"So many people are having a difficult time right now. The car manufactures tell us one day that there are 50,000 cars parked that cannot be completed and today we’re being told that inventory is overflowing. Regardless of whatever it is, people cannot afford new cars."
“Why is the sky near Antares and Rho Ophiuchi so colorful? The colors result from a mixture of objects and processes. Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. Gaseous clouds whose atoms are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Backlit dust clouds block starlight and so appear dark.
Antares, a red supergiant and one of the brighter stars in the night sky, lights up the yellow-red clouds on the lower center. Rho Ophiuchi lies at the center of the blue nebula near the top. The distant globular cluster M4 is visible just to the right of Antares, and to the lower left of the red cloud engulfing Sigma Scorpii. These star clouds are even more colorful than humans can see, emitting light across the electromagnetic spectrum.”
"First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?"
“Johannes Kepler is best known for figuring out the laws of planetary motion. In 1610, he published a little book called “The Six-Cornered Snowflake” that asked an even more fundamental question: How do visible forms arise? He wrote: "There must be some definite reason why, whenever snow begins to fall, its initial formation is invariably in the shape of a six-pointed starlet. For if it happens by chance, why do they not fall just as well with five corners or with seven?"
All around him Kepler saw beautiful shapes in nature: six-pointed snowflakes, the elliptical orbits of the planets, the hexagonal honeycombs of bees, the twelve-sided shape of pomegranate seeds. Why? he asks. Why does the stuff of the universe arrange itself into five-petaled flowers, spiral galaxies, double-helix DNA, rhomboid crystals, the rainbow's arc? Why the five-fingered, five-toed, bilaterally symmetric beauty of the newborn child? Why?
Kepler struggles with the problem, and along the way he stumbles onto sphere-packing. Why do pomegranate seeds have twelve flat sides? Because in the growing pomegranate fruit the seeds are squeezed into the smallest possible space. Start with spherical seeds, pack them as efficiently as possible with each sphere touching twelve neighbors. Then squeeze. Voila! And so he goes, convincing us, for example, that the bee's honeycomb has six sides because that's the way to make honey cells with the least amount of wax. His book is a tour-de-force of playful mathematics.
In the end, Kepler admits defeat in understanding the snowflake's six points, but he thinks he knows what's behind all of the beautiful forms of nature: A universal spirit pervading and shaping everything that exists. He calls it nature's "formative capacity." We would be inclined to say that Kepler was just giving a fancy name to something he couldn't explain. To the modern mind, "formative capacity" sounds like empty words.
We can do somewhat better. For example, we explain the shape of snowflakes by the shape of water molecules, and we explain the shape of water molecules with the mathematical laws of quantum physics. Since Kepler's time, we have made impressive progress towards understanding the visible forms of snowflakes, crystals, rainbows, and newborn babes by probing ever deeper into the heart of matter. But we are probably no closer than Kepler to answering the ultimate questions: What is the reason for the curious connection between nature and mathematics? Why are the mathematical laws of nature one thing rather than another? Why does the universe exist at all? Like Kepler, we can give it a name, but the most forthright answer is simply: I don't know.”
"The image that comes to mind is a boxing ring. There are times when you just want that bell to ring, but you're the one who's losing. The one who's winning doesn't have that feeling. Do you have the energy and strength to face life? Life can ask more of you than you are willing to give. And then you say, 'Life is not something that should have been. I'm not going to play the game. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to call "out". There are three positions possible. One is the up-to-it, and facing the game and playing through. The second is saying, "Absolutely not. I don't want to stay in this dogfight." That's the absolute out. The third position is the one that says, "This is mixed of good and evil. I'm on the side of the good. I accept the world with corrections. And may the world be the way I like it. And it's good for me and my friends." There are the only three positions."
"I have been a long-time fan of General George S. Patton, Jr. It started when I was a kid, and my history teacher even ordered a few extra Patton films for the World War II section of U.S. history because he knew I was a Patton fan. Probably the biggest accolade that he could have was from the Germans who he fought, one of whom said simply, “He is your best.”
For whatever reason, though, I had never read "The Patton Papers 1940-1945." On a whim a week or so ago, I ordered a copy, and I cracked it open at lunch the day it arrived before I headed back to work. I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed a book more. I’m not sure The Mrs. feels the same way, since when I’m reading it, about every five minutes I’ll come up with a snippet to read to her. She keeps saying, “Thanks, but no tanks.”
