"Netanyahu and Trump: Agents of Chaos Playing By The Same Self-declared Rules"

"Netanyahu and Trump: Agents of Chaos

 Playing By The Same Self-declared Rules"

by Leo Hohmann

"The state of Israel has increasingly become the mirror image of America, or maybe it’s the other way around. I’m still not sure which is the dog and which is the tail being wagged by the dog, but you get my point. The two nation states have become so intertwined that at times it gets difficult in the overall specter of geopolitics to figure out where one state begins and the other ends.

The dominant mentality in both countries is that they are chosen of God and are somehow “exceptional” among the nations, giving them license to impose their will on other nations and expect those nations to lie down in perfect submission. If a nation refuses to lie down and actually defends its own national interests, they are labeled as terrorists and treated accordingly.

Both countries have aggressive, warmongering leaders sitting in the highest seats of power who feel that, because God is on their side, they cannot lose to their enemies. So they provoke their enemies in hopes of drawing a response that will then justify the war-like treatment that had been planned all along. After years of intense propaganda in which the citizens of these two countries are herded into opposing echo chambers, both are hopelessly divided.

That brings us to the election results in Israel. Israelis flocked to the polls on October 27 and when the ballots were counted, no party won enough seats to control the government outright. The incumbent party of PM Benjamin Netanyahu did not win the 62 seats needed to control the government but it did win 53 seats, more than any other party. Here’s the latest numbers:

· Netanyahu bloc: 53 seats

· Opposition bloc: 48 seats

· Arab Parties: 19 seats.

Netanyahu did not win, but nor did he lose. So what does Netanyahu do? Emboldened by the results, he doesn’t try to unify the people of his country and draw them together. That’s what any normal politician would do in such a situation. But no, not Netanyahu. He takes the opposite approach. In a post to X today, he claimed, without any proof, that the election was “stolen” by Arab parties that “support terrorism.”

Netanyahu may be giving us a clue as to the card that his friend Donald Trump will play when his party loses the midterm elections next Tuesday, Nov. 3. Trump has already made it clear that if he loses it could only be because the other side rigged the deck against him. In Trump’s mind, he has never lost an election and if he were to lose, it could never be because a majority of Americans have come to realize he’s a theatrical drama queen who lies continuously and acts recklessly. No, it could only be because his opponents cheated.

These are the actions of dictators. Expect them to pull out every trick in the book to hold onto power and throw the world into deeper and deeper chaos and division, as this provides cover for the international war crimes that both men have committed and want to continue committing. In both cases, they know that if they lose their hold on power there’s a good chance they could lose their freedom and wind up behind bars.

Just today it was announced by U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) that the United States committed another round of extra-judicial killings on the high seas. A boat was blown out of the water in the Eastern Pacific by the U.S. Navy, killing all five souls aboard, under the assumption that the boat was being piloted by drug runners. This makes 243 people who have been killed in this way since Trump launched this super-aggressive and flat-out illegal policy in late 2025. The U.S. Southern Command stated in a press release that the boat was traveling “along established narco-trafficking routes” and that was enough to presume their guilt.

This would be like you driving down a boulevard in an American city and the cops pull you over. Two officers jump out of their squad car and approach your vehicle, and at first you think they are coming to write you a ticket for some alleged traffic violation, but instead they pull out their service pistols and open fire on your vehicle, killing you and any other passengers you may have in your car. When your family inquires of the police, demanding an explanation for their reckless and irresponsible behavior, they say your loved one was traveling along a known drug-trafficking corridor and that’s all they needed to act on the spot as judge, jury and executioner. No search of your vehicle. No arrests. No trials. You were driving through an area they didn’t want you traversing so they murdered you in cold blood. They provide documents showing there were a number of drug busts along that boulevard and so you wouldn’t have been driving down it unless you were also a drug dealer. Guilt by association. Case closed. See you later.

Netanyahu is equally guilty of crimes against humanity by deliberately killing unarmed civilians in huge numbers and then dismissing it as collateral damage that couldn’t be avoided if he’s going to eliminate the evil terrorists. Even if the targeted guy was a terrorist, what gives any country the right to act in this way, to bomb an entire apartment building full of innocent men, women and children because one terrorist happens to live there? Nobody with a conscience, certainly not a valid Christian conscience, would defend such behavior.

But as long as the world is embroiled in highly orchestrated wars, famines, protests and chaos, these men will continue to get away with their crimes. And not just them but the entire apparatus that surrounds them and enables them. They will continue to launch new wars of aggression in the name of “peace and democracy” that kill and slaughter thousands, if not millions, while blaming it all on their enemies."

- https://leohohmann.substack.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Atmospheres"

Deuter, "Atmospheres"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant.

The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid."

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

I Blinked and It Was Autumn…"

Full screen recommended.

oltsev art,

"I Blinked and It Was Autumn…"

"This film follows a handful of quiet moments - a mailbox latched shut, a woodpile counted and recounted, a last boat waved off from a harbor - small acts of people getting ready for a winter none of them quite remember agreeing to. And somewhere in all of it, a life doing the same thing, at its own unhurried pace.

