Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 9/16/23
"This Is The Worst Economy In US History;
Las Vegas Shocking Crime; Financial Crisis Unavoidable"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, September 16, 2023
Musical Interlude: Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"
Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation, "Dance of Life"
Be kind to yourself, forget all the troubles
for a little while and enjoy this beautiful video...
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across.
Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552.”
○
"Our planet is a tiny porthole, looking over a cosmic sea.
Can we learn what lies beyond our own horizons of perception?"
"What Is Hope?"
"What Is Hope?"
"What is hope? It is the pre-sentiment that imagination is more real and reality is less real than it looks. It is the hunch that the overwhelming brutality of facts that oppress and repress us is not the last word. It is the suspicion that reality is more complex than the realists want us to believe. That the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the actual; and in a miraculous and unexplained way, life is opening creative events which will light the way to freedom and resurrection. But the two - suffering and hope - must live from each other. Suffering without hope produces resentment and despair. But hope without suffering creates illusions, naïveté and drunkenness.
So let us plant dates even though we who plant them will never eat them. We must live by the love of what we will never see. That is the secret discipline. It is the refusal to let our creative act be dissolved away by our need for immediate sense experience, and it is a struggled commitment to the future of our grandchildren. Such disciplined hope is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints the courage to die for the future they envisage. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest hope."
- Rubin Alves
The Poet: Charles Dickens, "Things That Never Die "
"Things That Never Die "
"The pure, the bright, the beautiful
that stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulses to wordless prayer,
The streams of love and truth,
The longing after something lost,
The spirits longing cry,
The striving after better hopes -
These things can never die.
The timid hand stretched forth to aid
A brother in his need;
A kindly word in griefs dark hour
That proves a friend indeed;
The plea for mercy softly breathed,
When justice threatens high,
The sorrow of a contrite heart -
These things shall never die.
Let nothing pass, for every hand
Must find some work to do,
Lose not a chance to waken love -
Be firm and just and true.
So shall a light that cannot fade
Beam on thee from on high,
And angel voices say to thee -
These things shall never die."
- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
"In Praise of Traditional Family Values… Mostly"
"In Praise of Traditional Family Values… Mostly"
By Paul Rosenberg
"Humanity has a problem of clinging to extremes, as I’m quite sure you’ve noticed. They love the Reds and hate the Blues, or they love the Blues and hate the Reds. They believe deeply in God, or they consider belief to be insane. And once they’re on one side or the other, they instinctively repel any modification of their opinion. Their polarization jumps to defend itself. Facts for its defense are assembled afterward, as a second step.
Discussions of “family values” have stood on this kind of battlefield for decades, making them hazardous at best. Nonetheless, I think that it’s time to remove this topic from automatic polarization. And I do think that many people are ready for it. So let’s give it a shot.
The Gulf Between Beneficial and Mandatory: There are two big obstacles to letting go of this polarization, and both involve the difference between “beneficial” and “mandatory.” These two obstacles are the political and the cultural. We’ll go through each.
Problem #1: The Political: The problem with anything politicized is that all political decisions include threats of violence. That’s what laws are, after all; without physical force standing behind them somewhere, laws would merely be suggestions. So, when we politicize something, we mix it with violence. That violence may stand at the end of a long process, but it’s always there. For this reason, politicized family values polarize people, and understandably so - no one likes having a gun pointed at them.
Both “you must” and “you must not” are mandatory statements, and if politics is involved, they’re also threats. If you don’t comply, something bad will happen to you. As related to values, this is nearly the worst foundation imaginable. Even if we could pick a “family value” that nearly all us would agree with, forcing people to comply with it removes their judgment - their agency - from the equation. By doing that, we minimize them, degrade them, insult their consciousness. So, political solutions, regardless of which side of the polarization divide “wins,” damage and degrade far more than they can fix.
Problem #2: The Cultural: There are strong and enduring reasons why certain “family values” persist, though they’re not always the best of reasons. For example, the majority of humans have an instinct to reproduce and to see their offspring reproduce. That’s simply built into the race; none of us would be here without it. Nonetheless, this feeling, while necessary, is not something that we should force on others. By pressuring people to conform to our wishes, we move perilously close to violating their agency.
I happen to think that having children is a good thing for adults to do. But it would be wrong of me to pressure others to do so. My opinions on the beneficial should not be made mandatory for any other person. I have a moral right to require that others do no harm, but I have no right to make them live according to my feelings. That would make them a slave, not a free being with agency over his or her life. However important I think childbearing may be, I have no right to enslave people to my way of life.
