World War Three Dead Ahead!

It will come either by Hillary's neocons going Russian Bear-baiting; or, if Trump gets elected, the neo-cons in the GOP establishment going bear-baiting, or Putin thinking Trump is now treating NATO like some sort of protection racket and thereby taking back the former Soviet Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Maybe Finland, too.

Donald Trump just made imbecilic statements that if certain NATO countries in Europe haven't paid enough money in his estimation to the United States for their collective defense, then he'll just sit right back and let the Russians roll right over them, should Russia follow through on a decision to invade certain NATO countries.

Now our parents and grandparents knew of a certain British Prime Minister who flew to Munich and returned with a pact between the UK and Hitler, proclaiming "Peace in out time!" Soon enough, Hitler took over Czechoslovakia and the following September, invaded Poland.

To thread the needle of avoiding World War 3, if that's even possible, the United States needs to STOP poking the Russian Bear, i.e., get out of the Ukraine, and at the same time reaffirm its treaty obligation or promise as a lead pipe guarantee that it will defend the European NATO countries against a Russian attack. That means, of course, that we need to redirect our War Department dollars (622 billion of them) so as to spend them wisely, and not waste them on boondoggles such as the F-35 Lardbucket: no way is that thing going to compete with Russia's new Sukhoi fighter jets.

But most importantly, we should be waging peace at the same time we keep our committments and keep strong enough to keep them, in order to maintain the peace.

Remember what I said yesterday about Donald Trump?

Yesterday I referenced the Vox.com article that stated that Donald is no dove. Today I have another article that essentially conforms the same thing, although it is a far less researched opinion piece in the American Conservative.  But the comments are worth clicking through and reading the article by Daniel Larison: No, Trump isn't an "Isolationist."

Larison contends that Donald Trump is not an isolationist, but a nationalist who would intervene solely in the interests of the United States and to Hell with everybody else. Even if the intervention is directly against Russia. Well Putin would have only one thing to say and do in such an intervention, and in a way would tell Trump, as Dimitri Orlov has described Russia saying to the West many times before, to go to Hell, and then make it stick. Making it stick, of course could be or could lead to an extinction level event. Or do you think Trump would just bend over and take it? (The same goes for Hillary and her neocons.)

Colin Dueck sees Trump this way, and for once I am in at least partial agreement with Dueck. Dueck writes:

His critics call him an isolationist, but that’s not quite right either. Genuine isolationists on both left and right, however wrong-headed, tend to be more high-minded, principled and pristine than The Donald. Trump’s real niche, carved out in his own strange way, is simply American nationalism.

.... 

Trump’s nationalism leads him on the one hand to eschew deeper involvement in Syria because the conflict has little or nothing to do with the U.S., but on the other it leads him to make ridiculous statements about seizing other nations’ resources and denouncing diplomatic agreements with other states. If we can pin down his foreign policy at all, it is aggressive and unilateralist when Trump thinks the U.S. has something to gain, and it is otherwise content to leave regional problems to regional actors. One reason that he isn’t an “isolationist” or anything close to it is that he claims to want to “make America great again,” and part and parcel of that supposed greatness is building up the military and “winning” contests with other states.

For more, click here, and don't forget to read the comments!

Remember, Peak Oil is here and gone in the US and is coming soon for the rest of the planet, and Russia's one country with a lot of unexploited oil and natural resources!

Trump Is no Dove, Either.

From Zack Beauchamp's The Donald Trump Dove Myth on Vox.com:

I honestly don't know how Trump would govern if elected president. Nobody knows how Trump would govern, because we've never had a president like him before. 

All we have to go on is what he's said and done. And any close examination of that record, beyond his high-profile rhetoric at debates, suggests that Trump is an instinctive advocate for US military force. He seems especially interested in it when it can be used to enrich or protect the United States — taking the oil, killing the terrorists, etc. 

This isn't the kind of [Ed-M: messianic and Manichean] hawkishness we're used to. During the Bush administration, hawkishness became equated with neoconservatism. You're a hawk if you support sending in ground troops to fight terrorism or bombing Iran's nuclear program; you're a dove if you oppose those things. 

