So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, July 16, 2022
"Sometimes I Just Want To Quit"
Full screen recommended.
Tommy Bites Homestead, 7/16/22:
"Sometimes I Just Want To Quit"
Comments here:
Full screen recommended.
"Empty Shelves Take Over Target;
Customers Left Looking For More"
Comments here:
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Martin Luther King said we're in "the fierce urgency of now."
Well, Good Citizen, you ain't seen nothin' yet...
But we will...
“The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it.
Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.”
- Leo Babauta
"Don't Ignore The Warning, Start Prepping Now; Halloween Sales Start In July; Pay Off Debt Today"
Jeremiah Babe, 7/16/22:
"Don't Ignore The Warning, Start Prepping Now;
Halloween Sales Start In July; Pay Off Debt Today"
Comments here:
"We're so freakin' doomed!"
- The Mogambo Guru
"Will the Market Meltdown in the Next Eight Weeks?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 7/16/22:
"Will the Market Meltdown in the Next Eight Weeks?"
"Experts are coming together and agreeing that inflation is a huge problem around the world. We are also seeing the banks struggle with earnings right now. JP Morgan and Wells Fargo just announced their earnings and to no one‘s surprise their earnings were off. What’s next for the market? Will it crash in the next eight weeks?"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Far beyond the local group of galaxies lies NGC 3621, some 22 million light-years away. Found in the multi-headed southern constellation Hydra, the winding spiral arms of this gorgeous island universe are loaded with luminous young star clusters and dark dust lanes. Still, for earthbound astronomers NGC 3621 is not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy. Some of its brighter stars have been used as standard candles to establish important estimates of extragalactic distances and the scale of the Universe.
This beautiful image of NGC 3621 traces the loose spiral arms far from the galaxy's brighter central regions that span some 100,000 light-years. Spiky foreground stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy and even more distant background galaxies are scattered across the colorful skyscape.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090919.html
Chet Raymo, “Examination of Conscience”
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“Examination of Conscience”
by Chet Raymo
"I have been reading Stephanie Smallwood's “Saltwater Slavery,” a close examination of the trade in human beings between the coast of West Africa and the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is a sobering read, but if there is one thing I came away with, it was this: We have an enormous capacity to rationalize the most horrendous crimes. Everyone involved in the slave trade - the European owners of the ships, the masters of the trading companies, the ship captains and crews, the plantation owners in the West Indies and the Chesapeake, the African tribal chiefs who captured and sold their neighbors to the European merchants - knew in some part of their souls that what they were doing was wrong. All of them - good Christians among them, pillars of their communities - found ways to rationalize their participation.
Who among us is immune to self deceit? To what extent am I implicated in the horrendous tragedies that are Darfur and Iraq? What do I owe to the global environment? Is there such a thing as innocence when we are so intimately connected that people in Fiji and Japan will read these words only moments after I write them?
What about science, the favored subject of this blog? Here is Smallwood: “The littoral [of the West African coast]...was more than a site of economic exchange and incarceration. The violence exercised in the service of human commodification relied upon a scientific empiricism always seeking to find the limits of human capacity for suffering, that point where material and social poverty threatened to consume entirely the lives it was meant to garner for sale in the Americas.”
Even science, like religion and democratic politics, can be pressed into the service of evil. We are all of us to some extent in the grip of economic forces as powerful and sometimes as pernicious as those that drove the saltwater slave trade. Few of us are required to personally face the direst evils. We are saved from moral anguish only by the fact that our acts of commission and omission ripple outward until their consequences are diluted and lost in the general happiness or unhappiness of humankind.”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
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"The precept: "Judge not, that ye be not judged" is an abdication of moral responsibility: it is a moral blank check one gives to others in exchange for a moral blank check one expects for oneself. There is no escape from the fact that men have to make choices; so long as men have to make choices, there is no escape from moral values; so long as moral values are at stake, no moral neutrality is possible. To abstain from condemning a torturer, is to become an accessory to the torture and murder of his victims.The moral principle to adopt in this issue, is: "Judge, and be prepared to be judged."
- Ayn Rand
"It May Be Then..."
"Passion doesn't count the cost. Pascal said that the heart has its reasons that reason takes no account of. If he meant what I think, he meant that when passion seizes the heart it invents reasons that seem not only plausible but conclusive to prove that the world is well lost for love. It convinces you that honor is well sacrificed and that shame is a cheap price to pay. Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Parnell and Kitty O'Shea. And if it doesn't destroy it dies. It may be then that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one's life, that one's brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one's expended all one's tenderness, poured out all the riches of one's soul on a poor drab, a fool, a peg on which one hung one's dreams, who wasn't worth a stick of chewing gum."
