"Some friends don’t talk much…but they understand everything. “I Miss My Old Dog” is a tender, slow-burning Delta King’s Blues ballad about loyalty, quiet companionship, and the kind of love that never needed words. A soft, fingerpicked acoustic guitar carries the memory gentle and true. The harmonica cries warm and lonesome, like a call across an empty yard at dusk. The groove moves slow and heartfelt, built for porch lights and fading sunsets. This is blues for the best kind of goodbye. For the ones who waited at the door, rode shotgun without complaint, and never once judged. He may be gone… but he’s still walking beside you."
"Will you ever see your beloved pet again? Edgar Cayce reveals the breathtaking spiritual truth about the heavenly reunion with your departed dog or cat. Discover exactly how they wait for you and what happens at the exact moment you cross over. The quiet grief of pet loss brings a heavy, burning question to the heart of every pet parent: "Will I ever actually see you again? And if I do... how does it even happen?" If you have ever looked up at the stars, begging for a concrete answer about where your soulmate dog or cat is right now, you are in the exact right place. We are moving beyond the poetry of the Rainbow Bridge to explore the profound, metaphysical revelations of Edgar Cayce (the "sleeping prophet"). Cayce accessed the Akashic Records to reveal the undeniable truth about animal souls, proving that the heavenly reunion is an absolute, unbreakable law of the universe. Understanding the eternal journey of animal souls, according to Edgar Cayce and the Akashic Records, can profoundly heal your grieving heart.
This isn't just about comforting theories; it's about recognizing that the unbreakable bond of unconditional love never fades. We delve into concepts like vibrational frequencies, soul individualization, and how the universe orchestrates your ultimate reunion. This video aims to be a vital sanctuary of clarity and spiritual awakening for anyone navigating the quiet, chronic ache of pet bereavement. Ultimately, Edgar Cayce's message is one of infinite hope: death is only a transition, and your magnificent reunion is already written in the stars. Have you loved and lost multiple pets? Which beautiful souls are you waiting to reunite with?"
"Seven grocery stores shut their doors in one weekend. An eighty-eight-year-old family market turned off its lights for the last time. A Kroger closed and left the seniors who walked to it with no way to reach food at all. This is not one bad quarter for one struggling chain. It is a nationwide contraction happening store by store, mostly unannounced, filmed by the people it happens to. In this video you'll watch Americans stand in the aisles and do the math out loud. A thirty-dollar roast at a discount grocery store. A hundred and thirty-nine dollars for a cart that looks like nothing. Twenty-one items that cost forty-six percent more than the same twenty-one items a year ago. A single mother with eleven dollars and three kids to feed. A worker walking her last shift. A neighborhood watching its only source of fresh produce get boarded up.
The pattern underneath is measurable. Between 2019 and 2024 food-at-home prices climbed about 25 percent while paychecks moved 21. In 2024 retailers announced more than 7,100 store closures, a 69 percent jump on the year before. USDA put food insecurity in single-mother households at 35.2 percent. United Way's ALICE data counted 29 percent of U.S. households as employed and still unable to cover essentials. What closes with a grocery store is not just a building. It is the last walkable place to buy fresh food in a neighborhood that already had nothing else."
"What's happening at the center of the Trifid Nebula? Three prominent dust lanes that give the Trifid its name all come together. Mountains of opaque dust appear near the bottom, while other dark filaments of dust are visible threaded throughout the nebula. A single massive star visible near the center causes much of the Trifid's glow. The Trifid, cataloged as M20, is only about 300,000 years old, making it among the youngest emission nebulas known.
The star forming nebula lies about 9,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Archer (Sagittarius). The region pictured here spans about 10 light years. The featured image is a composite with luminance taken from an image by the 8.2-m ground-based Subaru Telescope, detail provided by the 2.4-m orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, color data provided by Martin Pugh and image assembly and processing provided by Robert Gendler."
“Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet.” You may recall these words from Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.” There is nothing intrinsically cheerful about the world, she says. To live is to die; it’s all part of the bargain. Stars destroy themselves to make the atoms of our bodies. Every creature lives to eat and be eaten. And into this incomprehensible, unfathomable, apparently stochastic melee stumbles… You and I. With qualities that we have - so far - seen nowhere else. Hope. Humor. A sense of justice. A sense of beauty. Gratitude. But also: Anger. Hurt. Despair. Strangers in a strange land.
Galaxies by the billions turn like St. Catherine Wheels, throwing off sparks of exploding stars. Atoms eddy and flow, blowing hot and cold, groping and promiscuous. A wind of neutrinos gusts through our bodies, Energy billows and swells. A myriad of microorganisms nibble at our flesh.
We have a sense that something purposeful is going on, something that involves us. Something secret, holy and fleet. But we haven’t a clue what it is. We make up stories. Stories in which we are the point of it all. We tell the stories over and over. To our children. To ourselves. And the stories fill up the space of our ignorance. Until they don’t. And then the great yawning spaces open again. And time clangs down on our heads like a pummeling rain, like the collapsing ceiling of the sky. Dazed, stunned, we stagger like giddy topers towards our own swift dissolution. Inexplicably praising. Admiring. Wondering. Giving thanks.”
Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans to gain or maintain power. What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy. If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
– J. K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement, June 5, 2008
"So many big stories in the news today, it’s hard to know where to begin and end. Let’s start with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). It fell below 300-million barrels, just reported for last week. The energy department claims today that the effective bottom (the level at which you start destroying the salt caverns by going any lower) is 70-million barrels. That’s nonsense. It’s what the government wants you to believe or what it wants to believe it can do if it has to, or what it wants Iran to believe, which is all just more denial of reality. Throughout the entire time of the war, the oil industry has been saying the effective bottom of the SPR is around 250-million barrels.
The oil industry has generally accepted that the operational minimum for oil in the SPR, a point at which it would be more difficult to pump out the oil, is somewhere between 250 million and 300 million barrels. Meanwhile, sizing studies done on the SPR in the 1970s recommended an inventory minimum of 250 million barrels…That means we are there… or very close.
“The SPR’s drawdown, distribution and fill capabilities are currently limited and are at risk going forward due to longstanding issues with aging infrastructure compounded with ongoing major construction intended to address them,” the GAO warned in the report. “When you do a drawdown, then you accelerate kind of the degradation of the wells themselves and some of the equipment,” Goldwyn said. “It’s like anything else — you use it a lot, you have to maintain it.” (Morningstar)
The Government Accounting Office says that partial collapse has already been happening. Additionally, equipment failures have left us to where the government cannot pump as low as it claims, even if it decides it wants to. More than a quarter of that [remaining] oil is physically inaccessible, blocked by failing pumps, corroded pipes, and underground salt caverns that have deformed beyond their operational parameters, according to internal government documents. (Eastern Herald)
Somewhere not far below the present level, you start to increase the risk of collapsing the salt caverns. (Because they pump water down into the caverns to float the oil up, and once they have to pump that much water in, the salt dissolves enough to collapse.) The mechanics of salt cavern geology mean that caverns left idle, or drawn down rapidly and then not refilled, can shift in ways that compromise the borehole integrity needed for reliable extraction. Repairing that kind of structural degradation requires engineering work that goes well beyond standard maintenance: remediation of the cavern walls, replacement or relining of wellbore casings, and in some cases the permanent abandonment of caverns that have deformed beyond recovery.
So, we are now close to what we might call “cavern bottoms,” like the phrase “tank bottoms” where they really mean the effective bottom of oil tanks because the final 10-20% fills up with sludge composed of sand, water, paraffin, tars, etc. that you can’t get much fuel out of.
Energy executives made their concern explicit to Congress in June. Oil company representatives warned Trump administration officials and lawmakers that the country’s energy price shock exposure had grown sharply with each successive drawdown, pressing the administration to prioritize refilling over other uses of the reserve.
Keep taking the caverns down below their present level, which now has a 200-handle, and we start significantly increasing the risk of severely damaging the caverns. In fact, they say we should begin refilling them now to avoid causing damage because just sitting at the present level will cause deformity over time due to lack of oil pressure against the sides of the salt and due to the water.
"For now, the United States is carrying the lightest emergency oil buffer it has held in more than four decades, and a significant portion of that buffer cannot be mobilized at the pace the reserve was designed to provide. What the Department of Energy decides next, whether to fund the repairs, begin purchases, or defer both while oil prices are relatively low, will determine whether the SPR exits this period as a functioning emergency instrument or continues to erode toward a level at which it cannot absorb a serious shock." That paragraph was written more than a month ago. The whole situation is only worse now.
Spotty fuel shortages start to hit: The shortages in fuels are starting to emerge. I covered this at greater length in my weekend Deeper Dive, but will add a little here from the latest headlines: First, let’s note that US oil (West Texas Intermediate) has broken back solidly above $80/bbl ($82.20 at the time of this writing), and Brent Crude is pushing back toward $90 ($87.89 at the moment).
Airlines are now scrambling for jet fuel. I already reported on how Gatwick told all pilots flying into London at the start of last week to tank up before heading to London because Gatwick would be out of fuel before the end of last week. (Whether they got their hands on any additional fuel and/or staved off enough refueling to end the week with some jet fuel still in their tanks, I haven’t heard.)
In July, several European airlines announced that they were at risk of running out of jet fuel. Europe has turned to the United States and Asia for alternative fuel imports in recent months but continues to feel the strain of the shortages. The United Kingdom, France, and Germany are extremely vulnerable due to their heavy reliance on the Middle East for their fuel supplies.
Europe set itself up for this to happen if a situation like the present developed. It did that by dialing back its existing refining operations in preference for green energy, and not approving new refineries, making Europe more reliant on fuels refined in the ME. It has regulated itself into deep troubles. The US has done somewhat the same, but still refines enough to export fuels to Europe; however, doing so at such an accelerated rate raises fuel prices for Americans.
