Deuter, "Atmospheres"
Simply beautiful...
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, July 15, 2023
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this sharp telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellites of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. Their separation on the sky, less than one degree across a pretty field of view, translates to only about 35 thousand light-years at Andromeda's distance, but Andromeda itself is found well outside this frame.
Brighter and more famous satellite galaxies of Andromeda, M32 and M110, are seen closer to the great spiral. NGC 147 and NGC 185 have been identified as binary galaxies, forming a gravitationally stable binary system. But recently discovered faint dwarf galaxy Cassiopeia II also seems to be part of their system, forming a gravitationally bound group within Andromeda's intriguing population of small satellite galaxies."
"It Strikes Me..."
“It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can’t get out of, but I think this is very usual in life. There are people, particularly dumb people, who are in terrible trouble and never get out of it, because they’re not intelligent enough. It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry - or laugh.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
"It's Human Nature..."
“We’ve all heard the warnings and we’ve ignored them. We push our luck. We roll the dice. It’s human nature. When we’re told not to touch something we usually do even if we know better. Maybe because deep down, we’re just asking for trouble.”
- “Meredith Grey”, “Gray’s Anatomy”
“The Immutable Laws of Nature, and Murphy’s Other 15 Laws”
“The Immutable Laws of Nature, and Murphy’s Other 15 Laws”
by Peter McKenzie-Brown
“The Immutable Laws of Nature”
•Law of Mechanical Repair: After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you’ll have to pee.
•Law of Gravity: Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible place.
•Law of Probability: The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.
•Law of Random Numbers: If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal; someone always answers.
•Law of Variable Motion: If you change traffic lanes or checkout queues, the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now.
•Law of the Bath: When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone will ring.
•Law of Close Encounters: The probability of meeting someone you know increases exponentially when you are alongside someone you don’t want to be seen with.
•Law of the Damned Thing: When you try to prove to someone that a machine or device won’t work, it will.
•Law of Biomechanics: The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.
•Law of the Spectator: At any theatrical, musical or sporting event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, for beer, or to the toilet and who leave before the end of the performance or game. Those who occupy the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies and stay seated beyond the end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.
•Law of Coffee: As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your partner will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.
•Murphy’s Law of Lockers: When only 2 people are in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.
•Law of Plane Surfaces: The chance that a slice of marmalade toast will land face down on a floor is directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.
•Law of Logical Argument: Anything is possible when you don’t know what you are talking about.
•Law of Physical Appearance: If clothes fit, they’re ugly.
•Law of Public Speaking: A closed mouth gathers no feet
•Law of Commercial Marketing: As soon as you find a product that you really like, it will cease production or the store will stop selling it.
•Law of Psychosomatic Medicine: If you don’t feel well, make an appointment to see to the doctor and by the time you get there, you’ll feel better. If you don’t make an appointment you’ll stay sick.
“Murphy’s Other 15 Laws”
1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
2. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.3. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
4. A day without sunshine is like, well, night.
5. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
6. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.
7. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
8. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.
9. It is said that if you line up all the cars in the world end-to-end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them.
10. If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.
11. The things that come to those who wait, may be the things left by those who got there first.
12. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
13. Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries.
14. God gave you toes as a device for finding furniture in the dark.
15. When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.”
"When I See..."
"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair."
- Blaise Pascal
Ahh, but it does...
"Warning: WW3 = No More Food Trucks; You Need To Know This To Survive Famine"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 7/15/22
"Warning: WW3 = No More Food Trucks;
You Need To Know This To Survive Famine"
Comments here:
"Washington Is Begging For A Preemptive Nuclear Attack From Russia"
"Washington Is Begging For A
Preemptive Nuclear Attack From Russia"
By Paul Craig Roberts
"We have a concept of domestic security, and it's public. You can read all the reasons for nuclear arms to be used. So if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be used in accordance with our concept." - Vladimir Putin
"The Washington Dumbshits are encouraging Russia to wipe out the US in a desperate act of self-preservation. Russian lawmakers have completed an investigation into Washington’s military-related biological activities at laboratories across Ukraine on the basis of findings made public by Russia’s Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Troops over the past year. Washington is working on a “universal” genetically engineered bioweapon designed to cause severe damage to enemies comparable to that of a “nuclear winter,” a Russian parliamentary commission investigating US biolabs in Ukraine has concluded.
