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Friday, October 16, 2026

"Nobody Is Hiring Anymore And Americans Are Running Out Of Money"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 10/16/26
"Nobody Is Hiring Anymore And 
Americans Are Running Out Of Money"
"Layoffs in 2026 keep coming, the job market crash is real, and nobody is hiring the people it pushed out. In this video, Americans show it from their side: a laid-off trucker rejected everywhere for being too old, a master's degree with more than 100 applications and two interviews, a woman waiting all morning for the layoff meeting, 30 applications and zero interviews, an AI screener that rejected a resume in 60 seconds, a nine-year loan officer laid off over a Zoom call, 39 applications and three interviews, a layoff at 9:30 in the morning after four years, a second layoff after 16 months unemployed, school budget cuts that laid off three staff, instant rejections for being overqualified, a layoff with $100K in student loans and a brand new house, a disabled worker who can't find remote work, a job search across Broward County, and a job offer rescinded after three recruiters went silent. We look at why companies post jobs and sit on them, how long a job search really takes now, and what to do if you get laid off."
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"Snyder Reports, 10/16/ 26"

Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 10/16/ 26
"Americans Are Getting Ripped Off at 
Grocery Stores and Don't Even Know It!"
"Americans are being ripped off at the grocery store and don't realize it. I weighed it on camera - here's what you're really paying for. This isn't just high grocery prices - it's shrinkflation by weight. We test Kroger 12oz cheese that scales at 9.8oz to 10.4oz, Walmart Great Value bacon sold as 1lb that scales at 15.1oz to 15.5oz, a Kentucky Legend ham labeled 5.26 lbs, and frozen shrimp loaded with glaze water. You'll see how sodium tripolyphosphate adds water weight, why your shrimp shrinks after cooking, and the butcher-counter trick to get meat re-weighed and re-priced. Weigh your food before you pay full price. Have you weighed something that came up short? Drop the store, product, and what the scale said in the comments below."
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Adventures With Danno, "Grocery Items at Meijer Everyone Needs To Buy Right Now!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 10/16/26
"Grocery Items at Meijer 
Everyone Needs To Buy Right Now!"
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Jim Kunstler, "Things Have Changed"

The Square Mile of the ‘City of London’ within Greater London
"Things Have Changed"
by Jim Kunstler

“Most people are not the enemy. They are scared, proud, lonely, overworked, 
and trying to protect something they love with the only map they were handed.”
  - LHGrey on Substack

"I remind you once again: history is a trickster. Sometimes things turn out, and sometimes they just turn, and these days they’re turning hard. Get this: Russia is not our mortal enemy anymore. This is not 1956 or even 1986. It is no longer the so-called Free World against the wicked Hammer and Sickle.

Russia is no longer a weird political science experiment acting in defiance of human nature — that is, of people striving to make good lives for their families. No more sacrificing everyone’s happiness to prove Karl Marx’s cockamamie theories. No more trying to foist all that on the rest of the world. Russia gave up on that project and opted to become a normal nation, with the full kit of normality: commerce, shopping, banks, enterprise. Things have changed.

Things have gotten strange, too. You see every indication that, for now, Europe has become something of adversary, if not exactly our enemy, yet. Europe has lost its mind. Now, it is Europe’s turn to destroy itself in pursuit of idiotic theories - such as: nations don’t matter... you can have a high standard of living without productive industry... carbon is destroying the world.

Europe is now tyrannized by the unelected EU commission, much as the old Soviet Union was tyrannized by its politburo. An Orwellian switcheroo has occurred. When history plays tricks, it plays doozies. So, now you’ve got the grandmotherly Ursula von der Leyen dictating what all the countries in Europe may do and not do with their farms and factories and the daily lives of their people, just like Joseph Stalin in 1937. And you have the grotesquely weak leaders of France, Germany, and the rest submitting to this.

And outside the EU - which it voted to exit in 2016 - you have our so-called “mother country,” Great Britain (the United Kingdom) committing suicide in the most extravagant way, turning over prime ministers like they were jacks in a game of whist, jailing their own people for impure thoughts, while allowing the wholesale rape of its womenfolk by foreign invaders. Most extraordinary, as Dr. Watson might have observed to old Sherlock. Meanwhile, they have the ragged remnant of their old empire to defend, and it’s not going so well.

That remnant is all that’s left of Britain’s economy: its banks, its Wall Street, which they call The City of London, a square mile of hideous skyscrapers by which Britain desperately seeks to maintain financial flows into an economy that increasingly produces nothing. Which is to say, all that’s left of Britain’s vast imperial power is a matrix of nefarious financial rackets - just as, in the USA, all that’s left of the old Democratic Party is its matrix of rackets.

These days, Britain’s political apparatus is working hard to scare-up a war with Russia as a last-ditch attempt to salvage its hopelessly wasted economy. Britain’s leadership apparently thinks it can summon a war economy and even draft an army of foot-soldiers as if this were 1914 or 1939. It’s an insane project, based on an age-old wish to capture the vast natural resources of Russia. They’ve been at it, like, forever. (France and Germany tried it, too. Didn’t work.)

Now we, here in the USA, in our own hemisphere of the globe, far across the salty seas from Europe, had been enlisted in this project to mess with Russia since 1991, and that’s not working so well anymore, either. First of all, there is the NATO problem. We’re still entangled in that anachronistic treaty, despite Russia having opted to be normal thirty-five years ago. So, you see, the way to get Russia was to stir up a war between it and Ukraine.

And they used us to do it - because the EU+ NATO lacked the mojo for the job. They got our Anglified State department and its NeoCon errand boys, along with our intel cowboys and their “Five-Eye” pardners, to stage the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Kiev, kick out the Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych and, after running through a couple of puppet presidents, installed the former comedian Zelenskyy in the job (who had played a buffoonish Ukrainian president on TV previously, another great prank by our friend, history).

The next gambit was to try to shoe-horn Ukraine into NATO, which everybody knew would provoke Russia to move against Ukraine, which it did in 2022. Russia did not want NATO military bases on its border. That, Mr. Putin declared, loudly enough to be heard in Berlin, Paris, London, and Brussels, was a “red line.” Voila, war! And the USA being the backbone and the bank account for NATO, got dragged into backing Ukraine by the feckless “Joe Biden” - years on Ukraine’s bribery payroll, and too out-of-it to not be punked into playing along. Yeah, he said, you can join NATO. The blue and yellow flags busted out all over our land. Slava Ukraini, the useful idiots shrieked.

