#that you *not* play with the nuclear weapons or ruin reality for everyone else

[y-rhywbeth2]

tbh I'm going to side with Mystra whenever it comes to threats to the Weave. Every time somebody harms/kills the Weave it ends in literally world shattering disaster. Everyone stop fucking around with the fabric of reality.

[projectsoleil]

Collapsing Upon It's Own Pressure || Cella || MM Trial 6.5 || Re: Fergus, Leo & Pheo, Angelbot

“One must start with generalizations and observations if they are to make a proper hypothesis.  That’s what good science is based off of.  Give me just a glimpse at what the aliens can do we’ll be that much closer to have a reasonable society again.”

Why don’t they get it?  This isn’t normal, this isn’t how the world is supposed to be.  Don’t get that!?  Fergus of all people should understand how much better everyone’s lives could be!

“You’re telling me were meant to live in a society where someone could level a city because they were having a bad day?  That’s the kind of society you think is normal?  We don’t eve know what the aliens society is like.  Maybe only one of them has powers, or maybe they’ve millions of years to figure this out.  We’ve had it for what… a couple of generations.”

She’s not convinced, she’s been self assured time and time again the these powers are on the whole a net negative than a net positive.  Even if Fergus’ arguments are sound.

“At least back then the average layman wouldn’t have access to rocket batteries or nuclear warheads.  We have people who can conjure pseudo-black holes, make people fall to sleep by singing, and conjure cyber creatures.  You’re telling me that you’d rather a world where every person is a walking weapon than one where at least you’d have to get a weapon to be a legitimate threat?”

Change… they kept on repeating that phrase.  What was the point of it?  Sure in small scale it was great, wonderful, people should change.  But what would that matter on a ruined planet?

“I don’t care about their change, if they want to feel good about becoming better people than good for them.  Maybe in whatever afterlife there is they can talk about that in length.  You can change people, but do you know how hard and how long it would be to change a society of people?  A whole planet’s worth?  You’re all so tied down to your ideal happy-go-lucky solutions that you can’t think two steps ahead!  Like a heroic speech is going to change anything!  Where has that gotten us!?  Nowhere!  I’ll take something new, I’ll take this risk over your pointless and useless words anyday.  Your best isn’t good enough!  We need something better!  We need a workable solution!”

Her fuming is halted when Leo speaks up. She’s almost forgotten that she had lifted both him and Red up.

[���♫♫]

“Well… I mean of course I didn’t do this all myself.  I don’t mean to lessen your impact on any of this either…”

Wait what was he reaching for?  His weapon?  Did he plan to cut the others down for speaking against her so sharply or…?

Again her thoughts were interrupted as she was completely caught off gaurd by Red’s words.  So much so that for a moment everyone feels that they fall for a split second before Rev unsteadily orients them back into her orbit once again.

“Is… now really the time for this!?”

For someone who thinks themselves highly as a genius, she can’t really see where all this is headed.  Even as Red pulls the remote out she’s unsure as to what she’s going to do.  Even if it’s obvious to everyone else, even if her inevitably betrayal is so clear and certain…

Cella can’t even fathom that as an outcome that can occour.

Until it happens, and her reality is shaken.

“…”

For once she’s without words, maybe because she was intently listening to Red, or maybe her head was still reeling from what she had just witnessed.

She’s sure that she’s misheard, or maybe in the high of all her explaining that her mind must’ve conjured some illusion before her.  That’s happened before to others hasn’t it?  The mania and excitement gets to them and their mind plays tricks upon them.

But when she blinked, when she repeated the words in her head it she couldn’t chalk it up to a mental mishap.  

“Why…?”

Surely it was a mistake.

“I don’t get it… why are you doing this?”

Maybe some fault of her own?

“Was it something that I said, or did?  Was I taking too much credit?  You both know how much I appreciate and value you don’t you?”

Had she not shown her appreciation enough?  Was she too cold to her partners?

“Red… we can still go to space together.  And Leo you could get all the support from me that you could ever ask for.”