The book itself is a compilation of diary entries, letters Patton wrote, and orders he gave in the period from 1940-1945. To have the ability to read through those are amazing, even when he just writes about the mundane aspects of his life or his son having trouble in math at school. I didn’t start at the beginning, I just picked it up and started reading at a more-or-less random spot, which coincided with his taking command of American troops in North Africa. And then I couldn’t put it down.
While many passages have resonated with me, I decided to write about one in particular today. It consists of his instructions that were provided to his officers prior to launching Operation Husky, where he and Montgomery launched a naval invasion of Sicily. Spoiler alert: he did pretty well. This is one passage I’ll make sure to share with Pugsley and The Boy because there is so much truth not only in a military sense, but in life to what Patton wrote on June 5, 1943. Stuff in italics is Patton’s (from page 261 and page 262). My comments are in plain text.
"Discipline is based on pride in the profession of arms, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence. Discipline must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of battle or the fear of death.
Discipline can only be obtained when all officers are imbued with the sense of their lawful obligation to their men and to their country that they cannot tolerate negligence. Officers who fail to correct errors or praise excellence are valueless in peace and dangerous misfits in war."
Discipline starts with a single individual. In my case, it doesn’t come from without, it must come from within. Getting up on time. Paying the bills. Having a sense of purpose in life. It has been my observation that people will do what you want when you’re looking if they fear punishment. If they are being judged, they might do it when others are around. When it becomes a value, however, they do it every time, all the time, even when no one is looking, and even when no one will ever know.
"Officers must assert themselves by example and by voice."
People watch. And people listen. Letting things slide never creates excellence.
"There is no approved solution to any tactical situation."
There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is: “To so use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum of time.”
Obviously, war isn’t a game, but the lesson for life outside of attacking Sicily in 1943 still exists. And it’s not to use Claymores (FRONT TOWARD ENEMY) and a mortar barrage to open a business meeting. But I have been involved in business and life situations where time was of the essence, and being polite just had to go out the window.
"Never attack [enemy] strength, [but rather his weakness]..."
"You can never be too strong. Get every man and gun you can secure provided it does not delay your attack..."
"Casualties vary directly with the time you are exposed to effective fire... Rapidity of attack shortens the time of exposure..."
"If you cannot see the enemy, and you seldom can, shoot at the place he is most likely to be..."
"Our mortars and our artillery are superb weapons when they are firing. When silent, they are junk – see that they fire!"
One thread that runs through Patton’s writing and actions is his devotion to attacking. Defending wasn’t something that he was interested in. In life, I think that attitude is required. It’s easy to give up, it’s easy to fall into the trap that there’s nothing more to do, nothing more to gain. It’s similar to having all A’s on my eighth-grade report card and deciding to coast on that for the rest of my life.
Potential can only be realized if we push ourselves, and we can only push on the attack. So, attack life like a poodle going after a pork chop, up to the very last breath.
"Never take counsel of your fears. The enemy is more worried than you are. Numerical superiority, while useful, is not vital to successful offensive action. The fact that you are attacking induces the enemy to believe that you are stronger than he is..."
"A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution ten minutes later..."
"IN CASE OF DOUBT, ATTACK ..." "Again, attack. But the additional thought is added: don’t listen to your fears. Fear is something that will paralyze even a strong man. And from my experience, the best way to get over fears and avoid the paralysis that comes with them is to take action. What action? Any action that leads you toward your goal. Even the smallest action often sets off a cascade of following actions that lead to...success."
"Mine fields, while dangerous, are not impassable. They are far less of a hazard than artillery concentrations..."
"Speed and ruthless violence on the beaches is vital. There must be no hesitation in debarking. To linger on the beach is fatal."
We are going to run into problems. Some of them huge. Some of them of our own making. The idea is to push through. The Mrs. and I watched a kid on the local wrestling team that was just awful in terms of skills, experience, and well, brains. But, he’d get it in his head that he could win, and he would go out and win some very, very unlikely matches. Why? He didn’t hesitate. He jumped on the chances he made.
I’ll probably have a few more of these as I go through the book. And, as much fun as it is to read, I’m going to take my time to enjoy it. I’d best show a little bit of discipline... Patton might be watching."
''As Americans, we must ask ourselves: Are we really so different? Must we stereotype those who disagree with us? Do we truly believe that ALL red-state residents are ignorant racist fascist knuckle-dragging NASCAR-obsessed cousin-marrying roadkill-eating tobacco juice-dribbling gun-fondling religious fanatic rednecks; or that ALL blue-state residents are godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving left-wing communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts?''
