Full screen recommended.
OPTM, 3/23/26
"Trump Panics As Iran Closes All Doors To
Negotiation And Ceasefire; Trump Backs Down"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Monday, March 23, 2026
Michael Bordenaro, "How the System Keeps People Stuck in Poverty"
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 3/23/26
"How the System Keeps People Stuck in Poverty"
Comments here:
"This Will Cripple the Economy - And It’s Happening Right Now!"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 3/23/26
"This Will Cripple the Economy -
And It’s Happening Right Now!"
"Diesel fuel prices are surging at an alarming rate, and this could have a devastating impact on the entire economy. In this breaking news update, we break down how rising diesel costs are affecting small businesses, supply chains, food prices, and everyday consumers. While many people focus on gas prices, diesel is the backbone of transportation, logistics, and production - meaning every product you buy is directly impacted. As inflation pressures return and budgets get tighter, this could be the beginning of a much larger financial crisis. Main Street America is already feeling the effects, with small business owners struggling to absorb rising costs and being forced to raise prices or shut down. From grocery stores to restaurants to shipping and manufacturing, the ripple effect of higher fuel costs is spreading fast. If diesel prices continue to climb, consumers can expect higher food prices, increased living expenses, and renewed inflation across the board. This is a critical economic warning sign that could impact your finances, your budget, and the overall stability of the U.S. economy."
Comments here:
Sunday, March 22, 2026
"Gas Prices About to Skyrocket – Here's What's Coming"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 3/22/26
"Gas Prices About to Skyrocket –
Here's What's Coming"
Comments here:
"Israel is Over, 20,000 IDF Wiped Out As US Turns On Netanyahu"
Full screen recommended.
Alastair Crooke, 3/22/26
"Israel is Over, 20,000 IDF Wiped
Out As US Turns On Netanyahu"
Comments here:
"Iran's Fattah-2: Twelve US Officers Killed in One Strike"
AlertSyncro, 3/22/26
"Iran's Fattah-2:
Twelve US Officers Killed in One Strike"
"An Iranian Fattah-2 hypersonic missile struck a classified American command post in Kuwait. Twelve senior US military officers killed instantly. Two generals, four colonels, three lieutenant colonels, three majors. All dead in one strike. And the weapon that killed them cannot be stopped by any defense system America has deployed."
Comments here:
"The Harsh Reality Of Going Broke - People Will Work Until They Die"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/22/26
"The Harsh Reality Of Going Broke -
People Will Work Until They Die"
Comments here:
"The Insane Cost of Living Is Crushing People"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 3/22/26
"The Insane Cost of Living Is Crushing People"
"The cost of living in America has reached a breaking point - and the numbers prove it. In this video, real Americans share what financial stress actually looks like in 2026. A household earning nearly $30,000 a month that still feels broke. An ER doctor making $2,600 every two weeks whose rent alone costs $2,200. People who are not buying luxuries. People who are just trying to survive.
Grocery prices are out of control. A family of four is spending $200 a week just to keep the fridge stocked. One woman walked out of CVS having spent $72 on four items - shampoo, conditioner, toilet paper, and a birthday card. Another spent nearly $70 at Walgreens on basic children's medication: Advil, Zyrtec, and vapor rub.
Here is what the data actually shows. A single American needs $4,686 a month just to cover basic necessities - rent, utilities, health insurance, transportation, and food. To earn that, you need to make $60,000 to $70,000 a year. The median income in the United States is $53,000. That gap is not shrinking. For millions living paycheck to paycheck, it is growing every single month.
Then there is gas. Prices have jumped nearly a dollar in just a few days, tied to the war threatening the Strait of Hormuz - the single passage through which roughly 20% of the world's oil supply moves. When that route is disrupted, oil prices rise. When oil prices rise, trucking costs rise, food distribution costs rise, and grocery prices follow. Americans are already panic buying fuel, which will push prices even higher. By summer, analysts are warning gas could hit $6 to $8 a gallon. This is the American financial crisis happening right now. Drop a comment and tell us how you are feeling it where you live."
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"What created Devils Tower? The origin of this extraordinary rock monolith in Wyoming, USA is still debated, with a leading hypothesis holding that it is a hardened lava plume that never reached the surface to become a volcano. In this theory, the lighter rock that once surrounded the dense volcanic neck has now eroded away, leaving the dramatic tower.
Click image for larger size.
Known by Native Americans by names including Bear's Lodge and Great Gray Horn, the dense rock includes the longest hexagonal columns known, some over 180-meters tall. High above, the central band of the Milky Way galaxy arches across the sky. Many notable sky objects are visible, including dark strands of the Pipe Nebula and the reddish Lagoon Nebula to the tower's right. Green grass and trees line the foreground, while clouds appear near the horizon to the tower's left. Unlike many other international landmarks, mountaineers are permitted to climb Devils Tower."
"We've All Heard..."
"The early bird catches the worm. A stitch in time saves nine. He who hesitates is lost. We can’t pretend we haven’t been told. We’ve all heard the proverbs, heard the philosophers, heard our grandparents warning us about wasted time, heard the damn poets urging us to seize the day. Still, sometimes, we have to see for ourselves. We have to make our own mistakes. We have to learn our own lessons. We have to sweep today’s possibility under tomorrow’s rug, until we can’t anymore, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant: That knowing is better than wondering. That waking is better than sleeping. And that even the biggest failure, even the worst, most intractable mistake, beats the hell out of never trying.”
- “Meredith”, “Grey’s Anatomy”
Freely Download Or Read Online: Rainer Maria Rilke, "Letters to a Young Poet"
"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are
only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.
Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence,
something helpless that wants our love. "
- Rainer Maria Rilke, "Letters to a Young Poet"
○
"The Restless Heart "
by Chet Raymo
"In "Letters to a Young Poet", Rainer Maria Rilke writes: "We should try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue." To which I would add, let us trust the gifts that nature has given us- curiosity, attention, reason- and if our personal lives are destined for oblivion, then know that we have made of ordinary things something grander and more enduring. We are the transformers. We are bestowers of praise. "Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them," Rilke advises the restless young poet, echoing the great Catholic mystics: "And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
Is it enough? In the long history of humanity, no hope has been so enduring as personal immortality. At every time and in every place men and women have assumed they will live forever. It is our solace, our balm for the restless heart. Even Neanderthals, it seems, placed flowers in the graves of their dead, presumably to grace the afterlife.
But the lesson of modern biology is clear: Death is final. Do we lapse then into morbidity? Do we rage, rage against the dying of the light? We have art. We have science. Even a rhyme can thumb its nose at death, says Seamus Heaney. We can each of us try to live our lives as poetry, to add to the world an element of graciousness that is not strictly necessary, to leave behind a spoor of rhymes that marks our passage on the Earth.
Yes, the spirit is flesh, but the spirit is more than flesh. The spirit is flesh in interaction with a universe of almost unimaginable grandeur and complexity. The windows of the flesh are thrown open to the world. The spirit is a wind of awareness, a pool stirred by angels."
Some part of the spirit will linger after the flesh is gone, as memories in other flesh, as words, music, science, rhymes- as a world nudged slightly in its pell-mell course towards good or bad. But the self is mortal: This is the existential fact that agitates the restless heart. "We are biological and our souls cannot fly free," writes Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, summarizing what science has taught us about ourselves. He adds: "This is the essential first hypothesis for any consideration of the human condition."
○
Freely read online or download "Letters to a Young Poet",
by Rainer Maria Rilke, here:
"Everybody's Pretending..."
“You go up to a man, and you say, “How are things going, Joe?” and he says, “Oh fine, fine... couldn’t be better.” And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn’t be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody’s having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much.” - Kurt Vonnegut
"People are sad. People are broke. People are worried about money, people are worried that they're not enough and not amounting to anything and they don't feel good about themselves. People have rough times, and everybody's pretending it's not true, and we need to break that veneer." - Eve Ensler
"Far From the Madding Crowd"
 "Far From the Madding Crowd" by Joel Bowman |
Buenos Aires, Argentina - “Looks like you got back just in the nick of time!” remarked one friend, welcoming us home. “South is the only way to fly these days!” chimed another, with one wary eye on our northern neighbors. “Energy… food… water… and a long overdue measure of political sanity!” added a third, extolling a few of the virtues of our chosen home down here at the End of the World.
We’re back on Terra Argentea, dear reader, after a couple of months roaming the northern hemisphere… from Japan to the USA to Panama and back down the end of the Americas once more. It is from this distant southern clime we read this morning’s headlines… and the worsening situation whence we just escaped.
The latest, from AFP: "US, Iran Trade Threats To Target Infrastructure In Middle East. Iran threatened on Sunday to “irreversibly destroy” key infrastructure across the Middle East if US President Donald Trump follows through on his vow to “obliterate” the Islamic republic’s power plants unless the Strait of Hormuz swiftly reopens."
The tit-for-tat threats came as the war entered its fourth week and continued to reverberate across the Middle East, with alarm mounting over strikes around nuclear sites. Trump, under pressure over rising fuel prices, raised the stakes by announcing a countdown over Tehran’s de facto blockade of the vital Strait of Hormuz shipping route. Writing on Truth Social, Trump said the US would “hit and obliterate” Iranian power plants “starting with the biggest one first” if Tehran did not fully reopen the strait within 48 hours, or 23:44 GMT on Monday according to the time of his post.
Hmm… is this what is meant by “unintended consequences…” “higher-order events…” “unforeseen externalities…”? Call it what you will, dear reader… but when the words “obliteration,” “irreversible destruction” and “oil blockade” start popping up in headlines about the world’s key oil chokepoint, it’s generally not a positive sign for peace and prosperity...
Indeed, in the “fog of war,” cascading knock-on effects have a way of spiraling out of control. One day, Israel is striking Iran’s South Pars “super giant” gas field… the next Iran is bombing Qatar’s Ras Laffan (the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility)… and before you know it, you’ve got an old-fashioned energy crunch on your hands!
And even if one could make a wish and imagine peace in the Middle East overnight, a scenario that looks less and less likely by the day, it’s not as though one simple flicks a switch and turns supply on again. Indeed, triple digit oil prices may be far stickier than expected. Wrote Goldman Sachs in a note to investors on Thursday: “The persistence of several prior large supply shocks underscores the risk that oil prices may stay above $100 for longer in risk scenarios with lengthier disruptions and large persistent supply losses.”
What does a world economy without access to cheap, reliable and abundant energy look like? Are we likely to see a global recession this year? (As of a couple of days ago, Moody’s had the odds at 49%.) Or worse? A depression? There will be lots to unpack and sort through over the coming weeks and months… and we’re happy to be doing so down here, far from the madding crowd."
"Everything We Assume Is Permanent Is Actually Fragile"
"Everything We Assume Is
Permanent Is Actually Fragile"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"The great irony of the past 75 years of expanding consumption is the belief that all these decades of success prove the system is rock-solid and future success is thus guaranteed. The irony lies in the systemic fragility that's built into the large-scale industrial production that generates endless surpluses of energy, food, fresh water, etc. and the global financial system that delivers endless surpluses of capital and credit to be distributed by public authorities and private owners of capital.