President Donald Trump, having survived the Ukraine phone call impeachment gambit and many other attempts to put him out of business, was wise to the game, and one of the first things he did returning to power in 2025 was to confab with Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Against all odds, Mr. Trump has maintained that working relationship despite having to pretend to support NATO. He apparently realizes that the tricks of history have placed the USA in greater alignment with Russia than with our former World War Two allies, most particularly a desire to avoid the World War Three that NATO is now pushing for.

The President has made it clear that he is done with the weaselly Zelensky and all his machinations - his visits to suck-up with King Charles, his nefarious dealings with NATO, his monstrous money-laundering. If Mr. Trump has not yet secretly withdrawn America’s remaining support for Ukraine via NATO, he will do so soon, explicitly, and in a way that is liable to be an end to NATO, which trickster-history has managed to turn into a warmonger. The EU and NATO do not have the money to keep that war going. It’s as simple as that.

Now, Iran. Americans are badly exercised by this operation, which has so far claimed around twenty American lives. (No, the count is really in the hundreds. -  CP) Well, there’s an election on, and you can be sure that a lot of this discontent is being generated by 1) the desperate Democratic Party and 2) the various characters in what’s being called “Woke MAGA.” The peeved apostates, such as Tucker, Candace, MTG, and company, might be acting under, shall we say, foreign influence, but they also seem plumb crazy. In the case of Tucker and Candace, of course, the ideas they’ve been retailing seem garishly insane. Tucker babbles about literal infestations of Satan-sent demons, and sneers Goebbels-like against the Jews, while Candace follows her cuckoo Charlie Kirk vengeance project.

Get this: Iran has lost this war, and badly. (Absolutely untrue! Iran has won this war, and is prepared to extend it until the US/Israeli gangster mob end their aggression. If they don't, Israel will cease to exist while every American asset in the Middle East, including it's navy, will be totally destroyed. - CP) And for a good reason: being that they were determined to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles to deliver them, and President Trump made the reasonable decision that it better not happen. Iran, being run by a lunatic Jihad faction, the IRGC, refuses to come to reasonable terms. (Totally false! - CP) The few weeks left before the US midterm election make this an especially delicate period. The Iranians well know this, and are playing it for all it’s worth in hopes that a flip of the US Congress will improve their position. It’s a bad bet.

The president has made it pretty clear, and consistently so for months. The Iranians can either agree to become a normal nation, even prosperous, happy one, but with no nukes and no more jihad, or we are going to put them out of business - whichever way the midterm election goes. In other words, what you’re seeing now in that corner of the globe is not the final disposition of things. ("Oh, a good and normal nation?" Like the psychopathically degenerate inbred genocidal Israel possessing 300 nukes? Really? - CP)

The Europeans apparently have an incentive to do whatever they can do keep feeding the flames in Ukraine and Iran, though they are not advertising it overtly. Our interests have diverged. The Europeans are maneuvering in such a way as to make themselves an adversary to the USA, a very unwise move. It also happens that their countries are going up in flames at the moment. Their citizens are not happy, and they are further belabored by a large force of invading savages. The leaders in charge of those countries might not be in charge a whole lot longer. Think about recalibrating your expectations about where all this is going. And don’t be so glum. The odds are in our country’s favor, and these wars can be resolved favorably."

A comment: Mr. Kunstler is obviously an extremely talented writer and author, but his opinions are definitely shaped by his pro Israeli/Zionist support for that abomination, as evidenced subtly quite clearly in his writings. Consider that when reading his articles. Presented here so you can judge truth for yourself.
- CP
o
Related:

Dan, I Allegedly, "Are We Headed For A Crash?

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 10/16/26
"Are We Headed For A Crash?
"Are we headed for a stock market crash? I sit down with Jack Hanney, CEO of Patriot Gold Group, to discuss the warning signs investors should be watching: a potentially overvalued stock market, the concentration of gains in major tech stocks, the AI investment boom, rising Treasury yields, and America's growing national debt. We also discuss inflation, the Federal Reserve, and why another market downturn could have serious consequences for retirement savings. Jack and I look at the historical relationship between gold and financial turmoil, the growing interest in physical gold and silver, and how precious metals may fit into a diversified portfolio. We discuss the purchasing power of the dollar, central bank gold buying, the risks of relying too heavily on stocks, and the importance of thinking about financial protection before a crisis hits. Is the market due for a correction, or are we looking at something much bigger? Watch the full conversation and decide for yourself."
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"The House Of Saud Is On Fire"

"The House Of Saud Is On Fire"
by indi.ca

"As the master martyr Yahya Sinwar said, “By God, I see it (a war) with my own eyes that will transform the planet. It will be a regional and religious war that will burn everything, both green and dry... The battle hasn't ended with Ramadan, in fact, the battle starts with Ramadan.” The Ramadan War is nominally over and he was right. We are in the midst of a regional and religious war burning everything green and dry. See it spreading from the Persian Gulf to the Saudi Arabia, with Al Aqsa getting closer all the time.

The Yemen Front: The fire that Sinwar sparked has burnt every Gulf base and spread to what they call Saudi Arabia, with the torch being carried by brave Yemen. The Saudis unholiest site, Aramco, is burning across many points, including right in the headquarters. Saudi clown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who used to openly cavort with Jeffrey Epstein, is now "shuttling between heavily guarded palaces equipped with bunkers and is guarded by a handpicked security team, officials familiar with his movements said."

Know that the Saudis started bombing Yemeni airports in 2015, starved hundreds of thousands of children to death since, and bombed Sanaa airport again after Khamenei's funeral, when Iran dared break the civilian air siege. Yemen is fed up with it, and the courage of the Palestinians is spreading. The flood of fire gets closer and closer to Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, which marks the high point of liberation, and the only ending.

