Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 8/19/23
"Must See! Everything You Need to Know
About the Biggest Crash Of Our Lifetimes"
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If you would like to connect with Lynettes team
about finance mgmt see her website here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, August 19, 2023
"Preparing For A Massive Storm; Bad Times Are Coming; Society Is Collapsing; Buy Food Now"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 8/19/23
"Preparing For A Massive Storm; Bad Times Are Coming;
Society Is Collapsing; Buy Food Now"
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Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Divenire", "I Giorni"
Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, "Divenire"
o
Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, "I Giorni"
"‘I Giorni’ became one of Steinway Artist Ludovico Einaudi's most-played piano pieces because, in the composer–performer's words, "I was among the first of a new generation to create and to write music that was, let’s say, playable and contemporary. At a certain point, it was difficult to find contemporary repertoire that you could enjoy playing at home. I think the music that I started to create was, in a way, filling the space left open and abandoned by composers." Ludovico Einaudi trained as a classical composer and pianist before continuing his studies with Luciano Berio, a leading composer of the twentieth-century avant-garde. He ultimately turned away from what seemed a glittering classical career to forge his own musical path, giving him the freedom to reconcile his wide-ranging influences."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"To the eye, this cosmic composition nicely balances the Bubble Nebula at the right with open star cluster M52. The pair would be lopsided on other scales, though. Embedded in a complex of interstellar dust and gas and blown by the winds from a single, massive O-type star, the Bubble Nebula, also known as NGC 7635, is a mere 10 light-years wide. On the other hand, M52 is a rich open cluster of around a thousand stars. The cluster is about 25 light-years across.
Seen toward the northern boundary of Cassiopeia, distance estimates for the Bubble Nebula and associated cloud complex are around 11,000 light-years, while star cluster M52 lies nearly 5,000 light-years away. The wide telescopic field of view spans about 1.5 degrees on the sky or three times the apparent size of a full Moon."
"Is It Any Wonder..."
"Thomas Edison said in all seriousness: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labor of thinking" - if we bother with facts at all, we hunt like bird dogs after the facts that bolster up what we already think - and ignore all the others! We want only the facts that justify our acts - the facts that fit in conveniently with our wishful thinking and justify our preconceived prejudices. As Andre Maurois put it: "Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage." Is it any wonder, then, that we find it so hard to get at the answers to our problems? Wouldn't we have the same trouble trying to solve a second-grade arithmetic problem, if we went ahead on the assumption that two plus two equals five? Yet there are a lot of people in this world who make life a hell for themselves and others by insisting that two plus two equals five- or maybe five hundred!"
- Dale Carnegie
The Poet: Maya Angelou, “Alone”
“Alone”
“Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home,
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone.
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong,
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use,
Their wives run round like banshees,
Their children sing the blues.
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone,
But nobody,
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know…
Storm clouds are gathering,
The wind is gonna blow.
The race of man is suffering,
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody,
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody,
Can make it out here alone.”
- Maya Angelou
"Alone..."
“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and – in spite of True Romance magazines – we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely – at least, not all the time – but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”
- Hunter S. Thompson,
“The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman”
"Brace Yourselves, Because What They Have Planned Is Going To Absolutely Devastate The U.S. Economy"
"Brace Yourselves, Because What They Have Planned
Is Going To Absolutely Devastate The U.S. Economy"
by Michael Snyder
"Do you remember what happened in 2008? Many people believe that another historic financial disaster is coming and that it will absolutely devastate the U.S. economy. Earlier this week, I wrote about an investor named Michael Burry that has actually bet $1.6 billion dollars that the stock market is going to crash. He made all the right moves in 2008, and he fully intends to be proven right once again in 2023. Of course current conditions definitely resemble 2008 in so many ways. The residential housing market is so dead right now, and commercial real estate prices are plummeting at a very frightening pace. Unfortunately, officials at the Federal Reserve are making it quite clear that they are not done strangling the economy.
This week, mortgage rates jumped above the 7 percent mark to the highest level that we have seen in more than 20 years…"Mortgage rates surpassed 7% this week, hitting the highest level in more than two decades. The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed mortgage increased to 7.09% this week, up from 6.96% the week prior, according to Freddie Mac’s release on Thursday. That’s the highest point since the first week of April 2002 and marks just the third time rates have exceeded 7% since then. The last times were in October and November of last year, when the rate reached 7.08%."
Needless to say, high mortgage rates have been crippling the housing market in recent months. At the midpoint of this year, existing home sales were down a whopping 18.9 percent from the same time in 2022…"Total existing-home sales – completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops – receded 3.3% from May to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.16 million in June. Year-over-year, sales fell 18.9% (down from 5.13 million in June 2022)."
There are certainly lots of people out there that would like to buy homes, but thanks to how high mortgage rates have become they simply cannot afford to do so. Housing has become extremely unaffordable in this country. According to Redfin, the percentage of teachers that can afford to buy a home close to the school where they work has fallen to just 12 percent…"The number of teachers who can afford a reasonably priced home in their school district nationwide has collapsed to just 12%, down from 17% last summer and 30% in 2019, amid the worst housing affordability crisis in a generation, according to data from Redfin.