On 18th June, the consultancy Energy Aspects forecast a jet fuel supply deficit across Europe of almost 600,000 bpd in the third quarter of the year, compared to surpluses of around 116,000 bpd in the United States and 425,000 bpd in Asia-Pacific. Europe’s inventories totalled around 38 million barrels at the beginning of June, equivalent to roughly 30 days of its fuel demand. The International Energy Agency (IEA) made a similar estimate.
That situation, too, has only gotten worse in the month that has transpired since that report. EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said that the region could face jet fuel shortages near the end of the summer season but that Brussels plans to coordinate releases of national reserves as required. Several European countries have also turned to alternative suppliers to fill the gap.
Even if they step in with the remainder of their crude reserves, they are going to find they don’t have the refining capacity to utilize that crude, now that so much of their supplemental ME refining has been knocked out along with so much Russian refining. It won’t matter that they have the crude, if they don’t have available refining capacity—something I’ve always pointed to as a major chronic problem that would come out of both the war in Iran and the war in Ukraine.
The U.S., Nigeria, Canada, India and South Korea have all stepped in to provide Europe with jet fuel. Meanwhile, in Italy, refiners boosted jet fuel production by around 10 per cent during the first four months of the year, helping to meet national demand. As jet fuel contributes around 20 to 25 per cent of an airline’s operating costs, keeping ticket prices down has been difficult. Some airlines have already been forced to cut flights… The low-cost Irish airline Ryanair said that 20 per cent of its unhedged fuel was hit hard by price spikes, leading operating costs to increase by 11 per cent.
Californian government operates with the same kind of heat-damaged brains that Europe does, pushing for more green energy by tightening the noose on the energy they already have, so it is in the worst condition of any US state as we move now into the tighter phase of the energy crisis where physical fuel shortages are just starting to emerge in major parts of the world, putting more demand on US fuel, which will raise US fuel prices.
More war, even with less war: From there, let’s talk about the war because that will have something to say about how much worse the crisis gets (which is already going to be way worse than most people realize because we’ve been riding on buffers that are now pretty well wrung out). As I’ve said, when the buffers run out completely on their ability to deliver, then the fuel shortages will start showing up. In some countries that is already happening, but not noticeably yet in the US, though things have gotten really tight for airlines, and prices on Ag diesel have been through the roof compared to anything farmers have seen in years before.
Trump has now caved in on his air strikes, as I said in my last Deeper Dive was looking much more likely now. Today he announced that, instead of relying on more bombing, he’s going to rely on the effectiveness of his own blockade at laying siege to Iran. That means Iran keeps its blockade in place, something it has announced in the headlines below that it will do, regardless, until the US meets several of its demands, which present a very high bar for Trump. So, that means no flow of oil as Iran will continue to enforce its blockade via its war on shipping.
Those banking on the deal between Iran and Oman to open the Strait of Hormuz, have been breathing the carbon monoxide of burning oil wells, pipelines and refineries far too long. As I made clear in my Deeper Dive (“Oil Pressure on Prices Is Rising Dramatically and Has Just Entered the Danger Zone”), Iran has said several time in the last few days (officially) that the deal it is striking with Oman will NOT open the strait back up!
The deal only determines how navigation through the strait will be controlled and profited off of by Iran and Oman after it finally does open up. As I noted in the Deeper Dive, some other Arab states have already signed their acquiescence to the new agreement, so Trump’s opinion on it no longer even matters. You can read in the headlines below about all the demands Iran has now added to Trump that must be met before it will reopen the strait.
In fact, the war continues to rage on from Iran’s side as it attacked several more ships over the weekend, noted in that Deeper Dive and in the headlines below. This it does to continue to rigidly enforce its own blockade. So, no, there is no reprieve in site for the flow of oil out of the either of the bodies of water that line the Arabian Peninsula.
To put a good face on it, President Trump now says he is only “semi-negotiating” with Iran. That is all he has been doing, according to Iran, for some time, because they kept telling him, “We don’t know who it is you think you are negotiating with, but it isn’t us!” When they announced weeks ago they would no longer negotiate with Donald Trump, they meant it; but he kept saying they were begging him for a deal and were deep in negotiations with the US. Their list of their demands that emerged over the weekend, which they say must be met before they will end their blockade on either major body of water, is certainly not what “begging for a deal” looks like. As I reported last Thursday, “Iran Has Trump Right Where it Wants him and Is Turning up the Heat!”
As I also said over the weekend, Trump will do his best to spin his retreat into something that helps him avoid losing face, and that’s why he’s calling it “partial negotiations.” “Whatever,” says Iran. “Still not negotiating.”
The perfect storm
Another powerful story is told by Bob Moriarty in the the video I’ve posted below. He notes the same confluence of storms coming against the US and the world that I’ve been calling out this year and says they are going to merge at a catastrophic level this fall. (I’ve started the video at the part where it gets dangerous, but you can also take it back to the beginning to get a good overview of the precious metals market as it stands right now.)
