that led to this election with the other recent political scenarios in Western democracies, like the US and the UK.

It is a short video and worth watching.

"The Right wing authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro cruised to a 10-point victory on Sunday night in Brazil, becoming president-elect of the world’s fifth most populous country and the most extremist leader in the democratic world. While some of the dynamics driving his victory are unique to Brazil, many of them are similar to prevailing political currents in North America, Eastern Europe and, increasingly, Western Europe.

Bolsonaro’s victory is highly consequential in its own right: For the 210 million people who live within the borders of the country, as well as for the region and the globe, he and his tyrannical movement now dominate. But beyond those consequences, there are valuable lessons to learn for all of the democratic world by understanding the sentiments that led Brazilians en masse to support someone who, a very short time ago, was relegated to the far fringes of political acceptability and whose ascension to power was unimaginable. I explored some of those key lessons in the eight-minute video."

Glenn Greenwald

You may see the original at The Intercept.

Caravan of Terror Surging Kind of North, a Blitzkrieg of Walking Families - 15,000 US Troops Being Deployed

Their forward progress is deceptively slight, as shown in the map below, and their numbers have decreased to 4,000.  Hmmm....

Perhaps these clever devils have taken a page out of Macarthur's  Korean war book,  those copycats, and are planning an amphibious landing at Acapulco.    A target rich environment, a rich and complacent resort town, just ripe and ready for plunder.

With this fiendish maneuver they can catch the 8.8 million unsuspecting residents of Mexico City in an insidious pincer movement—  and shame them into submission with their lack of just about everything.

Not to be outdone, Trumpolini is now mobilizing 15,000 troops to defend our Southern border.

But why has he not called upon NATO?   Hmmm, why not indeed, Comrade?

The last time one of these caravans put forward in the Spring of this year 14 people actually made it to the US border. 

If even more make it this time, perhaps 15, when then bring it, we like those odds—  1,000 to 1.  Shock and awe.  But we must be vigilant and never resist the feelings of panic and terror that support an excessive military response—  and expense.   Got to keep the MI Complex fat and happy.

What if these jokers quantumize their stealth capability using AI, and develop hypersonic capabilities supplied by You Know Who. 

They might even launch an airborne assault, and land in Grovers Mill, NJ!   On Halloween!  Hey, that's outside Princeton, near my 'hood!

See the impending doom to which my complacency and lack of hysterical gullibility has led me!  I better go pick up some milk and bread.  And find the ammo for my HK-91.  Where the heck is that anyway, in the sock drawer?

Are we losing ground in the new race to save the planet from the huddled masses, the influx of hordes of impoverished immigrants—   from Mars!!   Yes, you did not see this coming, you fools.

This is not impossible, and there is a precedent for this in the annals of science fiction.  Look it up.

What next, what terrors must we endure, as they and others like them ungratefully flee from the kindly gangs and benevolent oligarchs in Central America and the 'Red Planet' (hmmm...) in search of a better welfare deal and more freedoms to steal from the unsuspecting.

We are the victims again!

Oh the humanity!!

Given this junk and all the phone calls and door knocking, and increasingly loud and crazy ads on TV, I and many others will be glad to see this midterm election over.   And we don't even live in a swing state!   Those poor bastards must be enduring a living hell of press and pollsters and political signs covering up their broken storefronts.

But will we be caught, unsuspecting again, in 2020?

The future does look grim, indeed.