Redfin’s analysis of median teacher salaries for 2022 across 50 major cities for over 70,000 PreK-12 public and private schools revealed no teacher in San Jose and San Diego could afford homes within “commuting distances” to their respective school, which means home and work are 20 minutes during typical rush hour conditions."
So much damage has already been done. But apparently officials at the Federal Reserve believe that even more carnage is necessary, because they are indicating that more rate hikes are on the table…"Most Federal Reserve officials signaled during their July policy-setting meeting that high inflation still poses an ongoing threat that could necessitate additional interest rate hikes this year.
Minutes from the U.S. central bank’s July 25-26 meeting released Wednesday showed that central bank officials observed that inflation remains well above the Fed’s 2% target — and that policymakers need to see “further signs that aggregate demand and aggregate supply were moving into better balance to be confident that inflation pressures were abating.”
No. Don’t do it. Even if rates stay at current levels, we are headed for extreme pain. Raising rates even higher would just be suicidal. But it looks like they are going to do it anyway, and that could push mortgage rates up to the 8 percent level…"Economists have predicted mortgage rates could go above 8 percent if the economy continues to show signs of strength and the US Federal Reserve decides to raise interest rates again. Mortgage Rates have not hit such levels since 2000, according to data compiled by Freddie Mac."
Do officials at the Fed actually believe that our system can handle such high rates? Unless the Fed changes course, the housing market is going to absolutely implode. And of course the commercial real estate market is already imploding. The chaos that is already transpiring is putting an enormous amount of strain on our financial institutions, and Fitch is warning that we could soon see sweeping rating downgrades in the banking industry…
"A Fitch Ratings analyst warned that the U.S. banking industry has inched closer to another source of turbulence - the risk of sweeping rating downgrades on dozens of U.S. banks that could even include the likes of JPMorgan Chase. The ratings agency cut its assessment of the industry’s health in June, a move that analyst Chris Wolfe said went largely unnoticed because it didn’t trigger downgrades on banks."
In many ways, I feel like I am watching a repeat of 2008. Officials at the Fed can clearly see everything that is happening, but they just keep insisting on making things even worse. So I hope that you have been preparing for turbulent times, because things are going to get crazy.
Sadly, the truth is that most Americans are not prepared for tougher times. In fact, one recent survey discovered that 72 percent of Americans are not financially secure…"For many Americans, payday can’t come soon enough. As of June, 61% of adults are living paycheck to paycheck, according to a LendingClub report. In other words, they rely on those regular paychecks to meet essential living expenses, with little to no money left over.
Almost three-quarters, 72%, of Americans say they aren’t financially secure given their current financial standing, and more than a quarter said they will likely never be financially secure, according to a survey by Bankrate. Many of those people will lose their jobs during this new economic crisis, and because they don’t have any sort of a financial cushion to fall back on many of them will also end up losing their homes. Delinquency rates are already starting to move higher, and that should deeply alarm all of us.
But what we have experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg. So brace yourselves for what is ahead, because this ride is only going to get bumpier from here."
"Massive Amount Of Stores Closing In 2023 & 2024! More Banks Closing!"
Adventures With Danno, PM 8/19/23
"Massive Amount Of Stores Closing In
2023 & 2024! More Banks Closing!"
"More banks and thousands of stores are set to close by the end of 2023 and into 2024! We discuss why these banks and stores are closing and what this will ultimately do to our already failing economy!"
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"The Great American Blunder"
"The Great American Blunder"
by Jim Rickards
"From a geopolitical perspective, the U.S. today has never been weaker than since the post-Vietnam era. Remember the images of U.S. helicopters taking off from its South Vietnamese embassy in 1975, loaded with refugees trying to escape the country? It was a national humiliation.
So was the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2022. Desperate Afghans, eager to escape Taliban rule, clung to American transports leaving Kabul. It might represent an even greater national humiliation. In both cases, U.S. weakness was on full display for the world to see. Its defeat in Vietnam led to Soviet geopolitical gains throughout the world.
U.S. credibility around the world was restored during the 1980s as Reagan rebuilt the U.S. military into a powerful force. U.S. geopolitical power peaked after its dramatic victory in the First Gulf War in 1991. But the U.S. proceeded to squander that power in the wake of 9/11, with strategic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, for the past 20 years, the U.S. focused on fighting terrorists that have limited combat capability, not serious rivals like Russia with significant conventional forces.
Wonder Weapons? Many U.S. weapons systems supplied to Ukraine have proven to be inadequate or in some cases, total failures. Patriot missile batteries cannot shoot down Russian hypersonic missiles. The Patriot batteries are being blown up one-by-one at a cost of $1 billion each. U.S. Bradley fighting vehicles have been left in flames and ruins on the battlefields of Ukraine due to Russian mines. The M-777 howitzers the U.S. and its allies have sent to Ukraine have proved too fragile to withstand the high rates of fire required on the Ukrainian battlefields. And U.S. HIMARS precision artillery doesn’t always work because the Russians have learned to jam the guidance systems with electronic warfare techniques. Don’t think that the rest of the world hasn’t taken note of all this.