Christians and Parents and Gays, Oh My! Now let’s look at some of the “hard cases,” the ones that drive people to wild reactions:
Christians. I am not unsympathetic to Christianity, and certainly not to Jesus. I understand people who want to live according to their book, and I think they have every right to do so. If they think homosexuality is a bad thing, that’s their right. And they should be able to discuss their opinions openly, so long as they do it politely. What Christians should not do is force others to live by their book. That is, they shouldn’t try to enforce their values. And a primary reason they shouldn’t is their own belief in free will. As their book says, “Whosoever wills, let him come.”
If a Christian believes that God gave man free will, compelling other men to live against their will is to fight against God. Furthermore, it voids the concepts of faith and of “cleaning the inside of the cup first.”
Parents: Parents are often unhappy with grown children who wish not to have families. This is part of the current human condition and will probably remain for a very long time. So, it will continue to be a sore spot. Children who don’t wish to have families will have to understand that their parents feel differently and not be overly sensitive on the subject. Parents in this situation can ask occasionally and even make their case for family life once in a while, but parents should be the more mature party in this conflict of opinions. They should not push their children.
Gays. Let me start with a note to heterosexuals: I’d like you, for just a moment, to imagine the pain of growing up gay. What if you naturally felt for the same sex as you do now for the opposite sex? How would you deal with it at 12 years old, when all the boys were talking about kissing girls, or all the girls were whispering about boys? And what if they also told “homo” jokes and looked for opportunities to insult each other? Being the only one who was different and knowing that you couldn’t escape them at school, how would you feel? My point is that heterosexuals should have compassion for gay kids… and for older gay folks too. Their road is difficult, and I don’t think most of them simply choose it.
Now, a note to gays: Have a bit of understanding for straight folks. Yes, there are a few who talk about you maliciously, but most straight people have no interest in hurting you and might very well defend you in a pinch. Furthermore, you should not use the same political manipulation that your opponents once used. As I noted above, laws always entail violence, and you don’t have any more right to lord it over straight people than they have to lord it over you. If you want solid, long-term acceptance, you must convince people, not force them. Yes, that way is slower and harder, but it builds with durable materials, not materials that will blow away with the next change of the political winds.
The Case for Traditional Values: I think I’ve made myself abundantly clear that family values ought not be enforced on anyone. With that said, however, I’d like to make a case for them.
I’ve seen lots of people living lots of ways, and my observation (over quite a few decades) is that far more people thrive within the traditional family arrangement than within any other. Most of us are happier and more productive living long term with a committed spouse. And most of us gain a great deal from raising children. I’m not claiming that this arrangement is best for everyone, but I’ve known a lot of people over a lot of years, and this conclusion seems very solid to me.
Having a family is no panacea. Marriage is not automatically easy, and raising children is long, hard, and sometimes thankless work. I’m not saying that this way of life is painless; I’m saying that it’s productive and that we tend to mature and grow better within this arrangement than within others. I’ll go even further and say that there is value in the classic arrangement of the husband working and the wife tending the children and the home. In my opinion, it’s a productive way of life.
One difficulty in the husband/wife arrangement is that the woman is especially limited by it. Tending children and keeping house are hard. (Husbands: I strongly suggest that you try switching roles for a week.) No woman can do this full time and still have time and energy left for all her intellectual interests. That’s why this must be a choice. There is much to be gained by it, but there are real trade-offs.
Raising children is one of the most significant things that a person can do. It matters a tremendous amount, and women who choose to do it should be held in high esteem. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a token of great respect for a man to address an older woman as “mother.” That might be a good thing to bring back.
I should add that men too bear a burden in having their wives stay home with their children; they have to work more, they need to help at home anyway, and they worry right along with their wives. The difference - and it is a difference that matters - is that the husband has outside interests and is gone from the home most days. In most cases, the husband’s role, which is legitimately hard, is still less difficult than the mother’s. So, to sum up: while no one should be forced to follow traditional roles, they are very often the most productive choices for us.
Why We Don’t Have to Worry About the Family: I have, for a long time, heard people expressing their worries that “the family” will fracture because of modern changes. So, let me put your minds at ease: the family will not vanish as the preferred human grouping. I can say this with confidence because I have proof. And the best piece of proof I have is from the Oneida colony of the mid-19th century. (I covered these people in Free-Man’s Perspective #16.) Here, briefly, is the story:
The people of Oneida believed that traditional man/woman marriage was contrary to God’s will. They practiced - and enforced - group marriage, and over quite a long time. No one was permitted to have any sort of monogamous relationship… and there were hundreds of people involved. Over time, however, Oneida fell apart, mainly because the children of the first members wanted monogamous relationships. They took frightening risks and suffered harsh punishments in order to be monogamous. Everything in their lives powerfully opposed and punished monogamy, yet they could not be held back from it.