The key driver of increasing efficiencies has been scaling up production by concentrating ownership and capacity into a few quasi-monopolies/cartels. In industry after industry, where there were once dozens of companies, there are now only a handful of behemoths with outsized market and political power which they wield to retain their dominance.
For example, where there were dozens of large regional banks in the U.S. not that long ago, relentless consolidation has led to a handful of supergiant too big to fail banks which can take extraordinary risks (and undertake criminal skims) knowing that the federal government will always bail them out and leave the banks' corporate criminals untouched.
Two of these too big to fail banks recently paid fines in the billions of dollars, yet no one went to prison or even faced criminal charges. This highlights the systemic problem with concentrating capital and power in the hands of the few: too big to fail means corporate wrongdoers have a permanent get out of jail free card while the small-fry white-collar criminal will get a fiver (five-year prison sentence) for skimming a tiny fraction of the billions routinely pillaged by the too big to fail banks.
The net result is a two-tier judicial/law enforcement system: the too big to fail "essential" companies get a free hand and the citizenry get whatever "justice" they can afford, i.e. very little.
This concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few corporations is of course state-cartel socialism in which the public good has become subservient to the profits of corporate owners and insiders, and the skims paid to the state's insiders. The state enables and enforces this concentration of private wealth and power in a number of ways: regulatory capture, the polite bribery of lobbying, the revolving door between government and private industry, and so on.
The public good would best be served by competition and transparent markets and regulations, but these are precisely what's been eliminated by relentless consolidation and the paring down of the economic ecosystem to a handful of too big to fail nodes which work tirelessly to eliminate competition, transparency and meaningful public oversight.
This ruthless pursuit of efficiencies and profits has stripped the economy of redundancies and buffers. Production supply chains have been engineered to function in a narrow envelope of quality, quantity and time. Any disruption quickly leads to shortages, something that became visible when meatpacking plants were closed in the pandemic.
Supply chains are long and fragile, but this fragility is not visible as long as everything stays within the narrow envelope that's been optimized. Once the envelope is broken, the supply chain breaks down. Since redundancies and buffers have been stripped away, there are no alternatives available. Shortages mount and the entire system starts breaking down.
Quality has been stripped out as well. When markets become captive to cartels and monopolies, customers have to take what's available: if it's poor quality goods and services, tough luck, pal, there are no alternatives. There are only one or two service providers, healthcare insurers, etc., and they all provide the same minimal level of quality and service.
The moral rot in our social, political and economic orders is another source of hidden fragility. I'm constantly told by readers that corruption has been around forever, so therefore nothing has changed, but these readers are indulging in magical nostalgia: things have changed profoundly, and for the worse, as the moral rot has seeped into every nook and cranny of American life, from the top down.
There is no "public good," there is only a rapacious, obsessive self-interest that claims the mantle of "public good" as a key mechanism of the con.
As I discussed in "Everything is Staged", everyone and everything in America is now nothing more than a means to a self-interested end, and so the the entirety of American life is nothing but 100% marketing of various cons designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many. That America was a better place without endless marketing of Big Pharma meds and "vaccines", and colleges hyping their insanely costly "product" (a worthless diploma) has been largely forgotten by those indulging in magical nostalgia.
What few seem to realize is all the supposedly rock-solid permanent foundations of life are nothing more than fragile social constructs based on trust and legitimacy. Once trust and legitimacy have been lost, these constructs melt into the sands of time.
A great many things we take for granted are fragile constructs that could unravel with surprising speed: law enforcement, the courts, elections, the value of our currency -- these are all social constructs. Once legitimacy is lost, people abandon these constructs and they melt away. It's clear to anyone who isn't indulging in magical nostalgia that trust in institutions is in a steep decline as the legitimacy of these institutions, public and private, have been eroded by incompetence, corruption, dysfunction and the rapacious self-interest of insiders.
What we've gotten very good at is masking the rot and fragility. Masking the rot and fragility is not the same thing as strength or permanence. The nation is about to discover the difference in the years ahead."
"Leaving the Earth a Better Place"
“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”
- Barry Lopez
○
"Leaving the Earth a Better Place:
A Legacy of Love"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM
"It is a great act of love to leave the earth a better place when we leave than which we found her. We inherit this great planet from our parents and from the generations that came before. Then, in concert with the surrounding culture, our elders teach us how to care for the land and the sea, ourselves and each other. They model ways of being in relationship with every other expression of life on earth. But whether they act with care or carelessness, compassion or cruelty, generosity or greed, we have the ability to choose our own individual way of relating with the planet and her inhabitants. From our first breath here to our very last, we will find infinite opportunities to influence our environment for the better. We can decide now to act with intention in order to leave this amazing planet brighter and more beautiful than when we arrived.
If we enjoy environmental activism, we might feel moved to clean up beaches or to plant trees. But, we need not feel limited in our ability to contribute positively. There are many ways to leave a legacy of love. We might begin by radiating affirmative thoughts and feelings about how magnificent the earth truly is. We might create and tend a special garden, one that provides an abundance of food and herbs for ourselves and our loved ones. Or we might create a garden filled with sweet smelling flowers to uplift our hearts. We might even honor the earth simply by trying to be the best person we can be while we are here. Such good will can have a domino effect, inspiring others to contribute in their own way as well.
We spend our lifetimes being nourished and enlivened by the rain, sun, soil and wind. Our experience is blessed by other living beings, from plants to insects to birds and humans. We receive so much; giving back just naturally feels good. When we live our lives with intention of leaving this temporary home a better place for generations to come, we are perhaps leaving behind the best gift of all."
