Douglas Macgregor,1/28/23:
"Russia Mobilizes 700,000 Troops for a New Offensive"
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So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, January 28, 2023
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Do you see the bat? It haunts this cosmic close-up of the eastern Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula itself is a large supernova remnant, the expanding debris cloud from the death explosion of a massive star. While the Veil is roughly circular in shape and covers nearly 3 degrees on the sky toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus), NGC 6995, known informally as the Bat Nebula, spans only 1/2 degree, about the apparent size of the Moon. That translates to 12 light-years at the Veil's estimated distance, a reassuring 1,400 light-years from planet Earth.
In the composite of image data recorded through narrow band filters, emission from hydrogen atoms in the remnant is shown in red with strong emission from oxygen atoms shown in hues of blue. Of course, in the western part of the Veil lies another seasonal apparition: the Witch's Broom Nebula."
Chet Raymo, “The Silence”
“The Silence”
by Chet Raymo
“The hiding places of my power
Seem open; I approach, and then they close;
I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,
May scarcely see at all, and I would give,
While yet we may, as far as words can give,
A substance and a life to what I feel…”
“These few lines from Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” leapt off the page at me. They capture well enough what my life has become. All those years of teaching, of writing in the Boston Globe, were years of sharing public knowledge, knowledge that had been vetted by the scientific community. The work was not about me. The teacher was me, the writer was me, but what I taught and wrote was reliable, consensus knowledge of the world. A student in my classes or a reader of my newspaper columns would have been hard pressed to know my politics or my religion or the nature of the questions that came in the darkest hours of the night. And that is the way it should have been; that was my homage to objectivity.
Those were valuable years, years of building up a sturdy polder in the sea of mystery, a place to stand with a firmness of foot. And now, in retirement, with time on my hands- and on my mind- I find myself more inclined to explore what Wordsworth called “the hiding places of my power.” I approach. They close. I touch with my hand the surface of the pond that Pat wrote about the other day; my hand comes out of the depths to meet me. I see by glimpses. It is, I suppose, a kind of forgetting. With the forgetting comes a certain freshness. My fingertip touches the surface of the world from above and from below, and concentric circles spread outwards, rippling, like a soundless sound, and I struggle, in words, as best I can, to give a substance and a life to what I feel.
This does not mean, I trust, that I am going soft, finding supernaturalist religion or getting all New Age squishy as “age comes on.” I keep my feet planted on solid fact and read my weekly “Science” and “Nature” along with my Wordsworth. No, it is rather a simple freedom to explore the hiding places, attending to private particulars as opposed to public universals, listening for the small voice that whispers from the nooks and crannies of yet unassimilated reality.
There is a passage in “The Prelude” where a young Boy (the poet?), standing in evening air by the glimmering lake, makes a mimic hooting with his hands to his mouth and the owls answer. Twooo-twooo. And the reply. Twooo-twooo. Then, unaccountably, the answers cease. And in the silence the boy becomes more keenly aware than ever of water, rocks, and woods, and mountain torrents, “that uncertain heaven, received into the bosom of the steady lake.” Thoreau has something similar. He rejoiced in owls; their hoot, he said, was a sound well suited to swamps and twilight woods. The interval between the hoots was a deepened silence, suggesting, to Thoreau, “a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized.” It is that that I now attend: the deepened silence between the hoots.”
"Challenges..."
"When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not yet ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. "
- Paulo Coelho
"People Can’t Stop Spending"
Fill screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 1/28/23:
"People Can’t Stop Spending"
"The rich are getting richer. The poor are getting poorer.
The worst part is that people are in debt more than ever."
Comments here:
The Poet: Arthur O’Shaughnessy, "Music and Moonlight"
"Music and Moonlight"
"We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone seabreakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems…
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Ninevah with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth."
- Arthur O’Shaughnessy
○
"The Dreamers Of Dreams..."
"The division of one day from the next must be one of the most profound peculiarities of life on this planet. We are not condemned to sustained flights of being, but are constantly refreshed by little holidays from ourselves. We are intermittent creatures, always falling to little ends and rising to new beginnings. Our soon-tired consciousness is meted out in chapters, and that the world will look quite different tomorrow is, both for our comfort and our discomfort, usually true. How marvelously too night matches sleep, sweet image of it, so nearly apportioned to our need. Angels must wonder at these beings who fall so regularly out of awareness into a fantasm-infested dark. How our frail identities survive these chasms no philosopher has ever been able to explain."
- Iris Murdoch
"How to Handle the Beast"
"How to Handle the Beast"
by David Cain
"The Beast showed up around Christmas last year, and stayed till April. During those months it was difficult to get anything done, or believe getting things done was a thing I could still do. You might know the Beast too. It has many forms. The Doom-Anxiety Beast. The Regret Beast. The Despair Beast. The Shame Beast. Psychologists have names for some of them.