Everything is unstable, people rise and fall, speed up and slow down, if you’re fast enough you can probably slip out of her field of control as she grapples with the betrayal before her.

“I just… you all knew what I was doing.  I never lied about my intentions, or my plans, or anything to you!  Why are you sudden against all this now!?”

Ah… it starts to dawn on her… why this is all happening.

“I warned you both against this,  told you time and time again not to get close to them.  Not to think of them anymore than lambs to the slaughter.  But no, you had to get attached, you had link yourselves to them.”

It was their fault.  All they were supposed to do was fight, murder, and die.  And somehow they ended up doing something much, much worse!

“I knew that this would happen.  I saw the signs, the warning, and I should’ve cut off those issues than let them fester into the infections that they’ve become now."  

Everything is obvious in hindsight, but she thought better of them.  She believed in them, she thought that they’d be able to stand by her side no matter what happened through and through.  

Do they think that they’re rats fleeing some sinking ship?  Did they never truly believe in her?

"What do you even hope to gain?  Forgiveness?  Redemption?  A second chance?  Where do you think you’re going to go after all this!?  You think that they won’t turn you in to the authorities, or beat the ever loving crap out of you for what we’ve done?  This show of comradery won’t get you what you think it will!  I’m offering you a way out!  Even if you don’t want to come with me I can help you…!”

Ah hubris, the slayer of kings and gods.  And now it has come to take Cella down.

“…Fine, you’ve made your choice.  And I hope you’re happy with it, and I hope you’re all happy with what you’ve done to them.  Give them the false hope that somehow this is better than what I can offer them!" 

They probably are if their words are any indication.  As for Cella she can’t help but ball up her fists as she glares between Leo and Red.

What use is a star with no orbiting bodies?

The point is further hammered home with Angelbot is quite content reminding her that she is in fact alone, outnumbered, and probably outmatched if it really came down to it.

"It’s… it’s fine.  I don’t need…”

She doesn’t need anyone, what difference does it make now?  Who cares if she’s alone… again.  She was prepared for that wasn’t she?

“I’m used to being alone, whether I’m surrounded by people or by asteroids it’ll be the same.  I know what I’m doing is for the greater good… I know it is!  So stop talking to me like… you know what’s wrong with me!  You think that everything is just going to end up being okay if you take me to some bar and show me a good time!?”

Though she’d be lying if she didn’t think that it would be fun to have one bar crawl before being off among the stars.

“That’s always been the burden of the wise.  To be hated and resented for bringing about radical change when no one will get their side of the story!  The people they’ll… they’ll thank me long after I’m gone!  I don’t need to consult them!  One day they’ll look up and see what’s around them and realize that I’ll have granted this all to them.  Even… even if it cost lives!”

She knew she was human, she could only dream of having immortality and being able to live eons and see what she always dreamed of.  But Angelbot was right she was human, for all it’s faults and benefits.  That was one fact that she couldn’t escape.

“Any rich madman…?" 

She figures that Angelbot has a decent point.  In fact she knows that there was another organization doing what she was doing before she could even get her foot in the same door.  And she knew that they were right in that humans were… annoyingly stubborn and hardy.  

She remembered when she was going things about her own pace.  Even before the murder games she was set to do this one way or another.  Sure it probably would’ve taken more years to get launched and even more years to properly function.  But it wouldn’t have been with bloodshed.  Had her passion taken away her humanity?  So eager to be among the stars that she failed to see her proper place on earth?

"I didn’t forget about them!  I gave them everything that I had, trust, respect, I would give them the world and everything on it if they asked.  But they clearly…”

She choked up for a moment.  She didn’t want to show weakness, or sorrow, or anything less than control.

“Clearly they let something else take hold of them.  What use is there in remorse!?  Regret and remorse are things that stop normal people from achieving greatness.  I won’t be stopped!  Not by you, not by them, not even by… the people I called my partners.”

She sniffled as she rubbed her hand across her nose, but kept her eyes dry.

Friends… she thought she had those.  Maybe she still does but her stubbornness and unwillingness to admit her own wrongdoings is pushing them further and further away.  Like a rouge planet flung from it’s star system.