AI doesn't always prove the Dead Internet Theory. I'm open about using AI - and genuinely glad to be. Not as a shortcut, but as a tool. The way a filmmaker uses a camera, or a composer uses a piano. Every idea on this channel begins in a human mind. The concepts, the imagery, the words - they come from me. And lately, more and more often, they begin with you - with stories you leave in the comments that stay with me long after I've read them. The lyrics are mine. The visual direction is mine. The subtle details and quiet references woven into each frame - I'm always quietly hoping someone will notice them, and every time you do and write about it, it means everything. Reading hundreds of your comments, I feel something I didn't expect: that this work reaches people in the way I hoped it would. That it makes you feel something real. That's the whole point."

"5 Signs Your Dog or Cat Is Trying to Tell You Something"

Full screen recommended.

Native American Elder,

"5 Signs Your Dog or Cat Is Trying to Tell You Something"

Delta Blues Brother, "I Was Your Whole Damn Life"

Full screen recommended.

Delta Blues Brother, 

"I Was Your Whole Damn Life"

"Your dog is part of your life. But to your dog, you are life itself. You have work. Friends. Problems. Traffic. Bills. Places to go and people to see. Your dog has something much simpler. You. Your smell. Your voice. Your footsteps coming toward the door. The sound of your key. The moment you finally come home. “I Was Your Whole Damn Life” is an emotional Delta blues song about dogs, unconditional love, companionship, getting older, gratitude, faith, and the painful truth that their lives are much shorter than ours. Warm resonator guitar and soulful harmonica carry one realization that's easy to forget while they're still beside us: “You were fifteen years of mine... but I was every year of yours.” Maybe we don't always get the dog we imagined. Sometimes the calm one teaches us to slow down. The stubborn one teaches us patience. The needy one teaches us presence. And sometimes, during the hardest years of our lives, one simply stays beside us when we desperately need something that doesn't judge, question or leave. Maybe that's coincidence. Maybe it isn't. “Maybe we don't get the dog we wanted... maybe we get the one we need.” And there's another lesson worth remembering while they're still here. Your day might have had a hundred different moments. Your dog's day may have revolved around just one: the moment you came home. So put the phone down sometimes. Sit on the floor. Scratch behind those ears. Take the longer walk. Because someday that doorway will be painfully quiet, and you'd give damn near anything to hear those paws running toward you one more time."

The Daily "Near You?"

Leesburg, Florida, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: e.e. cummings, "Humanity I Love You"

"Humanity i love you because when you’re hard 

up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink..."

"Humanity I Love You"

"Humanity i love you

because you would rather black the boots of

success than enquire whose soul dangles from his

watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you

unflinchingly applaud all

songs containing the words country home and

mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because

when you’re hard up you pawn your

intelligence to buy a drink and when

you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and

because you are continually committing

nuisances but more

especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you

are perpetually putting the secret of

life in your pants and forgetting

it’s there and sitting down on it

and because you are

forever making poems in the lap

of death 

Humanity, i hate you"

- e. e. cummings

"H.L. Mencken Explains American Idiocracy 100 Years Ago"

"H.L. Mencken Explains 

American Idiocracy 100 Years Ago"

by Joey Clark

"I am happy to report one of my favorite H.L. Mencken quotes has been making the rounds again on social media: “As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Though I am happy to see people exposed to Mencken’s political invective in any dosage no matter how small, I worry many are not quite getting the point. I fear they may only be wading into the shallow end of the pool. So, allow me to now baptize you in the dangerous depths of Mencken’s political cynicism.

Forgive me if you are reading this and have already been christened in these rarified waters. If so, I say bravo! Encore! I suppose it won’t hurt to be christened again. I try to do so weekly. One can never be too certain about one’s political soul.

The modern use of Mencken’s “moron” quote almost always seems to focus on the hilarious punchline – the “downright moron” label applying to a particular president or presidential candidate – without paying enough attention to the setup. Not only is a president being called idiotic; so too is the whole democratic ideal itself.

According to Mencken, mass democracy and the culture it produces marches us towards conformity, folly, and stupidity. So, the question remains – why, as “democracy is perfected,” does the inner soul of the people reflect morondom? Well, Mencken provides a full answer in his 1920 essay (the source of his “moron” quote) on the presidential election of that year, “Bayard and Lionheart.” “Neither candidate reveals the slightest dignity of conviction,” writes Mencken. “Neither cares a hoot for any discernible principle. Neither, in any intelligible sense, is a man (now "person") of honor.”

However, Mencken then takes a turn. He shifts his focus away from the gladiators in the arena and onto the blood-thirsty spectators. He reminds us that democracy is not about the propagation of diverse and sound ideas, but winning votes at all costs. And how does one win votes?

“Of the two candidates, that one wins who least arouses the suspicions and distrusts of the great masses of simple men,” writes Mencken. “Well, what are more likely to arouse those suspicions and distrusts than ideas, convictions, principles? The plain people are not hostile to shysterism, save it be gross and unsuccessful… But they shy instantly and inevitably from the man who comes before them with notions that they cannot immediately translate into terms of their everyday delusions; they fear the novel idea, and particularly the revolutionary idea, as they fear the devil.”

Mencken goes on to venture that this fear of ideas is a “peculiarly democratic phenomenon” which has been perfected in America, a country that has developed the doctrine of “right-thinking” with a “singular passion for conformity” and “dread of novelty and originality in almost every aspect of life.”

If one is not in agreement with the right thinking of the time, then one is immediately suspect, “...any novel idea, in any field of human relations, carries with it a burden of obnoxiousness, and is instantly challenged as mysteriously immoral by the great masses of right-thinking men.”

