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Authored by Raheem Kassam via TheNationalPulse.com,

Former Secretary of State, US Senator, and Benghazi-belittler Hillary Clinton has penned a 5000-word opinion editorial for Foreign Affairs magazine – a scarcely-read byet important foreign policy industry publication. The article clearly aims to establish Clinton as a potential Biden pick for Secretary of Defense: one of the most powerful cabinet positions in the US government.

The Trump campaign will surely see the audition by the very unpopular Hillary Clinton as a gift in the final days of the U.S. Presidential campaign. The idea of voting for Joe Biden and waking up with Hillary Clinton will send chills up the spine of even many Democrats, to whom both Clinton and Biden represent an old, tired, globalist worldview at odds with a “progressive” or even populist Democrat trajectory.

And Clinton appears to know this, too.

Her article contains a number of veiled mea culpas over globalism, though she repeatedly lumps the blame at Donald Trump’s door for many of the problems caused – in a national security sense – by his predecessors:

“For decades, policymakers have thought too narrowly about national security and failed to internalize—or fund—a broader approach that encompasses threats not just from intercontinental ballistic missiles and insurgencies but also from cyberattacks, viruses, carbon emissions, online propaganda, and shifting supply chains. There is no more poignant example than the current administration’s failure to grasp that a tourist carrying home a virus can be as dangerous as a terrorist planting a pathogen. President Barack Obama’s national security staff left a 69-page playbook for responding to pandemics, but President Donald Trump’s team ignored it, focusing instead on the threat of bioterrorism.”

The article even critiques U.S. reliance of China, a key part of Donald Trump’s platform in both 2016 and 2020. She writes:

“[T]he pandemic has underscored how much the United States relies on China and other countries for vital imports—not just lifesaving medical supplies but also raw materials such as rare-earth minerals and electronic equipment that powers everything from telecommunications to weapons systems.”

And while also appearing to lambast her own side’s heartlessness over job losses – she calls the left’s “learn to code” mantra “fanciful and condescending” – she also gives away that a Democratic plan for the “modernization” of the U.S. military would lead to massive job losses:

“No one should pretend that every defense job can be saved or replaced. Cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending over the next decade will inevitably inflict a painful toll on families and communities across the country.”

The admission will further serve as a boon to the Trump campaign seeking to bolster its support amongst military families after a fake news onslaught wherein The Atlantic magazine invented sources in order to drive a wedge between the President and his traditional base.

The questions should now be asked of the Biden campaign:

1. Do you intend to appoint Hillary Clinton to the role of Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, or a similar high-level cabinet posiiton?

2. Does Hillary’s admission of major jobs cuts in the defense sector reflect the Biden campaign’s priorities?

3. Has Joe Biden spoken with Hillary Clinton over her prospective role in a Biden administration, or on national security matters?

If one is to believe the most recent polls, Joe Biden is on his way to the White House to become the 46th President of the United States. Except, according to Biden himself – the man whose finger would be on the button – he’s “running as a proud Democrat for the Senate.”

Think about how insane it is that we have a guy running for president who can’t even remember that he’s running for president. Joe Biden is seriously unwell.

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) October 12, 2020

Earlier Monday, Biden couldn’t remember Mitt Romney’s name, or what state he’s in…

Racists and bigots always identify people by color or religion. Biden can’t remember Mitt Romney’s name, so to Joe he’s now just “the Mormon.” There goes that vote… pic.twitter.com/HyJjGuUB9Y

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) October 12, 2020

Even Joe Biden’s Twitter account doesn’t know what state Joe Biden is in. pic.twitter.com/MXY0bqcx4f

— Andrew Clark 🎃 (@AndrewHClark) October 12, 2020

Sleepy Joe Biden had a particularly bad day today. He couldn’t remember the name of Mitt Romney, said again he was running for the U.S. Senate, and forgot what State he was in. If I did any of this, it would be disqualifying. With him, he’s just Sleepy Joe!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2020

And on Friday, the former Vice President had yet another teleprompter malfunction on Friday during a Las Vegas event, waxing eloquent about how his economic plan would include a “$15 million dollar min – a 15 thousand dollar — ha. $15 dollar minimum wage,” he said.

“I’m dreamin’ here!” he added.

