Full screen! lol
Supertramp, "Take The Long Way Home" (Penguins)
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, July 10, 2021
"A Look to the Heavens With Chet Raymo'
“Learning And Yearning”
by Chet Raymo
“This photograph of the Eagle Nebula made by a rather modest telescope - the 0.9 meter instrument at Kitt Peak, Arizona - appeared on APOD (click to enlarge). I sat in front of the computer screen for ten minutes, breathless. One tiny corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of tens of billions of galaxies that we can potentially see with our telescopes! At the center are the so-called "Pillars of Creation" from a famous Hubble photograph.
I recall when the Hubble photograph appeared in the media hundreds of viewers claimed to see the face of Jesus in the billowing clouds. Which prompted these observations from "Skeptics and True Believers": "In an article on the psychological basis of belief, the psychologist James Alcock proposed that two aspects of the human brain might be called the "yearning unit" and the "learning unit." He probably didn't mean these terms to be taken literally, as referring to separate compartments of the brain, but yearning and learning are certainly central to the way we interact with the world. It is hard to imagine how we can be fully human without a little of each. Finding the proper balance between the two is a task that can keep us occupied for most of our lives.
We yearn when we dream of fulfillment, of greater happiness, of knowing more. We yearn when we love, when we laugh, when we cry, when we pray. Yearning is wondering what is around the next bend, over the rainbow, beyond the horizon. Yearning is curiosity. Yearning is the driving force of science, philosophy, and religion.
Learning is listening to parents, wise men, shamans. Learning is reading, going to school, traveling, doing experiments, being skeptical. Learning is looking behind the curtain for the Wizard of Oz, touching the stove to see if it's hot, not taking anyone's word for it. In science, learning means trying as hard to prove that something is wrong as to prove it right, even if that something is a cherished belief.
Yearning without learning is seeing Elvis in a crowd, the fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs together in ancient rocks, weeping statues. Yearning without learning is buying tabloid newspapers with headlines announcing "Newborn baby talks of Heaven" and the like. Yearning without learning is looking for UFOs in the sky and the meaning of life in horoscopes.
Learning without yearning is pedantry, scientism, dogmatic belief. Learning without yearning is believing that we know it all, that what we see is what we get, that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. Learning without yearning is science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty. Yearning without learning is seeing the face of Jesus in a gassy nebula. Learning without yearning is seeing only the gas."
We yearn when we dream of fulfillment, of greater happiness, of knowing more. We yearn when we love, when we laugh, when we cry, when we pray. Yearning is wondering what is around the next bend, over the rainbow, beyond the horizon. Yearning is curiosity. Yearning is the driving force of science, philosophy, and religion.
Learning is listening to parents, wise men, shamans. Learning is reading, going to school, traveling, doing experiments, being skeptical. Learning is looking behind the curtain for the Wizard of Oz, touching the stove to see if it's hot, not taking anyone's word for it. In science, learning means trying as hard to prove that something is wrong as to prove it right, even if that something is a cherished belief.
Yearning without learning is seeing Elvis in a crowd, the fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs together in ancient rocks, weeping statues. Yearning without learning is buying tabloid newspapers with headlines announcing "Newborn baby talks of Heaven" and the like. Yearning without learning is looking for UFOs in the sky and the meaning of life in horoscopes.
Learning without yearning is pedantry, scientism, dogmatic belief. Learning without yearning is believing that we know it all, that what we see is what we get, that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. Learning without yearning is science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty. Yearning without learning is seeing the face of Jesus in a gassy nebula. Learning without yearning is seeing only the gas."
"A Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness"
"It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive."
- Gregory David Roberts, "Shantaram"
•
"A Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness"
"If I have harmed anyone in any way
either knowingly or unknowingly
through my own confusions
I ask their forgiveness.
If anyone has harmed me in any way
either knowingly or unknowingly
through their own confusions
I forgive them.
And if there is a situation
I am not yet ready to forgive
I forgive myself for that.
For all the ways that I harm myself,
negate, doubt, belittle myself,
judge or be unkind to myself
through my own confusions
I forgive myself."
"Tell Yourself..."
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
- Louise Erdrich
"The Heart of Humanity"
"The Heart of Humanity"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM
"Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and we will come out the other side. The last thing most of us want to hear or think about when we are dealing with profound feelings of sadness is that deep learning can be found in this place. In the midst of our pain, we often feel picked on by life, or overwhelmed by the enormity of some loss, or simply too exhausted to try and examine the situation. We may feel far too disappointed and angry to look for anything resembling a bright side to our suffering. Still, somewhere in our hearts, we know that we will eventually emerge from the depths into the light of greater awareness. Remembering this truth, no matter how elusive it seems, can help.
The other thing we often would rather not hear when we are dealing with intense sadness is that the only way out of it is through it. Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and the faith that we will come out the other side. With courage, we can allow ourselves to cycle through the grieving process with full inner permission to experience it. This is a powerful teaching that sadness has to offer us—the ability to surrender and the acceptance of change go hand in hand.
Another teaching of sadness is compassion for others who are in pain, because it is only in feeling our own pain that we can really understand and allow for someone else’s. Sadness is something we all go through, and we all learn from it and are deepened by its presence in our lives. While our own individual experiences of sadness carry with them unique lessons, the implications of what we learn are universal. The wisdom we gain from going through the process of feeling loss, heartbreak, or deep disappointment gives us access to the heart of humanity."
"Always True To Our Story..."
“The sands of time blew into a storm of images... images in sequence to tell the truth! Glorious legends of revolutionaries, bound only by a desire to be true to themselves, and to hope! Parables of colliding worlds, of forbidden love, of enemies healing the wounds of circumstance! Projected myth of persecution through greed and selfishness... and the will to survive! The Will to survive! And to survive in the face of those who claim credit for your very existence! We survive not as pawns, but as agents of hope. Sometimes misunderstood, but always true to our story. The story of Man."
- Scott Morse
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"What can we know? What are we all?
Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,
with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
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Vangelis, "Alpha"
This tune always made me think, and yet,
despite ourselves, of the March of Mankind across the ages...
"Big Trouble Is Here; The Wealthy Love Assets, The Masses Love Debt; Stop Buying Dumb Stuff"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/10/21:
"Big Trouble Is Here; The Wealthy Love Assets,
The Masses Love Debt; Stop Buying Dumb Stuff"
"A Conspiracy to Murder – The Government and the Big Pharma-Dependent Medical Profession Are Hiding the Facts About Covid and the Vaccine"
"A Conspiracy to Murder – The Government and
the Big Pharma-Dependent Medical Profession
Are Hiding the Facts About Covid and the Vaccine"
by Paul Craig Roberts
UPDATE: "Just received this from an accomplished highly intelligent attorney I have known for many years: “I have just spent 10 hours a day In the hospital with my son since July 2, he is now stable but essentially went into A Fib they cannot fix now because of a clot (vaccine induced I am sure) after being sick 10 days following his second Pfizer shot. It’s too much to go into now, we almost lost him. He’s 32. No history of hypertension or heart problems. Vegetarian. “
It is happening all over. See, for example, this. There are a huge number of cases of life-threatening reactions to the “safe” vaccine, especially among the young. Yet the social media nazis and google continue to deplatform those who give the alarm. That part of the medical profession that blindly without thought follow the Big Pharma “guidelines” issued by NIH, FDA, CDC, and WHO are accomplices to murder.
The idiot people overcome by orchestrated fear have ruined the health of a large percentage of the population. In this 25 minute video Dr. Ryan Cole explains the adverse impact on the human body of the spike protein that is characteristic of both the Covid virus and the vaccine. Most people are not in serious danger from the virus. These people should not expose themselves to the danger of the vaccine. "Vaccine Taboos"
The failure of public health authorities to treat Covid with known safe inexpensive treatments enabled the generation of fear and panic that supported mass vaccination with an untested and unapproved experimental technology. This primarily benefited Big Pharma’s profits and government encroachments on civil liberty and has harmed public trust in government and health authorities.
The vaccine adverse reporting system, which at best captures only 10% of vaccine-induced injuries - shows more death and injuries from the experimental Covid vaccine than from all vaccines combined over the past 30 years. Never before in history has a vaccine with such a high death and injury rate been permitted to be administered.
The facts have been kept from the people. Big Pharma has enough scientists on its payroll and supported by its research grants that their careers force them to serve as advocates for Big Pharma’s agendas. The presstitutes follow the hired scientists, not the independent ones. The American medical profession in general lost its independence because of Obamacare. After Obamacare hospitals bought up independent practices. One consequence has been the reliance of doctors on NIH, CDC, FDA, WHO guidelines—guidelines heavily influenced by Big Pharma’s interests—instead of thinking for themselves about how to treat patients. As so many medical practitioners are employees of large organizations, relying on official guidelines is a form of protection. In other words, Obamacare produced more bureaucratization of medicine.
It is the doctors and scientists who think for themselves who have devised the cures for Covid and who have raised the questions of the vaccine’s safety. As they are individuals and not large official organizations, they are outgunned by the material interests of the organized groups.
In place of debate and examination of the data there is the suppression of the evidence. Doctors and scientists who raise issues are censored and deplatformed. A recent example is the resignation of scientists on the board of the professional journal Vaccines to force retraction of a peer-reviewed article that compared deaths from Covid with deaths from the vaccine. Some who resigned were involved in the development of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine or had research grants from Big Pharma. They claimed the article was faulty because it assumed all deaths following vaccination were caused by the vaccine. Of course, these same scientists did not complain when all deaths from flu, co-morbidities, and all other causes were attributed to Covid in order to create fear in the public that would cause people to line up for the untested experimental vaccine. Even the inventor of the mRNA technology that is used in the vaccine has been erased for warning of the dangers of the technology.
In the United States today there is no longer any debate or examination of evidence. In universities, in print and TV media, and among scientists funded by interest groups and government, there is no debate. There is an official narrative and everything else is off-limits.
This is how we got a Covid pandemic, which never existed, and this is how we got half the population injected with an experimental technology about which scientists were mistaken. The spike in the vaccine has not remained at the point of injection but against expectations moves throughout the body, concentrating in the ovaries, causing blood clots, spontaneous abortions, and heart inflammation and death among the young never threatened by Covid.
This message cannot get out because so many scientists are owned by Big Pharma, because there is no integrity and independence in the media, because public health authorities have a revolving door with Big Pharma and legislators’ election campaigns are dependent on Big Pharma’s contributions.
The virus is mainly dangerous to elderly people with co-morbidities and impaired immune systems. The current push to force vaccination on children and young adults in the face of the massive evidence that the vaccine is more dangerous to them than the virus is nothing short of a conspiracy to murder. It proves beyond all doubt that the agenda being served is not a public health agenda."
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Related:
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Related, an absolute Must Read:
Friday, July 9, 2021
Alarming Must Watch! "What Does Wells Fargo Know? Something Big Is Coming - Bank Collapse?"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/9/21:
"What Does Wells Fargo Know?
Something Big Is Coming - Bank Collapse?"
"Wells Unexpectedly Shuts All Existing Personal Lines Of Credit, Hinting US Economy On The Edge"
Full screen recommended.
"Wells Unexpectedly Shuts All Existing Personal Lines Of Credit,
Hinting US Economy On The Edge"
by Epic Economist
"As the credit market heats back up due to the growing consumer demand amid the reopening, America's third-largest bank, Wells Fargo, unexpectedly announced this week that it will permanently shut down all of its existing lines of credit - a very popular product provided by the retail-focused Wall Street giant - and the move is already infuriating a legion of customers. The revolving credit lines that are about to be discontinued in the coming weeks typically allowed customers to borrow from $3K to $100k. When they were launched in the first place, the bank's goal was to offer users a way to consolidate higher-interest credit-card debt, pay for home renovations or avoid overdraft fees on checking accounts attached to the loan. In a statement released on Thursday, the bank said the decision came as an effort to simplify their product offerings, so they chose to no longer offer personal lines of credit as the bank feels it can better meet the borrowing needs of their customers through credit card and personal loan products.
