Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 7/19/25
"Alert! Internet Kill Switch!
Are You Ready for the WW3 Shutdown?"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Saturday, July 19, 2025
"You Are About To Become A Digital Slave, CBDC's Will Destroy Your Financial Freedom"
Jeremiah Babe, 7/19/25
"You Are About To Become A Digital Slave,
CBDC's Will Destroy Your Financial Freedom"
Comments here:
Mahmood OD, "Starvation Intensifies; Resistance Escalates; Israel Fails"
Full screen recommended.
Mahmood OD, 7/19/25
"Starvation Intensifies; Resistance Escalates; Israel Fails"
Comments here:
o
"This Is What Always Happens Before A Real Estate Crash"
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 7/19/25
"This Is What Always Happens Before A Real Estate Crash"
Comments here:
"Gregory Mannarino: 'Economy Is Set To Face An Imminent COLLAPSE'"
Full screen recommended.
LifeWorthLiving, 7/19/25
"Gregory Mannarino:
'Economy Is Set To Face An Imminent COLLAPSE'"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”
Full screen recommended.
Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”
"A Look to the Heavens"
"These two mighty galaxies are pulling each other apart. Known as the "Mice" because they have such long tails, each spiral galaxy has likely already passed through the other. The long tails are created by the relative difference between gravitational pulls on the near and far parts of each galaxy. Because the distances are so large, the cosmic interaction takes place in slow motion - over hundreds of millions of years.
NGC 4676 lies about 300 million light-years away toward the constellation of Bernice's Hair (Coma Berenices) and are likely members of the Coma Cluster of Galaxies. The featured picture was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2002. These galactic mice will probably collide again and again over the next billion years so that, instead of continuing to pull each other apart, they coalesce to form a single galaxy."
"What Do You Value?"
by John Wilder
“I have been in the service of the Vorlons for centuries, looking for you. Diogenes, with his lamp, looking for an honest man, willing to die for all the wrong reasons. At last, my job is finished. Yours is just beginning. When the darkness comes, know this; you are the right people, in the right place, at the right time.” – "Babylon 5"
"What is the most common question asked by philosophers nowadays? “Do you want fries with that?” Diogenes is dead. When he was up and kicking around, he lived in a wine barrel at the end of town, and often was caught on the streets stark naked. Sometimes he was, um, enjoying himself. Oddly, he was also thought of as a respected philosopher. When I try to emulate him, though, all I get is a restraining order and some embarrassing YouTube® videos.
The reason we remember Diogenes is for two reasons: First, he invented the chicken nugget, but sadly was unable to invent any tasty dipping sauces. Second, he walked around making pithy little statements like this: “We sell things of great value for things of very little, and vice versa." It’s a very short, and very wickedly to the point piece of advice. Frankly, it points out many of the problems we are facing as a society today.
Let’s take consooming for today’s topic.Billions of dollars are spent attempting to convince people to purchase one product or another. These advertisements are hard to avoid – and they have one thing in common – a desire to get the consoomer to spend money. In some cases, the ads provide the ability to match a need with a product. If I’m cutting down trees using axes and handsaws, knowing that a thing called a chainsaw exists is providing me a real value. So, ads inform.
But ads also are used to create desire in customers, playing on emotions to drive purchase decisions for things that aren’t needs, but frivolities. I have plenty of those! I’m a sucker for some things in particular. In the sitting room (where I’m typing this now) I look around and see a map I bought as artwork a few years ago. It shows all the undersea telegraph cables in around 1871. So very cool! I walked into the store, saw it, and bought it. I consoomed. I can’t cut down a tree with it. I can’t drive it to work. It’s just... there, stuck to my wall.
Is the map of great value? No. It’s a print. It doesn’t make me better, more complete, important, or accomplished. We can look in terms of multiple ways to value things. Dollars are only one. In this case, the picture cost about what I made in about an hour or two. Was it worth an hour of my life to own that map? Yeah, I guess so. But when I start to value objects that I own, and look at how much of my life I traded for them, my equation starts to change.