Watch:

Meanwhile, Biden pulled down his already-falling mask to cough during his speech.

Is Pelosi’s 25th Amendment push for Trump or Biden?

On of the most frequently asked questions addressed to the White House in recent days, was whether the president had tested negative for covid following his self-diagnosis that he was now cured of the virus.

Moments ago Trump’s physician Dr. Conley answered, and in a statement published by the White House, said that Trump has tested negative for Covid-19 on “consecutive days” using the Abbott BinaxNOW antigen card.

Conley also said that the test was not used in isolation, and was used in context with additional clinical and lab data, including subgenomic RNA and PCR measurements, “all of which indicated a lack of detectable viral replication.”

The Doctor’s conclusion: based on this comprehensive data, and “in concert with the CDC’s guidelines for removal of transmission-based precautions” the medical team has assessed “that the President is not infectious to others.”

We doubt his announcement will have any impact on the decision by the debate commission to cancel Thursday’s presidential debate, although we wonder just which “alternative science” will now be used to justify the claim that it is in Biden’s interest not to be in Trump’s proximity.

Authored by Robert Wheeler via The Organic Prepper blog,

Recently, I wrote an article discussing the looming food crisis in the United States and the rest of the world. While it might seem like paranoia to some readers, the information provided in that article is very real. In fact, I’m not the only one that’s been thinking about it.

Back in 2015, 65 people showed up at the World Wildlife Fund’s headquarters in Washington D.C. These individuals were international policymakers, corporate businessmen, academics, and “leaders in thought.” Their goal? To run a simulation of a world food crisis that would begin in 2020 and run to 2030.

The press release of the event was published on the Big Ag corporation Cargill website and revealed that the food shortage simulation that the decade between 2020 and 2030 would see two major food crises. During this time, prices would rise 400% of the long term average, there would be a number of climate-related weather events, governments would be toppled in Ukraine and Pakistan, and famine would force refugees from Myanmar, Chad, Sudan, and Bangladesh.

Does any of this sound familiar yet?

In the simulation, one governmental solution was a tax on meat. Another? A global carbon tax.

A meat tax. A carbon tax.

Seriously. This has to sound familiar by now.

The press release stated:

On Monday and Tuesday, 65 international policymakers, academics, business and thought leaders gathered at the World Wildlife Fund’s headquarters in Washington DC to game out how the world would respond to a future food crisis.

The game took the players from the year 2020 to 2030. As it was projected, the decade brought two major food crises, with prices approaching 400 percent of the long term average; a raft of climate-related extreme weather events; governments toppling in Pakistan and Ukraine; and famine and refugee crises in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Chad and Sudan.

Climate, hunger, civil unrest and spiking food prices came together at the Food Chain Reaction game in Washington DC this week. Cooperation mostly won the day. Along with WWF, the Center for American Progress and the Center for Naval Analyses, Cargill was one of Food Chain Reaction’s organizers. The company was represented in the game by Corporate Vice President Joe Stone.

. . . . .

Over two days, the players – divided into teams for Africa, Brazil, China, the EU, India, the U.S., international business and investors, and multilateral institutions – crafted their policy responses as delegations engaged in intensive negotiations.

Of course, working “globally” turned out to be the most beneficial.

Cooperation mostly won the day over the short term individual advantage. Teams pledged to build international information networks and early warning systems on hunger and crops together, invest jointly in smart agricultural technology and build up global food stocks as a buffer against climate shocks.

In the face of a steep price spike with looming global food shortages in 2022, the EU at one point suspended its environmental rules for agriculture and introduced a tax on meat. Both measures were quickly reversed in 2025, as harvests went back to normal and tensions eased in the hypothetical universe.

Carbon and meat taxes are “a possibility.”

The most eye-catching result, however, was a deal between the U.S., the EU, India and China, standing in for the top 20 greenhouse gas emitters, to institute a global carbon tax and cap CO2 emissions in 2030.

“We’ve learned that a carbon tax is a possibility in years ahead,” acknowledged Stone. “But before we can consider moving ahead with a measure like that, we must study it and understand it much better. We have to avoid sudden market distortions and unforeseen consequences.”