"A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet for sale, who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing, cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. "
“I can’t convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.”
- Kenneth Smith
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
"Our politicians in Washington are literally destroying our future. But do you see anyone out in the streets protesting their calamitous policies? By now, you have probably heard that the U.S. national debt has hit 31 trillion dollars. To be more precise, as I write this article the U.S. national debt is currently sitting at $31,142,591,307,260.01. It is the largest single debt in the history of the world, and given enough time it would completely destroy our economy all by itself. Unfortunately, hardly anyone in Washington seems to care about our rapidly exploding debt at this point.
In the old days, the Republicans would at least put on a show for us. They would huff and puff about the national debt but then give the Democrats virtually all of the spending that they wanted anyway. But now they have figured out that such a charade is no longer necessary, because most of their constituents just don’t care.
So most of our politicians no longer even pretend to care about fiscal responsibility. In recent years they have been on the biggest borrowing and spending binge in our entire history, and there are no indications that they ever plan to stop. They borrow and spend trillions upon trillions of dollars, and they expect you, your children, and your grandchildren to pay it back. Of course that will never happen.
We are never going to pay back the 31.1 trillion dollars that we have borrowed. Instead, we are just going to push the accelerator all the way to the floor until we finally go off a cliff. During the month of August alone, the U.S. government ran a $219.6 billion budget deficit…"Some things never change - such as the federal government spending more money than it has month after month after month. August was no different. The US government ran a massive $219.6 billion budget deficit last month, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement. That nudged out July as the second-largest monthly deficit in fiscal 2022."
Sadly, I didn’t hear of anyone in Washington giving a major speech when that happened, because the national debt is not even considered to be an important national issue today. But our entire standard of living depends on the value of the U.S. dollar. Having the default reserve currency of the world has been such a massive advantage for the United States, and now we are frittering it away. The rest of the world can see what we are doing. We are transforming our currency into toilet paper, and it is just a matter of time before it completely collapses.
Today, our politicians are stealing more than 200 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day. Just think about that. The old geezers in Washington know that they are near the end of the road. So they know that they will never have to pay any of this money back. But they get to spend it on whatever they want.
Of course it was inevitable that all of this borrowing and spending would eventually create rampant inflation, and now we are facing the worst inflation crisis in our history. Yes, even worse than the Jimmy Carter era of the 1970s. The Federal Reserve is rapidly hiking interest rates in a desperate attempt to get inflation under control, but that is causing all sorts of problems.
For one thing, the interest payments on our national debt will soon exceed a trillion dollars a year…"According to the Congressional Budget Office, this is exactly what will happen. It projects interest payments will triple from nearly $400 billion in fiscal 2022 to $1.2 trillion in 2032. And it’s worse than that. The CBO made this estimate in May. Interest rates are already higher than those used in its analysis."
Unfortunately, I don’t think that the current system will survive until 2032. Previous generations handed us the keys to the reserve currency of the world and the greatest economic machine that the planet had ever witnessed. Sadly, we took those precious gifts and completely destroyed them. As a society, we have lost all regard for long-term consequences.
Let me give you another example. Joe Biden just announced that he will be releasing more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve…“At the president’s direction, the Department of Energy will deliver another 10 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the market next month as part of the historic 180-million-barrel release the President ordered back in March. And the President will continue to direct SPR releases as necessary,” she said."
What an incredibly foolish thing to do. It is only supposed to be used in the event of a national emergency, and what Biden has decided to do is absolutely unprecedented. The fact that things are not looking good for his party in November is not an “emergency”, and Senator Tom Cotton is not amused…"Whoa, say critics, including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). “Well, it’s called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It’s not the political petroleum reserve,” Cotton told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Wednesday night."
We are going to need that oil someday. But thanks to Biden, most of it will already be gone. If we found ourselves in the middle of a major war, the worldwide flow of energy supplies would suddenly be greatly restricted. That is the sort of emergency scenario that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was designed for.
Sadly, thanks to the warmongers in the Biden administration we may soon find ourselves fighting wars with Russia, China, North Korea and Iran simultaneously. Most Americans have no idea what is going on behind the scenes. Things with North Korea are getting really, really tense, and a major war in the Middle East could erupt at any time.