“The United States aims to develop a universal genetically engineered biological weapon capable of infecting not only people, but animals as well as agricultural crops. Its use involves, among other things, the goal of inflicting large-scale and irreparable economic damage on the enemy,” the commission wrote in its final report.
“The covert and targeted use of such a weapon in anticipation of a positive inevitable direct military confrontation could create a significant advantage for US forces over the adversary, even against those who possess other types of weapons of mass destruction,” the commission added. “The possession of such highly effective biological weapons creates, in the view of the US military, the real prerequisites to change the nature of contemporary armed conflicts.” - https://sputnikglobe.com/
The question is: what is Putin going to do? Is he going to sit on his butt as in Ukraine and let the threat to Russia widen, or will he decide to protect Russia from the Satanic Evil in Washington? At some point even a liberal Kremlin will realize that there is no mutual security to be had with a country committed to Russia’s destruction."
o
"Russia had deployed the RS-28 (15A28) Sarmat ICBM, which will replace the Soviet R-36M2 Voyevoda missile. This is the worlds largest nuclear missile that includes 15 warheads each with high nuclear yield. According to Russian information, on April 24, 2022, a Sarmat ICBM test launch took place from Plesetsk in the Arkhangelsk region with the final destination being the Kura training field in Kamchatka. It is worth noting that this information was leaked to the Russian media immediately after the loss of the Moskva cruiser. The Russians note that there is no reason to follow the example of the US, which canceled the test launches of Minuteman III twice in March and April of this year under the fictitious pretext of "non-escalation" of the situation. Launch is only necessary for a complete re-equipment."
RS-28 Sarmat
15 warheads per missile, 11,000 mile range, hypersonic speed of 15,880 mph.
Do we really want to do this?
Full screen recommended.
"Poseidon:
Russian Underwater Drone That Can Sink Britain"
Consider what a 1,640 foot high tsunami wave would do to
the entire East Coast of the US... from Maine to Florida.
As far inland as W. Virginia. All gone...
"D.C. Residents Concerned Crack House On Pennsylvania Avenue Will Drag Down Housing Market"
"D.C. Residents Concerned Crack House On Pennsylvania
Avenue Will Drag Down Housing Market"
By the BabylonBee.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. — "Local residents and landlords in the DC area are concerned after rumors surfaced that a nearby home on Pennsylvania Avenue has become a dangerous crack house. “It’s just not fair. I work hard to maintain my property, only to have real estate values plummet when this riff-raff moves into the neighborhood,” said Carla Biggens, the owner of a middle-income apartment building that offers units at the reasonable price of just $15,000 per month. “I always see suspicious people coming and going from that place. It puts us all on edge. Lord knows what kind of shady things are happening there! Yuck!”
Local authorities confirmed hard drugs were recently found on the premises, but warned they would likely never find the perpetrator because the owner of the crack house pays their salaries. “It’s too much to expect corrupt feds like us to do anything about this shady crack house,” said a spokesperson for the FBI. “This neighborhood has been going downhill for a long time anyway. There’s nothing we can do.”
Residents are being encouraged to take their concerns to the next city council meeting where they will be ignored. At publishing time, DC home values had already plummeted to an average of only $12 million dollars."
"There Are Too Many"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 7/15/23
"There Are Too Many"
"There are too many real estate agents and loan officers right now. The average house price is unaffordable and is going in the wrong direction. The average agent makes no money. People cannot afford the average home."
Comments here:
"Outrageous Prices At Kroger! This Is Getting Unaffordable!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 7/15/23
"Outrageous Prices At Kroger!
This Is Getting Unaffordable!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are noticing some outrageous price increases on groceries! This is not good as grocery prices are reaching an all-time high! It's getting rough out here as more and more families struggle to put food on the table."
Comments here:
Friday, July 14, 2023
Col. Douglas Macgregor, "Ukraine: A Bad Day for the Army"
Col. Douglas Macgregor, 7/14/23
"Ukraine: A Bad Day for the Army"
Comments here:
"Scammers Buying Mansions And Cars With PPL Loans; Big Banks Get Rich As They Rob You"
Jeremiah Babe, 7/14/23
"Scammers Buying Mansions And Cars With PPL Loans;
Big Banks Get Rich As They Rob You"
Comments here:
"15 Prepping Items That Will Disappear From The Stores In 2023"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 7/14/23
"15 Prepping Items That Will Disappear From The Stores In 2023"
"After supply chains broke in 2021, things have never come back to the way they once were. Sudden shortages of essential products have become all too common by now. Grocery and retail stores are still struggling to keep shelves stocked, and we learned that many of them are one emergency event away from seeing inventories run out. Times are tougher, too. We’re spending a larger share of our paychecks to buy the same products. This is partly because consumer demand continues to outpace available supply, which is fueling inflation across many categories, and keeping the cost of living at historic highs. Industry insiders are telling us conditions will get even more difficult as we enter a deep recession.