Stone said he was impressed with the complexity of the game and the second and third order consequences of some of the decisions that were taken. “Take the meat tax Europe wanted to impose, and think through that. What meat are you going to tax – does that mean poultry and beef or aquaculture as well? Where do you levy the tax, where does the money go, what are the unintended consequences?”

The game was built over the course of months, with maximal realism in mind. The scenario was extrapolated from events that have actually occurred in the real world, such as the food crisis of 2008-2009 or the recent string of hottest years and months on record.

Cargill economist Tim Bodin, who helped design the game and sat on the judges’ panel that evaluated the team’s moves, said he was surprised by the degree of cooperation. “Most people started out with a short-term perspective, but transitioned to long-term measure pretty quickly – they started working to strengthen resiliency instead of just putting out fires.”

Keep in mind, this press release and the exercise took place in 2015 yet it’s almost as if they were reading the script for 2020.

There’s a clear agenda.

The fact is, we know there is an agenda for all of these things – food shortages, meat tax, global carbon tax and if COVID has been anything, it has been the most helpful little virus to ever have existed. That is, as long as you’re a member of the global feudal overlords. If you’ve been reading my articles recently, I’d encourage you to pay attention to what’s being said. Self-reliance is about to become a whole lot more important.

With all eyes on the impending election, and further as the White House has scrambled to contain the coronavirus outbreak within top administration ranks which drove world headlines after Trump’s brief hospital stint, it’s easy to forget that a major Pentagon crisis has also unfolded due to the pandemic. 

As of Monday it remains that six of the seven of members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are still quarantining at home. This marks one full week since all among the Joint Chiefs except for the Commandant of the Marine Corps, who was not exposed, went into voluntary quarantine. 

The Department of Defense took a moment on Sunday to remind the public and the world that “military readiness has not been affected,” The Hill reported. Starting last week the Joint Chiefs have issued repeat assurances that operations and defense readiness are not in doubt. 

“There has been no impact on our ability to effectively plan, coordinate and synchronize efforts to defend our nation,” Milley recently emphasized.

The prior Monday after Coast Guard Vice Commandant Adm. Charles Ray tested positive, Milley became the highest ranking US commander to take the unprecedented step of isolating at home due to at least two meetings where Ray was present.

Democrats and the media are blaming what they call Trump’s “recklessness”. And some conservatives are pointing out that repeat Pentagon “assurances” of readiness actually point to the opposite, given even routine meetings in high secure Pentagon areas simply aren’t taking place, and further despite the cadre of top commanders all residing on military bases, it remains they are limited in terms of taking classified information or files home with them, or what ‘real-time’ intelligence might be usually available in high secure defense HQs like the Pentagon.

There has been no impact on our ability to effectively plan, coordinate and synchronize efforts to defend our nation.” (2/2)

— The Joint Staff 🇺🇸 (@thejointstaff) October 8, 2020

Newsmax cites on such critic in its latest update:

Mackenzie Eaglen, a former congressional adviser on defense now with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said, however, “there is no way to make the optics look better,” saying the various statements put out by the military “signals that they are worried about the projection of even the perception of weakness.”

Consider too that if the same thing happened with China or Russia (a scenario in which their top chain of command were into quarantine for a week or more), Washington and international media would certainly see it as a significant moment of vulnerability.

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

And so we face the ultimate irony: ‘bailing-out-everything’ destroys the entire rotten system.

You’ve probably noticed things no longer work as well as they once did. For example, the store’s online inventory says something is in stock and when you get to the store, it’s not on the shelf. A small issue, but telling nonetheless.

Or you might call a local government agency to get an explanation of how a new fee is calculated, and nobody’s ever available to explain it–or sort out your punitive late fee even though you paid on time.

You’ve probably noticed services cost a lot more now, but the quality has eroded. Sure, it’s easy to blame it all on the pandemic, but quality has been eroding as costs have risen for years.

You’ve probably noticed massive cost overruns in public projects. That $1 billion bridge is now $3 billion–oh, sorry, make that $4 billion. If we ever get it finished, better estimate $5 billion.

You’ve probably noticed that enormous investments in infrastructure, education, reducing homelessness, etc. don’t actually improve the situation or fix what’s broken. Even the most basic projects take years or decades, congestion and homelessness increase, and education that’s not aligned with the real economy flounders on.