Mencken continues: “Such tests arise inevitably out of democracy – the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob emotions. In private life no man of sense would think of applying them. We do not estimate the integrity and ability of an acquaintance by his flabby willingness to accept our ideas; we estimate him by the honesty and effectiveness with which he maintains his own. All of us, if we are of reflective habit, like and admire men whose fundamental beliefs differ radically from our own. But when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental – men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost.”

That said, we can now craft a simple formulation for why, according to Mencken, the White House will one day “be adorned by a downright moron.”

• Democracy offers power to the masses.

• With power on offer, the masses come to care more about winning power than the free expression of ideas.

• With winning as the goal, all novel ideas take a back seat to conformity, virtue signaling, and emotional appeals.

• With the rules of the mob now set as such, only the most empty-headed or hucksterish politicians rise to the top.

• And finally, as this process is perfected and the democratic populace expanded, fewer and fewer ideas will matter until we have reached the land of Morondom with the president as our idiot idol.

So, the next time you wish to quote Henry Louis Mencken to call some president a moron, feel free, but I hope you understand it is the American people’s common love of mass democracy that has brought us to this “great and glorious day.”If you would like to know more about Mencken, read this definitive essay by Murray Rothbard, called “H.L. Mencken: The Joyous Libertarian.”

- https://1819news.com/news/

"A Perpetual Illusion..."

"Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion. Man is then only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and in regard to others. He does not wish any one to tell him the truth; he avoids telling it to others, and all these dispositions, so removed from justice and reason, have a natural root in his heart."

- Blaise Pascal

"The Pentagon’s 90-Day Doomsday Plan Should Be Your Wake-Up Call"

"The Pentagon’s 90-Day Doomsday Plan 

Should Be Your Wake-Up Call"

by Mike Adams

Excerpt: "What’s Behind the Pentagon’s 90-Day Doomsday Plan: The people who run the system are not preparing for the same future they are selling to the rest of us. This week, that truth stopped being a theory. The Pentagon has reportedly told U.S. military bases that they must be able to operate completely off-grid for 90 days, according to reporting by Fox News. Meanwhile, the UK government’s “Be Ready” campaign is telling British households they should prepare for roughly three days of disruption. Ninety days for the military. Three days for you.

That contrast is the story I want you to sit with, because it tells you more about what the people in charge actually believe than any press briefing ever will. When the agencies that own the satellites, the classified briefings, and the contingency plans decide they need 90 days of independent fuel, power and supply, that is not a drill. That is a read on the near future. And when the same class of officials hands the public a weekend-survival shopping list, they are not informing us -  they are managing us.

I am not writing this to frighten you into paralysis. I am writing it to make you understand that the gap between what they know and what they tell you is the most important fact in your life right now. The people preparing for a 90-day grid-down scenario are not doing it for a weekend of bad weather.

What the Fortress Program Is Really Telling Us: According to media reports, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell framed the program in stark terms, saying that relying on civilian municipal infrastructure for national defense is an intolerable risk. That is a remarkable admission. It means the Department of Defense has concluded that the grid, the water systems, the fuel networks and the communications infrastructure that every American depends on cannot be trusted to stay online during a crisis.

The program reportedly includes stockpiling fuel, generators, medical supplies, spare parts, critical minerals and electronic components. Notice what that list tells you. It is not about defending against a hurricane or a wildfire. It is about operating for a quarter of a year without any help from the civilization around the base. That is not storm preparation; that is siege preparation. And remember that military bases in Virginia and across the country draw their power from the same regional grids as the rest of us. PJM grid operators have already warned about reliability margins, which means the military’s own power supply is not guaranteed either.

When the people with access to every threat briefing on the planet decide that their own facilities must be able to survive for 90 days without outside help, I do not treat that as routine procurement. I treat it as an admission. Major disruptions are being planned for, budgeted for, and stocked for. The only question is whether the public is being told what those disruptions might be. Based on what I have seen, the answer is no - and the British government is hilariously telling the public to buy wet wipes and canned beans."

Full article is here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"How It Really Is, And Will Be"

All Federal, State and global debt in real time...

- https://www.usdebtclock.org/

"Why Are So Many Countries Suddenly Warning Their Citizens To Prepare For An Emergency And Stockpile Essential Survival Supplies?"

by Michael Snyder

"What in the world is going on? Why are governments all over the planet suddenly encouraging their citizens to become preppers? Do they know something that they aren’t telling us? If it was just one nation that was suddenly instructing people to stockpile food, water and other essential supplies, that wouldn’t be a big deal. But it isn’t just one nation. As you will see below, quite a long list of countries have simultaneously decided that now is the time for everyone to get prepared. So what has prompted this sudden sense of urgency?

For some reason, governments in Europe seem to have more of a sense of urgency than anyone else…Governments in the UK, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and France have encouraged households to keep food, water, medicines and other essentials available for emergencies. I can’t recall a time when so many European governments have been so concerned about making sure that their citizens are prepared for an emergency.

In the UK, the “Be Ready campaign” has been launched. Every citizen is being encouraged to stockpile at least enough food and bottled water to last for 72 hours…Every Briton is being urged to stock up to nine litres of bottled water and three days’ worth of food in new government guidance designed to ensure that households can survive a weather, cyber or other serious emergency. The Be Ready campaign is aimed at persuading people to stock up with supplies to last 72 hours, amid growing official concern about the impact of the climate crisis, technological dependency and hostile state threats.