The Poet: Theodore Roethke, “The Geranium”
“The Geranium”
“When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine -
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she’d lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)
The things she endured!
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.
Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me -
And that was scary -
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.
But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.”
- Theodore Roethke
"Life Comes At You Fast, So You Better Be Ready"
"Life Comes At You Fast, So You Better Be Ready"
by Ryan Holiday
"In 1880, Theodore Roosevelt wrote to his brother, “My happiness is so great that it makes me almost afraid.” In October of that year, life got even better. As he wrote in his diary the night of his wedding to Alice Hathaway Lee, “Our intense happiness is too sacred to be written about.” He would consider it to be one of the best years of his life: he got married, wrote a book, attended law school, and won his first election for public office.The streak continued. In 1883, he wrote “I can imagine nothing more happy in life than an evening spent in the cozy little sitting room, before a bright fire of soft coal, my books all around me, and playing backgammon with my own dainty mistress.” And that’s how he and Alice spent that cold winter as it crawled into the new year. He wrote in late January that he felt he was fully coming into his own. “I feel now as though I have the reins in my hand.” On February 12th, 1884 his first daughter was born.Two days later, his wife would be dead of Bright’s disease (now known as kidney failure). His mother had died only hours earlier in the same house, of typhoid fever. Roosevelt marked the day in his diary with a large “X.” Next to it, he wrote, “The light has gone out of my life.”As they say, life comes at you fast. Have the last 12 months not been an example of that? In December of 2019, the Dow was at 28,701.66. Things were good enough that people were complaining about the “war on Christmas” and debating the skin color of Santa Claus. In January, the Dow was at 29,348.10 and people were outraged about the recent Oscar nominations. In February 2020, when the Dow reached a staggering 29,568.57, Delta Airlines stock fell nearly 25% in less than a week, as people argued intensely over a message from Delta’s CEO about passengers reclining their seats. Even in early March, there were news stories about Wendy’s entering the “breakfast wars” and a free stock-trading app outage that caused people to miss a big market rally.And that was just in the news. Think about what you busied yourself with at home during that same period. Maybe you and your wife were looking at plans to remodel your kitchen. Maybe you were finally going to pull the trigger on that Tesla Model S for yourself - the $150,000 one, with the ludicrous speed package. Maybe you were fuming that Amazon took an extra day to deliver a package. Maybe you were frustrated that your kid’s room was a mess. And now? How quaint and stupid does that all seem? The global economy has essentially ground to a halt.Life comes at us fast, don’t it? It can change in an instant. Everything you built, everyone you hold dear, can be taken from you. For absolutely no reason. Just as easily, you can be taken from them. This is why the Stoics say we need to be prepared, constantly, for the twists and turns of Fortune. It’s why Seneca said that nothing happens to the wise man contrary to his expectation, because the wise man has considered every possibility-even the cruel and heartbreaking ones.And yet even Seneca was blindsided by a health scare in his early twenties that forced him to spend nearly a decade in Egypt to recover. He lost his father less than a year before he lost his first-born son, and twenty days after burying his son he was exiled by the emperor Caligula. He lived through the destruction of one city by a fire and another by an earthquake, before being exiled two more times.One needs only to read his letters and essays, written on a rock off the coast of Italy, to get a sense that even a philosopher can get knocked on their ass and feel sorry for themselves from time to time.What do we do? Well, first, knowing that life comes at us fast, we should be always prepared. Seneca wrote that the fighter who has “seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent’s fist… who has been downed in body but not in spirit…” - only they can go into the ring confident of their chances of winning. They know they can take getting bloodied and bruised. They know what the darkness before the proverbial dawn feels like. They have a true and accurate sense for the rhythms of a fight and what winning requires. That sense only comes from getting knocked around. That sense is only possible because of their training.In his own life, Seneca bloodied and bruised himself through a practice called premeditatio malorum (“the premeditation of evils”). Rehearsing his plans, say to take a trip, he would go over the things that could go wrong or prevent the trip from happening - a storm could spring up, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates, he could be banished to the island of Corsica the morning of the trip. By doing what he called a premeditatio malorum, Seneca was always prepared for disruption and always working that disruption into his plans. He was fitted for defeat or victory. He stepped into the ring confident he could take any blow. Nothing happened contrary to his expectations.Second, we should always be careful not to tempt fate. In 2016 General Michael Flynn stood on the stage at the Republican National Convention and led some 20,000 people (and a good many more at home) in an impromptu chant of “Lock Her Up! Lock Her Up!” about his enemy Hillary Clinton. When Trump won, he was swept into office in a whirlwind of success and power. Then, just 24 days into his new job, Flynn was fired for lying to the Vice President about conversations he’d had with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. He would be brought up on charges and convicted of lying to the FBI, and eventually pardoned by President Trump.Life comes at us fast… but that doesn’t mean we should be stupid. We also shouldn’t be arrogant.Third, we have to hang on. Remember, that in the depths of both of Seneca’s darkest moments, he was unexpectedly saved. From exile, he was suddenly recalled to be the emperor’s tutor. In the words of the historian Richard M. Gummere, “Fortune, whom Seneca as a Stoic often ridicules, came to his rescue.” But Churchill, as always, put it better: “Sometimes when Fortune scowls most spitefully, she is preparing her most dazzling gifts.”Life is like this. It gives us bad breaks - heartbreakingly bad breaks - and it also gives us incredible lucky breaks. Sometimes the ball that should have gone in, bounces out. Sometimes the ball that had no business going in surprises both the athlete and the crowd when it eventually, after several bounces, somehow manages to pass through the net.When we’re going through a bad break, we should never forget Fortune’s power to redeem us. When we’re walking through the roses, we should never forget how easily the thorns can tear us upon, how quickly we can be humbled. Sometimes life goes your way, sometimes it doesn’t.This is what Theodore Roosevelt learned, too. Despite what he wrote in his diary that day in 1884, the light did not completely go out of Roosevelt’s life. Sure, it flickered. It looked like the flame might have been cruelly extinguished. But with time and incredible energy and force of will, he came back from those tragedies. He became a great father, a great husband, and a great leader. He came back and the world was better for it. He was better for it.Life comes at us fast. Today. Tomorrow. When we least expect it. Be ready. Be strong. Don’t let your light be snuffed out."
