"Malls Are Disappearing Across America… And the Retail Collapse Has Already Begun"

Full screen recommended.

Across The States, 8/3/26

"Malls Are Disappearing Across America…

And the Retail Collapse Has Already Begun"

"Why are American malls dying? Most people blame Amazon or online shopping - but the real story began decades earlier. This video uncovers the hidden reasons behind the decline of shopping malls and reveals why the loss of these spaces is about much more than retail. Here’s the thing… malls were never just places to buy clothes or electronics. They became everyday gathering spots where families, teenagers, seniors, and neighbors connected without planning. We explore how overbuilding, failing anchor stores, changing consumer habits, and the disappearance of "third places" slowly pushed malls toward collapse. What most people don’t realize is that the biggest loss isn't a department store - it’s the sense of community these places quietly created. The reality is that many former malls are now being reinvented as churches, healthcare centers, apartments, and mixed-use community spaces, showing that people still crave real-world connection. Watch till the end to discover why the future of malls may depend less on shopping - and more on bringing people together."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Our Water Supply Is Under Attack"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 8/3/26

"Our Water Supply Is Under Attack"

"Breaking news: Cybersecurity attacks have targeted water treatment systems and public water infrastructure in multiple states, raising serious questions about the security of America's water supply. In this video, I break down what happened, which states have been affected, how these attacks work, and why every family should take this warning seriously. This isn't about fear—it's about preparation. I explain why storing emergency drinking water is one of the simplest and smartest things you can do today, especially during extreme summer heat. We also discuss the growing risks to critical infrastructure, what officials are saying, and why your state could be vulnerable even if it hasn't reported an attack yet. Stay informed, stay prepared, and let me know your thoughts in the comments."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

 

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Holding On To Something..."

Sam: "It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."

- Samwise Gamgee,

"Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"

"A Realistic Attitude..."

"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."

- Philip José Farmer

“On The Beach”

“On The Beach”

by Nevil Shute

“Nevil Shute’s 1959 novel “On the Beach” is set in what was then the near future (1963, approximately a year following World War III). The conflict has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout and killing all animal life. While the nuclear bombs were confined to the northern hemisphere, global air currents are slowly carrying the fallout to the southern hemisphere. The only part of the planet still habitable is the far south of the globe, specifically Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and the southern parts of South America.

From Australia, survivors detect a mysterious and incomprehensible Morse code radio signal originating from the United States. With hope that some life has remained in the contaminated regions, one of the last American nuclear submarines, the USS Scorpion, placed by its captain under Australian naval command, is ordered to sail north from its port of refuge in Melbourne (Australia’s southernmost major mainland city) to try to contact whoever is sending the signal. In preparation for this long journey the submarine first makes a shorter trip to some port cities in northern Australia including Cairns, Queensland and Darwin, Northern Territory, finding no survivors.

The Australian government makes arrangements to provide its citizens with free suicide pills and injections, so that they will be able to avoid prolonged suffering from radiation sickness. One of the novel’s poignant dilemmas is that of Australian naval officer Peter Holmes, who has a baby daughter and a naive and childish wife, Mary, who is in denial about the impending disaster. Because he has been assigned to travel north with the Americans, Peter must try to explain to Mary how to euthanize their baby and kill herself with the pill should he be killed on the ocean voyage.

The characters make their best efforts to enjoy what time and pleasures remain to them before dying from radiation poisoning, speaking of small pleasures and continuing their customary activities, allowing their awareness of the coming end to impinge on their minds only long enough to plan ahead for their final hours. The Holmeses plant a garden that they will never see; Moira takes classes in typing and shorthand; scientist John Osborne and others organize a dangerous motor race that results in the violent deaths of several participants. In the end, Captain Towers chooses not to remain with Moira but rather to lead his crew on a final mission to scuttle their submarine beyond the twelve-mile (22 km) limit, so that she will not rattle about, unsecured, in a foreign port, refusing to allow his coming demise to turn him aside from his duty and acting as a pillar of strength to his crew.

Typically for a Shute novel, the characters avoid the expression of intense emotions and do not mope or indulge in self-pity. They do not, for the most part, flee southward as refugees but rather accept their fate once the lethal radiation levels reach the latitudes at which they live. Finally, most of the Australians do opt for the government-promoted alternative of suicide when the symptoms of radiation-sickness appear.”

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

o

Freely download “On the Beach”, by Nevil Shute, here:

- https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20131214

○

"On The Beach", full movie.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HusewgIe_1k

Full screen recommended.

"The Last Places Standing When The Sky Turns To Ash: What They Don’t Want You To Know About Surviving The End"

"The Last Places Standing When The Sky Turns To Ash: 

What They Don’t Want You To Know About Surviving The End"

by Madge Waggy

Excerpt: “We are standing at the precipice of something we cannot comprehend, and the silence from those who know is deafening. The mechanisms are already in motion, the chess pieces positioned with mathematical precision while the world sleeps. I have seen the projections. I have read the classified briefings that never reached your evening news. What comes next will not be war as your grandparents understood it - it will be something that rewrites the very definition of survival. The question is no longer if, but when. And when it happens, the concept of ‘safe’ will become the most precious commodity on Earth.” - Dr. Elias Vance, Former Strategic Analyst, NATO Defense College

The Last Sanctuaries Where Humanity Might Endure When the World Ends: The clock isn’t just ticking anymore - it’s screaming. You feel it in your bones when you wake up at 3 AM, drenched in sweat, the residue of dreams you can’t quite remember but know involved running, always running. You see it in the way world leaders speak in coded language now, how the word “tactical” has replaced “nuclear” in press conferences, how the maps on television show arrows pointing toward borders that didn’t matter yesterday but suddenly matter more than your next breath. The architecture of global stability is cracking in places the architects never anticipated, and the rest of us are living in a house whose foundation has already turned to dust - we just haven’t felt the collapse yet.