Dan Jarvis, the security minister, said that “those who can follow this advice should follow this advice”. It amounted to “simple steps to be ready for everyday emergencies” as part of a wider, community-oriented effort “to improve our resilience as a nation”, he said.

So why has it suddenly become so important to do this? The UK’s defense secretary is saying that it is because we “live in a more dangerous and turbulent world”… UK families are suddenly being told to stock up on emergency supplies – and to prepare for war.

Wes Streeting, the UK’s defense secretary, went on a media blitz to push a new “Be Ready” campaign to boost Brits’ preparedness for crises - which he said could range from floods and wildfires to terrorism and cyber attacks and ultimately even war. “There’s no sugarcoating the fact that we do live in a more dangerous and turbulent world,” Streeting told BBC’s “Newsnight.” “It’s about saying to households across the country to be ready by just having some everyday essentials indoors should there be disruption from these sorts of events.”

Yes, our world has certainly become more “dangerous” and more “turbulent”, but I also get the impression that there is something that he isn’t telling us. In Sweden, citizens are being told that they may have to survive on their own for at least a week “in case of crisis or war”…In Sweden, the country’s civil defense guidance is warning households to be able to manage on their own for at least one week ‘in case of crisis or war.’ ‘The state of the world has worsened drastically in recent years. War is being waged in our vicinity. Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly common. Terror threats, cyberattacks, and disinformation campaigns are being used to undermine and influence us,’ the bulletin stated. It is noteworthy that Swedish authorities are using the word “war”, because a lot of people out there are convinced that military conflict is what has prompted all of this talk about preparing.

On social media, many are speculating that European governments are getting ready to go to war with Russia…

But if European governments are bracing for a military showdown with Russia, why is the government of Japan urging their citizens to stockpile food, water and other necessary supplies?…

Statements from Japan’s Disaster Management Minister indicate that the government is preparing to issue a national “emergency request”⁠ on November 2, 2026. The request aims to urge all households across the country to stockpile essential survival supplies. The announcement is planned for the same day as the official launch of Japan’s National Disaster Management Agency. The new national agency will lead coordination efforts across the country regarding disaster planning, immediate emergency response, long-term recovery, and reconstruction.

I can’t remember the Japanese government ever doing anything like this. Just like in the UK, Japanese citizens are being instructed to have enough on hand to last for at least three days…The emergency request lays down a self-sufficiency window of at least three days. However, the Disaster Management Minister Gishi Hosono emphasized that a one-week supply is recommended wherever possible.

Here in the United States, Project FORTRESS has just been initiated. The goal is for the U.S. military to be able to keep fighting for at least 90 days if all civilian infrastructure goes down…The Pentagon is preparing U.S. military bases to keep operating for at least 90 days without outside support as it prepares for the possibility of a major war that could cripple power grids, disrupt supply chains and threaten critical infrastructure on American soil.

The new requirement is part of FORTRESS, a broader military initiative aimed at ensuring American forces can continue fighting even if the civilian systems they depend on are disrupted, according to documents reviewed by Fox News Digital. “We don’t want to rely on standard civilian municipal infrastructure to run our national defense. We just simply can’t. It’s an intolerable risk,” Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell told Fox News Digital.

What kind of scenario would “cripple power grids, disrupt supply chains and threaten critical infrastructure”? I can only think of a few, and most of them involve military conflict. So what do they think might happen?

Shortly after we learned about Project FORTRESS, former Deputy Director of the FBI Dan Bongino issued a very urgent warning…The former Deputy Director of the FBI has issued an urgent warning to Americans as countries worldwide start stockpiling supplies for a potential crisis. Dan Bongino, who left the bureau in January, said the public needs to do what the UK and European governments are telling citizens: Have a preparedness plan and at least three days of food and power ready. ‘Have yourself an emergency radio, have yourself some batteries, get yourself some emergency food, get yourself a rain collection and water filtration, some filtration tablets,’ he said on Monday. ‘Get your stuff today. Please. Do it for your family,’ Bongino added.

Even though he no longer works for the government, Bongino still has lots of contacts inside the government. Has he been told something that would prompt him to literally beg his listeners to go out and buy emergency supplies? Someone should really ask him that question. And why is he urging us to have a “rain collection” system? You wouldn’t need to collect rain unless you were facing some sort of a long-term catastrophic emergency. Without a doubt, everything that he is saying is wise advice. But why has he suddenly developed such a sense of urgency? I have a feeling that something big is coming. Perhaps after the midterm elections in the United States we shall find out what it is."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "This Is Getting Ugly"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 10/28/26

"This Is Getting Ugly"

"Businesses are struggling, restaurants are closing, and the cost of everyday life keeps climbing. From fast-food deals to outrageous restaurant bills, corporate mergers, changing consumer habits, and the growing pressure on small businesses, we’re looking at the warning signs affecting the American economy."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"10 Expenses You Need to Cut Now for the Upcoming Economic Depression - The Reckoning Will Arrive Quietly!"

"10 Expenses You Need to Cut Now for the Upcoming

 Economic Depressionv- The Reckoning Will Arrive Quietly!"

by John Walter

Excerpt: Editor’s Note: "Economists say nobody can date a recession, which is true and also the least useful thing they tell us, since a household does not need a date so much as a margin. What people can date is their own tightening - the cancelled service, the second car listed on a Saturday morning, the pantry that abruptly acquires a system and a rotation - and that tightening is already underway in ordinary kitchens where the arithmetic gets done after the dishes are washed, months ahead of any official confirmation.