The California drought has shown just how quickly water shortages can occur and how badly this can disrupt our food systems. Water filters and purifiers are essential for any stockpile, and people start chasing for them any time an emergency seems imminent. During the Texas freeze of 2021, the super-low temperatures led water pipelines to burst, and millions of people lost access to clean water for days. These situations highlight the importance of having these products on hand because systems can break at any minute, and in some situations, going to the stores is no longer an option, so stock up on these while you still can do so.
We’ve learned the hard way that personal hygiene products, including toilet paper, are the first to disappear when people hear about any problems with the supply chain or weather emergencies. The cost of these goods has seen a significant increase in recent years, up almost 17% since 2021. It’s safe to say that when people start rushing to the stores to get these goods again, we will have to pay even more expensive prices for them. It’s always a good idea to have extra toothbrushes, soaps, moisturizers, razors, and hand sanitizers. Look for deals, and don’t forget to consider the necessities of each family member.
The Energy Information Association has warned several times that our domestic supplies of fuels remain tight. One single disruption can trigger extensive outages, just as it happened to gas stations in Florida earlier this year. Gasoline supplies are below their historical average for this time of the year, EIA data show, and for those who need their cars to work or travel regularly, a shortage can turn into a nightmare very quickly. If you haven’t yet, make sure you build a safe supply of fuels before seasonal price increases take place and weather events or other disruptions hit stations nationwide.
Preparedness is ultimately a way to teach us how to make conscious choices, save money, manage time and prevent all the unnecessary stress we would experience if we did things at the last moment. It’s a way to assess our needs and make provisions for our loved ones so everyone has their needs covered even in the event of an emergency. You can create your stockpile according to your budget, your preferences, and your individual plan. Everyone’s stockpile is different, and learning what makes sense for you is one of the most important lessons you can learn with this practice.
That’s why preparing in advance is crucial to survive the turbulent period we’re about to enter. Today, we listed a few products that are key in any prepper stockpile and can disappear from the stores before we even notice."
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibration"
Full screen recommended.
Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibration"
"Peaceful, empowering and soothing music and nature to nurture your mind, body, and soul. Supporting and empowering you on your life journey. 528Hz positive energy healing music with 417Hz Solfeggio frequency. These frequencies have a specific healing effect on your subconscious mind." Be kind to yourself, savor this extraordinarily beautiful video. Headphones recommended, not required.
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Distorted galaxy NGC 2442 can be found in the southern constellation of the flying fish, (Piscis) Volans. Located about 50 million light-years away, the galaxy's two spiral arms extending from a pronounced central bar have a hook-like appearance in wide-field images. But this mosaicked close-up, constructed from Hubble Space Telescope and European Southern Observatory data, follows the galaxy's structure in amazing detail.
Obscuring dust lanes, young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions surround a core of yellowish light from an older population of stars. The sharp image data also reveal more distant background galaxies seen right through NGC 2442's star clusters and nebulae. The image spans about 75,000 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 2442."
Chet Raymo, “The Sea Grows Old In It”
“The Sea Grows Old In It”
by Chet Raymo
“The poet, like the electric [lightning] rod, must reach from a point nearer to the sky than all surrounding objects down to the earth, and down to the dark wet soil, or neither is of use. The poet must not only converse with pure thought, but he must demonstrate it almost to the senses. His words must be pictures, his verses must be spheres and cubes, to be seen, and smelled and handled.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Ah, Mr. Emerson. This seems about as good a description of poetry as one is likely to find. I love the image. Not a hand reaching up to grasp the hand of Zeus, the hurler of bolts, but merely a pointed rod that reaches higher than any surrounding objects. A pen-point, scratching the firmament. Not a conductor reaching down to the earth, but deeper, into the wet inkpot of the soul.