World War 3 has already started, but thankfully we haven’t gotten to the part where billions of people die just yet. Unfortunately, our current crop of leaders couldn’t care less about the long-term future of humanity. So they continue to pursue policies that are incredibly self-destructive, and we are all going to pay a very great price for their foolishness."
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger Marketplace, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
"Ukraine has reportedly struck the Crimean Bridge. The bridge, which serves as the only land link between Crimea and the Russian mainland has been a symbol of Moscow ever since it annexed the peninsula in 2014. Residents reported heavy explosion around 6 am local time on Saturday, after which the bridge was seen to be ablaze with some of its portions caving in and collapsing. Visuals that have now flooded social media show a train on fire. That’s what Russia is saying caused the fire. Russian officials in Crimea are saying the fuel tanker caught fire. What that doesn’t explain is why this would happen only if a train were burning. Watch to know more."
"Here we go again. Gas prices bottomed out and are rising again. This will feed more public anger going into the November elections. The Biden administration is blaming… OPEC. It’s like he is trying to recreate the 1970s. The Putin excuse is wearing thin. But even in the midst of this, the crazy White House still emphasizes that it is trying to shepherd a “transition” away from fossil fuels toward clean energy. Electric cars are only a way station before they try to concoct a car with sails and solar panels. In other words, these people are nuts.
Sorry to put it that way but there is no need to sugarcoat things when industrial civilization is being deliberately and systematically dismantled.
How close are price controls? Closer than we like to admit. There is essentially nothing to stop them. The dictator of Belarus was one of the few national leaders in the world who did not lock down for a virus but he has locked down for energy prices. The government tweeted out that any increase in prices will be punishable by law. Ask yourself: What precisely stops other European governments from doing the same? We already see steps in this direction in the U.K. It could easily happen in the U.S.
An October Surprise? Maybe this is the October surprise everyone is expecting. Other candidates include a new disease panic, a climate change lockdown, more anti-Putin frenzy or possibly nuclear war. Did I just write the words “nuclear war”?
I almost cannot believe it myself and I hesitate even to raise the topic. Truth is that Biden did just the other day. Of course, he warned that Putin might start one. The trouble is that just talking about it makes the unthinkable more thinkable. Well, a nuclear exchange would certainly be one way to distract the public from a failing economy. The main point is that this crazy person said the grim word “Armageddon.” Yep, he actually said it. That means he is thinking it. Was it a gaffe? Maybe. Regardless, it is terrifying.
Back to the 1930s… Let’s move on from the 1970s and go back to the 1930s. The economy fell into a depression in 1930 but it didn’t need to be long and protracted. It could have been like 1922–23: short and uneventful. Incredibly, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act to begin the process of making matters much worse. As the Depression deepened, and the Hoover administration floundered around with goofy policies across the board, the crisis worsened.
Franklin Roosevelt campaigned on balancing the budget and legalizing beer and liquor. The public loved it and he won in 1932. Upon taking office, he first legalized drinking. Fine. Then he embarked on a wicked money and banking reform. He put banks on a holiday and issued an executive order demanding that everyone turn in their private holdings of gold in exchange for paper. This was for the good of the country, he said, and all patriots must comply or go to jail.
Inspired by Benito Mussolini in Italy, FDR decided to try out central planning. He gathered all the biggest businesses, labor unions and government bureaucrats together and cobbled together a great plan to dig the country out of the Great Depression. Years went by and matters only got worse. His trick to save the country didn’t work.
Resorting to the Unthinkable: By 1938, with Europe at war, FDR started thinking the unthinkable. Maybe entering this conflict could fix his economic and political problems at home. Many in the anti-war movement at the time - right and left - suspected this was his motivation all along. Poking and provoking Japan finally led to the attack on Pearl Harbor, which served as a great event to finally get the U.S. to do what many people said the country should never do again.
I’m not offering an opinion on the intervention either way, only to say that the war was good for FDR. The Great Depression persisted but by then there were bigger problems. And so it has been ever since. Every president in trouble thinks about how war could actually be a great help. This is a massive danger.
The Great Depression did not really end until 1948, when recovery was finally allowed to happen. Beaten and exhausted, the American people looked back over the previous 15 years and just did their best to forget the whole thing. FDR emerged as a hero and got his profile pic put on the dime that eventually came to be devalued just like freedom itself.
