The first time I heard of Sen. Liz Warren, it was in the bankruptcy bill fiasco during W’s tenure. This was one of the screws that the oligarchs put to little people after extending so much credit to them in the great democratization of credit. Warren was an academic expert there to say this screwed over the little guy. Liz Warren sounded reasonable. To the financially aware blogosphere, she sounded fantastic.

She next showed up in a documentary called Maxed Out. That documentary explained how easy credit combined with high pressure loan pushing and loan collecting created a nation where the savvy swindled the unaware like traveling peddlers of old. Warren was very astute and mentioned how the banks knew their profits came from lending to the worst risk. She says it all to you there. We got rid of usury caps so that the banks could make high margins, and do it under the guise of extending credit to the formerly red-lined. It was brilliant and like a proto-woke capital move. She came across as a very sharp woman.

Warren then got screen time as a voice against the big banks. She was involved with the TARP oversight. She was supposed to be part of the team that protected consumers. She had good appearances on Capitol Hill grilling bankers. It was a little like Mr. Smith going to Washington, and as the months went on and Obama and Holder were not going to jail bankers or break up Citigroup, seeing her at least take it to bankers about their practices was a win.

Then it happened. She ran for the Senate. Thus started the long transformation into just another woke Democrat. Things were so hot for her in 2016 that she even toyed with a presidential run. Nope. Like Biden, she may look back on that year as the biggest what if. They both got psyched out by polls. Both of them sit in the lounge with Chris Christie for presidential what ifs. Seriously, in ’12 if Christie runs, shows the machsimo in debates and then Hurricane Sandy hits, things may have gone very different.

Still, after 2016, it was easy to see if she stuck to her economic focus, that she could maybe do it. She went woke instead with the rest of her party. The populist $20 bill is on the ground for the Democrats, but all of them say “I hate whitey, die off whitey” as they reach for it. Shut up about the woke for four years, and it would be an easier run this time. She fell into a trap too. She sent her damn DNA in for analysis. She let Trump’s teasing get to her. It came back and they tried to play it off as 1%, somehow proving her stories, but no, the real interpretation was like 1/1000. If she had a nosebleed, she’d lose all her Indian blood. You cannot play woke when you are a high end Rachel Dolezal. If anything, her rise through academia on a lie exposes the game a little too much for the system.

I still thought she had a chance. Actually, I thought Biden was being a plow for Kamala. He could damage Bernie in debates while she stayed out of the fray. She had the right boxes checked, plus Obama’s people wanted her as the nominee. She flamed out, so maybe Biden was just the plow for Warren. No. Warren just descended further into wokeness, adding in her schoolmarm scolding voice made it worse. She became a lying fraud scolding you for being white. She can enjoy being the senior Senator from Massachusetts from here on out.

On to the links…

Easter Island’s Collapse – Remember when you were assigned Jared Diamond books in school and they explained everything? Every explanation matched up with the narrative. A famous example was Diamond’s reasoning behind the collapse of Easter Island. With more direct study of the island and archaeological record, we can now put another knife in Diamond’s career. Diamond would tell you that no African could tame zebras unlike the Eurasians and horses, and gullible readers lapped it up. Then you come across black and white photos of euros on zebras or the Rothschild family carriage pulled by zebras.

It’s not just the F-35 – The LCS program was a joke and it looks like the ships will be retired after roughly a decade of service. Our military procurement system works well for the contractors. In an old Social Matter essay, I wrote how the F-35 was a product of old systems. These companies do it because they can, and know that no one will ever say no.

Abolish the CIA – Codevilla goes after the Agency. There is always a need for an intelligence agency to analyze and help manage foreign affairs. The problem is our CIA is not ours. There really is no reforming CIA, only destroying it.

Body Count – Similar to the need for dead bodies in Vietnam, the Chinese have engaged in some curious growth of cases in this outbreak. The number revision explosion of yesterday was not confidence inspiring. If you have friends in China and get information out from them, you know that Wuhan/Hubei is hit the hardest while other areas are relatively mild, it is a very tense situation even if people are healthy, and that cities are under lock-down with varying degrees of severity for enforcement. Those in Shenzen and Beijing were no worries a few weeks ago, but are now under a great deal more stress.

End of the Unipolar Moment – Even if more people become aware that we are overextended and more realize the hyperpower or unipolar moment is over, will the USG deep state and forpol establishment care? No. I expect them to start up some major war within 18 months of Trump’s departure and at a minimum re-ignite random hot spots like Syria and Burma.

Watch Singapore – Singapore has 58 cases of coronavirus. It is aggressively tracking this and mapping who has touched who while in country. It also has a great medical system and could be a guide for how Western nations react when cluster outbreaks occur.

Peter Thiel “Back To The Future” – There are some gems in here as he reviews Douthat’s book. His comments on the culture war are funny as well.

Bernie On Bernie – There is a crude honesty about Trump. He reveals a lot of truths. This article tackles Bernie’s writing from decades ago. It is an inside look into his mind in an era where we are far more likely to see carefully packaged automatons like Pete Buttigieg.

Orban is the way – Someone has caught on that Orban in Hungary has become the foreign example for the right as Venezuela was for the left for years. Orbanism is a much safer model to say you want to emulate compared to what it really is, Putinism. Understand the enemy, go in and reform what needs to be reformed, and build real, behind the scenes power while in nominal power. I have been following Orban’s rise since his first victory, and what they did when first elected was a masterstroke for changing the entire battlefield to protect their power and carve out sovereignty.

Arranged Marriages Are Coming – As things collapse, people with an investment in the future and their grandchildren and grandchildren’s grandchildren in a dynastic sense, will turn to arranged marriages or at least limited choice set ups.People will rediscover that the next generation (as in what genes make it) is too important to leave in the hands of 15-25 year old women’s tingles.

CIA reads everyone’s comms, old school edition – WaPo has a nice article on how the CIA bought the company that made the encryption devices for other nations, allowing the US to read their internal comms. In all honesty, who the hell didn’t see this as a reality?