- W. Somerset Maugham
"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."
- Sydney J. Harris
The Poet: David Whyte, “Sometimes”
“‘Sometimes’: Poet and Philosopher David Whyte’s
Stunning Meditation on Walking into the Questions of Our Becoming”
by Maria Popova
“The role of the artist, James Baldwin believed, is “to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are.” This, too, is the role of the forest, it occurs to me as I walk the ferned, mossed woods daily to lose my self and find myself between the trees; to “live the questions,” in Rilke’s lovely phrase – to let the rustling of the leaves beckon forth the stirrings and murmurings on the edge of the psyche, which we so often brush away in order to go on being the smaller version of ourselves we have grown accustomed to being out of the unfaced fear that the grandeur of life, the grandeur of our own untrammeled nature, might require of us more than we are ready to give.
Those disquieting, transformative stirrings are what the poet and philosopher David Whyte explores with surefooted subtlety in his poem “Sometimes,” found in his altogether life-enlarging collection “Everything Is Waiting for You” and read here by the poet himself as part of a wonderful short course of poem-driven practices for neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris’s “Waking Up” meditation toolkit (which I can’t recommend enough and which operates under an inspired, honorable model of granting free subscriptions to those who need this invaluable mental health aid but don’t have the means).
“Sometimes”
“Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,
who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests,
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.”
- David Whyte
The Universe
“There are no accidents. If it's appeared on your life radar, this is why: to teach you that dreams come true; to reveal that you have the power to fix what's broken and heal what hurts; to catapult you beyond seeing with just your physical senses; and to lift the veils that have kept you from seeing that you're already the person you dreamed you'd become. There are no accidents. And believe me, that was one heck of a dream.”
“Tallyho,”
The Universe
“Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!”
- www.tut.com
“Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!”
- www.tut.com
"How Stress Affects Your Cholesterol Level: Everything You Wanted to Know"
"How Stress Affects Your Cholesterol Level:
Everything You Wanted to Know"
by Karen Reed
"You’ve heard all about how high cholesterol levels are causing ill health. More importantly, you’ve heard about how bad cholesterol is causing ill health. It affects your arteries and blood flow, putting your heart under more pressure to perform properly. Those with high cholesterol levels are more at risk of stroke, heart attacks, and heart disease.
Cholesterol has long been linked to the food we eat. There are certain foods that we’re recommended to stay away from and others that we should get more off to promote good cholesterol levels and help protect the arteries. Did you know that it’s not just food that affects the cholesterol levels? Stress has been linked to high cholesterol. In fact, some studies now show that stress is worse than the food we eat for cholesterol levels and ill health.
The problem is that stress is a silent killer. We don’t realize that our cortisol levels are up and causing these problems until it’s too late in some cases. It’s important to reduce our stress levels to keep our cholesterol levels down. Here’s a look at just how stress causes high cholesterol and what you can do about it.
What Exactly Is Cholesterol? Before you start looking at stress and how it affects to high cholesterol levels, you need to know more about it. What exactly is it and what does it do?
There are two types of cholesterol: good and bad. The bad cholesterol is known as LDL cholesterol, and you shouldn’t have any more than 100mg/dL of this type in your body. Good cholesterol is HDL, and you should have at least 60mg/dL. A good level of total cholesterol, according to physicians, is 200mg/dL and this can be made up of both good and bad. Considering you shouldn’t have more that 100mg/dL of the bad stuff, you want at least 100mg/dL of the good stuff. The more good cholesterol you have, the better it is for you. Good cholesterol can keep the bad stuff at bay and under control.
What exactly is cholesterol? It’s a fatty substance that is only found in animal products. It is naturally produced by your body, but can also be added to food. The body will make more cholesterol due to trans and saturated fats being added through food. Both types of cholesterol will enter the arteries and build up. The good stuff builds up as a lining to the arteries, protecting them from damage. The lining is soft and makes it easier for the blood to flow through the veins.
On the other hand, bad cholesterol blocks the arteries. It creates a friction layer that stops the blood flowing freely. The heart and brain don’t get the blood that they both need and clogs can appear in the arteries. You’re at a higher risk of suffering various health problems, including stroke and heart disease, because of your high bad cholesterol levels.
There are various types of people more at risk for having high cholesterol levels. There are certainly genetic factors involved, but there are also lifestyle factors. One of those is stress levels, especially in those who are overweight, smoke or have other health problems.
Stress and the Unhealthy Lifestyle: One of the reasons found for the stress and high cholesterol link is bad lifestyle habits. Those who are stressed are more likely to follow less healthy habits in other areas of their life. They’re less likely to exercise and more likely to eat bad food. After all, saturated and trans fat foods tend to be the comfort foods – those that people crave to try to boost their endorphin and serotonin levels.