Whatever the form, the Beast has certain characteristics. It saps your sense of agency and forward motion. It robs you of what might feel like your birthright: the basic ability to function to society’s standards. You lose the sense that you can steer the boat. The Beast may stay away for weeks or months or years. Then one Thursday afternoon, when one too many things goes wrong, it darkens your doorway again and you know that life might be different for a while.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s a good thing. Many of you do though. For what it’s worth, I’ll share what I’ve learned about tangling with the Beast.
As you already know, the Beast especially likes to visit during the holidays, or sometimes just after. It takes advantage of stress, isolation, and any sense of non-belonging you already feel. It wants to reduce you to a robotic pattern of habits and appetites. However, it can never quite steal that last bit of agency from you. There is always enough wriggle-space beneath it to do small, defiant things. This bit of space is what we will use to handle the Beast.
Assume your full height: Physically, I mean. The Beast can’t stop you from standing up straight, but it sure doesn’t want you to. It wants you to lower your head and drop your shoulders forward, especially in public – otherwise you might start to consider the possibility that you are in some way worthy, or even formidable. Upright posture doesn’t just symbolize resilience in the face of suffering, it creates the resilience. Be your full height. Return to it again and again.
Remember that the Beast is survivable: The Beast’s presence feels like you’ve been evicted from normal life, at least for now. Nothing is stable, and you can’t do what you need to do. It feels like you can’t possibly live at all until the Beast is gone.
Human history proves this is false. While the Beast can’t be ignored or destroyed, it can be lived with, and it has been. Human beings have cohabited with Beasts forever, often for years at a time. Life still happens during those years. Choices are still made, and good things are still accomplished.
What I’m trying to say is that taking action and finding meaning are possible even while the Beast is present. The conditions are different, but you still have agency. Life is still happening, and it still counts.
Discover the power of small acts of defiance: Whenever you feel the Beast sapping your will, do something – anything – that will improve your situation in even the smallest way. Straighten a crooked picture. Put all your stray pencils into a cup. The point isn’t so much to get things done, it’s to exercise the small bit agency you do have. One little act of defiance proves to both you and the Beast that it cannot clamp down on you completely. The earlier you do this in a day, the greater the effect.
Anything you do get done can weaken the Beast in a different way. By changing the state of things around you, you may be removing one of the Beast’s handholds, such as the laundry on your floor or the call you are not returning.
Lift things and clean: Physical exertion and cleaning up are the closest thing I’ve found to kryptonite for the Beast. A little of either can change a day’s trajectory, and remove more handholds.
Do a daily movement routine, even if it’s really easy. Even if it’s the equivalent of three pushups. Each one weakens the Beast, because it is an act against gravity. You are exercising your agency indirect opposition to the Beast’s inertia.
Get the house to a tidyish state if you can - a single room if you can’t - and keep it that way the best you’re able. Clutter is madness congealed.
Talk to people who know the Beast: Nothing has been as helpful for me as getting to know other people who know the Beast and are willing talk about it. There is tremendous relief to be found just describing your experience to someone:
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.”
- C.S. Lewis
The goal of talking is not to problem-solve, but to break the illusion that something has gone uniquely wrong for you.
Our species knows the Beast well, but we don’t talk about it much. I suppose that’s because it’s hard to win at the rat race and other public-facing status games when you admit you are suffering. But suffering less is more important."
"I Know Why You Did It..."
"There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission.
How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the government. They promised you order, they promised you peace, and all they demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent."
- "V For Vendetta", slightly modified.
Jim Kunstler, "Revolt Against the Deep State!"
"Revolt Against the Deep State!"
By Jim Kunstler
Saratoga Springs, New York - "So many calamities, quandaries and mysteries swirl in the zeitgeist that life in the USA and the rest of what passes for “Western Civ” these days feels like swimming against a rising tide of poisoned guacamole. You end up drowning the consensus about reality under the muck. Every thinking person must at least suspect that our “elites” are lying about virtually everything they have their hands in. Name something they’re not lying about, I dare you. But there’s some good news amidst all the bad. The people are beginning to wake up.
The big annual World Economic Forum meetup concluded last week with a mighty “So What?” as the world struggled with some success to get its mind right after years of relentless WEF-inspired psy-ops. Own nothing… eat bugs… great reset… yeah, right.
Get Lost! These days, fewer sovereign individuals believe their nonsense about the necessity of becoming menials for the “fittest 0.1%” of mankind who comprise the WEF’s cabal of elite “strategic partners.” News reports pegged the attendance in Davos this year at a shocking mere half of invitees. Did the absentees quail at the risk of all being together in the same auditorium (what with all those drones and missiles available on the black market)? Or could they not find enough unvaccinated pilots to fly their private jets?
By no strange coincidence, one of the WEF’s most sadistic leadership implants, PM Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, dropped out of office the same week, declaring she had “no gas left in the tank.” Old George Orwell had a pretty keen eye for the arc of history, but it never occurred to him that Big Brother would turn out to be Big Sister. Ms. Ardern was the one who said of her regime, “We will continue to be your single source of truth… Unless you hear it from us it is not the truth.”