Two questions sit under everything that follows: how much fixed weight can an ordinary family carry before one bad quarter becomes a ruined decade, and who decided the answer should be as much as a lender will allow? The second matters more, because nobody actually signed off on it, and because the answer has been quietly wrong before.

This piece is long on purpose, and it is written for people who would rather move early than move under duress. (Major sites are warning of a possible economic collapse in the coming years - watch this video to find out why.)

Cutting Weight Before the Storm: Why Households Feel the Break Long Before Economists Name It: The last time the ground shifted this way, in 2008, the earliest warnings came from the least credentialed places. The mortgage broker stopped returning calls. A neighbor sold a boat in June, which nobody thought about until October. When a plant trimmed overtime without announcing anything, the men on the floor noticed before the memos did. By the time the official word arrived, the decisions that would decide how the year treated each household had already been made by whoever made them, and everyone else spent two years catching up to a reality that had been visible, faintly, for months. Something similar is in the air now, minus the convenience of one dramatic event to point at, which makes it harder to argue about and considerably easier to ignore.

Being right about the future is less valuable than being early about your own exposure, and nobody needs a forecast to notice that fixed costs have crept up to meet income, that a savings account has been quietly subsidising the gap between the life a family leads and the one it planned, or that the whole arrangement rests on a single signature continuing to arrive. What follows is not a prophecy and does not pretend to be one, only a triage list ordered the way you would move if the ground started to give - fastest cuts first, then the slow, heavy, invisible ones that take years rather than weeks.

Four things are worth pinning down before the list, because they explain the order, and why some families will barely feel a downturn that flattens others.

▪ Fixed costs do not shrink when income does. A mortgage, a car payment, a card minimum and a nursery bill keep arriving in full whether or not the paycheck behind them arrives at all, so the damage in a collapse gets done by obligations rather than by prices. The family that can bend its obligations survives a shock that snaps the family carrying more of them, and income rarely decides which is which.

▪ Two households earning the same salary can sit in opposite positions. One holds a mortgage coverable on half a paycheck, drives something paid off and keeps a few months of cash within reach, while the other needs both incomes, carries a loan on the second car, services a card balance and keeps almost nothing liquid. From the street they look identical; only one has room to move.

▪ Cash is not the same thing as net worth. A retirement account feels like a cushion until it has to be tapped in a falling market, and home equity feels like one until the sale drags on four months and the buyer offers less than the last comparable. The only genuine cushion is the boring sort: money sitting somewhere reachable, doing nothing impressive, ready on a Tuesday.

▪ The window to act closes before the layoff, not after it. Once the notice lands, everyone in town is selling at the same moment, lenders tighten in unison and the family that waited pays the price of the crowd. Move while the paycheck still exists and you sell into a functioning market; move afterwards and you sell into a queue.

Here is where the last two collapses get specific, since generalities have a way of sliding off. Between 1929 and 1932 American equities lost roughly 89 percent of their value, around nine thousand banks failed and took depositors’ money with them, unemployment climbed toward a quarter of the workforce, national income fell by close to a third, and the federal government eventually shut every bank in the country for a week in March 1933 to stop the runs. Thirty years of habit dissolved in three, and the men who came through with their dignity intact were mostly the ones who owed the least. In 2008 the mechanism was faster and narrower but just as brutal in the personal register: Lehman Brothers filed on 15 September, credit markets froze within days, the S&P 500 fell about 57 percent from its 2007 peak to its March 2009 low, roughly 8.7 million jobs vanished and home prices dropped by around a third, leaving millions owing more than their houses were worth and unable to sell or refinance their way clear.

(A sequence that actually happened, and deserves remembering, because it answers the question of whether money in a bank is really money in your hand. In December 2001 Argentina froze bank withdrawals under a set of limits the press called the corralito, and savers discovered that the balance on the statement was real but unreachable; when the currency peg broke weeks later, dollar deposits were converted at a rate savers had not agreed to. In March 2013 Cyprus imposed a haircut on uninsured deposits above €100,000 to fund a bank rescue, and money that had been guaranteed in ordinary conversation turned out to be a claim rather than a possession. In June and July 2015 Greece closed its banks and capped ATM withdrawals at €60 a day for weeks, and pensioners queued outside branches for their own money. None of these was a collapse of the kind the history books describe, and every one of them was a collapse for the household living through it.)

What the record keeps saying, in the grand versions and the small ones alike, is that pressure arrives as a sequence rather than a single blow. Employment goes first, in hours cut before jobs are lost and overtime that quietly stops, credit follows as approvals automatic in spring are refused by autumn, and assets come next, when the house and the fund that were meant to be the safety net turn out to be worth less than the family believed. Fixed obligations, which never tightened at all, keep arriving in full at the worst possible hour, which is why they matter more than the things people argue about. The trouble with the interval between the first sign and the general recognition is that families make their biggest decisions inside it, in the dark, on the reasonable assumption that the last ten years will run for ten more.

So the work is to shed weight now, while the ground still feels solid and selling is still easy. The order below runs from cuts that take an afternoon to cuts that take a year, and it runs that way deliberately, because the small fast ones create the margin that the big slow ones are paid out of; skip the sequence and the margin never appears, since the other costs keep absorbing whatever surplus shows up.