But some of us are paying attention. Some of us have been watching the patterns long enough to recognize that history doesn’t repeat, as the cliché goes, but it rhymes with terrifying precision. The 1910s had their assassination in Sarajevo. The 2020s have their powder kegs scattered across multiple continents, each one guarded by fingers hovering over buttons that could reduce civilization to radioactive ash and memory. And when - not if, but when - those fingers finally press down, the world you know will vanish not with a bang that you hear, but with a silence that swallows everything you’ve ever loved.

This isn’t fear-mongering. This isn’t conspiracy theory dressed in journalism’s clothing. This is the mathematics of survival in an era where we’ve built machines capable of ending all life while simultaneously convincing ourselves that nobody would ever be irrational enough to use them. It’s the same delusion that preceded every catastrophe in human history - the unshakeable belief that tomorrow will look like today, until suddenly it doesn’t.

So let’s speak plainly about what comes after. Not the immediate horror, the blinding light and the shockwave that turns cities into memories, but the long, dark aftermath where survival becomes the only morality left. Where do you go when the northern hemisphere becomes a graveyard of poisoned air and toxic rain? Where can you breathe when the jet stream carries death on its back, circling the globe like a vulture waiting for the last heartbeat? Where does humanity hide when the weapons we’ve spent eighty years perfecting finally sing their song of annihilation?

The answer lies in geography, in the accidents of tectonic plates and ocean currents that created pockets of isolation in a world that has otherwise grown terrifyingly small. These aren’t paradise destinations or luxury retreats - the rich have already bought their bunkers in New Zealand, carving out survivalist compounds that would make feudal lords jealous. No, these are places defined by their relationship to distance, by how far they sit from the crosshairs of nuclear targeting computers that don’t care about your dreams or your children’s names.

What follows is not a travel guide. It is a map of the possible, a cartography of the places where the human experiment might continue when the laboratories of civilization have burned down. Read it with the understanding that survival is never guaranteed, only slightly less impossible."

Full, most highly recommended article  is here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

'How It Really Is"

 

Jim Kunstler, "Everybody Knows"

"Everybody Knows"

by Jim Kunstler

“I underestimated how emotionally committed much of the press is to rallying

 around Anthony Fauci. His reputation is more important to them than anything...” 

- Matt Taibbi

"The baleful afterburn of Dr. Fauci’s one-sentence testimony (“On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer...”) seeps over the land like some ghastly pestilence now. You couldn’t have seen a more vivid demonstration of manifest evil than the master bureaucratic grifter formerly self-styled as “The Science” stonewall his way through that fateful reckoning in Sen. Rand Paul’s committee hearing last Wednesday.

The score so far: over a million dead in America from the Covid-19 virus that Dr. Fauci helped develop starting as far back as the 1990s, with Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina. Tens of thousands left with serious, lasting injuries from the vaccines they promoted. The exact number of vaccine-connected deaths unknown because the public health agencies refused to report honestly on an operation that they caused to happen. There are whole legions of high officials and doctors behind Dr. Fauci now desperate to cover their asses.

Along with the mendacious news media. HHS Sec’y Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. happened to be on Dana Bash’s CNN Sunday morning program. By the way, Dana Bash used to be married to one Jeremy Bash, Chief-of-Staff to CIA-Director Leon Panetta under Barack Obama. CNN lied consistently to the American people during the years of the Covid emergency. You have to wonder if CNN takes direction from the CIA, or maybe rogue elements in (or retired from) the agency. Sunday, Dana Bash went on offense against RFK,Jr.

Didn’t work. RFK, Jr. kept his cool. The harshest thing he said to Bash through all her hectoring was “you were part of the problem,” a startling understatement. Ms. Bash otherwise only wrecked herself, over-speaking her guest at every opportunity, pettifogging, and filibustering. Everybody could see what she was up to. Imagine how desperate CNN was to think that Dana Bash could bluster her way over Mr. Kennedy. He helped her expose herself as a tool.

The news media has been a very active co-conspirator in the Covid operation. You’d think Senator Paul might want to subpoena some network executives from CNN, CBS, NBC, MSNOW (especially), plus Executive Editor Joe Kahn of The New York Times (and his predecessor during Covid, Dean Baquet) to find out why they reported so much pure falsehood around the so-called pandemic. How did they happen to become the propaganda department for the Democratic Party, and what was the party’s interest in the Covid operation? D’unh. . . .

Everybody knows. Even the super-hyped-up cat ladies, nose-rings, NPR stars, and moiling transsters of the lefty-left know. They have kin and friends who either died on respirators with IV lines of remdesivir in their arms, or were gifted by the vaxx shots with turbo-cancer or myocarditis or neuromuscular disease or immune system failure or some mystery illness. They have been harmed even more than those of us who declined to get vaxxed. Sooner or later, that’s got to mean something.

As for Dr. Fauci’s motive in this huge fiasco... it’s got to be clear both from the record of his career - nicely reported in RFK,Jr’s 2021 book "The Real Doctor Fauci" - and from the 1000-plus-page personal diary he recorded on the HHS computers, that Fauci was doggedly in pursuit of glory. Glory! And that his personal holy grail was to find a “universal vaccine” that could defeat any virus, so as to be acclaimed by all mankind! Glory! Glory! Glory! Given what is understood now about viruses and their interaction with vaccines - for instance, the flu vaccine which uniformly fails to adapt to annual virus mutations - that Dr. Fauci’s quest was quixotic, very basically foolish. All he ever produced, from the AZT wonder-drug for AIDS he developed back in 1986 (that probably killed as many people as died from the disease itself) to the Pfizer / Moderna mRNA shots for Covid in 2021... all that frantic, questing “science” just ended up killing and harming the credulous in large numbers. The buttoned-up little fellow appears to be guilty of mass-murder on an epic scale.

Of course, he is presumed to be protected by the autopen-signed peremptory pardon he received from minions of “Joe Biden.” Perhaps Dr. Fauci’s invoking the Fifth Amendment under those circumstances will prompt an overdue look at just how this autopen thing really worked. In any case, Dr. Fauci is liable to be voted in contempt of Congress this week for not answering any questions put to him. The connected legal procedure will keep Dr. Fauci’s misdeeds under public scrutiny for at least months to come.