Unpopular Presidents Are Dangerous: We find ourselves in a very dangerous place. An entire political party could be wiped out come November. They know this to be true. No political party is going to retire with grace. Something will happen to save this vast network of graft and the administrative state with which it is connected and depends.
Maybe it will be a banking crisis. The mess in housing is already starting to hurt financial institutions holding the mortgage debt. Too much in the way of a housing crash could lead to a repeat of 2008, ultimately proving macroeconomist Peter Schiff correct that the last time was just a warm-up.
We have so far been spared a liquidity crisis in banking and finance but we cannot rule it out. Controls on cash withdrawals would be something that Biden would jump at in a heartbeat. It would provide an excuse to intensify surveillance and put all those new tax agents to work.
All of these pale in comparison to the prospect of nuclear war. There must be some reason that the U.S. keeps sending billions to shore up the Ukrainian government in its struggle over the eastern border with Russia. In normal times, this struggle would not be worth any attention from the U.S... In this sense, it reminds me of Bush Sr.’s intervention when Iraq tangled with Kuwait over oil rights. He turned that into a moral crusade for one reason only: to send a signal to the world that the Cold War imperial state would forever remain internationally engaged.
What’s worse than rising gas prices? Nuclear armageddon. Leave it to this bunch in D.C. to make us feel grateful for the current egregious pain given the legitimate fear we have of something unthinkably worse."
"20 Signs Walmart Is Falling Apart Before Our Eyes"
by Epic Economist
"As the U.S. moves towards another recession, Walmart's empire is silently crumbling down. When you're the world's biggest retailer, even a one percent drop in earnings can be translated into billions of dollars in losses. But profits are down by almost a quarter compared to a year ago, which means that the big-box retailer's woes are far worse than anyone would've imagined. For decades, Walmart was the company competitors feared most, but new numbers show that the retailer has been falling behind in recent years. Walmart has begun to lose popularity amongst consumers, and major holes are starting to form in its business. For the most part, the company has hidden its financial struggles from the headlines because the problems it face are different across the world, which allows the superstore chain to mask itself in the overall picture.
The news gets worse. "Profits," it turns out, are the least of Walmart's problems. The retailer didn't generate any cash from operations at all this past quarter, instead consuming $3.8 billion. Add in $3.5 billion in capital spending, and Walmart's free cash flow for Q3 was a dishearteningly negative $7.3 billion. And the company hadn't experienced negative cash from operations since Q3 1995, more than a quarter-century ago, according to historical data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence.
And more financial losses may be coming for Walmart: The IBD Stock Checkup shows that earnings have actually fallen by an average of 4.5% over the past three quarters. This is well short of the 25% growth sought by investors. Over the past three years, the retail chain’s monthly sales have grown by an average of 10%. That’s why its projected 4% sales growth for the final quarter of 2022 seems so unimpressive. In other words, investors are seeing Walmart stock as a no-buy right now.
Walmart traditional business model is showing persistent signs of weakness both in the U.S. and overseas. If the retail giant fails to adapt to new market trends, e-commerce competitors may crush the Walmart and push it to a downward spiral we've seen so many other retailers go down in recent years. Will the biggest retailer in the scene be a victim of the relentless retail apocalypse? That is yet to be seen. But the outlook isn't promising right now, and the last earnings report was a train-wreck that resulted in major losses right after the retail chain experiencied a pretty bad losing-streak. At the end of the day, company's demise is a mere reflection of a collapsing economy, and what we've seen so far is just the beggining of a series of defeats that lie ahead for Walmart, American consumers and our entire economy.
As Motley Fool's Travis Hoium noted, when we dig between the lines, we can rapidly see a company in serious trouble and could be the "latest in a long line of leading retailers to go from boom to bust in the blink of an eye". That's why in today's video, we compiled a series of numbers, facts and stats that prove that Walmart's best days are behind it."
"New info about the pipeline incident and USA has warned its citizens to get out now. The Canadian government has also warned hockey players to leave Russia immediately. Was the pipeline incident a cyber related incident? It has happened before. Gas prices are rising again!"
"That we can never know,” answered the wolf angrily. “That’s for the future. But what we can know is the importance of what we owe to the present. Here and now, and nowhere else. For nothing else exists, except in our minds. What we owe to ourselves, and to those we’re bound to. And we can at least hope to make a better future, for everything.”