If I didn’t spend that hour at work, what could I have spent that hour on? How could I have changed my life? Could I have spent more time brushing my teeth, so they were 2.3% brighter? Should I have spent that time waxing my dog? What did I overlook or not spend time on? And which of those things might have been more valuable?
I understand that money is important – those who say that money isn’t important haven’t gone without it. But money isn’t the goal, it’s what can be done with it that’s important. The true currency of our lives isn’t gold, silver, or even PEZ™. It’s time. Each of us on this planet have a finite number of hours left on this rock, and that number goes down by one each hour that we spend. It goes down by one if I spend it at a job I don’t like. It goes down if I spend it writing the best post I’ve ever written. It goes down by one if I’m sleeping. It goes down by one every hour.
Yes, I know, exercising and other positive things might extend that life, but I’m still going to die. In the endless summer of a life when I was, say, 12, I didn’t think much about time and how I spent it. Even then, though, I didn’t try to just “pass the time” since there was so much to do and see and learn in the world. Now as I’m on the back side of life, I can see that those hours I have left cannot be wasted.
They’re all I have. And learning is great, but now it has to have purpose. Will it help me write? Will it help me crack a puzzle that I can share? Will it help me with some project I’m working on? Can it help me change the world?
Again, as I get older, it ceases to be about me. It’s now about what I can do to help others, how I can help make the world a better place. Thankfully, during my career I’ve been able to do work on things that matter, and have made the world a slightly better place. If I’m trading my life for my work, I’m glad that it’s work that matters.
Diogenes? He’s still dead, but he changed the world, just a little bit. And I can, too. And so can you. Time is still all we have, but it’s up to us to make the most of it, each and every day, just like Diogenes showed us. But, I don’t recommend you do it naked. Now, I wonder how Diogenes dealt with the restraining orders?"
"The Most Real 4K HDR Video - Dolby Vision in 120fps Nature"
Full screen recommended.
8K Earth, "The Most Real 4K HDR Video -
Dolby Vision in 120fps Nature"
"Experience the most stunning 4K HDR video with Dolby Vision in 120 FPS, featuring breathtaking nature scenes. This video is perfect for relaxation and meditation, with immersive visuals and soothing background music. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this visual masterpiece in the highest quality!"
"Can't You See..."
"Can't you see that the courage to risk, to dare, to toss that gold coin up in the air over and over again, win or lose, is what makes humans human? They are fragile, doomed creatures, blinder than worms yet braver than the gods. "
- Jennifer Donnelly, "Stepsister"
The Poet: William Stafford, "The Gift"
"Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one
that your life conceals, the one waiting outside
when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at
in her crochet design, the one almost found
over at the edge of the music, after the sermon.
It's the way life is, and you have it, a few years given.
You get killed now and then, violated
in various ways. (And sometimes it's turn about.)
You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait
and pray, and maybe good things come - maybe
the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more.
You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness.
It's a balance, the taking and passing along,
the composting of where you've been and how people
and weather treated you. It's a country where
you already are, bringing where you have been.
Time offers this gift in its millions of ways,
turning the world, moving the air, calling,
every morning, "Here, take it, it's yours."
- William Stafford
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
– George Eliot
"Spendid!"
“A lot of the nonsense was the innocent result of playfulness on the part of the founding fathers of the nation of Dwayne Hoover and Kilgore Trout. The founders were aristocrats, and they wished to show off their useless eduction, which consisted of the study of hocus-pocus from ancient times. They were bum poets as well.
But some of the nonsense was evil, since it concealed great crime. For example, teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy:
1492
The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.
Here was another piece of nonsense which children were taught: that the sea pirates eventually created a government which became a beacon of freedom of human beings everywhere else. Actually, the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the new government owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery, and, even after slavery was eliminated, because it was so embarrassing, they and their descendants continued to think of ordinary human beings as machines.