What follows, then, are the ten places a household bleeds, and what to do about each. Two dots, and then the list:"

Full, most highly recommended article is here:

- https://johnwalter25.substack.com/

"Snyder Reports, 10/28/26"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 10/28/26

"Feds Prepare For Election Doomsday -

Election Concerns Are Growing"

"Less than one week from the 2026 midterm elections - and the federal government is already preparing for an election doomsday scenario. According to three officials, the Justice Department has been discussing contingency plans to intervene in next week's midterms, covering scenarios seen as improbable but not impossible: foreign interference, claims that non-citizens voted, and chaos at the polls. In Alaska, a Trump-ordered DOJ lawsuit asked a federal judge to block the state from certifying a winner unless the incumbent, Republican Senator Dan Sullivan, comes out on top. Alaska is fighting back - and a judge has now set filing deadlines. In this video I break down what is actually on the table before the midterms, what both parties are preparing for, what is NOT confirmed yet, and what it means for your vote and your confidence in the outcome."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The War's The Thing"

"The War's The Thing"

by John Leake

"I voted for Trump because he promised “no more wars.” Holding a man to his most important promise about matters of life and death is what self-respecting grownups do. Many readers were offended by my post Both Sides of TDS: Trump Derangement Syndrome is the obverse of Trump Dimwit Syndrome. They apparently believe that Trump’s decision to break ten years of promises not to start new wars is a minor point. Others apparently believe that Trump always intended to vanquish the Iranian regime, which they believe “has been at war with the US since 1979.” They seem to believe that Trump never mentioned this intention because he assumed that prospective voters would understand that attacking Iran did not qualify as a “new war.”

I believe I have made it clear on this newsletter that I am opposed to war unless US territory is attacked. As all our Founding Fathers and many philosophers of great intellectual and moral distinction have remarked over the centuries, war is a calamity, and the decision to wage war is the most momentous, dangerous, and usually the most corrupt thing an executive can do.

Because only 0.4% of Americans serve in the military, 99.6% haven’t a clue about war and how terrible it is. Without knowing anything about it - and taking for granted that they and their children have little to no risk of being killed or maimed by it - they are “okay” with the US government/military killing foreigners and destroying their lands.

They don’t worry or lose sleep over young men who are killed by American weapons or the grief of the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends of these young men. It doesn’t bother them when American bombs destroy cities and civilian infrastructure, disrupting the lives, jobs, food and fuel supplies of millions and wrecking their economies.

For readers who don’t understand why I have become so critical of President Trump, I will clearly declare it so that you can decide if you wish to continue reading my newsletter posts, which are delivered from “John Leake From Focal Points.”

ͦ I do not share the tendency to be “okay” with killing people and dropping bombs on women and children and civilian infrastructure.

ͦ I believe that the perfidy and odiousness of the Democrats do not mitigate the gravity of Trump’s broken promise.

ͦ I believe that war is the most significant, dangerous, risky, and corrupt thing a US president can do, and that his domestic policies are of secondary importance.

ͦ In the matter of war - that is, the life, death, and property of millions - I expected President Trump to keep his promises."

- https://www.thefocalpoints.com/

"The Incredible Shrinking Dollar"

 

Click image for larger size.

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Bill Bonner, "Doomsday Prospectus"

"Doomsday Prospectus"

by Bill Bonner

Ardmore, Ireland - "‘Oh, and by the way...it could be the end of all life as we know it. ‘But don’t bother coming after us. We warned you.’ That was the gist of perhaps the strangest disclosure ever issued by a company preparing an IPO. Normally, disclosures are written by lawyers who cover every possibility but with the pizzazz of instructions on how to use your new vacuum cleaner. But in this case, the warnings are so apocalyptic...we can scarcely wait to see what happens.

The company is Anthropic. Its stock-in-trade is AI. And it could kill us all. The Independent: "In a long list of potential dangers for the company, it warns that its systems could “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity, particularly if such systems were misused, replicated, weaponized, or allowed to operate with a high degree of autonomy”.

The IPO documents point to a whole range of ways that Anthropic’s systems could pose a threat. They include models that have already been shown to be able to help people “develop chemical, biological, or other dangerous weapons”, and the use of its models in “high-risk or sensitive contexts, such as healthcare, scientific and biomedical research, drug discovery and development, legal, finance, government, or other critical decision-making environments.”

In addition to possibly causing the extinction of the human race, Anthropic may wipe out your money. Daily Mail: "The company behind the chatbot Claude reported a net loss of $80m.7 billion in the first half of 2026. That compares to a loss of $13 billion in the same period a year earlier. Despite the losses, Anthropic, valued earlier this year at $965 billion by private investors, is reportedly set to see that value rise to $1.5 trillion or possibly $2 trillion, although its final valuation has not been established.

This is not an investment offer...it is a Doomsday Prospectus. A single company worth more than $1 trillion? A company that has, as of yet, not earned a dime? The whole idea is absurd. But whatever else can be said about it, it’s one for the record books - one of the many strange things that are happening in the money world.

Most peculiar is the money itself. As far as we know, no paper money has held up so well as the dollar. It’s lost 96% of its value since the Federal Reserve was set up to protect it. But it is still in use. And perhaps no other currency has so thoroughly distorted and disjointed an entire world economy. In order to be worth so much, Anthropic would have to look forward to annual earnings of $50 to $100 billion per year - almost forever. But forever is a very long time for anyone. For a tech investor it’s about three months.