So don’t worry about the family. Gay people will not eliminate it, and political stupidity will not kill it. The vast majority of us are simply wired that way, and that wiring is not easily changed. As the Roman poet Horace wrote: 'You can expel nature with a pitchfork, but it just comes back.'"
"Meanwhile, Elsewhere..."
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell 9/15/23
"Moscow Metro: How To Get
From Vnukovo Airport to Moscow"
"The newest Metro Station on the Moscow Metro recently opened. In This video I detail How to get from Vnukovo Airport to Moscow. Airport Vnukovo Metro Station is directly below the arrivals hall of the Airport. Let's discover together how to get to Moscow from Vnukovo Airport."
Comments here:
Just like where you live, right, Good Citizen? Right?
Comments?
"Imagination Land"
"Imagination Land"
by The Zman
"All of us live in a silo of our own making to some degree. We read news sites we like and we like them because they tend to cover the stuff we think is important, in a way we hope is accurate. We admire opinions with which we agree. We hang out with people who share our interests. That’s normal. It’s also normal to know it and know others have different opinions and interests. Most normie conservatives get that Fox News is biased toward the Republicans, but they know all of the other stations are heavily biased to the Democrats.
This self-awareness has never applied to the Left. Every normal person has had a conversation with a Progressive friend where they claim the news is biased against them or is too easy on some conservative they currently hate. They will argue that Fox News is poisoning the minds of the public. When you point out that 90% of the mass media is run by hard left true believers, they scoff and say you’re nuts. The hive mind of Progressives has always allowed them to pretend they are surrounded by a sea of their enemies.
One point made by some on the Dissident Right is that this blinkered view of the world has infected the so-called conservatives. They are blind to the intellectual revolution going on over here, because they stare at Lefty all day. Like people looking directly into the sun, they are blind to everything else. As a result, the legacy conservatives carry on like it is 1984 and Dutch Reagan is riding high. Much of what so-called conservatism is these days is just a weird nostalgia trip, celebrating a fictional past with no connection to the present.
There are many reasons why so-called conservatives are becoming irrelevant, but the main reason is that their good friends on the Left are racing off into a fantasy land of their own creation. Listen to a modern Progressive talk and it is a weird combination of echolalic babbling and paranoia about dark forces that are imaginary. Replace “Russian hacking” with “work of the devil” and their howling makes more sense. Things like “foreign meddling” and “institutional racism” are just stand-ins for Old Scratch.
This increasingly weird disconnect between the Left and this place we call earth shows up in their main propaganda organs. Those old enough to remember reading English versions of communist newspapers can recognize the unintended humor on the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. This front page item is a good example. Everything in that “news” story describes a world that only exists in the fevered imaginations of the Left. It was a fictional account of present reality written for believers.
This Andrew Sullivan piece bumps up against this reality a little bit, but from a different angle. His argument is that the fantasy land of academia is casting a long shadow over American society, so it is imperative that the college campus be reformed to look something like reality. His framing of things is mostly wrong because he is just a slightly less berserk member of the hive he is trying analyze. His description of the dynamic on campus, though, is correct. It is a world untethered from reality.
The fact is, the college campus is the apotheosis of Progressive spiritualism. It has been dominated by the Left for as long as anyone has been alive. The constant flow of credit money into American higher education has removed all restraints on the people in charge. They are free to indulge whatever fantasies they have at the moment, as no one ever gets fired and the money spigot stays open. As a result, the American college campus is the full flowering of the Progressive imagination. It’s Wakanda for cat ladies.
This lurch into madness is the result of plenty. Up until recent, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the lack of universal prosperity has reined in the excesses of the Left. In order to win elections, Progressive politicians had to focus on better economics and expanding opportunity. Of course, the Cold War kept everyone focused on practical reality, as a mistake could have set off a nuclear exchange. That’s no longer the case.
Progressivism has always been a spiritual movement. It is the quest for cosmic justice based on the notion that we are only as good as the weakest among us. That is a fine and noble sentiment, as long as it remains a sentiment. The reality of scarcity has always kept this spiritualism in check. As we enter into what appears to be a post-scarcity world, Progressives are free to explore the far reaches of their mysticism. The result is a ruling class that is looking more like eastern mystics, than pragmatic rulers.
It is why civic nationalism is a dead end street. You see it in the Andrew Sullivan piece about the campus culture. What he is arguing in favor of is the same things we hear from civic nationalists. They all agree with Progressives that we need a unifying religion. They just want a debate about the contours and end points of the religion. The fact that no one has ever pulled this off without ushering in a bloodbath never gets mentioned, Instead, all of these folks prefer to frolic in imagination land, where all their dreams come true.”
○
“Father, O father! what do we here
In this land of unbelief and fear?
The Land of Dreams is better far,
Above the light of the morning star.”
- William Blake, “The Land of Dreams”
In this land of unbelief and fear?
