Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 11/6/21:
"Warning: Infrastructure Bill Guarantees More Inflation;
Minimum Wage Jobs And Inflation A Bad Combo"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, November 6, 2021
"You Can’t Make This Stuff Up - Crazy Economic News"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 11/6/21:
"You Can’t Make This Stuff Up - Crazy Economic News"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this sharp telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellites of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. Their separation on the sky, less than one degree across a pretty field of view, translates to only about 35 thousand light-years at Andromeda's distance, but Andromeda itself is found well outside this frame.
Brighter and more famous satellite galaxies of Andromeda, M32 and M110, are seen closer to the great spiral. NGC 147 and NGC 185 have been identified as binary galaxies, forming a gravitationally stable binary system. But recently discovered faint dwarf galaxy Cassiopeia II also seems to be part of their system, forming a gravitationally bound group within Andromeda's intriguing population of small satellite galaxies."
"When We Have Time..."
“How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy. In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.”
- Charles Caleb Colton, “Lacon”
○
“The problem is, you believe you have time.”
- Buddha
"A Brewing Revolution?"
"A Brewing Revolution?"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"I’ve been waiting many months for some good news to report. This past week brought it. Let’s hope it’s just the beginning. Before continuing, let me add this one proviso: The changes needed to get the country and world back on track to prosperity and flourishing are not fully realized in politics. We need a dramatic cultural, social and legal transformation, one that is far-reaching and permanent. And yet it also has a political expression. For now. On that front, there is nothing but good to report.
What’s significant about Tuesday’s election results is not the remarkable upset in the Virginia gubernatorial race. What’s remarkable is the depth and breadth of the blow to the regime sweeping through the whole state. Seats that Democrats had held very comfortably were taken away. And the reasons were the same in each case: the economy, education and virus restrictions.
“Bloodbath”: As attorney Jeff Childers wrote: "In what lefty pollster Larry Sabato called a “bloodbath,” Republicans swept Virginia’s elections last night. The GOP handily won the governorship (Glenn Youngkin), the lieutenant governorship (Winsome Sears) and the attorney general’s office (Jason Miyares)... In the House of Delegates, Republicans now have a majority.
There are historic elements to the win. Republican Winsome Sears, a former Marine, became the first Black female lieutenant governor in Virginia’s history. Jason Miyares is the state’s first Cuban-American attorney general.
This development shows some pretty deep problems for pro-lockdown, anti-parent Democrats all over the country. Virginia is a deep-blue state. Current governor and cozy Clinton confidante Terry McAuliffe had been described as “unbeatable.” Just yesterday, Biden confidently predicted McAuliffe’s win, in a state he won easily one year ago. But according to White House officials, Biden declined to take McAuliffe’s call last night after the election."
We Will Not Live in Cages: All of these wins trace to a hard repudiation of lockdowns, of course. In the case of education, the schools were locked shut last year and parents were forced to keep the kids at home. They involved themselves in their education and helping them with their textbooks and lessons. They sat in on their Zoom classes.
They were astonished at what they discovered. Their kids were being divided by race and told that one race is inherently exploitative and another permanently victimized. This wildly divisive message was considered mainstream by the teachers who were presenting material pushed by the school boards.
The seething began slowly, but as teachers refused to go back to work, intensifying pain on families, the moms got angry. When the schools finally reopened, the kids had masks forced on them. They were also subjected to lockdowns every time there was a positive case. It led to a year and a half of chaos.
School board meetings grew chaotic. The cops were called. Many parents were thrown out and some arrested. It became a badge of honor. Then the Democratic candidate for governor put a fine point on it. He catastrophically said that parents should not be in charge of what their students are taught. That seems to have done it. It prompted the electoral rout based in a wild anger at what the lockdowns, leftists and their henchmen have done at all levels of society.
The Price of Arrogance: As for the economy, Virginia is emblematic of the whole country right now. There are high prices for everything, especially gas. The stores have randomly empty shelves. Labor shortages have hit small businesses. Everyone is struggling and scared. Meanwhile, the monopoly party that controls the federal government seems clueless about the crisis developing at all levels of society. The arrogance of the Democrats at the state level seemed to mirror that.
This is the first real test of the party that now owns all these lockdowns, mandates and impositions on liberty. The result is a complete and total disaster for the Democrats. The rethinking of everything began at 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 3, 2021. They might see for the first time in a long time that there is no mandate in the United States for socialism, critical race theory, inflation and shortages. They are facing calamity now.
The Truck Driver vs. the Big Shot: The incumbent Democratic governor won reelection in New Jersey, but it came down to the wire. Just saying that is stunning. The betting odds for the Democrat incumbent favored him at 90%. Even though the Democrat won, the results have already caused shock waves.
The most exciting race in New Jersey happened at a lower level, in the 3rd Senate District. The seat of state Senate President Steve Sweeney, the longest-serving legislative leader in New Jersey history, was never in question. But he lost to Edward Durr, a conservative truck driver who reported spending only a few thousand dollars on his entire campaign. Durr did not give speeches and had no website or employees. All he had was a Facebook page. Boom: He got the job done.
This is a sign of something approaching revolution. Durr is a blue-collar worker, a paradigmatic case of a person horribly victimized by all these COVID policies that have wrecked life in the U.S. and the economy.