And how is Anthropic going to earn so much when a better product can be had for free? Already in a Front End Code Arena (whatever that is!) China’s Open Source Kimi-K3 beat Claude Fable 5...and every other US for-profit contender. That is probably why Anthropic is rushing an IPO. It is like a grocery store that marks down its inventory on Saturday; by Monday, the bread will be stale and the bananas will be rotten.

And something else for the record book, Anthropic could lose as much as $200 billion this year...marking it as the biggest money loser of all time. By comparison, Tesla’s losses are peanuts. Since its founding in 2003, it lost only $7 billion until it reached profitability in 2020.

There is so much cash, credit and claptrap in the asset markets. Like a giant sea surge - companies like Anthropic, Tesla, and others are lifted up far beyond what they are worth. Anthropic may come to rest on an Everest, with a value of $2 trillion, say some speculators.

Remember our dictum: The more you inflate prices, the less things are really worth. We brought up the subject yesterday. You may say that these prices are ‘inflated’ by the feds’ funny money. But what does that mean?

The output of Anthropic can in no way be described as ‘worth’ the prospective stock value. Its output is negative, by the aforementioned $80 billion in the first six months of this year. Speculators may guess that it will turn positive sometime in the future, but where will that money come from? From the millions of people whose jobs have been lost to AI robots? Will Claude make the accountants, lawyers, radiologists, and architects jobless...and then bill them for the benefits of AI? Unless the industry can add to consumer incomes - which seems unlikely  its current market valuations are just more fakery caused by the funny money fever; don’t try to take it to the bank.

Worth noting is that while trillions flush down the AI dream-hole, investment in residential construction has dropped. Zillow: "Over the 12 months ending July 2026, more than 1.42 million residential building permits were issued nationwide, down 1.7% from the same period a year earlier. Compared with the pre-pandemic trajectory from 2016 through 2020, permitting is running 19.4% below where it would have been if that trend had held."

But building data centers has boomed. At present prices and mortgage rates, approximately 88 million families are said to have been ‘priced out’ of the housing market. But at least the data will have a nice place to live. Air-conditioned. Off-street parking. And no noisy neighbors. The family of four can move in with the grandparents. And if Anthropic wipes them out…along with their town…and their country, who could complain? It was in the prospectus!"

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

John Wilder, "Manmade Horrors Beyond Human Comprehension"

"Manmade Horrors Beyond Human Comprehension"

by John Wilder

“Mr. Quaid, can you hear yourself? She’s real because you dreamt her?”

– "Total Recall"

"It’s the spooky season running up to Halloween, so, why not get a little strange and think about the dark side of things. I mean, with a chuckle or two.

Philip K. Dick is dead. I think. In life, Dick was obsessed with one overriding theme: that reality ain’t what it used to be. In his stories, he focused on things not being what they seemed to be. During his life he was dirt poor, and drug addicted. Back then, I hear, the goal of hippies was to do as many drugs as they could and not get caught. But enough about the Tour de France.

If that wasn’t enough, Dick was also paranoid, so I imagine having him over for dinner would have been, well, interesting, especially if he was in the midst of a meth binge. But his vision caught up with the world and since his death many movies and at least two television series have been based on his work. I’ll say, if you stop "The Man in the High Castle" at the end of season one, it’s a pretty good show. And some of the movies have been entertaining. We are, however, getting to the point in the news cycle where Dick’s vision seems to be on the verge of being able to be real as he wrote a lot about machine intelligence, so let’s review A.I.

In the last few days, Jack Dorsey of O.G. Twitter© fame, introduced an A.I. named Dessa that he claims was entirely trained on spoken language. If true, this is a huge increase in the amount of information that A.I.s can be trained on, as the spoken word contains so much more information than the same words as written down.

We had speech far before we had writing, and the intonation, timbre, pitch, and timing of words all have meaning that is very difficult to catch in the written word. I don’t need to have to wonder what The Mrs. means when she asks, “What are you doing?” because that sentence, though it can contain hundreds of different meanings, is always very clear from the way she says it. This is unlike when The Mrs. says, “Don’t leave your socks in the front room.” I have no idea what The Mrs. means by that one.

Training A.I. by voice is, I suppose, the next phase of A.I. development. Add in the capacity to process text, and you’ve got at least twice the training material, if not an order of magnitude more. What’s next? Well, why not mimic the sensory input of a child in a robot, and have the A.I. interact with the physical world the way an infant human would? You can mimic the stimuli that a child feels, from being tired, to being hungry, to being alone, to feeling pain and discomfort.

I’ve often thought that the limiting factor in the training of A.I. was in giving it limits, i.e., bounding the formless void that it dreams in with walls and time and sensation. My thought has been it is the existence of those very limits that created consciousness.

So now, an “infant” A.I. is trained and conditioned on the world. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be a real world, it could be a simulation, since the A.I. could easily be placed in a realistic video game engine to experience the world. And it would be easy to do this with 100,000 A.I.s at a time, discarding all of those that didn’t meet the parameters the researcher was looking for into electronic oblivion, even if they were conscious. The researcher could use just the best of them as templates to build all of the A.I.s for the next phase of development. Those A.I.s then would just be copies of the A.I. that had the “actual” experience. Paging Philip K. Dick.