Another major disruption caused by the sudden shutdowns is that many customers will be left without what may be considered as a critical source of liquidity. Even though the bank didn't reveal how many customers used the credit lines it is eliminating, recent data showed that Wells Fargo had had $24.9 billion in loans in a category called "other consumer" as of March, and that category was 26% lower this year than during the same period last year.
Many of the users of the credit lines that are shuttering will actually be the ones penalized by the bank's decision. According to the CNBC report, it will get much harder for the customers whose credit lines will be involuntarily closed to receive credit from a new source because their FICO scores will be penalized as if they had elected to close the credit line willingly. Economists have been advising users to stop making withdrawals and turn their attention to repayment to avoid disruptions in their credit scores. According to one CNBC analyst, "once the account is closed and you can no longer draw from it, your annual percentage rate will be frozen and that’s the rate you’ll pay on the remaining balance".
In essence, the move is Wells Fargo's latest in a series of lending products closures. In 2020, the bank announced it would no longer provide home equity lines of credit for its customers and that it would stop giving auto loans to most independent car dealerships. Back then, financial analysts argued that happened because the bank was having a hard time making enough money to keep these areas going since the Federal Reserve placed penalties and growth limits on its business.
The last time Wells restricted consumer credit was because of the mounting uncertainty about the remaining purchasing power of the American consumer amid what was the worst economic recession facing the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s. But that uncertainty pretty much vanished ever since trillions of dollars in federal stimulus money were pumped into the financial markets, and fueled several asset bubbles and an unprecedented boom in both stock and housing markets. That's why the timing of this latest decision is sparking so much curiosity amongst financial experts.
It seems that the bank is engaging in some prudent risk-management as it could already realize that the U.S. economy is on the edge of an inflationary collapse that will likely force the Fed to hike interest rates much sooner than expected. As Wells Fargo tries to restructure its operations and takes cautionary measures to prevent future losses, the bank's move says more about our overheating economy and a bleak outlook for the reopening than many can realize. Those who have previously seen warning signs indicating that a catastrophic financial crisis was approaching already know that they have to run for the exits before the whole system starts melting down while triggering huge losses and acute financial imbalances. One thing is certain: when big banks suddenly start to close down their credit lines is because they can see that trouble is ahead."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"M82 is a starburst galaxy with a superwind. In fact, through ensuing supernova explosions and powerful winds from massive stars, the burst of star formation in M82 is driving a prodigious outflow. Evidence for the superwind from the galaxy's central regions is clear in sharp telescopic snapshot. The composite image highlights emission from long outflow filaments of atomic hydrogen gas in reddish hues. Some of the gas in the superwind, enriched in heavy elements forged in the massive stars, will eventually escape into intergalactic space.
Triggered by a close encounter with nearby large galaxy M81, the furious burst of star formation in M82 should last about 100 million years or so. Also known as the Cigar Galaxy for its elongated visual appearance, M82 is about 30,000 light-years across. It lies 12 million light-years away near the northern boundary of Ursa Major."
The Poet: William Stafford, “Starting With Little Things”
“Starting With Little Things”
“Love the earth like a mole,
fur-near. Nearsighted,
hold close the clods,
their fine-print headlines.
Pat them with soft hands -
Like spades, but pink and loving; they
break rock, nudge giants aside,
affable plow.
Fields are to touch;
each day nuzzle your way.
Tomorrow the world.”
- William Stafford
"Millions Of Low Paying 'Jobs' Are Available, But Most Americans Can’t Afford To Take Them"
"Millions Of Low Paying 'Jobs' Are Available,
But Most Americans Can’t Afford To Take Them"
by Michael Snyder
"There are more job openings in the United States than ever before, but the vast majority of the available “jobs” pay so little that most Americans don’t want them. If working extremely long hours for some employer is not even going to lift you out of poverty, then you are probably better off taking whatever government assistance that you can get until a decent paying job eventually comes along. For example, if you get a job that pays 10 dollars an hour and you work full-time hours every week, you will earn somewhere around $1,600 a month before taxes. Needless to say, you can’t survive in most U.S. cities on $1,600 a month these days. It would have been tough to make it on $1,600 a month before the pandemic, but now we are in a highly inflationary environment. Housing costs are absolutely skyrocketing, health insurance premiums are at extremely ridiculous levels and food prices have been rising aggressively. The higher the cost of living gets, the less attractive low paying jobs are going to become.
Having said that, it is still good news that the number of job openings is sitting at a record high right now… "Job openings in the U.S. rose slightly in May to a record 9.21 million, reflecting an insatiable demand for labor as the economy fully reopens and businesses scramble to keep up with soaring sales for their goods and services."
The number of available jobs has set a record for three straight months. Job openings had fallen to as low as 4.6 million last year after the coronavirus pandemic briefly shut down much of the economy. Having lots of jobs available is better than not having a lot of jobs available, but of course the vast majority of those “jobs” could not support a middle class lifestyle for an average American family. Some have been using the term “labor shortage” to describe what is going on out there, but in reality what we are really facing is a shortage of jobs that people are actually willing to work.
Even though there are supposedly so many “jobs” available at this moment, the unemployment rate in this country actually went up last month… “There’s simply no labor shortage when you’re talking about finding house cleaners for a hotel - there is a shortage of workers who want to work at what you’re offering,” said Sylvia Allegretto, a UC Berkeley labor economist. She said the country is experiencing a “wage and benefits shortage.”
A labor shortage implies there aren’t enough available workers to fill open jobs, but this is not the case nationally, or in California. National unemployment in June was 5.9%, up from 5.8% in May, in part because the number of people looking for jobs grew, according to data from the Labor Department on Friday. California’s unemployment is tracking higher, at 7.9% in May.