Just as I’ve been doing, Bob connects the dots of our many shortages with troubles in Japan and says the troubles being faced by the yen and supported by the US Treasury are going to become a lot worse than what we’ve heard so far. A financial typhoon has broken out in Japan, and it is on a path directly toward the US since Japan is the largest foreign bond holder of US debt right now.
Bob also predicts a serious global famine due to the fuel shortages, fertilizer shortages, worker shortages (in the US) and the Super El Niño - risks I’ve been tracking here as well, though I haven’t been as strong on the famine prediction, aiming more along the line of food shortages. That is something I’ve never heard him predict this forcefully in the past either, but risks of the perfect storm in food and finance are certainly compounding, and some parts of the world are almost certain to face famine.
There is also a lot of powerful stuff about the collapse of the labor market in the headlines today and how bad it really is. I’ve been saying all year that the labor situation is worse than the headline figures would let on - calling it a stealth recession - and now we are seeing, just like with the distortions that have already formed in those salt caverns, that, beneath the surface, the trouble is deeper than headline numbers like the unemployment rate let on. I may get to that in a Deeper Dive, but this is enough for today."
Israel Calls Emergency War Cabinet, U.S DEFCON 2 Activated"
"Iran has confirmed its first operational nuclear warhead. This is not a drill. Not a bluff. Not a diplomatic maneuver. The Supreme Leader's statement, the physical device broadcast on state television, and the simultaneous ballistic missile test have left no room for interpretation. Israel's Emergency War Cabinet has been in session for hours. Washington activated DEFCON 2 - the highest nuclear alert since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Forty years of American foreign policy built around preventing this moment just failed. In this analysis, I break down exactly what Iran confirmed, what DEFCON 2 actually means in operational terms, and why the options left on the table are all dangerous."
"Life is not what you see, but what you've projected.
It's not what you've felt, but what you've decided.
It's not what you've experienced, but how you've remembered it.
It's not what you've forged, but what you've allowed.
And it's not who's appeared, but who you've summoned.
And this should serve you well until you find what you already have."
- The Universe
○
“There are no accidents. If it's appeared on your life radar, this is why: to teach you that dreams come true; to reveal that you have the power to fix what's broken and heal what hurts; to catapult you beyond seeing with just your physical senses; and to lift the veils that have kept you from seeing that you're already the person you dreamed you'd become. There are no accidents. And believe me, that was one heck of a dream.”
"I was introduced to Ben Hecht, many years ago now, by my friend Paul Greenfield. Like most people of my generation I had never heard of him. He had been fairly famous some decades earlier, known first for his cynical and cutting criticisms, then as Hollywood’s premier script doctor. Here’s a typical Hecht aside: "Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock."
And here’s one of the greatest telegrams of all time, and the one that brought him to Hollywood. It was sent to him by his friend, Herman Mankiewicz: "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around."
As the years went by, however, and as his fame ebbed and flowed, Hecht became something more. In fact, he became a thinker of great depth, and I’m quite sure you’ll benefit from spending some time with his thoughts. And so here, without embellishment, are the Hecht entries in my quotes file. Enjoy:
"Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself." ("Perfidy")
"The idea that there was something more powerful in life than the whim of kings, that there was a justice that the mind could impose on the might of nations, began with the Jews. The Jews were the artists and egoists of this idea. It was so powerful an idea that they, with artistic modesty, had to attribute it to God rather than to themselves." ("Guide For The Bedeviled")
"A simple fact entered my head one day and put an end to my revolt against the Deity. It occurred to me that God was not engaged in corrupting the mind of man but in creating it. This may sound like no fact at all, or like the most childish of quibbles. But whatever it is, it brought me a sigh of relief, a slightly bitter sigh. I was relieved because instead of beholding a man as a finished and obviously worthless product, unable to bring sanity into human affairs, I looked on him as a creature in the making. And lo, I was aware that like my stooped and furry brothers, the apes, I am God’s incomplete child. My groping brain, no less than my little toe, is a mechanism in His evolution-busy hands." ("A Child of The Century")
"There is also a new sort of fame in our day that has never quite been known before. It is a fame seemingly invented out of whole cloth, based upon nothing and needing only a press agent to keep it alive. This new species of fame does not wait for a man to win a race or a worldly prize before riveting its neon light on his head… They are famous for stopping in hotels, for holding hands in public, for speaking to each other, for having babies, for getting invited to parties… So deep is the limbo into which industry, politics and overpopulation is shoving us, that we ask of fame that it makes us aware of men rather than supermen. A depersonalized citizenry avid for identity has invented this new type of fame. The lonely city dwellers, whose human faces are lost in the shuffle of world problems and mechanized existence, elect representatives to live for them." ("A Child of The Century")
"They are unable to think except in homage to other thoughts." ("A Child of The Century")
"The mystery was chiefly this – that there was seemingly a tiny proportion of the human family born without greed, who entered life without a fear of tomorrow, without an urge to lose themselves safely in the known and practical words of their elders." ("A Child of The Century")