Democracy Saves the Day: Tuesday’s results give us every indication that an anachronistic political establishment is being swept away in favor of a new class of people dedicated to traditional American ideals. Such as freedom. Such as independence. Such as the rights of self-government.
Remember the reason the 19th-century liberals favored democracy. It was never intended as a perfect system that would end all corruption. The point was to have a system that enabled the peaceful transition of power without the ghastly social and economic cost of bloody coups and revolutions. It allows the people some hope of prevailing against a corrupt political establishment.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Republicans are the party of freedom and liberty. I’m a libertarian and I disagree with them on many issues. They also tend to spend like Democrats when they’re in power. So I’m not being partisan here. But on issues like lockdowns, vaccine mandates and children’s education, Republicans are simply offering saner policies. Democrats are acting like authoritarians.
We Will Break Free: A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll reveals that 41% of independents consider Democrats the bigger threat to democracy and 37% say Republicans are. Of all respondents, 42% say the Democrats are the greatest threat to democracy. At this point, democracy is our biggest hope for getting the U.S. back on the track for prosperity and peace. It will take 10, 20 or even 30 years to recover from the horrors of 2020 and following. But perhaps Nov. 2, 2021, will be remembered as the day that the country began fixing the damage inflicted by the old political establishment.
The new dawn will be a long time coming, but at least we see now the path the revolution will take and the hope it will bring to this long-suffering nation. They tried to put us in cages. We will break free."
"A Point Of No Return..."
”There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives.”
- Graham Greene
○
“When swimming into a dark tunnel, there arrives a point of no return when you no longer have enough breath to double back. Your only choice is to swim forward into the unknown… and pray for an exit.”
- Dan Brown
○
“And it was pointless… to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell… for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn’t changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You’re left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is to go on or not. But if you go on, it’s knowing you carry your scars with you.”
- Charles Frazier
○
“Never be ashamed of a scar.
It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.”
- Unknown
“The Meaning Of Good And Evil In Perilous Times”
“The Meaning Of Good And Evil In Perilous Times”
by Brandon Smith
Perhaps the most destructive idea ever planted in the minds of the general public is the notion that nothing in this world is permanent – that all things can and must be constantly changed to suit our whims. The concept of impermanence fuels what I call “blank slate propaganda.” The usefulness of the blank slate as a weapon for social control should be explained before we examine the nature of good and evil, because these days it infects everything.
The push for never ending social “evolution” has been called many things over the decades. In the early 1900s in Europe it was called “futurism;” an art and philosophical movement that helped spawn the rise of communism and fascism in politics.The argument that all old ideas and longstanding traditions should be abandoned to make way for new ideas, new technologies, news systems etc., assumes that the supposedly new ways of doing things are superior to the old ways of doing things. Things are rarely this simple, and in most cases the new methods so proudly championed by movements for social change are usually recycled and repackaged old ideas that are notorious for failure.
The blank slate theory is designed to confuse people with self-doubt and to misrepresent the constructs of nature as constructs of society. It most effectively disrupts people’s relationship to their own moral compass by suggesting that moral compass should be completely ignored as artificial. The argument by blank slate proponents is that all boundaries are created by society instead of by inborn conscience, and that these boundaries often hold us back from achieving our goals, bettering ourselves as a species and generally getting what we want out of life.
But the things we want are not always the things we need, and this is something that movement’s for social change often refuse to grasp. If we are all blank slates and if morality and the human soul are myths, why not do whatever the hell we want, whenever we want and live life as if it is one big Roman orgy of feasting, self-medicating and overall addiction to sensation?
The problem with the blank slate concept is that while it purports that all restrictions in the human psyche are taught to us rather than being inborn and that they can be abandoned any time we want, we still can’t seem to avoid the consequences of breaking those restrictions. People lose their sanity, societies crumble and nations fall to ruin over time the more we cast aside our principles in the name of social evolution or short term gain. It is unavoidable.
The only people who seem to benefit from the spread of the blank slate are the people already in political and economic power. For if they can convince the masses to ignore their conscience, they can then convince us to accept almost any other conditions.
To act in a manner consistent with inherent conscience, or to ignore conscience and act destructively, is a choice. It is the core pillar of free will. The choice to act destructively does not erase the reality of inherent conscience; in fact, people often have to be fooled into believing that a destructive and immoral action is a “good thing” before they are convinced to carry it out. Inherent conscience must be bypassed through trickery.
The problem with choosing to stick by one’s principles is that it is easy during times of relative stability, but increasingly difficult during times of struggle. In perilous days, the temptation to use destructive tactics to maintain an expectation of comfort or to merely survive can be high. It is no coincidence that power elites, the same people that tend to promote blank slate propaganda, also tend to deliberately engineer social crisis and chaos. But perhaps this needs a deeper explanation. We must define something most of us already understand intuitively. We must define “evil.”
Like inherent conscience and moral boundaries, blank slate theorists and social change advocates attempt to muddy the waters of what constitutes evil. Some will say there is no such thing — that evil is whatever we deem it to be in any given era depending on our biases. Others will claim that tradition, permanence and anything in society that remains static is evil. The only “good” for them is constant change.
But evil is not as illusory and changing as these people suggest. In fact, most men and women recoil automatically from certain specific behaviors regardless of how they were raised, what environment they come from, what culture they were born into or what era they lived. The people who don’t recoil at these behaviors are the people we have to watch out for because they are missing something integral to the heart and mind that makes the rest of us human.