It’s also a fact that the autopen pardon does not shield him from charges brought in state courts. The AGs of Florida, Louisiana, Alabama have declared investigations. Louisiana and Missouri have already made Dr. Fauci sit for depositions, and now they can compare his answers with the entries from his diary. It is obvious that on countless occasions and on many vital issues, Dr. Fauci told the public one thing while he believed (and recorded) the opposite in his diary.

One question that the public badly wants Secretary RFK,jr. to answer: how come you haven’t pulled the mRNA Covid vaccines altogether? They don’t work and they harm people. Why are they even still available? Would such a move amount to an admission that the whole emergency was a fake and a failure? And that the government’s own public health agencies are culpable? Would the survivors of the 268-million Americans who got the shots be a little pissed-off? What, then?"

- https://www.kunstler.com/

"Fauci Fakery"

John Wilder, "Fauci And The Big Lie"

"Fauci And The Big Lie"

by John Wilder

“Stop your squealing, you dunghill rat.” 

– "The Return of the King"

"I thought that I had done my last post on COVID. I really did. Then, that pisspot troll smugboi Fauci went before Congress and put on the most pathetic, weasel-like performance I’ve ever seen. As perhaps is his right, he pled the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering any question asked, including revealing such secrets as the color of the carpet or the color of his tie. Yes, it may be his right, but it does show the depth of his evil. Yes, evil.

In Russia it’s called corruption, but in the USA . . . we don’t talk about it. Viewed from 2026, the insanity of the Vaxx Offensive is even more absurd and insane. Of course, the GloboLeftElite did everything they could to fan the flames. The Covid War gave them two things that they desperately wanted: the ability to get rid of Trump by gaming the election, and ... power.

The GloboLeftElite love things like COVID or 9/11. It gives them the ability to control. They love that. What power did they want to show? All of it. They fired people who wouldn’t submit to the Vaxx. They restricted movement of people who didn’t take the Vaxx, and even arrested one woman who had used a fake Vaxx card to go to Hawaii. They arrested a man who was wakeboarding alone on the ocean. They made masks with holes in them so that kids in band could blow air into their instruments, since apparently a clarinet or piccolo will destroy any virus or bacteria.

Yes, they did this. Someone thought this was a good idea.

I didn’t take the Vaxx, and I’m glad. Two people I know took the Johnson&Johnson© Vaxx on the same day, and got matching heart attacks on the same month a little over a year later. They lived. Lots of people didn’t. In my mind, it wasn’t even a choice to take a Frankenvaxx© that hadn’t been tested. I didn’t try to convince my supervisor that I was right, I didn’t discuss my reasons, I didn’t argue, and I didn’t explain. My Boss: “Are you going to sign up to get the Vaxx, John?” Me: “No.” And that was it.

Parody, sure, but you know they feel that way. For older people with respiratory issues? It might have made sense to take the risk with the information available at the time. Now? No way. That Johnson&Johnson© Vaxx is now no longer available due to a “serious blood-clotting side effect”. But giving that to children? That’s criminal. People should be in jail.

But this is real. (as-found) Suppression of this very website started whenever I questioned the narrative on COVID or the Vaxx, making a joke about it on YouTube™ resulted in a channel strike, and it became a matter of faith that St. George Floyd would save us from the Trump Demon of COVID if only we would kneel and take the sacrament of the Vaxx. This was really a virtue-signaling cargo cult that had a belief in “sCIenCe” even when “sCieNCe” was clearly not being used, and was instead replaced by the same voodoo that gave us gender theory. My theory on why my site was attacked was that I had committed blasphemy in their eyes.

So, that white-haired weasel went before Congress and made me break my word and write one more COVID post. The reason for this post is simple: we can’t let this happen again. Beware whenever these weasels speak. Also, know that whenever they get a chance for control by using our fear, they will use it to remove our wealth and, more importantly, our freedoms. They will try this again. Remember: “No” is a complete sentence."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

"Spokane Is On Fire! Hundreds Of Homes Have Burned Down As Massive Wildfires Rage All Over The Western U.S."

Click image for larger size.

"Spokane Is On Fire! Hundreds Of Homes Have Burned

Down As Massive Wildfires Rage All Over The Western U.S."

by Michael Snyder

"The map above is so crazy that I don’t even have the words to adequately describe it. It is a real map that comes from WatchDuty.org, and it shows wildfires that are actively burning in this country right now. As you can see, enormous wildfires are raging throughout the western third of the nation. A combination of intense heat, severe drought, high winds and neglected forests have created conditions that are unlike anything the region has ever seen before. Every day more homes are being lost, and the economic damage that we are witnessing is incalculable.

As I write this article, three large wildfires that have just erupted are causing immense damage in the Spokane area. According to the latest update, approximately 7,500 acres have burned, more than 600 structures have been destroyed, and all three fires are 0% contained… Several fires exploded in size across Spokane County on Saturday afternoon. A combination of three fires has burned about 7,500 acres, and all three are still 0% contained. California Interagency Incident Management Team 7 is assuming command of the Spokane Area Fires, which consist of the Autumn Lane Fire, Old Trails Fire and Fairview Fire. Fire authorities confirmed to KREM 2 that over 600 structures have been destroyed by the fires.

There was a mad scramble to evacuate on Saturday evening, and as a result there were huge traffic jams throughout the city. In some cases, those stuck in the traffic jams could literally see giant flames approaching in their rear view mirrors. Can you imagine being in that position? There were many that left with only the clothes on their backs. That is how fast this happened.

And when some of them finally return home, they will discover that they have lost everything. Of the 600 structures that have burned down, authorities cannot yet tell us how many of them were homes…Cossel said they couldn’t say how many of the structures burned were homes at this time. He added that it could take up to a week for crews to arrive and assess the exact number of how many homes lost.