The House of Saud is a house of tards at this point, they keep attacking Yemen, which has little to lose, while they have everything to lose, and are losing it. As Press TV reports, "General [Yahya] Saree warned that if the Saudi coalition carries out any attack on Sana’a, Yemeni armed forces will target the Aramco headquarters in Dammam, the King Khalid Airport in Riyadh, and the Aramco refinery in Riyadh." And whaddya know, Saudi attacked Sanaa and Yemen was true to their promise. Yemen is Babe-Ruthing the baby-botherers, calling their shots. And Saudi simply cannot stop them.

As Reuters said, even through imperial censorship, "Saudi Aramco's headquarters in Dhahran suffered extensive damage in an ​attack on Tuesday, with a fire spreading across ‌several floors, three people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters... A ⁠fourth person said some functions had been shifted to ​global offices, adding that the fire was still burning into ​the early hours of Wednesday. Another source added that the top ​three floors of building, where the office ​of ⁠Aramco CEO Amin Nasser is located, were severely damaged, with part of the ceiling caved in and windows and doors ⁠blown ​out." The other two targets, the Aramco refinery and King Khalid Airport, were also hit, but it's hard to mark the footage or tell the difference because they're always being hit. This is just a regular occurence now. The refinery is anything but fine and flights to Riyadh are not flying.

If Saudi Arabia was a real country, they could and would stop this at any time at no cost and with only benefit for their people. But they are not a real country, Saudi Arabia is just a milking cow being ridden hard into a battle it's entirely unsuited for. Yemen's conditions to the Saudis are simple but of course unacceptable because the Saudis are not real people, just a corrupt family. Ansarallah generously ends most communiques saying "We will continue the equation of siege for siege and escalation for exaclation, and to target the Saudi enemy's military build-up, until the aggression stops and the siege on our dear country is ended." It's not that complicated, but Saudi is not a real country any more than Ukraine or the UAE or anyone else executing (and being executed by) the White Empire's strategy.

Yemeni leader Abdul Malik Al-Houthi laughingly refers to the Saudis as a milking cow, milked so hard their udders hurt, and they are certainly no warhorse. Yet here they are, with the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein in the saddle whipping them forward. The Saudi's proxy army in south Yemen (a pathetic proxy of a proxy of a proxy) is crumbling and losing territory, and all their air support can do is bomb territory without taking any. And, in response, Saudi gets hit disproportionately. After over a decade of genocidal siege, Yemen has little to lose, while the Saudis have everything. And so they're losing it. Saudis air defenses appear almost completely useless. Yemen calls out its targets in advance and hits them anyways. Washed-up mercenaries like Cristiano Ronaldo have been left scrambling as the Saudi regime cannot provide air cover for anybody.

As they offer again and again, Yemeni conditions for stopping this battle are simple (and Quranic). If Saudi stops aggressing against and besieging Yemen, Yemen will stop attacking and besieging them. For reference, it is as the Quran says in its first (long) chapter,

"And fight in God's cause against those who wage war against you, but do not commit aggression – for surely, God does not love aggressors.

Slay them wherever you find them [those who fight against you]; drive them out of the places from which they drove you, for [religious] persecution is worse than killing. Do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque unless they fight you there. If they do fight you, slay them – such is the reward for those who deny the truth – but if they desist, then surely God is most forgiving and merciful... If they desist, then let there be no hostility, except towards aggressors."

You can see these Quranic injunctions invoked clearly by Ansarallah, which says "In response to the Saudi aggression" and "we will continue until the aggression stops." But as the Quran also says (They thought of everything), "As for those who are bent on denying the truth, it makes no difference to them whether you warn them or not, they will not believe. God has sealed their hearts and their ears, and over their eyes there is a covering. They will have a terrible punishment," (2:6). We'll get to this.

One need not be Quranic to not be moronic. Any country with a sense of self-preservation would avoid fighting its neighbors, certainly if its neighbors can return the favor. But Saudi Arabia - like Ukraine, like the Gulf Apostates - is not a real country. Saudi Arabia was part of Greater Israel already and they die first, in apostasy. It is just a pawn of White Empire, being sacrificed when their masters should have resigned already. (In critical or theological commentary, the term "White Empire" is sometimes used to describe the historical European colonial framework built under papal authority (such as 15th-century papal bulls) that justified the subjugation and conquest of non-European territories.) There is no need to analyze Saudi behavior politically, they have no such authority. The Saudis are proxies of a proxy that continue the pattern of fake countries like Ukraine, aggressing instead of accepting that the battle is lost and their degredation and humiliation is in vain. They are just pawns in the greater war, with no capacity for self-preservation.

This greater war (WW3, if you ask me) is what Sinwar called a regional and religious war, driving the White Empire after the region after 500 years of Great Satanism. Sinwar lit the match with the Al Aqsa Flood and the flood of fire rises. So the fire that started from Gaza (where the genocide is unending), still embers in Lebanon, has left every gulf base in cinders, now enters Saudi airspace. But don't forget Iran on the backburner, because they're still cooking.

The Iran Front: While Yemen is going ham on the haram, Iran has ramped up strikes in the Strait of Hormuz also. America has been crowing about how much oil its been escorting out the strait, but it appears that Iran was just stringing them along. Just in time for their meaningless midterms, Iran has started sinking ships and leaving them burning. Much of it Saudi stock. These are not warning shots. Many of these ships are irretrievable losses.

As the IRGC Navy Commander said, "Today, America has become a fuel smuggler. It has lined up all its resources to get 4 or 5 oil tankers through the strait." The US Navy, after two straight defeats, has been reduced to petty piracy. Iran let them play pirates for a while, but now they're blowing ships out of the water mercilessly.

The White Front: You can see what's happening here, from the Empire's perspective. Gaza was the White Empire's Stalingrad and they are behaving like the Nazis, burning everything on their way out. But, militarily, make no mistake. This is a retreat turned into a rout.

It's important to understand, that all of this aggression started from the Empire. The Whites attacked Yemen through Saudi for a decade just as they attacked Russia through Ukraine for a decade too. You can see the same White Empire behind all of them because they're doing the same dumb things. No independent nation would do such dumb things, attacking such large and strong neighbors, but these are not independent nations, as we can see.