People who are stressed will look for ways to counter their cortisol levels, and that is usually through unhealthy methods. People are more likely to drink or smoke, which puts other strains on their body. The body isn’t able to produce the good cholesterol and is encouraged to create bad cholesterol. This reason is highly common in men. It is men who tend to deal with stress the worst, possibly due to misconceptions that relaxation techniques are for women. They also tend to have higher stressful jobs than women, since many men are in higher positions of power and authority. Men tend to be in more leadership roles, which means more responsibility and decision making. It may not seem fair, but that’s just a common view.
How the Body Reacts to Stress Causes High Cholesterol Levels: Another study found that people who suffer from high levels of stress have higher bad cholesterol due to the high levels of triglycerides. The triglycerides are the components that encourage the boost of bad cholesterol levels, causing major health problems. It doesn’t matter what your diet is like, although the unhealthier diet will put you more at risk.
The study researchers considered the reasons for the higher triglycerides. While the exact reason isn’t known, the theory is that it is due to the stress hormone cortisol. This is common is people who suffer long term stress, and leads to the release of adrenaline in the body.
Adrenaline is the body’s “flight or fight” response and helps to deal with the stress levels. It pushes people into making decisions and keeps them alert and active when they desperately need to be. Many people in trauma incidents report that they don’t know how they kept going. The adrenaline pushed them forward until they were given a chance to relax. That was when their bodies shut down, and they had the chance to allow the trauma to affect them. Adrenaline can certainly have benefits, but it causes the increase in triglycerides. This then triggers the high levels of bad cholesterol, which can later affect the body in other ways.
Stress Can Cause “Stickiness” in the Arteries: Another study has found that the arteries can be “sticky” due to high-stress levels. This may or may not be linked to high cholesterol levels. It could be a problem on its own that makes it look like someone has high cholesterol levels.
Stress makes the muscles spasm. This affects the arteries, which causes problems with the blood flow. The platelets in people with high-stress levels are commonly “sticky.” They cling to the artery walls and create bumps and friction for the blood flow. The blood is more likely to clog, and other health problems arise. The constriction of the arteries certainly doesn’t help things. When the arteries constrict, the area for the blood flow gets smaller, and it causes the blood flow to slow down. Mixed with the stickiness or high cholesterol problems, the blood gets stuck and clogs. It’s harder for the heart and brain to get the blood that they both need.
Stress causes many other health problems and affects the body in more ways that we currently know or understand. It is possible that stress isn’t just a factor for high cholesterol but makes high cholesterol worse for the health.
Reducing Stress to Prolong Life: Many scientists now recommend not focusing on reducing cholesterol as much as reducing stress. Cholesterol gained a bad rep for a long time, including good cholesterol. It’s taken time for the medical world to realize that not all cholesterol is bad and there are other factors that cause many of the same risks. One of those is the high-stress levels. It’s important to keep them to a minimum so the whole body can work effectively and we can prolong out lives.
The tricky thing is finding a way to reduce stress levels. Understandably reducing stress isn’t always easy and people can end up even more stressed because they’re trying to reduce it. Think about how you feel when you’re struggling to sleep because of stress. You get more worked up, which releases more cortisol and more adrenaline into the body. It’s harder to get to sleep, and this cycle continues until you find a way actually to reduce the stress.
Meditation and exercise are often considered the best ways to reduce stress. Yoga is a popular option since it combines the two together in many ways. You get to become one with yourself, focus on your breathing, and tone your body at the same time.
Both meditation and exercise help to release more happy hormones into your body. The right chemicals help to reduce the levels of cortisol in your body. You’ll have less adrenaline keeping you awake and fewer triglycerides causing your bad cholesterol production to increase.
It will be tempting to reach for a glass or two (or even a bottle) of wine to deal with stress. Smoking is tempting, along with binge watching a TV series while you struggle to sleep. You want to look for healthier ways to handle your stress. The negative ways will just cause more problems for your health.
Long Term vs. Short Term Stress and Cholesterol: If you have the odd day where you feel like you’re at the end of your tether, don’t worry about it too much. It’s not the short-term stress that causes the increase in cholesterol levels. The studies show that those who suffer long term stress are the ones who are most likely to see all the negative side effects.
Sure, stress isn’t good for you, but it is also a normal part of living. There are times that adrenaline and cortisol are needed. They can keep you going when you run out of energy or when going through trauma.