Meanwhile, the U.S. industrial capacity to provide the weapons and ammunition to fight this type of attritional war is highly inadequate. The U.S. produces about 14,000 artillery shells per month, which it hopes to double over the next few years. That might seem like a lot. But 14,000 shells is only enough to supply Ukraine for about a week at current firing rates. On the other hand, it’s estimated that the Russians are producing anywhere from 250,000-400,000 shells per month. You do the math.
The Weakest Link in the Chain: But the weakest link in the chain isn’t inadequate ammunition or substandard equipment. The weakest link in the chain is U.S. senior leadership, particularly Joe Biden. The Russians and the Chinese have taken note. They just conducted joint naval operations off the coast of Alaska and well within sight of U.S. territory in the Aleutian Islands. Few Americans may realize or recall that, during World War II, the Japanese Imperial Navy actually did invade and occupy parts of Alaska close to where the Russians and Chinese are conducting surveillance today.
Weakness breeds weakness and eventually war. The weak leadership in the U.S. is inviting unprecedented challenges from our main rivals. Expect more of this until someday two ships collide or two planes collide in mid-air, potentially leading to a shooting war. This wasn’t inevitable. For years, the U.S. has driven Russia into the arms of China through a combination of hubris and strategic shortsightedness. That was a massive mistake.
Worse Than a Crime, It Was a Blunder: Russia, China and the U.S. are the only true superpowers and the only three countries that ultimately matter in geopolitics. That’s not a slight against any other power. But all others are secondary powers (the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Israel, etc) or tertiary powers (Iran, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc).
One of the keys to U.S. foreign policy in the last 50 or 60 years has been to make sure that Russia and China never form an alliance. Keeping them separated was key. Specifically, the U.S. has strived to ensure that no power, or combination of powers, could dominate the Eurasian landmass. This meant that the ideal posture for the U.S. is to ally with Russia (to marginalize China) or ally with China (to marginalize Russia), depending on overall geopolitical conditions.
The U.S. conducted this kind of triangulation successfully from the 1970s until the early 2000s. In 1972, Nixon pivoted to China to put pressure on Russia. In 1991, the U.S. pivoted to Russia to put pressure on China after the Tiananmen Square massacre. Unfortunately, the U.S. lost sight of this basic rule of international relations. It is now Russia and China that have formed a strong alliance, to the disadvantage of the United States. The war in Ukraine has intensified this dynamic.
Historians Will Scratch Their Heads: One leg of the China-Russia relationship is their joint desire to see the U.S. dollar lose its status as the world’s dominant reserve currency. They’ve chafed against the ways in which the U.S. has used the dollar as a financial weapon. Again, the unprecedented sanctions against Russia have accelerated this process. We’ll see it come to fruition next week, when the BRICS nations are expected to launch a new gold-backed currency.
Ultimately, this two-against-one strategic alignment of China and Russia against the U.S. is a strategic blunder by Washington. The fact is, Washington has squandered a major opportunity to shape the geopolitical world in America’s favor.
When future historians look back on the 2010s they will be baffled by the lost opportunity for the U.S. to mend fences with Russia, develop economic relations and create a win-win relationship between the world’s greatest technology innovator and the world’s greatest natural resources provider. It will seem a great loss for the world.
Russia is the nation that the U.S. should have tried to court and should still be courting. That’s because China is the greatest geopolitical threat to the U.S. because of its economic and technological advances and its ambition to push the U.S. out of the Western Pacific sphere of influence. Russia may be a threat to some of its neighbors (ask Ukraine), but it is far less of a threat to U.S. strategic interests. It’s not the Soviet Union anymore. Therefore, a logical balance of power in the world would be for the U.S. and Russia to find common ground in the containment of China and to jointly pursue the reduction of Chinese power.
Of course, that hasn’t happened. And we could be paying the price for years to come. Who’s to blame for this U.S. strategic failure? You can start with the globalist elites…
It’s All About Trump: The elites’ efforts to derail Trump gave rise to the “Russia collusion” hoax. While no one disputes that Russia sought to sow confusion in the U.S. election in 2016, that’s something the Russians and their Soviet predecessors had been doing since 1917. By itself, little harm was done. Yet the elites seized on this to concoct a story of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The real collusion was among Democrats, Ukrainians and Russians to discredit Trump.
It took the Robert Mueller investigation two years finally to conclude there was no collusion between Trump and the Russians. By then, the damage was done. It was politically toxic for Trump to reach out to the Russians. That would be spun by the media as more evidence of “collusion.” Whatever you think of Trump personally, the collusion story was always bogus.
Now, just a few short years later, Russia and China are successfully spearheading efforts to break away from the dollar and are conducting joint naval exercises within sight of American territory. The U.S. has no one to blame but itself."