In psychological terms, the characteristics of high level narcissists and sociopaths match most closely with our historic concept of evil. And, in my view, most great evils done in history are in fact done by people with multiple narcissistic traits. As far as global elitists are concerned, they represent a rather insidious threat, because they are narcissistic sociopaths that have organized into a predatory gang, so all the traits consistent with the behavior of your average serial killer are now magnified a thousandfold by their access to unlimited resources.
How do we identify these people? Well, this is a difficult prospect at times because narcissistic sociopaths commonly hide in plain sight. Some people live with them for years before realizing exactly what they are. They also like to insert themselves into nonprofit organizations that claim to do good for the community as a cover for their more insidious motives.
Some traits and behaviors that are common are a lack of normal emotional response to traumatic events or joyous events, or they will mimic the responses of others to blend in but they come off as “forced” or “fake.” They have no concept of empathy; it does not exist for them.
They seek out centers of power and are drawn to positions of authority. They always seem to be demanding the efforts of others while rarely offering their own help. They make terrible leaders, always attempting to lead from a place of safety while letting their conscripts take the risks. Leading by example is a foreign concept to them.
They will lie repetitively about their accomplishments and their accolades. They will misrepresent their professional achievements in order to gain people’s trust. Ask them to prove through actions that they can do all the things they claim they can do, and they will try to avoid the test or respond indignantly and angrily.
They will gaslight their ideological enemies or people they are trying to control. They will accuse others of being “narcissists” or “sociopaths” or fascists or any moniker that will push the buttons of their target. Whatever evils they are guilty of, they will try to flip and lay at the feet of their enemies.
They always seem to have “minions” to do their dirty work for them and attack those that oppose them. People that have dealt with narcissistic sociopaths in their personal lives sometimes refer to these minions as “flying monkeys,” referencing the flying monkeys enslaved by the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. Flying monkeys are essentially useful idiots that the narcissist employs through fraud and sometimes through pay. Whenever the narcissist is under threat of being exposed, they unleash their flying monkeys onto the streets or onto the internet to undermine truth tellers.
They do not believe in moral or personal boundaries which is why they are always trying convince people that such boundaries are a myth. They will cross moral lines, always testing the fences for weaknesses; trying to wear others down until they give up and stop fighting back.
They desperately want to come out of the shadows and into the light of day. They want to be adored as the monsters they are, rather than the fake philanthropists they portray themselves as. In order to do this, every narcissistic sociopath makes it their duty to erase the idea of conscience, whether they are part of the globalist cabal or just another ghoul down the street. Their natural inclination is to corrupt whatever they touch, and if they cannot corrupt a thing, they will attempt to destroy that thing.
Most of all, narcissistic sociopaths want everyone around them to believe that we are just like them. That “deep down” all of us are unprincipled and morally bankrupt and all it takes is a crisis or calamity, just a little chaos to bring out the devil in everyone.
But if this were really the case, then humanity would have died out long ago through endless self-destruction; something keeps bringing us back from the brink in our personal lives and in society as a whole. Conscience keeps defeating evil by refusing to grant evil people the utopia of blank slate chaos they want so badly. And this is what give me confidence that no matter how terrible our days might become there is something on our side that goes beyond the physical world.
Every crisis is a test, a test of each person and a test of our culture. Can we act with reason and courage and principle even in the worst of times, or will we be lured to make our struggle easier through malicious means? Will we do right by those around us, or will we happily trample over them in the name of “survival?”
In the end, the worst men bring the best men to the surface. This is the only “good” they will ever do.”
The Poet: Langston Hughes, “Life Is Fine”
“Life Is Fine”
“I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn’t,
So I jumped in and sank.
I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn’t a-been so cold
I might’ve sunk and died.
But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!
I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.
I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn’t a-been so high
I might’ve jumped and died.
But it was High up there! It was high!
So since I’m still here livin’,
I guess I will live on.
I could’ve died for love -
But for livin’ I was born.
Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry -
I’ll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.
Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!”
- Langston Hughes
"You Cannot Shirk This..."
“Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country – hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
- Mark Twain
"There comes a time in every man's life when he has to choose sides. I have chosen my side. I am comfortable with my decision. I do not think everyone on my side is a saint, but I know that those on the other side are much, much worse. Sometimes a man with too broad a perspective reveals himself as having no real perspective at all. A man who tries too hard to see every side may be a man who is trying to avoid choosing any side. A man who tries too hard to seek a deeper truth may be trying to hide from the truth he already knows. That is not a sign of intellectual sophistication and 'great thinking'. It is a demonstration of moral degeneracy and cowardice."
- Steven Den Beste
“Screw The Way Things Are, I Want Out!”
“Screw The Way Things Are, I Want Out!”
by Paul Rosenberg
“This is a beautiful planet, filled, in the main, with decent, cooperative humans. And yet, I want out. Give me any kind of functional spaceship and any reasonable chance, and I’ll take it. This place is anti-human. It chokes the best that’s in us, aggressively and self-righteously. I was struck not long ago by a comment of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s, in which he expressed the same kind of feeling: “I ought to have become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth…”
All of us who’ve had a moment of transcendence - who made some type of contact with what is truly the best inside ourselves - have also sensed that life in the current world is incompatible with it. I think we should stop burying that understanding beneath piles of “that’s the way things are,” “we should be realistic,” and “you can’t fight City Hall.”