Of course it doesn’t help that being unemployed pays quite handsomely in many states these days. If you can make more money doing nothing, it simply doesn’t make sense to work. In order to encourage more people to work, many large chains in the restaurant industry are now raising wages substantially… "Job openings in the accommodation and food services sector increased from 1.16 million in April to 1.25 million in May. To entice workers to stay — and to hire more people — restaurants have been raising wages. Darden Restaurants (DRI), which owns Olive Garden, announced in March that it is hiking pay. McDonald’s (MCD), too, announced wage hikes for employees at corporate-owned stores in May. Others have done the same."
Large corporate chains can do this because they have deep pockets. But millions of small businesses all over the country that deeply struggled during the pandemic are not in the same position. Ultimately, a lot of small business owners find themselves doing more and more of the work themselves because they simply can’t find enough people to work for the wages that they are offering. Here is just one example… "Jarvis Young, who owns a Papa John’s in Los Angeles with his wife, is struggling to staff up at all levels, from managers to delivery drivers. He employs 16 workers and said he needs closer to 23.
He has started borrowing employees from other Papa John’s franchises to keep up with demand. Until they hire one, his wife is acting as the general manager. The two of them sometimes deliver pizzas - not quite what they envisioned for themselves as franchise owners. “At the end of the day, this is our business,” he said."
Today, there are tens of millions of Americans that are considered to be among the “working poor”, and that number is growing with each passing day. The cost of living is rising far faster than our paychecks are, and an increasing number of Americans are not even able to afford the basics.
For instance, everyone needs a place to live. Unfortunately, home prices have surged so dramatically this year that the percentage of Americans that say that it is a “bad time to buy a home” has risen to the highest level ever recorded… "The percentage who said that it was a “bad time to buy a home” spiked over the past three months from record to record and in June hit 64%. Consumers cited home prices as the predominant reason. A record low 32% of the respondents said that it was still a good time to buy a home, while the percentage of fence-sitters who didn’t know dropped to 4%."
And just trying to buy enough food to eat is becoming a challenge for a lot of people. When I went to the grocery store this week, I was stunned to see how high prices had become. Of course some manufacturers are trying to hide price increases by shrinking the sizes of their packages, and this is something that NPR did an article on the other day… "A couple of weeks ago, Edgar Dworsky walked into a Stop & Shop grocery store in Somerville, Mass., like a detective entering a murder scene.
He stepped into the cereal aisle, where he hoped to find the smoking gun. He scanned the shelves. Oh no, he thought. He was too late. The store had already replaced old General Mills cereal boxes - such as Cheerios and Cocoa Puffs - with newer ones. It was as though the suspect’s fingerprints had been wiped clean."
But Dworsky’s story didn’t end there. He decided to check out the back of the store, and it was there that he discovered what he was searching for... "Then Dworsky headed toward the back of the store. Sure enough, old boxes of Cocoa Puffs and Apple Cinnamon Cheerios were stacked at the end of one of the aisles. He grabbed an old box of Cocoa Puffs and put it side by side with the new one. Aha! The tip he had received was right on the money. General Mills had downsized the contents of its “family size” boxes from 19.3 ounces to 18.1 ounces. Dworsky went to the checkout aisle, and both boxes - gasp! - were the same price. It was an open-and-shut case: General Mills is yet another perpetrator of “shrinkflation.”
As I discussed a few days ago, we are going to be in a high inflation environment for the foreseeable future. That means that low paying jobs will just become less and less attractive. So employers can boast that they have as many “job openings” as they want, but if wage growth continues to lag way behind the real rate of inflation most of those jobs will continue to remain empty."
"Trouble is Coming! Lines of Credit Closed Without Warning"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, IAllegedly PM 7/9/21:
"Trouble is Coming! Lines of Credit Closed Without Warning"
"Trouble is coming! Wells Fargo bank has just announced that it will be closing lines of credit on the individuals and businesses without warning. This will dramatically affect peoples ability to get a new line of credit and lower their FICO scores."
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Peter Schiff Interview:
"We Are About To Suffer Big Time"
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"Wells Fargo Shuts Down All Lines Of Credit!
Looting Causes Target To Close Stores! - Full Spectrum Survival"
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"Possibly a Real Warning: Go Fill Up Your Gas Tank Now -
Something May Be Going Down"
"THE WARNING: Flying J, Pilot, and all of their subsidiaries have been told that the next shipment of gas will be their last shipment, and to shut the pumps off when they reach 10 percent. Secondary confirmation said Cenex, which is not associated with Flying J/Pilot got the same message."
"Traitors – All of Them!"
"Traitors – All of Them!"
by Bill Bonner
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "We write today with a jolly prediction: The war against inflation will be long… with sturm and drang… boom and bust… tears and laughter. Looking ahead, there will be battles won… and battles lost. A crash on Wall Street might produce a shocking deflation. Then, the forces of inflation will counterattack. Ultimately, this is a war inflation can’t lose. Because America will be betrayed by its own brass and blowhards.
Inflation Update: Here’s the latest on the battle, from The Wall Street Journal: "Supermarkets are stocking up on everything from sugar to frozen meat before they get more pricey, girding for what some executives anticipate will be some of the highest price increases in recent memory. Some supermarkets said they are buying and storing supplies to keep their shelves full amid stronger demand. Grocery sales in the U.S. for the week ended June 19 rose about 15% from two years earlier and increased 0.5% from a year earlier, according to Jefferies and NielsenIQ data. Stockpiling by food retailers is driving shortages of some staples, grocery industry executives said, and is challenging a U.S. food supply chain already squeezed by transportation costs, labor pressure and ingredient constraints."
Dear Reader Randy C. reports from the front lines: "I just had my car serviced at the dealership. Took a stroll through the lot. EVERY new car – every single one – had a supplemental sticker beside the manufacturer’s sticker: a $3,500 “market adjustment” addition. No inflation worries? Uh huh. Yeah, right. Move along now. Nothing to see here."