What I struggle to understand is why the White Empire would do this when they could just chill and live for a hundred years as undeserved statesmen. All of their avowed enemies – Iran, China, Russia – would happily trade with them. I have my explanations, but one of the things I didn't understand from the Quran makes sense now, in this context. The Quran says God just hardens some peoples hearts and there's nothing you can do about it, that's just things unfolding as they should. As the Quran says, "Then why, when Our punishment came to them, did they not humble themselves? But their hearts became hardened, and Satan made attractive to them that which they were doing," (6:43). Or, even more directly to our current moment, When they are told, 'Do not cause corruption in the land,' they say, 'We are only promoters of peace,' but it is they who are really causing corruption, though they do not realize it...

Then referring, it feels, to the Saudis, who claim to be custodians of the holy mosque while cavorting with Epstein, "When they meet those who believe, they say, 'We believe.' But when they are alone with their evil leaders, they say, 'We are really with you; we were only mocking.' God will requite them for the mockery, and draw them on, for a while, to wander blindly in their insolence..."

Then, as now, referring to the metaphor I'm going on about, They are like those who kindled a fire, and when it lighted up all around them, God took away their sight and left them in utter darkness, unable to see – deaf, dumb, and blind: they will never return [to the right path]. Or their case is like that of heavy rain pouring down from the clouds, accompanied by darkness, thunder, and lightning: they thrust their fingers in their ears at the sound of thunderclaps for fear of death. God thus encompasses those who deny the truth. (2:11)

The fire and the flood, the metaphor and what it's meant for. Hope for the suffering and struggling, and a resounding nope to those collaborating and spreading corruption. Sinwar saw it before all of us, but all of us can see it now. A fire burning green and dry. A flood rising red and hot. A regional war, a religious war leading, inexorably, inshallah, to Al-Aqsa."

"Iran Believes That More War Is Coming After The Midterms, And They Are Feverishly Preparing For It"

by Michael Snyder

"The war in the Middle East has been essentially put on pause until the midterm elections in the United States are over, but once we get to that point Iran is expecting the fighting to go to an entirely new level. So Iran is using this temporary lull in the action to get fully prepared. Ground forces are being trained, defenses are being strengthened, new missiles are being produced, and rallies are being held to bolster public support for the coming conflict. This time around, the Iranians don’t intend to just be on the defensive. They have openly warned that they could conduct ground incursions into neighboring countries, because they believe that this would give them even more leverage with the Trump administration. But if the Iranians get too aggressive, that could set off a chain of events that nobody will be able to control.

In recent weeks, President Trump has repeatedly stated that his administration will “make a decision” on Iran in the not too distant future. Everyone knows that he is referring to military action, and he just said it again… “We’ll make a decision on Iran very soon,” he concludes, amid reports of discussions about a resumption of fighting before Israel’s October 27 election and the United States’ November 3 midterm elections.

Trump has made similar comments repeatedly in the past, without following through with renewed strikes. Last week, he said the US would not attack Iran before the US midterms. I could be wrong, but at this stage I think that there won’t be any additional airstrikes in Iranian territory until after the midterms. However, once the midterms are over it appears that the U.S. and Israel intend to absolutely hammer Iran.

The Iranians are fully convinced of this, and according to the Wall Street Journal they are in full war preparation mode… Iran is fortifying its defenses, rallying loyalists and threatening a wider, harsher response against the U.S. and its Gulf allies as it prepares for potential American attacks after the midterms and seeks to deter them. Iranian officials have warned publicly and in private conversations with regional officials that the Islamic Republic will respond with further escalation across the Middle East if the U.S. launches new strikes.

If fighting is going to inevitably erupt again, the Iranians don’t just want to absorb strikes and fire off missiles in return. Instead, they want to go on the offensive. One of the options that is reportedly being considered is launching “ground incursions into neighboring countries”…Tehran has also suggested it could launch ground incursions into neighboring countries and target regional data centers and communications infrastructure.

Iran has the largest army in the Middle East by a wide margin. With reserves, they can muster a force of more than a million fighting men. That is one of their most important competitive advantages, and they are thinking about using it. A ground incursion across southern Iraq to grab Kuwait would be an extremely shocking move. But if the Iranians were to commit a couple hundred thousand troops to such an effort, there wouldn’t be much that Iraq, Kuwait or the U.S. would be able to do about it.

The U.S. has a few thousand Marines in the Middle East, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough to stop an Iranian ground invasion. The Iranians are also strengthening positions around their most important nuclear sites…Iran has also reinforced protection around its nuclear sites and other security-related bunkers. Last month, it built passive defense measures such as makeshift dirt mounds around its Pickaxe Mountain and Natanz nuclear sites to impede any attempted raid by ground forces, according to Vantor satellite images analyzed by the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

Iranian officials are touting their efforts. The country’s airports, seaports and power plants “have prepared for wartime conditions,” installing shelters and backup supplies to continue operating in a crisis, Brig. Gen. Gholamreza Jalali, the official in charge of the country’s contingency plans, told reporters at the end of September.

The Iranian nuclear program is the core issue of this war, and the Iranians have no intention of backing down. If you doubt Iranian resolve, just look at what they are doing in the Strait of Hormuz. On Sunday, six commercial vessels were hit within the space of just 24 hours…

Six commercial vessels were reported struck in and around the Strait of Hormuz on October 11, including five tankers and a container ship, as attacks on merchant shipping continue to escalate across the region. UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) issued five additional attack warnings, four of them time-late reports, adding to an earlier tanker attack already documented in Sunday’s Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) advisory. The six reports describe five vessels struck while transiting the Strait of Hormuz and a sixth tanker attacked near Sohar anchorage, Oman, in the Gulf of Oman.

I really wish that the Iranians would just back off. But that isn’t going to happen. In fact, it appears that they just hit another tanker. A lot of people seem to think that replacing these tankers will be easy. But that is not true at all.

Building a modern commercial oil tanker typically takes 9 to 15 months of physical construction, but the total turnaround from signing a contract to actual delivery can take up to 3 years. The cost to build a brand new oil tanker currently ranges from 60 million dollars to 140 million dollars. So when a tanker is hit by an Iranian cruise missile, it is a very big deal. It will be many years before the global tanker fleet is back up to full capacity.