Not lofty thoughts, airy philosophies, gnostic arcana. Rather, ideas that come wrapped in the stuff of the senses. Ideas that must be unwrapped the way you’d peel an orange, or pry open an oyster, or stir up from the bottom of a bowl of soup. The electric fire of the heavens captured and stored in the Leyden jar of physical self.
Take, for example, Marianne Moore’s “The Fish”, a poem that has been endlessly analyzed without ever giving up its secrets. Anyone who stands on that rocky shore with the poet, looking into the wave-washed chasm - the sea as fluid as breath, as hard as a chisel- takes away a lesson as profound as any one might learn in school, perhaps without being able to articulate exactly what the lesson is. The experience is simply there, to be seen, smelled, handled, in the weave and wave of animal bodies, in the intricate rhyme and syllabication of the poem. Truth- crow-blue, ink-bespattered, hatcheted, defiant.
I’d go further. I’d say that Emerson’s description of poetry can be equally applied to science, or to any human attempt to attract the spark of Zeus. One must lift one’s rod beyond the scratch and tumble of the everyday, while keeping its foot buried in the dark wet soil of lived experience.”
•
“The Fish”
“Wade through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like an injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave,
cannot hide there for the submerged shafts of the sun,
split like spun glass,
move themselves with spotlight swiftness into the crevices -
in and out, illuminating
The turquoise sea of bodies.
The water drives a wedge of iron through the iron edge of the cliff;
whereupon the stars, pink rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green lilies,
and submarine toadstools, slide each on the other.
All external marks of abuse are present on this defiant edifice -
all the physical features of accident -
lack of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and hatchet strokes,
these things stand out on it;
the chasm-side is dead.
Repeated evidence has proved that it can live
on what can not revive its youth.
The sea grows old in it."
- Marianne Moore
"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"
Greg Hunter, Weekly News Wrap-Up
"Weekly News Wrap-Up, 7/14/23"
FBI Banana Republic, War Coming, Dollar Crashing
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"A whistleblower exposing treasonous bribes against President Joe Biden was arrested and charged with 8 criminal counts. This is what banana republics do at the end of the line when they want to stay in power after extreme corruption is exposed. Meanwhile, the Head of the FBI Christopher Wray testified on Capitol Hill and was grilled by Congress on a variety of issues. It appears he was caught in lies concerning censoring Americans through social media, and saying there was not FBI undercover presence at J6 in Washington D.C. The crimes are now out in the open, and the lies to try to cover them up are too. The FBI is now helping foster a banana republic government.
The U.S. is wanting to send cluster bombs to Ukraine. It is a war crime to use them, but the Ukrainians are losing badly to the Russians. More than 26,000 soldiers died in the recent so-called counter-offensive. It was an unmitigated disaster and a total cremation of NATO by Russia. The Russians are wanting a peaceful end to the conflict while the Biden Administration is calling up troops and sending F-16’s capable of delivering tactical nukes. Biden and company want war at all costs, and it looks like we are all going to get it.
The U.S. dollar had a very bad week. It lost 4.5% in six days. There is, once again, talk of cutting interest rates as inflation has cooled, but with a crashing dollar, can that happen? What would happen to inflation if the U.S. dollar sinks further spurred by cutting interest rates." There is much more in the 45-minute newscast.
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about
these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 7/14/23:
"Here’s Why the Sudden “Rebellion” in Russia was a NothingBurger… And What it Really Means"
"Here’s Why the Sudden “Rebellion” in Russia
was a NothingBurger… And What it Really Means"
by Chris MacIntosh
"Ok, the big news of the last few weeks. The imminent collapse of Russia. The sudden rebellion by Wagner troops followed by the equally sudden, non-rebellion had the MSM in a tizzy. Most interesting and hilarious was watching the MSM go from “Wagner mercenaries are murdering Ukrainians” to “Wagner mercenaries are going to free us from Putin’s tyranny.” And, of course, now… silence. To be fair, it’s probably best they just shut up. I am simply stunned that anyone continues to listen to these shills who either spout propaganda or simply have no earthly idea what is going on but feel the need to say… well, something. Surely, it must be getting humiliating at this point?
In any event, here are some thoughts and questions I have after having digested some of what appears to have taken place. I watched the MSM come out with multiple (I counted 7 and then stopped counting) reports out on the Saturday morning. The fact we had this deluge of reports in such a rapid timeframe seemed odd to me. I mean the “mutiny” had literally only begun taking place hours prior. Hours!