"Your Phone Isn’t Spying on You to Show You Ads (It’s Worse Than That)"
"Your Phone Isn’t Spying on You to Show
You Ads (It’s Worse Than That)"
Your iPhone is not eavesdropping on your conversations
to sell you things. It’s actually much worse.
by Stephen Johnson
Excerpt: "Yesterday I asked my wife what she wanted for her birthday. She told me she’d like a cordless Dremel. Later, I was served an advertisement for - you guessed it - a cordless Dremel. Now, we’d never talked about hand-drills before; I have no interest in power tools, I’d never done a search for them or looked at them on Amazon, so the phone must have been listening to what we were saying. It has a microphone right there, so why wouldn’t it be sending our voices to Google headquarters or wherever so they can send me an ad? What other explanation is there? It turns out there is another explanation, and it’s stranger and more insidious than high-tech eavesdropping.
Your phone isn’t listening to you (at least not how you think it is): Your phone is listening to you at all times, sort of. If it wasn’t, personal assistant apps wouldn’t be able to spring into action when you say “Siri” or “Alexa.” But that’s a different kind of listening. Your device is only always listening for a specific word (or the “wake word”). Only after it hears that do the smarter parts of its digital brain light up.
Your conversations are not routinely transmitted to distant advertising companies so they can pick up random words and serve you commercials. This would take a lot of resources, and probably violate wiretapping and other privacy laws. It also just doesn’t make sense: There would be too much noise in listening to everything everyone says, and not enough signal to bother - especially since advertisers already know everything relevant about you without having listen to you prattle on to your dumb friends.
What data your phone is actually collecting: Instead of eavesdropping and storing your voice as many assume, your apps, phone, watch, game system, computer, and probably your oven are greedily collecting every data point they possibly can, including but not limited to your:
• Location information (both through your device’s location settings and IP address)
• Search history
• Browsing history
• Purchase history
• Physical interactions (that is, how you physically use your device)
This information, taken as a whole, is way more valuable and useful than whatever you talk about, and basically anyone who wants to can buy it. Advertising companies don’t, as a rule, connect this data to anything that can specifically identify you (like your name and address). That wouldn’t be hard to do, but there isn’t much in it for advertisers. They know everything you do, 24 hours a day, so what difference does your name make? The process itself is called fingerprinting, and it allows advertisers to track you across sites and apps."
Full article is here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "This Will Affect Us All"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 8/19/23
"This Will Affect Us All"
"We just heard of one of the largest bankruptcies to affect the business community in a long time. Evergrande just announced a chapter 15 bankruptcy. This will affect each and every one of us in the global economy. "
Comments here:
"Strange Prices At Kroger & Lots Of Missing Items! What's Going On Here?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 8/19/23
"Strange Prices At Kroger & Lots Of Missing Items!
What's Going On Here?"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are noticing a lot of missing items and some confusing prices on certain products. We are checking on the different deals of the week, but trying to find out what's going on with these prices and how to prepare for some of the upcoming food shortages."
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Friday, August 18, 2023
"Food Shortages & Grocery Prices That Are Set To Skyrocket! Not Good!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, PM 8/18/23
"Food Shortages & Grocery Prices That
Are Set To Skyrocket! Not Good!"
"We are exposing the truth about the food shortage situation and all the events leading up to grocery prices going up even higher in costs! Brace for impact as we are expecting higher prices than ever!"
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Canadian Prepper, "Bad News: It's Starting..."
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper 8/18/23
"Bad News: It's Starting..."
Comments here:
"Massive Collapse Will Hit The Car Market; CARMAX Loaded With Cars, Car Dealers Stuck"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 8/18/23
"Massive Collapse Will Hit The Car Market;
CARMAX Loaded With Cars, Car Dealers Stuck"
Comments here:
"20 Shortages That Will Make People Panic This Fall"
Full screen recommended.
"20 Shortages That Will Make People Panic This Fall"
by Epic Economist
"If you're not already stocking your pantry with fall and winter supplies, now it's time to do so. More grocery and household supply shortages are coming soon, according to retailers. That's why the importance of being prepared for such an event is getting increasingly clear. On top of that, over the next few months, several products, from iPhones to car parts and prescription medications are going to be in short supply, meaning that Americans should start bracing for stockouts and empty shelves once again.
For example. some of the most popular snacks will be in short supply soon. While consumers tend to buy more snacks during the colder months to avoid having to take multiple trips to the grocery store, the production of several snacks is going down due to lower agricultural production. For instance, sugar and cocoa shortages are likely to result in shortages of sweets and chocolate. A drop in the production of nuts can impact the availability of trail mix, nut butters, and granola bars this fall. Whole-grain crackers and biscuits are suffering from a worldwide shortage of wheat. Meanwhile, a nationwide potato shortage is likely to reduce the variety of potato chips and frozen fries we find at our local supermarket. On top of that, a shortage of corn is expected to cause stockouts of hard-shell tortillas and is even disrupting the production of Doritos right now.
