So, we rise from the rubble...
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Monday, November 2, 2026
Adventures With Danno, "Expect A Run On Essentials, Rough Times Ahead"
Adventures With Danno, 11/2/26
"Expect A Run On Essentials, Rough Times Ahead"
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Dan, I Allegedly, "They Want To Tax Every Mile You Drive!"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 11/2/26
"They Want To Tax Every Mile You Drive!"
"California is considering a mileage tax that could charge drivers for every mile they travel. And this isn't just a California story. States across the country are studying road-usage charges, raising questions about what drivers could pay, how mileage would be tracked, and what happens to personal privacy. We're looking at California's budget problems, existing gasoline taxes, government spending, the California Lottery, and the growing debate over mileage-based fees. Who collects the money? Who monitors your miles? What will the bureaucracy cost? And will these charges replace existing taxes or become another expense? This is personal finance, business news, government accountability and national news that could affect drivers across America. Your vote has consequences. Make sure you understand the issues."
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"Snyder Reports, 11/2/26"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 11/2/26
"Fake Nuclear Alerts Spark Fear
As Cyberattacks Raise New Concerns"
"Emergency alerts just went off with fake nuclear warnings in Russia and Ukraine - while a cyber attack shut down grocery freezers across Europe. Here is what happened and what to stockpile now. In this video we break down the overnight hack on Ukraine and Russia's emergency alert apps that sent false radiation, chemical and street-combat warnings, the second cyber attack in two weeks that pushed supermarket freezers to 50 degrees Celsius and destroyed food, why 33 countries are now telling citizens to stockpile food, water and backup heat, and what the midterm election and rising US-Iran tensions could mean for power outages, food shortages and supply chain disruptions here in the US. This is about emergency preparedness, food storage and cyber attack readiness - not panic. Do what you can to prepare now."
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"The Great Political Train Wreck: Will a Blue Tsunami Sweep the Republican Trump Train Right Off its Rails?"
"The Great Political Train Wreck: Will a Blue
Tsunami Sweep the Republican Trump Train Right Off its Rails?"
by David Haggith
"We all know polls can be wrong - grossly wrong. So, we need to keep that in mind as we read through the headlines today. Still, there is not only unanimous agreement between the polls, there is widespread fear in Republicans that the polls are right. The number of major Republican social-media supporters of Donald Trump who have turned decidedly against them and who have hundreds of thousands, and some even millions, of followers certainly indicates there has been a tidal shift of support away from Trump and maybe away from the Republicans who have empowered and enabled his almost dictatorial form of government by decree in which he has often claimed powers that the conservative Supreme Court has ruled are not his to claim.
The biggest issue of contention in terms of dictatorial presidential power right now is the Iran war. Having overturned a good part of Trump’s tariffs wars as being never his to initiate in the first place, the court has not made any clear determination on the president’s Putinesque non-declaration of the not-a-war that is raging in the Middle East like the worst war we’ve seen America in since Vietnam - worst in that it has far more potential to go nuclear than, say, Iraq or Afghanistan did, and worse because it is destroying the entire global economy, making global enemies of all nations for the US and Israel - something that will be far more apparent a year down the road when the oil shortages and high inflation and inevitable soaring interest rates have taken their toil.
The president promises a bigger war right after the election, and the Dems, even if they do win, will have no power to stop him until they take office in December. If the president’s party loses this election, the president may become more hostile this time in the not-war than he has been during his past threats because he’ll know there is a possibility that he only has about a month in which to finish whatever it is he’s going to do.
Would the Democrats, however, actually rein in his war? That’s hard to say because they have never seen a war that, as a party, the would not support, They went along with the war on terror; they went along with its subparts - the war on Afghanistan, then the war on Iraq. They started war on Libya, then the war on Syria. The fact is, their party is as controlled by the warlords of the MIC as the Republicans. Big Banks, Big Oil, Big Weaponry, Big Steel and Big Rubber all make bank off of oil wars, and this is an oil war like no other that we have seen. As the president, himself, said, America is getting rich of this war and the high oil prices it has delivered. By that he meant those groups I just listed are getting rich - the same ones that always get rich off of big wars.
There is a reason Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC). This is it! With all that is at stake let’s look at the big Blue wave that is predicted by all polls to sweep over Trump Train like a tsunami, ripping it its the rails.
States as red as blood may end black and blue: One headline states below that Republicans now appear to be facing an evening of absolutely bruising - even brutal - losses tomorrow. The Trump economy is the driving issue for everyone. With his beloved tariffs and the oil war he claims to love, and the return of high inflation both types of war are bringing, which is driving interest rates, he gets to full own the economy, especially with his campaign promise that this would be a golden era. Trump’s betrayal of major MAGA promises to Republicans have chiseled away his base as well.