Polls indicated her party would get thrashed in this year’s parliamentary election. Next door in equally vaxxed-to-the-max Australia, the government had to confess last week that the country had more COVID-19 deaths in the first half of January this new year than in all of 2021. Wait, what? I thought the vaxxes would solve everything.
It’ll Take a Fire Hose to Clean up the Joint: Now, finally, there are political forces gathering to oppose all this deliberate malice and deceit. Yes, they’ll need something like a fire hose to clean the joint up, but hey, you have to start somewhere. For example, Europe is finally starting to emerge from its COVID coma, France especially, where disgruntled masses marched in the streets last week, evinced growing disgust with WEF poodle Emmanuel Macron.
Great Britain has been a basket case of woke doublethink and economic tribulation. It’s crumbling over excess all-causes mortality and a public health officialdom addicted to lying. But British doctors are in revolt against the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the U.K. equivalent of the FDA. That’s a good sign.
Germany, not so much. Is it possible they really haven’t learned anything from what went on 1933–1945? But let’s give them a little more time.
And a wake-up is underway in these sore-beset United States. It was no small thing, for instance, that former “vaccine” cheerleader Scott Adams, the podcaster of the Dilbert comic strip fame, admitted pretty forthrightly that he was wrong about all that. “The thing [the unvaxxed] are not worrying about is what I have to worry about: which is what is that vaccination five years from now? All of my fancy analytics got me to a bad place.”
Advice for Elon Musk: Meanwhile, Elon Musk shocked the Twitterverse (and beyond) by confessing that he only took the vaxxes because international travel for business required it, and his second shot was a near-death experience (while his cousin developed myocarditis from it). Meanwhile, the U.N. issued a warning to him through a WEF mouthpiece, EU Commissioner for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova: "Comply and regulate speech on the platform, or else…
We have the rules which must be complied with and otherwise there will be sanctions. I think that the confidence has been weakened, and I had quite a high level of confidence when it comes to Twitter. I have to say that we worked with knowledgeable people, with layers, with sociologists, who understood that they have to behave in some decent way. Not to cause really big harm to society…”
Something tells me that Mr. Musk will invite these busybodies to take a flying you-know-what at a rolling donut. As the Tweeter @BlackFlagExpat explained: Musk can simply set up the server capacity outside of EU jurisdiction (UK, Andorra, Switz, Russia?) and move all data to those physical and virtual servers. Then lay off all European employees and stop paying rent on all leases. Nice!
Is the Deep State Taking On Water? Looks like the ship of the Deep State got some holes ripped in its hull and may be fixing to go down sometime in 2023. We have a newly installed Republican House, which has pledged to get to the bottom of Deep State shenanigans. Well, it’s time to get down to bid’ness and compel some folks to do some ‘splainin’ under oath.
First, ask Deborah Birx to ‘splain’ exactly what was going on in that White House C-19 task force. Why did the public health officers demonize early treatments with known, safe drugs and censor anyone who spoke out against their insane policies? What did the task force know about Pfizer and Moderna’s “vaccine” trials?
Ask Rochelle Walensky how come she and the CDC kept pushing mRNA shots and boosters long after a broad array of injuries and deaths presented from their use. Put Bill Gates’s butt in the chair and have him ‘splain’ the labyrinth of funding mechanisms he set up to push “vaccines” all over the globe and how his tentacles happen to penetrate into the World Health Org (WHO). Ask him if he ever had conversations with the leadership of the WHO and the World Economic Forum (WEF) about population reduction and methods for achieving it. That’s just for starters. There’s plenty more that needs some serious ‘splainin.
Rats Jumping Ship: It seems like some of the rats are jumping ship. Biden Chief of staff Ron Klain is handing over his duties to former Covid-19 “czar” Jeff Zients - who did such a swell job keeping Americans mis-and-disinformed through the heart of the “vaccine” campaign (January 2021 to April 2022). I’m sure Klaine just wants to “spend more time” with his family. Isn’t that what they always say? It’ll be interesting to see which part of the swamp he turns up next in.
Every thread of the Covid-19 narrative promulgated by this jerk, and the leaders of the CDC and FDA, are shredded, proved to be not only lies, but deadly lies. Every angle of Covid policy was wrong, and treasonously wrong. This is who will soon be, ostensibly, leading the country - since you can be sure that “Joe Biden” is not. Nobody will believe a word that Jeff Zients utters. The mainstream media is even turning against this coterie of evil nincompoops.
The sociopaths in our own government and their international managers have lost control of the ball in this game. They can insist on any sort of absurdity, but the people have stopped buying it. That’s great news!
Resentment over all this is breaking out. Nobody wants any more boosters. The running dogs of official propaganda, such as Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, await their career executions. The years of Reality Consensus Disorder draw to a close. And the counter-revolution finally begins."
"Multiple Items You Should Stock Up On At Kroger!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 1/28/23:
"Multiple Items You Should Stock Up On At Kroger!"