Likewise, you may struggle to find the latest book releases at stores this fall. That’s because one of the most basic products is now experiencing a shortage. When paper demand tanked during the pandemic, many paper mills pivoted to produce packaging and cardboard to keep up with newfound dependence on online shopping, resulting in a nearly 20% reduction in production capacity from 2019, according to ERA Forest Products Research. But once the health crisis was over, demand for paper products spiked — and mills have not restored pre-pandemic production levels yet. Many of the mills that transitioned to packaging cannot easily revert back to paper production. On top of that, paper. raw material costs to produce paper have risen dramatically, pushing the price of paper up as much as 60%, Business Insider reported. In other words, if you’re waiting to get your hands on the hottest new novel or sci-fi release, you should probably prepare your wallet or opt for an e-book.
Whether you’re planning to do some home renovations on your own or you’re a homebuyer right now, tighter supplies for building materials are likely to impact your plans in the final stretch of 2023. After two years of growth, demand to build new homes is slowing this year, reports CNBC. But according to The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC), 93% of the 602 members surveyed reported experiencing material shortages this year. For instance, the waterproofing foam used for stucco lath is in short supply right now. During the pandemic, lumber was also in demand, but The National Association of Home Builders reported sawmills were slow to react to consumer and retailer demand for lumber. Now prices are soaring due to a combination of multiple supply chain problems, and many materials won’t see improvements in production until next spring. By taking action before these shortages spread across the supply chain system, families can ensure they have the necessary supplies to stay self-reliant and independent, even during emergencies and in times of crisis. For that reason, today, we compiled a list of shortages that may cause a lot of stress for U.S. consumers in the next few months."
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Musical Interlude: 2002, “Where The Stars And Moon Play”
Full screen recommended.
2002, “Where The Stars And Moon Play”
“Pamela and Randy Copus are the duo known as 2002. Randy Copus plays piano, electric cello, guitar, bass and keyboards. Pamela Copus plays flutes, harp, keyboards and a wind instrument called a WX5. Both musicians also provide all of the vocals on their albums, recording their voices many, many times and layering them to create a "virtual choir" with a celestial, angelic quality.”
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Will our Sun look like this one day? The Helix Nebula is one of brightest and closest examples of a planetary nebula, a gas cloud created at the end of the life of a Sun-like star. The outer gasses of the star expelled into space appear from our vantage point as if we are looking down a helix. The remnant central stellar core, destined to become a white dwarf star, glows in light so energetic it causes the previously expelled gas to fluoresce.
The Helix Nebula, given a technical designation of NGC 7293, lies about 700 light-years away towards the constellation of the Water Bearer (Aquarius) and spans about 2.5 light-years. The above picture was taken three colors on infrared light by the 4.1-meter Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. A close-up of the inner edge of the Helix Nebula shows complex gas knots of unknown origin.”
"Can't You See..."
"Can't you see that the courage to risk, to dare, to toss that gold coin up in the air over and over again, win or lose, is what makes humans human? They are fragile, doomed creatures, blinder than worms yet braver than the gods. "
- Jennifer Donnelly, "Stepsister"
"The Prophet: On Good and Evil "
"The Prophet: On Good and Evil "
"Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves,
and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.
You are good when you are one with yourself.
Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.
For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.
And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among
perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.
You are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
For when you strive for gain you are but a root
that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.
Surely the fruit cannot say to the root,
Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance.
For to the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.
You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,
Yet you are not evil when you sleep
while your tongue staggers without purpose.
And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.
You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.
But you who are strong and swift,
see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.
You are good in countless ways,
and you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard.
Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.
In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness:
and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea,
carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.
And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and
bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.
But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little,
Wherefore are you slow and halting?
For the truly good ask not the naked,
Where is your garment?
nor the houseless, What has befallen your house?"
- Kahlil Gibran
○
Freely download a PDF version of "The Prophet" here:
The Poet: David Whyte, "In the Beginning"
"In the Beginning"
"Sometimes simplicity rises
like a blossom of fire
from the white silk of your own skin.
You were there in the beginning
you heard the story, you heard the merciless
and tender words telling you where you had to go.
Exile is never easy and the journey
itself leaves a bitter taste. But then,
when you heard that voice, you had to go.
You couldn't sit by the fire, you couldn't live
so close to the live flame of that compassion
you had to go out in the world and make it your own
so you could come back with
that flame in your voice, saying listen...
this warmth, this unbearable light, this fearful love...
It is all here, it is all here."
~ David Whyte
"Relax..."
"Relax. They're not going to kill us. They're going to
TRY and kill us. And that is a very different thing. "
- Steve Voake, "The Dreamwalker's Child"
○
"You cannot kill me here. Bring your soldiers, your death, your disease, your collapsed economy because it doesn't matter, I have nothing left to lose and you cannot kill me here. Bring the tears of orphans and the wails of a mother's loss, bring your Jesus on a cross, bring your hate and bitterness and long working hours, bring your empty wallets and love long since gone but you cannot kill me here. Bring your sneers, your snide remarks and friendships never felt, your letters never sent, your kisses never kissed, cigarettes smoked to the bone and cancer killing fears but you cannot kill me here. For I may fall and I may fail but I will stand again each time and you will find no satisfaction. Because you cannot kill me here."