Republicans are bracing for a brutal election night, convinced they’re set to face some previously unthinkable losses in deep-red Trump territory as key battleground races hang on a knife’s edge. This is what happens when a dictatorial leader betrays all of his own supporters on so many major issues, and the congressional cult that backs him lets him get away with all of it with no restraint whatsoever. It means they get to fully own all of this, too. (And the Democrats only response seems to have been, “Let’s just give Trump enough rope to hang himself.”) It is what happens when his own party, in control of both houses of congress, lets him run far outside the constitution. Payback time DOES arrive.
House Republicans are privately discussing not just if they’ll lose their majority, but by how many seats. Imperiled GOP incumbents in once safe districts have been begging party leaders for more money in the final few days to stem the bleeding
There are plenty of betrayed Republican voters who are ready to let some blood out of their own party, so good luck with the money from billionaires buying those voters off, as Elon has been trying to do … again. Trump has even tried desperately to buy them off with promises of free tax-payer money if they will only enable his team of enablers to win again. Talk about desperate when the whole nation is suffering from bleeding red ink out of its budget during a time of soaring interest rates and screaming inflation threats and intensifying bloody-hot wars - the very wars Trump supporters believed they were getting out of if they voted for the Red Team.
With all of that, Trump is going to throw out another trillion-plus in additional government spending for no other stated reason than to try desperately to capture votes. He may also hope it will serve as a stimulus package to jump-start his moribund golden era, but it is a sugar diet, not protein, that is fiscally irresponsible in the extreme.
One Republican strategist working on midterm races simply responded to a question about the [political] environment with a video of a dumpster on fire that was being swept away by flood waters. Top GOP officials and lawmakers have long known the political landscape would be bad, amid voter anger over the cost of living and aspects of Trump’s policy agenda. But they’re facing a worse position than they expected earlier this year. And they have exactly one day left now to change all of that.
Republicans for weeks have worried that young men who’d voted for Trump, including white and Hispanic working class voters, will stay home amid disillusionment with high costs and the Iran war.
They certainly should! And they no doubt will. I’ll be the one surprised here if the Republicans don’t get trounced after all of this economic wreckage, savage oil war and betrayal of major promises to Trump’s base. Republican voters ought to turn away from their own gang just over the Epstain betrayal. Certainly over the economic catastrophe that is now starting to show its ugly head. Even more over the blatant wars and threats to attack friendly nations.
The twisted wreckage
Here is an example of how twisted some of the leaders in the party have become: Republicans have watched with horror as GOP governor nominee “Vivek’s [Ramaswamy’s] numbers have gone off a cliff” in the last few days after he ran an ad featuring Democrat Amy Acton’s estranged mother saying her daughter is a liar.
Who could have guessed that bright idea of a rape-belittling ad in these Epstained times (which Trump fully endorsed) would backfire? That is how tone-deaf and desperate the party has become. Throw someone’s rape back in their face with mom calling daughter a dirty liar, even though her dad was so guilty of rape he fled the courts for the rest of his life.
Acton’s stepfather was charged with raping her when she was 12. Her dad was so afraid of being convicted, he disappeared until he died two decades later, and that was during a time when rape convictions were rarely granted by courts. She must have had a pretty strong case for him to go into hiding for two decades during a time when only the strongest cases ever won.
That’s the hill you want to die on, Ramadamna Ding Dong? (I borrowed that from a friend as a nickname for Ramaswamy. I thought it was pretty good.) Throwing rape back in your opponents face? Good grief! This party has tarantulas crawling out of its cracks.
But in one of the most dire signs, once-unimaginable GOP worries have started to creep about deep-red Louisiana. Yeah, the swamps that Trump never drained during Trump 1.0 as he filled the White House with Goldman Sachs executives, ivy-league bankers, and Exxon execs. are looking a little bloody down in Louisiana.
The blue tsunami may be a Halloweenish outcome for EVERYONE because it make the ghoul who is caged in his gold-plated home all the more erratic as his frontal-lobe dementia - now easily every bit as obvious as the brain rot that took over the White House’s previous skeleton occupant—takes over what is left of his bruised and leg-dragging, apparently diapered body. For those who cannot see the dementia and physical deterioration in TheRump’s rambling, word-salad speeches, his peculiar little noises and mouth blips, his daily cussing tirades and his bizarre new fetish for using rallies to carry on repeatedly about the butts of other men as if that is going to win back MAGA …
The Atlantic has joked the octogenarian commander-in-chief is losing his inhibitions as he ages and, after a lifetime of staunch heterosexuality, is succumbing to “gay dementia”. Still, he’s not always gay in his blatant ogling: “By the way, I looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before, Nicki Minaj,” he confided. “That’s hard to miss. Stand up, Nicki. That’s hard to miss….” Mostly, however, Mr Trump’s praise at his rallies this month has been confined to men: “handsome guys” from the Secret Service, “massive, beautiful, handsome generals”, and of course Mr Husted, a “handsome sort of guy”.