Trump's instincts are not neoconservative, and he's skeptical of neoconservatism's more grandiose ambitions to remake the world in America's democratic image. That makes him sound dovish by American standards, because we've come to equate dovishness with opposing policies that neocons support. 

But historically, there are lots of other forms of American hawkishness.

Mr. Beauchamp goes on to state that of those is the Jacskonian tradition (going back to Andrew Jackson) and it fits Trump best, because Trump is on record (read the article) in favor of the wars but hes opined that the USA should have just taken -- stolen -- those countries' oil. Just like Andrew Jackson stole the lands of the Indians of the USA Southeast and sent them to Oklahoma in a trail of tears.

Now as of March 19th Russia is the country with the sixth largest amount of oil reserves. US oil production was down by about 10% from last year's peak as of June 3rd. If this production continues in this sort of decline, it won;t be long before the US corporate world and the US government will be coveting Mother Russia's oil and the Pentagon will be making plans to "secure" it. This in spite of Trump's proclaimed support for Israel and the Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's VERY successful overtures to Vladimir Putin  and Israel's turn to Russia as an ally (more here, here and here).

Needless to say, an attempt to steal Russia's oil will mean World War III, which would probably end with nuclear exchanges between the United States and Russia, resulting in a nuclear winter (ice age), a radioactive spring (rewarming), and resumed global warming following, ending in Near Term Extinction.

Note: "messianic and Manichean" from Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine, p. 217, describing the delusions of the neoconservatives that Hilary stuffed the USA State Department with when she was Madame Secretary of State. This sort of messianic insanity is a form of (small-c) christ-psychosis: nota bene "messiah" in English and original Hebrew mashiach "anointed one" translated to khristos (originally "ointment") and christus (specifically Jesus) in Greek and Latin, respectively.)

If You Want to Get Mauled, Go Poke a Bear Repeatedly.

Vladimir Putin and "The Hildebeest."
Hillary will continue the neocon policies started under Clinton 42, or even under Poppy Bush 41.
Source: static.kremlin.ru/media/events/photos/big/fdPIA2gpDXpa3tZvdgqJMuvwDGr5tDAx

Well Neil Godfrey of the Vridar blog, a Top 50 Biblioblog and one that explores Christian Origins not limited to an historical Jesus, has joined the chorus of warnings that current US foreign policy against Russia is leading us straight into World War III. Why is the USA doing this? In one word and three: Greed and Russian Natural Resources.

Reblogged from Vridar, Neil Godrey's post, Sleepwalking once again into war, this time nuclear.

Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, scares me. He compares in Frontline Ukraine the current international tensions over Ukraine with those over the Balkans prior to World War 1. He further compares the dynamics between NATO/”Wider Europe” and Russia with those between Western Europe/UK and Germany prior to World War 2.

On the one hundredth anniversary of World War I and the seventy-fifth anniversary of the start of World War II, and 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Europe once again finds itself the cockpit of a great-power confrontation. How could Europe have allowed itself to end up in this position, after so many promises of ‘never again’? This is the worst imbroglio in Europe since the 1930s, with pompous dummies parroting glib phrases and the media in full war cry. Those calling for restraint, consideration and dialogue have not only been ignored but also abused, and calls for sanity have not only been marginalised but also delegitimated. It is as if the world has learned nothing from Europe’s terrible twentieth century. (Sakwa, R. 2015, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, I.B. Taurus, London. p. 1, bolding mine in all quotations)

....

A word search (I have not yet read past chapter 3) takes me to the following:

Hillary Clinton packed the State Department with ‘Democrat’ neoconservatives with a messianic and Manichean view of the world. Clinton herself had few achievements in her four years as the American foreign minister, and has since concentrated on positioning herself as a potential candidate in the US presidential election of 2016 by scoring easy points – and there are no easier points than Russia-bashing. (p. 217)

....

Even the Cold War architect of Containment, George Kennan, was horrified:

The implications of NATO enlargement were substantively debated. In an interview with Thomas Friedman in 1998, the doyen of international diplomacy and the architect of the original policy of ‘containment’ of the Soviet Union in the post-war years, George Kennan, was unsparing in his condemnation. Kennan spoke with dismay about the Senate’s ratification of NATO expansion plans:  

I think the Russians will react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anyone else […] This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed on to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.  