- Iain S. Thomas
"Our Dilemma..."
"Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time;
what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better."
- Sydney J. Harris
"Judge Napolitano, Judging Freedom 8/18/23"
Judge Napolitano, Judging Freedom 8/18/23
"Worst Crimes Committed by Federal Gov -
Intel RoundTable w/Larry Johnson & Ray Mcgovern"
o
Judge Napolitano, Judging Freedom 8/17/23
"JFK Assassination -
the CIA's Role w/Jacob Hornberger"
"Assassination of John F. Kennedy, mortal shooting of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, as he rode in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. His accused killer was Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine who had embraced Marxism and defected for a time to the Soviet Union. Oswald never stood trial for murder."
Col. Douglas Macgregor, "It's All Gone!"
Col. Douglas Macgregor, 8/18/23
"It's All Gone!"
o
"David Stockman on Why NATO Has Become
an Enemy of Peace and Security Around the World"
By InternationalMan
"Excerpt: "America’s Brobdingnagian $1.3 trillion national security budget thrives on manufactured threats and falsely demonized foes. And nothing could be more demonstrative of that proposition than the utter villainy which emanated from the NATO summit in Vilnius.
For crying out loud. Since the Munich Security Conference in 2007, the man (Putin) has said over and over, and then over again, that Ukraine’s ascension to NATO is an absolute red line. And anyone with their head screwed on right would have no trouble accepting that declaration by answering one simple question. To wit, how would Washington react if Russia put missiles and nukes in Mexico, or Cuba, or Nicaragua, or Granada or Venezuela or even Tierra Del Fuego?
Of course, President John F. Kennedy resolved that matter 61 years ago. Yet the whole Vilnius confab amounts to a wink and nod pageant telling the world that exactly what JFK said could not stand on our own doorstep back then, in fact, must stand on Russia’s now. One day soon the Great Hegemon on the Potomac will plant US/NATO missiles 40 minutes from the Kremlin and the purported “aggressor” domiciled there needs to shut-up and eat his geopolitical spinach.
Holy moly. The very idea is an affront to rationality and is a reckless invitation to permanent friction between two nations holding upwards of 12,000 nukes between them. Yet the miscreants gathered in Vilnius left no room for doubt in their declaration:
"Ukraine’s future is in NATO. We reaffirm the commitment we made at the 2008 Summit in Bucharest that Ukraine will become a member of NATO, and today we recognize that Ukraine’s path to full Euro-Atlantic integration has moved beyond the need for the Membership Action Plan. Ukraine has become increasingly interoperable and politically integrated with the Alliance, and has made substantial progress on its reform path."
So the question recurs. How in the whole fricking big wide world would adding the parts and pieces of Novorossiya, Poland, Lithuania, Rumania, the Cossack Hetmanates, the Crimean Khanate, the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and many other historical footnotes that were slapped together by the Soviet Tyrants after 1920 to form the current unnatural borders of Ukraine contribute to the Homeland Security of America, way over here on the far sides of the Atlantic and Pacific moats?
The answer of course is that it contributes nothing, as in nichts, nada and nugatory. NATO isn’t about security, collective or otherwise, anyway. It’s an utterly vestigial relic of the Cold War that was stood-up to contain a totalitarian Soviet Empire which was armed to the teeth, but which has long since disappeared into the dustbin of history. So George Bush the Elder should have parachuted into the Ramstein Germany air base in 1991, declared victory and dismantled NATO then and there.
As it has transpired, however, the bloated now 31-nation NATO of today has actually become an enemy of peace and security. That’s because it exists mainly as a marketing forum for western arms manufacturers and a think tank for generating phony threats and scary stories designed to keep military budgets amply stocked with fiscal wherewithal and vastly over-sized military establishments well provisioned with missions, mandates, war games and busy work."
Full article here:
"How It Really Is"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 8/18/23
"Way Too Much Crime"
"We are getting hit with more crime every day. Mass groups are taking over shopping malls. People are street racing at a record pace. And now people are committing major felonies to defraud auto dealerships out of cars."
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "A Bumpy Ride"
"A Bumpy Ride"
by Jim Kunstler
“This voter is not convinced by virtues or statistics.
He is convinced by dreams, visions, stories and jokes.”
- Curtis Yarvin
"Draw back from the scene and understand that the sheer heaping-up of procedural legal bullshit in the various sham court cases against candidate Donald Trump is largely an attempt to confound, mystify, and preoccupy the public while the great scaffold of our national life collapses. The news 0 both legacy and alt - will be dominated day after day by analyses of every move and counter-move through endless thickets of courtroom minutiae while the US economy crashes and burns, residual wealth is confiscated, and the American social order turns into something like fiery goo.