Screw the way things are, screw “realistic,” and screw City Hall too. I was made for better things than this, and you were too.
Everywhere I turn, some kind of ruler, sub-ruler, enforcer, regulator, or “right-thinking” quasi-enforcer demands not only my money but also for me to make myself easy to punish, thus showing myself to be a good subservient. That’s not just wrong; it’s a disease. I don’t care whether such people are “following orders,” “just doing their job,” or whatever else they tell themselves to soothe their rightly troubled souls. That mode of living is perverse, and these people are enforcing a disease.
Let me make this part very clear: The desire to control others is disease; it is corruption. Willing controllers are a morally inferior class. And the truly deranged thing is that these people rule the world! Forget about why this is so - we can debate that later - focus rather on the utter insanity of this: A minority of moral defectives, who think extortion is a virtue, rule people who are happy to live and let live, by force.
That’s outright lunacy. And to support the lunacy, we have lies, intimidation, and slogans: “In a democracy, you’re really ruling yourself,” “Only crazy people disagree,” “It’s always been this way,” and so on. To all of which I reply, How stupid do you think we are? You drilled that crap into us when we were children, but we’re not children anymore. And if “our way” isn’t as bad as North Korea, that makes it right? Only to a fool.
And the results of “the way it’s always been”… my God, the results… A study from the 1980s found that since 3600 BC, the world has known only 292 years of peace. During this period there have been 14,531 wars, large and small, in which 3.6 billion people have been killed.
This is what I’m supposed to serve with all my heart and soul? A Bronze Age system that can’t keep itself from slaughter? We’re talking about a 5,600-year track record of mass death, and yet fundamental change is considered unthinkable? Well, screw that too, because I think deep, fundamental change is called for, and was called for a long time ago.
Again, this is a wonderful planet and most of the people on it are decent, but it is ruled by insanity, and I want out. Yes, I know, there’s really nowhere to go. Every place I might go is dominated by the same diseased model, and dissent is punished the same, and in some places worse. That’s one of the reasons space appeals to me; it gives me a chance to escape this madness.
I’ll draw this to a close with a passage from C. Delisle Burns’s wonderful "The First Europe," describing why the Roman Empire collapsed: “Great numbers of men and women were unwilling to make the effort required for the maintenance of the old order, not because they were not good enough to fulfill their civic duties, but because they were too good to be satisfied with a system from which so few derived benefit.”
I, for one, am unwilling to expend any effort to maintain the present order. It is by its nature incompatible with the best that is in us, and always will be. Those of us who want to be more and better cannot support the current order without opposing what’s best in ourselves. Screw that.”
"Woke Gets Whacked - But Hold the Victory Lap"
"Woke Gets Whacked - But Hold the Victory Lap"
by Jim Kunstler
"It begins to look like the 2021 elections put a decisive end to the Woke-Jacobin-Progressive reign-of-terror, and its demonic efforts to cancel the authority of truth in human affairs - truth being derived from reality. For years, in an ever-escalating campaign of coercion, persecution, and punishment, the WJPs made their own reality-optional “truth” and foolishly expected the nation to roll over for it. On Tuesday, voters all over the land, in effect, whapped the Party of Chaos upside its head with thirty inches of No. 6 rebar and said “no more.” Days later, the Wokesters are still seeing stars and planets blink in their temporal lobes.
The Virginia governor’s race illustrated plainly and clearly what was at issue, all crystalized in the Loudoun County School Board’s idiotic behavior this past year. First was the sex module of the mess: A fifteen-year-old boy pretending to be a girl in a dress raped an actual teenage girl in a “Girls’” bathroom. The Loudoun County School Board covered it up so as not to interfere with its innovative gender confusion pedagogy. The boy rapist was transferred to another school where he committed the same crime all over again. Very bad optics. And WJP candidate Terry McAulliffe told parents to stay out of it, stupidly driving a stake through his own heart in the process.
Second was the Woke race module, namely Critical Race Theory, the principle that American society is hopelessly and systemically racist and that white people need to be punished for it. The School Board and its political allies denied that this doctrine of Marxist identity politics was being worked into the curriculum. They were lying, of course, and stupidly, because it was very easy to prove.
Now, I’m going to tell you succinctly what is behind Critical Race Theory, and it’s going to hurt: After sixty-odd years of civil rights policy and legislation, a sizable cohort of African-Americans are not making it in this society and white WJPs (aka “liberals”) are stricken with guilt and shame at the failure of their efforts to uplift this group and heal the world. So, they’ve teamed up with the nation’s race hustlers to construct a scaffold of excuses for why this is so. The actual reasons for why this is so are taboo, namely, liberal deconstruction of American family life, unwillingness to prescribe behavioral norms, and self-sabotaging cultural choices such as the failure to promote the teaching of language skills as a primary task of public education - because ghetto English is more stigmatizing and economically disabling than skin color or any other feature of self-presentation, unless you are a professional comedian. That’s the cold, hard reality and that is what needs to change - but it won’t change as long as race-hustling (making money off the excuses) is considered “okay.”