Those who suffer long term stress will have prolonged cortisol and adrenaline levels. Those hormones will be much higher than they need to be and in the body for much longer. They cause a range of health problems when around for long periods of time, including high blood pressure, insomnia, and even Type II diabetes. It shouldn’t be surprising that high cholesterol levels are also a problem.
Healthy eating is an important lifestyle choice. Not only will it help to reduce the foods that cause cholesterol production but it can also reduce the cortisol release. Healthy foods protect the body, supply energy, and help to boost the production of happy hormones, which help to reduce the stress hormones.
When you suffer from long term stress, you will want to look for ways to eliminate the reason for stress as much as possible. I know this isn’t always going to be easy. You may enjoy your career, but there will be times that you struggle to cope with all the demand your job throws at you. It’s not like you can just pick and choose. However, if there is a way that you can reduce the stuff you do that causes stress, such as delegation, then you want to do it where you can.
Long term high-stress levels may not cause immediate problems. There are links to issues years down the line because of the stress levels that you have felt at some point in your life. This issue is linked more with long term stress, but some bouts of short-term stress can also be a problem.
Stress Isn’t the Only Culprit: It is important to note that stress isn’t the only reason we suffer from high cholesterol levels. While it’s a silent killer and common, there are many other reasons your cholesterol levels could be high. Diet is certainly a factor, but so are genetics and other lifestyle choices that you make. The place you work or the chemicals that you inhale from where you live can also cause cholesterol levels to increase.
This is something that scientists are still trying to understand. We have come a long way since believing that all cholesterol was bad. Now we know that some cholesterol is good, and we want it to our bodies, but we need to make sure that it is good. While stress isn’t the only culprit, it is one of the main reasons for high cholesterol levels and other health problems. It’s best to keep the stress levels at bay as much as possible.”
"WWIII is Not Worth Supporting Ukraine in a Land Grab"
"WWIII is Not Worth Supporting Ukraine in a Land Grab"
by Martin Armstrong
"The West is determined to invade Russia and they believe that they can destroy it despite the fact that they are no longer a communist nation or a threat. That does not seem to matter for they want war because Russia and China will not surrender their sovereignty to the United Nations under this Great Reset all for Climate Change & the WEF.
Indeed, many practical Western military strategists are starting to agree that Henry Kissinger’s advice must be taken and that peace negotiations should begin – NOW. There is a growing number of military strategists that realize that Russia and Belarus along with China and North Korea will all join to defeat the West and NATO which they see as the greatest threat now to humanity.
The West needs war because it can no longer maintain this Marxist socialism system borrowing endlessly with no intention to repay anything back. This is coming to an end. Our computer has warned 40 years ago that the target for the collapse of socialism was due in 2023. Communism fell in 1989 and now it is our turn in 2023. Marx’s theories will be remembered throughout history. I find it interesting that it is forbidden even in the Ten Commandments warning that this idea of rob from one class to hand to another has never worked. We must now pay the price for this theory. When it was first imposed, over 200 million people died resisting communism in Russia and China. It is ironic that now we are the Marxism trying to impose our will upon Russia and China. What goes around, comes around.
Russia has been unable to use its air power because NATO is providing Ukraine with all the tactical information needed so they only need to turn on their radar minutes before launching and as such Russia cannot destroy those systems which have been supplanted by NATO. Either Russia takes out the AWACs providing that information which then is an act against NATO. The West thinks it is very clever in this arrangement but they really have entered the war and it is just a matter of time that this escalates out of control.
The danger here is that the West is pushing Russia into a very dangerous position. Russia can terminate the entire supply of arms to Ukraine by destroying dams that also form key bridges over the Dnepr. However, they can score a complete defeat of Ukraine by launching several dozen tactical nuclear weapons. What will NATO do then? These clever tactics of NATO being in the war but pretending they are not is a very risky game.
It is not likely that the West will ever take the advice of Kissinger and apply pressure to Kyiv to come to the table and face this unpleasant reality that they must relinquish their claim to territory occupied by Russians who they absolutely hate."
“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow..."
Full screen recommended.
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Freely download "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare" here:
"How It Really Is"
“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were
a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
“Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.”
“There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
“All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots,
and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.”
- Mark Twain
"Three Months That Wrecked the World"
"Three Months That Wrecked the World"
by Jeffrey Tucker
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
- William Shakespeare, "The Tempest"
"The most salient question of our time is: Who destroyed the world? We know the “what” of that question already. It was the lockdowns, the spending, the monetary insanity, the mandates and the overwhelming and ghastly explosion in the forces of command and control imposed all over the world. This broke everything. It is nowhere near being put back together again. In fact, it is getting worse. The main issue concerns the who. This matters if we are ever to gain a clear picture of how the happy life of 2019 turned into the hellscape of 2022.