"Americans Know Something Big Is Coming and They're Getting Ready"
Full screen recommended.
A Homestead Journey, 3/22/23
"Americans Know Something Big
Is Coming and They're Getting Ready"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Doomsday Prepping At Costco!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/22/23
"Doomsday Prepping At Costco!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Economic News Ninja, 3/22/26
"Panic At Costco As Gas Prices Rise"
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "Grants for Your Business AndYour Bills - Here's the Full List"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 3/22/26
"Grants for Your Business AndYour Bills -
Here's the Full List"
"Millions of Americans are struggling with rising bills, expensive utilities, and the high cost of starting or running a business - but what most people don’t realize is that free grant money is still widely available right now. In this video, I break down how to find grants for your business, grants to help pay your bills, and local programs that can provide real financial assistance. From programs offering $5,000 to $50,000 for small businesses to resources that can help cover utilities, rent, internet, and even medical expenses - these opportunities are out there if you know where to look. I also walk you through exactly how to search for grants in your city and state, including overlooked programs like 211 services, local redevelopment initiatives, and private grant opportunities. Thousands of people have already signed up for my Free Grant Guide, and many are seeing real results - from paid utility bills to funding for their businesses."
Don’t miss out on money that is already set aside to help
people - take action today and get access to the guide here:
Comments here:
"Something Is Wrong With American Food… And You Can Feel It Every Day"
Full screen recommended.
The Unfolded States, 3/22/26
"Something Is Wrong With American Food…
And You Can Feel It Every Day"
"Something about the food you eat every day has changed. Energy drops faster, hunger comes back sooner, and digestion feels less predictable. This video breaks down what’s actually happening inside the modern American food system, from production and processing to how food is designed and consumed. Using data from sources like the CDC, USDA, and peer-reviewed research, we look at how ultra processed food, large-scale agriculture, and supply chain optimization have reshaped what ends up on your plate. The goal is not to blame individuals, but to understand how the system itself has evolved over time. Once you see how these changes connect, many everyday symptoms start to make more sense. Not as isolated problems, but as patterns shaped by the environment you’re eating in."
Comments here:
""US-Israel-Iran War, 3/22/26""
Full screen recommended.
OPTM, 3/22/26
"Trump Panics As Netanyahu Begs For Ceasefire
After Iran Damages 13 Refuelling Aircraft"
Comments here:
o
Danny Haiphong, 3/22/26
"Iran HITS Israel’s Dimona Nuke Site,
Trump’s 48-Hour Power Plant Threat Collapses"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, 3/22/26
"Marandi Responds To Trump's 48-Hour Ultimatum To Iran"
"President Donald Trump posted late Saturday that the U.S. would "obliterate" Iran's power plants if it does not open the Strait of Hormuz. Professor Mohammad Marandi responded to the threat and said Iran's position remains "steadfast." The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What's Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
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Glenn Diesen, 3/22/26
"Seyed M. Marandi: Total War -
Attacking Nuclear Plants, Desalination & Infrastructure"
"Seyed Mohammad Marandi discusses the targeting of nuclear plants, desalination plants, critical infrastructure, and the civilian population. Trump has given Iran 48 hours to open the Strait of Hormuz (capitulation), otherwise the US will destroy Iran's energy facilities. Then there will be no limits on Iran's response, and the consequences will be global. The future of global stability will be decided over the next few days. Marandi is a professor at Tehran University and a former advisor to Iran's Nuclear Negotiation Team."
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Saturday, March 21, 2026
Jeremiah Babe, "Alert: Things Are Getting Out of Control - A Financial Crash Is Coming Next"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/21/26
"Alert: Things Are Getting Out of Control -
A Financial Crash Is Coming Next"
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Fred Reed, "Joan Baez: 'When Will They Ever Learn?'”
"Joan Baez: 'When Will They Ever Learn?'”
by Fred Reed
"This, written sixteen years ago, I stumbled on in the Lew Rockwell archive. While not brilliantly written, it illustrates that the more things change, they more they don’t. Oh good. I see that Senator Lindsey Graham wants to attack Iran. The US, he says, should “sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard.”
Senator Graham has the brains of a tapeworm, making him eminently qualified for the senate. Tapeworms, I note, do not have brains. It is characteristic of warlike innocents, to include the Pentagon, to believe that if you destroy navies and air forces, you win wars. This worked well in Vietnam, you will recall, and as soon as we destroy the Taliban’s navy, Afghanistan will be a cakewalk.
Now, I understand that practicality and realism are alien concepts in American politics, to be approached with trepidation, but maybe, just once, we should think before sticking our private parts into a wood-chipper. Just once. I do not propose consistent rationality, forethought, or intelligent behavior. I profoundly respect my country’s traditions. However, folk wisdom from West Virginia: Before you say, “I can whip any man in the bar!” it is well to scout the bar."