"With Grocery Prices skyrocketing across the country, we are here at Kroger to look at multiple items that everyone should be stocking up on. It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
"The Nuclear War That We Have Been Relentlessly Warned About Is Now Right On Our Doorstep"
"The Nuclear War That We Have Been Relentlessly
Warned About Is Now Right On Our Doorstep"
by Michael Snyder
"Once the nukes start flying, there will be no going back. So I hope that you all understand that we are playing for all the marbles here. Sadly, our leaders don’t seem to get it. They just keep escalating the conflict in Ukraine, and on the other side the Russians just keep escalating matters as well. On Thursday, Russia responded to news that the U.S. and Germany would be giving highly advanced tanks to the Ukrainians by firing “a barrage of missiles and drones across the country”. The Russians are now so invested in this war that there is no way that they could ever back down. Of course the same thing is true for the Biden administration. Joe Biden has staked his presidency on winning this war, and Congress has already approved approximately 100 billion dollars in total aid for the Ukrainians. We are on a collision course with destiny, and the cataclysmic war with Russia that I have been warning about for many years is now right on our doorstep.
Donald Trump is warning that a worst case scenario is coming too. On Thursday, he posted a message that instantly made headlines all over the world…"A Truth Social post from Trump on Thursday appeared to react to the recent wave of announcements on Western tank deliveries. “FIRST COME THE TANKS, THEN COME THE NUKES. Get this crazy war ended, NOW. So easy to do!” Trump wrote.
He is quite correct. We must end this war before the nukes start flying. And actually Joe Biden once warned that we would be facing “World War 3” if we ever sent tanks into Ukraine. But now the Biden administration is trying to assure us that sending tanks into Ukraine is perfectly fine.
Look, at this point we are providing more funding for the war in Ukraine than everyone else combined, more military equipment for the war in Ukraine than everyone else combined, more ammunition for the war in Ukraine than everyone else combined, and more military intelligence for the war in Ukraine than everyone else combined. In addition, we are regularly flying Ukrainians into this country for training. Once their training is done, they are sent to the front lines where many of them will soon die.
Sadly, as long as it isn’t our boys and girls that are dying on the plains of eastern Ukraine, most Americans are simply not going to care. But the truth is that this has become our war, and the Russians understand this very clearly… “There are constant statements from European capitals and Washington that the sending of various weapons systems to Ukraine, including tanks, in no way signifies the involvement of these countries or the alliance in hostilities in Ukraine,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. “We categorically disagree with this, and in Moscow, everything that the alliance and the capitals I mentioned are doing is seen as direct involvement in the conflict. We see that this is growing.”
Over and over again, the Russians have threatened us with nuclear weapons, but for some reason we are not taking those warnings seriously. This week, the head of Russia’s lower house of parliament wrote something that should send a chill up all of our spines…"The head of Russia’s State Duma has said that the promised deliveries of additional weapons to Kyiv by Western countries could heighten the war in Ukraine to a new level that could result in a “global catastrophe.”
Vyacheslav Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel on January 22 that “if Washington and NATO countries supply weapons that will be used to strike civilian cities and attempt to seize our territories…this will lead to retaliatory measures using more powerful weapons.” The comments by the head of Russia’s lower house of parliament were broadly taken to mean nuclear weapons, and he has now joined other high-ranking Russian officials who have recently threatened a significant escalation of the unprovoked war the Kremlin launched against Ukraine 11 months ago."
But the Biden administration can’t back down now. Biden has essentially pushed all of his chips into the middle of the table and is betting everything that this war will be a success…"Biden has pinned his legacy on a major land war in Europe in which the United States has engaged in an effective proxy battle with nuclear rival Russia. This fight – which is, in a way, the last battle of the Cold War – is a test of will between an American president and a Kremlin strongman deeply influenced by the US-Soviet standoff. Biden is leading the most significant foreign policy venture at least since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Its success is critical for America’s credibility as well as his own. The magnitude of the mission is likely to overshadow much of the rest of his presidency – including the current investigation into misplaced classified documents – in world history."
So more escalations are inevitably coming. It is time for the American people to face the truth. We are at war, and there is no way out.
Recently, an extremely long line of tanks was spotted rolling across Kansas. Scenes such as this will become increasingly common in the days ahead.
If the American people truly understood what was at stake, there would be massive protests in every major U.S. city right now. But they don’t understand what is at stake. We are literally closer to nuclear annihilation than we have ever been in our entire history, and the Russians have actually been preparing for such a scenario for decades.
Unfortunately, the backbone of the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal is still made up of hopelessly outdated Minuteman missiles that first went into service back in the 1970s. Would you want to use a computer or a phone from the 1970s? Well, then why would we want to fight a nuclear war with missiles from the 1970s?
But instead of addressing that glaring need, the Pentagon is gearing up for conventional wars on multiple fronts, and this is making U.S. arms manufacturers very happy…"The Post also notes the budget proposal does far more than that: “It lays the foundation for a vastly revitalized defense industrial base – and does so with one eye on the People’s Republic of China.” 25 new mass-assembly lines will soon roll out weapons quantities “far in excess of what is required to replenish Ukraine.” 700 HIMARS systems are ordered vs. the 20 sent to aid Kyiv, and 3,600 of two kinds of anti-ship missile, more appropriate for the South China than the Black Sea."