Conspirators Like to Brag: To assist the discovery project, I’ve become a voracious and very close reader of every opportunistic autobiographical account on which I can get my hands. At issue, above all else, is that amazing period between Feb. 1 and April 1 of 2020. Three months that wrecked the world. Who were the players and why did they do it and why did they persist in their egregious errors? What were their motivations?
I have by now a complete bibliography that perhaps I will share at some point. At issue right now is the autobio of one Dr. Deborah Birx, aka the “scarf lady” who pushed so hard from those early days, all throughout the rest of the year, crucially through the November election that ended up pushing Trump out of office. She was never a fan as she makes clear, but she claims that her politics never affected her devotion to “the science.”
Yeah, we’ve heard that one before. In any case, it was she who was tasked with doing the really crucial thing of talking Donald Trump into green-lighting the lockdowns that began on March 15 and continued to their final hard-core deployment on March 16. This was the “15 Days to Flatten the Curve.”
Her book admits that it was a lie from the beginning. “We had to make these palatable to the administration by avoiding the obvious appearance of a full Italian lockdown,” she writes. “At the same time, we needed the measures to be effective at slowing the spread, which meant matching as closely as possible what Italy had done - a tall order. We were playing a game of chess in which the success of each move was predicated on the one before it.” In other words, she wanted to go full CCP but didn’t want to say that. Crucially, she knew for sure that two weeks was not the real plan. “I left the rest unstated: that this was just a starting point.”
It Was a Lie: “No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it,” she admits: "Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread was a start, but I knew it would be just that. I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them. However hard it had been to get the 15-day shutdown approved, getting another one would be more difficult by many orders of magnitude. In the meantime, I waited for the blowback, for someone from the economic team to call me to the principal’s office or confront me at a task force meeting. None of this happened."
Bingo. It was a solution in search of evidence she did not have. She told Trump that the evidence was there anyway. She actually tricked him into believing that locking down hundreds of millions of people was somehow magically going to make a virus that everyone would eventually get go away. Meanwhile, the economy was wrecked all over the world, as most governments in the world followed what the U.S. did.
Trump was not and is not an idiot. She reports that by April 1, he had lost confidence in her. He might have intuited that he had been tricked. He stopped speaking to her. On the other hand, Trump had a major problem. He had made a dramatic decision. It was a disastrous one but he learned from long experience that admitting error only fed the media that wanted him dead. So he refused. He refused to admit the problem.
His solution was to pretend like it was the right thing and that it saved millions (no evidence!) but that now was the time to open the economy. It took another several weeks but finally, he went full-on with an opening agenda. He came to realize that he had destroyed the Trump economy, the ticket to his reelection, by his own hand!
Tragedy in Our Times: This is a story of Biblical proportions, at once desperately sad and tragic, a story of fallibility matched by ego, a story of enormous betrayal that played off character flaws that ended up wrecking hope and prosperity for billions of people.
Once Trump turned against her and eventually found other people to provide good advice like the tremendous Scott Atlas, Birx turned to rallying around her an inner circle (Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield and a few others) plus assembling a realm of protection outside of her.
For example, Scott Atlas tried to stop the testing madness (you remember it well) and changed the CDC guidance. “Less than a week later,” she writes, “Bob and I had finished our rewrite of the guidance and surreptitiously posted it. We had restored the emphasis on testing to detect areas where silent spread was occurring. It was a risky move, and we hoped everyone in the White House would be too busy campaigning to realize what Bob and I had done. We weren’t being transparent with the powers that be in the White House…” Yikes!
Et Tu, Brute? And guess who provided her protection within the White House. I will let her tell you: "Ever since Vice President Pence told me to do what I needed to do, I’d engaged in very blunt conversations with the governors. I spoke the truth that some White House senior advisors weren’t willing to acknowledge. Censoring my reports and putting up guidance that negated the known solutions was only going to perpetuate COVID-19’s vicious circle. What I couldn’t sneak past the gatekeepers in my reports, I said in person."
Did you catch that? The name is Pence. She names him out directly as her protector. Mr. Earnest, Mr. Honest, Mr. Moral and Good. He clearly teamed up with her and her gang to keep the hysteria roiling from March all the way through November. Didn’t Shakespeare teach us something about this? If you are looking for the betrayer, the slayer, the plotter, the person who fells the leader, always and everywhere look to the No. 2 in charge. There you will find the real source of the problem. Et Tu, Brute?
What followed seems inevitable in retrospect. The inflation, the broken lives, the desperation and now the growing hunger and demoralization and educational losses and cultural destruction, all of it came in the wake of these fateful days. The plotters usually admit it in the end, taking credit, like criminals who cannot resist returning to the scene of the crime. And what a crime it was."