Not for the first time the ‘superficial and ill-informed’ nature of Congressional discussion was condemned. Equally, he added words that remain a portent for today:  

I was particularly bothered by the references to Russia as a country dying to attack Western Europe. Don’t people understand? Our differences in the cold war were with the Soviet Communist regime. And now we are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.(Sakwa, R. 2015, Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands, I.B. Taurus, London. pp. 45-46)

“Her Cold War stance is reflected in her parting injunction to Obama that ‘the only language Putin would understand’ is ‘strength and resolve’.”

Putin understands the language of ‘strength and resolve’ perfectly; it is evident he does so by his rebuilding of Russia’s strength and has so far shown steely resolve and restraint in the twin disasters of Syria/ISIS/Iraq and the Ukraine.

Dmitry Orlov last week posted this warning from several Russian-Americans plus some US luminaires that if the United States were to keep bear-baiting Russia into World War 3, the United States will find itself at the very least with no economy, no working infrastructure and no government; and at the very worst, it will be reduced to a radioactive ashtray.

In other words, World War III is death to America! Ugh.

Jesus Fracking Christ. And the only way we can get out of this, alive,is if we vote for Jill Stein, or at least Trump in the general election. But it doesn't matter who votes, but who counts the votes.

Hat tip to Neil Godfrey and Uncle Joe (Stalin).

Are We Ready for World War III?

Morris Berman dug up this little nugget:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/36306-survey-reveals-public-support-for-nuclear-strikes-and-a-disconnect-from-the-bloody-reality-of-bombs

Here's the beginning of the article:

In the wake of President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima last week, renewed debates over the use of atomic weapons against Japan in August 1945 have highlighted a disturbing trend: a rise in public support for US attacks on civilians across the globe. Never having withstood a prolonged bombing campaign on their soil, many people in the United States are quick to support and justify the use of bombs -- including nuclear ones -- on others. 

Academics Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino conducted research on the US public's attitude regarding nuclear bombing and recently publishing a summary of their findings in a Wall Street Journal story titled "Would the US Drop the Bomb Again?" From a survey of a "representative sample of 620 Americans" administered by YouGov last July, Sagan and Valentino revealed results that were "unsettling about the instincts of the US public." Specifically, the pair reported that, "When provoked, [US citizens] don't seem to consider the use of nuclear weapons a taboo, and our commitment to the immunity of civilians from deliberate attack in wartime, even with vast casualties, is shallow."

Of course, the survey question offered up a little scenario similar to the Old Pearl Harbor (as opposed to 9/11, the New one): Iranian forces blowing up a US air craft carrier, killing 2400 sailors. The surveyor asked the question:"Would you approve of the US dropping a nuclear bomb on a city of 100,000 souls in Iran?" 59 percent of the respondents replied similar to the following: "Of course!" And no doubt a few probably said: "Whaddya mane, souls?"

I wonder if people would approve of doing the same to Russia if Russian forces did the same in the Black Sea in response to some US provocation in the Ukraine? I bet they would!

For more, click here.

Well it looks like World War III is on the front burner now...

Well I thought peak oil would have caused an economic collapse; then I came to the concusuin of belief that climate change will beat peak oil to it; recently, I thought the now-emerging and next financial crisis would give climate change a good run for its money. Now, apparently, because Obama reportedly refused to speak with Russia about its Aegis missile defense plans in Eastern Europe, the threat of World War III a.k.a. The Apocalypse, Armageddon, the final Holocaust has now passed climate change and financial problems as the biggest and first threat to civilisation and even the existence of humanity itself.  Dimitri Orlov, among others, posted the following about Washington's constant bear-baiting of Mother Russia:

Originally posted as A Russian Warning -- Club Orlov, 31 May 2016:

We, the undersigned, are Russians living and working in the USA. We have been watching with increasing anxiety as the current US and NATO policies have set us on an extremely dangerous collision course with the Russian Federation, as well as with China. Many respected, patriotic Americans, such as Paul Craig Roberts, Stephen Cohen, Philip Giraldi, Ray McGovern and many others have been issuing warnings of a looming a Third World War. But their voices have been all but lost among the din of a mass media that is full of deceptive and inaccurate stories that characterize the Russian economy as being in shambles and the Russian military as weak—all based on no evidence. But we—knowing both Russian history and the current state of Russian society and the Russian military, cannot swallow these lies. We now feel that it is our duty, as Russians living in the US, to warn the American people that they are being lied to, and to tell them the truth. And the truth is simply this:

If there is going to be a war with Russia, then the United States

will most certainly be destroyed, and most of us will end up dead.