Look, I’m not trying to talk about what he should like sexually, but I am asking is turning every campaign into an opportunity to carry on about your sexual proclivities what presidential politics is now about in America, or is this dementia removing all inhibitions? Is this what a brilliant man who is losing the election decides is a brilliant use of this campaign time? Or is this what a creepy old man with a rotting brain stem carries on about, even when on television? Can you imagine George Washington carrying on like that? Abraham Lincoln? Even Ronald Reagan? Is this the hell in which American politics dies?
This is what we have for presidential candidates these days. Let’s be honest here: Those who still hang with their man, the New Don of Indecency, are as willfully blind toward their own guy’s dementia as all the Democrats who suddenly wondered on a debate night what went wrong with bicycle-toppling, curtain-greeting, often-ranting, rambling, stage-tripping, dog-faced-pony-soldier, creepy, hair-sniffing Uncle Joe.
There is no good ground for Democrats to stand on here. They lost because the antique candidate they literally threw up against Trump was every bit as washed out and demented as Trump now is. So, then they reached into their bag of Halloween tricks and pulled out a little treat named Kamala, who was every bit as much tossing out word salad as her former boss, Joe. Remember the airhead talks that went like this: “I am for solving these problems together because when we all work together then we have togetherness, and the problems come together to be solved together….” Every interview was like listening to an automaton stuck in a brain loop.
This is the best garbage the clown cars seem able to put out on election night for pickup in the morning. So, both parties deserve the garbage Trump has delivered. Fully! The rest of us could only wonder how on earth it took the Blue-Pill Team that long to figure out how bad ol’ Joe was as we looked at the stone-cold, jaw-hanging faces of the liberal media after the debate that night who seemed genuinely bewildered at how their skeleton suddenly came out of the closet. Such is partisan politics and the Halloween clown cars both parties regularly deliver. Probably the same reason ultra-blue Seattle hasn’t figured out why it is failing so badly:
Isn’t it long past time to get out of partisan politics and recognize that the uniparty never delivers any good to the US? I got out long ago, leaving me free to criticize both clown cars for the horror shows that they really are."
Jim Kunstler, "Forcing Function"
"Forcing Function"
by Jim Kunstler
“Where Enlightenment philosopher Descartes said, ‘I think, therefore I am,’
the Communist says, ‘I’m right, therefore I’m in charge.’
- Data Republican on X
"It was supposed to be an election, but the event we’re in is actually an attempt to overthrow the government. The coup is underway. It’s a turnstile into the next phase of this Fourth Turning. We know who the perps are. They have outed themselves. They have declared war on the republic on video. Is there any other remedy except to arrest the bums, take them off the game board, and stuff them into a courtroom?
And how might that happen? First of all, who are they? At the operational level, a gang of a thousand or so bureaucrats, retired bureaucrats, current and ex-military officers, politicians, lawfare artists and their accomplice judges, billionaire activists, and not a few non-citizen hostiles working through a constellation of well-funded NGOs and lesser groups, partnered-up with the Democratic Party to give them the aura of legitimacy.
Their plan is to cheat like hell in the election tomorrow, rendering the outcome inconclusive and contestable in order to foment enough civil unrest to force the president to declare an emergency - triggering a sequence of actions to, in turn, declare the president and his administration illegitimate and pass off authority to a select handful of state governors such as Newsom (CA), Pritzker (IL), Spanberger (VA), Whitmer (MI), Polis (CO), and Hochul (NY), and then hold a new constitutional convention to radically change the structure of the government to establish permanent one-party rule.
One big reason for staging the coup is that many of the plotters’ heroes and leaders have already committed many crimes against the nation and the people, and are afraid of finally being held accountable for them. They don’t want to lose their fortunes, their power, their status, and end up in prison. These would be former presidents Obama and Clinton, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Comey and many many other familiar names. Some of these may still be active in the current shenanigans.
The lower level operational plotters only became known very recently: Danielle Reiff (former USAID, the Democracy Renewal Group); Paul Zeitz (Renew to Thrive); Rear Admiral (Ret.) Mike Smith (National Security Leaders for America); Erica Chenoweth (Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the United Democracy Alliance); Julia Roig (The Horizon’s Project and Partners Global); her husband, Enrique Roig (former USAID / State Department official (Renew American Democracy, RAD); Ezra Levin, Leah Greenberg, and Matt Traldi (Indivisible).