Meanwhile, the Saudis and the Houthis are both attacking energy infrastructure. Just a little while ago, the Saudis bombed the Al-Sabaha oil depot in Sanaa…
This has made the Houthis really angry. They are pledging to hit some of the most strategic targets in Saudi Arabia in response…The Houthis warned Saudi Arabia Tuesday that any strikes on the Yemeni capital would trigger a “harsh and painful” retaliation. “Any strikes on the capital, Sanaa, will be met with a harsh and painful response in the capital of the Saudi enemy, Riyadh,” Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree warned in a post on X.

An hour later he expanded on the threat, saying in another post that if Saudi Arabia “proceeds with its announced targeting” of Sanaa, the Iran-backed rebels would attack state energy company Saudi Aramco’s headquarters in Damman, along with King Khalid Airport in Riyadh, which they have already targeted with deadly missile strikes, and Aramco’s refinery in Riyadh.

In addition, the Houthis are warning that there will be a “swift and painful response” if the U.S. joins the fighting… “If the U.S. becomes involved in the aggression against Yemen, we will not deliberate over the decision to respond, rather, there will be a swift and painful response targeting the U.S. and all its interests in the region,” Houthi political bureau member Mohammed Al Bukhaiti told the Agence France-Presse news agency in an interview. He also warned “all employees and workers at Saudi oil facilities and airports (should) stay away from these sites, as they have become legitimate targets”.

The longer the fighting in the Middle East goes on, the worse the global energy crisis will get. Unfortunately, there is no end in sight. Instead, it appears that the fighting in the Middle East could be about to greatly escalate. The Iranians have warned us that they are ready to fight a “doomsday war” with the United States. A lot of the “experts” are not taking that threat seriously, but I believe that they should. If push comes to shove, I am convinced that the people that are running Iran would be willing to go all the way to the top of the escalation ladder, and that really would be a nightmare scenario."

"Why Iran Didn’t Walk Away"

"Why Iran Didn’t Walk Away"
by Larry C. Johnson

"I’ve had this article sitting in storage waiting for the right moment to publish it. Tonight, Mario Nawfal hosted a debate on Iran that featured Robert Barnes and Matt Tardio. Matt put out so much disinformation and falsities that I believe now is the time to set the record straight about what happened to the JCPOA. I was tempted to attach the prefix, “RE” to Matt’s last name but decided not to go down the ad hominem path. Instead, let’s just deal with the facts.

On May 8, 2018, Donald Trump announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear agreement that Iran had signed with the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China three years earlier. He reimposed every sanction the deal had lifted and then piled on more under a policy he called “maximum pressure.” Iran had not violated the agreement. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which had inspectors at every Iranian nuclear site, had certified again and again that Iran was keeping its side of the bargain.

Most people in Washington expected Tehran to respond in kind: throw out the inspectors, restart the centrifuges and race for the bomb. Some in the administration hoped it would, because that would have justified the next step. Iran did the opposite. For a full year it continued to abide by every limit in the agreement, keeping its enrichment at 3.67%, its stockpile under 300 kilograms and its doors open to the IAEA. Understanding why tells you a great deal about how Iran’s leaders actually think, and it undercuts the caricature of a reckless regime that dominates American commentary.

It put the United States in the wrong: The first reason was legitimacy. By staying in the deal, Iran turned the dispute from “Iran versus the world” into “the United States versus everyone else.” Washington, not Tehran, was the party that had broken an agreement endorsed by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2231. Europe, Russia and China all said so. For the first time in decades Iran held the diplomatic high ground, and its leaders understood that giving it up would reunite the coalition that had sanctioned them before 2015.

That calculation paid off in a way few predicted. In August 2020 the Trump administration tried to invoke the deal’s “snapback” clause to restore all UN sanctions on Iran. Thirteen of the fifteen members of the Security Council rejected the move, on the grounds that the United States had left the agreement and could not use its provisions. Had Iran walked out in 2018, the snapback would have been automatic and unanimous. Patience bought Iran protection at the United Nations.

It gave Europe a chance to deliver: The second reason was economic hope. The deal’s value to Iran was sanctions relief, and the Europeans promised to preserve some of it. They created a special trade channel, INSTEX, designed to let European companies do business with Iran without exposure to American sanctions. Tehran gave Europe time to make it work. It never did. INSTEX completed its first transaction, a shipment of medical supplies, only in March 2020, and European companies fled Iran rather than risk being cut off from the American market and the dollar. Iran’s oil exports collapsed from about 2.5 million barrels a day to a few hundred thousand. But Iran’s leaders had to test the European promise before they could declare it worthless, and they did.

It denied Washington and Israel a pretext: The third reason was security. Iran’s leaders knew that any visible move toward a bomb would be used to justify military strikes. Hawks in Washington and Jerusalem had argued for years that the deal only delayed the inevitable; an Iranian walkout would have proved their case. By staying inside the agreement, with inspectors on the ground, Iran made it far harder to sell a war. The IAEA’s reports were Iran’s best defense.

This was consistent with the position Iran’s leadership has held publicly for two decades. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei issued a religious ruling forbidding nuclear weapons, and Iran remained a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty throughout. Whatever one thinks of the sincerity of that position, Iran’s conduct after May 2018 matched it.

It bet on outlasting Trump: The fourth reason was time. Iran’s leaders had watched American politics closely, and they knew presidents come and go. The deal had been negotiated by one administration and abandoned by the next; it could be restored by a third. Staying in the agreement kept that door open. President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif had staked their political careers on the deal, and they argued that Iran should wait out Trump rather than burn the bridge. Khamenei, who had always been skeptical of American promises, allowed them to make that case. It was a wager that the United States would return to its word.

Why the patience ran out: Iran’s patience was not unlimited, and it was never unconditional. On May 8, 2019, exactly one year after Trump’s announcement, Rouhani said Iran would begin to scale back its commitments in stages. Iran invoked paragraph 36 of the deal itself, which allows a party to stop performing its obligations if another party is in significant non-compliance. Each step was announced in advance, carried out under IAEA observation and described as reversible the moment the United States returned and lifted sanctions. In July 2019 Iran exceeded the stockpile limit and enriched to 4.5%. In November it resumed enrichment at Fordow.