The sea pirates were white. The people who were already on the continent when the pirates arrived were copper-colored. When slavery was introduced onto the continent, the slaves were black.
Color was everything.
Here is how the pirates were able to take whatever they wanted from anybody else: they had the best boats in the world, and they were meaner than anybody else, and they had gunpowder, which is a mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulphur. They touched the seemingly listless powder with fire, and it turned violently into gas. This gas blew projectiles out of metal tubes at terrific velocities. The projectiles cut through meat and bone very easily; so the pirates could wreck the wiring or the bellows or the plumbing of a stubborn human being, even when he was far, far away.
The chief weapon of the sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was much too late, how heartless and greedy they were.”
- Kurt Vonnegut, "Breakfast of Champions"
"Native American Power Drums, Spirit Pride"
- CP, Choctaw/Euro mongrel as I am...
"Accomplished Fugitives..."
“Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves, and the modern world is particularly rich in such stratagems. We can keep ourselves so busy, fill our lives with so many diversions, stuff our heads with so much knowledge, involve ourselves with so many people and cover so much ground that we never have time to probe the fearful and wonderful world within. More often than not we don’t want to know ourselves, don’t want to depend on ourselves, don’t want to live with ourselves. By middle life most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.”
- John Gardner
"Scott Ritter: Russia Wins, NATO Loses – WW3 Nears"
Full screen recommended.
Garland Nixon, 7/19/25
"Scott Ritter: Russia Wins, NATO Loses
– WW3 Nears"
Comments here:
o
Dialogue Works, 7/19/25
"Trump's Fantasy Crumbles!
Russia & Iran Devastate It As Ultimatum Implodes!"
Comments here:
"Medvedev Advises Putin Start WW III Before Trump’s 50 Day Ultimatum"
"Medvedev Advises Putin Start WW III
Before Trump’s 50 Day Ultimatum"
by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: "After reading you for more than 10 years, I understand that you are the best at geopolitics because you honestly know history. Medvedev has called on Vladimir Putin to consider pre-emptive strikes against the US and its allies in response to Donald Trump’s ‘theatrical’ 50-day deadline. What would your advice be to Putin, since no leader can do what Trump has demanded and remain in power?" - PD
ANSWER: I would give the West 31 days to (1) remove Zelensky & hold an election in Ukraine, (2) honor the Minsk Agreement as the West guaranteed, and let the Donbas vote on separation as took place in Czechoslovakia and the breakup of Yugoslavia. If that is not carried out, the Ukrainian people have 2 weeks to vacate Kiev, and it will be nuked.
NATO will claim that they will target Moscow, and I would then lock in every capital of Europe. If Trump intervenes, I would target Washington, NYC, Chicago, and LA without dropping leaflets. Maybe then the people will get off their ass and remove the leaders of Europe, and the American Neocons should be hauled out and imprisoned for a usurpation of power, and that would be using the West’s tactics of REGIME CHANGE in reverse.
Let us not forget that the Neocons of the US and Europe deliberately created this civil war in Ukraine. John McCain and Victoria Nuland overthrew the Ukrainian government and installed a puppet regime. They lied to the Ukrainian people, telling them this was their moment for peace and it was just about them. What bullshit!
Victoria Nuland decided who would run Ukraine, not the people. Her gaffe was “F the EU”, she was deciding the fate of Ukraine. She installed her UNELECTED puppet and instructed Turchynov to attack the Donbas. The Ukrainian people were lied to by Zelensky, who ran on a promise of peace.
Our press always condemns Putin and will never tell the truth because the Neocons pay them to drum up the war at all costs. WAR, WAR, WAR. Why? That leads to massive death, the destruction of our economic future, and war never ends as expected. The bulk of our national debt is the cost of the endless wars of the Neocons, which Trump promised to stop, so much for democracy.