Who elected them the bosses of our outfit? In fact, they are wannabe commissars, eager to push the rest of us around. They came up through a bureaucratic ecosystem of commissars. They are creatures of it. It’s all they know. We have seen their like before in the governments of the old Soviet Union and its spinoffs.
They are in company with another layer of better-known coup plotters outside and above the NGO orbit. Norm Eisen, head lawfare ninja who has been involved in every Deep State hoax of the past decade, including RussiaGate, the Ukraine Impeachment, the J-6 op and the House Committee that pretended to investigate it, the Mar-a-Lago raid, and most of the frivolous lawsuits engineered through the two years of Trump 2.0. Marc Elias is the election lawfare ninja who has engineered and organized much of the ballot fraud in at least four recent national elections. Mary McCord is a former FBI and DOJ executive officer, also involved in every hoax and attempted subversion since 2016. Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) are also active plotters.
Senator Elissa Slotkin, involved in the setup for Maidan coup in Ukraine, 2014, when she worked for Veep Joe Biden, happened to be in Poland about a month ago. You might have noticed over the weekend that an attempted coup was staged there by forces seeking to bring Poland under tighter EU control - to give up their currency (the Zloty) for the Euro, and to open up their border to “migrants.” The coup in Poland has apparently failed. But, at the same time that France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Belgium are exploding in riots starring their migrants. Is the coup in America an extension of what looks like an international effort to overthrow Western Civ? Kinda smells like it.
So, these birds are daring President Trump to exercise his maximum executive power. Seems to me that Mr. Trump has the will to take them on. Let them make their move. Let them attempt to foment riots here post-election. The president and his agency heads at the DOJ, FBI, and Homeland Security already have probable cause (reasonable, fact-based belief) that a crime is being committed, or is about to be committed, by certain persons in a particular place. The plotters have laid it all out in Zoom calls that they foolishly believed were not recorded and email memoranda that were not supposed to get loose. And keep in mind that the President also happens to be Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, in case things get spicy.
Arrest these plotters for seditious conspiracy (18 U.S.C. § 2384), insurrection (18 U.S.C. § 2383), advocating overthrow of the government (18 U.S.C. § 2385), and conspiracy to defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. § 2385). If they have done any of this plotting in concert with persons associated with foreign governments, charge them with treason (18 U.S.C. § 2381) and misprision of treason (knowing of it and failing to report it) (18 U.S.C. § 2382).
That ought to take the starch out of them. To this point, President Trump has been notably scrupulous in dealing with his political enemies, while they have employed every conceivable underhanded tactic, including attempted assassination. Their effrontery is monumental. The battlespace is prepared. Better believe the Gray Champion is moving to meet them there."
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“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
o
Bill Bonner, "The Final Frontier"
"The Final Frontier"
by Bill Bonner
"To go boldly where no man has gone before."
- "Star Trek"
Ardmore, Ireland - "What happened last week? Well, we got (tentative) answers to two important questions.
1. When is the AI bubble going to pop? Answer: this is as good a time as ever. Wall Street Journal: "OpenAI has raised less than half of the $30 billion it had initially targeted for its latest funding round, with market jitters over the AI trade dampening investor appetite for one of the industry’s biggest names. After receiving tepid interest from some large investors, OpenAI has so far secured roughly $11 billion in commitments for the new financing, according to people familiar with the matter. The deal values the company at $1.25 trillion - less than the $1.4 trillion valuation that it had earlier hoped to achieve."
And here’s CNN on the story: "NASDAQ suffers worst month in over a year as AI nerves roil markets."
Investor’s Business Daily, meanwhile, tells us that when AI goes down...the whole market will follow: "Dow Jones futures: Stock market sells off as Apple, Palantir, midterm elections loom; what to do."
In our view, it is extremely unlikely...verging on impossible...for AI bets to pay off. People could spend more on AI toys and tools...but there’s just not enough profit that could be squeezed out of current output to justify all the fertilizer that has been dumped onto the AI seedlings. The only way AI investments could theoretically pay off would be for these little shoots to grow into real wealth that we haven’t seen before - adding trillions in jobs, houses, cars...fuel...meals...and so forth. Could AI do that? There’s no evidence of it. AI can do remarkable things; but, so far, it can’t pay the mortgage.
2: Why don’t we just put our wealth into bitcoin? The argument was persuasive. Bitcoin is cheap to store. Easy to move around. Safe. Secure. Private. As you know, our Bonner Private Research allocation model recommends only a token exposure to crypto - just 1% of the portfolio. Crypto fans suspected that we didn’t understand how it worked...or that we were afraid of such a mysterious form of wealth. They were right on both counts! And now we do see how it works. And the very thing we feared has come to pass. Fox: "Expert warns of ‘AI hacking bloodbath’ following massive Binance cryptocurrency theft."