“You want to revive the dead for some… ceremony…?" 

She’s actually unsure what to think at this point.

”…“

Does she even bother to stop this mad robots ramblings at this point?  She’s not even sure where she ought to start replying.  Maybe it was best to let them fantasize for a moment.

[clexa--warrior]

In the earliest days of the Trump crisis, just about a month after the inauguration, I received the horrifying news that my best friend and podcast partner, Chez Pazienza, had died of a drug overdose.

This article was originally published at Salon

It was the evening of Feb. 25, 2017, and the shock still hasn’t quite worn off. In fact, I ask myself nearly every day what Chez might’ve said about the most recent atrocity committed by the chief executive. I’ll never know for sure, but there’s something comforting in that exercise, imagining how he’d frame this dark ride with equal parts Gen-X angst, stinging Bourdain-ish erudition and artistically worded blue streaks that would’ve made George Carlin applaud.

I’m convinced, however, that it wasn’t really an overdose that killed him. Sure, it was the weapon of choice, but it wasn’t the ultimate cause of death. Chez possessed the ability to foresee this Trump crisis stretched out in front of him — maybe not the specifics, but a general concept in his big brain for the horror show that was awaiting us. I believe it was the crushing reality of not only being force-fed a Trump presidency every day but also covering it professionally that forced him to drift back to his old addictions to ease the pain. And I wish more than anything that I could have stopped him.

Nevertheless, Chez could clearly see the incoming abuses, the crimes, the ungainly nonsense, the recklessness, the racism, the petty vindictiveness — all of it.

In 2015, he accurately forecast that Trump, if elected, would spitefully withhold federal funding from regions that refused to support his cruel whimsy. Naturally, we’ve watched this play out with Puerto Rico, California and most recently Pennsylvania, where Trump, this week, threatened to withhold funding for the commonwealth because of Gov. Tom Wolf’s COVID plan. In Trump’s view, responsible leadership is worthy of punishment because it makes him look bad by contrast, while incompetence, mainly his own, is routinely lionized.

Trump’s blinding dumbness in the areas of history, the Constitution, the presidency and democratic institutions has infected him with an ugly, bastardized view of his job description, inflamed by his own biases and whatever he’s picked up from watching cable news. He’s a presidential dilettante, even now, nearly four years into the gig.

His wafer-thin understanding of presidential leadership contributes to his most self-defeating misapprehension: that he’s only the president of the red states. Everyone else is the enemy, even more so than our actual overseas adversaries — surely more than Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, whom Trump praises more often than many of his fellow citizens and colleagues. The rest of us are only useful to him as punching bags and targets for his screechy, obscene, misspelled tweets and, more recently, his fascist police force. The upside of his deformed view of the presidency is that if he loses this election, it’ll partly be because he refused to expand his support beyond his loyalists.

This is one of the reasons why he felt compelled to cheat in the 2020 election by attempting to blackmail the president of Ukraine into smearing Joe Biden — a plot that ended with Trump’s impeachment and trial in the Senate. After all, how could he win re-election with only 40-44 percent popular support without making up the difference … somehow?

His relationship with his disciples is a match made in hell, given that his Red Hat fanboys have an equally stunted view of the presidency. I assure you, they’d never allow Trump-style behavior from their doctors, their kids’ teachers or, hell, their airline pilots. If they hadn’t been so badly brainwashed by the conservative entertainment complex, they never would have gifted the nuclear codes and the immense power of the presidency to such an unstable, erratic, incompetent political tourist who has utterly failed to grow into the job and rise to the occasion — who has failed to accept the intense gravity of his post. As Barack Obama said in August, “It’s because he can’t.”

At no other time has that been more evident than in Trump’s response to the pandemic. For the first two years of his presidency, many of us sat on the edge of our seats wondering when Trump would be seriously challenged either by a military threat, a terrorist attack or a global pandemic. From the moment Hillary Clinton conceded, I suspected this buffoonish greenhorn would be put to the test and fail badly. I never imagined that his reaction, untethered from experts, would be quite this calamitous.