If that worked, and the researcher gave it a body, well, we’re straight into Bladerunner territory where we, humanity, may have created something that is indistinguishable from a conscious human being out of this laboratory. I’ll note, if it’s indistinguishable, at what point would we have to call it alive? At what point would we have to call it human? Can it get worse? Certainly!

The post is titled "Manmade Horrors Beyond Human Comprehension", so I’ve gotta live up to that. It gets worse. What happens if we use all that simulation data . . . on us.

Aldous Huxley famously wrote "Brave New World", which, arguably is closer to reality than Orwell’s "1984."  But I digress, that’s fodder for another post.

Brave New World centered around a caste system. In it, there were five levels:

Alphas: the intellectual elite.

Betas: smart, but not independent and not capable of revolt.

Gammas: mass-produced drone men with some skills.

Deltas: no-skill laborers, can’t read.

Epsilons: barely above animals.

These creatures were based on genetic engineering, chemical manipulation, and conditioning. Based on what we’ve seen with immigration, it certainly seems like "Brave New World" is the goal. I’ll let you fill in the blanks.

At what point are humans replaced by A.I. in the caste system our overlords would have? At what point do they use A.I. to create a Skinner Box for conditioning humans based on A.I. research? At what point do they cease needing wild-born humans at all? At what point will they want to discard us?

We seem to be messy and independent, which isn’t good for the bottom line, and certainly not good for the comfort of the elite. These risks certainly do seem to converge, one a man-like artificial servant that is born of hundreds of thousands of sacrifices, and one a neutered caricature of a human built to serve the needs of a ravenous elite.

Thankfully Dick and Huxley were paranoid mad dreamers and nothing like that could ever happen. And don’t think I’m a paranoid drug user. Don’t you be calling me a Dick! Besides, that’s the word that The Mrs. keeps using when she mentions socks. Whatever could she mean?"

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

"AI Insiders Final Warning: 'It Will Kill You' w/ Connor Leahy"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 10/27/26

"AI Insiders Final Warning:

 'It Will Kill You' w/ Connor Leahy"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Why Is The US In A Cascade Of Dangers?"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 10/27/26

"Why Is The US In A Cascade Of Dangers?"

Experts are now warning the United States to prepare for a cascade of dangers this winter - and it comes down to two things colliding at the worst possible moment. Sweeping cuts to NOAA have slashed staff levels, canceled contracts and grants, and shut down databases and research labs. The agency long considered a global crown jewel in climate science and forecasting has lost roughly 20% of its staff since January 2025. At the same time, forecasters are tracking a potentially historic Super El Niño for 2026–2027, and a polar vortex forecast to weaken and stretch in early November - which can push cold air deep into the Southeast for days, if not weeks. In this video: what a "cascade of dangers" actually means, the flooding already hitting Hawaii, heavy rain aimed at Southern California on Halloween weekend, what stratospheric warming does to the jet stream, and why experts say this is the worst possible time for both of these to happen at once."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Falling Through Time"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Falling Through Time"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this sharp telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellites of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. Their separation on the sky, less than one degree across a pretty field of view, translates to only about 35 thousand light-years at Andromeda's distance, but Andromeda itself is found well outside this frame. 

Brighter and more famous satellite galaxies of Andromeda, M32 and M110, are seen closer to the great spiral. NGC 147 and NGC 185 have been identified as binary galaxies, forming a gravitationally stable binary system. But recently discovered faint dwarf galaxy Cassiopeia II also seems to be part of their system, forming a gravitationally bound group within Andromeda's intriguing population of small satellite galaxies."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Asha’s AI Art & Music, "The Celestial Kingdom"

Full screen recommended.

Asha’s AI Art & Music, "The Celestial Kingdom"

"Welcome to The Celestial Kingdom - a breathtaking fantasy realm suspended high above the clouds, where luminous palaces rise among floating islands, waterfalls disappear into the mist, and peaceful gardens glow beneath endless skies. Journey through grand ivory-and-gold halls, tranquil turquoise pools, flowering terraces, hidden libraries, and magnificent castles drifting among the clouds. As daylight fades into a deep sapphire night, the kingdom comes alive with warm lantern light, shimmering waterfalls, graceful fairies, and quiet celestial beauty. This immersive fantasy journey is accompanied by original ethereal music featuring delicate strings, harp melodies, atmospheric textures, soft humming, and sparse male and female fantasy vocals. Some vocals are intentionally sung in an invented fantasy language, allowing the voices to become part of the atmosphere rather than tell a specific story. Perfect for relaxing, studying, reading, writing, sleeping, creative inspiration, or simply escaping into another world for a while. For the best experience, headphones are recommended."

Native American Elder, "Wisdom When You Feel Completely Lost"

Full screen recommended.

Native American Elder,

"Wisdom When You Feel Completely Lost"

"A Lonesome Highway Hymn"

Full screen recommended.

Retro String, "A Lonesome Highway Hymn"

"Some music is heard. The blues is felt. Welcome to a journey through smoky guitar tones, slow-burning rhythms, soulful melodies, and the unmistakable sound of the blues. Every note carries a little heartache, every guitar bend holds a memory, and every rhythm feels like a story from another time. Imagine an old blues bar after midnight -  dim lights, a weathered guitar, a glass on the table, and music drifting through the room long after everyone else has gone home. This playlist blends the spirit of Classic Blues, Soul Blues, Slow Blues, and Blues Rock into a timeless listening experience made for quiet nights and reflective moments."

The Daily "Near You?"

Richmond Hill, Georgia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!