Too many Americans see through the WJP sex-and-race nonsense and are now voting to evict it from the public square and run it out of the halls of power, at least at the state and local level. For now, though, it remains entrenched at the national level, in Washington, where it receives huge support from the very well-paid permanent bureaucracy that administers bad social policy. The 2021 election results suggest that the Woke Democrats will be run out of Congress and the White House in 2022 - if the USA can make it there without cracking up, which remains painfully uncertain under the toils of Covid-19.
The pandemic, so-called, invokes a dark suspicion of official misbehavior at a higher and more sinister level than the mere political inanities of Wokery. The public health officialdom has lied to the nation at every turn in this melodrama, and to the extent that many rational citizens think that the authorities are out to kill them. For instance, you have Dr. Fauci of the NIAID continuing to deny that he played any part in promoting gain-of-function research on viruses here and in the Wuhan lab. His latest dodge was to change the official definition of gain-of-function to an alphabet-salad of obfuscatory bullshit before a Senate committee - for which Senator Rand Paul once again accused him of lying and beseeched him to resign.
The CDC and the FDA have unleashed a set of untested vaccines on the public that have shown to produce alarmingly high rates of adverse reactions, both disabling and leading to death. The CDC’s VAERS system for reporting all that is so janky that doctors can barely use it and the CDC refuses to fix it; meanwhile doctors are being punished for even attempting to report adverse reactions. The whole of medical officialdom has militated aggressively against early treatments of Covid-19 with cheap and easily available drugs, even firing doctors who attempt to use the protocols.
The entire approval process of the various vaccines has been rife with fraud, gamed statistics, sabotaged trials, bait-and-switch scams, and unaccountable manufacturing screw-ups - all immersed in a stench of moneygrubbing. The drug companies have refused to fully reveal the contents of the vaccines. Now they are ramping up an urgent campaign to vaccinate children following rushed and falsified clinical trials, with the statistical certainty that many more kids will be injured or will die from the vax than they would from Covid-19 itself.
Citizens have a right to object to this, and to the illegal vaccine “mandate” invoked by the pugnaciously stupid “Joe Biden” regime. There is an awful creeping suspicion in the USA and in other countries that people who have received vaccinations are beginning to present fatal cardiovascular and neurological illness in large numbers, and that an attempt is underway to cover all this up. There is likewise a growing body of evidence that the vaccines and “boosters” incrementally disable the human immune system so that later in the winter of 2021-2022 millions of people will be at risk of dying from Covid variants and virtually any other disease that comes along, including cancers. How many of us are prepared for that?"
"Into The Abyss We Go…"
"Into The Abyss We Go…"
by Michael Snyder
"Why won’t our politicians ever listen? Just two days after voters made it exceedingly clear that they hate mandates, the Biden administration has announced that the nationwide OSHA mandate will go into effect on January 4th. Are Biden and his minions this dense, or do they just not care what the American people think? It has been estimated that the new OSHA mandate will cover approximately 80 million Americans, and it could potentially result in millions of highly qualified workers losing their jobs in early 2022.
What the Biden administration is trying to do is completely unconstitutional, and red states are already challenging it in court. Many people may not realize it yet, but this is one of the most important turning points in U.S. history.
From an economic standpoint, this new mandate is going to be absolutely disastrous. We are already in the midst of the worst worker shortage in all of U.S. history, and we are currently dealing with a supply chain crisis of epic proportions. Forcing millions of Americans out of their jobs right in the middle of the upcoming winter will take both the worker shortage and the supply chain crisis to entirely new levels.
But Biden is going to do it anyway. On Thursday, we learned that January 4th has been set as the official deadline for compliance with the new OSHA mandate…"Tens of millions of Americans who work at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly. The new government rules were issued Thursday. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration says companies that fail to comply could face penalties of nearly $14,000 per violation."
If the company that you work for has 100 or more employees, you are covered by this mandate. Needless to say, many employers will be frightened into submission by the extremely high financial penalties. Those companies that are deemed to be “repeat offenders” could potentially “face a maximum fine of $136,532”…"Repeat offenders or those found to be willfully noncompliant could face a maximum fine of $136,532. It is not immediately clear what constitutes a repeat offender."
Of course many businesses across the country have no intention of ever complying with this new mandate. Realizing this is the case, the Biden administration will be secretly sending out OSHA spies to conduct surprise inspections…"OSHA staffers will be doing random inspections to check if businesses are complying and employees could have to pay for their own tests out of pocket. The agency is using emergency orders that usually deal with workers exposed to ‘grave dangers’ to enforce the standards."
GOP lawmakers responded with fury and said some unvaccinated Americans were being forced to decide between putting food on the table or getting the shot, while retailers said the new rules will put an ‘unnecessary’ burden on businesses before the holiday season.
It’s official. We now live in a dystopian nightmare. And many local regimes are also choosing to become increasingly authoritarian. For example, just check out the new rules for children that will soon be implemented in San Francisco…"San Francisco will soon require children as young as 5 to show proof of Covid-19 vaccination to enter certain indoor public spaces like restaurants, entertainment venues and sporting events, public health officials said this week. The local mandate already requires children and adults over the age of 12 to show proof that they are vaccinated before entering those places. Now, city health officials are planning to extend the health order to children ages 5 to 11, the group newly eligible for the shot."