Then we heard that the intelligence agencies briefed Congress earlier in the week about an expected uprising. Earlier in the week? So the spooks at the CIA and Congress knew about this ahead of time. Which means corporate media knew ahead of time. Which explains how they manage to have literally dozens of articles out within hours. They wrote the Russian Civil War narrative beforehand!
Which brings up the question. How did the security services know this was going to go down… before it happened if they weren’t playing a hand in the affair? An attempted Maidan coup 2.0? If that’s true, then you know what that means? It means that the US has directly attacked Russia. That is an act of war.
Those conclusions, true or not, lead one to consider that maybe, just maybe we have the CIA involved in a foreign country attempting to overthrow its leadership. Shocking, I know. And if so, this was an act of war committed by the US against Russia. But I’m sure it’s not. I’m sure it’s true that the Wagner group is so upset with Putin they tried to remove him from power, and I’m equally sure that upon advancing and finding NO resistance Wagner had a change of mind and instead decided to divert to Belarus to have a beer with Lukashenko. It totally makes sense. I mean, I looked it up and do you know what the temperature was on that weekend over there? 26°C. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, that’s not particularly hot, but I challenge you to throw on all that military fighting gear and walk a few hours in the sun and then tell me with a straight face that you would turn down a cold beer. So that’s what happened, and the coup is now over. In a weekend, no less. Now if money DID change hands between the CIA and Wagner, that’d have been long enough for it to, you know… be settled. Just sayin’.
Think about a hypothetical situation where the CIA did offer some of the billions being laundered through Ukraine in order to foment a “color revolution.” Now, imagine you’re one of those Russkies, a guy like, say, Prigozhin. You have, as I see it, three options:
Accept it and actually risk your neck trying to take down Putin along with the Russian army (Wagner is about 20% of the fighting force of the Russian army)
Decline it and tell your enemies to kick sand, which means they keep the money and you keep fighting.
Or you tell your enemy, sure, and take their money, run a psyops program for a weekend, and ultimately keep fighting. This way you get the best of both worlds.
So what’s it gonna be? I’ll let you decide the most probable scenario. What I do think is evident to all but most intellectually incurious is that what we are being told surely isn’t accurate. Here’s something else to consider. You’d think that if a coup were taking place the capital flight out of Russia would be extreme, and you’d immediately see it in the currency market.
So it’s odd that the ruble has continued to strengthen against both the dollar, the euro, and the British pound. I guess those Russkies are just dumb."
o
London Real, 7/14/23
Douglas Macgregor, "Ukraine Cannot Win This War:
It's Time To Negotiate With Putin"
Comments here:
"There Comes A Time..."
“Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.”
- Martin Luther King Jr.
"Vast Hordes Of Americans Are Being Forced Out Into The Streets As The Middle Class Disintegrates"
"Vast Hordes Of Americans Are Being Forced Out
Into The Streets As The Middle Class Disintegrates"
By Michael Snyder
"How many people will be sleeping in homeless shelters, on the streets or in their vehicles where you live tonight? That is the sort of question that not a lot of us like to think about. But the truth is that homelessness is growing at a very rapid pace all over the country right now. But if you have lots of money, life probably seems pretty good to you at the moment. You may eat at a different restaurant every night, and you may be one of the approximately 10 million Americans that currently own a second home. Our leaders made the wealthy even wealthier by pumping trillions of dollars into the system in recent years, but as the cost of living has soared the poor have gotten even poorer and the middle class has steadily disintegrated. So now the gap between the wealthy and the rest of the nation is larger than ever, and that is creating a tremendous amount of tension in our society.
In California, vast hordes of homeless people sleep in the shadows of multi-million dollar homes every single night. And even though California has spent a whopping 17.5 billion dollars on homelessness during the last four years, the homeless population in the state has just continued to grow…"California has spent a stunning $17.5 billion trying to combat homelessness over just four years. But, in the same time frame, from 2018 to 2022, the state’s homeless population actually grew. Half of all Americans living outside on the streets, federal data shows, live in California."
Across the country, homelessness is on the rise. But California is adding more homeless people every year than any other state. More than 170,000 unhoused people now live here. Just think about that number for a moment. There are 170,000 homeless people in just one state. And those are the ones that they can actually count. They are many more that haven’t been found yet or that don’t want to be counted.