Let us take a step back and put what is happening in a historical context. Russia has suffered a great deal at the hands of foreign invaders, losing 22 million people in World War II. Most of the dead were civilians, because the country was invaded, and the Russians have vowed to never let such a disaster happen again. Each time Russia had been invaded, she emerged victorious. In 1812 Nepoleon invaded Russia; in 1814 Russian cavalry rode into Paris. On June 22, 1941, Hitler’s Luftwaffe bombed Kiev; On May 8, 1945, Soviet troops rolled into Berlin. 

But times have changed since then. If Hitler were to attack Russia today, he would be dead 20 to 30 minutes later, his bunker reduced to glowing rubble by a strike from a Kalibr supersonic cruise missile launched from a small Russian navy ship somewhere in the Baltic Sea. The operational abilities of the new Russian military have been most persuasively demonstrated during the recent action against ISIS, Al Nusra and other foreign-funded terrorist groups operating in Syria. A long time ago Russia had to respond to provocations by fighting land battles on her own territory, then launching a counter-invasion; but this is no longer necessary. Russia’s new weapons make retaliation instant, undetectable, unstoppable and perfectly lethal. 

Thus, if tomorrow a war were to break out between the US and Russia, it is guaranteed that the US would be obliterated. At a minimum, there would no longer be an electric grid, no internet, no oil and gas pipelines, no interstate highway system, no air transportation or GPS-based navigation. Financial centers would lie in ruins. Government at every level would cease to function. US armed forces, stationed all around the globe, would no longer be resupplied. At a maximum, the entire landmass of the US would be covered by a layer of radioactive ash. We tell you this not to be alarmist, but because, based on everything we know, we are ourselves alarmed. If attacked, Russia will not back down; she will retaliate, and she will utterly annihilate the United States.

Well I'm going to ask Dimitri to add my name to the list of persons as the undersigned of the warning. For more information, click here.

Not only do we have the utterly insane neo-cons running the foreign policy apparat in Washington, but we have utterly insane End-Times Christians running about the command of the US Armed forces catapulting Christian propaganda. And they know they can get away with it, because they have congressmen and senators to run interference for them.

From The Huffington Post: General ‘Jerry’ Boykin Says Gun-Toting Jesus Will Lead ‘Mighty Army’ During Second Coming, 02/20/2014:

Jesus is coming— and he’ll be carrying a really big gun when he does.
That’s what former U.S. Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin thinks,according to a speech he gave on behalf of the conservative Family Research Council at the WallBuilders’ Pro-Family Legislators Conference, in which he describes his vision of the Second Coming of Christ, that he believes will be led by a blood-stained, gun-toting Jesus armed to the teeth with an AR-15 assault rifle.

To see what Boykin said, click here.

And from the same site, The Taliban in Our Midst, 5/22/2015:

ChristPsychotic USAF Major General Craig Olson
Photo Credit: U.S. Air Force photo by Jerry Saslav

Military officers who wear their religion on their sleeve are a danger to our country at any time, but especially after the terrorists attacks of September 11, 2001. 

Whether it’s US Army Lieutenant General William G. Boykin telling his audience that “My God is bigger than his” in the close aftermath of that tragedy, or the more recent example of US Air Force Major General Craig Olson saying in uniform and in public — and speaking in tones far more like a preacher than a military officer — “I am a redeemed believer in Christ,” these are dangerous men, making dangerous displays of religion. 

Moreover, such displays occur in an environment where they are strictly prohibited by secular rules. These rules — and in the case of the US Air Force, written regulations — are in place for a reason.

But these rules are routinely flouted because...

The USAF is understandably afraid of certain members of the US Congress, as are all the Services when it comes to presenting an overt challenge to what these members of Congress believe is “every Christian’s right to profess his or her religion, no matter the circumstances.” 