One way or another, the military industrial complex always seems to win. But if a nuclear war erupts, there will be no winners. Only losers. Joe Biden and his minions are assuring us that the war in Ukraine can be won without nuclear weapons ever being used by either side. Do you believe them? Hopefully they are correct, because if their gamble fails it will literally mean the end of civilization as we know it today."
Friday, January 27, 2023
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the dusty molecular cloud is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region. Across the spectrum, astronomical explorations of the obscuring interstellar clouds reveal energetic shocks and outflows associated with newborn stars, including the telltale reddish glow from scattered Herbig-Haro objects hiding in the image.
Distant background galaxies also lurk on the scene, almost buried behind the dusty expanse. This alluring view spans over two full moons on the sky, or 17 light-years at the estimated distance of LDN 1251."
"15 Facts Which Prove That A Massive Economic Meltdown Is Already Happening Right Now"
Full screen recommended.
"15 Facts Which Prove That A Massive Economic
Meltdown Is Already Happening Right Now"
by Epic Economist
"Economic conditions just keep getting worse. As we prepare to enter 2023, we find ourselves in a high inflation environment at the same time that economic activity is really slowing down. And just like we witnessed in 2008, employers are conducting mass layoffs as a horrifying housing crash sweeps across the nation. Those that have been waiting for the U.S. economy to implode can stop waiting, because an economic implosion has officially arrived. The following are 15 facts that prove that a massive economic meltdown is already happening right now.
Our system of government has failed time after time, and our politicians continue to spend money on some of the most ridiculous things imaginable. No matter who we send to Washington, the story remains the same. As long as our politicians are borrowing and spending trillions of dollars that we do not have, Fed officials won’t be able to win their war against inflation.
The Fed can send interest rates into the stratosphere, but inflation will continue to remain high because our politicians insist on showering the nation with giant mountains of cash. We should all be deeply, deeply offended by what is happening, but most Americans simply do not know enough to care.
But once economic conditions get even worse than they were in 2008 and 2009, the majority of the U.S. population will become extremely angry. Of course things could have turned out much differently if we had made better decisions during the years leading up to this crisis. Unfortunately, we have run out of time to change course, and that means that a tremendous amount of pain is ahead for all of us."
"Flirting With Disaster; Economy Is Burning Down; Home Sales Crushed"
Jeremiah Babe, 1/27/23:
"Flirting With Disaster; Economy Is
Burning Down; Home Sales Crushed"
Comments here:
"15 Terrible Years of Fakery"
"15 Terrible Years of Fakery"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"Well, two years of egregious inflation has certainly made my much-needed diet much easier! I’m shopping for something to eat and thinking “no way am I going to pay that for eggs” “I can’t afford this cheese!” “Bacon is breaking the bank!” “I’ll buy this olive oil, I guess, but it had better last a year.” And so on it goes. Very clearly, prices for the food I like have essentially doubled in two years. That’s not reflected in the CPI entirely but that index is a weighted average that is usually expressed in one-year terms. It does not tell you about the reality on the ground of the products you buy.
Sure, you can still snag all the foods you should not eat. Cakes, muffins, bread, cookies (sweetened with corn syrup), pasta, and rice are still affordable. But that’s all the stuff that has caused obesity rates in America to double in a generation. It’s the healthy things that are becoming unaffordable.
Let’s just tell it like it is. Our standard of living is being smashed. Already, we’ve lost two years of life expectancy in three years. This is pretty much solid proof of the underlying reality. In the old days, this is how we knew for certain that the Soviets were lying about their great prosperity. They were not living as long. Vital statistics pretty well always tell the truth. We knew they were poor based on this alone.
So too, our own vital statistics are telling us the truth that as a country, and really as a globe, we are losing ground fast. Everyone but the very rich. Excess deaths in 2022 are far higher than they were during the pandemic of 2020. They are deaths of despair, deaths from cancer left undetected, deaths from ill health, deaths from substance abuse, deaths from murder and suicide, and deaths from vaccine injury. Death everywhere. And the dollar is dying too.
The dollar of 1913 is now worth about $0.3. And there is no end in sight. They are talking about taking away gas stoves, gas cars, and gas everything, which is a certain path toward dooming billions to further impoverishment.
There are some very bad people running the world right now. They are not embarrassed about what they have done. There will be no apologies. No trials. No justice. All the people calling for Nuremberg 2.0 are wasting their breath. Watching the World Economic Forum last week, the bad guys are riding higher than ever.
More Lockdowns: The lockdowns of 2020 were a mere warmup. They have every intention of using this strategy for anything they want to achieve. It will be for the climate, for inflation, an economic crisis, a security crisis, another bug on the loose, food shortages, you name it. Lockdowns are the new word for public policy. They got away with it once, and they will do it over and over. People ask me if they can get away with it. The obvious answer is yes.