November 9, 2010: "Note that the United States cannot defeat Iran militarily, short of using nuclear weapons. It is easy to start a war. Finishing one is harder. I could punch out Mike Tyson. Things thereafter might not go as well as hoped.
Some will find the thought of American martial incapacity outrageous. Can’t beat Iran? Buncha towel monkeys? Among grrr-bowwow-woof patriots, there exists a heady delusion of American potency, that the US has “the greatest military power the world has ever seen.” Ah. And when did it last win a war? In Afghanistan, for ten years the gloriousest military ever known, the expensivist, and whoosh-bangiest, hasn’t managed to defeat a bunch of pissed-off illiterates with AKs and RPGs.
At this point Lindsey of Persia will doubtless allude to the wonders of air power, of “precision-guided weapons,” of smart bombs that presumably read Kant on the way down. Those pitiable Iranians would have no hope of stopping our mighty bombers. True.
Implicit in this Thomistic fantasy (Clancy, I mean, not Aquinas) is that Iran wouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t dare fight back without a navy, etc. Lindsey had better be very sure that Iran couldn’t block the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation. Enough of the world’s petroleum comes from the Gulf that the price would rise drastically if the Straits were blocked. Some economies would simply stop. How many supertankers going up in flames would be tolerated before operators of tankers refused to risk it?
Iran recently began serial production of the Nasr 1, an anti-ship cruise missile. Tankers are thin-skinned and highly flammable. The Nasr 1 can be fired from the back of a truck. Trucks by their nature are mobile. They are easy to hide.
The Air Force, to include Naval Air, may be confident that it can destroy all of Iran’s missiles. The Air Force always believes that air power can do anything and everything - make coffee, win at marbles, everything. After all, don’t its airplanes say “Vrooom!” and “Swoosh!”? Don’t cockpits have lots of portentous buttons and spiffy little screens? Unfortunately the Air Force is regularly wrong.
In fact the entire military is regularly wrong about the ease and duration of its adventures. For example, it had no idea that Viet Nam would turn into an endless war ending in defeat (if that makes sense). Iraq notoriously was going to be a walk in the park. That the war on Afghanistan would last ten years with a distinct possibility of defeat…this never occurred to the soldiers. It is barely conceivable that the Five-Sided Wind Box could do what Field Marshal Graham thinks it could do. The unexpected is always a possibility. But, the stakes being what they would be in Hormuz, hoo-boy….
Another possibility is that Israel will attack Iran, as it has threatened. I would like to think that even Bibi Nut-and-Yahoo has better sense but, it the US can produce gibbering wingnuts, why not Israel? The practical effects of an Israeli attack would be indistinguishable from those of an American attack: America would have to solve the problem. Which it probably couldn’t. Israel can bomb Iran’s nuclear codpieces, but it can’t defeat Iran. And if the Strait were blocked after an Israeli attack, the entire globe would holler, “Israel did it!” which would be true.
The distance from “Israel did it” to “The Jews did it,” though logically great, is emotionally short. People think in collective terms. Remember that after some Saudis dropped the Towers, the alleged war on terror morphed almost instantly into intense hostility for Moslems. It doesn’t make sense, but what has that got to do with anything?
I know a lot of Jews, who are all over the place politically and intellectually. They have in common a complete lack of resemblance to the scheming, hand-rubbing, heh-heh-heh Jews of Neo-nazi imagination. Few sacrifice Christian children (a temptation strongest, I can attest, among Christian parents). But…people think collectively. Congress doesn’t support Israel because it likes Israel, but from political expediency. If the wind blows the other way, so will Congress. Gasoline at twelve dollars is a lot of wind in a commuting country.
Things worsen for America, yet we really don’t know where the country is going or how it will react. The last domestic catastrophe was the Great Depression, when America was a very different place. How bad can things get, economically, politically, internationally? How does a pampered population incapable of planting a garden respond to genuinely hard times? “It can’t happen here,” one hears. What can’t? I suspect that all sorts of things could happen, given sufficiently hard times.
The United States is today an edgy, unhappy country, sliding toward poverty, increasingly dictatorial, inchoately angry, hostile to blacks, the French, Mexicans, Moslems and, creepingly, the Chinese. (Jews, perhaps to their surprise, don’t make the enemies list.) Americans don’t do cosmopolitan. The federal pressure for diversity exists because otherwise no one would associate with anyone else. The Persian Gulf is one of few places that plausibly might wreck the industrial world. There would have to be someone to blame. And Israel can’t survive without American support.
Maybe I’m crazy. But if I were an Israeli, I’d find a nice café on Diesengoff and enjoy a double cappuccino, watch the girls, and keep my bombs in my pocket. Let somebody else take the fall."
"God Is A Comedian"
"God Is A Comedian"
by NO1
"It is a well-established fact that the universe has a sense of humor. It is less well-established, but increasingly obvious, that the humor is of the kind best enjoyed from a great distance, like, let’s say the moon. Three weeks into the Iran war, reality has passed through the looking glass, out the other side, and is now selling tickets to the gift shop. What follows is not satire. Satire requires exaggeration, and you cannot exaggerate something that is already operating at maximum absurdity. This is simply the news, and nothing but the news. Told straight, in a universe that has clearly stopped taking its medication.
The United States is sending 5,000 Marines into the Persian Gulf to seize Kharg Island, a speck of land 15 miles off the Iranian coast that handles 90% of Iran’s oil exports. This is, on paper, a reasonable military objective in the same way that sticking your hand into a beehive is a reasonable way to acquire honey. It is technically correct. The bees would disagree.