By November of 2024, somebody will be elected president, or no one will be. At this point, it is probably down to an election that more than half the country won’t believe in, or no election at all due to civil chaos so extreme it will make the 1861 weeks of secession look as tame as a middle school fire drill. Beyond the hamstringing and hog-tying of their chief adversary, the Democratic Party lawfare necromancers have set up the gameboard with surpassing precision so that their opponents will never be able to win another election. Yet, they are so self-satisfied as to apparently think no one noticed. (We’ll be coming for you, eventually, Marc Elias.)
As to the parsing out of all those bogus charges against Mr. Trump, consider that we now live in a culture of no truth, only battling portfolios of narrative spin, at least according to the Marxian wokesters who have seized the machinery of law, so, there, with a snap of your fingers goes jurisprudence - as in: I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, blah blah…. The joke is on you. There is no truth, anymore, so stop insisting that there is anything like it to determine, except whatever outcome the Party of Chaos seeks.
The suspended animation of August with its sand castles, lobster rolls, and care-free cocktail cruises will soon yield to the season of hurricanes, financial fiascos, momentous military movements, and reversals of political fortune. What, for instance, becomes of “Joe Biden,” the fictitious president, and that claque of grift-bedizened relatives around him? I’ll tell you one thing: no way is this fellow running for reelection, and the mighty pretense around that hallucination makes idiots of everyone on cable TV news. Somebody has already slipped Ol’ “Joe” the black spot. Dr. Jill has crawled into a bottle. The “Big Guy” is just sulking now, drowning his sorrows in ice cream - but his fate hangs there above the Rehoboth dunes like an ominous black sea-bird suspended on an ill wind, mocking him. You have finally screwed the pooch, Joey, it cries… caw caw caw….
We are thus close to the moment when impeachment can no longer be dodged. The reams of Biden family bank records that Mr. Comer of Kentucky has unearthed hither and yon, plus deal memoranda, video and audio recordings of dark confabs, and hundreds of tell-tale emails are of a different evidentiary nature than the roster of hypothetical thought crimes confabulated by Jack Smith, Alvin Bragg, and Fani T. Willis. Personally, I would like, at least, to see impeachment hearings where all that hard evidence of Biden family bribery is methodically laid out for The New York Times and CNN to ignore. It will look like a game of chicken for a few days, but then the party honchos will “sadly” order Ol’ Joe to step aside before that grim spectacle goes too far.
The Ukraine War will then be Kamala Harris’s to lose - depend on it - though nobody will care. I have a feeling that Barack Obama will not be able to… how shall we say… work with her. All that cackling must conceal an inner vacancy so vast that Judge Crater, DB Cooper, and the brigantine Mary Celeste might be roaming around in there, along with Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa, and the Lost Colony of Roanoke. And I cringe to imagine the meetings with Kamala where Susan Rice, Lisa Monaco, and Torie Nuland try to tell the poor simp what to do. It will look like one of those girlie beat-downs on an Oakland street-corner.
Anyway, by that time the stock markets will be all a’crumble, all those Vanguard retirement funds will wash-up like so many writhing grunions on Cabrillo Beach, and your local bank will cap withdrawals at $500 a few weeks before executing the long-rumored bail-ins. At that magic moment, the Democratic Party will have everything it has wished for.
Of course, I can’t say the melodrama will play out exactly like that, in that sequence. But expect trouble in September. Expect disorder like you’ve never imagined. Think about retrieving whatever cash you have in the bank. Consider arming yourself for safety’s sake, if you live in a part of the country that allows it. Or maybe even if you live in the other parts. Lay in some beans and rice and some batteries. Buckle your mental seat belt. When August is over, it’s going to be a bumpy ride."
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 8/18/23"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 8/18/23"
91 Trump Felonies, NATO Ukraine Disaster, Murdered Suddenly
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"There are now 4 separate cases and a total of 91 felonies charged to President Donald J. Trump. It has become a ridiculous cartoon prosecution of the former President that is anything but funny. It shows a complete desperation of the Deep State to stop Donald Trump and “We the People.”
This is an attack on the First Amendment that makes it illegal to contest and protest obvious election fraud. Meanwhile, the President that many say was cheated in has seen zero charges, even though House GOP members have released proof Joe Biden and family have gotten at least $20 million in illegal cash. It’s 91 to 0 and Biden is winning - so far.
From the beginning, I said the Ukraine war was going to be a disaster and the so-called sanctions were going to “backfire.” According to a new report, the U.S. has gotten nearly $6 trillion poorer and Russia has gotten about $600 billion richer. This has become a NATO Ukraine disaster, and now they are talking about giving land for peace. Can peace come before NATO starts a nuclear war? Let’s hope so.
Another week and more CV19 bioweapon/vax murders. These people are young and “died suddenly” for no apparent reason. You don’t die suddenly at 38 years old for some unexplained reason, but that is exactly what happened to Broadway star Chris Peluso. When is the mass awakening to the CV19 death and disability program going to happen? Not soon enough. We really should start calling this phenomenon “Murdered Suddenly.”