And CNN elaborates: "Normally, a dealer selling a one-year-old used car will get about 80% to 85% of its original price, according to Edmunds.com. But, according to the site’s most recent figures, car dealers can now sell one-year-old used cars for about 95% of the original price. That’s the average. And some used cars and trucks are worth even more than they cost when they were new."
Last War Against Inflation: Let us put this in the simplest perspective. Forty years ago, Field Marshall Paul Volcker led a successful war against inflation. He blasted it with higher reserve requirements to prevent the banks from lending money… and bombed it with a 20% interest rate on money lent to the banks by the Federal Reserve. The battlefield was littered with casualties – dead companies… failed investments… and desperate households. It was the worst economic calamity in America since the Great Depression. But when the smoke cleared, Tall Paul was still standing… and inflation was on the run.
Inflation Attack: Now, four decades later, inflation is again on the attack. But what could you expect? America’s “base money” (the Fed’s balance sheet) was less than $1 trillion in the summer of 2008. Now, it’s over $8 trillion. That’s an 8x increase in the space of 13 years.
And here’s colleague Dan Denning on federal spending: "…the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected this year’s federal deficit to reach $3 trillion, or 13.4% of GDP. It may be even bigger than that, if President Biden and Congress collude on more spending. But as is, it would be the second-largest deficit as a percentage of GDP since 1945."
Those stimmy checks and unemployment toppers are giving people money to spend. But the free money doesn’t produce more goods and services. It only produces higher prices.
How Today’s War Might Evolve: Now, try to imagine how today’s war against inflation might evolve. Imagine the Fed’s key lending rate not at today’s 0.25%… but at 80 times that amount, at 20%…Imagine mortgage rates not under 4%, but over 13%… Imagine a grim recession imposed by the Fed itself…
Imagine Joe Biden standing behind the Fed chief, even as the mob calls for his head… against the deafening howl and disgust of the Washington Post press, the Krugman economists, the Pelosi and Warren Congress, the Pentagon, the universities, and Wall Street. Unimaginable, right?
White Flag: Right. The trouble with a war against inflation today is not that it is unwinnable. The problem is that it is unfightable. Every sector of the Establishment is in cahoots with the enemy. None will oppose it seriously. And there… leading them all… will be the Commander-in-Chief himself, Joe Biden…with a white flag in his hand."
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Related:
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 7/9/21"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 7/9/21:
More Jab Deaths, Trump Sues Big Tech, Greatest Financial Crash Ever"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
The CDC has released the latest adverse reactions and deaths from people getting shots for CV19. Now, nearly 7,000 are dead from the so-called jab, with more than 400,000 reported injuries. Please keep in mind, a 2011 Harvard Health Care study says “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported.” The jab is, in fact, an experimental gene therapy human drug trial that they would like to be approved as a “vaccine.” None of the so-called vaccines are approved, and they are only labeled “Emergency Use Authorization” (EUA) by the FDA.
President Donald Trump strikes back at Big Tech after they removed him from all social media platforms. Trump says he’s suing Twitter, Facebook, Google and their executives for “illegal unconstitutional censorship.” What will the discovery look like is my big question.
The so-called “reflation trade” looks like it is losing steam. The Fed is acting like it is finally going to taper the easy money as inflation heads much higher. Some bigtime investors and market experts like Dr. Michael Burry says we are headed for the “mother of all crashes” because of “the greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things.” Burry called the 2008 financial crisis at the top. I would not bet he’s wrong this time either.”
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 7/9/21:
Jim Kunstler, "Is Reality 'Baseless,' Too?"
"Is Reality 'Baseless,' Too?"
by Jim Kunstler
"Advice to the mindf**k-hesitant: When “Joe Biden” and Kamala Harris come to your door selling vaccines, treat them as you would, say, a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses proffering Watchtower magazines: “Thank you, but I’m not interested in your organization… and please take me off your mailing list. Have a nice day!” Cue: sound of door clicking shut.
Something tells me there are still too many sane people with a sense of humor left in this tormented land for the flunkies of “progressive” Wokery to achieve the total control they seek over the hundred-million, give or take, who are starting to think: Y’know, I’d kind of like my country back. And what country was that? It was the country we were before the Intel “Community” took over, in the service of an utterly corrupt political elite running the system like it was their personal cash register.
About that country I would like back… for starters, the country that valued the rule-of-law. Yes, I know, that’s awfully high-toned — the rule of law — as if one is invoking some clichéd bronze blindfolded babe in a negligee, hoisting a scale in one hand and a sword in the other. I’m thinking, rather, of a flesh-and-blood judge, perhaps a corpulent fellow with bad knees, of, say, the DC federal court, who would dare to throw out the malicious political prosecution of figures like General Flynn or the journalist Julian Assange… or an FBI that would make a criminal referral for sedition against Senator Mark Warner… or a newspaper editor who might be interested in the connection between Marc Elias’s Lawfare outfit at Perkins Coie and the Central Intelligence Agency. One could go on endlessly with the pungent hypotheticals. So much evil mischief has not been seen in one polity since Berlin, 1938.
Anyway, the country we live in now no longer observes the rule of law because it has become a security state like the former Soviet bloc states, with a rogue Intel “Community” that has hijacked the truck that the wheels of justice run on. Here’s a thought: do we know for sure whether the CIA might have been involved in the late, lamentable 2020 election? Wow, that’s outside the box! But, hey, why not? Think of all the fakery they are so capable of engineering, and consider how avid they were to get rid of that pain-in-the-ass Donald Trump (who wanted to get rid of them!), and also consider that there is really no check on their activities whatsoever because the supervising authorities are 1) Adam Schiff’s House Intel Committee (bwaha!), and 2) the aforementioned seditious scoundrel Mark Warner’s Senate Intel Committee. These two are so owned by the CIA that they must have a standing weekly TGIF session to peel grapes for the C-suite at Langley.