I was just at an international airport flying into the country and flying out on a connecting flight. It took about 90 minutes to get through the whole mess. During that time, I was subjected to several rounds of facial recognition photography, passport and document checks, a contact trace for Covid, drug-sniffing dogs, pat downs and body scans, and endless amounts of time in lines in which thousands of people from all over the world stood patiently creeping along and putting up with every bit of it, none of which achieves anything except surveillance and control.
And yet, it all worked. People do it because they want to get from here to there. If you want to get what you want in life, you comply. In fact, you comply with everything. This model will be tested in the future to the ninth degree. Those who say that they won’t go along never have any realistic plan for what they would do otherwise.
Those Classified Documents: Consider the incredible brouhaha about the classified documents found at the homes of Trump, Biden, and Pence. People were not shocked that Trump would be holding some but the revelations about Biden and Pence were a shock.
People pretend as if they have done something wrong but we might ask a different question: what is the deep state hiding? And why are they so intent on hiding it that they are happy to take down a sitting president and a goody-two-shoes VP from the previous administration?
How about a populist cry to de-classify these documents? We are supposed to live in a country with some transparency such that the people have access to the goings on with the government we supposedly control. Classifying things is not really about keeping foreign enemies in the dark. It is about keeping the people in the dark. It’s stuff we are not supposed to know.
What is so terrible that we cannot know? I’m guessing that there are some 60 years worth of secrets we are not to know, dating back at least to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and through the Vietnam War and Watergate and moving all the way forward to the Iraq War, 9-11, and the origins of the virus and the relationship between the CIA and big pharma.
I almost cannot believe I’m typing these words because I’m not of a conspiracy mindset. But with the opening of Twitter with Elon Musk plus the crack research team of Tucker Carlson, plus Substack, and many private newsletters, I’ve been enlightened as to the real nature of what’s going on.
If I were going to sum it up it would be as follows. There is a deep administrative state that is global in nature, built from public and private sectors, that deeply despises the idea of democracy and rule by the people. They despise it and want to get rid of it permanently and replace it with what we used to call fascism.
Free Speech: Will they succeed? The only thing that will stop them is an informed people. We are living in a slight window of time right now in which we can have access to information. The search engines are pretty useless, having long ago signed up to be agents of the administrative state. But we do now have the single most powerful research tool on the planet: the Twitter search bar.
Try it out. I’ve learned that anyone can find anything through this means. It’s pretty much all I use now. It’s like magic. Which is why they are going to try to shut it down. They will also try to shut down Substack and many other platforms too. The only way to prevent it is to spread truth far and wide while we have the chance.
Let’s return to the opening theme of our decimated prosperity. Firings in the tech realm are increasing and will certainly get worse. Back in 2008, Ben Bernanke set the U.S. on a course toward 15 years of fakery with zero interest rates. That massively distorted the financial sector, the corporate sector, and the culture at large.
This has all come to an end with the higher rates designed to get inflation under control. And yet prices are still rising some 6% per year so there is more to come and with it recession and more layoffs and bankruptcies. If the Republicans get serious about the budget and reform, they will allow the U.S. to test default on the debt. They should.
These days, financial and personal safety comes at a premium. I’m happy to see Bitcoin on the move again and gold and oil too. These strike me as the safest bets in the coming years as the corporate sector continues to undergo massive upheaval. Not to get too maudlin about it all but this really is a turning point in civilization. It seems like they want a new Dark Age. We cannot allow that to happen."
Judge Napolitano, "Ukraine, Tanks & Putin, w/Scott Ritter"
Judge Napolitano, 1/27/23:
"Ukraine, Tanks & Putin, w/Scott Ritter"
Comments here:
o
Related:
Douglas Macgregor, 1/27/23:
"We Are Co-Belligerents"
"The Walls Are Closing In"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 1/27/23
"The Walls Are Closing In"
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "Pretend-O-Rama"
"Pretend-O-Rama"
By Jim Kunstler
“Not only is there no threat from Russia that is independent of American policy, but it is also the expansion of NATO to ‘meet the threat from Russia’ that creates the very threat that expansion was supposed to meet.” - Alistair Crooke
"I doubt that many Americans - even the masses sunk in vaccine smuggery and obsessive Trump-o-phobia - believe that America’s Ukraine project is working out for us. Of course, to even begin thinking about this debacle, you must at least suspect that our government is lying about virtually everything it has its hand in. Name something it is not lying about, I dare you.
So, what was the Ukraine project? To use that sad-ass country as a vector to disable and destroy Russia. You can’t over-state the stupidity of that objective. And why did we want to do that? Because… reasons. Oh? And what were they? Well, Russia was… there. Oh? And what was it doing? Trying to take over the world? Uh, no. It was actually just trying to be a normal European nation again after its traumatic 75-year-long experiment with communism, which ended in 1991.