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Related:
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up: War Coming,
More Die “Unexpectedly,” Record Inflation, Drought Disaster"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"There is no getting around the fact that direct war with Russia is coming. There are zero moves for peace talks, and the only thing that is moving are more weapons to Ukraine. Meanwhile, the economic sanction war continues to backfire. Canada has decided to allow a repaired turbine that helps moves natural gas from Russia to Europe to be returned to Russia. No way that turbine be there before July 22. That’s when Russia says it cannot guarantee the Nord Stream 1 pipeline will function to full capacity. The repaired turbine has been held up by Canada because of sanctions. There is no telling when it will be put back into service. Will the economy in the EU and, especially, Germany be shut down even further? Will the banks fold? Will Europeans freeze this winter? All good questions that probably have very negative answers.
Another week and more reports of people who “die unexpectedly.” The reports never ask the question, “Were they vaxed?” Heaven forbid anyone ask for an autopsy with all of these people dying (many of them young) for no apparent reason. Might it be they were given a bioweapon that was passed off as a vaccine? And it’s causing heart attacks, strokes, cancers and many other life threatening and life ending problems?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is out with a new inflation number, and it’s hit another fresh 40-year record high at 9.1%. Shadowstats.com economist John Williams calls bull crap on the rigged “official” inflation number, and he says inflation in the real world is more like 17.3%. This is bad news for the Biden/Obama White House. This new inflation spike is going to force the Fed into raising rates in their upcoming July meeting. That will further tank the economy right into the mid-term election in November.
To go along with the record inflation, there is even worse record drought out West. Lake Mead and Lake Powell are at historic lows. The federal government is demanding massive cutbacks in water consumption to make supplies last. Dane Wigington of GeoengineeringWatch.org says the severe drought is mostly caused by man-made weather modification that the government has been doing for years non-stop. This is going to have a dangerous and profound effect on food prices and production."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble he talks about these
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up:
"Inconvenience Stickers Everywhere At Kroger! Not Good! What's Coming?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno 7/16/22:
"Inconvenience Stickers Everywhere At Kroger!
Not Good! What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger Marketplace, and are noticing inconvenience stickers everywhere! The last time we saw this many, there was a major food shortage. For the past few weeks we have seen a steady increase in food prices around the country. In addition we are also seeing a lot more empty shelves. It's getting rough out here as stores continue to struggle to get in products!"Comments here:
Friday, July 15, 2022
"Never, Ever Forget..."
"Never, ever forget that nothing in this life is free. Life demands payment in some form for your "right" to express yourself, to condemn and abuse the evil surrounding us. Expect to pay... it will come for you, they will come for you, regardless. Knowing that, give them Hell itself every chance you can. Expect no mercy, and give none. That's how life works. Be ready to pay for what you do, or be a coward, pretend you don't see, don't know, and cry bitter tears over how terrible things are, over how you let them become."
- Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls "
"20 Reasons Why Young Americans Are Screaming Mad About Our Unfair Economy"
Full screen recommended.
"20 Reasons Why Young Americans Are
Screaming Mad About Our Unfair Economy"
by Epic Economist
"Young Americans are getting extremely angry and frustrated with the current economic conditions. Previous generations promised them that if they worked hard, made good choices, stayed in line, and got good grades, they would be able to live the "American Dream". Millennials and Gen Zs were told not to worry about accumulating massive levels of student loan debt because there would be good jobs waiting for them at the end of the rainbow once they graduated. Well, that turned out to be a lie. Right now, nearly half of them are living paycheck to paycheck and having trouble covering basic expenses. In fact, today we have the highest share of adults living with their parents since the Great Depression, and younger generations will continue to fall behind financially because they can't afford to buy a home and start building wealth on their own.
Some economists argue that the young are part of an entitled generation that is flat broke because they are lazy and irresponsible, but that is far from the truth. Today, they work much longer hours and earn significantly less than previous generations when adjusting to inflation.
Young Americans have tried to do everything right and are still struggling to get by. Many of them end up blaming themselves. Many of them think that they are not talented enough or that they didn’t work hard enough or that they don’t have the right connections. But the reality is that decades of inflationary policies are starting to catch up with us in a major way, and they just happen to be caught in the crossfire. Their future looks quite gloomy, and as more of them start realizing that the system is broken, they are likely to become angrier and angrier.