According to a financial and reputation management expert … the worst may be yet to come. Eric Schiffer, chairman of Patriarch and Reputation Management Consultants, told FOX Business that the scale of the theft underscores the growing cybersecurity challenges facing major financial institutions. “I look at this as one of the world’s greatest thefts of all time, and it’s sad,” Schiffer said.
The Financial Times gave a fuller report on Saturday. It was full of jargon and techie mumbo jumbo...but as near as we could make out the folks at Binance still don’t know how the heist was pulled off...nor by whom. Crypto is a way of keeping track of who owns what. And the crypto guys were sure the ‘information’ was safe and sound. But it wasn’t. And wasn’t it either extreme naïveté or remarkable hubris to think that today’s technology was so advanced that tomorrow’s technology would pose no threat to it? There are always lock makers...and the lock pickers are right behind them.
In other news, the US president continued his anatomical observations. Nicki Minaj has a ‘beautiful ass,’ he remarked. He started ‘studying [Jon Husted’s] ass’ two weeks ago; this last week he noted that the Ohio senator had fingers like ‘sausages.’
Finally, two actors from "Star Trek" died last week. The Independent: "Star Trek" community rocked by two major losses in one week Walter Koenig and Sir Patrick Stewart have died."
That was last week. This week the important thing is probably the US mid-term elections. Who will win? Who will lose? What will it mean? Polymarket:
72% chance Democrats take the Senate
94% chance Democrats take the house
And to what new galaxy will this take us? Stay tuned."
"Economic Market Snapshot 11/2/26"
"Economic Market Snapshot 11/2/26"
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Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
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Market Data Center, Live Updates:
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Financial Stress Index
"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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Job cuts and much more.
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Commentary, highly recommended:
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
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And now... The End Game...
o
Sunday, November 1, 2026
"Alert! Multiple Nuclear Alert Cyberattacks; Oil Refineries Burning"
Canadian Prepper, 11/1/26
"Alert! Multiple Nuclear Alert Cyberattacks;
Oil Refineries Burning"
Comments here:
"When I See..."
"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair."
- Blaise Pascal
Ahh, but it does...
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“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
Folks, I fear our time for such reverence is upon us.
God help us, God help us all...
"People Don't Realize What's Happening, Things Could Break Loose Any Time Soon"
Jeremiah Babe, 11/1/26
"People Don't Realize What's Happening,
Things Could Break Loose Any Time Soon"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"
Full screen recommended.
Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"To some, it looks like a giant chicken running across the sky. To others, it looks like a gaseous nebula where star formation takes place. Cataloged as IC 2944, the Running Chicken Nebula spans about 100 light years and lies about 6,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Centaur (Centaurus).
Click image for larger size.
The featured image, shown in scientifically assigned colors, was captured recently in a 12-hour exposure. The star cluster Collinder 249 is visible embedded in the nebula's glowing gas. Although difficult to discern here, several dark molecular clouds with distinct shapes can be found inside the nebula."
"Beyond the Palace Gates"
Full screen recommended.
"Beyond the Palace Gates"
"Step into a world beyond reality, where magnificent palaces shimmer beneath celestial skies, crystal pathways lead to hidden places, and every turn reveals another dreamlike wonder. This relaxing fantasy journey takes you through an enchanted world of luxurious palaces, glowing gardens, sparkling crystals, and breathtaking scenery accompanied by peaceful ethereal music. Created for moments when you simply want to escape. Perfect for relaxation and unwinding, studying and reading, meditation, sleep and peaceful evenings, background ambience, dreaming and escaping into another world. Relax, settle in, and journey Somewhere Beyond."
Delta Blues Brother, "We Didn’t Fall Out… We Just Drifted"
Full screen recommended.
"We Didn’t Fall Out… We Just Drifted"
"Not every ending is loud. Some friendships don’t break… They fade. “We Didn’t Fall Out… We Just Drifted” is a Delta blues reflection on time, distance, and the quiet way life pulls people in different directions. No fights. No closure. Just… less and less."
Native Elder Speaks, "The Truth About America"
The Poet: Robert Service, "Prelude"
"Prelude"
"In youth I gnawed life's bitter rind
And shared the rugged lot
Of fellows rude and unrefined,
Frustrated and forgot;
And now alas! it is too late
My sorry ways to mend,
So sadly I accept my fate,
A Roughneck to the end.
Profanity is in my voice
And slag is in my rhyme,
For I have mucked with men who curse
And grovel in the grime;
My fingers were not formed, I fear,
To frame a pretty pen,
So please forgive me if I veer
From Virtue now and then.
For I would be the living voice,
Though raucous is its tone,
Of men who rarely may rejoice,
Yet barely ever moan:
The rovers of the raw-ribbed lands,
The lads of lowly worth,
The scallywags with scaley hands
Who weld the ends of earth."