Then came the events that hardened Tehran. The United States killed General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated in November 2020. The Natanz enrichment plant was sabotaged in April 2021. Each attack was answered with another step: 20% enrichment, the end of expanded inspections, and finally 60%. The Biden administration had a chance to restore the deal in Vienna in 2021 and 2022, and those talks collapsed too.

Sixty percent as leverage: The most alarming of Iran’s steps, the decision in April 2021 to enrich uranium to 60%, is usually cited as proof that Tehran was racing for a bomb. Look at the timing and the terms and it reads very differently. Talks to restore the deal opened in Vienna on April 6, 2021. Five days later the enrichment hall at Natanz was sabotaged in an attack widely attributed to Israel. Iran announced 60% enrichment two days after that.

The move was a message aimed at the negotiating table. Iran was telling the remaining parties, and the United States, that every month they failed to honor their commitments would cost them, and that the cost would rise. Iran’s government spokesman, Ali Rabiei, said publicly on April 20 that the step “can quickly be reversed” if the other parties returned to their obligations, and that enrichment would then go back to the level set in the 2015 accord. The parliament’s law of December 2020, which ordered higher enrichment and fewer inspections, was written the same way: it tied every escalation to the absence of sanctions relief.

That is leverage, not a breakout. Iran had watched Europe fail to deliver for three years and the United States refuse to return without new concessions. Staying at 3.67% had won it praise and nothing else. Raising the stakes was the only tool it had left to make the other signatories take their own commitments seriously. Iran enriched to 60% so that it would have something to give back.

What the critics will say: Critics make three arguments that challenge my thesis. The first is that Iran was provoking the United States all along through its missile program and its support for allies across the region. But neither was covered by the JCPOA. The deal was deliberately limited to the nuclear program because that was the only issue on which agreement was possible. Holding Iran responsible for breaking terms that were never in the agreement is not a fair test.

The second is that 60% enrichment has no civilian purpose. That is largely true, and it is the point. A bargaining chip has to be valuable to the other side, and 60% was valuable precisely because it worried Washington, Europe and Israel. Iran never enriched to 90%, never left the Non-Proliferation Treaty and never expelled inspectors during this period.

The third is that in early 2023 the IAEA found uranium particles enriched to 83.7% at Fordow. Iran said they were the result of unintended fluctuations in the enrichment process, and the agency did not report any stockpile at that level. Particles are not a stockpile, and a stockpile is not a weapon. Iran’s accumulated 60% material did grow, to about 87.5 kilograms by that report and far more later, and that growth was dangerous. But it was the predictable price of a policy of pressure that gave Iran no reason to stop.

The lesson: The record shows a government that responded to the breach of an international agreement with restraint, then with measured and reversible pressure, and only escalated after its economy had been strangled and its officers and scientists killed. That is not the behavior of a regime determined to build a bomb at the first opportunity. It is the behavior of a government that wanted the deal to survive and concluded, slowly, that the United States would not let it.

There is a lesson here for Washington. When the United States walked away from an agreement that was working, it did not get a better deal. It got an Iran with near-weapons-grade uranium, fewer inspectors and every reason to doubt American promises. Iran kept the JCPOA alive for a year after Trump abandoned it. The question we should be asking is not why Iran eventually stepped back, but why the United States walked away from a deal that was keeping Iran a year away from a bomb."
o
Full screen recommended.
10/15/26: Colonel Wilkerson and I discuss with
 Danny Haiphong the latest developments in West Asia.

Thursday, October 15, 2026

"Judge Napolitano, 10/15/26"

Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano, 10/15/26
"Seyed M. Marandi Warns: Trump’s MOAB on Iran 
Could Trigger $10 Gas & Global Economic Collapse!"
"What happens if a major U.S. strike on Iran triggers a wider conflict across the Middle East? In this video, we examine Seyed M. Marandi’s warning about the potential consequences of a Trump-led MOAB strike on Iran, including disruptions to Gulf energy supplies, a possible surge in oil prices, and the risk of severe global economic instability. Could gasoline prices potentially reach $10 per gallon if the Persian Gulf becomes heavily disrupted? What could happen to oil markets, shipping routes, inflation, and economies around the world? We break down the warning, the possible geopolitical chain reaction, and the risks facing the global economy. From Iran and the Persian Gulf to Saudi Arabia, the United States, oil markets, and global trade, this analysis explores what a major escalation could mean for ordinary people and the world economy."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

Full screen recommended.
Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

"A Look to the Heavens"

"This colorful cosmic skyscape features a peculiar system of galaxies cataloged as Arp 227 some 100 million light-years distant. Swimming within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, Arp 227 consists of the two galaxies prominent on the left; the curious shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue, spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470. The faint, wide arcs or shells of NGC 474 could have been formed by a gravitational encounter with neighbor NGC 470. Alternately the shells could be caused by a merger with a smaller galaxy producing an effect analogous to ripples across the surface of a pond.
Remarkably, the large galaxy on the right hand side of the deep image, NGC 467, appears to be surrounded by faint shells too, evidence of another interacting galaxy system. Intriguing background galaxies are scattered around the field that also includes spiky foreground stars. Of course, those stars lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. The field of view spans 25 arc minutes or about 1/2 degree on the sky."
                 - http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100211.html

"Kingdom of Eternal Enchantment"

Full screen recommended.
Crystal Heaven,
"Kingdom of Eternal Enchantment"
"Step into a breathtaking underwater fantasy kingdom where glowing coral forests, pearl-covered palaces, crystal waters, enchanted flowers, and mystical sea creatures come together in a world beyond imagination. Let this magical journey carry you through ancient underwater kingdoms, luminous gardens, celestial palaces, hidden villages, sparkling rivers, enchanted forests, and peaceful ocean realms filled with wonder and beauty."

Native American Elder, "The Native Way To Clean Your Heart in a Dirty World"

Full screen recommended.
Native American Elder,
"The Native Way To Clean Your Heart in a Dirty World"

"I Ain’t Changed, I Just See People Clearer Now"

Full screen recommended.
Blues Masterpiece,
"I Ain’t Changed, I Just See People Clearer Now"
“I Ain’t Changed… I Just See People Clearer Now” is a sharp, reflective blues about growth without losing yourself. The singer hasn’t become colder or different - just wiser. Time has peeled back the layers, revealing who people really are, without illusion or excuse. Driven by steady blues guitar and the knowing cry of the harmonica, the song carries a calm, confident groove. The voice doesn’t sound bitter - just aware, grounded, and done pretending not to notice what’s right in front of them. Not changed… just awakened."