The Land of Dreams is better far,
Above the light of the morning star.”
- William Blake, “The Land of Dreams”
"How It Really Is"
"Ah, You Miserable Creatures!"
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great!
You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything!
Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
- Frederic Bastiat
How much more evidence do you need to
realize we as a society have lost our collective minds?
"One Chance..."
“You get that one chance; and damn it, you’ve got to take it! If there’s one lesson I know I will take with me for eternity, its that there are those things that might happen only once, those chances that come walking down the street, strolling out of a café; if you don’t let go and take them, they really could get away! We can get so washed out with a mindset of entitlement – the universe will do everything for us to ensure our happiness – that we forget why we came here! We came here to grab, to take, to give, to have! Not to wait! Nobody came here to wait! So, what makes anyone think that destiny will keep on knocking over and over again? It could, but what if it doesn’t? You go and you take the chance that you get; even if it makes you look stupid, insane, or whorish! Because it just might not come back again. You could wait a lifetime to see if it will… but I don’t think you should.”
- C. JoyBell C.
"The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History"
Strong language alert!
Full screen recommended.
"The Most Honest Three Minutes In Television History"
Comments here:
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 9/15/23"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 9/15/23"
Dr. Fauci Admits Vax Failure, Pushing Nuke War, Inflation Rising
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"The death and disabilities from the failed CV19 bioweapon vax must be getting obvious to the general public because Dr. Anthony Fauci just admitted the CV19 so-called vaccine can cause severe heart problems. We all have known this for more than a year, but Dr. Fauci never mentioned it. This is a sure sign that it is becoming obvious to all that the CV19 shots were a total deadly and debilitating scam on America and the world. The total public awakening is going to be beautiful and ugly at the same time.
It seems every week there is a new announcement of more weapons and more funding in support of the disaster that is the Ukraine war with Russia. NATO has failed, and yet, more and more deadly weapons are being sent to Ukraine and used against Russia. This past week, NATO missiles were used by Ukraine to attack the Russian Black Sea Fleet. What will the response be? Russia is also warning the UK not to train Ukraine commandos to blow up Russian nuke power plants. Putin is promising “serious consequences.” All the while, the brain-dead propaganda spewing Lying Legacy Media tells us Ukraine is winning, which is the exact opposite of reality. There is absolutely zero talk of peace, and all the signs point to an escalating war that will end with a nuclear exchange. Our leaders are reckless compromised idiots, and the world will pay dearly for it if it is not derailed soon.
Inflation is on the rise again as the August inflation rate spiked .6%. That’s the biggest increase this year, and more inflation is on the way with oil, gasoline, diesel fuel and food all headed higher. No way the Fed will be in the interest rate cutting mood with this news. On top of that, the ECB just raised interest rates to a record 4%. Watch the Fed follow suit at the next meeting or before. Bye, bye housing and commercial real estate, and hello Greatest Depression. There is much more in the 47-minute newscast."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about
hese stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.
Dan, I Allegedly, "This Is Where The Chaos Begins"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 9/16/23
"This Is Where The Chaos Begins"
"I love when business experts give us warnings. Now we’re getting another warning from Kevin O’Leary, but there is a huge twist to this now. The ERC, employee retention credit is being closed by the IRS."
Comments here:
"Outrageous Prices At Walmart! This Is Crazy! What's Next?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 9/16/23
"Outrageous Prices At Walmart!
This Is Crazy! What's Next?"
"In today's vlog, we are at Walmart and are noticing some outrageous price increases on groceries! This is not good as grocery prices have already reached an all-time high! It's getting rough out here as more and more families struggle to put food on the table!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
City Prepping, 9/16/23
"9 Food Items That Will Skyrocket in
Price in 2024 (That You'll Want)"
Comments here:
Friday, September 15, 2023
"20 Great Depression Era Foods We Will Need Soon"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 9/15/23
"20 Great Depression Era Foods We Will Need Soon"
"On October 29, 1929, the U.S. stock market faced a devastating crash that resulted in the crisis that we know today as the Great Depression. During that period, millions of Americans lost their jobs, their incomes, and their homes, and countless families faced homelessness and hunger. Some people survived because they started to plant their fruits and vegetables and raise animals to make their meals. But for many others, that wasn't an option so they had to improvise with the ingredients they had available. Back then, the vast majority of Americans had to stretch every dollar and pinch every penny to get the most food for their buck.
Conditions were so extreme that desperate people started to do things that would be unthinkable during normal times just to have something on their plate. For instance, while some people only did this when it was roadkill, others actually hunted squirrels to eat. Those were times when panic and desperation were rapidly spreading through our society, and some Americans had to fight to survive. Eating squirrels was not uncommon in the 30s. Beef was out of the reach of many struggling households, and chickens were kept alive so they could provide eggs, so options were limited.