- Robert Service
Jeffrey Sachs, "Be Prepared For What's Coming..."
Jeffrey Sachs, "Be Prepared For What's Coming..."
"Jeffrey Sachs exposes the decades-long history of Middle East conflicts, questioning the wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Iran. He argues that military intervention has brought enormous human and economic costs while making regional instability worse. Sachs also discusses Netanyahu's influence on U.S. foreign policy, Trump's broken promises, and why he believes a two-state solution is essential for lasting peace."
Comments here:
"As Governments Around The World Urge Their Citizens To Prepare, Here Are 3 Key Things To Watch This Week"
by Michael Snyder
"Can you feel it? There is a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the air, and it appears that things could be about to break loose all around us. On Friday, chaos erupted on Wall Street as tech stocks crashed really hard. Most people don’t realize this, but nearly five trillion dollars in tech stock wealth has already been wiped out on the Nasdaq 100 since October 6th. Meanwhile, there was more violent rioting in Europe this weekend, the upcoming midterm elections could spark similar rioting here in the United States, and on top of everything else the Middle East is bracing for renewed fighting with Iran. This could potentially be a week that we will remember for a long time to come.
Last week, social media was absolutely buzzing with speculation about why governments all over the world are suddenly urging their citizens to stockpile food, water and emergency supplies…Governments across Europe and Asia are increasingly asking households to prepare for emergencies by keeping essential supplies at home, from drinking water and non-perishable food to medicines, batteries and cash. The guidance is drawing attention as officials warn that natural disasters, cyberattacks and hostile-state activity could disrupt everyday services sooner than expected. Times Now reported earlier that Japan is preparing a nationwide disaster-readiness appeal, while Britain launched its ‘Be Ready’ public campaign urging households to remain self-sufficient for at least 72 hours.
Now France has released official guidance for assembling a three-day emergency kit. The announcements have emerged amid heightened geopolitical tensions, leading to concerns worldwide. According to Daniel Aldrich, Dean’s Professor of Resilience at Northeastern University, “We are living through a polycrisis. Shocks no longer arrive one at a time. A storm knocks out power, the outage freezes payment systems, and a cyber intrusion lands on top of both.”
In most cases, people are being encouraged to have enough to survive for 72 hours. But in Germany, officials are instructing citizens to have at least a 10 day supply… Germany recommends that residents maintain enough food, water, and other necessities to sustain themselves for up to 10 days. Its Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) acknowledges that not every household can immediately build a 10-day supply, making three days of preparedness a practical starting point. The agency’s updated guidance addresses prolonged power outages, extreme weather, misinformation, and security emergencies, including situations involving armed conflict.
What do they think is going to happen? Even as governments issue these ominous instructions, they are assuring us that everything is fine, but meanwhile the U.S. Army is preparing for a scenario in which the digging of “mass battlefield graves” will be necessary…"The U.S. Army has conducted military exercises involving the excavation of mass battlefield graves, preparing for a potential future war in which casualties could become so overwhelming that bringing fallen soldiers home promptly would no longer be possible.
The drills, dubbed Operation Dragon Covenant, were held in North Carolina earlier this month and brought together military engineers, chaplains, medical personnel, and fatality management specialists to practice burying large numbers of bodies in temporary battlefield trenches, Army Times reports. Engineers reportedly used D6 bulldozers to excavate trenches capable of holding 20 bodies in roughly 75 minutes. Commanders calculated that a properly equipped engineering company could dig and cover trenches for 2,400 bodies in 24 hours of nonstop operations."
Without a doubt, I do believe that global events are reaching a critical turning point. On Monday, we will want to watch the financial markets very closely, because last week ended very badly. Stocks tend to fall a lot faster than they rise, and what we just witnessed was absolutely stunning. On Friday, approximately 2 trillion dollars in stock market wealth was suddenly wiped out…
Some were calling it “Bloody Friday”, and Intel got hit particularly hard… Intel, meanwhile, tanked almost 29% after issuing a weak outlook for the current quarter, pointing to a slowdown in PCs. Revenue in the company’s client computing and physical artificial intelligence group declined 5% from the year-ago quarter to $8.1 billion.
Sandisk was also down 13%, even as its fiscal first quarter results beat estimates. The data storage company announced an eight-for-one forward stock split. Chipmakers more broadly were under pressure as well. Advanced Micro Devices dropped close to 11%, while others such as Nvidia and Broadcom fell 4% and 5%, respectively.
What goes up must eventually come down. Over the past year, investors have engaged in an epic borrowing binge, and when margin debt increases so rapidly it almost always has a bad ending… Investors are borrowing heavily against their portfolios to boost their returns. Over the past year, margin debt has increased by 49%. That’s a bad omen. According to Fundstrat Global Advisors, whenever margin debt has grown more than 45% year-over-year since 1960, the market has declined five out of six times (83%). That’s a signal worth watching.