"I Promise You This..."

"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards."
- Edward Abbey

The Daily "Near You?"

South Pittsburg, Tennessee, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"A Real Church Sign"

 

"Oh yeah, we're doing fine. Thanks for asking..."

"The Beginning Of A New Day..."

"This is the beginning of a new day.
You have been given this day to use as you will.
You can waste it or use it for good.
What you do today is important because 
you are exchanging a day of your life for it.
When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever;
in its place is something that you have left behind...
let it be something good."
- Author Unknown

"I Used to Be Disgusted, Now I'm Just Tired"

"I Used to Be Disgusted, Now I'm Just Tired"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"The midterm elections, the “most important elections of our lifetimes,” are coming. Whoever wins, it isn't really going to change much. Today’s system is simply too deeply entrenched. While the much-touted differences between America's political parties get obsessive, hysterical attention, the sameness of Imperial corruption, waste and squalor regardless of who's in power gets little notice.

Scrape away the differences - mostly in domestic and cultural issues - and we see the dead hand of Imperial Corruption is on the tiller. The core of Imperial Corruption is the disconnect between the nation's ideals of representational democracy and open markets and the sordid reality: elites serve their interests by corrupting both democracy and open markets.

Elites Against Democracy: Unfettered democracy and markets cannot be controlled by a tiny, self-serving elite. Stripped of corruption, democracy and markets are free-for-alls that are constantly evolving. This open-ended dynamism is the beating heart of both democracy and open markets. But the dynamic adaptive churn of unfettered representative democracy and open markets are anathema to insiders, vested interests and elites. Each has gained asymmetric power by subverting democracy and markets to serve their private interests. They’ve destroyed the system’s natural dynamism.

When "competition" has been reduced to two telecoms, two healthcare insurers, two pork processors, etc., the system has been stripped of adaptability and resilience. Democracy has been replaced by an auction of political power to the highest bidder.

Everything’s Up for Grabs: It rewards cronies and devotes all its resources not to solving the nation's problems but to whipping up conflagrations of divisiveness and partisan hysteria that wash away the middle ground where problems can actually be addressed. This crippling of the nation's ability to actually solve difficult problems serves the interests of self-serving elites whose sole interest is accumulating personal wealth and power.

Their proclaimed interest in solving the nations' real-world problems are fraudulent tissues designed to hide the putrid reality that all their so-called "solutions" distill down to sluicing huge sums of state money to cronies and campaign contributors under the guise of "solving problems."

The only "problem" America's elites know how to solve is the "problem" of how to get personally richer while tightening their control of the nation-state's vast flood of (taxed/ borrowed) money. Cronies and contributors get tax breaks hidden in 1,000-page legislation and overflowing rivers of money (here's looking at you, Big Pharma, Big Defense, Higher Education, Sickcare, et al.).

Masters at Misdirection and Distraction: America's elites are masters at misdirection and distraction: it's always the other side's fault that the nation is sliding down the chute. The elites don't really care which side is in power, as they control them both to serve their own interests. Any advance that increases efficiency and productivity and furthers the public good is squelched, suppressed or co-opted by vested interests. They fear, rightly, that their share of the spoils might be diminished by advances that render obsolete their particular cartel, monopoly or other embedded skim, scam, fraud, embezzlement or simply unproductive dead weight.

But something funny happens on the way to gaining control of complex emerging systems: that control destroys the system's self-correcting mechanisms and adaptability. Rigging the system to serve one's own interests destroys the system's ability to adapt to changing circumstances and selective pressures.

Adapt or Die: Once a system has been crippled to serve the interest of an elite, when forced to adapt or die, it can only die as its mechanisms of adaptation were destroyed by the power-grab of elites. An economy dominated by a handful of cartels and quasi-monopolies is an economy that is doomed to slide into the dustbin of history, as cartels and monopolies "win" by crushing competition, as competition threatens their profits and control of markets and governance, a.k.a. "democracy."

Any system that serves the interests of the few by choking off adaptability and the dynamisms of a free-for-all churn lacks the tools needed to avoid systemic collapse. By enabling elites to organize the nation to serve their personal interests, America has been stripped of the dynamics needed to adapt. Without these dynamics, collapse is the only possible outcome.

Don’t Forget the Deep State! But no mention of today’s “democracy” can ignore the Deep State - the unelected and unaccountable Administrative State. The Administrative State has existed in some form in every nation-state/empire, but the U.S. Deep State only gained its vast global powers in World War II and the Cold War. That was when the Deep State learned the lesson that the public can’t always be counted on to do “the right thing.” They may choose unwisely (for example, choosing appeasement over preparation). And so the really important decisions needed to preserve the nation cannot be left to the public or parochial politicos in elected office. Those decisions must be in the hands of those who know what has to be done.

Democracy is simply the rubber stamp for doing what's necessary. Beyond that, it's a potentially fatal hindrance. That's the mindset of the Deep State, and if you and I were in upper-echelon positions in the Administrative State, we'd agree with this mindset when things get serious.

This mindset is a self-reinforcing group-think feedback loop. Those who believe the public should set policy are weeded out, either by self-selection or via being sent to bureaucratic Siberia. We're protecting you. That's all you need to know.

This opens the door to functionaries who came to do good but stayed to do well, i.e. those with the right credentials and connections to enter the Power Circle to "serve the public" but soon become insiders maximizing their own private gains. That's the problem with the Administrative State: it's ultimately unaccountable, not just to the public or elected officials but to itself.

Enjoy the Circus: But in the meantime, enjoy the political theatrics we’ve been treated to down on the sand-strewn floor of the Coliseum. While Imperial Corruption undermines what's left of the nation's ability to adapt fast enough and successfully enough to survive what lies ahead, we can cheer the "winners" of the political bloodsport. We can simply ignore the winds of disorder sweeping the land.