To reach Kharg Island, the Marines aboard the USS Tripoli and USS Boxer must first sail through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has mined. The strait is also, as of this week, a toll road. The IRGC verifies vessels on VHF radio and charges up to $2 million per transit, payable in cash, cryptocurrency, or barter. At least eight ships have paid. Iran’s parliament is legislating the arrangement formally, because even revolutionary theocracies require a compliance department.
A White House source told Axios they need “about a month to weaken the Iranians more” before attempting this. One month. Of a war Trump described as ‘winding down’ on Friday - three weeks in, which by his count is basically four days… Both statements were made, as far as anyone can tell, by people who occupy the same government and occasionally share a building.
A former Navy SEAL called the plan “insane”. A retired Vice Admiral called it “a massacre-in-making scenario”. A retired Rear Admiral pointed out that even if they seize the island, Iran simply turns off the pipeline at the other end. Frankly, I think they're being extremely polite. This is a clusterf*ck of historic proportions and everyone who's ever held a rank knows it.
The USS Gerald R. Ford, meanwhile, the most expensive warship in human history, is retreating to Crete. The official reason is a “laundry fire”. 266 consecutive days at sea, 28 days short of the Vietnam-era deployment record, and the crown jewel of the US Navy is fleeing the theatre, not because of being damaged in combat, not because missiles are flying around it… But because someone's skivvies got too hot.
France, in a display of allied solidarity, deployed the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the region. Its precise location was then revealed to the entire internet by a sailor who went jogging on deck with Strava running. Iran’s calling B7.
There exists in diplomacy a concept known as “sanctions”, which works on the same principle as telling a child they can’t have dessert while you’re eating cake in front of them. The United States has been sanctioning Iran for years. It has also been bombing Iran for three weeks. These are, in the normal course of events, complementary activities. One is economic warfare. The other is the regular kind.
This week, the US Treasury lifted all oil sanctions on Iran. For 30 days. 140 million barrels of Iranian crude, sitting on ships at sea, may now be sold freely on the global market. Including to the United States itself. In yuan. The United States is purchasing, with Chinese currency, oil from the country it is currently bombing?! The same oil that funds the missiles that just shot down an F-35 for the first time. The same missiles that are redecorating allied oil infrastructure.
Treasury Secretary Bessent called this “narrowly tailored”. Narrow like in white, and tailored as in card, apparently. In the same OFAC filing, Russian oil sanctions were lifted as well. And Belarus potash too, because apparently the universe was running low on irony and needed to top up.
The logic, insofar as there is any, goes like this: the war has crashed the global oil market so hard that the administration needs the enemy’s oil to keep gasoline prices from eating the midterms. They are unsanctioning the people they’re bombing because the bombing is working too well at the thing they didn’t want it to do. The sanctions were necessary to stop Iran funding the war, but the war made the sanctions too effective, so the sanctions had to be lifted to fund the war effort against the country that no longer needs sanctions because the oil revenues that sanctions were preventing are now required to prevent the economic damage caused by preventing those revenues, which is itself a consequence of the military campaign designed to make the sanctions unnecessary by making Iran the kind of country that doesn’t need sanctioning, which it would be, if the sanctions hadn’t been lifted to pay for making it that.
Two F-35 stealth fighters have been hit by Iranian air defenses. The first was confirmed by CENTCOM, which used the phrase “emergency landing” in the way that a funeral director might describe death as “a permanent change of address”. The pilot had shrapnel wounds. The aircraft, they said, “will not return to service”, which is the sort of thing you say about a car that hit a bridge abutment at speed, not about a plane that landed.
A Chinook helicopter was subsequently tracked conducting an extensive search pattern over eastern Saudi Arabia. This is what you do when something has come apart in the sky and you need to find the bits. It is not what you do after a landing, emergency or otherwise.
The entire F-35 doctrine, the single most expensive weapons program in human history, rests on the assumption that the aircraft is invisible to radar. Someone forgot to tell the Iranians the planes were invisible.
Then there’s Diego Garcia. The B-2 bomber staging base in the Indian Ocean, roughly 4,000 kilometres from Iran. Iran sent two intermediate-range ballistic missiles. One failed mid-flight. An SM-3 intercepted the other. The outcome is beside the point. Iran had publicly claimed a maximum missile range of 2,000 kilometres. They were lying by a factor of two, which, in the context of ballistic missile capabilities, constitutes what experts call “a very bad surprise”. Rome, Paris, and London are now within the theoretical strike envelope. The British gave permission for Diego Garcia to be used for strikes against Iran and discovered that the Iranian response could, if Tehran felt creative, arrive at Heathrow.
Trump asked NATO to send ships to help secure the Strait of Hormuz. Every. single. ally. refused. Trump called them “cowards” and said NATO has a “very bad future”. He then announced that the United States doesn’t actually need the Strait of Hormuz. He then said countries that do need it should police it themselves. He then told China to police it. He then sent 5,000 Marines toward it.
This sequence of statements was delivered, as far as the public record shows, by the same person, using the same mouth, within roughly 24 hours. The allies are cowards for not helping with the thing he doesn’t need, which is why he’s sending Marines to die for it, unless the countries that do need it do it themselves, which they won’t, because they’re cowards. Trump told reporters the strait could be opened with a “simple military maneuver” that is “relatively safe” but requires “a lot of help”. Help. From the cowards. Who he doesn’t need. For the strait. That he also doesn’t need.