The California Interagency Incident Management Team 7 said the Spokane Area Fires is the No.1 priority in the nation. Of course we know that many of the structures that burned down were homes, because we have seen footage of entire neighborhoods burning on the news… This is a major tragedy. One local resident described is as “a nuclear bomb going off in our neighborhoods”… “This is a nuclear bomb going off in our neighborhoods,” Spokane resident Brent Dallman told CNN affiliate KHQ. “This is condensed into where it’s demographically a lot of people, so it’s really tragic.” But big corporate news outlets in New York City and Washington D.C. are not giving this disaster much coverage at all. So many in the eastern half of the nation don’t even know what is going on.

Washington Governor Bob Ferguson has officially declared a state of emergency. According to his office, more than 200,000 acres are currently burning across the state… “Our record-setting drought and high winds are creating dangerous conditions across the state,” Governor Ferguson said. “I am declaring an emergency to help prevent loss of life and property damage. I encourage all Washingtonians to do their part to protect our state during these extreme conditions.”

“This year has already been one of our busiest wildfire years on record, and we just started August,” said Commissioner of Public Lands Dave Upthegrove. “Our firefighters are already stretched thin across the state, and with more heat and wind expected this weekend and for the rest of the summer, any new spark on our tinder dry landscapes can lead to another devastating wildfire. I’m urging all Washingtonians to not be that spark.”

Washington is in the midst of a record-setting fourth consecutive statewide drought. More than 1,000 fires have burned approximately 425,000 acres - the most acres burned since 2021, according to the Department of Natural Resources. Currently, more than 200,000 acres are burning in 12 large fires. The month of August is just beginning, and there is no rain in sight. Hopefully some precipitation will come along soon.

Interestingly, one of the fires that has erupted in Spokane just happens to be “ground zero” for a massive data center that had been put on hold due to “local pushback”…

The fires have continued to spread even as I have been writing this article. Now the total number of acres that have been burned in the Spokane area has surpassed the 8,000 mark. Those that have already evacuated probably won’t be able to return to their homes for an extended period of time.

Meanwhile, the Super El Niño of 2026 is bringing more intense heat to the western half of the country. For the next few days, yet another historic heat dome will be absolutely baking many of our most prominent western cities…Records at risk: Dozens of record highs are likely to be set this weekend from California to Montana, and it is possible that a few monthly records could be tied or broken as well.

Searing highs: Triple-digit heat stretches from Las Vegas to Montana, with cooler pockets in between. Forecast high temperatures Sunday could reach 114 degrees in Phoenix and Las Vegas, and the low-to-mid-90s in downtown Los Angeles. These numbers are down only slightly from Saturday.

Public health threat: The NWS warns of “major” or “extreme” heat risks across much of the region, indicating a widespread threat to public health from heat exposure. “Major” heat risk is not only centered on the Southwest, but will also stretch from Denver to North Dakota. In Los Angeles, which is under an extreme heat warning, cooling centers are open this weekend through Sunday, though above-average temperatures are forecast to extend into next week. Other major cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix have also opened various cooling stations.

“Critical” fire danger in Northwest: Elevated fire risk is predicted from eastern Washington southward into Oregon and Nevada, on eastward all the way to the Dakotas. “Critical” fire weather risk - a level 2 out of 3 - is projected for much of Montana and parts of Idaho and Wyoming.

For years, I have been warning about the epic multi-year drought that the western half of the country has been experiencing. At first, a lot of people out there didn’t think that it was that big of a deal. But now the consequences are becoming exceedingly clear. What we are facing is not even close to normal, and it is time for America to wake up."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Walmart Shopping Food Pantry Items"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 8/3/26

"Walmart Shopping Food Pantry Items"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Americans Are Waking Up to What’s Really Happening to This Country"

Full screen recommended.

The Unfolded States, 8/3/26

"Americans Are Waking Up to 

What’s Really Happening to This Country"

"The future of America is becoming a growing concern as everyday life changes in ways many people can no longer ignore. Behind the viral warnings are real pressures affecting jobs, household budgets, privacy, food security, and trust in public institutions. This video examines why official economic statistics can feel disconnected from daily experience. We follow the stories of a qualified applicant struggling to secure an interview, a seventy-eight-year-old retiree choosing between groceries and medication, and families facing rising housing costs. National data helps explain how the cost of living crisis, a cooling job market, Social Security benefits, and food insecurity are affecting different groups across the country. We also investigate AI job displacement, data center energy demand, and smart home privacy concerns involving connected televisions and voice assistants. Some online claims are supported by evidence, while others exaggerate food technology, government fraud, imported vehicles, or credit card debt. By separating personal testimony from verified information, the video shows which warning signs matter, which claims need correction, and what Americans should monitor next."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Don Corleone Trump"

"Don Corleone Trump"

by Chris Hedges

"I visited Donald Trump’s Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City the day before it closed, in October, 2016. The casino had two huge white gates flanked by 2-ton white, cast-stone elephants. Its entrance was topped by an array of 70 turquoise and teal fiberglass minarets and a dozen gold-tipped domes. A neon sign with red and gold lettering read: “Trump Taj Mahal Casino and Resort.” A lighted fountain in front of the glass casino doors was decorated with two rows of six white-and-gold urns.

Taj Mahal, the casino owned by Donald Trump in Atlantic City, USA. 

The Trump Taj Mahal, New Jersey’s tallest building and the world’s largest casino, cost $1.2 billion to build. The opulent suites, when they opened, were named after historical personalities - Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Napoleon and Cleopatra. The suites cost around $10,000 per day. Trump, whose name and image were plastered throughout the casino, employed his familiar hyperbole to call it the “eighth wonder of the world.” The casino operators were instructed to answer incoming calls with the words: “Thank you for calling the Trump Taj Mahal, where wonders never cease.” The waitresses wore “harem girl” outfits.