Some savvy 2020 election skeptics are pointing at China as possibly having interfered in the election that installed their pre-paid errand-boy “Joe Biden” in the White House - but what if the real action was actually closer to home? And why wouldn’t the CIA queer the election and then set up China to take the blame, since China is already in America’s dog-house for gifting the world with SARS-Covid-19 and its lovely variants? Just wondering… just asking… maybe the thought has crossed your mind, too.
Have you groked that the virus affords such wonderful opportunities for exercising state coercion over a spooked public? Just yesterday, Sec’y of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra declared that it is, “absolutely the government’s business to know who’s been vaccinated.” Of course, it’s as much the public’s business to know what the correct figure is for Covid cases and deaths, as well as adverse mRNA reactions and deaths. And, just for instance, two counties in California recently revised down their overall case numbers for the whole virus melodrama by 20 percent - so many cases were just hospitals gaming the federal bureaucracy for higher subsidy pay-outs keyed to the virus. And, after a month of getting bashed around for lying about this and that, America’s chief Covid-19 health officer, Anthony Fauci (“The Science”) has gone back on cable TV telling the country to “get over it.” Their vax “hesitancy,” he means. Why would anyone besides the sebaceous Chris Hayes on MSNBC believe him?
Another feature about the country I would like back is the freedom to live without the harassment of Woked-up useful idiots working day and night to destroy the very meaning of language while hustling American culture, tradition, and heritage into its “anti-racist” gas chamber. The local school board in the next town over from here just voted last night to retain the name of the high school’s football team: the Indians. I take that small local act of chutzpah as a good omen telling us the tide has turned. We want our country back. We want the rule of law back. We want reality back. We want good faith back. As MLK might have said: from every hill and mole-hill, let freedom ring!"
Gregory Mannarino, AM/PM 7/9/21
Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/9/21:
"'Diaper Inflation.' More People Borrowing From
Their Credit Cards To Make Ends Meet"
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Related:
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/9/21:
"Alert! The Fed. Is Already Moving Goalposts!"
Thursday, July 8, 2021
"5 Specific Reasons Why You Should Stockpile Food Right Now"
Full screen recommended.
"5 Specific Reasons Why You Should Stockpile Food Right Now"
by Epic Economist
"For the longest time, food prices remained stable in the United States, and consumers were not particularly concerned about price fluctuations each month. Even though there were readjustments to the cost of staples every year, those increases weren't exactly alarming, and back then, one could say they were truly temporary. Our supermarkets were packed with food and something that always made grocers proud was their ability to ensure an enormous variety for their customers. But now we can say that things are a whole lot different, and not in a good way. As the world tries to rebound from the global recession induced by the health crisis, a massive wave of inflation is dramatically hitting agricultural commodities, and food producers are having to pass those cost increases to consumers.
However, many industry experts have been warning that the recent price hikes won't be the only ones. In fact, they are marking the beginning of a prolonged era of higher prices and low supply. This means that although we're already facing some painful food inflation, prices won't get any lower than they are at this moment for a long, long time. And when we look forward, several events that are unfolding right now will likely combine, and contribute to the acceleration of food price inflation in the coming months. In view of such a scary scenario, the best way to fight inflation is to get prepared in advance. That's why today we brought 5 specific reasons why you should start stockpiling food as soon as you can.
In a telling sign of what is coming for us in the months ahead, recent reports have been describing that supermarkets are feverishly stockpiling food in anticipation of the coming inflationary spike. According to the Wall Street Journal, several supermarket chains have started to stock up on everything from sugar to frozen meat before they get more expensive, bracing for what some executives anticipate will be "some of the highest price increases in recent memory". The move is a reversal from what happened last year when millions of panic buyers hoarded groceries because of concerns about food availability, triggering supply chain disruptions and acute shortages all across the country. Now, retailers themselves are buying and storing supplies to keep their shelves full amid stronger demand, in that way, they can have more control over rising costs and protect their profit margins.
The latest price increases at the stores and the need to stockpile come as several key factors are pushing up costs all the way from farm to store. But one thing is certain: when inflation starts to run out of control, these companies will conveniently keep the price of their products significantly higher even though they have been stocking up on inventory before prices of inventory rise. When food retailers start to brace for the worst of inflation, that of course, is not a good sign for consumers. So it seems like a good option to start stockpiling too before essential products become unaffordable.
With gas prices hitting record highs every month, it has become way more expensive to transport food around the country. Supply transportation costs have already been going up due to a national shortage of drivers, but now that gas prices rose 56 percent compared to a year ago, those increases will also impact food prices. Moreover, the ruthless “megadrought” in the western states just continues to get worse. For years, people have been diverting water from rivers that flow into the lake to water crops and supply homes. And since there isn't enough water for everyone, millions of farmers are having to dramatically reduce the number of crops that they are currently growing. On top of all that, a devastating plague of grasshoppers is now causing massive headaches for our farmers in western states. Many local farmers have already started to report extremely painful crop losses. So far, Oregon and Montana have been the hardest hit by the insect plague, but fifteen other states are also facing grasshopper damage. All combined, the 17 states suffering from this pest have recorded a loss in agricultural produce of $8.7 billion.
All things considered, our long-term outlook is rather gloomy and quite scary. Each of these factors will severely impact our food supply chains and all of them are going to combine to drive prices to levels never seen before. If someone still believes inflation is going to be transitory, we're sorry to say that what we have seen so far was just the tip of the iceberg. So if you don't want to get caught off-guard by shortages and explosive prices, you should stock up on the supplies you need before they're long gone."
Gerald Celente, "Murder Rates Up Thanks To Murderous Politicians, Covid War"
Gerald Celente,
"Murder Rates Up Thanks To Murderous Politicians, Covid War"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over hype and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in the increasingly turbulent times ahead."
Must Watch! "The Economy Has Collapsed - You Just Don't Know It; Surviving Great Depression 2.0"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/8/21:
"The Economy Has Collapsed - You Just Don't Know It;
Surviving Great Depression 2.0"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Flight Through the Orion Nebula in Infrared Light"
"What would it look like to fly into the Orion Nebula? The exciting dynamic visualization of the Orion Nebula is based on real astronomical data and adept movie rendering techniques.