"… a time darkened by the pall of government." ("A Child of The Century")
"The more we let others sing, dance and perform for us, the more empty we become." ("A Child of The Century")
"It grows ever harder to make friends in a complex world, for friendship requires contact. But one can make enemies of those one has never seen or heard. This lonely enemy-making activity is becoming more and more the American way." ("A Child of The Century")
"… most of his exaltations have nothing to do with himself." ("A Child of The Century")
"To my astonishment, there appeared a man I hardly knew with totally alien moods. That man was I. I seemed to be looking with eyes I never had used on a planet not yet inhabited… The sense that life was new, and all land and sea were at their beginnings made me happy… I had the illusion of being distributed around various parts of the room in which I lay. There seemed to be a number of me’s, and try as I would I was unable to assemble them. I was fascinated with being a number of people and discussed this with Rose and her sister Minna. I had no thought for my illness, and the fact that Rose and the doctors believed me seriously ill seemed absurd. I had never felt so remarkably alive, nor so full of eagerness…
It was a white, sunlit hospital room in which visitors sat and talked. But I looked on a strange world in this room. I had never known or felt this room before. It was a world of gentleness. My heart ached with happiness when I beheld it. The kindliness of the faces than beheld me, the fine, cool talent of the doctors and nurses that tended me were only a part of the gentleness that embraced me. The gentleness was mostly something within me. I looked on everything with love. As the days passed, each morning became a rendezvous at which I arrived eager and smiling. I needed no visitors, books or music to keep me diverted. The day flying in through the window was enough. The sky darkening, the night coming delighted me. The word God did not enter my head, but a word that seemed the same was always there. It was the word life. I felt a gentleness toward people because they were part of a happy mystery of moving and breathing. I was pleased by the way they walked and felt close to all who came into my room, including the hospital barber, as if they were kinsfolk.
I returned to Nyak on the day Jenny was having a birthday party. The garden was filled with the voices of her four-and-five-year-old friends. Their whoops and squeals of joy seemed the perfect sounds of mankind… I though of the possibility of dying and found myself smiling at the impossibility of such an event. The love that had come to me a few weeks ago swelled my heart and brightened the room… again I lay through dreamy hours, making love to time as if it were a dancing girl… There were few thoughts in my head. At times I remembered incidents of past years and made notes of them. The memories were curiously alike. They were all happy. I loved not only what was around me, but all that had ever been. Gratitudes I had never felt brought tears to my eyes at night and I wondered what I could do to thank the sea, the stars and the multitude of days through which I had come. After a few weeks I bought a stock of pencils and began to write this book." ("A Child of The Century")
"In this new interview, Colonel Douglas Macgregor argues that Iran has captured the strategic initiative and warns that the United States could respond by launching another major strike with its available bombers, aircraft, and precision munitions. Macgregor says the United States faces a serious munitions problem, arguing that stocks may have fallen to only 20 to 30 percent of what is needed. A 2023 CSIS war game similarly found that some US long-range precision-guided munitions could be exhausted in less than one week during a major conflict, while a 2026 CSIS assessment says the Iran war has significantly depleted some long-range missile stocks.
The discussion also examines Ukraine, where repeated drone strikes have damaged Russian refineries and disrupted energy infrastructure, while US intelligence and targeting support for Ukrainian deep strikes has been widely reported. Macgregor argues that the United States should leave the Gulf conflict rather than attempt to preserve global military dominance, while the interview's later conspiratorial explanations are rejected as unsupported, leaving the central question of military capacity, economic pressure, and escalation as the focus."
"This week, we will witness a convergence of celestial events that is truly extraordinary. On August 12th, we will be able to see a parade of 6 planets in the sky, a total solar eclipse and the peak of the Perseid meteor shower all on the same day. I was curious, and so I asked Google if this had ever happened before and I was told that these three events “have never all occurred on the same day in recorded modern astronomical history”. I was also told that the probability of all three events taking place on the same day is “roughly 1 in several hundred million”. Could it be possible that God is using the heavens to try to get our attention? If so, could it be possible that incredibly significant events are about to happen?
I wrote about this extremely unusual convergence of celestial events last month, but now that the day is approaching I just had to write about it again. In Luke chapter 21, Jesus specifically instructed us to watch for “signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars” in the days just prior to His return. August 12th will probably be the most spectacular day for heavenly events since the Great American Eclipse of April 8th, 2024. Needless to say, all sorts of historic events have occurred since that total solar eclipse.
Now another total solar eclipse is coming, along with a parade of 6 planets and the peak of the Perseid meteor shower…The sky is about to put on an incredible show through August, as celestial events occur throughout the month. But one day in particular will offer the ultimate stargazing experience. On Wednesday, Aug. 12, there will be a planetary alignment early in the morning, a solar eclipse in the afternoon, a new moon at night and the Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak. We have never seen this happen before, and we will never see it again.