And then, after that, coming along pretty well under Mr. Putin. Did I say that? Yes, I did, because it is a fact. Russia wrote new private property laws, made commerce legal again, and allowed its citizens to do business. Russia wasn’t threatening any other nations, most particularly its former province, Ukraine. It had even invited Ukraine to be a sovereign member of its trade association, the customs union, with a bunch of other regional states who had rational interests in good regional relations. That’s what set off the maniacs at the US State Department - under Secretary John Kerry, a.k.a. the haircut-in-search-of a-brain - who, in 2014, decided to overthrow Ukraine’s government.
The project since then was to use the US-controlled Ukraine government to antagonize Russia and, finally, to draw Russia into a military operation intended, SecDef Lloyd Austin said more than once, “to weaken Russia.” Well, everything we’ve done there, from eight years of shelling the Donbas, to kicking Russia out of the West’s banking system, to pouring billions of US dollars into Ukraine’s corrupt government, has only strengthened Russia internally, earned the approbation of many other nations who object to US interference in their regions, and steered poor Ukraine into the graveyard of failed states.
We are losing this unnecessary proxy war about as steadily as possible, and actually making Russia look good in the process. Russia could have ended the war in five minutes by turning Kiev into an ashtray, but it spent the first eight months of the operation trying to avoid busting up Ukraine’s infrastructure, so as not to turn it into a failed state (that would present new and worse problems). Mr. Putin made many overtures to negotiate an end to the conflict, all rejected by Ukraine, the US, and its NATO “partners.”
So, now Russia is grinding on-the-ground to reduce Ukraine’s ability to continue making war by systematically killing the troops Ukraine foolishly throws into the battle line, and destroying Ukraine’s heavy weapons. Ukraine is about out of its own soldiers and weapons. Russia is maneuvering to roll over what’s left there and put an end to these pointless and needless hostilities. Contrary to US propaganda, Russia has no ambition to conquer NATO territory. Rather its aim is to restore order to a corner of the world that has been its legitimate sphere of influence for centuries - and more than once been used as a doormat for European armies to invade Russia.
Apparently, we can’t allow Russia to clean up this mess we made - or we pretend that we can’t, even though it’s happening anyway, whether we like it or not. So now, the US promises to send thirty-one M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. A bold move, you think? Not exactly. By the time these tanks get anywhere in the vicinity of Ukraine, this war is likely to be over. Never mind the difficult business of training the few remaining eligible Ukrainian men between sixteen and sixty how to operate the tanks, and train maintenance crews, and deliver inventories of spare parts - you see where this is going — not to mention the certainty that the Russians will simply blow them up as fast as they appear on the premises. Anyway, a measly thirty-one tanks that can barely be operated is meaningless compared to hundreds of T-72s backed by newer T-14 tanks the Russians can muster from just over their border with Ukraine.
The tank proffer is, sad to say (for the dignity of our country), a joke, kind of a last feeble pretense before the whole thing ends in ignominy for the “Joe Biden” team - whoever that actually is. The repercussions are liable to be ugly for our country, not necessarily more military trouble in other lands (which we probably lack the capacity to engage in now), but something more personal: the collapse of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and a vicious loss of purchasing power here at home. That would provoke a situation worse than the Great Depression of the 1930s, and that’s probably where things are going.
The Ukraine misadventure will disappear from America’s collective consciousness in a New York minute and a Fourth Turning jamboree of serious domestic political disorder will commence in short order. If you think “Joe Biden’s” term in office has been a disaster so far, just wait. You ain’t seen nuttin yet."
"Do You Believe..."
“Do you believe,’ said Candide, ‘that men have always massacred each other as they do today, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?”
“Do you believe,” said Martin, “that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
- Voltaire
Gregory Mannarino, "Economy Continues To Crater As Inflation Continues To Rise!"
Gregory Mannarino, 1/27/23:
"Economy Continues To Crater As Inflation Continues To Rise!"
Comments here:
"The Middle Class Squeeze"
"The Middle Class Squeeze"
Biden's $7,400 tax on the working class while elites bank $30 trillion.
By Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman
Normandy, France - "We begin with a bleak update. The DailyCaller: "Americans Getting Poorer As Real Disposable Income Plummets Over A Trillion Dollars In 2022." "Over the course of 2022, America’s real disposable income fell to its lowest level since the 1932 Great Depression, Heritage economist EJ Antoni said Thursday… He said the 2.1% real GDP for 2022 was the slowest growth since 2016, outside the 2020 and 2021 pandemic years. The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows real disposable personal income dropped to -6.4%, data released by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows. The steep decline cost Americans over a trillion dollars in 2022, Antoni reported."
Did real incomes really fall to 1932 levels? Probably not… Let’s get the report directly from Heritage.Org: "New data released Thursday showed prices have risen 13.7% since President Biden took office, as measured by the consumer price index (CPI). The overall price level declined 0.1% last month but increased 6.5% in 2022, a year which saw four-decade-high inflation. Even as the increase in the CPI slows, many consumer staples remain highly elevated compared to the start of the Biden administration: eggs are up 189.9%, ground beef 21.1%, gasoline 44.3%, electricity 21.3%, transportation services 19.5%, and housing 11.8%."