Full screen recommended.
Up close and personal with a famous stellar nursery normally seen from 1,500 light-years away, the digitally modeled representation based is based on infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope. The perspective moves along a valley over a light-year wide, in the wall of the region's giant molecular cloud. Orion's valley ends in a cavity carved by the energetic winds and radiation of the massive central stars of the Trapezium star cluster. The entire Orion Nebula spans about 40 light years and is located in the same spiral arm of our Galaxy as the Sun."
"I See No Reason..."
"Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told- and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion."
- Michael Crichton, "The Lost World"
Dan, IAllegedly, PM 7/8/21: "Is this Economy a Pump and Dump? It’s About to Collapse"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, IAllegedly, PM 7/8/21:
"Is this Economy a Pump and Dump? It’s About to Collapse"
"Is our Economy the Classic Pump and Dump? We are constantly being told that it is great and full steam ahead. I am at Balboa Island, CA. There is so much to talk about between the precarious stock market and depending bitcoin crash."
Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/8/21: "Economic Freefall- Food Prices Skyrocketing, Consumer Debt Hits New Record"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/8/21:
"Economic Freefall- Food Prices Skyrocketing,
Consumer Debt Hits New Record"
"Fake It Til You Take It"
"Fake It Til You Take It"
by Bill Bonner
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "Picking up from yesterday… Ms. Rana Foroohar, writing in the prestigious Financial Times, proposed… simply bringing a smidgen of strategic and long-term foresight to the way America’s economy is run. In a world in which we have to compete with state-run giants like in China, that think on 50-year time horizons, quarterly capitalism simply doesn’t cut it any more (not that it really ever did).
It is easy to lament… and fun to mock… the shallow “thinking” of the thinking classes. Capitalism created almost all the wealth we enjoy. The only alternative is some form of political control over capital, business, markets, and people.
As we explained in our "Win-Win or Lose" book, there are only two ways to get what you want. Either you bargain, trade, and persuade for it – that is, providing goods and services to others in exchange for goods and services from them… Or you take it by force… otherwise known as theft, burglary, corruption, payoffs, giveaways, income redistribution, socialism, communism, facism, etc. You either make it… or you take it. There is no other way. And there is no example in all of history where a politically controlled, centrally planned economy (taking it) was more fruitful than a free economy (making it). But heck… we’ll try to keep an open mind.
Unknowable Future: The first problem with central planning is that it relies on the aforementioned force… and is therefore doomed from the get-go. As we will see, the planning is as fake as the dollar. The world improvers pretend that they are preparing for the future. What they are really up to is trying to change the future… which inevitably leads to taking things that don’t belong to them.
The second problem is that the plans all depend on the part of the time spectrum that is unknowable – the future. The planners are always trying to make better tomorrows, without knowing what tomorrow would have been like if they had left it alone. In one tomorrow, long ago, the automobile was invented. Suddenly, plans for more horse-watering troughs were obsolete. In another, along came the internet. World War I surprised all the future-facing thinkers of the early 20th century. COVID-19 seems to have gotten the drop on those of the 21st.
Ms. Foroohar seems to admire the “state-run giants,” who plan for 50 years ahead. But what is the likelihood that their plans actually work out? There are zillions of possible tomorrows. But the planners cannot plan for an infinite number of futures. They can only plan for one. So the odds are, approximately, a zillion to one that they will get it right. The future… as they have imagined it… will never exist. And their plans will not only be unwelcome… but unwise, untimely, and unprepared for the future that actually comes.
Wrong Direction: We can get a hint of how the plans might go awry by wondering what kind of strategic plans the Nixon Administration might have come up with 50 years ago. For example, it might have tried to steal a march in the battle against climate change. But it probably would have been marching in the wrong direction. That is, it might have spent billions trying to make the planet warmer; global cooling was the bugaboo back then. “Another Ice Age?” asked TIME magazine in 1974, worrying about the spread of arctic temperatures.
Or perhaps Nixon would have begun making plans for strategic competition with China. But wait… China was not considered a rival back then; Mao’s central planning had just starved 20-30 million of his own citizens in the Great Leap Forward.
Back then, the “state-run giant” with a swell economy that seemed to threaten the U.S. was the Soviet Union. “We need more central planning in the U.S.,” said the Paul Krugmans of the 1960s. “We need it to keep up with the Soviets. They’re pulling ahead.” In the 1960s, the Soviets were definitely ahead in the “Space Race.” They had put their man, Yuri Gagarin, into orbit in 1961. It wasn’t until eight years later that the U.S. was able to definitively win the race by putting men on the moon. And by then, Gagarin was already dead at 34… in a plane crash. Even as late as the 1980s, the U.S. elite still thought it was in a dogfight with the Soviet Union. The Reagan Administration added $1.7 trillion to U.S. debt, largely to counter the threat.
Eastern Threat: But by the early 1990s, the Soviet economy – weighted down by five decades of central planning – was no longer airworthy. The Russians dragged it off the runway themselves in 1993, and went back to a basically capitalistic system. By then, the planners manques in the U.S. had turned their attention farther east. Japan Inc. was the bubble of the 1980s. And it had an “industrial policy.” “We need strategic planning to keep up with Japan Inc.” said America’s elite. But the Japanese economy blew up in 1989. Its stock market has never recovered.
Peak Oil: Strategic planning back then might have also included a big handout to the oil industry. Oil was essential to the U.S. economy. And the U.S. was running out. At least, that was the theory of American geologist M. King Hubbert, who believed the peak in U.S. oil production had been reached in the early 1970s. The U.S. created a Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in anticipation of running out. By the 1980s, the U.S. was awash in oil. Then, the fracking revolution of the 2000s made the U.S. energy-independent again. And in the COVID-19 crisis and lockdowns of 2020, the price of oil went negative. Producers had to pay to get rid of it. Instead of filling their SPR, the planners should have left it empty!