The casino went through bankruptcy five times. Trump is doing to the country what he did to the Taj Mahal. His administration is operating well beyond its means with a budget of $7.4 trillion for fiscal year 2026, against projected revenue of just $5.6 trillion. Trump’s idiocy has embroiled the United States in an endless and unwinnable war with Iran, which may tank the global economy. He is set to cut health coverage for 15 million people, along with food assistance and other basic needs programs. He has terminated the jobs of thousands of government employees. He has shut down USAID, the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Kennedy Center. He gutted Voice of America and vows to close the Department of Education. He withdrew from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Agreement (twice). He continued the suspension of funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which had begun under the Biden administration. He canceled thousands of U.S.-funded international development projects. He erased government datasets and climate-related web pages. He slashed the budgets for renewable energy initiatives while revoking federal carbon and pollution regulations.

His scorched earth policies, which are dynamiting the foundations of the republic, are accompanied by a culture of corruption and deceit that is unmatched in American history.

Trump, whose officials face accusations of insider trading and whose family has made more than $1.4 billion from crypto-related ventures since taking office, shamelessly profits from the fusion of unregulated cryptocurrency-based prediction markets and politics pioneered by gambling apps, such as Polymarket.

Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm, 1789 Capital, is a major investor in Polymarket, where he sits on the advisory board. He has an estimated net worth of $400 million. He also serves as a strategic advisor at Kalshi, which gave him equity in the company worth some $300,000 - now estimated to be worth millions. Kalshi recently announced it will allow users to bet on whether the FDA will approve individual drugs as “safe and effective.”

Trump’s Truth Social is developing a prediction market called Truth Predict. His administration sued Connecticut, Arizona and Illinois in an attempt to block these states from regulating prediction markets. Truth Social also launched a $100,000 per month service offering quicker access to Trump’s market manipulating posts - a thinly disguised version of insider trading.

The White House, replicating the mob-style shakedowns of Atlantic City’s casino culture, demands huge payouts from corporations and billionaires in exchange for political favors and deregulation. The Wall Street Journal writes that Trump has amassed a slush fund of $800 million for pet projects, including his ballroom, presidential library, super PACs and political issue committees. Trump’s chief fundraiser, Meredith O’Rourke, nicknamed “The princess of darkness,” collects the payoffs with the blunt pitch “The boss wants this money.”

The nonnegotiable demand is lifted from the playbook of Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, the head of the Bruno-Scarfo crime family, whose extortion racket collected millions from Atlantic City construction firms, businesses, bars, restaurants, unions – which saw their health and welfare funds looted – and casinos. And, just like the mob, once is never enough for the Trump crime syndicate. It always comes back for more.

Trump, who like most mobsters is accompanied by a much younger goomah - his latest being his executive assistant Natalie Harp - has a long history of mob-like retribution. He issued executive orders targeting law firms that previously employed attorneys who investigated him. The firms lost security clearances and access to federal courthouses. Scrambling to placate Trump, they sheepishly succumbed to his demands.

When I arrived at Trump’s casino, the 22-space tour bus terminal was empty. Most of the 12 restaurants in the casino were closed. The casino’s arena, seating 5,500 people, had shut its doors. The Trump Taj Mahal, like our republic, was about to die. “When I walked inside the Taj, glittering Austrian crystal chandeliers, which cost $14 million each, dangled over the softly lit interior,” I wrote in America: The Farewell Tour. “Many were missing strings of beads. The walls were covered with mirrors. I looked out at rows of gaming tables, blackjack tables, roulette wheels, and three thousand slot machines that twinkled with colored lights. The slot machines emitted beeps, hums, and dings of various pitches. They stretched over an area the size of three football fields. The gambling floor was almost empty. The dealers stood in front of vacant, felt-covered tables. Most of the gamblers who slumped in the cushioned chairs in front of the slot machines were elderly and haggard. They robotically pulled down levers or pushed square buttons. They stared blankly at the spinning screens in front of them. One slot machine generates between $200 and $300 a day for the casino. The dedicated gamblers are given courtesy drinks. Housekeepers occasionally enter rooms to discover the corpses of elderly men or women who spent hours drinking more alcohol than their bodies could absorb. It is not uncommon for slot players to wet and soil themselves.”

“The seventeen computerized check-in desks near the entrance were empty,” I continued. “A lone clerk stood behind the long counter facing empty rope lines. Toilets in the bathrooms, adorned with Carrera marble, were covered with plastic bags and had signs reading ‘Out of Order.’ I walked along the soiled and worn carpet through long, deserted, and poorly lit corridors on the upper floors. Semicircular beige wall sconces, some of which enclosed burned-out bulbs, were placed every few feet on either side of the hall. The sconces were dirty and cracked. The ceiling had brown water spots. The air smelled of mold. Three quarters of the 1,250 rooms had been mothballed. The casino felt like a ghost ship.”

Gambling, like Trump’s sham university and his $TRUMP memecoin, is about selling escapist fantasies. It is about preying on people’s despair. The spinning reels on the slot machines, for example, are an illusion. They do not slowly run out of momentum. They are programmed to appear that way. Computer chips determine the outcome the moment the button is pushed or the lever pulled. Virtual reel mapping ensures that a jackpot symbol appears above or below the payline. The player has the impression of almost winning, spurring the gambler to bet more money.

Trump from his earliest days as a real estate developer was enmeshed with the mob, including his cutthroat lawyer Roy Cohen. Cohen represented Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, the boss of the Genovese crime family, and Carmine Galante from the Bananno crime family. Trump was schooled by Cohen and others in the art of extortion, blackmail, threats and graft. He has, throughout his career, surrounded himself with mobsters, grifters and sycophants.

Joseph Weichselbaum, a three-time-convicted felon who was eventually imprisoned for trafficking marijuana and cocaine, managed Trump’s helicopter fleet. The helicopters ferried high rollers to and from Trump casinos. These high rollers could get anything they desired, from sex with escorts to cocaine. Weichselbaum’s easy access to drugs was probably an asset. When Weichselbaum was awaiting sentencing, Trump wrote to the judge that he was “a credit to the community.” The trafficker received a three-year sentence, although he served only 18 months. The couriers who physically delivered the drugs for Weichselbaum got up to 20 years. When he was released from prison, Weichselbaum moved into Trump Tower with his girlfriend.