"Have you contemplated your home galaxy lately? If your sky looked like this, perhaps you'd contemplate it more often! The featured picture is actually a composite of two images taken from the same location in south Brazil and with the same camera - but a few hours apart. The person in the image - also the astrophotographer - has much to see in the Milky Way Galaxy above.
The central band of our home Galaxy stretches diagonally up from the lower left. This band is dotted with spectacular sights including dark nebular filaments, bright blue stars, and red nebulas. Millions of fainter and redder stars fill in the deep Galactic background. To the lower right of the Milky Way are the colorful gas and dust clouds of Rho Ophiuchi, featuring the bright orange star Antares. On this night, just above and to the right of Antares was the bright planet Jupiter. The sky is so old and so familiar that humanity has formulated many stories about it, some of which inspired this very picture."
Click here to listen to my latest interview with Outer Limits.
"With or without our consent, humanity is being dragged into a horrific third world war. Martin speaks with Ryan McCormick from The Outer Limits of Inner Truth and gives a sobering assessment and forecast of how, why, and what to expect when hell on earth manifests.
Martin also discusses:
· The likelihood that Americans will be subjected to, and willingly accept a Chinese-style social credit rating system.
· What the past eight civilizations that have collapsed (with the exception of Egypt post-1250 BC) all have in common.
· If the push for green energy will fully succeed in the US or only prevail in a limited number of states.
· When China becomes the epicenter of economic activity by 2032, will it drastically increase it's sphere of influence and political ideologies the same way the US did in post World War II.
· What form of government in history was most favorable to individual rights and what nations and states will have the most freedom in the future."
"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."
“No. Not like this. I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing.”
- James T. Kirk, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan"
“Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.'”
- Carlos Castaneda, "Journey to Ixtlan"
"When The Soon To Be Mrs. and I were just dating, I was cooking something or other. I think it was eggs. I like eggs sunny side up, and don’t particularly care if they’re cooked all the way.
The Soon To Be Mrs.: “Aren’t you worried about salmonella?”
John Wilder: (Laughs in full Chad manifestation.)
The Soon To Be Mrs.: (Swoons.)
Seriously, she swooned. I’ve never seen it before in my life, but in that moment I think that was what sealed the deal, the moment in time that The Soon To Be Mrs. realized that this one is different. He’s not like the others. Here is a man who has zero fear of The Current Thing, and knows that salmonella won’t be the thing that punches his ticket out of having a functioning circulatory system.
No. I’m not afraid of salmonella. I would spit in its tiny little eyes or flagellum or tentacles and say, “Not today, my bacterium friend! My Danish-Scots-Germanic blood is far too strong for the likes of you!” And then I would attack Poland. Oh, wait, that’s been done.
I know I’m not going to die like Hemingway, and I’m not going to die like the comedy greats Belushi, Twain, or Nietzsche did. Nope. I think I’m gonna go out like Elvis. On a toilet after having eaten a fried peanut butter, jelly and bacon sandwich covered in cheddar cheese and mayo. Nope, I’m gonna die on a toilet. I mean, after all, a king should spend his last moments on the throne, right?
A lot of people worry about dying. I suppose I did, in my 20s, when I was worried about carrying out my responsibilities as a dad. Those are serious responsibilities – because those kids are going to be the legacy that I leave on Earth. That and my writing, collection of PEZ® dispensers and velvet Elvis paintings.
Again, a lot of people worry about dying. I’m not sure why. Of things that are more-or-less predetermined, that’s the big one. We’re all going to die. All of us. And I’m not sure I care.
Oh, sure, I want to live. I have no particular desire to die. If given the preference, I suppose I’m in favor of my continued heartbeat. But I don’t fear death. I don’t go to sleep at night wondering if this pain or that pain or that thing might be the symptom I look up on WebMD® that seals the deal that Wilder is going up to irritate Jesus in Heaven with bad puns.
I don’t worry about some future point when I’m going to enjoy life. I’ve achieved nearly every goal I’ve ever set for my life. End. Full stop. It’s like when a baseball game goes into extra innings, “Hey, free baseball.” And me? Free life. I’ve done nearly everything I’ve ever wanted to do.
What do you give a man who has everything? I mean, besides another bottle of wine. You give that man: Today. I’ve got Today. The only moment I live in is right now. And right now isn’t all that bad. I’m sitting in the sitting room (question: is any room I sit in, by definition, a sitting room? Discuss.) with the cool night air blowing in the window, some songs I love playing on the laptop, a cold beer by the keyboard, and the knowledge that at this moment, everything is fine.