Of course it isn’t just U.S. stocks that have been falling. Last week, global investors lost a grand total of nearly 5 trillion dollars…
Now we will wait to see what happens on Monday. If global markets bounce back, that will be a very good sign. If they do not, that could be a harbinger of bad things to come.
On Tuesday, the focus will be on the midterm elections in the United States. Historically, the party that is holding the White House does not do well… Pain is the norm for White House incumbents when the midterms roll around. In 1994, Bill Clinton suffered a 54-seat setback in the House of Representatives; in 2010, Barack Obama lost 63; in 2018, Trump himself lost 40.
Democrats are expecting to do extremely well on Tuesday, and the polls are reinforcing those expectations… With Republicans clinging to a paper-thin 218–214 margin in the House and 53–47 lead in the Senate, opinion polls indicate a rising “blue wave”. A recent Reuters/Ipsos survey gave Democrats an 11-point lead, 47% to 36%, on the generic congressional ballot, while Trump’s approval rating stood at 32%. Voters will also choose governors in 36 states and three US territories, and decide thousands of state legislative contests.
At this stage, the left believes that winning the House is absolutely certain and they are being told that there is about a 70 percent chance that they will win the Senate too. If the Democrats do not win the Senate, the left will be extremely angry. The most important Senate races to watch are Texas, Alaska and Michigan. And if the Democrats do not win the House, the left will go absolutely ballistic. Let’s watch and see what happens.
A lot of political anger has been building up for months, and it won’t take much to cause a major explosion. In the aftermath of the midterms, just about everyone is expecting the U.S. and Israel to bomb Iran. In anticipation of that operation, cargo aircraft have been transporting air defense batteries to Israel…The US has transferred 10 military cargo aircraft to Israeli air bases in the southern Negev region amid preparations for a possible military strike against Iran, the Israeli public broadcaster KAN reported Thursday. The broadcaster said the aircraft landed at Ovda and Nevatim air bases, while additional US military planes were reportedly dispatched to bases in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
According to KAN, the planes departed from Fort Bliss in the US state of Texas, which houses one of the US military’s largest air defense centers, including facilities associated with interceptor missiles and air defense batteries. It has also been pointed out that at least 13 KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft are currently parked at Israel’s Ramon International Airport…
All of the military assets needed for the coming operation are either in place or will be in place shortly. The Iranians know this, and they are threatening to respond with an “earth-shattering blow”… Iran threatened an “earth-shattering blow” against the United States and Israel on Saturday, warning that “red lines are a thing of the past” if either resumes military strikes against the Islamic Republic, as President Donald Trump weighs renewed action amid escalating threats from Tehran. If there are no more red lines, what sort of weapons might they use?
We are also being warned that Iran will no longer limit themselves to attacks in the Middle East… Iran’s rapidly evolving defense doctrine allows military retaliation beyond the geographical area from which an attack originates, Mohammad Mokhber, an adviser to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said Sunday. “The geography of a threat no longer determines the geography of the response,” Mokhber wrote on X, describing what he called a “rapid shift” in Tehran’s military strategy.
Most people assume that Iran could never threaten those of us living in the United States and Europe. That is not a safe assumption at all. The Iranians have far more cards up their sleeves than most people realize. And if they push things too far, that could spark an all-out apocalyptic showdown in the Middle East. Decisions that are made this week could radically alter the course of human history. So buckle up and hold on tight, because I have a feeling that things are about to get really wild."
Joel Bowman, "Voluntary Exiles"
"Voluntary Exiles"
by Joel Bowman
“Men who dreamed, and then realized their dreams. Men filled with wonder,
with longing, with ecstasy. Sailing straight for the unknown, finding it, realizing it...”
~ Henry Miller, from "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" (1945)
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "We’ve enjoyed the good fortune of late to dine with a few of your fellow readers. Over juicy steaks and ample malbec, we exchanged stories and compared Notes, trying to make sense of the world around us. From democracy on the run in Brazil… to riots in France, Germany, and Italy… to the political shenanigans in the U.S. of A… it’s not easy to put the world to right in a single dinner. Still, one must try…
Usually when when meet up with readers, the question arises: Why Argentina? It’s a fair question. After all, dear wifey was born in Norway and grew up between the US and UK. Your editor hails from Australia’s golden shores. And between us, we’ve lived in at least a dozen other countries, besides…Today, we share with you a few thoughts about our adopted home, for what they’re worth…
For the aspiring voluntary exile, the first question one ponders when settling into life in a “foreign” country is, “Why here?” The obvious corollary – why not there? – is seldom far behind. After all, to our compatriots, Argentina must appear just as counterintuitive as, say, Albania... or Algeria... or Angola... to say nothing of the rest of the alphabet. Why the Paris of the South, then, and not the Buenos Aires of the North? One has to be somewhere, of course. But why anywhere in particular? We are by no means the first itinerant head-scratcher to ponder the “geographical conundrum.”