His response to the hurricanes that collided with Puerto Rico represented a harrowing preview of how he’d handle the pandemic. I was convinced at the time that he was at least temporarily unaware that Puerto Rico was even part of the United States. I mean, how could he have been so thoughtless and unsympathetic to actual Americans? Turns out, he probably knew — he just didn’t give a shit. Never before has a modern president behaved so callously toward a devastated population of his own people, hurling paper towels at their heads as if he were firing a T-shirt cannon at a college basketball pep rally. Today, the island territory continues to rebuild despite Trump’s reprehensible indifference.

America is better than this. We’re better than him.

There have to be consequences for his indifference to the destruction in Puerto Rico as well as the 225,000 casualties of COVID-19 (and counting). Neither should have happened here. But this is what it looks like when the president and his people fail to do the paint-by-numbers things in response to a crisis — things that so many other presidents managed to achieve. Had Trump listened to the experts at the CDC and WHO, thousands of Americans would still be alive today and we might have been free and clear of this blight by now. Instead, Trump listened to the entertainers on Fox News, not to mention the shrieking voices in his head, convincing him to abandon the effort at exactly the wrong time — in April, at the initial height of the infection curve.

Before giving up, he applied travel restrictions to China, but it was too little too late. Forty thousand people arrived in the United States from China by flying through Europe and landing in New York, magnifying the catastrophic outbreak there. After that, Trump did nothing else to slow the spread, making George W. Bush’s 2005 response to Hurricane Katrina look masterful by comparison. Now, eight months into this disaster, Trump continues to ignore the rules, ignore safety protocols and ignore the experts, holding maskless, undistanced rally after rally, fueling his own ego, even after being infected himself. And there’s no end in sight.

Win or lose, his bungled, herky-jerky reaction to the pandemic will be remembered as the defining failure of his presidency, and it’s the No. 1 reason why he deserves nothing but ignominy and prison.

Rather than accepting the challenge and rising to meet it, as any other president would have, he’s spent all these months of national stress, uncertainty and illness not comforting or proactively leading the American people, but whining, whining and whining some more about how COVID ruined his presidency. Solving the pandemic could have been his greatest achievement — but Trump always makes things worse for Trump. Undermining himself and then playing the victim when things go sideways is the only thing he’s good at.

He possesses the most brittle ego of any president since Richard Nixon — one of many character flaws that undermine his self-identification as a manly alpha. Indeed, he’s nothing more than an easily-ruffled snowflake who constantly bellyaches about how “unfair” the world treats him — you know, the alleged billionaire president. So unfair.

Donald Trump has redefined what it means to be an empty suit. He talks an enormous game, but in reality his entire record is composed of failures and stolen successes. He claims to understand things he’s never able to explain openly or in any detail. Accordingly, he’s obsessed with repealing the Affordable Care Act, but only because it was Barack Obama’s signature achievement, not because it’s bad policy — and it’s not bad policy, he just says it is and his fanboys believe him.

If challenged, I’d wager a year’s salary he couldn’t name anything in the law beyond the mandate and the coverage for pre-existing conditions. I’m sure he doesn’t know about the myriad consumer protections or the mandatory benefits, or how the low-income subsidies work or the Medicaid expansion or the marketplaces — none of it. Yet he’s seeing to it that the entire thing is obliterated mid-pandemic when Americans need coverage the most. He definitely doesn’t know that coverage for pre-existing conditions is made possible, for example, by placing caps on premiums and co-pays, while banning rescission and lifetime limits on coverage. Worst of all, he doesn’t know that many of his own voters are covered today because of the ACA.

Between the pandemic and the possible repeal of the ACA, America is physically sick. And because of Donald Trump, we’re spiritually sick, too. He doesn’t understand that the president sets the tone for the nation. He’ll never grasp that the way he communicates influences the way we communicate with each other. His constant firehose of crapola encourages others to let their hatred, racism and obnoxious, crazy-eyed antagonism fly freely — playing out in our public spaces and on our social media platforms every damn day.