With so many financial setbacks, it’s no wonder why roughly half, or about 45%, of young Americans agree that they feel like they will never have the things they want in life because of their money situation. Among younger generations, financial health remains persistently below the national average, Morning Consult’s research exposed. Millennials’ average financial well-being score - developed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to track financial security and freedom of choice across different population segments over time - stands at 47.05 compared to 50.81 out of 100 for the average American. Even though it may not look like a dramatic difference, that’s quite a significant gap when you consider that a 1-point gain in a consumer’s month-over-month financial well-being score basically amounts to about a $15,000 boost in household earnings, or a 20-point credit score improvement.
When we break U.S. adults down by age, we can see that our long-term economic decline has hit the young the hardest by far. And yet somehow we expect them to bear the burden of providing Medicare, Social Security, and other social welfare benefits to the rest of the population as they get older. No wonder this group is feeling so helpless about their future. For that reason, today we gathered statistics that reveal Millennials and Gen Zs are facing worst economic conditions than previous generations."
Must Watch! "Chick-Fil-A Addiction, Massive Long Lines Fueled By Debt; Carmax Lots Full; Amazon Record Sales"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 7/15/22:
"Chick-Fil-A Addiction, Massive Long Lines Fueled By Debt;
Carmax Lots Full; Amazon Record Sales"
Comments here:
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The absolutely incredible idiocy of the willfully, frantically, totally
ignorant American sheeple... Astounding, astonishing stupidity!
“A Revolution Not Made But Prevented”
“A Revolution Not Made But Prevented”
by Brian Maher
"Yesterday we plumbed the origins of the French Revolution. Today we contrast the 1789 French Revolution with the 1776 American Revolution. How did they differ? And does the American Revolution even merit the moniker “revolution?” These are the questions we tackle today…
Each revolution undid a king. The French revolutionaries yanked old Louis XVI from his throne at Versailles. They later introduced him to Monsieur Guillotine’s famous toy. An ocean spared George III the blade or the noose, it is true. The American colonists nonetheless struck the trans-Atlantic chains that had bound them to monarchy. Yet each revolution bubbled from different aspirations, different objectives.
Was the American Revolution Really a Revolution? Before proceeding, a note: Today we paint in bright colors, with a brush that is necessarily wide. That is, we omit much of the subtlety, much of the shade and shadow of the full historical portrait. Yet here is the overall view: The French revolutionists were out for the Ancien Régime that sat so heavily upon them. We refer here to the old “throne and altar” sociopolitical system of the Bourbon kings. The American revolutionists - meantime - were out to reclaim the ancient rights of Englishmen. It was these rights that George III was molesting… in the revolutionists’ take.
The American revolutionists were not out for revolution, that is. They instead were after a sort of reset as a man resets an erring clock or a wayward thermostat. They did not seek change, that is — but to remain largely the same. Less a revolution than an anti-revolution… we might properly label the thing a revolt.
A child may revolt against parental sovereignty. But is he a revolutionary? Enlightenment statesman Edmund Burke labeled England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 “a revolution not made but prevented.” The same may be said - the same has been said - of the American Revolution. It was in many respects a revolution not made but a revolution prevented. Few ideological stars dazzled them, few ideological sugar plums waltzed within their skulls. They were instead grounded in the good, hard earth - and history.
Historian Clinton Rossiter: "However radical the principles of the Revolution may have seemed to the rest of the world, in the minds of the colonists they were thoroughly preservative and respectful of the past… The political theory of the American Revolution, in contrast to that of the French Revolution, was not a theory designed to make the world over."
Adds historian and political theorist Russell Kirk: "For novel abstract theories of human nature and society, most of the men who subscribed to the Declaration and the Constitution had no relish."
You Need Form in Order to Reform: The American revolutionists pursued reform, it is true. Yet reform has no existence without preexisting form. The form is first. Reform chisels it, sands it, paints it, renews it. Reform does not wreck it. It is true to the underlying form. The American colonists had their preexisting form: their British cultural and political heritage. They clung to the Magna Carta and the ancient rights of Englishmen. They modified, updated and molded the existing form into a new American shape. That is, they kept the old and good. They cut away the old and diseased. They reformed.
The French Revolution: The French revolutionists did not reform. They brought no chisels with them, no sandpaper, no paintbrushes. They instead seized axes, hacksaws, sledgehammers, wrecking balls… and proceeded with delirious abandon. All prior social, cultural, religious and political forms they razed, all bridges to the past they dynamited. No form remained to reform.
The French Revolution, in contrast to the American Revolution, sizzled and crackled with ideology. It looked to build society anew - from root to branch, from cellar to attic. God Himself was chased out of France, deported, banished, exiled. Revolutionists sat “reason” down in His vacated throne. Savagery, barbarism and slaughter on the wholesale followed.