America used to be the “land of the free”, but that is clearly not true anymore. The months ahead are not going to be pleasant. As mandates choke the life out of our economy, the ongoing shortages are going to get even worse and prices are going to go a lot higher. In fact, we are already being told to brace ourselves for “sticker shock” when we go to buy meat…
"For America’s meateaters, this is a problem. Some cuts have soared 25 percent over the past year, while others are fetching near record prices, making meat one of the biggest contributors to pandemic inflation. And industry experts expect meat to keep gaining through the holidays and beyond. “The sticker shock is what we all need to be prepared for,” said Bindiya Vakil, chief executive officer of supply-chain consultant Resilinc. “This is here to stay, at least through the summer of 2022.”
The good news is that nobody in this country is starving at this point. The bad news is that food prices around the world continue to escalate dramatically, and this is pushing millions upon millions of people in poorer countries into hunger. This week, we learned that global food prices shot up another 3 percent in the month of October…"A United Nations index tracking staples from wheat to vegetable oils climbed 3% to a fresh decade high in October, threatening even higher grocery bills for households that have already been strained by the pandemic. That could also add to central banks’ inflation worries and risks worsening global hunger that’s at a multiyear high."
As I have been relentlessly warning, a plethora of factors have combined to create a “perfect storm” for food prices…"Bad weather hit harvests around the world this year, freight costs soared and labor shortages have roiled the food supply chain from farms to supermarkets. An energy crisis has also proved a headache, forcing vegetable greenhouses to go dark and causing a knock-on risk of bigger fertilizer bills for farmers."
Many of these factors will continue to intensify in 2022. So be thankful for what you have, because in some parts of the world things are already starting to get quite crazy. For example, in North Korea citizens are now being encouraged to eat black swan meat due to the “crippling food shortage” in that nation…"North Korea has started touting the “exceptional” health benefits of consuming black swans after breeding them, while also farming rabbits as the country battles a crippling food shortage, according to state media. “Black swan meat is delicious and has medicinal value,” the ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said in an article published Monday."
I have been warning that this was coming, and things are only going to get worse from here. So I would stock up while you still can, because food prices are only going to go higher.
If you are one of those that may lose a job in the months ahead, I want you to know that our prayers are with you. Don’t give up, and don’t lose hope. I know that things are really dark right now, but sometimes the darkest valleys in life are where the light shines the brightest."
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Related:
Gregory Mannarino, "A Bloodbath On A Scale We've Never Seen Before"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/5/21:
"A Bloodbath On A Scale We've Never Seen Before"
Friday, November 5, 2021
“A Market Veteran Just Exposed A Stock Market Crash Is Fast Approaching In November”
Full screen recommended.
“A Market Veteran Just Exposed A Stock Market
Crash Is Fast Approaching In November”
by Epic Economist
"Markets stayed numb in October and that was enough for people to start ignoring the risks again. One more time, the extraordinary rally was supported by misleading growth projections and printed money. But now it's official. The Fed has set up a date to start tapering its bond purchasing program and raise interest rates. That means we're closer to a massive stock market crash than most people dare to imagine. In fact, there's a special confluence of factors indicating that an unprecedented stock bubble burst will come without people even noticing it. When they realize what happened, it will already be too late. That's what Christopher Irons of Quoth The Raven's Fringe Finance recently warned in an article entitled: "We Could Be Staring Down The Barrel of A Catastrophic NASDAQ Crash And Not Even Know It."
For months now, economists have been comparing the current stock market bubble to the dot-com bubble that began inflating in 1999. At this point, stocks are extremely overvalued, just like it happened in the past, but most investors prefer to believe that it will be different this time. That's why "I believe the next crash is going to come as a breakneck-style surprise. The point is still the same: the next big market plunge could be any day now, and will likely be led by tech," Irons wrote.
Today, “the NASDAQ is literally the 1999 tech bubble on steroids," according to Irons. People are weaponizing options, something that wasn’t being done in 1999, the financial analyst explains. Back then, investors' mania alone pushed stocks higher. But between March 2020 and now, there have been multiple examples -- including Goldman Sachs, Softbank, Bill Hwang, and Tesla -- that the NASDAQ bubble is not being supported by real growth prospects and its mania may have started at a much higher level thanks to planned purchases that helped to inflate the bubble in the first place.
Moreover, and particularly when it comes to tech stocks, one lie feeds the other. That is to say when asset managers collect record profits because the tech stock market is in a huge bubble, they need to come up with excuses for why the markets are outperforming, even though production is collapsing. If we check corporate media news on any given day we will see asset managers saying that "valuations do not matter anymore". This type of lie becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and only attracts more victims to the slaughter.
In an exclusive interview with Quoth the Raven, EMA GARP Fund Manager Lawrence Lepard discussed the potential pins that could burst this massive bubble. When he was asked what could be the most likely cause for a market crash right now, he said: "Think of it as like an avalanche. What snowflake is going to be the last one before it breaks free? The market is insanely overvalued, but until now has proven that what is insane can become more insane. So you can't short it. Frankly, all price signals are broken and we could be in a "crack-up boom". I do see signs of weakness. Personally, I think we are near the end and close to a crash."
Lepard argues that inflation is running hot and turning out to be way more persistent than previously anticipated. Therefore, it is bound to reduce profit margins and make the current multiples look even more insane. Inflation will become a catalyst when investors' psychology changes at the moment they realize there's no way to support the bubble any longer.