We have also just learned that family homelessness in the United States is surging…"Family homelessness in the US is on the rise in an alarming sign of how the increasing cost of goods, the ever-tightening housing supply and the end of most pandemic-era benefits are putting pressure on Americans. Some 72,700 people in families with children were experiencing homelessness in 20 of the largest cities in the nation as of January, a 37.6% jump from a year before, according to an analysis of data provided by jurisdictions. In New York, that figure shot up by two thirds, while Chicago, the District of Columbia and Fort Worth, Texas, also saw outsize increases."
I thought that Joe Biden was “fixing” the economy. So why has that number gone up by 37.6 percent in just one year? Something is not adding up.
A 28-year-old single mother in Washington D.C. named Mercedez Millings doesn’t have a home for herself and her four children. Since she is so close to the White House, perhaps Biden and his family would be willing to take her in…"Among those homeless in the nation’s capital is Mercedez Millings, a 28-year-old single mother of four. She delivered packages and worked at a pizza shop during the pandemic, but experienced homelessness during that time and bounced between living in her car and staying with family.
She and her children have been living in a Salvation Army transitional housing program with some 25 other families for most of this year - and Millings is taking personal finance and workforce development classes. But one big obstacle is stopping her from getting a job: She gave birth to her youngest at her mother’s home during the pandemic and never received an official birth certificate. Without it, she’s unable to sign her daughter up for child care."
There are countless others just like her. They would love to have homes, but housing costs have simply become way too high. As I mentioned yesterday, an unused space next to a laundry room that has been converted into an “apartment” in one building in New York City will run you $2,300 a month. And actually purchasing a home is now out of reach for tens of millions of Americans. The Fed has made certain of that by hiking interest rates so dramatically.
Earlier today, I came across a tweet that shared some mortgage math that is just stunning… "New mortgage math is brutal. Say you buy a $1m house with $200k down at a 7% rate ($800k mortgage). Over the first three years you pay $193k ($5,322/mo.) After those $193k of payments your $800k mortgage is now at $774.5k. You paid $166k in interest, $25.5k in principle."
Ouch. Of course housing costs are not the only thing that is going up. According to Zero Hedge, auto insurance rates are going up by double digit percentages all over the nation…"The Wall Street Journal found Allstate has jacked up car insurance premiums by 40% in Georgia, Nationwide Mutual Insurance has increased insurance rates by 32% in California, and State Farm has bumped rates in New York by 11%. The reason is that many of these insurers have experienced significant losses over the last several years, an indication premiums will continue to rise well into 2024."
If you are still making the same amount of money that you did two or three years ago, you are rapidly falling behind. The cost of living is not going to slow down for any of us, and if you can’t keep up that is too bad for you.
In such an environment, many middle class Americans find themselves falling into poverty, and many poor Americans are finding themselves out in the streets. All over America, giant homeless encampments are sprouting like mushrooms. Here is just one example…"One of California’s famous wine regions has a government-sanctioned homeless encampment set up near the local courthouse, Fox News Digital has learned.
Photos taken on Sonoma County’s administrative campus in Santa Rosa show blue tents lining a parking lot where up to 100 homeless individuals can live. Leaders in Sonoma County, located in northern California’s famed wine region, approved the taxpayer-funded homeless camp this year after a “shelter crisis” declaration. The administrative complex is home to various offices such as Sonoma County Human Resources, the county registrar, Superior Court of California and district attorney’s office."
If you still have plenty of money, you may not care what is happening to everyone else. For now, those with lots of cash are living the high life. But that won’t last for long. A day of reckoning is coming for the wealthy, and they will deeply mourn as their tremendous wealth is wiped out. During the early stages of this economic crisis, it will be the poor that are hit particularly hard, but great pain is eventually coming for those at the top of the food chain too."
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"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination - indeed, everything and anything except me."
- Ralph Ellison, "Prologue to Invisible Man"
And the brutal truth is that unless if affects them directly, nobody gives a damn. All fun and games and grabass, right? Well Good Citizen, this nightmare's only beginning. Oh, they will care, very, very soon...