Literally, in my life, Every Single Thing Is Fine. I could go into details, but you already know how awesome I am. So, I live for today? Hell no.
t’s the inversion of beauty: it consists of being positive about, well, any old thing that feels good. I could list these “pleasures”, but you know the list as well as I do. We see it every day, with vice being paraded as virtue, and the continual demand going out for people to celebrate it, because, “Can’t you see? This horrid abomination that no healthy society or people in the entire history of the world has tolerated, iS BeAuTIfUL!” No, I think living a life built on YOLO is one doomed to fail – inevitably it will fail based on two reasons: it is materialism or a faith based on the nihilism of the material world writ large, and it is based on needs, like youth, wealth, sensation, or, yes, even life. So, not YOLO.
One thing I’ve tried to preach is outcome independence. Indeed, since the final outcome of life on Earth is fixed, all the intermediate steps lead there. Instead, I try to focus on virtue and faith. I write not because of YOLO, and not because it’s easy. Some nights it’s hard as hell to get the post to “close” and feel right. There are dozens of posts where, even after 1600 words, I still didn’t say exactly what I meant to say. That’s okay, it’s on me. I’m learning, and if I were perfect at this, I wouldn’t have more work to do.
For me, it’s the work. It’s getting better. It’s finding ways to add value to those people around me. There are those who pull their weight in the world, and those that don’t. I want to be one that pulls his weight, who has contributed as much as I can to helping my family and the wider world.
I don’t always do it. And I’m not always right, either. I’ve produced some stuff in my life that was really, really good, but not perfect. Thankfully, that’s not my mark, either, since just like immortality here on Earth, searching for perfection is a lonely and silly pastime. I want to make the world a better place with my family (first) and my work (now second) guided by God. And I want people to laugh hard while learning and thinking about the things I write.
The beauty of this is to win, all I have to do is the best that I can do every day. To win? All I have to do is be the best person I can be every day. See? Each night, I go to bed and sleep soundly if I know, in that day, that I gave it my all. Do I take time for me? Sure. But that’s not the goal – I serve a higher purpose.
So, what do I fear? Not death. It’s coming whether I like it or not, and, honestly, I’d rather not return my body in factory-fresh condition – I’d like all the parts to fail at once. On the toilet. I think Elvis would have wanted it that way. Oh, wait... I wonder if Elvis ate eggs sunny-side-up? Hang on, I’m sure he did. Elvis ate everything."
"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we do not know."
"Simply because you do not have evidence that something
exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist."
"Learn to say 'I don't know.' If used when appropriate, it will be often."
Baltimore, Maryland - "Yesterday came an amusing news item over the Reuters wire: "Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday he was imposing a ban on consumer price rises in response to "exorbitant" inflation across the economy, state media reported. "From today, any price increase is prohibited. Prohibited!," the state-run Belta news agency quoted Lukashenko as saying in a meeting of government ministers. "It starts today - not from tomorrow, but from today, so that prices cannot be inflated during the course of today," Lukashenko said."
“Well, that ought to fix that,” joked our colleagues Dan Denning and Joel Bowman. ‘How dumb can these people be’ is a frequent question here at the Bonner Private Research headquarters. We plumb the depths of it; but our cord is never quite long enough. Everybody knows that price controls don’t work. Always and everywhere, they are followed by shortages… and ultimately higher prices. But heck, it’s a New Era, right?
Old School Rules: In the 1990s, we were invited to Belarus to advise the government, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We sat around an immense meeting table with some immense Belarusians, whom we took for the leaders of the new country. But after a few rounds of vodka, it was obvious to both sides of the table that we were ill-suited to the job. On our side, we had no clue what to tell them. And on theirs, they wouldn’t have been able to implement our advice, even if it had been good.
The old rules and patterns still applied. You still couldn’t get something for nothing… regression to the mean (going back to normal) was still a good bet… and the more government did to make things better, the worse they would get. “Why don’t you guys just protect private property… back your money with gold… lock up murderers and thieves… and otherwise leave people alone…” we suggested. But the context – a crumbling communist empire – was so different… surely, there was no precedent. Our advice went nowhere. And the inflation rate now in Belarus – 19%.