People hunted, foraged, and learned to make the best of what they had on hand. Canned goods, flour, eggs, and milk sometimes were all families had, and still, they created many different recipes with humble food staples. Those who could eat twice a day were the lucky ones. Poor families only had one meal per day, and parents went hungry at nighttime so they could feed their children.
Even though this happened almost one century ago, the struggles of that time are still in the nation's memory, especially because current economic conditions are becoming eerily similar to what happened in the late 1920s and at the beginning of the 1930s. Today, we have the most overvalued stock market in history. The housing market is falling apart, with commercial properties setting off the downfall, the economy is slumping while consumer prices are still soaring, and thousands of companies have already announced mass layoffs this year.
To say that life has changed dramatically in the past few years is an understatement. For those who are fortunate enough to still have jobs, making ends meet is no more an issue than normal. But for those who have lost their income entirely, from now on, money will be a bigger problem than ever before. This, however, is not the only burden Americans are facing right now. Grocery stores and big-box retailers are reporting empty shelves for several staples once again, and every time we go shopping, prices are up again.
Although we genuinely hope that our population doesn’t reach the same levels of despair and financial ruin that American families faced during the Great Depression, there plenty of statistics indicating that we are headed to a historic downturn. That's why we must learn from history, and get ready for the hardships before they reach us.
Even the UN is warning that a Depression-era famine will happen again, so preparing for the next economic and financial disaster is definitely a matter of survival. For that reason, we compiled some recipes that our parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents made back then out of nearly nothing."
Comments here:
"Jeremiah Babe, 9/15/23"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 9/15/23
"Warning! Las Vegas Chaos Will Spread;
Economy Is Falling Apart As Home Buyers Cancel Contracts"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Who knows what evil lurks in the eyes of galaxies? The Hubble knows -- or in the case of spiral galaxy M64 - is helping to find out. Messier 64, also known as the Evil Eye or Sleeping Beauty Galaxy, may seem to have evil in its eye because all of its stars rotate in the same direction as the interstellar gas in the galaxy's central region, but in the opposite direction in the outer regions. Captured here in great detail by the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, enormous dust clouds obscure the near-side of M64's central region, which are laced with the telltale reddish glow of hydrogen associated with star formation.
M64 lies about 17 million light years away, meaning that the light we see from it today left when the last common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees roamed the Earth. The dusty eye and bizarre rotation are likely the result of a billion-year-old merger of two different galaxies."
The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "I Want A Lot"
"I Want A Lot"
"You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.
So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.
But what you love to see are faces
that so work and feel thirst...
You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret."
- Rainer Maria Rilke
"Decide..."
“We're all going to die. We don't get much say over how or when, but we do get to decide how we're gonna live. So, do it. Decide. Is this the life you want to live? Is this the person you want to love? Is this the best you can be? Can you be stronger? Kinder? More compassionate? Decide. Breathe in. Breathe out and decide.”
- “Richard”, “Grey’s Anatomy”
o
- W. Somerset Maugham
"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."
- Sydney J. Harris
Chet Raymo, "The Dot and the Abyss"
Click image for larger size.
"The Dot and the Abyss"
by Chet Raymo
"Let's take a stroll around the neighborhood. Nearby. Not very far. Let's say 20 light-years from the Sun. A typical neighborhood, for our neck of the galaxy. About a hundred stars. If we travel to the nearest one on, say, a Voyager spacecraft, it will take us upwards of thirty thousand years to get there. So our neighborhood amble will take a while.
First we'll pop in on Alpha Centauri and its two companions. Alpha is a twin of our Sun, a yellow star. In our 20-light-year neighborhood there are half-a-dozen Sunlike stars. Not many stars are bigger or brighter. Sirius, Altair, Procyon. Nothing really hot and bright like Rigel in Orion, and no red giants. All things considered, our Sun is one of the big shots on the block. A dozen or so orange stars, somewhat cooler and less bright than the Sun. A passel of red dwarfs. And a handful of white dwarfs make up the mix. About a hundred in all.
Now let's put the neighborhood in perspective. Imagine the 20-light-year-radius sphere with its hundred stars is the size of the period at the end of this sentence. Then the Milky Way Galaxy would be about the size of your desktop, a great wheeling whirl of stars with our neighborhood dot about two-thirds of the way out from the center.
Click image for larger size.
The next spiral galaxy? Andromeda? Another circular tabletop of a hundred billion stars at the other end of the house. How many galaxies? Well, tens of billions that we can potentially see with current technology, spread out around us in every direction for hundreds of miles. And our sweet little Sun and its one hundred neighboring stars are in this period.