The death toll was 130,000 when Zelensky was running, and he promised peace. It is now approaching 1.5 million, and over 8 million have fled the country. Russia was optimistic that Zelensky’s election would end the war. He has suspended the election, assumed a dictatorial role, and takes his orders from NATO. No major country suspended elections during World War I or World War II.
The Ukrainian people have been played as fools, denied any democratic process. What I hear behind the curtain is that nobody cares about the Ukrainian people, what the hell, they were all communists and Nazis before anyhow.
It was Boris Johnson who flew to Kiev and instructed Zelensky that he was not allowed to sign any peace deal. The Ukrainians I speak to ask, are they allowed to have peace without permission from London, Paris, Berlin, and Washington?
The Neocons only care about winning. They do not care about the cost, the people who die on the battlefield, nor the “collateral damage” to civilians. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, with massive casualties on both the military and civilian sides.
Total Estimated Deaths in WWII: 70–85 million
Military Deaths: 21–25 million
Civilian Deaths: 50–55 million
Europe lied and signed a peace treaty, and Merkel admitted that they had no intention of honoring that agreement. It was only to buy time for Ukraine to raise an army to start World War III against Russia.
The West wants this War. There is no possible way for Putin to come to any peace terms with the West. They will not honor it, for the Neocons have spent their entire lives dreaming about the conquest of Russia. The West is infected with these warmongers. There is no dealing with them. It is up to us to get off our ass and demand their removal!
Our computer has been correct all along. I stood up at the 2011 WEC in Philadelphia and warned that the war cycle turned up in 2014. That was correct, and it was the Ukrainian Revolution. In 2013, the year before, I warned that the computer had targeted Ukraine as the hot spot. These are NOT my personal forecasts. Nobody can be that correct from a “I think” perspective. The computer has been forecasting World War III, and 2026 is a Panic Cycle. With Trump’s absurd 50-day ultimatum, we can expect that this will indeed start to heat up from August onward."
o
"How Russia Could Destroy the Entire World"
"In today’s world, the threat of global annihilation is a very real possibility. Among the nations with the power to end all civilization in a matter of minutes, Russia stands out as number 1. With advanced weapons systems capable of unparalleled destruction, Russia could trigger the end of the world in just five minutes and bring humanity to its knees."
o
"Russia Puts Advanced Sarmat
Nuclear Missile System On ‘Combat Duty’"
"Moscow has put into service an advanced intercontinental ballistic missile that Russian President Vladimir Putin has said would make Russia’s enemies “think twice” about their threats, according to reported comments by the head of the country’s space agency. Yuri Borisov, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said Sarmat missiles have “assumed combat duty”, according to Russian news agency reports.
“The Sarmat strategic system has assumed combat alert posture,” the state-run TASS news agency quoted the Roscosmos chief as saying. “Based on experts’ estimates, the RS-28 Sarmat is capable of delivering a MIRVed warhead weighing up to 10 tons to any location worldwide, both over the North and South Poles,” TASS said in its report.
Putin said in February that the Sarmat – one of several advanced weapons in Russia’s arsenal, is deployed now. In 2022, some two months after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Putin said the Sarmat would “reliably ensure the security of Russia from external threats and make those, who in the heat of aggressive rhetoric try to threaten our country, think twice”.
The Sarmat is an underground silo-based missile that Russian officials say can carry up to 15 nuclear warheads, though the United States military estimates its capacity to be 10 warheads. Known to NATO military allies by the codename “Satan”, the missile reportedly has a short initial launch phase, which gives little time for surveillance systems to track its takeoff.
Weighing more than 200 tons, the Sarmat has a range of some 18,000km (11,000 miles) and was developed to replace Russia’s older generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICMBs) that dated from the 1980s. Russia test-fired the Sarmat missile in April 2022 in the Plesetsk region of the country, located some 800km (almost 500 miles) north of Moscow, and the launched missiles hit targets on the Kamchatka peninsula, in Russia’s far east region."