It seems like it can just go on forever. But everything is forever until systemic weaknesses reveal themselves, typically at the most inopportune junctures. We could well be at one of them. It's easy to be disgusted. But I’ve found that being disabused of the fantasy that the system is self-correcting is the healthier perspective. I used to be infuriated by it all. Now I'm just tired of it all."

"44% Of Americans Have Trouble Paying For Basic Necessities And The Lifetime Cost Of The American Dream Has Risen To $5.3 Million"

by Michael Snyder

"How did we get to a point where nearly half of the entire population is struggling to even pay for the most basic necessities? A lot of people talk about “economic collapse” as something that will occur someday in the future. The truth is that “economic collapse” has been slowly happening for decades as the middle class has been systematically eviscerated. It now takes 5.3 million dollars to live the American Dream over the course of a lifetime. Who can afford that? Most Americans aren’t even going to come close to making 5.3 million dollars during their working years. Of course in this economic environment, much of the population is just concerned with trying to survive from month to month. The cost of living crisis that has been raging for this entire decade is absolutely crushing millions upon millions of U.S. households, and now we just learned that the official inflation rate has gone up again.

If financial stress has become a major theme in your life, I want you to know that you are not alone. According to a shocking new survey just released by the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of Americans struggle to even pay for the most basic necessities…More than four-in-ten Americans (44%) indicate they have had trouble paying for at least one of these basic necessities in the past year We aren’t talking about having difficulty paying the phone bill.

The survey found that an alarmingly high percentage of the population can’t even afford to pay for housing, food and medical care. It also discovered that a whopping 27 percent of Americans can’t pay their monthly bills in full…
60% say they do not currently have enough income to lead the kind of life they want.
53% say they do not have emergency funds that would cover their expenses for three months.
27% cannot pay some of their monthly bills or can only make partial payments.
32% say they worry every day or almost every day about the cost of healthcare and the amount of debt they have.

More than a quarter of the population is getting behind on their debts. That is what you call a crisis. And there is no end in sight. Most Americans don’t want to be rich. Most Americans just want to live a middle class lifestyle like their parents did. Unfortunately, it now costs 5.3 million dollars to live the American Dream over the course of a lifetime…

The cost of the American dream is rising at a faster pace than household earnings, driven by notable increases in the cost of homeownership, raising children and paying for college, according to a new report. An analysis by Investopedia finds that the lifetime cost of the American dream rose 4.1% from 2025 to 2026, with the cost increasing by more than $208,000 from $5.11 million a year ago to $5.32 million this year. Are you going to make more than $5 million dollars during your working years? If not, you are out of luck.

Housing costs have been eroding the middle class faster than just about anything else… Homeownership costs rose the most in dollar terms, with the lifetime cost rising by over $91,000 from $1.184 million in 2025 to $1.275 million in 2026. That rise amounts to a 7.7% increase year over year.

That figure includes a 20% down payment on a median-priced single-family home of $420,000, with a 6.32% 30-year mortgage that brings the total cost with interest to about $837,000, as well as $3,057 a year in insurance costs, property taxes and 30 years of upkeep and utilities which adds another $438,000 to the price tag.

Of course the figures quoted above no longer apply, because the average rate on a 30 year mortgage is now well over 7 percent. So now homeownership is even more unaffordable. And just about everything else is becoming more expensive too.

Today we learned that the official rate of inflation just went up again…September brought little relief to the accelerating cost of living, as consumer prices increased again and kept the inflation rate well above the Federal Reserve’s goal. The consumer price index, a broad measure of goods and services costs across the U.S. economy, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.6% for the month, putting the 12-month rate at 3.7%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected respective gains of 0.6% and 3.6%.

The formula that is used to calculate the official rate of inflation has been changed dozens of times since the Jimmy Carter era, and at this stage it doesn’t even come close to accurately reflecting how quickly prices are actually going up. But the fact that even the government is admitting that inflation is rising is not good.

Soaring energy costs were the primary reason for the spike in the inflation rate…Energy costs drove inflation in September, and high retail prices in October suggest pain at the pump will continue. Prices have soared since the Iran conflict started at the end of February. Gasoline prices last month rose 9.1% from the prior month - a faster pace than August’s 3.9% increase- and are up 34% over the past year. Fuel-oil prices, meanwhile, are up 74% since last September.

When this inflation report was released, it really spooked investors, and bond yields spiked dramatically…The 10-year Treasury note yield rose on Wednesday following the latest U.S. inflation print. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note - the main benchmark for mortgages, auto loans and credit card debt - jumped more than 7 basis points to 5.289% and reached the highest level since Oct. 8. The longer-dated 30-year U.S. Treasury yield - which tends to react most to geopolitical events - was up more than 3 basis points to 5.602%.

The U.S. Treasury has been working really hard to keep bond yields under control. I think that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is going to need a bigger boat. During most economic downturns, normally we are either facing an inflation crisis or an unemployment crisis. This time around, it appears that we will have both.

Mass layoffs have been occurring all over the nation, and on Wednesday we learned that Netflix is joining the party…Netflix is reportedly laying off 1,000 workers – the streaming giant’s biggest cuts since 2022. Staff were told Wednesday that about 6% of the workforce – within product, tech, legal, and human resources teams – was being slashed, according to a memo obtained by the Post. I thought that Netflix was doing well. I guess not.

Kroger is another company that was once thriving, but now they have decided to give the axe to about 3,000 highly-paid corporate workers…Kroger is planning to eliminate approximately 3,000 corporate positions over the next three years as the grocery giant expands its use of artificial intelligence and looks to cut costs, according to a report. The planned cuts would affect roughly 37% of Kroger’s approximately 8,200 corporate employees, Reuters reported Monday, citing an internal memo from CEO Greg Foran. The restructuring comes as Kroger faces pressure to improve sales, keep grocery prices competitive and streamline operations through increased use of AI.

Every time more highly-paid jobs are wiped out, the middle class gets even smaller. If you still have your seat in the middle class, you should be very thankful, because more chairs are being pulled out of the game with each passing day. The top 10 percent of all income earners are still thriving, but for almost everyone else life is a struggle. It didn’t have to turn out this way. Decades of insanely bad decisions have brought us to this point, and now the cost of living is the number one political issue during this campaign season by a very wide margin."
o
Video here:

"How It Really Is"