Bill Bonner, "Carrots and Sticks"
"Carrots and Sticks"
Pushy politicos, "kooky" moderates
and boondoggles out the wazoo...
by Bill Bonner
Poitou, France - "Gina Raimondo is a Washington hack. She was identified years ago, by the New York Times as a “rising star’ in the firmament of democratic politics. In 2016, she went to the World Economic Forum, where she no doubt picked up the game plan. And now she is US commerce secretary…even though she knows diddly-squat about the real world of business.
Ignorance is a job qualification. Otherwise, she wouldn’t say things like this: "I want the United States to be the only country in the world where every company capable of producing leading-edge chips will have a significant R&D and high-volume manufacturing presence…It is America’s obligation to lead. We must push like no time before."
Ms. Raimondo believes that her desires, regarding what kind of business people do in the US, have some importance. She thinks she must not only guide the $24 trillion US economy…but ‘push’ it. Pushing sounds like work; you could work up a sweat. But how tough could it be to spend other people’s money from the comfort of an air-conditioned office? Or whack businesses with more laws and regulations that punish them for not doing as they are told? After all, there are only two ‘push’ possibilities – the carrot or the stick.
“Kooky” Moderates: In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower and Sen. Robert Taft played golf and enjoyed each other’s company. They didn’t always agree. But they were the leading lights of the Republican party, and on the important points, they were of like mind: go easy on the carrots and the sticks. Budgets should be balanced. Foreign wars should be avoided. And The People should be left alone to seek happiness however they could. In other words, don’t be too pushy. Taft died in 1953. Eisenhower retired in 1961.
John F. Kennedy replaced Eisenhower in the White House. More of an activist on social issues, Kennedy was nevertheless not far from Eisenhower on fiscal and foreign matters. He was in the process of reining in the military/industrial…and CIA…complex – about which Eisenhower had warned him - when he was murdered in 1963.
Since then, both Democrat and Republican parties have been taken over by a new breed of politician. In public, the two parties rage against each other. But, on the important matters— carrots and sticks – they are more solidly united than ever. As to both, they want more. And the moderate views of the Eisenhower-Kennedy Era are now labeled as “far right.” Or, in the case of RFK, Jr., “kooky.”
The two parties used to be predictable and reliably balanced. Republicans thought Big Government was a monster at home…but an angel overseas, where it could correct the mistakes to which foreigners were prone. Democrats saw US power as devilish abroad…but it sprouted wings at home, where it could raise up the poor and downtrodden.
Out of Carrots: Today, both parties believe the federal government is an archangel everywhere, and that the solution to all problems – domestic and overseas – is more carrots and sticks. Alas, the feds are running out of carrots. KPBS: "The federal deficit nearly tripled, raising concern about the country's finances. The Treasury Department said Thursday that the budget gap from October through June was nearly $1.4 trillion - a 170% increase from the same period a year earlier. The federal government operates under a fiscal year that begins October 1. The deficit ballooned both because of a sharp increase in government spending and a significant drop in tax revenues.
Said Maya Macguineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. "How can anyone possibly think this trend is sustainable?" You have to wonder. How can the feds spend $150 billion on a war in the Ukraine…another $52 billion at home, in Ms. Raimondo’s chip industry boondoggle…and yet another $50 billion bailing out regional banks? How can it even think of ‘reparations’…or the trillions it could spend on the Green Agenda?
A “Grotesque Act”: Or, backing up 3 years, to the Time of Trump…how could our leaders – Republican and Democrat alike – ever imagine that they could shut down almost the entire economy (where in the Constitution did it give them the right?)…at a cost of $16 trillion…handing out money so recklessly that former US budget director (under Ronald Reagan) David Stockman called it “the most grotesque act of fiscal malfeasance in American history.”
So far this century, the federales have dispensed $27 trillion worth of carrots…that they didn’t have (as measured by the increase in the national debt). Eisenhower, Taft, Kennedy would all be appalled. Where were the conservatives? The Republicans? Where was anyone at all who was not completely brain dead? They have been purged from both parties. Spending runs wild. The peaceniks are gone too. More about them…and the declining marginal utility of sticks…tomorrow."
"No One Is Buying This"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 7/14/23
"No One Is Buying This"
"EV cars are stacking up inside the dealerships. No one is buying them. The Fed is determined to ruin things at all costs. They will raise interest rates to try to slow down inflation. So far it’s not working."