RS-28 Sarmat
15 warheads per missile, 11,000 mile range, hypersonic speed of 15,880 mph.
One Sarmat can destroy an area the size of Texas or France.
A hypersonic nuclear missile launched from Russia will hit Washington, DC in 23 minutes.
o
The Poseidon Torperdo
Full screen recommended.
Fully operational and deployed, the Poseidon torpedo with a 100 megaton warhead explodes deep underwater, causing a 1,600 foot high tidal wave which destroys everything on the U.S. East Coast as far inland as West Virginia. England would simply disappear beneath the waves...
It would look exactly like this, only twice as high...
Do we really want to do this? Pray to God we don't...
"America’s Banking System on the Brink: Your Money Isn’t Safe - Banks Are Insolvent and the FDIC Can’t Save You!"
"America’s Banking System on the Brink:
Your Money Isn’t Safe - Banks Are Insolvent and the FDIC Can’t Save You!"
by The Silver Academy
"Just understand 3 Basic Facts:
Total Deposits (All Commercial Banks):
1. $18,319.2$ billion (or $18.3$ trillion), seasonally adjusted as of July 2, 2025
2. FDIC has about $150 Billion
3. For every $10,000 in the bank you would get about $750
With Wells Fargo showing they borrowed nearly $200 billion to stay in business for the quarter investors are starting to panic on which banks are insolvent.
Have you ever wondered what truly happens to your money after you hand it over to the bank? You might imagine a vault with your cash awaiting your return, but the reality is far more unsettling—and it carries dire consequences for every American.
The United States is drowning in over $37 trillion of national debt, a figure so large it defies imagination. But what’s truly alarming is that nearly $11 trillion of this debt needs to be refinanced in the very near future - and at much higher interest rates than before. How will our government handle this colossal weight as the price of borrowing ticks ever upward?
When was the last time you considered what your bank deposit actually is? Contrary to popular belief, depositing money doesn’t mean the bank stores your funds in a labeled box for safekeeping. Instead, your deposit instantly becomes an unsecured loan to the bank. That’s right - your “safe” savings are legally just another debt the bank owes, and you, the depositor, are an unsecured creditor.
But what if a crisis strikes and everyone wants their money back at once? Here’s where the math becomes truly frightening. Take a look at the numbers: As of July 2025, Americans have parked approximately $18.3 trillion in commercial bank deposits. Meanwhile, the FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund (the backstop for your “insured” money) sits at only $129.2 billion as of the second quarter of 2024. Think the FDIC can step in and save the day for all depositors? Think again. That insurance fund covers barely 0.7% of all deposits. If even a tiny fraction of depositors demand their money back at the same time, the whole system unravels.
What about the banks themselves? Are they as stable as they appear? Beneath the surface, banks are buckling under the weight of bad loans and underwater investments, especially in sectors like commercial real estate where falling values and higher rates are fueling a looming default crisis. Imagine over $1 trillion in commercial real estate loans coming due while the underlying properties crater in value. Who’s holding the bag? Increasingly, it’s your neighborhood bank - and, by extension, you.
And just when you thought the system couldn’t handle more stress, layoffs are sweeping across industries - from tech giants to manufacturing and retail. Does this wave of job losses signal something much deeper is wrong with our entire economy?
The threats don’t end there. Look at the towering mountain of unfunded liabilities - Social Security and Medicare promises totaling more than $73 trillion, with no current funding plan in sight. What happens to these social safety nets if the wheels come off the financial system?
Now, take a step back and ask yourself: Is this the kind of backdrop where a nation can afford to fight five wars at once? The United States is not only financially embattled at home but entangled abroad as well - waging proxy conflicts with Iran through Israel, a grinding standoff with Russia via Ukraine, an escalating economic war with China, further economic hostilities with much of the world, and the quiet, relentless war on the American workforce, squeezed between inflation and rising taxes. Does any superpower survive being stretched this thin, both financially and geopolitically?