Trump’s casino opened in 1990 with a concert by Michael Jackson. It was an extravaganza built with $820 million of unsustainable debt, including the issuing of $675 million in junk bonds at a 14 percent interest rate. Marvin B. Roffman, a casino analyst at the Philadelphia investment firm Janney Montgomery Scott, told The Wall Street Journal that the Taj Mahal would need to make $1.3 million per day to meet its interest payments. No casino had ever brought in that much money.

“The Taj was doomed from the start,” I wrote. “Trump soon had to service interest rates of $95 million a year. He was able to get new loans for a while and then went bust. It was a brief and giddy moment of insane excess. But it was good for his outsized brand, even if it showed an atrocious lack of business sense. Trump had borrowed money at high interest rates and lied about the rates to regulators. Trump dumped the losses on stock and bondholders, who were fleeced for more than $1.5 billion. Numerous local contractors and suppliers, never paid by Trump, went bankrupt.”

Trump made out like a bandit. He put up little of his own money. He shifted personal debts to the casino and collected millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and other payments. His casino employees collectively lost millions of dollars in retirement savings, along with their jobs. His business debts were off-loaded on his investors.

Trump owned three casinos in Atlantic City and one in Gary, Indiana. The Trump Plaza and the Trump Taj Mahal casinos were shut down. The Trump Marina, his third casino, was sold to Texas billionaire Tilman Fertitta. Fertitta, currently Trump’s ambassador to Italy, renamed it The Golden Nugget. Trump’s casino in Indiana, a 340-foot vessel called the Trump Princess, declared bankruptcy in 2004. All failed because of Trump’s insatiable greed and mismanagement.

Trump is doing to the nation what he did to the Taj Mahal. He is harvesting and extorting the organizations he oversees for personal profit, while the rest of us are left bereft amid the ruins."

- https://chrishedges.substack.com/

Bill Bonner, "Knock the Temple Down"

Click image for larger size.

"Knock the Temple Down"

by Bill Bonner

"Trump has accumulated 35% of America’s 

national debt SINCE 1776... Let that sink in..."

- "The Rest is Politics: US"

Poitou, France - "The drama over the weekend came when thousands of Moroccans surged into a Spanish enclave on the African coast. But what sense did it make? They still couldn’t get to Europe. And Ceuta is a tiny Spanish city. There was nothing for them to eat...and nowhere for them to sleep. So, they surged back home. Forbes: "Most Migrants Who Crossed Into Ceuta Have Returned To Morocco - As Death Toll Rises To 34."

Why did this happen? Whispered on the internet: it was an Israeli operation...perhaps ‘the dumbest psyop of all time,’ writes Mike Whitney, intended to embarrass the Spanish government. Immigration control was Donald Trump’s strong suit. The Democrats had bungled it, he thundered. Americans overwhelmingly wanted the borders controlled in a sensible, hospitable way. But POTUS seems to have bungled the immigration issue too. More tomorrow.

So many people criticize Trump’s handling of the economy and foreign affairs, there is no point in us piling on. Besides, we have no criticism to offer. He is the ignorant rascal he always was. But if anyone was suited to do the gods’ work, it was POTUS 47. The gods will tolerate neither a vacuum nor a monopoly. Occasionally, they send forth a man like Donald Trump to fill a hole...or to make one.

Donald Trump is single-handedly doing what the Russians, Iranians, North Koreans, Chinese, Democrats, Communists, Terrorists, Clintons, Bushes (though Bush II made significant strides), Covid - and the whole ‘Axis of Evil’ - couldn’t do. He is letting the air out of the US empire bubble, deflating its near-monopoly on global power.

At the beginning of his first term, in 2017, if he wanted to make America great again, he had to re-instate the policies that made it great in the first place. Free speech, free trade, free people...free from foreign mischief...free from crushing taxes...free from deficits...free from war...free from funny money. Maybe he knew it was a lost cause. Maybe he intended to knock the temple down. Or, maybe he just charged ahead without giving the matter much thought.

In any case, instead of vetoing excess spending, he put on his DOGE-and-pony show...pretending to cut programs and fire people, but ultimately accomplishing nothing. Tariffs were always a bad idea. Still, a modest, sober tariff program might have raised a little money without doing much harm. Instead, his ‘reciprocal’ tariffs were whimsical, outrageous...on-again, off-again, with little rhyme or reason. Instead of the ‘peace president’ he promised to be, he partnered with the most bloodthirsty warmonger in the world...and attacked Iran, with no plausible gain for the US.

And instead of surrounding himself with able counselors who could help guide him to sensible policies, he brought a confederacy of dunces into the White House, few of whom had any idea what they were doing. And he put a prize blockhead - Pete Hegseth - in the most delicate and important post, in charge of a $1 trillion national war machine.

It all happened so fast...and so unexpectedly. Commentators were stunned into silence. Mouths open in disbelief, they were left on the curb, as the bus moved on. As soon as they had drawn the measure of one woebegone devil...there were two more in the pen, pawing the ground and snorting to be unleashed.

It didn’t seem to make sense. Critics kept referring to Trump as a conservative, but he was acting like a bomb thrower - attacking all the familiar institutions and protocols of American government. He was supposed to be a consummate deal-maker...but he couldn’t seem to make a deal with anyone. No deal to end the Ukraine war. No deal to reduce imports. No deal to cut spending and deficits. No deal with NATO. No deal with Greenland. And no deal with Iran, even after threatening to eliminate its entire civilization if it didn’t at least pretend to come to terms.

Even on small matters, Team Trump proved remarkably inept. You’d think a developer could make a pool repair. But no...the New York Times: "Charges Dropped in Reflecting Pool Case as Prosecutors Say Work Was ‘Botched.’ A former Olympian will not face trial after federal prosecutors acknowledged that the Trump administration’s claims of vandalism were false."