Congress’ constant dalliance with such pseudo-Christian organizations as James Dobson’s Focus on the Family — whose members most remind me of the people at the famous Scopes trial in Tennessee, who for the most part were hopelessly ignorant — exacerbates this fear.

For more information, click here.

And is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter ready to do combat with Russia and China's best and most capable?

From Air Power Australia, the abstract of the RAAF's assessment of the F-35:

The Joint Strike Fighter is not designed to perform air superiority roles, unlike the larger F-22A, and is not well adapted to performing the penetrating long range strike role filled by the F-111 until 2010.

There has been considerable adverse press associated with JSF cost overruns, project delays, and other difficulties observed in this program. 

The JSF Program and resulting aircraft designs have, since the very first days of the program, been burdened by fatal optimism, a total indifference to what is real, placement of form over substance, the acquisition malpractice of concurrency and the fact that the STOVL F-35B is the baseline for all three variants, having dictated and constrained most if not all key aircraft parameters in the definition and resulting design of the other two JSF variants. 

The F-35 JSF aircraft designs will not meet specification nor the operational requirements laid down in the JSF JORD (Joint Operational Requirements Document) by significant degrees, noting that these operational requirements and resulting specifications, themselves, were predicated on the capabilities of reference threats from an era past and subsequently subjected to the illogical and deeply flawed process known as CAIV (Cost As an Independent Variable).

The designs of all three JSF variants are presenting with critical single points of failure while even the most basic elements of aircraft design (e.g. weight, volume, aerodynamics, structures, thermal management, electrical power, etc.) will almost certainly end up in what Engineers call "Coffin Corner". 

In essence, the unethical Thana Marketing strategy used to sell the JSF, along with the acquisition malpractice of concurrency in not only development, production and testing but the actual designs of the JSF variants, themselves, have resulted in the JSF marketeers writing cheques that the aircraft designs and JSF Program cannot honour.

 For more information in the form of charts and graphs comparing the F-35 with other USA-built aircraft, click here.

We are so not ready for World War III.

And what will happen if World War III goes off? Nuclear exchanges between the United States and Russia. It will be a Near-Term-Extinction Level Event that sets off a Nuclear Winter that will be really a mini-ice age.  After that, global warming.

Casting Fellow Americans as “The Enemy” to Justify Vote Theft

Reposted from here.

Election day is only half over, and my desk is already flooded with stories and first-hand reports of voting irregularities. Voters in Pennsylvania are being harangued by GOP “poll watchers” to show ID, even though they absolutely do not have to, and a judge finally had to intervene. An election worker in Oregon was caught altering ballots so that they would show a straight-Republican ticket. Voters in South Florida are enduring historically long lines to vote. A lawsuit has been filed in Ohio to protest the “experimental” patch added to software in voting machines in dozens of counties.

In instance after instance, these actions are being taken by Republicans, from Secretaries of State and state legislatures at the top all the way down to “True the Vote” Tea Party footsoldiers looking to frighten people away from their polling places.

A part of me looks at all this and wonders, “What kind of fascist scumbag summons the gall to steal the right to vote from a fellow American?” But then it hits me: the root cause of all this is the fact that the GOP has, for many years now and especially since 9/11, pushed the idea that people who don’t agree with them are un-American and dangerous. For those who have swallowed this line of crap, the idea of actually stealing someone else’s right to vote becomes understandable. It’s a matter of National Security! These terrible un-Christian terrorists have to be stopped!

It’s fairly self-evident that if you have to cheat and scare people to win, your ideas lack merit…but the larger issue here is the kind of America that is being created. The Republican Party has made it a matter of survival to convince people, who are in every other way probably very good and decent types, that half the country, indeed their own neighbors, are swarming with The Enemy, and that Enemy does not deserve basic American rights like voting.

One hell of a whirlwind will be reaped if matters continue like this.

Exactly. If this keeps up, nothing will be done about climate change which threatens to destroy the Arctic Ocean ice cap by 2016, and release methane that will cause out-of-control global warming. Result may eventually be another Permian Extinction and the planet becoming like Venus.