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "A Fun Day"
"A Fun Day"
By Jim Kunstler
“NATO has lost this war. Biden has lost this war. The lunatic Democrats have lost this war. The uni-party warmongers have lost this war. The EU has lost this war. Ukraine and Zelensky have lost this war.” - Kim Dotcom
"Somebody in the “Joe Biden” White House apparently thinks that the operations already underway are not enough to destroy our country fast enough, so a little extra push, such as nuclear annihilation, might get’er done.
By operations underway I mean things like mRNA vaccines stealthily deleting kin, friends, and public figures from the scene…decriminalizing crime…undermining the oil industry by a thousand cuts…liquidating small business…making little children insane over sex…flooding the land with illegal immigrants…devaluing the currency…queering elections - all of these things done on purpose, by the way. And if you complain about any of it, here comes the FBI or the IRS knocking on your door.
So, to make sure that a collapse of the USA comes on-schedule, there is the useful fracas created by our government geniuses over in Ukraine that creeps day-by-day toward a quick American assisted suicide. Just to remind you, here’s how that started: In 2014, the US fomented a coup against Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. In short order, the Russian language was banned (despite the fact that most Ukrainians speak Russian). A piqued Russia re-po’d the Crimean Peninsula. When ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine (the Donbas provinces) tried to go their own way, Ukraine shelled and rocketed them for eight years. That was the setup, killing 14,000 people.
All of the above was absolutely unnecessary, you understand. Ukraine had been going about its business the best it could since 1991 as a shlub nation with an aged-out Soviet infrastructure, some US-sponsored bioweapons labs, and no energy resources. It had been collecting royalties for allowing Russia to run oil pipelines across its fruited plain - of which, a lot of gas was siphoned off in transit by bandits. Ukraine attempted to compensate for its disadvantages by being an international money laundromat, though that only benefited its oligarch class (and the extended “Joe Biden” family).
After “Joe Biden” got “elected” in 2020, and news of his family’s sketchy business activities in Ukraine and elsewhere finally dribbled out, Ukraine was turned into a giant grenade and “JB” (or persons acting on his behalf) pulled the pin. NATO was dragooned into the quarrel as backup against its better judgment. If the objective was to weaken Russia, as stated by one of our strategic geniuses, SecDef Lloyd Austin, it didn’t work out. Rather, it exposed the USA as a reckless global psychopath bent on wrecking every country it pretends to help - including the major countries in NATO.
Two-thirds of the world’s other nations then started backpedaling away from the US and its protective services to form an economic and security coalition around the BRICs group, as led by Russia and China. The Ukraine campaign itself was a loser from the get-go, relying utterly, as it did, on US and NATO support. This week’s NATO meet-up in Vilnius, Lithuania, showed how that’s going now: Not too well. The Ukraine army is shredded. It’s out of munitions. The US is also out of those very artillery shells most in demand. What to do?
The answer to that, as “Joe Biden” returns from Europe to a White House haunted by a cocaine-snorting ghost, is to send three-thousand fresh reserve troops to Europe and promise a bunch of F-16 fighter planes. Said planes, which were introduced in the early 1970s, will come out of our country’s “high-mileage” inventory. These F-16s will require a suite of highly technical ground support infrastructure. They will not come with the latest avionics upgrades and will be no match for Russian air defenses. Good luck with that, President Z!
It’s all fakery, of course. What do we aim to do with those three-thousand US reservists? Send them into battle in Priyutnoye? I’m sure…At this point, we can only pretend to prolong this stupid and unnecessary conflict with such lame gestures. Germany and France know this is a lost cause. The United Kingdom (so called) is such a mess that it literally doesn’t know what it’s doing in far off and irrelevant (to it) Ukraine. Without those countries, there is no NATO, really. So, the whole vaudeville this week was a sham - led by a US President who was too puny to attend the opening night banquet with fellow NATO leaders, and too incoherent to make a point on departure.
Anyway, “Joe Biden’s” entire act is unspooling. He is a prank that the Democratic Party played on the American people. Sometime before Halloween he will have to exit the scene in disgrace, gruesome as the prospect might seem, with Kamala Harris anxiously draining vodka bottles as she awaits history’s call at the old Naval Observatory. That will be a fun day in the USA, all righty."
"Concerning Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Crazy!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 7/14/23
"Concerning Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Crazy!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Aldi and are seeing some concerning price increases! We are seeing a lot of the cheaper food items start to skyrocket in price. This is a bit concerning as many families are already struggling to put food on the table!"
- Comments here:
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