By our count, the US was already headed down in 2016. Turning it around - with a national debt of $20 trillion at the time - would have been tough. But Mr. Trump might have been able to do it. With his cult-like following among Republicans, he might have been the only human being who could have given Americans a substantial period of peace and prosperity.

Determined use of the veto power could have cut the deficits. A single call could have stopped the slaughter in Gaza, just as Eisenhower stopped Israel’s attack on Egypt in 1956. And an honest speech could have put a majority of Americans on his side. Instead...he alienated, insulted and appalled nearly everyone. Europeans. Canadians. Latin Americans. Muslims. Chinese. And US voters too! YouGov:

"Americans’ approval of Donald Trump’s job performance continues to decline, according to the July 25 - 27 Economist / YouGov Poll. 34% of U.S. adult citizens strongly or somewhat approve of Trump’s job performance, tied for a record low for either Trump term, while a record 62% disapprove. That’s a net job approval of -28, also a record low."

And now, with $40 trillion in debt, of which the fattest slab was added by Trump himself, the last opportunity to fold up the imperial tent with neither violence nor bankruptcy - that is, by choice rather than by catastrophe - is gone forever."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Canadian Prepper, "Why We're Probably F*&KED!"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 8/2/26

"Why We're Probably F*&KED!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, "Alpha"

Vangelis, "Alpha"

This song always suggested the March of Mankind through the ages, having the "aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts", as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle so aptly described us, and as Pascal said of us, "What sort of freak then is man! How novel, how monstrous, how chaotic, how paradoxical, how prodigious! Judge of all things, feeble earthworm, repository of truth, sink of doubt and error, glory and refuse of the universe! Who will unravel such a tangle?" Despite ourselves, Mankind marches relentlessly on, to our unknown destiny... - CP

David Alfaro Siqueiros's mural, 

"The March of Humanity on Earth and Toward the Cosmos"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"This pretty field of view spans over 2 degrees or 4 full moons on the sky, filled with stars toward the constellation Taurus, the Bull. Above and right of center in the frame you can spot the faint fuzzy reddish appearance of Messier 1 (M1), also known as the Crab Nebula. M1 is the first object in 18th century comet hunter Charles Messier's famous catalog of things which are definitely not comets.

Click image for larger size.

Made from image data captured this October 11, there is a comet in the picture though. Below center and left lies the faint greenish coma and dusty tail of periodic comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko, also known as Rosetta's comet. In the 21st century, it became the final resting place of robots from planet Earth. Rosetta's comet is now returning to the inner solar system, sweeping toward its next perihelion or closest approach to the Sun, on November 2. Too faint to be seen by eye alone, the comet's next perigee or closest approach to Earth will be November 12."

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

"The Road We Never Took"

Full screen recommended

Gengu AI, 

"The Road We Never Took"

"Welcome to Gengu AI – your ultimate destination for AI-generated music and next-generation sound experiences. This channel is dedicated to creating unique, high-quality tracks powered by artificial intelligence, blending creativity and technology to deliver music that feels fresh, emotional, and immersive. AI was the tool. The story came from human feeling. If this film gave you a quiet breath, a memory, or a moment of peace, thank you for being here."

Native Elder, "5 Signs Your Soul Is Tired and Not Your Body"

Full screen recommended.

Native Elder,

"5 Signs Your Soul Is Tired and Not Your Body"

"'5 Signs Your Soul Is Tired and Not Your Body' explores the hidden psychological and emotional signs of deep inner exhaustion that sleep alone cannot fix. Through timeless Native American wisdom, this powerful mindset shift reveals how emotional burnout, chronic stress, spiritual fatigue, and unresolved emotions quietly drain your energy. Learn how to recognize these five life-changing signs, restore your inner peace, and reconnect with your authentic self. If you've been feeling empty, unmotivated, or emotionally exhausted, this speech offers practical insights for healing, personal growth, emotional resilience, and mental clarity. Watch until the end to discover how ancient wisdom and modern psychology work together to transform your mindset and help you live with greater purpose.This speech teaches that true exhaustion often begins in the soul, not the body. By recognizing emotional and spiritual fatigue, you can heal from within, regain inner peace, develop emotional resilience, and create a healthier mindset for lasting happiness."

"Bad Decisions Make Good Stories"

Full screen recommended.

Delta King's Blues,

"Bad Decisions Make Good Stories"

"The smartest choices built my life… but the dumb ones sure made the best stories. “Bad Decisions Make Good Stories” is a rowdy, grin-filled Delta King’s Blues tune about wild nights, questionable ideas, and the unforgettable memories that somehow become funnier with every passing year. A foot-stompin’, back-porch acoustic guitar drives the groove like an old pickup headed toward trouble with a full tank and no real plan. The harmonica laughs through every smoky bend, sounding like it’s heard every outrageous tale - and probably started a few of them. The rhythm rolls loose and lively, built for old friends, cold drinks, and stories that begin with, "You ain't gonna believe this..." This is blues for everyone who survived their younger years. For those who know that while wisdom comes with age, the best campfire stories usually come from doing something you probably shouldn’t have. I’ve got a few regrets… but I’ve got a whole lot more stories worth telling, sometimes the wrong turn makes the best memory."

The Daily "Near You?"

South Jordan, Utah, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Langston Hughes, "Life is Fine "

"Life is Fine"

"I went down to the river,

I set down on the bank.

I tried to think but couldn't,

So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!

I came up twice and cried!

If that water hadn't a-been so cold

I might've sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator

Sixteen floors above the ground.

I thought about my baby,

And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!

I stood there and I cried!

If it hadn't a-been so high

I might've jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',

I guess I will live on.

I could've died for love -

But for livin' I was born.

Though you may hear me holler,

And you may see me cry -

I'll be dogged, sweet baby,

If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!"