A lot of things in life – though not novel to history – are certainly new to us. You only die once, for example. You don’t get a chance to practice. Or learn from your mistakes. Many people have done it before, but for you… this is your first time. You just have to do your best… And in today’s markets, we have a whole new context. Completely new to anyone under the age of 60. You had to be an adult in 1980 to have seen anything like it. Now, the Fed can no longer support the economy or the stock market; any attempt to stimulate them will only cause more inflation. Let’s review.
Fatal Conceits: We’ve all spent most of our lives in an age of plenty. After WWII, it seemed like it would be onwards and upwards forever. Growth, prosperity and progress seemed like they were in the bag. It was a period of great conceit too. Americans came to feel that they were a special people. “We see further,” is how the now deceased and very dispensable Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, put it. We are the “indispensable nation.”
The conceit grew out of power… and along with them both came fantasy thinking, corruption and debt. There was no war we thought we couldn’t win, though we won none. Overseas, we claimed the right, for us and for us alone, to invade, to assassinate, and to execute – no judge or jury necessary. And at home, we aimed to abolish poverty and to forbid the use of drugs that lacked FDA approval.
The elite professed to be working for ‘equity’ and ‘diversity’ even as they grew further and further removed from the common people, whom they regarded as deplorable. They aimed to turn Iraq into an American-model democracy, complete with ATMs on every corner and Sunday night football. And though all their previous crusades ended in woeful failure, they still believed that they do the most remarkable things – turning women into men, and men into women… and adjusting the thermostat for the entire planet.
But it was money that undid them. Their boondoggles, illusions, and jackass programs were expensive. By 1971, the Nixon administration shifted to a pure-paper money system (with nothing to limit the quantity of money or protect its value) and the trap was set.
The New Old Era: The Fed and its member banks funded the federal government by expanding the money supply, lending out newly created dollars – especially to the US government. GDP growth slowed. But debt growth sped up. In 1980, US debt was still under $1 trillion. Now, it is $31 trillion… and growing fast. By the 21st century, the whole economy was so tricked-up on debt and delusion that productivity declined. Real wages went down. The Fed pumped up financial assets… while ‘globalization’ brought China into the world economy to help keep down consumer prices.
Come 2021, and the gods seemed to turn against the USA. Consumer prices were rising at the fastest pace in 40 years. The Fed had to put its money-printing on pause. And later, when inflation didn’t disappear, it had to ‘tighten’ – reversing the policies and profligacy that created the Bubble Epoch. No more bailouts. No more stimmies. No more zero interest rate lending. And no more bull market.
And here we are, in a ‘new era.’ It is new to most Americans. But it is actually a very old era. Every fake boom is followed by a bust. And every attempt to ‘print your way out of it,’ is followed by worse inflation. The best way out is to follow the advice we gave the Belarusians. They didn’t take it. Neither will the USA."
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Joel’s Note: As you might have seen the US National Debt officially surpassed $31 trillion earlier this week. There’s a lot of hang wringing and finger pointing among both Republicans and Democrats, but they needn’t waste their energy… there’s more than enough blame to share between both parties.
It took the republic roughly two hundred years to amass its first $1 trillion in debt, a bar it cleared back in October, 1981. Since then, it’s been off to the races, with each successive president adding more and more to the total debt. Reagan piled on $1.8 trillion… George H.W. Bush another $1.5 trillion… and Bill Clinton $1.4 trillion. Then came the heavy hitters…
Between 2001 and 2009, George W. Bush added $6.1 trillion to the national burden, before Barack Obama said “hold my beer,” and dropped another $8.3 trillion on top. Then came Donald Trump, the man who was going to march on down to Washington DC and “drain the swamp.” During his four years at the helm, the national debt grew by a whopping $8.2 trillion… almost as much as it did under his predecessor, only in half the time.
Then, when the moment came for Mr. Trump to leave office, sky high, multi-trillion dollar deficits were essentially par for the course…So high had the national debt piled that it was almost impossible to see the peak with the naked eye. Earlier this year, in his State of the Union speech, Mr. Biden even crowed that he would be “the only president ever to cut the deficit by more than one trillion dollars in a single year.” It was a bit like saying, “I’ll be the first ever smoker to reduce my daily intake by 100 cigarettes!” One had to be a serious addict in the first place in order to cut so much from the fix. And it’s not as though our aging smoker is a paragon of health…
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates: “The Biden Administration has enacted policies through legislation and executive actions that will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits between 2021 and 2031 [...] This is on top of the trillions of dollars we were projected to borrow before President Biden took office.” $31 trillion is a big number, to be sure… but one gets the feeling we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet…"
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