On the other end of all this, sits Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi, who is not answering texts from US envoy Steve Witkoff. And why would he? The last Iranian official who engaged in negotiations was Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council. Israel killed him. The supreme leader before that was killed on day one. Defence Secretary Hegseth is openly calling senior IRGC positions “temp jobs”. You are assassinating everyone with the authority to negotiate and then complaining, with what appears to be genuine bewilderment, that nobody will negotiate. This is the diplomatic equivalent of burning down every restaurant in town and then leaving a bad Yelp review about the lack of dining options.
And because one chokepoint apparently wasn’t enough, the Houthis have formally entered the war. Yahya Saree made the announcement with the kind of understated menace that works better when you’ve spent the last two years proving you can, in fact, hit things with missiles from Yemen. “This battle is the battle of the entire Ummah,” he said like someone who’s been warming the bench for two years and got called.
The Red Sea, the other way around, is now also contested. The global shipping industry, already staring at 3,200 vessels trapped in the Gulf with 20,000 seafarers aboard, now has two chokepoints to worry about instead of one.
The Gulf states, who are nominally America’s allies in this production, are having what might be described as a Moment. Kuwait’s Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery, the country’s largest, has been struck by Iranian drones. Again. Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister told a gathering of 12 Arab and Islamic nations that Saudi “patience is not unlimited”, which in Saudi diplomatic language is roughly equivalent to throwing a chair. Qatar’s Prime Minister stated on camera that “everyone knows who the main beneficiary of this war is”. He didn’t name Israel. The sentence didn’t need the word.
QatarEnergy declared force majeure. Two of 14 LNG trains damaged, one of two gas-to-liquids facilities hit, 12.8 million tonnes per year offline, 17% of Qatar’s export capacity gone, $20 billion in annual revenue evaporated, repair timeline of three to five years. And because the universe’s sense of humour remains fully operational: Exxon holds 34% of Train S4 and 30% of Train S6. An American oil major took a direct missile hit from a war America started. The insurer’s phone must be making fascinating noises.
Israel’s Haifa refinery, the Bazan complex, 197,000 barrels per day, 40% of national refining capacity, was hit by Iranian ballistic missiles. The IDF said it was “shrapnel from an intercepted projectile”. This is becoming a pattern: Israel issues a statement, footage appears, reality picks the winner.
The entire post-1973 petrodollar deal was simple: Gulf sells oil in dollars, America provides the security umbrella. The umbrella is on fire. The refineries are on fire. And according to an Omani journalist on BBC Arabic, Trump has sent an invoice: $5 trillion to continue the war, $2.5 trillion to stop it. The petrodollar was already the payment. This is double-billing for a service that is visibly, combustibly, failing.
Rheinmetall’s CEO went on CNBC and said the thing that nobody in his position is supposed to say. “If the war lasts another month, we will have nearly no missiles available. All European, American, and also Middle East country warehouses are empty, or nearly empty.” This wasn’t a leak. Not an anonymous source. Not a think tank estimate. This was the CEO of Europe’s largest defense manufacturer, on camera, stating plainly that the cupboard is bare. It is the military equivalent of the pilot coming on the intercom to say he doesn’t know how to land.
The IEA released 400 million barrels from strategic reserves. The largest coordinated release in history. It will be remembered as such for 3.8 days. The fire extinguisher lasted less than a week and the fire hasn’t even noticed.
United Airlines is planning for $175 per barrel through the end of 2027. Whatever “winding down” means, United’s CFO doesn’t believe in it. Corporate planning has looked at the situation, done its own maths, and concluded that this is a two-year problem being described as a two-week one.
Gold had its worst week since 1983. Down over 10%. But Chinese banks are allocating 600 kilograms of gold bars per bank per day, and every single allocation sells out in under 60 seconds. Every trading day. On weekends it’s 100 kilograms. Also gone in a minute. The demand isn’t 600 kilograms. The demand is whatever number would empty the vault. The banks are rationing and the rations evaporate on contact with the Chinese public like water on a hot skillet.
Someone bought 11,000 COMEX gold options at $15,000-$20,000 strikes for December 2026. Paper gold crashes. Physical gold gets hoarded. The two markets are now occupying separate realities, waving at each other across an increasingly unbridgeable divide.
Friday’s press gaggle. Barely exaggerated: at 12:03 PM, President Trump told reporters he wanted a ceasefire with Iran. At 12:05 he declared victory. At 12:07 he announced he was sending Marines. At 12:08 he said no boots on the ground. At 12:11 he said he did not want a ceasefire. At 12:16 he declared victory again. At 12:17 he asked for a ceasefire. At 12:23 he told NATO they were cowards. At 12:29 he said Iran was begging for a ceasefire. At 12:31 he said everything was perfect. At 12:36 he said $500 oil was a good thing. At 12:37 he demanded Iran open Hormuz. At 12:39 he said Hormuz was never closed. At 12:41 he said the US was not at war with Iran. At 12:42 he declared victory in Iran.
By 3:43 PM he told CBS he doesn’t want a ceasefire. By 5:13 PM - 13 minutes after futures markets closed for the weekend, in a coincidence that should be studied in every securities fraud textbook - he posted on Truth Social that the US is “getting very close to meeting our objectives as we consider winding down our great Military efforts”. The S&P reversed more than 1% in seconds. QQQ had already surged 1.1% in the 80 minutes before the announcement, with call options flowing in at a pace that suggests someone, somewhere, had an itinerary.
It is a well-established fact that the universe has a sense of humor. It is an equally well-established fact that the best response to the universe's sense of humor is a stiff drink, a comfortable chair, and the quiet confidence that eventually, even the universe runs out of material. Hopefully."
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