- Langston Hughes

"Death and How to Be More Alive: Carl Jung on Immortality and the Rebirth of Middle Age"

"Death and How to Be More Alive:

 Carl Jung on Immortality and the Rebirth of Middle Age"

by Maria Popova

"Once, I spent a year walking Brooklyn’s historic Green-Wood Cemetery daily, winding between the marble tombs engulfed by tree-roots and emblazoned with the surnames of the dead, each followed by a full stop to demarcate the terminus of life. It hovers there, so sure of itself, this punctuational emblem of an irrevocable end. And yet the surety of science about what happens when we die, like the surety of religion, is only speculative, for it is conceived by the living. Whitman - who often walked Green-Wood - knew this when he wrote that “to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.” Over and over we have mistaken our suppositions for sureties when both intellectual honesty and spiritual courage demand we concede that death is not a period but a question mark.Available as a print.

Carl Jung (July 26, 1875–June 6, 1961) was only twenty and newly enrolled in medical school when he came to see death as a way of understanding life: His father, who had died six weeks earlier, appeared to him in a dream, announcing that he would be returning home after a holiday. Struck by how real the dream felt, Jung began devising a psychological cosmogony of death that would take him half a lifetime to formulate, its crux best articulated in his 1929 commentary on "The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life": "Death is psychologically as important as birth and, like it, is an integral part of life… For, seen in correct psychological perspective, death is not an end but a goal."

Five years later, Jung developed these ideas in his most intellectually elegant essay, titled “Death and the Soul” and included in Jenny Yates’s altogether magnificent anthology Jung on Death and Immortality (public library). Developing the idea that “life strives towards a goal and is determined by an aim,” he wrote: "The question of the meaning and worth of life never becomes more urgent or more agonizing than when we see the final breath leave a body which a moment before was living.

[…]

Life is an energy-process. Like every energy-process, it is in principle irreversible and is therefore directed towards a goal. That goal is a state of rest. In the long run everything that happens is, as it were, no more than the initial disturbance of a perpetual state of rest which forever attempts to re-establish itself."

This perspective, Jung realized, is not one our consciousness readily takes, for it requires a counterintuitive understanding of the substance we are made of - time. It was his encounter with Einstein - the two dined together in the early days of relativity - that allowed Jung to violate his own creaturely intuitions in order to conceive of death not as the endpoint of a line across the Euclidean space of being but as a curve following the curvature of spacetime itself: eternity as a field in which all directions are relative. Einstein’s great revelation was that space and time are one, that spacetime tells matter how to move and matter ballasted by gravity tells spacetime how to bend. At the heart of Jung’s conception is the intimation that consciousness bends spacetime one way and we call it life, bends it another and we call it death, while the energy that does the bending remains inexorable. The question of where life goes when it goes, like the question of where love goes when it goes, may be a question not of termination but of transmutation.

Jung captured this idea in his response to a pastor who recounted having had a conversation with his brother at the time of his death, even though they were separated by a continent: "It is very probable that only what we call consciousness is contained in space and time, and that the rest of the psyche, the unconscious, exists in a state of relative spacelessness and timelessness. For the psyche this means a relative eternality and a relative non-separation from other psyches, or a oneness with them."

Recognizing that “no one knows what ‘psyche’ is, and one knows just as little how far into nature ‘psyche’ extends,” he observed: "It would seem to be more in accord with the collective psyche of humanity to regard death as the fulfillment of life’s meaning and as its goal in the truest sense, instead of a mere meaningless cessation. Anyone who cherishes a rationalistic opinion on this score has isolated himself psychologically and stands opposed to his own basic human nature."

Just as Jung was finishing “The Soul and Death,” his sister died. He coped by writing a psychological analysis of "The Tibetan Book of the Dead "- an ancient instruction for shedding karmic illusions, which Jung likened to psychological complexes, drawing a parallel between the Buddhist notion of enlightenment and the aim of psychiatry: withdrawing our psychological projections in order to see clearly. Our conception of death, he argued, is a projection of our own hopes and fears - the core complexes that govern our lives - lensed through our creaturely intuitions about space and time, intuitions that have regularly misled us about the realities of nature, from the shape of the Earth to the centricity of the Solar System.

Jung collided with his own creaturely intuitions when, in the fourth winter of the world’s deadliest war, he had a near-death experience himself: His heart stopped, then, miraculously, restarted. In the wake of the heart attack he wasn’t meant to survive, he wrote in a letter: "What happens after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imagination and our feelings do not suffice to form even an approximate conception of it… The dissolution of our time-bound form in eternity brings no loss of meaning."

A year later, he was still thinking about it, about the “glimpse behind the veil” it had afforded him, writing in another letter: "Whatever you do, if you do it sincerely, will eventually become the bridge to your wholeness, a good ship that carries you through the darkness of your second birth, which seems to be death to the outside."

Central to his thinking was the concept of synchronicity - the meaningful alignment of two events in space and time - which he had co-invented with his onetime patient Wolfgang Pauli shortly after the physicist was awarded the Nobel Prize. Decades later, in a letter penned as he himself was approaching death, Jung would insist that we must not rule out “the possibility that there is an existence outside time which runs parallel with existence inside time,” intimating that life is simply the alignment of consciousness and time, but the unconscious could exist on another temporal plane. Beneath the seeming self-contradiction - there are no parallels in curved spacetime - was Jung’s insistence that curves, not parallels, are the best way to understand death by understanding life. A century and a half after the forgotten visionary Elizabeth Peabody offered her abiding wisdom on middle age and the art of self-renewal, and half a century before Ursula K. Le Guin penned her magnificent meditation on menopause as rebirth, Jung wrote in “Death and the Soul”:

The curve of life is like the parabola of a projectile which, disturbed from its initial state of rest, rises and then returns to a state of repose. The psychological curve of life, however, refuses to conform to this law of nature… From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life. For in the secret hour of life’s midday the parabola is reversed, death is born. The second half of life does not signify ascent, unfolding, increase, exuberance, but death, since the end is its goal. The negation of life’s fulfillment is synonymous with the refusal to accept its ending. Both mean not wanting to live, and not wanting to live is identical with not wanting to die. Waxing and waning make one curve.

Couple with Annie Dillard on how to bear your mortality, then let this spare, stunning poem teach you how to live and how to die."

- https://www.themarginalian.org/