What else? The planners of the Nixon era might have wanted more freeways right through the inner cities to make it easier for commuters to get to work… and more gas stations, where they could fill their tanks… and more cigarette machines to make it easier for them to enjoy a smoke.
Grotesque Future: Of course, when you’re trying to prepare a whole nation for the future, you’re going to make mistakes. But what does it matter? The elites will do the planning. They will reward their favored clients, allies, and cronies. They will subsidize industries they like and punish those they don’t – with other people’s money, of course. They will give funding to universities to study the future they imagine… and cancel alternative opinions. Professors who describe the future as the elites would like to see it will get tenure.
Companies that enable their plans will get contracts. Planners will get sinecures. Busybodies will find lifelong employment implementing their plans. And day by day, little by little, the future will take shape. Not the future as it should be – full of surprises, growth, and innovation… nor even the future that the elites tried to create (you can’t really force the future to do what you want)…but a grotesque future – like the Soviet Union in 1989 – full of failed plans… bankrupt programs… and sour people."
"The Mystery Plague That Is Killing Countless Birds In 9 States And Washington D.C. Has Gotten A Lot Worse"
"The Mystery Plague That Is Killing Countless Birds In
9 States And Washington D.C. Has Gotten A Lot Worse"
by Michael Snyder
"Large numbers of birds are dropping dead from a “mystery disease” throughout much of the eastern half of the country, and scientists still have absolutely no idea why this is happening. They have tested the dead birds for a whole host of known illnesses, but those tests have not revealed the cause of this plague. We are being told that a lot of the affected birds appear to develop neurological problems, and many of them go completely blind before they finally die. The “mystery disease” has spread to more states since I first wrote about this plague, and at this point the list of affected areas includes Washington D.C., Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. If authorities are unable to find a solution, will this plague eventually spread across the entire nation?
I don’t know why the mainstream media is not giving this story more coverage, because this is quickly turning into a major crisis. The following comes directly from a statement that was posted late last week on the official website of the USGS… "In late May, wildlife managers in Washington D.C., Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky began receiving reports of sick and dying birds with eye swelling and crusty discharge, as well as neurological signs. More recently, additional reports have been received from Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. While the majority of affected birds are reported to be fledgling common grackles, blue jays, European starlings and American robins, other species of songbirds have been reported as well. No definitive cause(s) of illness or death have been determined at this time. No human health or domestic livestock and poultry issues have been reported.
The natural resource management agencies in the affected states and the District of Columbia, along with the National Park Service, are continuing to work with diagnostic laboratories to investigate the cause(s) of this event. Those laboratories include the USGS National Wildlife Health Center, the University of Georgia Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, the University of Pennsylvania Wildlife Futures Program and the Indiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory."
With each passing day, more birds are going blind and more birds are dying. In Virginia, an animal control professional named Jennifer Toussaint will never forget the first time that she encountered baby blue jays that had been afflicted by this mysterious illness… "Jennifer Toussaint, chief of animal control in Arlington, Virginia, can’t forget the four baby blue jays. In late May, worried residents had delivered the fledglings to her clinic just outside of Washington, D.C., within just a few hours. Each was plump, indicating “their parents had done a great job caring for them,” Toussaint says. But the birds were lethargic, unable to keep their balance, and blinded by crusty, oozing patches that had grown over their eyes.
Toussaint and her staff soon reached a gloomy diagnosis: the jays were the latest victims of a mysterious deadly disease that had emerged in their area just a few weeks earlier and had already killed countless wild birds. There was no known treatment, so they euthanized the jays. “It was difficult to feel so helpless,” Toussaint recalls."
Experts have never seen anything like this before, and they are in a race to try to find some answers. Whatever is causing this, it appears to be affecting a wide range of species… "Several species of birds have been affected by the mystery illness, according to the University of Pennsylvania: blue jay, European starling, common grackle, American robin, northern cardinal, house finch, house sparrow, Eastern bluebird, red-bellied woodpecker, Carolina chickadee, and Carolina wren."
And at this point, the “mystery disease” appears to have spread very widely. For example, in the state of Virginia there have been confirmed reports “in the counties and cities of Alexandria, Arlington, Clarke, Fairfax, Falls Church, Fauquier, Frederick, Loudoun, Manassas, Prince William, Shenandoah, Warren, and Winchester.” In Indiana, cases have now been identified in 53 different counties.
So if this is something that is spreading from bird to bird, it is spreading very easily and it is spreading very rapidly. But at this point we don’t know for sure that it is some sort of a disease, because so far all of the tests that have been done haven’t come up with much of anything… "Natural resource management agencies in all of the affected states and D.C. are working with the National Park Service to investigate this event.
So far, several infectious agents have not been detected in any of the birds that have been tested, including Salmonella and Chlamydia, avian influenza, West Nile virus and other flaviviruses, Newcastle disease virus and other paramyxoviruses, herpesviruses and poxviruses, and Trichomonas parasites."
Something other than a disease could potentially be causing this plague. We just don’t know. At one point it was being theorized that eating cicadas was causing these birds to become ill, but scientists appear to have ruled this theory out… "But the cicadas appear to be blameless. Birds tend to avoid eating fungus-ridden cicadas, and sick birds have been observed in areas where cicadas were rare. “It does not look like it’s a match,” says Brian Evans, a migratory bird ecologist with the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute."
So many strange things have been happening in 2021. As I discussed yesterday, right now we are witnessing a horrifying plague of grasshoppers in the western half of the country, and at the same time we have a nightmarish plague of dead birds in the eastern half of the country. On top of everything else, we are right in the midst of a “megadrought” which may end up becoming the worst in the entire history of our nation.
Many believe that it is just a “coincidence” that so many bad things are happening to us all at once, and perhaps they are correct. But nobody can deny that our world has gotten a whole lot crazier over the last couple of years, and I expect quite a bit more craziness during the second half of 2021."
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