So what does all this mean for you, the everyday American? The hard truth is the banks do not have your money, at least not the way you think they do. Fractional reserve banking means that only a small fraction of deposits are kept as cash - if too many people come for their funds, the money simply isn’t there. If a real crisis sparks a mass withdrawal, we face a technical default, plain and simple.
Isn’t it time for a real conversation about the risks lurking in every corner of our financial system? How much longer can we pretend everything is fine when the numbers add up to such glaring vulnerability? More than ever, Americans need honesty, vigilance, and accountability. The warning bells are deafening - will you listen before it’s too late?"
"The Cost Of Living Is Out Of Control"
"The Cost Of Living Is Out Of Control"
by Michael Snyder
"Do you feel financial stress on a regular basis? If so, you are certainly not alone. As you will see below, a new survey has discovered that more than two-thirds of the entire country is feeling “anxiety and depression” due to financial stress. The cost of living is totally out of control, and it is absolutely crushing the middle class. On Wednesday we learned that the official rate of inflation has gone up again. Apparently it was the largest increase in five months, but I don’t put much stock in the official government numbers because I know how much they have been manipulated. In fact, the formula for calculating the official rate of inflation has been altered dozens of times since Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and every time they change the formula the goal is to make inflation look lower than it actually is. To me, what really matters are the prices that we are hit with on a day to day basis, and those prices have been skyrocketing.
I am old enough to remember when summer vacations were actually affordable. Gasoline was under a dollar a gallon, and you could stay at cheap motels for less than 20 dollars a night as you drove across the nation. But these days even a vacation that lasts for just a few days can put you deep into debt… After stepping off the plane in Nashville, having paid far more than expected for your flight, the rental car desk awaits. Four days with a Toyota Camry costs $670. A Starbucks coffee on the way to the hotel is another $7. Your budget hotel somehow costs $500 for the weekend, breakfast not included. Eating out for dinner means the day’s spending is comfortably into four figures. Who can afford that?
Summer vacations have become a thing of the past for much of the population, and that is extremely unfortunate. Of course the cost of just about everything else has been rapidly rising as well. Let me give you some examples. For the past five years, U.S. home prices have been rising at a pace of almost 10 percent a year…Over the past five years, U.S. home values have increased by roughly 8–9% per year on average, while over the past ten years, they’ve risen about 6–7% per year on average. In other words, national home prices saw an exceptionally rapid climb in recent years, far above historical norms.
I can understand why so many young people are so frustrated right now. The average price of a home in the United States has now risen above half a million dollars. But they keep telling us that inflation is low. Give me a break.
Health insurance has also been getting a lot more expensive…Average monthly premiums for families with employer-provided health coverage in California’s private sector nearly doubled over the last 15 years, from just over $1,000 in 2008 to almost $2,000 in 2023, a KFF Health News analysis of federal data shows. That’s more than twice the rate of inflation. Also, employees have had to absorb a growing share of the cost.
The spike is not confined to California. Average premiums for families with employer-provided health coverage grew as fast nationwide as they did in California from 2008 through 2023, federal data shows. Premiums continued to grow rapidly in 2024, according to KFF. Who can afford a monthly health insurance premium of $2,000? In the old days, they would call that “highway robbery”.
And don’t even get me started on the price of food. There was a time when some Americans would actually purchase dog food to eat in an attempt to cut costs, but now even the price of dog food has soared into the stratosphere…The average unit price of dog food was $5.78 in 2021, but last month the figure was $8.42. Rising food prices are the number one reason why the number of Americans facing food insecurity has nearly doubled over the past four years. Anyone that actually believes that things are “fine” is simply not living in reality.