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about
these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 8.18.23
Bill Bonner, "Rich Men North of Richmond"
"Rich Men North of Richmond"
A tale of woe and the forgotten class of American workers...
By Bill Bonner
"I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day,
Overtime hours for bullshit pay,
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away.
It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to,
For people like me and people like you.
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true,
But it is, oh, it is.
Livin' in the new world
With an old soul,
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do,
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do,
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond..."
~ Oliver Anthony
Youghal, Ireland - "First, a news flash: our legendary Doom Index has turned suddenly and decisively down – more so than in 2020. What that means, we don’t know…but we’ll find out. Dan will have more details later this week. Back to the ‘Rich Men North of Richmond’…
Increasingly Insufferable: Virginia used to be a ‘southern’ state. But today, north of Richmond, is the red, white, and blue of the US federal government…reaching down to Fredericksburg…with the military industrial/spook complex concentrated around the northern suburbs of Washington, DC.
The rich men north of Richmond are a fabulous race of super-achievers. After subduing the South, they fanned out – Nicaragua…Panama…Cuba…the Philippines…France…and they kept going until they had troops all over the world. They built factories to turn out automobiles and tanks. They built big cities – New York, Gary, San Francisco. They made movies, sang songs and got rich.
But in 1913, they set up the Fed…and the IRS. Then, in 1971, they changed the dollar to make it easier for them to get even richer. And over time, they became more and more insufferable.
Why do US soldiers still camp in South Korea, Japan and Germany – not to mention Niger and the Gulf of Guinea, you might ask? Why does the president of the US, on his own say-so, tell us with whom we can trade and with whom we cannot? Why can’t we say what we really think without getting canceled or charged with a ‘hate crime.’ It’s because the rich men north of Richmond ‘just wanna have total control.’
They created the US empire, with its $33 trillion in debt…its 200,000 pages of regulations…its lobbyists, politicians, grifters, scoundrels and hacks…it perennial, losing wars…its vast, clunky bureaucracy…its incompetent experts…its giveaway programs…unbalanced budgets…claptrap theories…and worthless campaigns against drugs, poverty and free speech.
“Bullsh*t Pay”: For most people, the federal government is a terrible burden, a scam and a shame. But it works well for the people north of Richmond. Just look at the big, new sparkling office buildings along the beltway…and the many new McMansions in McLean or Falls Church.
But away from the centers of power, things are not so sweet. Real wages, south of Richmond, have not increased significantly since 1975, nearly 50 years ago. And today, many…if not most…Americans work for “bullsh*t pay” going further and further into debt. The total amount of credit card debt outstanding bounded over $1 trillion for the first time last week. And the interest rate rose over 20%. How much is left? How do they pay the rent?
The Wall Street Journal reports: "The U.S. has seen a record increase in homeless people this year as the Covid-19 pandemic fades, according to a Wall Street Journal review of data from around the country. The data so far this year are up roughly 11% from 2022, a sharp jump that would represent by far the biggest recorded increase since the government started tracking comparable numbers in 2007. The next highest increase was a 2.7% jump in 2019, excluding an artificially high increase last year caused by pandemic counting interruptions."
Deaths of Despair: And here’s Joseph Stiglitz describing the grim lives of half the country: "Families in the bottom 50 percent hardly have the cash reserves to meet an emergency. Newspapers are replete with stories of those for whom the breakdown of a car or an illness starts a downward spiral from which they never recover.
… U.S. life expectancy, exceptionally low to begin with, is experiencing sustained declines. This in spite of the marvels of medical science, many advances of which occur right here in America and which are made readily available to the rich. Economist Ann Case and 2015 Nobel laureate in economics Angus Deaton describe one of the main causes of rising morbidity—the increase in alcoholism, drug overdoses and suicides—as “deaths of despair” by those who have given up hope."
The Associated Press adds the latest numbers: "About 49,500 people took their own lives last year in the U.S., the highest number ever, according to new government data posted Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which posted the numbers, has not yet calculated a suicide rate for the year, but available data suggests suicides are more common in the U.S. than at any time since the dawn of World War II."
“There’s something wrong. The number should not be going up,” said Christina Wilbur, a 45-year-old Florida woman whose son shot himself to death last year. Yes, there’s something wrong. A “bi-partisan stench” is coming from the Potomac, says Spectator magazine, with “plenty of blame to go around.”
Or, as Glenn Greenwald puts it: "The relevant metric now isn't left versus right. It's anti-establishment versus pro-establishment. Namely, do you think the loss of trust that these institutions of authority have suffered is valid or not? Do you think that they deserve the contempt in which they are held by a large portion of the population? I believe it's absolutely justified to hold them in contempt... That's the fundamental distinction that defines our political spectrum more than old definitions of left versus right."
Yes…Oliver Anthony is right. It’s the ‘rich men north of Richmond’ who threaten us all. More to come…"
Oliver Anthony, "Rich Men North Of Richmond"