We know all of this. But there is a sense in which we don't know it. Psychologically we still live in the cosmic egg universe of Dante, our cozy planet with the Empyrean just up there above the clouds. We have lived through the most breathtaking transformation of human knowledge and we haven't begun to grasp what it means. It’s as if the transformation never happened. We know and we don't know. Maybe we don't want to know."
"A Lot Of People..."
"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
"Your Future As Peasants"
"Your Future As Peasants"
by Addison Wiggin
I know the human being and fish can co-exist peacefully.
- George W. Bush
"Okay, so are we “boiling the oceans,” as former Vice President Al Gore told the Davos Crowd of the World Economic Forum earlier this year… or are we “burnt toast”?
"Free Speech On Trial"
by Leighton Woodhouse and Alex Gutentag
"Neither sound very positive. And on a sunny day in the Mid-Atlantic, 75 degrees and a slight breeze, it doesn’t feel much like either. Still, it’s not a question we’re asking lightly. The journal Science Advances published the results of a study which has been measuring 9 key health factors for the planet earth. They include, Earth’s climate, biodiversity, land, freshwater, nutrient pollution and “novel” chemicals, those created by man. Those six metrics are all “out of whack” according to the AP, because all six are exceeding “safe operating space for humanity” on this shining ball of blue we call home.
“We are in very bad shape,” said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “We show in this analysis that the planet is losing resilience and the patient is sick.” Of the three other metrics the study tracks – ozone, health of the air and acidity in the oceans – only the ozone layer is in whack. “I’ve often said if we don’t quickly cut back on how we are stressing the Earth, we’re toast,” commented Granger Morgan, a professor of environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon, when interviewed by AP. “This paper says it’s more likely that we’re burnt toast.”
As you can imagine, after the AP covered the study, the rest of the legacy press chimed right in. The “narrative,” of course, is that we’re all doomed to be boiled alive and, apparently, have dry mouth as we try to swallow the “burnt toast” conclusion. You’ll recall, here in The Daily Missive we’ve been following the debate between the “alarmists” and “deniers.”
The alarmists want draconian measures taken to mitigate the causes of climate change in their scientific view. The deniers, many of whom don’t dispute the science at all, but have a beef with the policy being crammed down our throats by politicians and unelected bureaucrats all over the globe. Deniers favor “adaptation” which is best supported by a free market and open source innovation. Addled by the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon, we see these debates all over the place from network news to twitter posts.
The mitigators believe we need draconian measures to bring the Earth back into the whack it was before the Industrial Revolution in the 1750s. Oy. “Climate change is the perfect problem for enterprising globalists,” Jim Rickards told us in a Wiggin Sessions interview earlier this year. “It’s a global problem, so it requires a global solution.”
Our buddy Jud Anglin, writing in Mark Moss’ newsletter Brush Fires, identifies some objectives of the Davos Crowd, should we go along with their premise and accept that the seas are, in fact, boiling and the air tastes like stale bread crumbs. Here are the objectives of The Green World Order policy agenda, in bullet point form, according to Jud:
Centralized for total control. Eyes on you… Eyes on me.
A transformation from fossil fuels to electricity.
All your home appliances will have to be electrified:
Furnaces…
Gas Ranges and Ovens. ...
Water Heaters. ...
Clothes Dryers. ...
Fireplaces. ...
Grills. ...
Fire Pits...
Outdoor Lighting…
And, of course, you’ll drive an Electric Vehicle (EV).
The X (formerly Twitter) iconoclast, Jordan Peterson, tweeted a longer list:
No fireplaces.
No meat.
No dairy.
No heat.
No air conditioning.
No cars.
No clothes.
No flights.
No comedians.
No free speech.
No cash.
No cats.
No dogs.
No farm animals.
No children.
Your future as peasants under the eco-fascists. Really just fascists with the best excuse ever.
There are two main tenets we follow in our writing. The first is we start most of our inquiries with a simple question: “What could go wrong?” Then we see where that question takes us. The second is “ignore politics at your peril.” Both tenets are vital to keep in mind when planning your future… what you’re going to do with your money, what you’re going to do to protect your family, what you can do to ignore the busy body world improvers who want to tell you where to live, what to eat, what energy you can use, what you drive and… the worst of them all, what you can “think”.
Today’s installment of “ignore politics at your peril,” comes loaded with a fresh dose of Orwellian doublespeak. Below, you’ll find a piece tracking the Great Barrington Declaration as it wends its way through the courts. We’ll let the authors, Leighton Woodhouse and Alex Gutentag, writing in today’s episode of the online publication, Public, explain the Declaration and why it's destined for the Supreme Court.
Some context, The Biden White House, including specific members thereof, has been issued an injunction by a Federal judge in Louisiana forbidding them from talking to social media companies (like X, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.).