The planetary parade will include all of the planets in our solar system except for Venus… A six-planet parade begins in the pre-dawn hours on Tuesday, and continues for several nights afterward, according to The Planetary Society. This planet parade will include Jupiter, Mercury, Mars, Uranus, Saturn and Neptune. For those wanting to see this six-planet spectacle, you’ll likely only be able to see four planets without any aid: Jupiter, Mercury, Mars and Saturn. To catch Uranus, binoculars will be necessary and to witness Neptune, you’ll need a telescope.
Of course that parade of planets is not the main event. The main event on August 12th will be the total solar eclipse… Millions of people across Europe and North America will witness a solar eclipse on Wednesday, Aug. 12, but the event will vary greatly depending on the location. A narrow corridor stretching from Greenland to northeastern Spain will experience a total solar eclipse, much of Europe will enjoy a deep partial eclipse, and parts of North America will see a smaller partial eclipse.
A partial solar eclipse will be visible in 26 U.S. states. If you live in an area of the country that will get a partial solar eclipse, it will “look like a cookie with a small bite taken out of it”… The Aug. 12 total solar eclipse will only be visible from Greenland, Iceland, Spain, Russia and parts of Portugal. Residents in some U.S. states will be able to see a partial eclipse using specialized eclipse glasses. In the U.S., the sun will look like a cookie with a small bite taken out of it, according to NASA.
Following the total solar eclipse, everyone will be able to enjoy the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. NASA says that it will be the “best meteor shower of the year”… The “best meteor shower of the year,” according to NASA, is about to begin. The Perseids meteor shower, which can produce up to 50 to 100 shooting stars an hour, will be active from July 17 to Aug. 24, according to the American Meteor Society (AMS). This year, the shower will peak around the same time as a total solar eclipse on Aug. 12, according to USA TODAY’s previous reporting.
This is our only chance to enjoy all three of these things on a single day, because such a convergence will never happen again in any of our lifetimes. I asked Google about this, and I was told that the mathematical odds of all three events occurring on the exact same day “are roughly 1 in several hundred million”…The mathematical odds of a total solar eclipse, a six-planet parade, and the peak of the Perseid meteor shower falling on the exact same calendar day are roughly 1 in several hundred million, making it an exceptionally rare, “once-in-a-generation” cosmic coincidence.
Of course this strange confluence of events in the heavens will be occurring at the same time when war, famine, pestilence and natural disasters are breaking out all over the planet. Over the weekend, the historic wildfires in western North America got even worse. In fact, over 20,000 people in western Canada were just evacuated from their homes…A large wildfire is growing rapidly in western Canada, threatening towns in British Columbia. More than 20,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes. The entire town of Summerland, with a population of 12,000, is covered by the evacuation order. In addition, another 8,000 residents in nearby Peachland have been ordered to evacuate. The fire has destroyed houses as it spreads, but it is unclear how many.
I have previously written about how this is a record year for wildfires in Oregon, and it turns out that Utah is setting records too…A fire in central Utah has burned more than 114,000 acres as of Saturday afternoon, becoming the state’s largest wildfire this year. Speaking at a fire briefing earlier this week, Utah Governor Spencer Cox noted that the blaze is the third to reach roughly 100,000 acres this year, “which is not a record that we’re proud of, but we’re grateful for all of the work that’s happening here.”
Meanwhile, it appears that the Middle East could be about to erupt in flames for a different reason. The Iranians continue to block the Strait of Hormuz, and they keep telling us that they will never end their nuclear program. There are signs that the U.S. may not be willing to continue military action, and so Israel is very strongly considering going it alone…Israel is preparing for the possibility of carrying out unilateral military strikes against Iran if the United States reaches an agreement with Tehran and moves to end the ongoing war, Israeli media reported Saturday. According to Israel’s Channel 13, the Israeli military is continuing to prepare for potential independent operations against Iran, keeping the option open even if Washington decides to step back from direct military action.
If Israel conducts airstrikes in Iran, the Iranians will respond with fury. Ballistic missiles will come raining down on Israeli cities, and that would cause the Israelis to strike back really hard. In such a scenario, the risk of going all the way up the escalation ladder would be extremely high. And it just so happens that at this exact moment in history we are witnessing an amazing convergence of heavenly events that has never happened before and will never happen again."
"Too many people are allowing their past, bad relationships, failed businesses, financial mistakes, and other people's opinions to control their future. In this video, Dan explains why you have to clear your head, let go of the people who hurt you, take responsibility for your choices, and start building the life you want today. Nobody else can create your happiness for you. You have to take control. Life is difficult right now. Money is tight, businesses are struggling, jobs are changing, and many people are under enormous financial and personal pressure. But your circumstances don't have to define your future. Surround yourself with good people, protect your peace, take care of yourself, make better decisions, and keep moving forward. Your past is behind you. What you do today is what matters. Be kind to everybody you come in contact with - you have no idea what they're going through."
Let the streets soak in their red capitalist blood.”
