ClaytonB
Member

To assume any less is naivete. In a game of chess, the goal of each player is to checkmate the other. To assume your opponent would show you mercy at the last moment is ridiculous. Obviously, he only aims for victory and nothing else and will play every available move on the board. For these psychopaths, the word "law" is a meaningless sound, something more like a dog's bark. They have no concept of what law even is, nor would they care even if they did. The problem is that there are grave economic consequences for focusing too much official attention on Bitcoin. Suppose they were to go absolute scorched-earth and announce the equivalent of the War on Terror but, this time, make it "War on Crypto". Now, I will grant you that they could stamp it out. But the problem is the same as executing a popular political dissident... you don't actually defeat his movement, you make a martyr of him and he becomes even more powerful in death than he ever was in life. That is the chess-position on the board. If they could just order a Delta black-ops team to kick down some doors in various countries overnight and decapitate the Bitcoin network, they would have done that long ago. But that's just not how Bitcoin works. There is no central head to decapitate. This is by design. It is literally decentralized and that's something that fries the Evil Empire's brain-circuits. They literally do not comprehend "decentralized cooperation" because their world-model is based on the false belief that the only possible form of cooperation is by subjugation. Once I make you my slave, we finally have a "cooperative" relationship ... I make you cooperate, and you cooperate because you have no choice. Since this is their world-model, they literally cannot believe that it is possible for a truly decentralized cooperative network to exist. And so they continue to misunderstand and underestimate Bitcoin, over and over. I watched all the live charts in 2017 as they were doing combined cyber-warfare and economic warfare on the Bitcoin network. They had hundreds of millions or maybe billions of dollars "in-flight" in the Bitcoin network (they were just transferring the money back to themselves), and they were using it to DDoS attack the network. It was astounding to watch. The Bitcoin network definitely felt the blow... to get a transaction through the network within an hour or so was costing as much as $20 during peak demand times. But it survived. I get it, but again, Bitcoin reduces the problem to an "all-or-nothing" bluff. The only way to truly stop the flow of Bitcoin is to do a global shutdown of the entire Internet, shoot down the satellites and then send kill squads out to kill all known major holders, major miners and other major actors in the Bitcoin network. Not saying they wouldn't do that due to any moral limitations on their part... if they could logistically pull it off, I have no doubt that they would gleefully do so. No, the problem is how do you sell to the world this idea that the entire Internet needs to be shut down for several days, and Bitcoin satellites shot out of space, in order to eradicate some kind of weird digital Pokemon trading system?!? The global public won't get it because it just doesn't add up. Bitcoin is simultaneously a pyramid scheme being run by online Magic Card-trading neckbeards... and it is also a global national-security threat?! How do you sell that, politically? Literally nobody is going to understand this. So, they have to find a more effective strategy and they've already started on that for the last 5-ish years or so. Just as with drug busts, they're doing "federal agents pose with seized Bitcoin" photos and publishing those to create this new perception that Bitcoin = criminal-money. They will try to build this up until they have a pretext for the kind of Delta-force assassination operation you have in mind. But failing that, they are still building a case for a "War on Crypto"... so they could...

It is terrifying that, since roughly 2016-ish, we are being walked through the exact phases of the Bolshevik Revolution, step-by-step. Bald-faced propaganda that would have made Soviet party officials in the Politburo blush for shame if they were forced to print them in Pravda are being sold, straight-faced, to the American public. The propagandists themselves do not so much as bat an eyelash as this never-ending stream of verbal sewage comes flowing out of their mouth on national broadcast TV. It's simultaneously amazing and terrifying. The name "Clown World" is an insult to clowns. At least clowns earn an honest living doing what they do. These people seem to have come straight up out of the pit of hell. And the beat goes on...