Trump has debased the presidency, replacing decency and humility with unearned self-praise and horrendous sadism. Our nation’s most cherished values and institutions have been randomly crushed by this 90-foot kaiju monster for too long. His constant antagonism has turned father against son, mother against daughter, family against family. Over what? The damaging misadventures of a political fraud — a garish old brat who bankrupted his businesses, defrauded Americans with his sham foundation and university and is currently bankrupting the U.S. treasury while establishing himself as a Putin-style kleptocrat.

In 1860, our nation nearly crumbled under the weight of slavery and secession. Today, our nation is on the verge of collapse under the weight of a painted-up clown whose performative fascism has led to the extrajudicial murder of American citizens on American soil; the use of Homeland Security as a secret police force tasked with assaulting Americans in advance of awkward photo-ops; the use of the Department of Justice as a personal law firm; taxpayer revenue as a personal slush fund; and, worst of all, the construction of internment camps for Central American migrant children, where some have been raped by American guards. Rivaled only by the pandemic response, the Trump Cages are the most disgusting and unforgivable aspect of this presidential crisis.

The 2020 election is about ending all that, while beginning the process of a second Reconstruction — rebuilding our government in a way that guarantees this will never happen again, while convening a Trump Crimes Commission to hold the perpetrators accountable. Part of that process is about remembering what happened here, in this era. There will be voices who insist we should move on and forget about all this ugliness. We would do well to ignore those voices. The minute we forget the damage he’s inflicted upon us all, the next Trump will be waiting to strike.

Indeed, the only way to move on is to punish the crimes and plug the holes. We have no choice but to use this dark ride — one that took my friend Chez and many thousands of others — as an opportunity to repair the gaping Trump-shaped craters in the system exposed and exploited by this unqualified, disgracefully unpresidential and obviously unglued president. If Joe Biden and Kamala Harris successfully oust Trump, a week from today, the Trump crisis will be on its way to ending, while the hard work of cleaning up the mess will begin. In both the election and the aftermath, we cannot fail. Everything depends on what happens next.

[ileneca7]

Meaningless Monday Market Movement – Happy Columbus Day

Meaningless Monday Market Movement – Happy Columbus Day

By Phil of Phil’s Stock World 

In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue – and got totally lost, missed India by 6,000 miles but called the Native American Islanders Indians anyway, slaughtered them and stole their gold and, lacking any real wealth to go back to Spain with, instituted a slave trade that lasted 250 years and ruined the lives of tens millions of people.

I got called into the Principal’s office when my daughter gave a report like that in 7th grade – just 5 year ago.  Suddenly, it’s in vogue to question our “heritage” and the legends of the founders and that’s a good thing.  You want Russians to question Marx and Lennin and you want the Chinese to question Mao so why shouldn’t our children question Columbus and Jefferson?  Either you want to raise critical thinkers or you don’t.

There aren’t many critical thinkers playing the markets these days. Over the weekend, Trump and North Korea continued their Twitter War after Trump’s “calm before the storm” comments on Friday and Saturday afternoon, the President of the United States tweeted “Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid…hasn’t worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, makings fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!” to which Kim Jong Un said that proved it was necessary to protect themselves against the “nuclear threats of the U.S. imperialists.” Kim Jong-un also said that North Korea’s nuclear weapons are a “powerful deterrent firmly safeguarding the peace and security in the Korean peninsula and Northeast Asia.”

Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, charged in an interview on Sunday that President Trump was treating his office like “a reality show,” with reckless threats toward other countries that could set the nation “on the path to World War III.”  Other key quotes from that interview were:

“I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.”

He acts “like he’s doing ‘The Apprentice’ or something.”

On how fellow GOP senators feel: “Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here… of course they understand the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.”

On Trump undermining Tillerson: “A lot of people think that there is some kind of ‘good cop, bad cop’ act underway, but that’s just not true.”

On Trump’s tweets harming U.S. foreign policy: “I know he has hurt, in several instances, he’s hurt us as it relates to negotiations that were underway by tweeting things out.”