Specific evidence has been cited in instances where the Biden administration has demanded specific posts they deemed “misinformation” about the COVID-19 virus, mask mandates and vaccines. It’s a deep rabbit hole, if you have a few days of free time you want to spend wondering whatever happened to the America that cherished free speech.
Spoiler alert: White House lawyers are trying to get the injunction lifted because… the injunction violates the government’s right to free speech. In other words, they are using the 1st Amendment to argue they have the right to censor statements they don’t agree with. Yeah, see below.
In light of the climate “debate”, we’re keenly observing the Great Barrington Declaration as it trundles its way toward 1 First St NE, Washington, DC. If the Biden folks have their way, they will also be able censor “misinformation” about the climate. Rather, they will only allow you to read the forgone conclusion that the climate crisis is here and we must act urgently. After all, “the science is settled,” right?
“What kind of disaster,” we’re wondering beholden to our first tenet, “would a climate crisis lockdown of the economy create?” And how long could we expect the government to use emergency powers like they did during the pandemic? It’s Friday, enjoy the read below. And enjoy your weekend!"
o
by Leighton Woodhouse and Alex Gutentag
"Missouri v. Biden, one of the most important free speech cases in American history, is almost certainly going to the Supreme Court. The case centers around whether the Biden administration violated the First Amendment of the Constitution when it pressured social media platforms to take down or de-amplify accounts that voiced speech the government disagreed with. Two of the plaintiffs in the case are Stanford University’s Dr. Jay Battacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, currently on leave from Harvard, who co-wrote a statement called the Great Barrington Declaration, which laid out an alternative public health response to lockdowns and school closures.
For that, they were personally targeted by Anthony Fauci and then-NIH Director Francis Collins, who orchestrated a media campaign to discredit them. On social media, they were censored and shadow-banned, which is at the heart of the case. On the Fourth of July, a federal judge issued an injunction to prevent the government from pressuring social media companies to censor any further content. That ruling was appealed to the Fifth Circuit, which issued a mixed ruling on the injunction.
Yesterday, the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to weigh in by appealing the federal court’s injunction. That’s a risky move for the government, given how stridently pro-free speech this court is. Most observers believe the Supreme Court is almost certain to hear the case. In its application for a stay on the injunction, the Biden administration argued that the Fifth Circuit decision “contradicts fundamental First Amendment principles.”
“A central dimension of presidential power is the use of the Office’s bully pulpit to seek to persuade Americans - and American companies - to act in ways that the President believes would advance the public interest,” the administration wrote. “The court imposed unprecedented limits on the ability of the President’s closest aides to use the bully pulpit to address matters of public concern, on the FBI’s ability to address threats to the Nation’s security, and on the CDC’s ability to relay public health information at platforms’ request.”
In other words, according to the Biden administration, by preventing the government from censoring people, the court is violating the government’s freedom of speech. Public is tracking this case closely and will report on any developments here as it makes its way to the nation’s highest court."
o
"The Supreme Court Will Rule on Censorship"
Missouri v. Biden goes to the high court, setting up a historic
showdown. Did adminstration lawyers make a tactical error?
"Wrong Is Wrong"
"Wrong Is Wrong"
by Robert W. Malone, MD, MS
"Living in the state of Virginia, I have witnessed first-hand this week how most of the main stream media has worked to normalize that a political candidate could run for the Virginia State Congress, all the while streaming herself and her husband in porn videos as recently as this year. These porn videos include this candidate soliciting “tips” for “sex acts” - requested by her audience. Ergo, she was getting paid to perform sex for money… to pay for her costs to get elected… Yes, this is seriously happening and yes, journalists are defending this. Many big name journalists and newspapers are suggesting Virginians should accept such a candidate without reservations. In fact, some went as far to say it is “misogyny” (this is, is hatred of, aversion to, or prejudice against women) to “malign” such a candidate.
Common decency is something we should strive for in our society and elected officials. Anyone who streams sex videos purposefully on-line, who solicits money for sex on-line or off-line, doesn’t not represent decency. End of story. Defending the indefensible for the sake of winning an election is disgusting. But just look at these headlines:
I could literally write an entire essay on why this behavior is so wrong, whether the candidate is women, man, Democrat or Republican. Why defending this behavior is so wrong. Wrong is wrong."
o
"And then it all changed. It was of course 9/11 that signaled the alteration and darkened the sky, the growing mistrust, the boot-faced bureaucracy. This was bad enough for Americans, but perhaps even more dismaying for foreign admirers. Bit by bit, the glitter came off.
On my last visit, a change of planes at a major mid-western hub was so dingy and exhausting, and the airport itself so tired, crowded, and unwelcoming…Everywhere there were long lines of dispirited people, looking like a defeated army. Even some years ago the growing state-sponsored squalor of San Francisco was becoming evident in some parts of the city. Now I dread to go back at all. But behind it lay a feeling of a country in decline. I do not just mean that the country seems poorer and shabbier, a sensation that has grown stronger and stronger since the Iraq War. I no longer have that sensation of sunny liberation I had back in the 1970s and 1980s whenever I set foot there. The last few times I have been, I have been glad to depart… I have fallen out of love with America."
Jim Kunstler, "The Conundrum"
"The Conundrum"
By Jim Kunstler
“If a politician does a ‘favor’ for a crime boss, and the crime boss pays the politician’s wife, it’s still bribery. If the crime boss pays the politician’s crackhead son on account of the favor, it’s still bribery.” - Jeff Childers, the Coffee & Covid blog.
"Just as a janky investment can turn catastrophically ruinous in the finance world, “Joe Biden” has transmuted from an asset to a liability for the Party of Chaos as we enter the season when things get real. Just weeks ago, the phantasm in the White House could do nothing wrong, despite doing absolutely everything wrong in the thirty-two months he’s haunted the Oval Office. But now, an odor of rot and sulfur trails his every bumbling misstep while his maunderings from the podium set off alarms in party HQ. What to do, indeed…?
As of five minutes ago, “JB” was still pretending to run for reelection, which, of course, was a bamboozle that only the Wokester rank-and-file, hoaxed into an epic psychotic rapture, might swallow. The “president’s” stage managers run a “campaign committee” on next-to-zero contributions, you see, but all it really does is send out millions of algo-concocted, drivel-filled emails five times a day to keep the big pretend going while the DC Blob desperately looks for a way out.
Ever since the fabled Laptop from Hell entered stage left, the un-raptured of the land have been exposed to gales of evidence that “Joe Biden” ran a family influence-peddling racket as veep, and that it likely has something to do with the extravagant mess spawned in Ukraine. The crude and lawless labors of the DOJ and the FBI to cover all that up have been failing lately as a harsh music of blown whistles ominously cleaves the dank night air over the Potomac swamp.
The coming House impeachment inquiry, with its extraordinary subpoena powers, can easily un-confuse these matters as Rep Comer (R-KY) goes after the Biden family bank records. The equation is pretty straightforward: Millions of dollars rattling around the coffers of “Joe” and Jill, and Jim and Frank, and the Biden kids and grand-kids divided by the low six-figure salaries of a senator and vice-president, times, say, the $20 to $50-million inflows of revenue (for no discernible services rendered) from Ukraine, Russia, China, Kazakhstan, and Gawd-knows how many other entities arguably hostile to the USA’s interests through Hunter Biden’s multitudinous shell companies. It’s called money-laundering.
Meanwhile, mirabile dictu, Special Counsel David Weiss goosed three counts of illegal gun possession against Hunter Biden out of a federal grand jury Thursday. Somehow, a loaded garbage barge of tax evasion charges that was last seen a few weeks ago steaming into Indictment Central happened to sail off into the Bermuda Triangle and vanish from the docket. Also in question: what about that “diversion agreement” sneakily embedded in the plea deal that blew up a month ago in Judge Maryellen Noreika’s courtroom? That little gem would have let Hunter B off the hook for any other past federal crime imputed in the many reams of evidence about Biden family moneygrubbing already made public. If the plea deal evaporated, did not the diversion agreement go up in a vapor with it? Hunter’s lawyers apparently say it’s still in force. How does that work?
More to the point, this exorbitant political psychodrama involving a criminally compromised head-of-state, who appears increasingly mentally incompetent, too, is taxing the Blob’s patience, disturbing the Wokesters’ consensus trance, and testing the DNC’s tactical playbook without any apparent good options at hand. Somebody ought to be whispering in “Joe Biden’s” ear that his services are no longer required, the performance is over, and it’s time to exit, stage right. But that, of course, leaves the Blob and the DNC with Kamala Harris, the cackling empty pants-suit, now fully evolved into an historic political joke. It’s not like they can even pretend to run her for president in 2024.
Nor is there any realistic way to shove her offstage for a replacement. The appointed veep switcheroo gambit - shoehorning Gavin Newsom in there and then elevating him as Kamala quits - looks un-sellable. He’s turned California into a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape of flash-mob thievery, car-jacking, medical lunacy, and wildfire mismanagement. The videos of California mayhem play on social media 24/7. He’d never get confirmed by Congress. And who else is there on the DNC bench? Pete Buttigieg? (I’m sure…) Hillary? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha…! They could stuff Barack Obama back in - the Constitution only prohibits a third elected term, not an appointment. Wouldn’t that be a nation-ending prank? (At least he could stop pretending to not already be secretly acting president.)"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)