tl;dw -- some notes on the overall topic: To paraphrase Mises on the matter of the divisibility of the monetary medium (gold, silver, etc.): Any total amount of money is as serviceable for the use of the monetary medium as any other amount. That is, there is never a need for "more money". For coinage, we do want more of the monetary metal as population grows, simply because coins can only become so small before they become too small to handle. However, there are solutions to this, such as using non-precious metals for very small transactions, which is why copper used to be used for pennies, nickel for 5cent coins, and so on. Thus, even if you had just one gold bar for the whole world, it would still be possible through subdivision to give every nation in the world their one small piece of that gold bar, and that small piece would be the gold reserve of the nation. Obviously, that is an exaggerated situation. In reality, as population grows (thus, increased demand for coinage) the demand for precious-metal mining for coinage also grows, and so more resources are invested into that, and the low-dilution mining sources that were formerly unprofitable, become profitable. IIRC, there's vastly more gold dissolved in the water of the ocean than all gold ever mined by humans added together, many times over. Obviously, the cost of recovering that is very high, but if the population really grew to be so enormous that the amount of gold available today would not suffice for coinage, then it would become so precious that mining it directly from the ocean, even at great expense, would become profitable. The assumption that gold is no longer money is not correct. Gold is no longer popular money in the West, that is, it is not used hand-to-hand by most people, most of the time. But this is not actually historically unique, as bimetallism in Britain and Europe caused many gold outflows during the era where those laws were being imposed. Sometimes, gold would disappear from a bimetallic economy and silver would have higher legal value than gold, and vice-versa. So, yes, it is true that people don't use gold very often in hand-to-hand transactions in the US/West but this says nothing about whether gold itself is still money. Go to Dubai and find out whether gold is still used as money. It is commonly-used money there. While less common, it is still used as money in India, among the upper-class. They do transactions in gold. In Russia, it is used as money for large transactions. In Africa, it widely used for all kinds of large transactions. In Switzerland, it is actually used as money in purchase transactions. Gold never completely stopped being money.

Yes, that's another aspect of being pro-life. Trump believed all the lies that the vaccines were safety-tested, that they were 100% effective against COVID-19, and, most egregiously, that he was responsible for the success of getting the vaccines out through "Operation Warp Speed." He gambled with the lives of desperate Americans, and like you've said, to this day, he prides himself in getting the vaccines pushed through.

Yes, I know that Trump has done way more public engagement than Kamala. My point is Trump was outsmarted by a really stupid candidate because he allowed his own ego to get the best of him and fell into her traps. And it's his ego which will be his undoing, just as his ego kept him from being judged by Republican Primary voters in his refusal to participate in those debates.

It's a single issue which is connected to a network of other positions. That single issue is pro-life. To be pro-life means that you care for the preservation of innocent life both inside and outside of the womb, and that incorporates the prohibition of conflicts and wars which will lead to the unnecessary, if not, unethical, termination of civilians who have nothing to do with posing a national threat. It has been shown countless times that the nation-state of Israel is using certain events to justify a campaign of genocide towards an ethnic/national group of people who are not terrorists. As a Christian, I'm against any candidate who will support another nation killing my people (that is, Palestinian Christians) for political and religious reasons. Trump's unadulterated support of Israel offsets his commitment to end the conflict over in Ukraine and Russia, even if he claims, "I just want the dying to stop." He wants to stop the killing of Ukrainian and Russian lives, but he's okay with Palestinians (and even Israelis) being killed because "Israel needs to be feared by her enemies again." Therefore, as a "sInGlE-iSsUe VoTeR," I feel justified in not supporting Trump at all, and I'm sick and tired of people like you trying to justify "voting for the lesser of two evils."

A time is coming when the mask is going to come off. On the one hand, you can choose pure, absolute, boundless evil and eternal hatred in slavery to the Antichrist, forever; on the other hand, you can choose Jesus of Nazareth, the only man who conquered death, who gave his life to save the world from sin and to provide salvation and eternal life in the fullest possible sense of the word "life", forever. The middle road -- the modern myth of material life where you work, you die, and then sleep forever in non-cognition -- is going to vanish. There will be exactly and only TWO options. This is prophecy and God will certainly fulfill it. And whether or not the unmasking of Antichrist comes in our generation, your appointment with God your Creator, who reveals himself to us most particularly in Scripture is coming soon. At most, it would be delayed maybe five or six decades from now, if you're very young, and Jesus does not return before then. The Gospel is not trifling. I am a witness and I am informing you: the Gospel is not trifling. There is a war on, and you're in it, whether you want to be or not. Pick a side!

^THIS "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Occam's Banana again."

Call it "poetic justice." Trump dodged all of the Republican Primary debates, because he was so proud that he had a commanding lead with Republican voters (in the polls and in the eyes of the mainstream media), and he felt that Republican voters didn't need to hear his positions challenged and scrutinized with the other candidates. Now he lost what is probably his last debate to a candidate who, like him, dodged the public, flying high on the polls and favor of the mainstream media and would-be voters. Trump is an arrogant person whose ego got the best of him against a woman who memorized her script and played him by leading him into all the traps that Trump's persona couldn't help.

I'm against Zionism, not Israel because, theologically speaking, the Church is Israel (those who are covenantally united to Christ by faith and through baptism). So I am pro-Israel, in the Biblical sense of the word, not in the nation-state sense of a country which is Atheistic in its entire ethics, civics, etc.