The moment interest rates begin to rise, investors will start to run for the exits and seek yield elsewhere. Lastly, one of the things making people believe this time is actually different is the fact that we just faced a crash one year ago, and now they believe we would never have two crashes in such a short period of time. They are truly expecting this bull market to go on for decades. But the truth is that most investors forget that recessions and crashes don't take into consideration when the last bull or bear market was.
We're seriously mistaken when we tell ourselves that another crash isn’t possible because one just happened a year ago. We have to remember that we have never recovered from last year's recession, we simply used printed money to fill in the cracks opened in the system. But everything is starting to fall apart. The Fed knows it. Market veterans know it. And if you're paying attention, you should know that too. So if you don't want to be caught off guard by a surprise stock market crash, start acting now, because we're a lot closer to a disaster than most people think."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Light-years across, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula appears in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus, the dusty, obscuring clouds are part of a Milky Way molecular cloud some 1,200 light-years distant.
Click image for larger size.
It is also listed as Barnard 150 (B150), one of 182 dark markings of the sky cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard. Packs of low mass stars are forming within, but their collapsing cores are only visible at long infrared wavelengths. Still, the colorful stars of Cepheus add to this pretty, galactic skyscape."
Chet Raymo, "Trying To Be Good”
"Trying To Be Good”
by Chet Raymo
“A few lines from Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese”:
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
“I’ve quoted these lines before, if not here, then elsewhere. When I first read them back in the late 80s, they resonated with what I felt at the time. I had spent part of my earliest adulthood walking on my knees, both literally and metaphorically, seeking to tame what I took to be the animal within. Saint Augustine was whispering in my ear, and Bernanos’ gloomy country priest walked at my side. I was ready to follow Thomas Merton into the desert; indeed, I once took myself briefly to the monastery at Gethsemane, Kentucky, where Merton was in residence. That was a journey of more than a hundred miles, and I was busy repenting, although of what I don’t know.
As I read those lines from Mary Oliver in middle age, I had long been cultivating the “soft animal” within, immersing myself in the is-ness of things, the flesh and blood, the gorgeously sensual. No more walking on my knees, repenting. I walked proudly upright, with my sketchbook and my watercolors, my binoculars and my magnifier, sniffing the world like an animal on the prowl. I was letting my body learn to “love what it loves.” Those were the years I wrote “The Soul of the Night” and “Honey From Stone”- the most intensely creative years of my life. The world offered itself to my imagination, if I may borrow another line from “Wild Geese.”
And now, another half-lifetime has passed. The soft animal dozes, the body seeks repose. And I think of the first line quoted above: “You do not have to be good.” What could the poet have possibly meant by that? Of course one has to be good. In a cell at Gethsemane or on the bridge over Queset Brook, one has to be good. And so one tries, one tries. The soft animal of the body that nature has contrived for us is not fine-tuned for goodness.”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
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“Wild Geese”
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
- Mary Oliver
“Earth Prayer”
“Earth Prayer”
“Grandfather, Great Spirit, once more behold me on earth and lean to hear my feeble voice. You lived first, and you are older than all need, older than all prayer. All things belong to you – the two-legged, the four-legged, the wings of the air, and all green things that live. You have set the powers of the four quarters of the earth to cross each other. You have made me cross the good road and road of difficulties, and where they cross, the place is holy. Day in, day out, forevermore, you are the life of things.
Hey! Lean to hear my feeble voice.
At the center of the sacred hoop
You have said that I should make the tree to bloom.
With tears running, O Great Spirit, my Grandfather,
With running eyes I must say
The tree has never bloomed.
Here I stand, and the tree is withered.
Again, I recall the great vision you gave me.
It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives.
Nourish it then,
That it may leaf
And bloom,
And fill with singing birds!
Hear me, that the people may once again
Find the good road
And the shielding tree.
At the center of the sacred hoop
You have said that I should make the tree to bloom.
With tears running, O Great Spirit, my Grandfather,
With running eyes I must say
The tree has never bloomed.
Here I stand, and the tree is withered.
Again, I recall the great vision you gave me.
It may be that some little root of the sacred tree still lives.
Nourish it then,
That it may leaf
And bloom,
And fill with singing birds!
Hear me, that the people may once again
Find the good road
And the shielding tree.
I think I have told you, but if I have not, you must have understood, that a man who has a vision is not able to use the power of it until after he has performed the vision on earth for the people to see… It was even then only after the heyoka ceremony, in which I performed my dog vision, that I had the power to practice as a medicine man, curing sick people; and many I cured with the power that came through me. Of course it was not I who cured. It was the power from the outer world, and the visions and ceremonies had only made me like a hole through which the power could come to the two-leggeds. If I thought that I was doing it myself, the hole would close up and no power could come through. Then everything I could do would be foolish…
Revealing this, they walk.
A sacred herb – revealing it, they walk.
Revealing this, they walk.
The sacred life of bison – revealing it, they walk.
Revealing this, they walk.
A sacred eagle feather – revealing it, they walk.
Revealing this, they walk.
The eagle and the bison – like relatives they walk.
A sacred herb – revealing it, they walk.
Revealing this, they walk.
The sacred life of bison – revealing it, they walk.
Revealing this, they walk.
A sacred eagle feather – revealing it, they walk.
Revealing this, they walk.
The eagle and the bison – like relatives they walk.
The Six Grandfathers have placed in this world many things, all of which should be happy. Every little thing is sent for something, and in that thing there should be happiness and the power to make happy. Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus we should do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World.”