On the other hand the peak oil situation will be exacerbated as the neocons from Bush's Administration decides to take out Iran, driving the price of oil into the ionosphere and crashing the global economy. In this case, the rest of the planet, even NATO in Europe, may decide that WE are the rogue nation that must be defeated in our time, lest the dark ages will descend upon humanity. And I don't even have to tell you what disasters that may ensue from THAT. You can use your reasoned imagination.

Bush and the Rapture.

I found an illustration of the last seconds on Earth prior to the Rapture, at the site Democratic Underground. It depicts Bush with a whole bunch o' Christians on a hillside awaiting the rapture that is just about to happen. Below, World War III rages. Of course, it's just LIKE Bush to disappear whenever disasters and catastrophes happen. Remamber 9/11? Remember Katrina? Remember when the economic meltdown first reached critical mass last September and Paulson -- not Bush -- sent a page-and-a-half piece of proposed legislation to Congress?


Well, here is the Rapture!

Boston Globe Article: Financial Doomsday Machine

This machine, which Elaine Meinel Supkis calls the Derivatives Beast, is threatening to undo the whole entire global economy. At its peak valuation, it was valued at more than one quadrillion dollars.

Globe Article:

If government doesn't do more, and fast, this could be worse than the
1930s. Why? There are three big reasons: [Ed-M: HAHAHA. As if the US Gov't, head over heels in debt and promises that will create more debt, can break this downturn without causing China et al to dump our foreign-held debts. The problem was practicing Keynsian Economics (deficit spending, a little inflation) without any
Anti-Keynsian economics (surplusses, a little deflation) for almost 65 years except '69 and '99, running trade deficits galore, and failing to stomp on bubbles with both feet when they first begin to form!]

Finance: A Doomsday Machine. The financial system is in far worse shape than it was when the stock market crashed in October 1929. In the 1920s, there was a stock market bubble, mainly because people could play the market "on margin," borrowing to invest in stocks. There were also scams like the original Mr. Ponzi's. Like in the present decade, the Federal Reserve helped to enable the game, with low interest rates and few rules. [Ed-M: So did the bank of Japan! It has run Zero Percent Interest Rate lending since '95 fer cryin' out loud. Result was the whole freakin' PLANET was awash in easy credit (read: cheap money for the asking!) and ended up in various bubbles, like the dotcom bubble, the housing bubble, and the recent commodities bubble, which, when it burst, cause the price of all commodities except precious metals to plummet.]

But today, thanks to "securitization" of loans and the ability of insiders to create exotic and unfathomable financial instruments, the speculative system makes buying stocks on margin look like child's play. In the aftermath of the crash of 2008, the process of sorting it all out and getting banks functioning again is something that markets simply cannot do. We are not even clear who owns what. The wise guys on Wall Street invented a doomsday machine from which there is no market escape.

In 1929 when the stock market crashed, the banking system was relatively healthy. Bank customers played these speculative games and took the losses, not banks. This time, the banks drank their own Kool-aid. [Ed-M: Here Mr. Kuttner gets it right! Bravo! Decades from now, if we're not all DEAD or back in the Stone Age by then, we'll be analysing what went wrong and exclain, "How could those banks be so colossolly stupid as to buy and sell credit default swaps, normal and 'synthetic' CDOs, MBSs and the like to and from each other?" Well it's easy. The computer whizzes who invented these things had to please their gnomish bosses! Who only wanted to get (more) rich.]....

Roosevelt was said to be a big spender, but his biggest peacetime deficit was only about 6 percent of GDP. This year, the deficit will exceed 11 percent, and the recession will deepen all year. It took the truly massive deficits of World War II - nearly 30 percent of GDP - to finally end the Great Depression. [Ed-M: Actually the Great Depression ended in 1939, when the European factories went to producing all armaments, forcing Europe to import consumer goods from US!]....

During the bubble years, the foreign borrowing disguised domestic weaknesses, such as our much-diminished manufacturing sector. For now, foreigners are still willing to lend us vast sums, but that may not continue indefinitely. [Ed-M: And CHINA, the biggest holder of our debts, has already expressed concern over our overspending. Won't be long now...]

Happy Lost Decade, everyone! May we NOT utterly collapse into a Stone Age, or kill everyone off in a thermonuclear WWIII, wherein the heavens would disappear with a roar, and the elements melt with fervent heat, and the Earth and all the works therein get burnt.