"With grocery prices at record highs, you might think that grocery chains are making loads of money right now. While some of them have strong business models and are doing well in this environment, several others have never recovered from the losses they faced during the pandemic or even earlier. In the past couple of years, many grocers have filed for bankruptcy to restructure their debt, faced changes in leadership, or been sold out to larger corporations, but these measures were no guarantee of success and that their core problems have been solved. Especially now that U.S. consumers are looking for the best deals they can find and competition is growing.
At the moment, many big grocery chains are finding themselves at a crossroads, navigating through uncertain times and staring at the possibility of disappearing from the market. Although some of them still have hundreds of stores open, others are closer to annihilation, with so few locations left that you can count them on your fingers.
Look at the news posts below...Every day we're hopelessly saddened and discouraged at just how truly bad it really is, and knowing there's nothing we can do about it. Of necessity we need to be aware of these things, but it's not and never will be enjoyable. Then, as now, you need a short break away from it all, and this very special musical interlude is precisely that. Now and then, very rarely, you stumble upon something simply extraordinary, something that's just so astonishingly, magically beautiful and well done it's unbelievable. This is one of those times... Savor these wonderful musical images...
Full screen recommended.
Dark Legend, "An Imaging of Tuesday Afternoon"
The Elves sing of the beauty of Tuesday Afternoon.
o
Full screen recommended.
Dark Legend, "An Imaging Of Nights In White Satin"
o
Full screen recommended.
Dark Legend, "An Imaging Of Forever Autumn"
o
Full screen recommended.
Dark Legend, "A Whiter Sade Of Pale"
o
I'm a harsh critic, have done this blog for 16 years with
over 90,000 posts, thought I'd seen it all until finding this.
I simply cannot compliment or recommend this site highly enough.
"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."
“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of Infinity. Life is Eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in Eternity.”
"But what a universe, anyhow! No use blaming human-beings for what they were. Everything was made so that it had to torture something else. Sirius himself was no exception, of course. Made that way! Nothing was responsible for being by nature predatory on other things, dog on rabbit and Argentine beef, man on nearly everything, bugs and microbes on man, and of course man himself on man. (Nothing but man was really cruel, vindictive, except perhaps the loathly cat). Everything desperately struggling to keep its nose above water for a few breaths before its strength inevitably failed and down it went, pressed under by something else. And beyond, those brainless, handless idiotic stars, lazing away so importantly for nothing.
Here and there some speck of a planet dominated by some half-awake intelligence like humanity. And here and there on such planets, one or two poor little spirits waking up and wondering what in the hell everything was for, what it was all about, what they could make of themselves; and glimpsing in a muddled way what their potentiality was, and feebly trying to express it, but always failing, always missing fire, and very often feeling themselves breaking up as he himself was doing. Just now and then they might feel the real thing, in some creative work, or in sweet community with another little spirit, or with others. Just now and then they seemed somehow to create or to be gathered up into something lovelier than their individual selves, something which demanded their selves sacrifice and yet have their selves new life. But how precariously, torturingly; and only just for a flicker of time! Their whole life-time would only be a flicker in the whole of titanic time. Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold therewill still be time. Oh God, what for?"
- Olaf Stapledon, "Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord"
○
Freely download "Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord",
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$300 Carts Of Groceries, And Mountains Of Credit Card Debt"
by Michael Snyder
"Have things been getting better for the middle class, or have things been getting worse? Needless to say, the answer to that question is obvious. The cost of living is absolutely crushing us, we can’t afford to replace our rapidly aging vehicles, debt levels are exploding, and the proportion of the country that is living paycheck to paycheck has been steadily rising. Our economy is a mess, and America’s middle class is getting smaller and smaller. Sometimes I feel like I am watching a very tragic version of musical chairs. If you are still holding on to your chair, you should be very thankful, because more people are slipping out of the middle class and into poverty with each passing day.
If you are old enough, you can still remember a time when many middle class families would purchase a new vehicle every few years. Sadly, today most of us are being forced to get as much mileage out of our rapidly aging vehicles as we possibly can. As a result, the average age of the passenger vehicles traveling America’s roads has reached an all-time record high…"This should be the best of times for the people who help keep America’s cars running.
There have never been as many on the road - around 290 million light vehicles - and they have never been so old. One reason for that is good news: They are better made. Getting the odometer past 100,000 miles has gone from being noteworthy to normal. Thirty years ago the average passenger car was about 8.4 years old and today that is 13.6 years."
Even keeping our aging vehicles repaired has become exceedingly difficult. These days, if the mechanic hands you a repair bill for less than a thousand dollars that is a reason to celebrate. In the old days, you could get a really nice used vehicle for a thousand dollars.
Of course groceries have become insanely expensive as well. Earlier today, I came across a USA Today article that discussed the fact that the average household in Miami spends 327 dollars at the grocery store per trip…"Many longtime Miamians say they’ve felt this way since the pandemic transformed much of their city. As New Yorkers and Californians faced lockdown orders and restrictions, many flocked to Florida, with the largest increase of New Yorkers moving to Miami where they could benefit from tax and mandate breaks while working remotely. But along with having the largest net population gain of any state in the country came exploding living and housing costs. Housing prices have risen almost 50%, according to the UBS Global Real Estate Bubble Index released last month."
Grocery prices shot up. (An average household spent about $327 per trip). So did electric bills. A carton of eggs last year cost $5. 327 dollars used to be a lot of money. Now it will just buy you one cart of food.
I warned my readers that the economic conditions that we were witnessing in Venezuela would eventually come here, and now it has happened. As I discussed a few days ago, core consumer prices have actually risen for 53 months in a row. Our cost of living crisis is out of control, and there is no end in sight. As they struggle to pay their bills, many Americans are turning to credit cards for some relief. As a result, credit card debt balances have soared to record high levels…"The average American household credit card balance as of the third quarter of 2024 was about $10,757 after adjusting for inflation, according to a new study. The personal-finance website WalletHub onFriday released its new Credit Card Debt Study, which found that consumers added $21 billion in debt during the third quarter of 2024. Early results for the fourth quarter of the year show preliminary data for October at a new record high for credit card debt in the month, in absolute terms."
As credit card debt levels rose, it was inevitable that more Americans would start getting behind on their payments, and that is precisely what has happened…"Are you feeling financially stressed as 2024 comes to a close? You’re not alone, not even close. In fact, 7.8 million Americans have delayed payments on at least one of their credit accounts this year. That’s a million more than in 2023." This is really bad news for the economy as a whole, because our economy is highly dependent on consumer spending.
You can’t get blood from a stone, and restaurants all over the country are learning the hard way that most consumers simply cannot afford to eat out as regularly as they once did…"Seafood giant Red Lobster, Italian chain Buca di Beppo, fish taco eatery Rubio’s Coastal Grill and the owner of burger and pizza chains BurgerFi and Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza are among those that have sought to reorganize through bankruptcy this year. Hooters of America is also huddling with lenders and advisers amid revenue declines, Bloomberg reported.
Shares of Dine Brands Global Inc., the parent of Applebee’s and IHOP, are down about 30% year-to-date, while shares of Bloomin’ Brands Inc., which owns Outback Steakhouse, dropped to near 2020 lows last month after it reported a decline in US same-store sales." Yes, a “restaurant apocalypse” has begun. When I first started using that term, a lot of people thought that I was exaggerating. But of course I was not exaggerating one bit.
There was a time when it seemed like just about anyone in this nation could achieve “the American Dream” if they just worked hard enough. But now we have reached a point where only 31 percent of Americans believe that they have “made it” in life… Despite being the land of opportunity, the American Dream remains frustratingly out of reach for most Americans, with a mere 31% believing they’ve financially “made it” in life. Sadly, that figure is even lower for Baby Boomers…
"However, the picture becomes less optimistic with age. Only 27% of baby boomers feel they’ve reached financial success, and among those who haven’t, just one-third believe they ever will. The survey found that Americans consider their path to financial success threatened by various external factors, including presidential elections (46%), interest rate changes (45%), and the job market (42%)."
After working so hard for so many years, only 27 percent of Baby Boomers feel like they have “made it” in life. Well, that is quite depressing. Things could have turned out far differently. Many of us ranted and raved for years that things would turn out this way, but most of the country did not want to listen. Bad decisions lead to bad results. Our leaders have been making tragically bad decisions for decades, and thanks to them we now have a complete and utter nightmare on our hands."
"A federal judge just halted the $25 billion deal that would have created America's largest grocery chain between Kroger and Albertsons. Find out why this decision could spell trouble for both companies and what it means for grocery prices nationwide. In this packed episode, we're exploring the real impact of this merger block on consumers and workers. Plus, we're diving into Amazon's bold move into the pharmacy business, Macy's shocking real estate selloff in NYC, and the truth about holiday shopping trends at America's premier malls.
You won't believe the numbers behind holiday spending this year - the average American is planning to spend HOW much on gifts? We're breaking down the latest retail trends and what they mean for your wallet."
"What this country needs... what this great land of ours needs is something to happen to it. Something ferocious and tragic, like what happened to Jericho or the cities of the plain - something terrible I mean, son, so that when the people have been through hellfire and the crucible, and have suffered agony enough and grief, they'll be people again, human beings, not a bunch of smug contented cows rooting at the trough."
- William Styron, "Set This House On Fire"
Oh, don't worry folks,
something "ferocious and tragic" is indeed coming...
In France, Leon Blum. FDR in the US. Mussolini in Italy.
All of them shared the same idea -
transfer wealth from those who earned it to those who did not.
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "Juan Hipolito del Sagrado Corazon de Jesus Yrigoyen. With a name like that, it was obvious that he was destined for a fancy business card. And in the early 20th century, he became president of the Argentine republic. But he - no more than Franklin Delano Roosevelt nor Donald John Trump - did not create the tide that made him famous. He just swam in it.
As we’ve seen, events are not simply random reactions to the news... day by day. Instead, they are products of deep, unseen currents. Like old boots swept along the bottom of silent seas... they eventually wash up on a distant shore.
We’ve seen too that the problem with the democratic welfare/warfare state is that the more resources it gets... the more power it has... the more corrupt and parasitic its ruling elites become... and the more difficult it is to bring it under control. Each new program... each new dollar spent... adds more people who want to make sure the spending continues. This process continues until something bad happens... either something unexpected (like the Plague)... or something entirely predictable, such as bankruptcy.
We saw yesterday what happened in Argentina. After a wild and wonderful ride in the late 19th century, with a Primary Political Trend moving towards free markets and prosperity, Argentina had become one of the richest countries on earth. Then, like the US and European nations... it then came under the influence of a new trend - more interested in redistributing wealth, than creating it. In England, David Lloyd George came to power. In France, it was Leon Blum. FDR in the US. Mussolini in Italy. All of them shared the same basic idea - to transfer wealth from those who earned it to those who did not.
This new Primary Political Trend expressed itself in different ways. Germany, Japan and Italy relied on war to take valuable resources from their neighbors. The rest stuck with larceny. Argentina, beginning with the leadership of Yrigoyen, was among the most brazen.
But as Maggie Thatcher observed, other people’s money runs out. And a year ago, Javier Milei leveled with the nation. “There is no money,” he told the voters. The inflation rate had risen to an implied 3,700%. Bad things were happening. Chaos and catastrophe - a la Venezuela - were close at hand. And in last year’s election, what Milei called the ‘casta politica’ was happy to have someone take the problem off their hands (and take the blame for what happened next.).
Sooner or later, we presume the US will have to do the same. It will run out of money and be unable to continue. But not before it has fully exhausted its bag of tricks, feints, foolishness... and its credit. Its dollar is still considered a ‘strong’ currency. It still collects more than $4 trillion in tax revenue... which it can use to pay off elites and soothe the voters. It has plenty of rich people who could be sqeezed for cash…and plenty of loose ‘fat’ that could be easily cut from its budgets. It is not desperate; the ‘bad thing’ hasn’t happened, yet. That’s why we believe the US is still on the downswing of the Primary Political Trend... still headed for more government, more debt, more inflation, and more war.
Italy, Germany and Japan had the ‘bad thing’ happen to them in WWII. They were convinced - by ‘Bomber’ Harris and the Enola Gay - to give up their warfare state enterprises.
After Korea, Dwight Eisenhower believed the US military should stand down too. He cut the ‘defense’ budget by nearly 30% and when Britain and France invited him to join in their attack on the Suez Canal, in 1956, he turned them down. Eisenhower retired in 1961 - warning the nation against the ‘unwarranted influence’ of the ‘military/industrial complex.’ But the MIC already had so much influence that it was quickly back on a roll. Dean Acheson, Secretary of State in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, mongered the novel idea that the US was in a ‘cold’ war... and needed to be fully armed and ready.
The US firepower establishment also found that Europe - properly incentivized - would outsource its defense to the Pentagon, thereby increasing the latter’s market share. Thereupon, European and American democracies went their separate ways. Spared the burden of defense, Europe’s governments became welfare states, in effect, giant, compulsory insurance programs.
The US, meanwhile, could favor its firepower industry, becoming a warfare state. And then, as early as the 1960s, Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey were arguing that the US could be both - with guns and butter for everyone. But in 2024, voters in France, Germany, and the US turned against their ruling cliques…and all the world’s major governments seem to be headed towards a debt crisis. Is a ‘bad thing’ coming their way too? Tune in tomorrow."
“Life insurance pays off triple, if you die on a business trip.”
– "Fight Club"
"The health industry in the United States is a mess, probably worse than a woke vampire movie where vampires use pronouns like undead/cursed and make their victims go to DEI training (Death, Exsanguination and Immortality) before selecting them based on their social privilege score. Talk about sucking!
But back to the point: the system is a mess. Case in point, the insurance companies are for-profit institutions. As, um, you might have noticed from recent events this leads to almost inevitable conflict between the patient and “their” insurance company.
This has created some really perverse incentives, especially for the company. If they can successfully deny enough claims, their profit goes up, so their best bet to make the most money is to not allow claims, just like the best way for some specialists and hospitals to make the most money is to do the most testing. “Hey, this is the machine that goes ‘ping’, and it’s useful to see if you have the Hong Pong flu.”
Oh, and lawyers? We didn’t even mention them. Lawyers just love to find that doctors missed giving the right test so that they can sue them. So, we have the groups all competing for an economic slice of the pie. How big is the pie? In 1960, it was a manageable 5% of the economy of the United States. The average life expectancy then was somewhere around 70 years old.
In 2019, healthcare costs were over three times as much, at 17.6% of the economy. Lifespan had gone up to almost (not quite) 79 years. So, 12.6% of the economy for an extra 8 point something years? Is that a good deal?
Well, not exactly. Lifespan is certainly extended by modern medical care to some extent, but a huge amount of that uplift is due to factors that have nothing to do with the increased costs of health care. But some of it is better health care: much better trauma care has also made events like gunshot wounds and car accidents more survivable, so the average is going to go up because people aren’t dying young in car crashes as often.
But people aren’t smoking as much, either. Also, cars and roads are objectively safer than in 1960 by an order of magnitude, and since car deaths are skewed to young men, that really helps the average life expectancy. And all of these things have increased life expectancy:
• Nutrition
• Clean Water
• Sanitation
• Antibiotics
• Vaccines
As you can see, many of these things aren’t healthcare, and with the exception of neonatal healthcare, they’re all stupidly cheap. So, a big part of why health care costs so much more is that people are living longer and consuming more health care. If a smoker didn’t die of a heart attack from smoking at age 45 at nearly zero medical cost, now they’re living longer and using medical care at age 80.
And, like usual, everyone points to cheap strawberries as the benefit, but skips the $19.75 Tylenol™ pill in the hospital. Healthcare in the United States is so expensive (at least in part) because to so many it’s free. This increases the recordkeeping, and hospitals have to spread their bills on decent hardworking non-deadbeats.
So, it’s broken. How do we fix it? On insurance, The Mrs. has a simple idea: make it illegal. All of it. Medical services are cash on the barrelhead. You pay for the services you get. That sounds drastic, but when I really thought about it, this would eliminate the entire medical billing bureaucracy. We talk about a capitalism, but health care tied to insurance is anything but capitalist, especially with all the mandates and cost shifting from programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
The Mrs.’ solution has some real-world evidence to show she might be on to something – real prices for services insurance doesn’t pay for like breast, um, augmentation and laser eye surgery have gone down in real terms. Force doctors to post prices, and for emergency services, well, I’m sure we can figure out ways that hospitals can’t create “pay $90,000 for this shot of anti-venom that cost us $125 or you die” scenarios.
Cap malpractice awards to reasonable levels.
Pharmaceuticals are a bit stickier since we want to foster innovation, but how many of them take public institute research to make their drugs? And we can certainly streamline the FDA, especially for sketchy drugs that might help people that are otherwise terminal.
Get the federal government mostly out of health care, except to prosecute people for fraud. Like the people responsible for the Vaxx®. And make the penalties criminal.
Eliminate free care. If it’s so important to you that people who can’t afford to get treatment, get treatment, don’t use my wallet to assuage your feelings. Pay for it yourself, Sally Strothers.
A Christian cross might make a fictional vampire recoil in horror, but the lack of a money trough will make the health-care-hydra vampire wander away to try something else, hopefully by finding a real job, or, failing that, being paid to suck something else. Doctor got his degree from Columbia. I told him I wanted one from America."
"Private health insurance corporations are trying to trick seniors across America into signing up for Medicare Advantage. Is it less expensive? No. Is it better coverage? Also no. It’s just another way for corporations to skim more money off the ill."
"History is either "one damned thing after another" - a chaotic collection of random events - or there are connections between events that are not readily visible. The study of history includes both rooting around for more factual evidence to aid our understanding, and interpreting what is known--both the factual evidence and what people living at that time described and thought was happening.
Two recent events invite interpretation: the sudden collapse of Syria's regime and the assassination of an American CEO in America's financial capital. These can be viewed as unique one-off events of little future import or they can be viewed as watershed events, harbingers of a future far different than the present.
A systemic case can be made that the grey swans circling above us are harbingers of transformative change. What is a grey swan? A grey swan is an event that is known and possible to happen, but which is assumed to be unlikely to occur. The term derives from Nassim Taleb's black swan theory, which describes an event that is unlikely but unknown.
The explanation machine is already spewing out reams of reasons why Syria's dynasty collapsed practically overnight after enduring for decades in a tumultuous region riven by war and conflict. What's strikingly difficult to explain neatly and coherently is how everything is forever until it is no more. Are there causal factors that are common to all such sudden collapses of regimes that appeared to be if not forever, then demonstrably durable?
This raises interesting questions. If we identify the causal factors of sudden collapse, are they discernable in other nations that appear stable at the moment? Could some of these factors act like viruses, and spread to neighboring countries, or via the Internet, to distant lands that share similar profiles? Could such a collapse act as a domino falling, providing the impetus to other fragile states collapsing?
Equally interesting is the mass of propaganda being spewed to cover up the systemic vulnerabilities that might have played a role in the Syrian regime's collapse. The tsunami of propaganda is intended to bolster the everything is forever narrative, but the enormity and virulence of the propaganda effort suggests the opposite: extreme vulnerability and fear of other regimes that they could be next.
Discussions of what triggered the Western Roman Empire's collapse shed some light on the ease of embracing an interpretation that misses the mark. Gibbon concluded that Christianity undermined Rome's coherence; others view Christianity as the alternative structure that enabled Europe to maintain critical coherence in the centuries after Western Rome fell. (The Eastern Roman Empire - the Byzantine Empire- had a different set of circumstances and endured in truncated form for almost a thousand years after Rome fell.)
Moral and social decay are often listed as causal factors, but dismissed by those who see the increasingly capable Barbarian armies as the cause of Rome's collapse. Others have widened the narrative from war and internal decay to climate change and the ravages of pandemics.
The relevance of all these factors leads to a diagnosis of polycrisis - the collapse cannot be attributed to any one factor but to the confluence of many factors, each of which undermined the status quo's moral, financial and material bases which fatally destabilized the coherence of the regime's military and political responses.
From the perspective of polycrisis, the collapse of Syria's regime could be a harbinger of future collapses, not a one-off event. The reason for this is that many of the keystone/linchpin elements of polycrisis are visibly global in nature: they affect every region and nation-state, regardless of size or location.
Sudden collapses of key regimes tend to unleash forces that destabilize other regimes, or act as triggers for regimes to take actions which are initially viewed as protective which end up imploding the regime from within.
Humans like to think we're in charge, but forces such as extreme weather and demographic decline are not controllable in the same way as declarations of war, which tend to exacerbate whatever problem the war was intended to solve.
History is definitive in one regard: there are discernable eras of widespread turmoil, conflict, demographic decline, destabilization and the collapse of the status quo. The Warring States era in China comes to mind, as do the 1600s in Europe.
Only time will tell if Syria's regime collapse is the first inning of a long game of global destabilization, or if it is a one-off event with limited knock-on consequences. If we line up the systemic elements of polycrisis that are already evident globally, the argument that it will all blow over with minimal long-term impact seems unpersuasive.
The assassination of an American healthcare CEO illuminates many of America's taboos, realities that cannot be openly stated without immediate vitriol from defenders of the status quo. One such taboo is to state the obvious: an economy-society that defines prosperity by the metrics of corporate profits and a rising stock market rather than the well-being of its citizenry is an economy-society begging for overthrow.
Matt Stoller's essay on this event provides much-needed historical context for domestic violence against the status quo: "An Assassin Showed Just How Angry America Really Is." Stoller excerpted quotes from American leaders in the previous era of domestic violence against America's status quo (1886-1920) that reveal their clear understanding that unrestrained corporate power wielded by monopolies and cartels were as oppressive as Communism, though obviously by different means.
I'm angrily accused of being a Marxist (an accusation equally broad-brush and meaningless as being accused of being a Nazi), and heaped with abuse for thinking that "soaking the rich" is a solution to what is clearly the Invisible Hand of the Free Market doing its magic, making everything better every day, in every way, even as the "prosperity" and the well-being of the bottom 90% of the citizenry are in slow-motion disarray.
To say that the job of every CEO in America is not to provide a quality product or service for the good of the citizenry but to boost the corporation's profits and stock valuation is also taboo. That this is so obviously true is what makes it taboo.
It's also taboo to state that America's corporations have profited immensely from sickening the citizenry to the point that 75% of the populace is at risk of metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes. This was not the case 50 years ago. Something changed, and immense profits have been reaped not by improving the public's health but in sickening them and then alleviating the symptoms of these lifestyle diseases.
It's equally taboo to state that America's healthcare system isn't actually about healthcare, it's about profits. Please read this account of the amazing healthcare America offers its homeless populace, all without regard to profit, of course:
"The Invisible Man:" We see right through the unshowered soul living in a car by the beach, or by the Walmart, or by the side of the road. But he's there, and he used to be somebody. He still is. A firsthand account of homelessness in America.
If America has the "best healthcare in the world" available to all, then by all means back up your certitude by switching places with this fellow.
Recall the response of the Monsanto representative when challenged to drink Round-Up since it was so safe. ("F-U!") The well-paid apologists for the status quo know how to lie glibly and attack those who break the taboos, but they never back up their claims with their own personal lifestyle. It's called hypocrisy and moral rot. "What Happened to Integrity and Honor?" (12/6/24)
When we speak of the present as the New Gilded Age, perhaps we should review the social history of the prior Gilded Age: decades of disorder and violence from the Haymarket bombing in 1886 to the bombing of Wall Street in 1920, with everything from strikes being suppressed with machine guns, shootings of industrial titans and politicians and mail-bombs in between.
That's 34 years of social disorder. But never mind, everything will be fine as long as we avoid saying what's taboo out loud. The lifestyle of a stable New Gilded Age is out of stock. Maybe history is nothing but random events without any common causal foundations, but to wager that The New Gilded Age is forever may not be a safe bet."
"Alert! The East Coast Is Being Buzzed By 'Very Sophisticated'
Giant Drones Every Night That 'Go Dark' When Approached By U.S. Aircraft"
by Michael Snyder
"Enormous “mystery drones” are buzzing rooftops and flying freely through the skies in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, and our government is powerless to stop it. As I discussed yesterday, these drones have been spotted over military facilities, water reservoirs, transportation hubs, police departments and other sensitive installations. But even though some of these drones are the size of cars, and even though they are buzzing us at rooftop level in some cases, we can’t seem to track them effectively and when our aircraft do approach they “go dark” and disappear.
What in the world is going on? These drones have been appearing just about every night since mid-November, and there are countless eyewitnesses. In fact, New Jersey State Senator Doug Steinhardt says that he saw them from his own front porch…"And State Senator Doug Steinhardt says that’s simply not good enough. “I’d be happy with an explanation that we’ve looked at it, and we don’t have information, or for law enforcement to say it’s an ongoing something or other, you know, and that’s as much as we can tell you, but we’re not even getting that which is unfortunate,” said Steinhardt. And Steinhardt says he’s not just speaking as a lawmaker, he’s speaking as a witness. “I walked out of my front porch last night and saw it would look like drone activity to me. I mean, I’ve seen airplanes cross the sky before and this wasn’t that,” he says."
We have never seen anything quite like this before, and people are really starting to freak out.
Many can’t seem to understand why nothing is being done to stop these unidentified drones from doing whatever they want in our airspace. The mayors of 21 different towns in New Jersey got together and wrote a letter to Governor Phil Murphy demanding action…"The mayors of 21 towns in New Jersey are demanding action in a letter sent to Gov. Phil Murphy over the mysterious drones that have been spotted flying overhead in recent weeks.
Since mid-November, large drones of uncertain origin have been repeatedly spotted in the sky at night over central and northern New Jersey. The drones, which are larger than the type typically used by hobbyists, have raised concerns due to their proximity to both a military installation and President-elect Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf course. Of course Murphy is quite concerned as well.
At a press conference on Monday, he explained that these drones are “very sophisticated”…"New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy commented on the situation on Monday, saying that while authorities have not identified any immediate threats, they are treating the sightings with seriousness. “This is something we’re taking deadly seriously,” Murphy said during a press conference Monday, adding, “These are apparently very, as I understand it, very sophisticated. The minute you get eyes on them, they go dark.” Murphy said state and federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, are actively investigating. He noted that 49 sightings were reported on Sunday. This confirms what we have been hearing from other sources.
Apparently we have been trying to confront these drones, but the moment they see our aircraft coming they “go dark” and disappear. If one of our enemies has giant drones that we can’t track and that can elude us with ease, that is a major problem.
Of course it would probably be even worse news if these drones do not belong to any of the usual suspects. At this point, authorities are openly admitting that they do not know who these drones belong to or where they are coming from. When Fox News senior congressional correspondent Chad Pergram confronted House Speaker Mike Johnson, this is what he was told…
"Pergram: It seems as though Members from both sides are not getting answers about these drones or whatever they’re seeing in New Jersey and Staten Island. There’s a hearing focusing on this today. What is the level of concern? Do you think the government is being straight? And Members can’t even get answers on this.
Johnson: We’re working on that. We need straight answers of course. We are concerned about drones and all of these new technologies and what it might mean for national security and the safety of the American citizen. I’m looking forward to the outcome of that hearing. And if we don’t get the necessary answers there, we’ll dig deeper and go to the classified level.
Pergram: Any thought that these might be “dark” programs?
Johnson: I hope not. I do not believe so. But there’s a lot of investigation going on. So we’ll find out."
Yes, I do hope that we get some “straight answers” soon. The FBI is deeply involved in the investigation, and they just released a statement that tells us absolutely nothing… “We understand the concern, and we are doing all we can to figure out what’s going on,” a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Newark Field Office, which is leading the investigation, told PIX11 News. “We truly don’t have much information to provide at the moment.”
If these drones actually belong to our military as some are suggesting, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security wouldn’t be expending resources looking into this. The fact that they are trying to solve this “mystery” tells us a lot. And obviously Congress doesn’t know what is going on either, because they are actively searching for answers. So that leaves us with two main theories.
Either Russia, China or another one of our enemies has drone technology that we cannot defend against, or these drones originate from a source that is not human. As I have discussed extensively, there has been a dramatic increase in sightings of unidentified aircraft all over the world in recent years. At this point, it is becoming very clear that something truly unusual is happening.
As for the enormous drones that are invading our airspace night after night, hopefully it will turn out that there is a simple explanation. But for now, mystery drones continue to brazenly buzz the East Coast during their nightly visits, and people are really getting scared."
"Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The spider-shaped gas cloud on the left is actually an emission nebula labelled IC 417, while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the right is dubbed NGC 1931 and is both an emission nebula and a reflection nebula.
About 10,000 light-years distant, both nebulas harbor young, open star clusters. For scale, the more compact NGC 1931 (Fly) is about 10 light-years across.”
“Who is this woman? Her name is on the prow of her boat: The Lady of Shalott. Yes, it’s Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott,” from the poem of 1842, here illustrated by John William Waterhouse in 1888. By some unspecified curse this lovely maiden was confined to a tower…
“Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river”
near Camelot, where, forbidden to look out the window, she observed the world in a mirror and wove what she saw into a tapestry. So what is she doing in the boat, with her hand-stitched creation? One day, Sir Lancelot rode by her tower alone. She saw him in the mirror and – “half sick of shadows” – couldn’t resist turning to see him unreflected.
“His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;
On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow’d
His coal-black curls as on he rode…”
The mirror cracked. She left her loom, descended from the tower, found a boat, inscribed her name on the prow, and…
“Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right -
The leaves upon her falling light -
Thro’ the noises of the night”
cast off to drift downstream to Camelot – and to Lancelot. But curses are not to be foiled.
“For ere she reach’d upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.”
We are all of us in a way the Lady of Shalott, all of us who seek to create an image of the world, artists, poets, scientists. We perceive the world through the filter of our limited senses, our biologically evolved brains, our nurtured preconceptions. We weave our tapestries, knowing that our creations are a reflection removed from reality. Our “curse” is to be in love with the real, yet never able to embrace it except in the cold glass of conceptualization. Our legacy? To be found in a boat lodged among the reeds, our tapestry draped across the thwart, with Camelot yet somewhere further down the stream, glistening, beckoning, inescapably out of reach. But, ah, there’s that gorgeous tapestry.
There is another curse, self made, and that is to mistake the mirrorworld for the world outside the window, to fail to recognize the contingency of our conceptualizations, to forego an honest seeking for the falsely found, and – most ominously – to want to impose our own mirrorworld on others.”
"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
“No. Not like this. I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing.”
- James T. Kirk, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan"
“Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.'”
- Carlos Castaneda, "Journey to Ixtlan"
"When The Soon To Be Mrs. and I were just dating, I was cooking something or other. I think it was eggs. I like eggs sunny side up, and don’t particularly care if they’re cooked all the way.
The Soon To Be Mrs.: “Aren’t you worried about salmonella?”
John Wilder: (Laughs in full Chad manifestation.)
The Soon To Be Mrs.: (Swoons.)
Seriously, she swooned. I’ve never seen it before in my life, but in that moment I think that was what sealed the deal, the moment in time that The Soon To Be Mrs. realized that this one is different. He’s not like the others. Here is a man who has zero fear of The Current Thing, and knows that salmonella won’t be the thing that punches his ticket out of having a functioning circulatory system.
No. I’m not afraid of salmonella. I would spit in its tiny little eyes or flagellum or tentacles and say, “Not today, my bacterium friend! My Danish-Scots-Germanic blood is far too strong for the likes of you!” And then I would attack Poland. Oh, wait, that’s been done.
I know I’m not going to die like Hemingway, and I’m not going to die like the comedy greats Belushi, Twain, or Nietzsche did. Nope. I think I’m gonna go out like Elvis. On a toilet after having eaten a fried peanut butter, jelly and bacon sandwich covered in cheddar cheese and mayo. Nope, I’m gonna die on a toilet. I mean, after all, a king should spend his last moments on the throne, right?
A lot of people worry about dying. I suppose I did, in my 20s, when I was worried about carrying out my responsibilities as a dad. Those are serious responsibilities – because those kids are going to be the legacy that I leave on Earth. That and my writing, collection of PEZ® dispensers and velvet Elvis paintings.
Again, a lot of people worry about dying. I’m not sure why. Of things that are more-or-less predetermined, that’s the big one. We’re all going to die. All of us. And I’m not sure I care.
Oh, sure, I want to live. I have no particular desire to die. If given the preference, I suppose I’m in favor of my continued heartbeat. But I don’t fear death. I don’t go to sleep at night wondering if this pain or that pain or that thing might be the symptom I look up on WebMD® that seals the deal that Wilder is going up to irritate Jesus in Heaven with bad puns.
I don’t worry about some future point when I’m going to enjoy life. I’ve achieved nearly every goal I’ve ever set for my life. End. Full stop. It’s like when a baseball game goes into extra innings, “Hey, free baseball.” And me? Free life. I’ve done nearly everything I’ve ever wanted to do.
What do you give a man who has everything? I mean, besides another bottle of wine. You give that man: Today. I’ve got Today. The only moment I live in is right now. And right now isn’t all that bad. I’m sitting in the sitting room (question: is any room I sit in, by definition, a sitting room? Discuss.) with the cool night air blowing in the window, some songs I love playing on the laptop, a cold beer by the keyboard, and the knowledge that at this moment, everything is fine.
Literally, in my life, Every Single Thing Is Fine. I could go into details, but you already know how awesome I am. So, I live for today? Hell no.
t’s the inversion of beauty: it consists of being positive about, well, any old thing that feels good. I could list these “pleasures”, but you know the list as well as I do. We see it every day, with vice being paraded as virtue, and the continual demand going out for people to celebrate it, because, “Can’t you see? This horrid abomination that no healthy society or people in the entire history of the world has tolerated, iS BeAuTIfUL!” No, I think living a life built on YOLO is one doomed to fail – inevitably it will fail based on two reasons: it is materialism or a faith based on the nihilism of the material world writ large, and it is based on needs, like youth, wealth, sensation, or, yes, even life. So, not YOLO.
One thing I’ve tried to preach is outcome independence. Indeed, since the final outcome of life on Earth is fixed, all the intermediate steps lead there. Instead, I try to focus on virtue and faith. I write not because of YOLO, and not because it’s easy. Some nights it’s hard as hell to get the post to “close” and feel right. There are dozens of posts where, even after 1600 words, I still didn’t say exactly what I meant to say. That’s okay, it’s on me. I’m learning, and if I were perfect at this, I wouldn’t have more work to do.
For me, it’s the work. It’s getting better. It’s finding ways to add value to those people around me. There are those who pull their weight in the world, and those that don’t. I want to be one that pulls his weight, who has contributed as much as I can to helping my family and the wider world.
I don’t always do it. And I’m not always right, either. I’ve produced some stuff in my life that was really, really good, but not perfect. Thankfully, that’s not my mark, either, since just like immortality here on Earth, searching for perfection is a lonely and silly pastime. I want to make the world a better place with my family (first) and my work (now second) guided by God. And I want people to laugh hard while learning and thinking about the things I write.
The beauty of this is to win, all I have to do is the best that I can do every day. To win? All I have to do is be the best person I can be every day. See? Each night, I go to bed and sleep soundly if I know, in that day, that I gave it my all. Do I take time for me? Sure. But that’s not the goal – I serve a higher purpose.
So, what do I fear? Not death. It’s coming whether I like it or not, and, honestly, I’d rather not return my body in factory-fresh condition – I’d like all the parts to fail at once. On the toilet. I think Elvis would have wanted it that way. Oh, wait... I wonder if Elvis ate eggs sunny-side-up? Hang on, I’m sure he did. Elvis ate everything."
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