When the American author, Henry Miller, moved to Paris in the 1930s, he was already 40 years old. Miller said he made the move so that he could regain a “life of dignity.” Compared to his hometown of New York City, la Ville Lumière was (at that time) cheap and afforded the artist a kind of freedom that had somehow eluded him back home. Miller spent a decade in the French capital, during which time he wrote prolifically and enjoyed la bonne vie. When he eventually returned to the States, he penned “The Air-conditioned Nightmare,” an account of his impression of life in a country he could no longer understand or appreciate. To him, it seemed sterile and pointless. Absurd, even.
Wrote Miller of his experience: "In a few months I was down south at the home of an old friend. I spent a good part of the Summer there, then returned to New York. My father was still alive. I visited him regularly at his home in Brooklyn, talked about the old days in New York (the ‘80s and 90’s), met the neighbors, listened to the radio (always that damned “Information Please!”), discussed the nature of the prostate gland, the peculiarities of the bladder, the New Deal which was still new to me and rather goofy and meaningless. “That Roosevelt!” I can hear the neighbors saying, as if they were saying “That Hitler!”
A great change had come over America, no doubt about that. There were greater ones coming, I felt certain. We were only witnessing the prelude to something unimaginable. Everything was cock-eyed, and getting more so. Maybe we would end up on all fours, gibbering like baboons. Something disastrous was in store - everybody felt it. Yes, America had changed. The lack of resilience, the feeling of hopelessness, the resignation, the skepticism, the defeatism - I could scarcely believe my ears at first. And over it all that fatuous veneer of optimism - only now decidedly cracked.
What Miller perhaps recognized was a “system” of which he was no longer a part. Abroad, he was liberated from the norms and expectations of mere existence at home. Shifting status symbols... arbitrary social standards... pointless political posturing... the proverbial rat race; all that belonged to another world, baggage on a train he had long since alighted. For Miller, it was not simply the dark and foreboding future he perceived but, as Henry Thoreau put it a century and a half earlier, the way by which “most men tend to lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
Old World Charm: Each man will define a “life of dignity” after his own fashion and, with a stroke of good fortune and a little imagination, discover a place where he can pursue his own happiness. Here in Buenos Aires, we have found such a place... at least, for now. Sure, until recently the politics were a complete mess and the economy was mostly in the doldrums… (Although, as regular readers know, that’s all in flux, even as we type these words to you this very morning.)
Still, there’s plenty more to life than the ongoing disaster of the public realm. In fact, one might argue it’s the private realm that really matters in the here and now. Part of this city’s charm, at least to us, lies in the “backwardness” of the place. There are no televisions blaring out in restaurants. No smartphone screens at the kitchen table. And nobody goes to dinner before 9pm (tourists excepted). Indeed, it is not uncommon to see a young family enter a restaurant at 10 or 11 o’clock on a “school night.”
On which point, families almost always dine together. Big families, too. Italian style. With lots of gesticulations and enthusiastic crosstalk. In most places, there is no such thing as a “kids menu.” Children eat what their parents eat. No “ifs, ands or buts,” as our own mother used to say to her own kids.
When in the many parks and plazas that perforate the city, all children know that, if they are lost, they need only find and inform the closest adult who, knowing the drill, places the child on their shoulders and claps loudly. Surrounding adults then do the same until, in concentric circles, the commotion emanates until the relevant parent realizes they are missing a kiddo. No Child Protective Services necessary. Just honest, reliable community.
Besides all that, there is a designated “friends day,” which the Argentines take very seriously. Amigos call each other, with unreserved affection, “gordo” (fatty), “loco” (crazy) and “pela” (baldy). Nobody gets “offended” or whines about it. Men embrace one another heartily, offering a kiss on the cheek, then dance the dark and brooding tango with the prettiest lady in the room.
An older, worthier generation still wears hats. And ties on a Sunday. Adults still read physical books in cafes. Often big, thick tomes, with nary a vampire or wizard to be found among the dog-eared pages. (Why, just yesterday we spotted a young man in a cafe near Plaza Vicente Lopez, reading a volume of Cicero’s works. Hope for the future, indeed.) The term “woke” is simply something you did before you got out of bed and, as Oscar Wilde once proclaimed, a gentleman seldom goes to sleep on the same day he woke up."
"There Was Truth..."
"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad.
There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth
even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
- George Orwell, “1984”
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