You’ve probably noticed that all the highly paid analysts, academics, think-tank gurus, private-sector hotshots, etc. are either clueless, incoherent or delusional. All their “solutions” boil down to one recommendation: keep the feeding trough filled to the brim, no matter how many hogs are gorging themselves.

Incompetence is now so ubiquitous, so embedded, so obvious and so intractable that we finally have to recognize that America has institutionalized incompetence. 

Why? That’s an interesting question with no one answer.

Broadly speaking, self-interest is all that matters. Every decision is made to maximize self-interest while cloaking the predation with sickly-sweet propaganda of the most transparent type.

Institutions protect insiders because every insider must mask their self-interest and the general failure of the institution. Insiders protect other insiders lest transparency reveal the insiders’ skims and scams and the failure of the institution to fulfill its purpose.

Risk is to be avoided at all costs because any failure might reveal the systemic failure of the entire organization. So as Louis-Vincent Gave recently explained, CYA Is the Guiding Principle Of Our Time. If insiders just maintain the status quo and don’t rock the boat with any risky innovations or policies, no one will look too deeply at the systemic failures or the rising risks of the whole rotten mess collapsing.

This is how we’ve devolved to doing more of what’s failed spectacularly. Indeed, spectacular failure is the excuse for bigger budgets, more staffing, more studies, etc.

America’s core businesses are monopoly and corruption. In either case, the customer / end-user can be ignored because they have no real choice. Or the choice is false: your choice of healthcare insurance provider, Internet provider, etc. is between two equally predatory companies.

As a result of the network effect, quasi-monopolies abound in Big Tech. Yes, there are alternative platforms for posting videos other than YouTube, but few will see your content because “everybody goes to YouTube.” So content providers have to not just promote their content, they have to promote the alternative platform in a system that’s rigged to favor the monopoly-platforms.

Corruption also limits transparency and competition just like monopolies and cartels. Insiders rig the hiring process so cronies and relatives get the jobs, and so on. Those tasked with oversight look the other way because their cushy post-retirement position awaits them if they just keep their mouth shut.

Then there are the incompetent elites at the top. They’ve punched all the right cards–elite university, multiple diplomas, internship with the right judges, investment bank, etc.–but they’ve learned absolutely nothing other than how to navigate a corrupt system that protects or even rewards incompetence.

What the ruling elites learn in America is somebody will bail me out. The government will fund the financial bailout, the fines will be wrist-slaps, the university will slip me into a highly paid position out of the limelight, and so on.

And always, always, always, the feeding trough will be filled to the brim, no matter what the cost or the incompetence. Sacrifice and discipline have been reduced to platitudes in America’s elites, whose core competence is issuing mea culpas when caught.

An enormous percentage of well-paid “work” is compliance-related. As the pursuit of self-interest has decayed competence, we’ve become obsessed with monitoring and ticking endless boxes to conform to accepted practices, whether they make sense or not.

This is the essence of BS work: all the compliance busy-work has nothing to do with the actual production of goods and services or innovation or excellence; as the late David Graeber said of BS work: everyone doing it knows it’s worthless.

Compliance is the perfect cover for institutionalized incompetence. The irony is rather rich: systemic incompetence is papered over by incompetent compliance measures, all of which drain the feeding trough.

There’s only one way left to fill the feeding trough being drained by systemic incompetence: trillions in “free money” forever. That this extravaganza of endless “free money” debauches the currency is ignored, because all the ruling incompetents have been trained to be utterly confident that somebody will bail me out.

And so we face the ultimate irony: bailing-out-everything destroys the entire rotten system. Competence now means successfully navigating incompetent systems corrupted by self-interest. This means avoiding all risk and leaving everything as it is, lest someone notice the systemic failure.

What we’ve institutionalized is run to failure: we’ll just keep doing more of what’s failed spectacularly until the entire status quo collapses in a fetid heap of greed, self-interest and gross incompetence.

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My recent books:

A Hacker’s Teleology: Sharing the Wealth of Our Shrinking Planet (Kindle $8.95, print $20, audiobook coming soon) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World
(Kindle $5, print $10, audiobook) Read the first section for free (PDF).

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($5 (Kindle), $10 (print), ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).

The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)

Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF)

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