Corker remains influential, and his breaking from Trump so publicly could lead others to speak out. Perhaps more significantly, the retiring Senator still holds a vote until Jan. 2019 in a Senate the Republicans control by a two-vote margin.  He’s highly skeptical of Trump’s tax plan, and may be tough to get onside on other key issues.

Those key issues include tax reform and the Obamacare repeal (yes, they are still trying to do that) and those are the underpinnings for the market rally.  The justification for these record-high market multiples is that we’re not taking into account all the extra money companies will be making when they don’t have to pay taxes anymore but they don’t pay taxes now – so how much less can they possibly pay?

Taxes are already down 2/3 for Corporations in the past 40 years and now Trump’s plan it to knock off another 1/3 of what’s left but 2% is only 10% of where we started and, it begs the question – if cutting Corporate Tax Rates fixes everything – why didn’t the first 66% of the cuts have any effect (other than leading to 2 of the worst market crashes in history and an economy that’s $20Tn in debt)?

Including “Entitlement” taxes (that’s right, they talk about cutting entitlement spending but ignore that fact that they already took that money from you – so you ARE ENTITLED to get it back!), Individual Taxes have jumped from 51.8% of all collections in the 50s to 80% in 2015 (up 42%) while Corporate Taxes (including Excise Taxes) have dropped from 45.5% to 13.8% (down 70%).  The new tax plan doesn’t have to completely screw the Middle Class – the old tax plan already did that!

Excise taxes were a type of tax that Corporations couldn’t avoid paying because they were based on sales – not phony P&L statements so, of course, those have been slashed from 13.4% to 3% (down 77.6%) and there, in a nutshell, is why the US is $20Tn in debt – it’s nothing but $20Tn of tax avoidance by Corporations that’s gotten worse and worse every year for decades and the proposal on the table now is to CUT THEIR TAXES FURTHER and also give massive tax cuts to the owners of those Corporations. This is MADNESS!

67% of the people now disapprove of the direction our country is heading but the GOP is doubling down for the 32%. Only 67% of Republicans still support the President, down from 80% in March and that does not bode well for next year’s elections with 13 months to go.  Instead of getting a handle on what’s actually wrong with this country, our Vice President, Mike Pence, flew to Indianapolis over the weekend in order to engage in some performance art – walking out on the Colts game “because the 49ers kneeled during the National Anthem“.  That’s the story – here’s the facts:

Pence knew this was going to happen. The press was told to remain in the parking lot, and not even to bother coming in — as Pence would be leaving early.

Pence had just been in Las Vegas, and his next stop was Los Angeles, a short plane flight west — but he instead flew all the back to Indianapolis for this photo op, taking his entourage and his security detail with him.  The streets doubtless had to be blocked off for his motorcade.  Special security precautions were taken for the Vice President of the United States.  All along, he planned to engage in a tawdry, pre-planned sham performance — with all the expense that entails — just to get people embroiled in a cynical culture war.

If they want to pull something like this as a sort of campaign stunt, let them pay for it with campaign money. Don’t bill the taxpayers for this. This is why people hate government.

This country has real problems brewing and yes, Puerto Rico still has no electricity or fresh water for 3M people stuck on an island and THIS is what our leaders are up to?  The question is, why isn’t EVERYONE kneeling at this point?   

As promised, we sent out Alerts to press our hedges on Friday, taking our President’s word that a storm is coming as a good reason to be cautious into earnings, which kick into gear on Thursday, with CitiGroup (C) and JP Morgan (JPM) reporting, followed on Friday by BankAmerica (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), PNC (PNC) and First Horizon (FHN) and then, next week – we’re officially back in earnings season.

Today is a holiday and the volume will be very low but we have 9 Fed speakers jammed into the next 4 days and the Fed Minutes will be released on Wednesday, along with a 10-year note auction at 1pm.  Other than that, just some loose data with Retail Sales punctuating the week on Friday along with Consumer Sentiment:

Not much else to do but let today play out and, hopefully, see what is real tomorrow.

Meaningless Monday Market Movement – Happy Columbus Day was originally published on MarketShadows