EJ Antoni, research fellow in regional economics with The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, released the following statement Thursday on the latest data: “Biden’s presidency has been marked by excessive spending, borrowing, and printing of money by the federal government. The result has been an appalling rise in inflation to levels not seen in 40 years.
If you are wondering where the government got the trillions of dollars in extra spending over the last two years, they are taking it out of your hide right now through the hidden tax of inflation. Every time you put gas in your tank or groceries in your back seat, you are paying Biden’s inflation tax.
Prices have risen so much faster than wages that the average family has lost $6,000 in purchasing power. As the Federal Reserve belatedly raises interest rates to fight the very inflation it helped cause, interest rates are rising fast, increasing borrowing costs by $1,400. Combined with falling real wages, the average family has effectively lost $7,400 in annual income since Biden took office."
America’s Poor Middle Class: Until now, the economic story has been fairly simple. The feds spent too much. They financed excess spending with ‘printing press’ money. The result was inflation – a tax, $7,400 so far, for every family in the country.
The Fed is now working to bring consumer price inflation under control. Its higher rates have caused trillions in losses to investors and are leading to a recession, probably later this year.
Note also, that the Primary Trend has reversed. That too is easy to understand. After 40 years of rising stock and bond prices, they are now going down. And as long as the Fed continues to raise its key lending rate…and reduces the nation’s money supply…asset prices are more likely to go down than up.
In brief, the Primary Trend aims to correct the excesses of the last 20 years – the rich got too much of the money, interest rates were too low, stock prices were too high (especially the techs), flakey ‘assets’ (cryptos...NFTs) were worth billions, debts and deficits were out of control...the Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Powell Put distorted the markets…stimmie checks distorted the economy…and much more.
According to some estimates, the 2021 correction erased $30 trillion from the world’s (paper) wealth. And the yield on US 10-year Treasury bonds is now 7 times higher than it was in 2020. So you see, dear reader, God is in His Heaven, the king is on his throne…and the Fed and Mr. Market are both on the job…both bringing things back to ‘normal.’
Elites Bank 10X: But this phase is unusual. And probably temporary. It will probably end soon. Before too long, the Fed and Mr. Market will part company. The fiscal and monetary policies of the last two decades were exceptional. As we saw, above, they cost the middle class a lot of money. The aforementioned $7,400 is just the most recent and most obvious tab. Our own calculations show that the common working man has not had a real raise in nearly 50 years. The things that really matter – his food, his shelter, his energy, and his wheels – are much more expensive, requiring him to sell more of his precious time just to keep up with them.
But while the ordinary citizen was getting poorer, the rich – that is, the elite – got richer, faster than any time in US history, with nearly all the increase in wealth going to the richest part of the population. Here’s David Stockman with the figures: "The net worth of the top 1% of households increased by a staggering 192% during that 13-year period, rising from $15.6 trillion in Q4 2008 to $45.6 trillion in Q4 2021." That $30 trillion gain, however, was 10X more than the $3 trillion gain attributable to the bottom 50% of households.
Naturally, the feds want to keep the show on the road. That is how they win the support and admiration of their elite brethren…it’s their source of campaign contributions, bribes and sinecures…and it’s how they pocket the wealth that previously belonged to the ‘The People.’ Yes…the Fed will ‘pivot.’ And that is when the next phase…much harder to understand, much more difficult to navigate…will begin. Investors will rejoice. Homeowners will see their houses rise in price. Wages will rise. The economy will appear to boom…and the middle class will get even poorer. More to come…"
Joel’s Note: Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, Powell… call it four generations of Fed Puts. And what do we see as a result of the elites’ meddling and fiddling? A massive transfer of wealth from workers to moochers… outsiders to insiders… Main Street to Wall Street. Take a look at the chart Dan Denning sent to the BPR team this morning. It shows the increase in total net worth held by the richest 1% in the country since December, 1996…
Click image for larger size.
“The total net worth of the top 1% increased by 400% from then to the peak in Q42021,” writes Dan. “From $8.6 trillion to $45.6 trillion.”
Astute readers will recognize that start date as the moment when Ayn Rand’s fallen pupil, Alan Greenspan, delivered his (in)famous “irrational exuberance” speech. Here’s the key paragraph from that talk…"Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade? And how do we factor that assessment into monetary policy? We as central bankers need not be concerned if a collapsing financial asset bubble does not threaten to impair the real economy, its production, jobs, and price stability." ~ From Alan Greenspan’s address to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Dec 5, 1996
In a classic MAD “What, me worry?” moment, Greenspan then cited the market crash of 1987 as having “few negative consequences for the economy.” Message to markets…investors…speculators: Have at it, we’ve got your back!
“What Greenspan didn’t reckon on,” observes Dan, “is what Fed puts would do to inflation, or to the gap between people who got rich on rising asset prices, and people who got poorer in real terms because their primary assets are/were their wages, and maybe their home (now subject to violent booms and busts thanks to monetary policy).”
Record inflation… violent booms and busts… and falling assets/wages… it’s exactly the kind of “negative consequences for the real economy” Americans are now dealing with."