- Hasan Piker
"You can’t overstate the power of ideas, especially bad ideas, and super-especially bad ideas that are really just manifestations of emotional states such as envy, vengefulness, enmity, sloth, and greed. Did somebody say communism? A lot of people are saying it lately. This garbage barge of management nostrums for the ills of advanced industrial society has steamed back into New York Harbor and is busy now dispatching its agents across the land.
It’s yet another youth movement in an America which cultivates them at regular intervals associated with Fourth Turnings. I happened to be in college during the last one, the hippie rebellion of the late 1960s. It was mostly adolescent sexual energy tinged with resentment over the military draft and the war that went with it, plus a lot of marketing opportunities for music and clothing.
The US economy back then was still a roaring industrial engine. The comforts of that bygone time are legendary. You could easily support a family on an assembly-line job. College was cheap as hell my State U charged about $500-a-year for tuition and room-and-board. (Imagine that!) You could hide-out from the draft there, too. The new birth-control pill turned campus life into a non-stop orgy with classes for R & R. Is it any wonder that the hippies morphed so easily into hedge funders?
This time around it’s pretty ugly for the youth demographic. College for them turned out to be a life-altering swindle, burdening the young with unpayable loans that can’t even be escaped via bankruptcy. Even the sex angle was ruined by vindictive feminism and the trans fad. Work is scarce and it’s nearly impossible to make a living at it, that is, pay for food and a roof over your head (and, ugh, those loan repayments!). Plus, work is mostly found only in meaningless service to despotic corporations. The most enterprising might land a job in an NGO, but the work there is “activism,” which is pretend work, productive of nothing but the acting-out of grievances.
These grievances, it has been noted by many high-toned observers like VDH, are real enough to provoke a desperate reach for remedies, and communism is a ready-made portfolio for all that. In the 1960s, we still had the reverberations of the civil rights crusade setting a basic moral tone for hippiedom. But fifty years later, that has all mutated into a race-and-gender hustle that adds so much piquancy to the recycled communist agenda. (Note that a hustle is a low-grade racket, and a racket is an effort to get something for nothing.) So, today’s communist program is not just a war against the injustices of capital, but a jihad against the Western Civ horse that capital rode in on, and most particularly the white horseman up in the saddle.
Hasan Piker, the present guru and demigod of the movement, put it pretty plainly in a Twitch-stream a few years back when he was rising to stardom on Uncle Cenk Uygur’s Young Turk Network. “We want more immigrants to come into your countries and then they’re gonna fuck your sisters and then your daughters - we’re here to destroy the White race, bitch.” Piker is also a leading amplifier of Jew-hatred and other calumnies such as the USA “deserved” the 9/11 attacks. Apropos of our action in Iran, Piker quipped, American soldiers should be shot at like cattle (link).
Piker is rumored to have earned over $6-million on Twitch. He’s quite tall (6’4”) ripped, and a snappy dresser, often sporting old-fashioned sport-jackets with a necktie (dress for success?) and is probably catnip to the cat ladies of Gen Z, who comprise the bulk of the activist corps of the rising Gen Z Democratic Socialists - as the communists have styled themselves to avoid stimulating any action around the Communist Control Act of 1954 (50 U.S.C. §§ 841–844), which categorizes the Communist Party per se as “an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States.”
Altogether, Hasan Piker and the Democratic Socialists pose quite a vexing problem for the pathetic, old, square, bloviating chuds in the Democratic Party of the Chuck Schumer/Cory Booker ilk. Other bloggers (e.g., Jeff Childers at Coffee & Covid) have observed that Democratic Socialism is the monster that the Dems have been working on sedulously for more than a decade in their Frankenstein lab of Gramscian cultural overthrow. The monster has escaped and is now out on the highways and in the hedges terrorizing the public.
You are surely aware that the entire regular agenda of the Democratic Party has for some time been patently insane. They are still wasting the nation’s patience with debates over the self-evident idiocy of men in women’s sports, resistance to the deportation of illegal immigrants, and their obviously evil opposition to voter ID. Communism is just the icing on that fruitcake. The recent primary election victories of such prodigies as Abdul El-Sayed, Melat Kiros, and Darializa Avila Chevalier, along with the ongoing capers of Mayor Zohran Mamdani pretending to govern New York City, must be giving the old guard the vapors.
And yet, the most pathetic actual commie among them, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), the Jewish, Israel-hating alte kocker, abides and even thrives in his new role as Godfather to this hatch of larval communist youth. This is Bernie’s revenge on the party that robbed him of two presidential nominations. He’s doing what all good Jacobins do — what they live for! He has sentenced his old comrades of the DNC to death. He’s stuffing his old enemies into the tumbrel and carting them off to the public square for execution. They can see it coming and it’s giving them the heebie-jeebies. And finally, of course, the Mamdanis and El-Sayeds and their spawn will come for Bernie, too, leaving only AOC in the ensanguinated ruins to become America’s Eva Perón. Wait for that!"