The revolutionists threw aside their “political servitude,” argued Burke - but at the price of their souls. That is because they likewise threw aside the “yoke of laws and morals” that had bound them to Christian virtue. They deformed society… rather than reforming society. From one summary of Burke’s 1790 "Reflections on the Revolution in France": The French Revolution... was tending towards anarchy rather than reformation. Burke valued tradition and the structures that had built up over time rather than the shattering of state, culture and religion that had taken place in France.
These French revolutionists had no past, as stated. They had only a future. Here we speak not metaphorically but literally. Time itself was under new management.
Redrawing Time: In 1792, French revolutionists emptied the existing calendar into the wastebasket. They tacked up a new calendar… beginning at “Year One.” All 12 months were rechristened, primarily after the rhythms of nature. The months themselves were broken into three weeks, each consisting of 10 days. Each day - in turn - was reduced to 10 hours under a decimal system. One new hour counted 144 miniatures or 2.4 times the old hour.
Churches, meantime, were reconfigured as “temples of reason.” All traces of religion and the Church were cleared out, all holy days stricken out. Libertarian writer, Mr. Lew Rockwell: "Streets named after saints were given new names, and statues of saints were actually guillotined... The calendar itself, rich with religious feasts, was replaced by a more “rational” calendar with 30 days per month, divided into three 10-day weeks, thereby doing away with Sunday. The remaining five days of the year were devoted to secular observances: celebrations of labor, opinion, genius, virtue and rewards… People were sentenced to death for owning a Rosary, giving shelter to a priest or indeed refusing to abjure the priesthood."
Now you have the flavor of it. Imagine it - a lunatic nation dynamiting its past foundations - and beginning anew at Year One. How does a man know his age… or celebrate his birthday?
The Democracy of the Dead: The revolutionists, argued Burke, lowered their axes upon what Lincoln later labeled the “chords of memory.” These are the chords of memory that link past to present, past and present to future. In this democracy of the dead, the dead are granted a vote. Yay, nay or present… the dead have a say in a nation’s doings.
The French revolutionaries stripped the dead of their vote. They replaced it with the tyranny of the living. And the unborn would never learn the wisdom of the ancients. In Burke’s telling: "As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born."
The French revolutionists tore the contract. They may have struck the past’s shackles from their wrists. But they merely exchanged old shackles for new shackles…"
"Perhaps..."
“Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven
where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines
down upon us to let us know they are happy.”
~ Eskimo saying.
"A Look to the Heavens
"The W-shaped ridge of emission featured in this vivid skyscape is known as the Cygnus Wall. Part of a larger emission nebula with a distinctive outline popularly called The North America Nebula, the cosmic ridge spans about 20 light-years. Constructed using narrowband data to highlight the telltale reddish glow from ionized hydrogen atoms recombining with electrons, the two frame mosaic image follows an ionization front with fine details of dark, dusty forms in silhouette.
Click image for larger size.
Sculpted by energetic radiation from the region's young, hot, massive stars, the dark shapes inhabiting the view are clouds of cool gas and dust with stars likely forming within. The North America Nebula itself, NGC 7000, is about 1,500 light-years away.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150312.html
Chet Raymo, “To Sleep, Perchance To Dream”
“To Sleep, Perchance To Dream”
by Chet Raymo
“What is more gentle than a wind in summer?
What is more soothing than a pretty hummer
That stays one moment in an open flower,
And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?
What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing
In a green island, far from all men's knowing?
More healthful than the leafiness of dales?
More secret than a nest of nightingales?”
What indeed? The poet Keats answers his own questions: Sleep. Soft closer of our eyes. I've reached an age when I find myself occasionally nodding off in the middle of the day, an open book flopped on my chest. Also, more lying awake in the dark hours of the night, re-running the tapes of the day. And, in the fragile moments of nighttime unconsciousness, dreaming dreams that reach all the way back to my childhood.
I've read the books about sleep and dreaming. There has been lots of research, but not much consensus about why we sleep or dream. Sleep seems to be pretty universal among animals. Who knows whether animals dream. Do we sleep to restore the soma? To knit the raveled sleeve of care? Process memories? Find safety from predators? After 50 years of work, the sleep researcher William Dement opined: "As far as I know, the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy."
The Latin poet Martial supposed that sleep "makes darkness brief," a worry-free way to get through the scary hours of the night when wolves howl at the mouth of the cave (and goblins stir under the bed). That hardly explains my dropping off after lunch into a dreamless stupor that I neither desire nor welcome.
“Low murmurer of tender lullabies!
Light hoverer around our happy pillows!
Wreather of poppy buds, and weeping willows!”
Not quite! There are the nightmares too. The tossing and turning. The hoo-has. But enough of this idle speculation. I'm getting sleepy...”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/