- Black Elk, Oglala Sioux
"Get Your Stuff Together..."
- Quincy Jones
"The Land of Lies"
"The Land of Lies"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"There is so much dislocation, disorientation and overall social, political, cultural and economic crisis all around us. It can be difficult even to glimpse the whole, much less keep up with the chaos. Any single human mind can only comprehend a bit of it at a time. But somehow certain news items boil to the top as perfectly emblematic of the loss of trust in our times.
The top symbol for today is surely that the White House spokesperson Jen Psaki came down with COVID-19 - or I should say at least she tested positive. False positives are common. She says her symptoms are minor “thanks to the vaccine” but there is no way to know that. The striking thing is that her masks, distancing and jabs did not stop infection. Further, her fully vaccinated family is likely the source of the spread.
Why Won’t They Tell Us the Truth? Even at this late date (we are 21 months into this nonsense), the most obvious truths are still being obfuscated by the likes of Psaki, namely that this is a mild sickness for nearly everyone and a severe threat only to those who are approaching the average age of death otherwise or those with comorbidities.
All data bear this out. It has been stable for the entire pandemic and yet you have the presidential spokesperson continue to act as if this virus were an equally mortal threat to the whole population, herself included. She has spent her whole tenure stigmatizing people who get COVID and claiming that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. And yet the kabuki dance she has pushed for the better part of a year finally did not protect her against the dreaded fate of contracting COVID. Of course her symptoms will likely be mild, and this is true with or without the vaccine she has personally pushed on the entire population even at the expense of people’s livelihoods.
A more grim symbol of the subterfuge, duplicity and overall fraudulence of the public messaging on this whole thing is harder to imagine.
The Land of Lies: But of course it is only the beginning of the lies that completely enveloped public culture today. Here’s a partial list:
● We’ve got the Fed out there saying that inflation is minor and controllable. False. By every measure, we are already in double digits as bad as in the late 1970s.
● We’ve got the administration claiming that there is no problem paying for trillions in spending, and the debt-to-GDP ratio is at historical highs.
● We’ve got the head of the Treasury suggesting that there is no downside to spying on every bank account in real-time and pillaging billionaires merely for holding assets.
● We’ve got a media that is not even reporting on the massive loss of confidence in the president, who is undergoing a record-breaking slide from tolerance to huge public loathing.
● We have the most striking hatred between the states (red vs. blue) in more than 150 years, with an open war of words happening on a daily basis.
● The U.S. economy is on the verge of another dive into recession following the depression of the last 20 months, further dooming the prospects for the middle class to find their way back to progress.
●The public sector is being shaved of 5–10% of its workforce due to the vaccine mandate, which might sound good to libertarians, but these are people who collect trash, process driver’s licenses, put out fires and drive buses and trains.
● So many professionals are being fired - sorry, put on unpaid leave - that it is impossible to keep up. It is hitting academia and technology.
● Pilots around the country are continuing their full-scale revolt, forcing the daily cancelation of flights in the thousands, making it very difficult even to travel around the country. The companies blame the weather.
● Big Tech is doubling and tripling down on censorship. Just two weeks ago, LinkedIn claimed not to be doing it. Now it is routine, while the rest of the big boys have become mouthpieces for the regime.
If only one of these trends had happened in normal times, it would have dominated the headlines. But in times of chaos, it becomes difficult to focus and easier for the elites to sneak around to intensify the pain on the public.
Safety in Numbers: Trying to read the tea leaves on the historical narrative can be a challenge and filled with fallibility. But based on my reading today, I’m confident that we are living through a major shift in the narrative. It’s good and bad but it is real.
I would compare it to World War II, the Great War, the Civil War or the American Revolution. Something dramatic has changed. Our expectations for stability have been shattered. It is a hinge upon which what happens in the coming year will remake the world in unpredictable ways. We are all learning what it must have been like to live in the Soviet Union in its last decades. We know they are lying and they know we know. But it all continues anyway. I’m thinking not just of government spokespeople but also even respectable media.
For example, I’ve read The Wall Street Journal’s report on the flight cancellations by American Airlines. The journalist certainly knew for sure that the reason was an employee strike against the vaccine mandate. But the journalist said NOTHING about this, not even a hint. He only referred to weather problems and staff issues related to the pandemic. Give me a break. In the old days, at least they would bury the truth at the end of articles. Now they erase it completely. The only way to find out what’s going on anymore is to be part of information networks that exist beneath the surface, like this newsletter.
“This Time It Is Different”: How serious is the unraveling going to get? Generations in the U.S. have been spared a serious monetary crisis. This time it is different. The monetary crisis will unfold in ways we’ve not seen before. When the dollar was last under this much challenge, gold served as a refuge, but mostly for the elites. The rest of everyone else got pillaged. This time we also have these new fun tools called cryptocurrencies. There are thousands of them. They are democratized. Everyone can get involved.
They are so attractive now that governments want to monopolize them. Fat chance! It is too late for that. In fact, with global supply chains broken at the same time the dollar is decaying and U.S. debt is facing possible default, it is too late for the order to hold. I imagined six months ago that we could ride out the next year and a half until a new wave of political leaders could make a go of it. I no longer believe that.
But wait, am I being too pessimistic? Is there a new sign that the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way, that Americans are beginning to fight back against the madness? Tune in tomorrow..."