If you're voting for Trump, then don't complain about the conflicts in the Middle East and Israel's campaign to wipe out an entire demographic due to their ethnicity. Trump is a staunch supporter of aiding Israel in all of her military campaigns.

Lehto asked for a meme... wish granted...

Mask-slip. They really do believe this. All he has to say is that he "felt" there "might have been" some kind of illegal activity going on, and that's enough. He will be cleared of everything and will be promoted. I assume the family will file a lawsuit and it's possible they might get some damages out of it. But it still won't have been worth turning their entire life upside down for 2-3 years. So, he still wins the argument, no matter how wrong he is "legally". I can't speak for other Americans, but I have an ocean of fury at the boundless cowardice of policing in post-911 America. "You were trying to intimidate me." As she immediately retorts, perfectly, "I'm intimidating??" She's probably a buck, soaking wet. He clearly has small-man syndrome but even if there was an actual fight, she wouldn't stand a chance. Police department policies specify conditions in which police are permitted to use force, and those extend beyond physical contact -- verbal threats, verbal assault, intimidating behavior, and so on, are all possible reasons that a police officer might reasonably escalate the use-of-force. But the problem is that these exceptional conditions are then turned by the police into a game of dictionary-definitions, so that "she stepped within my personal space and raised her voice" becomes a carte blanche to assault and cuff her in her own home despite his illegal entry, refusal to leave when trespassed, and outright cowardice. I call it "pig-mind". The pig-mind, even when it is caught in blatant violation of the law, does not back down. Instead, it immediately begins scheming on how to flip the script. In his case, he saw that she was already emotionally agitated, so refusing to leave and ratcheting up the emotional confrontation might lead her to pop off. And while she didn't actually pop off, he only needed her to step forward to then have a pretext to say it was his interpretation "in the moment" that she was popping off, or about to pop off. And so he's 100% justified under "PD policy" to then attack and cuff her. Once she is arrested, it doesn't matter how much he was breaking the law because, in the end, "he was right", that is, she really was a dangerous criminal who wanted to resist an act of arrest, for which crime she was then charged. That's how the pig-mind works. The pig-mind is all over the place in modern society, I encounter it everywhere. It's not just in police, although policing seems to attract pig-minded people by the droves. You can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices; the moment they know they've screwed up, their entire existence has one and only objective, and that is to somehow trip you up, and make it out like you were the bad guy all along, ex post facto.

A moment of honesty: I'm worried about where this is going. The very fact that Trump conceded to have this debate on ABC and get gang-stomped by the "moderator" and Kamala in absolute cahoots, shows that something isn't right. Trump literally dodged a bullet in Butler, PA but be honest: a network of actors who are desperate and capable enough to take a crack shot at a former US President and current Presidential candidate (and, by all rights, should have blown his head off) isn't going to stop after they miss, no matter how frustrated they may be at having missed the shot. Remember, just being able to set up a shot like that is practically impossible. No "lone 20-year-old gunman" could just "somehow" arrange to even get in position for a shot like that. So, whoever did that had not only the motive but also the means to create that opportunity. The debate was basically the verbal equivalent of an assassination in respect to how absolutely one-sided it was. Kamala came out looking rational. She did not come across as her usual airhead schtick. It doesn't matter how astroturfed it was behind the scenes, 90+% of Americans are utterly clued out to that kind of thing. All they see is the broadcast itself. Soviet propaganda works. That's how you get communism, duh, because the propaganda actually works. So, if you're pinning your hopes on Americans "seeing through the lies", I suspect you are in for a desperate disappointment. I don't know how this election will turn out, but I rate the chances of Trump winning fairly and the results being honestly acknowledged, to be less than 1%. The potshot in Butler, PA was a stretch-goal, meaning, it wasn't their main hope. Throwing the 2024 election is the main goal, their last line of defense. And if they throw this one again, 40+% of Americans will wake up to what's really going on. But this time, it really will be too late. All that is left to do is to pray...

Weaving along a graveyard footpath -- dusty and unkempt, bristle-dry grass on either side, too long and snapped like slender, desiccated straws by some passing beast of the night -- I spied a curious headstone sunken into the ground as though a chute into the underworld had been plugged to stop the world from draining away into the abyss. Unable to resist its gravitational draw like a planet falling into a passing black hole, I drew closer. Kneeling and sweeping aside the collected dust and leaves of years which had composted onto its face, I read the following: The United States of America Born July 4, 1776 Died September 11, 2001 "The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave"

Well, that escalated quickly... :astonished: