Valdez, Alaska, USA. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, January 2, 2025
The Poet: Tom Disch, "What to Accept"
"What to Accept"
"The fact of mountains.
The actuality
Of any stone - by kicking, if necessary.
The need to ignore stupid people,
While restraining one's natural impulse
To murder them.
The change from your dollar,
Be it no more than a penny,
For without a pretense of universal penury
There can be no honor between rich and poor.
Love, unconditionally, or until proven false.
The inevitability of cancer and/or
Heart disease.
The dialogue as written,
Once you've taken the role.
Failure,
Gracefully.
Any hospitality
You're willing to return.
The air each city offers you to breathe.
The latest hit. Assistance.
All accidents. The end."
The actuality
Of any stone - by kicking, if necessary.
The need to ignore stupid people,
While restraining one's natural impulse
To murder them.
The change from your dollar,
Be it no more than a penny,
For without a pretense of universal penury
There can be no honor between rich and poor.
Love, unconditionally, or until proven false.
The inevitability of cancer and/or
Heart disease.
The dialogue as written,
Once you've taken the role.
Failure,
Gracefully.
Any hospitality
You're willing to return.
The air each city offers you to breathe.
The latest hit. Assistance.
All accidents. The end."
- Tom Disch
"Never Ever Forget..."
"Never, ever forget that nothing in this life is free. Life demands payment in some form for your "right" to express yourself, to condemn and abuse the evil surrounding us. Expect to pay... it will come for you, they will come for you, regardless. Knowing that, give them Hell itself every chance you can. Expect no mercy, and give none. That's how life works. Be ready to pay for what you do, or be a coward, pretend you don't see, don't know, and cry bitter tears over how terrible things are, over how you let them become."
- Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls "
"Seeing Through The Apocalypse: The Biggest Secret"
The Biggest Secret"
by Zen Gardner
“And he said unto them,
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”
- Mark 4:9
“It has been said that wisdom is not in seeing things,
but in seeing through things.”
- Manly P. Hall
So much of the big lie that we're witnessing on the world stage is simply projected pride- the big, fat, stinking manufactured pride of pathological egomaniacs reinforcing a fabricated world of their ugly, demented imaginations. Whether world conquest piggy-backing on natural and manufactured catastrophes, or attempting to morph humanity and terraform our environment to meet their specifications for world control, it's all defensive.
They're scared. It is they who are running and hiding from something so incredibly powerful they have to erect giant sand castles to hide behind while they attempt to exterminate all those who carry this amazing potential to realize Truth.
Us. An awakened and empowered us is what they're absolutely frightened of. Our warfare is a spiritual one. Whether we encase this understanding in one of the more classic frameworks or see it completely metaphysically, the play we're witnessing is nothing to fear. The feverish power struggles and social engineering taking place on such a massive scale are all based in fear. Fear of you, and fear of me. Because we represent the potential connection to Truth. And their inevitable downfall.
A perfect example of this shadowy charade is the "Brotherhood's" usurpation of symbols. While we know this supplanting of authority is true about their false hierarchy and self-imposed "ownership" of lands, natural and even human resources, they've cleverly tried to co-opt the inherent powers of the so-called mystery schools, the language of which is numbers and symbols.
What people forget is almost all of these symbols occur naturally with wonderful positive, regenerative properties. What these lying entities have done is simply attach negative and destructive and abusive connotations to anything they can. A perfect example of how once you're wrapped up in their world of interpretation with an abusive, violent world around you to back it up, you begin to think the lie is true.
Therein lies their only power. Your "belief" and entertaining of their notions, empowered to appear real only by your participation. Turn it off. Turn off their sources- mainstream media, staged events, manipulated music, shallow publicity, even phony personal responses and relationships.
It's time to get real. Remember, their whole plan is designed to replace reality with a false matrix of power that's fed by fear. Don't dwell on it, and see it for what it is. And reverse the flow. Each one of us changes the direction of Spaceship Earth. By our very clarity of understanding, our conscious awareness of the Truth and our not submitting to their web of deceit, we throw off the illusory shackles of the would-be controllers. Just one person's total lack of fear, not giving any obeisance to their societal, political, economic or physical oppression network, is a flame in their flimsy cobweb.
Be it.
They're lying usurpers..but it only works with our agreement. Our conscious awareness, as vague as that may seem to some, is the ultimate weapon. And it starts with waking the hell up and then keep waking up...rattling as many other cages as we can in the process. It's not always a smooth process, but it requires honesty and guts. And cutting the bullshit.
As our collective consciousness grows more awake and aware it gains power and tremendous momentum. The x-factor is synchronicity. When each of us responds to Universal consciousness things change dramatically. Life's signs become increasingly apparent and start challenging and leading our lives more and more, activating them in ways we never knew could have such a powerful influence. With each and every wake up the war is won. It was won in the beginning. We just need to stop believing the illusions around us and acting on our true conscience. At that point it becomes now."
- http://beforeitsnews.com/
o
Who are 'They'?
"It's no wonder truth is stranger than fiction.
Fiction has to make sense."
- Mark Twain
Freely download "The Biggest Secret", by David Icke, here:
Don't judge it until you've read it, with an open mind...
"An Early Warning"
"An Early Warning"
by The ZMan
"The new year has started with a bang, literally and figuratively, as terrorism was the big story on the first day of the year. A Tesla truck exploded outside the Trump building in Las Vegas, killing one and injuring seven. Then there was the car attack in New Orleans, where according to news reports a car went on a rampage killing fifteen people and injuring dozens of others. Police say the driver of the vehicle was not alone and there is currently a manhunt for the others.
The identity of that driver in New Orleans has been released and to no one’s surprise his ancestors were not on the Mayflower. The media is calling him a “Texas man” but he was born to recent arrivals, most likely from East Africa. He served in the military and had various office jobs until he decided to go on jihad. Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar is a good reminder that absimilation is just as likely as assimilation. It is a thing we increasingly see as alien populations increase in the West.
Assimilation means to become like that which you joined. As John Derbyshire observed almost a decade ago, there is an opposite, absimilation, which means to become less similar to that which you have joined. In the case of second and third generation immigrants, this is a common enough thing that it has become the focus of the overall immigration debate. While most absimilated migrants do not go on murderous rampages, many refuse to assimilate on principle.
This is one of the problems with immigration that the Romans understood, but our current oligarchs do not understand. When the alien population is small, the pressure to assimilate is very high. Those who refuse can find little support within their alien community, so they either assimilate or leave. This was the case with 19th century immigration from Europe. Some claim up to a third of European immigrants remigrated because they could not or would not fit into American society.
When the alien population reaches a large enough size, there forms a critical mass of aliens who refuse to assimilate and find enough support within the alien population to survive apart from the main population. This was the lesson of the 19th century when Italians packed into ghettos became a society within a society. It turned out that even in 19th century America, assimilation is not automatic. The more alien the population, the more difficult it is to assimilate them.
Of course, in this age, there is no effort to assimilate these people. Instead, they are encouraged to let their freak flag fly in the name of diversity. Further, there has been intense pressure on the native population to move aside and not demand these new people quickly assimilate into the native culture. The result is second a third-generation migrants who are alienated by the deracinated state of America and encouraged to hate the white population.
That alienation is not just with the migrants. It appears the Las Vegas Tesla attack was done by a white man named Matthew Livelsberger. Like Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the New Orleans terrorist, Livelsberger was an army veteran and served with Jabber at the same base in Texas. It is looking like these two attacks are connected and the result of a group that may have come together in the military. Long forgotten, Nidal Hasan was in the Army when he went on his rampage.
It should surprise no one that alienated migrants are now finding common cause with alienated natives this way. On the one hand, we have massive importation of people unlikely to assimilate into American society. On the other hand, we have a culture war against the native white population, specifically white men. It is as if the ruling class is trying to create the perfect conditions for terrorism. This is not an unreasonable suspicion, given the performance of the FBI.
Even though these events took place in the new year, they are part of a pattern we saw in 2024 from the FBI and the other security forces. The assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania was due to staggering incompetence. The same is true of the attempt in Florida by a guy who should have been on the FBI radar. Time after time we see that the FBI fails at its basic duties, most likely due to the fact they spend all their time trying to frame people for the latest fads.
As we always see in these terrorism cases, the people involved in this one will have been brought to the attention of law enforcement. The FBI will say they had reports about these people. No one will ask what they did with those reports, because the answer is they did nothing. Their response will be to demand more money so they can frame some people for whatever they will call this stuff. They will pretend they are now on top of this new problem.
Putting aside the FBI malfeasance, this batch of terrorism is a reminder that our rulers have created a tinderbox. The revolt against Musk over the holiday break regarding Indian migrants should be another warning to the oligarchs. To head off much bigger problems down the road, there needs to be an immigration moratorium, including a halt to most “guest worker” programs. Every new arrival is a flammable log on the hot coals of the deracinated American population.
Further, there needs to be a national effort to assimilate the current alien population into the native European culture. Part of this needs to be remigration. Those who refuse to assimilate must leave. Cultural diversity needs to be treated like communism was treated in the 1950’s. It took an economic collapse and world war to assimilate the last great immigration wave. That was with a diverse European population before the major powers had nuclear weapons.
Unless the oligarchs wish to be swinging from trees, they need to head off this looming demographic disaster. Things like diversity and openness are luxury goods that can be indulged in easy times, but the easy times are over, so these leisure habits must be replaced with realism. What the first day of the new year tells us is America has a real problem with its population. That reality can no longer be ignored. To fix it means being realistic about the human condition."
Greg Hunter, "Trump Admin: Fight Between Freedom & Deep State Control"
"Trump Admin:
Fight Between Freedom & Deep State Control"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), publisher of "The Solari Report," says the real work for the Trump Administration is happening now. CAF is a financial expert and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.) who managed hundreds of billions of dollars in her career. CAF says this is a fight within the Trump Administration that is summed up by those who will fight for freedom and sovereignty and those who want America under Deep State control. CAF explains, “You had a lot of people who voted for Trump that wanted to see him protect freedoms. You also have a lot of people voting and donating for Trump because they think he can get them the control grid. The centralization and decentralization are both hoping Trump will give them what they want. Trump has to do something that works economically.
The first day, Trump will be asked to fill the top 10 or 20 positions. Ultimately, after you fill the cabinet and the other top positions, then there are another 10,000 positions to be filled. The President does 1,000 positions, and those thousand do the rest of about 10,000 positions. The guys who want the control grid are trying to get their people in place. The guys who want freedom are trying to get their people in place. After you get the people in place, it’s going to have to be battled out one policy at a time. So, this is trench warfare, and it’s not going to be decided by the election. It’s going to be decided by the staffing and the policy debate that happens day after day.
The corruption that has to be cleaned up is huge. Take the recent announcement of royalties being paid to a government health agency - the National Institutes of Health (NIH). CAF says, “The NIH is receiving $1.1 billion from Pfizer–BioNTech for the Covid vaccine shots.”
Ed Dowd says we just added a fresh 800,000 disabled people to the 4 million disabled since the CV19 shots were introduced. The total amount of disabled people in the US from the CV19 vax now stands at 4.8 million.
CAF points out Dr. Mark Skidmore (Michigan State) just published a study that says if we could go back to the disability numbers of 2010 and before, the US could reduce the federal deficit by $500 billion a year!! CAF says, “If you connect the dots with Ed Dowd, Dr. Skidmore’s study and the announcement of Pfizer paying royalties to NIH, we are paying NIH a billion dollars to poison the American people and bankrupting the country.” There is no wonder why Big Pharma and the NIH are very nervous of Bobby Kennedy Jr. Keep in mind, this is just one broken piece of corrupt government.
CAF says look who DOGE is auditing first. It’s the IRS. CAF says, “If you knew the government was missing $21 trillion (and it is), you would go to the Fed and audit them. We are going to go over to the New York Fed and the Treasury and look at the bank accounts and find out where that money went and get it back - right? Why would they audit the IRS? Because Janet Yellen (Treasury Secretary) says the American people owe $7 trillion in unpaid taxes. There is only one reason you audit the IRS, and that’s because you want to collect the $7 trillion. So, you are not trying to find the $21 trillion that has disappeared out the back door? You are trying to find the people who Janet Yellen says owe the US Treasury."
CAF says look out for the push for a digital ID. It equals slavery. It’s being pushed by the Deep State control team. CAF says the freedom team will push to keep cash alive. Everyone can do that by using cash more. CAF says, “The big danger in 2025 is going to be rising inflation. .The real inflation rate is around 10%.” CAF also says there is a big market correction coming because the stock market is in a bubble. CAF says there will be gruesome news coming out of Syria in 2025 because her sources say, “The genocide and slaughter are off the charts in Syria.”
In closing, CAF says there are many ways the Deep State control team wants to separate you from your wealth, and the freedom team will be proposing ways to stop that along with protecting freedom of speech. 2025 will be trench warfare between the Deep State control team and the freedom and sovereignty team." There is much more in the 1-hour & 28-minute interview.
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with the publisher of "The Solari Report," Catherine Austin Fitts, as she looks ahead for what’s coming in 2025.
Bill Bonner, "Brewing Storm"
"Brewing Storm"
Inflation has not been beaten. Despite the Fed’s efforts to bring
them down, interest rates are going up. Since the rate cutting
cycle began in September, long-term interest rates are up about 100 bps
by Bill Bonner
"Should old acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?"Baltimore, Maryland - "As we left 2024, we left behind a jolly, wacky year... and many unanswered questions. Gold rose 27% over the 12 months. That alone endeared the year to us. We raise a glass... and sing a maudlin chorus. But other things made us glad to see 2024 go.
For months, the Democratic leadership, in collusion with the mainstream press, assured the nation that its president was on the ball. Sharp as a tack. Then, when said Commander in Chief appeared in a TV debate it was clear - even to the investigative journalists! - that they had been lying. His mouth open as he sought to remember his talking points, the president erased all doubt as to his competence. He made Donald Trump seem sane and sensible in comparison. This should have provoked an important question: If no one was at home in the White House, who was running the country?
But that same team of brave news hounds that managed not to pick up the scent of absenteeism in the Oval Office also managed to not ask the critical question... how does a democratic republic function when its elected chief is AWOL? And why do people bother to vote if it doesn’t make any difference whether their chosen jefe is on the job or not?
That question would have revealed that Joe Biden was never really in charge... and that it’s not the voters who actually decide the direction of public policy, but the elite insiders. So, the press left it alone... which is what it does with all important matters. Instead, it turned to a ‘floating island of garbage’ and other distractions to prove that all Republicans are mean racists... that is, until Joe Biden took up the garbage theme himself, applying it to nearly half the voters.
By this stage in the election cycle, November was approaching hard and fast and Democratic heavyweights had already seen the crash coming... and already taken action to avoid it. For weeks, they had been steadfast in their support of Biden, claiming after the debate that “anyone can have a bad night.” Then, suddenly, they stuck a knife in his back, forcing him to admit that he was washed up.
This was, of course, a great opportunity. Thoughtful voters sat on the edge of their chairs. Instead of two unappealing candidates - one a reckless jerk, the other a pathetic ghost - they might finally have someone they could feel good about voting for. After all, there are some 45 million registered democrats, surely they could find one of them who was smart, and likable... who could champion the party’s goals and consistently support its programs. Instead, the honchos put forth Kamala Harris, a DEI hire who had either no idea what those goals were... or a complete inability to sell them to the public.
The dumbness didn’t stop there. In the following presidential debate - Harris vs. Trump - all the Republican had to do was to explain why his policies would be better than those of Ms. Harris, who had none at all! But Mr. Trump chose instead to focus on Haitians allegedly eating the pets of the people of Springfield, Ohio (where no incident of such pet-o–voria was ever recorded).
Perhaps the strangest, and most pathetic, thing of all was that neither of the two dared to mention the great storms brewing right off the coast. Haitian immigrants might enjoy a stew made with Fluffy the cat... or not. A man might pretend to be a woman and enter the girls’ shower room. And Donald Trump’s “God Bless the USA” bible may encourage the goodwill of the Almighty... or not.
The effect they have on our lives is minimal. But the feds are already paying more in the interest than they do on defense. They owe $36 trillion already and are now borrowing at the rate of $10 billion/day. This puts America’s fiscal house on the edge of a very loose, sandy beach... with a hurricane approaching. And a real debt crisis, with or without a real war... would send the whole rickety capital structure tumbling into the surf.
Inflation has not been beaten. And despite the Fed’s efforts to bring them down, interest rates are going up. Since the rate cutting cycle began in September, long-term interest rates are up about 100 basis points. The problem is so obvious that even Donald Trump and his merry band of misfits must see it coming. But they see it as an ‘efficiency’ issue... a cosmetic challenge that can be met with a little nipping and tucking here and there. Musk and Ramaswamy have been appointed to wield the scalpel. And the press, missing the point as usual, will howl and whine at every petty incision. What a show!
And don’t forget taking back the Panama Canal... buying Greenland... invading Mexico... tariffs... deportations... the Ukraine and the Levant! Yes, dear reader, 2024 is gone. But at least we have 2025. A plot that defies easy understanding... with a star-studded cast of clowns and grifters. So, pull up a chair."
"2025 Stock Market Crash? Famed Investor Jim Rogers Issues A Warning"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/2/25
"2025 Stock Market Crash?
Famed Investor Jim Rogers Issues A Warning"
Comments here:
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
Travelling with Russell, "Walking in Red Square on New Year's Eve"
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 1/2/25
"Walking in Red Square on New Year's Eve"
"How does walking through the centre of Moscow on New Year's Eve feel? Join me as I walk through the world-famous Moscow Christmas Markets in Red Square. What does the mood and atmosphere feel like on Red Square on New Year's Eve? Happy New Year everyone. I hope you had a great last day of 2024, and I hope you're all ready for 2025. I decided to make a short video about how everyone visited Red Square on New Years Eve in Russia. My own plan was to stay home and prepare for our at home celebration, but the weather was too nice, too white and too good to not show you what its really like."
Comments here:
"Is 2025 Going To Look Like A Hollywood Disaster Movie?"
"Is 2025 Going To Look Like
A Hollywood Disaster Movie?"
by Michael Snyder
"What kind of year is 2025 going to be? If you ask 1,000 different people that question, you will probably get 1,000 different answers. There are some that are very optimistic about the year ahead, but there are others that are very pessimistic about the year ahead. In fact, Gallup just conducted a survey that discovered that most Americans believe that 2025 will be a year of “political conflict, economic difficulty, international discord, increasing power for China and Russia, and a rising federal budget deficit”…
"Americans foresee a somewhat challenging year ahead for the country, based on their predictions for various aspects of U.S. affairs and daily life. Majorities of U.S. adults think 2025 will be a year of political conflict, economic difficulty, international discord, increasing power for China and Russia, and a rising federal budget deficit."
I agree with all of that. The U.S. is facing both internal and external turmoil, and our economy is very rapidly moving in the wrong direction. But another major global health crisis would make things so much worse. In recent weeks, so many of the usual suspects have been doing interviews in which they warn that a bird flu pandemic among humans has become inevitable. Do they know something that the rest of us do not?
Already, we are starting to see public officials freak out. The state of California recently declared a state of emergency, and now it is being reported that Arizona has detected bird flu in the wastewater in the cities of Phoenix, Tempe and Surprise…"Bird flu has been detected in wastewater in multiple metro Phoenix cities, county health officials confirmed Monday.
Routine wastewater surveillance in Phoenix, Tempe and Surprise - the three cities in the county where monitoring occurs - confirmed the presence of avian influenza, according to a press release from the Maricopa County Department of Public Health (MCDPH). The influenza subtype, which includes bird flu as H5N1, has been detected in multiple locations in the Valley in the past couple of months."
Meanwhile, the bird flu continues to spread like wildfire among animals all over the nation. 123 million birds, most of them chickens and turkeys, have already died in the United States alone. And now a farm in Ohio that has nearly a million chickens has been infected…"Ohio agriculture officials are investigating after avian flu was detected in nearly one million chickens in Darke County. The National Veterinary Services Laboratory confirmed Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza was detected in Darke County on Dec. 27, involving 931,302 chickens. Since it’s an active case, the ODA did not identify the individual farms."
Cats are dying from coast to coast too. In Oregon, it has been determined that a cat that recently died from the bird flu caught it by eating turkey-based cat food…"Experts and some public officials are warning against raw pet foods after a cat in Oregon was found to have died from a product contaminated by bird flu. The maker of that cat food, Northwest Naturals, has since recalled certain batches of the turkey-based food." If humans start getting infected and dying on a widespread basis, it really will be a nightmare scenario, and the level of panic that we will witness will be off the charts.
It appears that 2025 will also be a year of war. The U.S. and Israel are openly talking about conducting a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s nuclear program, North Korea is threatening to invade South Korea, and long-range NATO missiles continue to hit targets deep inside Russia. In response, the Russians just fired missiles at Kyiv…"Russia launched an aerial attack on Ukraine on Tuesday, striking the capital and other regions with multiple missiles and drones.
Ukraine’s air force reported a ballistic missile threat at 3:00 a.m. (0100 GMT), with at least two explosions heard in Kyiv minutes later. Another missile alert was issued at 8:00 a.m. followed by at least one explosion in the city. Missile debris fell in the Darnytskyi district of the capital with no reports of casualties or damage, the local administration said."
Elsewhere, Chinese President Xi Jinping is boldly declaring that “reunification” with Taiwan is inevitable and nobody will be able to stop it…"No one can stop China’s “reunification” with Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in his New Year’s speech on Dec 31, laying down a clear warning to what Beijing regards as pro-independence forces within and outside of the island of 23 million people.
In the past year, Beijing has stepped up military pressure near Taiwan, sending warships and planes almost daily into the waters and air space around the island in what Taiwanese officials view as a creeping effort to “normalize” China’s military presence. Will 2025 be the year when China finally pulls the trigger? When it happens, we will instantly be at war with China.
Ominously, the Chinese are in the midst of “the largest military build-up of any nation in the world since Germany in the 1930s”…"According to a report by a national security expert, the People’s Republic of China has ordered the largest military build-up of any nation in the world since Germany in the 1930s, raising concerns about the military threat presented by China."
On top of everything else, it appears that Afghanistan and Pakistan are on the brink of “all-out war”…"Fears of an all-out war erupting between Afghanistan and Pakistan are rising after the Taliban sent troops to the border as the two countries continue to trade deadly strikes. The Afghan Taliban has unleashed a series of devastating artillery strikes on Pakistani military checkpoints along the tense border, sparking fears of a full-blown conflict between the two neighbors. The hardline Islamist group boasted it had obliterated ‘several’ Pakistani positions and mobilized battalions of fighters to confront any retaliation from Islamabad, in a chilling show of force."
While all of this is going on, our entire planet continues to become even more unstable as well. On average, we experienced a “billion dollar disaster” in the United States about every two weeks in 2024. Just think about how crazy that is. And that doesn’t even count all of the “billion dollar disasters” that have been happening in other nations.
Sadly, this is just the beginning. Today, we are being warned that a massive underwater volcano off the coast of Oregon that is thousands of feet tall is likely to erupt in 2025…"Scientists have warned that an underwater volcano off the coast of the northwestern US is likely to blow sometime in 2025. The volcano, called Axial Seamount, is more than 3,600-feet-tall and sits half a mile underwater just 300 miles off the coast of Oregon."
Our world is going completely nuts, but for the moment those at the very top of the economic pyramid continue to party like it is 1999. On Tuesday, it was being reported that the 500 wealthiest people in the world now have a combined net worth of 10 trillion dollars…"The world’s 500 richest people got vastly richer in 2024, with Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang leading the group of billionaires to a new milestone: A combined $10 trillion net worth.
An indomitable rally in US technology stocks played a key role in turbocharging the trio’s wealth, as well as the fortunes of Larry Ellison, Jeff Bezos, Michael Dell and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The eight tech titans alone gained more than $600 billion this year, 43% of the $1.5 trillion increase among the 500 richest people tracked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index."
If you are one of the lucky few that is sitting on a giant mountain of money, life may still seem pretty good for the moment. But a day of reckoning is coming for them too. 2024 was certainly a chaotic year, but I am entirely convinced that 2025 will be much more wild. Brace yourself for what the next 12 months will bring, because it appears that all sorts of craziness is about to start breaking loose."
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
"Alert! Evil Unleashed In New Orleans; Trump Las Vegas Hotel Explosion"
Jeremiah Babe, 1/1/25
"Alert! Evil Unleashed In New Orleans;
Trump Las Vegas Hotel Explosion"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant.
The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
•
"When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged
in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where
he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars."
- Walt Whitman
"For Love Of Butkus"
"For Love Of Butkus"
“Back in the early days of his career, Sylvester Stallone was so broke he ended up homeless and unable to buy food. At his lowest point, he realized he had no option but to sell his beloved dog and best friend, Butkus, whom he simply couldn't afford to feed. After selling Butkus to a stranger for $25, he walked away crying.
Just two weeks later, Stallone saw a boxing match between Muhammed Ali and Chuck Wepner. It inspired him so much, he wrote the script for "Rocky". As he started approaching movie studios, he had one request: he would star in the movie. With offers for as much as $350,000, Stallone still refused until they agreed for him to play the lead. But the compromise came at a cost, with Stallone instead receiving just $35,000 for his script.
The first thing the actor did when he received the money was return to the liquor store where he had last seen Butkus. After standing there for three days, he saw the man who had purchased his dog approaching and begged to buy his dog back. It would cost him $15,000, but it was worth every cent to Stallone. Butkus would appear in the film with his owner. "Rocky" went on to be the highest-grossing film of 1976 and won three Oscars. It also propelled Stallone to fame."
The Poet: Theodore Roethke, “The Return”
“The Return”
“Suddenly the window will open
and Mother will call,
it's time to come in.
The wall will part,
I will enter heaven in muddy shoes.
I will come to the table
and answer questions rudely.
I am all right, leave me
alone. Head in hand I
sit and sit. How can I tell them
about that long
and tangled way?
Here in heaven mothers
knit green scarves;
flies buzz.
Father dozes by the stove
after six days' labor.
No - surely I can't tell them
that people are at each
other's throats.”
- Theodore Roethke
"We Like To Think..."
"We like to think that we are rational beings; humane, conscientious, civilized, thoughtful. But when things fall apart, even just a little, it becomes clear we are not better than animals. We have opposable thumbs, we think, we walk erect, we speak, we dream, but deep down we are still routing around in the primordial ooze; biting, clawing, scratching out an existence in the cold, dark world like the rest of the tree-toads and sloths."
- "Grey's Anatomy"
"I Assure You..."
"You may wonder about long-term solutions. I assure you, there are none. All wounds are mortal. Take what's given. You sometimes get a little slack in the rope but the rope always has an end. So what? Bless the slack and don't waste your breath cursing the drop. A grateful heart knows that in the end we all swing."
- Stephen King
"On The Meridian Of Time..."
“On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured – disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui – in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.”
- Henry Miller
"For This Is What We do..."
"Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that's why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that's why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living."
- Alysha Speer
"The joke was thinking you were ever really in charge of your life. You pressed your oar down into the water to direct the canoe, but it was the current that shot you through the rapids. You just hung on and hoped not to hit a rock or a whirlpool."
- Scott Turow
"What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?'"
- Barbara Kingsolver
“For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.”
- Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”
"Unless Something Changes, 4 Years From Now We Will Be 51 Trillion Dollars In Debt"
"Unless Something Changes, 4 Years From
Now We Will Be 51 Trillion Dollars In Debt"
by Michael Snyder
"The U.S. government is currently constructing the most colossal monument in the history of the world. It is a monument of debt, and we will forever be remembered as the nation that piled up far more debt than anyone else ever did. For decades, this generation has been recklessly spending the money of future generations of Americans. Most people seem to think that we are totally getting away with this swindle, but the truth is that the party is almost over. Our national debt has already surpassed the 36 trillion dollar mark, and according to usdebtclock.org at our current rate of spending our national debt will surpass the 51 trillion dollar mark four years from now.
We are a spoiled, bloated, greedy nation that has run up a debt so big that words simply do not do it justice. We have got to stop spending so much money, but we just can’t help ourselves.
In January, Donald Trump will be faced with some very difficult decisions regarding our debt as soon as he is inaugurated…"It’s going to be an urgent issue for Trump as soon as he takes office. The federal government will resume the cap on its borrowing authority on Jan. 1, as the U.S. sits on a national debt of more than $36 trillion, though the Treasury Department can buy time for a number of months with so-called extraordinary measures. The fiscal time bomb illustrates the struggle Trump and Republican leaders face heading into 2025, as they consider whether to court Democrats who will want concessions or their own conservatives who are known for rigidly sticking to their demands to cut funding."
If Trump decides that it is time to cut spending, that will make our short-term economic problems even worse. But if he decides to keep spending money at current levels that would be suicidal.
Most Americans have no idea how difficult it is to spend a trillion dollars. If you spend one dollar every single second, you could spend a million dollars in just twelve days. If you spend one dollar every single second, you could spend a billion dollars in 32 years. But at that same rate, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars.
Let me give you another illustration. If you were alive 2000 years ago and you started spending one million dollars every single day when Christ was born, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now. That is how large one trillion dollars is. But the United States is not one trillion dollars in debt. The United States is 36 trillion dollars in debt. And as I discussed the other day, we will never pay that debt off.
A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times. That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off one-third of the U.S. national debt. But if you are determined to do something, the government wants you to know that you can help. If you can believe it, the government is actually taking online donations that will be used to help pay off the national debt. Or at least that is what they are claiming. If you were able to donate one dollar every single second to help pay off the national debt, it would take you hundreds of thousands of years to come up with enough money to pay it off.
Are you starting to get the picture? We are in so much trouble. We could have lived within our means and left America in tremendous shape for the generations that follow us. But that is not what we did. Instead, we have saddled our children and grandchildren with the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world.
What we have done to future generations of Americans is beyond criminal. One day, if they get the chance, they will look back and curse this generation for what we have done to them. We spent tens of trillions of dollars that belonged to them, and we have stuck them with the bill for our wild excesses. We have taken the greatest economic machine that humanity has ever seen and we have driven it straight off a cliff.
And yet we are so proud of ourselves. We think that we are so special and that we have all the answers. Of course the truth is that we should be deeply ashamed of ourselves. Over and over again we kept sending the same clowns back to Washington D.C. and they just kept on spending our money like they were playing a really twisted game of Monopoly. So now we are going to pay the price. All of us.
Apparently the Chinese wanted to see how much of a joke the U.S. Treasury has become, because they hacked into it a few weeks ago…"A state-sponsored actor in China hacked the U.S. Treasury Department, gaining access to the workstations of government employees and unclassified documents, the Biden administration said on Monday. The announcement comes after revelations in recent months that China had penetrated deep into U.S. telecommunications systems, gaining access to the phone conversations and text messages of U.S. officials and others."
According to Reuters, this was a “major incident”…"The hackers compromised a third-party cybersecurity service provider and were able to access unclassified documents, the letter said, calling it a “major incident.” According to the letter, hackers “gained access to a key used by the vendor to secure a cloud-based service used to remotely provide technical support for Treasury Departmental Offices (DO) end users. With access to the stolen key, the threat actor was able override the service’s security, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users.”
Of course you don’t have to be a hacker to find out the big secret that the U.S. Treasury is trying to hide. The big secret is that we are broke. We are drowning in an ocean of red ink, and we can barely pay our bills. Something has got to change, because if we stay on the path that we are currently on we will be 51 trillion dollars in debt four years from today."
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When the debt was "only" $30 Trillion...
Full screen recommended.
Demonocracy,
"US Debt of $30 Trillion Visualized
in Stacks of Physical Cash"
"Sunny Mornings: Beautiful Relaxing Music with Piano, Guitar & Bird Sounds"
Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation, 1/1/25
"Sunny Mornings: Beautiful Relaxing
Music with Piano, Guitar & Bird Sounds"
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Musical Interlude: 2002, "Falling Through Time"
Full screen recommended.
2002, "Falling Through Time"
"New Year's Moscow 2025 Right Now, Fabulous Winter Russian Streets!"
Full screen recommended.
Window to Moscow, 12/31/24
"New Year's Moscow 2025 Right Now,
Fabulous Winter Russian Streets!"
Comments below:
I'm speechless, astonished at what a sane, civilized society can achieve...
Happy New Year 2025!
Musical Interlude: Logos, "Cheminement"
Full screen recommended.
Logos, "Cheminement"
For reasons unknown Blogger refuses to load this beautiful video onto the blog.
Please enjoy it here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“What will become of these galaxies? Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive this collision. Typically when galaxies collide, a large galaxy eats a much smaller galaxy. In this case, however, the two galaxies are quite similar, each being a sprawling spiral with expansive arms and a compact core. As the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are unlikely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides.
Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants. Known collectively as Arp 271, the interacting pair spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo. Recent predictions hold that our Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130825.html
"Tell Yourself..."
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
- Louise Erdrich
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