Piker: “We want more immigrants to come into your countries and then they’re gonna f**k your sisters and then your daughters. We’re here to destroy the White Race, Bitch.”
Poitou, France - "The heat! Here in France, this is the fifth heat wave of the summer. Temperatures are expected of over 100 degrees on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, of all the things Donald Trump may have done wrong, so far, the one that will do the most damage is the least controversial of all. In 2017, the US empire was already headed for bankruptcy. Trump just picked up the speed. But he did something else; he introduced a new style of governing. Most commentators rail against the style; few notice, or care, about the substance. And as of August 2026, it probably doesn’t matter who is in the White House, or whether they are an East Coast slick...or a Kentucky hick; the ship is sinking.
Last week, we looked at how Donald Trump’s governing style was influenced by his mentor Roy Cohn, who had learned from ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno, and others. But how does that connect to the Primary Trend...or the decline of the empire Here’s the key to understanding the Primary Trend...and what is most likely to happen next. After the introduction of the 1971 fake dollar and low-rate regime, borrowing was easier than earning. And now, the US owes nearly $40 trillion. Half of that has been added since Donald Trump first moved into the White House. We have no reason to think that won’t continue. The total could be approaching $50 trillion in national debt when Trump leaves office.
Since July 1st, US debt increased by $450 billion. Over the last thirteen months, it has gone up by $3.6 trillion. Federal debt is increasing at $7 billion per day. At this rate, it should hit $40 trillion before the end of this year. By the end of the decade, it could be closing in on $60 trillion. And then...the sky’s the limit.
We are ‘borrowing’ from the future, say the sages. ‘We owe it to ourselves,’ they add. But we are not borrowing at all...since there is no chance of paying it back. And the people we are supposedly borrowing from have no say in the matter; some of them have yet to reach the cradle let alone the voting booth.
In order to pay off the debt, we would have to earn a $40 trillion surplus. But it’s not economically, politically or even mathematically possible. Have you seen any mention of it in the nation’s press? Any plans for it from the Treasury department? No? Why not? Because no serious person thinks it will ever happen. They will serve ice cream in Hell before the debt is repaid.
As for ‘owing it to ourselves,’ do you own Treasury bonds, dear reader? We don’t. Chief among lenders are foreigners, to whom we owe about $9 trillion. The Japanese are a special case. The Japanese government lent money at ‘ZIRP’ - zero interest rate policy. Japanese ‘investors’ borrowed from the Bank of Japan and then lent (buying bonds) to the Bank of the US (the US Treasury). And now, as Tom and Dan have been describing it, the US prints money not only to keep its own credit bubble pumped up, but Japan’s too. Bessent et al are afraid that if Japan’s currency crashes, speculators will have to unwind all those T-bond trades...probably causing a crash in the US debt market.
At the current rate, for every dollar in tax receipts, the US spends about $1.33. Just getting to a balanced budget would require giving up nearly $2 trillion of spending annually...equal to 6% or 7% of GDP. Then, to repay the existing debt over a 15-year period would add another $2.6 trillion...bringing the annual total to 15% of GDP.
Recall that after the Franco-Prussian war, France was obliged to pay reparations equal to 25% of GDP, which were intended to cripple her economy. Paying off the US debt - even if begun next year - and adding in the 15-year cost of foregone deficits...would be a total burden of 225% of GDP. Not going to happen.
No, we are not borrowing from the future; we are stealing from it – spending money that we haven’t earned and never will earn. It’s a swindle, not honest finance. Borrowers will not repay. Creditors will not get the money they expect. Lenders are already losing money...and have been for the last six years - the longest draw-down in the bond market in history.
Interest rates are at their highest level in 19 years...with the 30-year US Treasury at 5.27% yield. That’s up from less than 1% when the Primary Trend struck bottom in 2020. But it is set to go much higher. The last major yield cycle ended in 1981 after 44 years of rising rates. At its peak, the US 10-year Treasury yielded more than 15%. And that was when the feds still owed less than $1 trillion.
The empire is listing badly. But the rats are not abandoning the ship; they’re looting it. As the opinion piece in Les Echos put it...‘a society that cannot control its expenses...turns towards extraction,’...using the tactics perfected by leading political economists, such as ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno. Poor ‘Fat Tony’ took the rap as head of the Genovese crime family. But his right-hand man, Vincent ‘The Fish’ Cafaro turned informant and caught him admitting to ‘Matty the Horse’ Ianniello that he wasn’t ‘the boss.’ That job was held by Philip ‘Benny Squint’ Lombardo. Too late. ‘Fat Tony’ went to jail and died there in 1992.
And there is where our dots connect. In the Empire, as in the mafia, the circus ringmaster is out in front. People love him or hate him. But he’s seldom the one really running the show. Donald Trump gets the headlines...but the real ‘boss’ is deeper, darker, and more permanent - the military, big Pharma, lobbyists, Wall Street, and the government itself. Elect whomever you want; the show goes on. And the deficits continue."
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI)is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding,safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
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