Things are so bad that approximately one-fourth of the U.S. population is now using “buy now, pay later” loans to pay for everyday living expenses… A growing number of consumers are taking out “buy now, pay later,” or BNPL, loans to cover everyday living expenses, data shows, a sign of the precarious financial state facing many U.S. households. A quarter of Americans now use BNPL loans to pay for groceries, up 14% from last year, according to a recent survey from LendingTree. The personal finance firm also found that more people are using such financing to pay for clothing, technology and housewares. Of course once those companies get you hooked, they will hammer you with high interest rates. But many Americans are just desperate to find a way to survive from month to month.
According to one recent survey, almost 70 percent of the population is feeling “anxiety and depression” because of their finances…Americans are feeling increasingly uneasy about their financial future. Nearly 7 in 10 (69%) say financial uncertainty has led them to feelings of anxiety and depression, according to a recent survey from Northwest Mutual — an 8-percentage-point increase from 2023. Other surveys have come up with similar results.
For example, here is one that found that “65% of middle-income Americans believe their income has not kept pace with rising expenses”…Middle‑income Americans are still adjusting to a higher cost of living and ongoing financial pressures, according to the latest Primerica® U.S. Middle‑Income Financial Security Monitor™ (FSM™). The survey finds that 65% of middle-income Americans believe their income has not kept pace with rising expenses — a sentiment that has remained remarkably consistent for more than four years, highlighting the challenges families feel as prices outpace paychecks.
“Middle‑income families are making tough decisions every day to cover the essentials and save for the future, and it continues to shape how they perceive the overall economy, with many feeling less confident and more cautious about what lies ahead,” said Glenn J. Williams, CEO of Primerica. “That makes it even more important for families to seek sound financial advice. A financial professional can help families find the money in their budgets, reprioritize expenses and build a realistic path to save for the future. Even starting with a small amount can make a significant difference over time.”
And that same survey discovered that 80 percent of middle-income Americans rate the economy poorly…"Middle‑income Americans continue to rate the economy poorly. More than three-quarters (80%) rate it negatively — a figure that has remained consistent over the past year. Amid ongoing economic uncertainty, a strong majority (83%) say they want to take steps to protect themselves financially for the long term — yet only 36% are actually doing so."
A lot of people get upset with me when I write like this, but it is the truth. We really are experiencing the kind of long-term economic decline that I have long warned about. If you are feeling constant stress because of the state of your own personal finances, I want you to understand that there are tens of millions of other Americans that are in the exact same boat. Decades of very foolish decisions have brought us to this point, and the American people should be very upset at those that are responsible for bringing this crisis upon us."
Adventures With Danno, "Massive Price Increases At Sam's Club!"
Full screen recommended.
AM 7/19/25
"Massive Price Increases At Sam's Club!"
Comments here:
Friday, July 18, 2025
"Alert! NATO To Enter War In Weeks, Moscow Prepares Nuclear Bases"
Full screen recommended.
Prepper News, 7/18/25
"Alert! NATO To Enter War In Weeks,
Moscow Prepares Nuclear Bases"
Comments here:
"It's Official, I'm Leaving California, This State Is Done"
Jeremiah Babe, 7/18/25
"It's Official, I'm Leaving California,
This State Is Done"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“In one of the brightest parts of Milky Way lies a nebula where some of the oddest things occur. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebulas. The Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324), the bright structure just above the image center, houses several of these massive stars and has itself changed its appearance.
The entire Carina Nebula spans over 300 light years and lies about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula, was one of the brightest stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically. Eta Carinae is the brightest star near the image center, just left of the Keyhole Nebula. While Eta Carinae itself maybe on the verge of a supernova explosion, X-ray images indicate that much of the Great Carina Nebula has been a veritable supernova factory.”
Chet Raymo, “Like Rubies Ringed With Gold”
“Like Rubies Ringed With Gold”
by Chet Raymo
“Here’s a Hubble Space Telescope composite photograph of two colliding galaxies in the constellation Corvus.
Each of the three books of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” ends with the same words: “the stars.” The Inferno concludes with distant stars glimpsed through the narrow exit of hell. “We emerged,” says the poet, “and saw the stars.” The poet’s journey through Purgatory ends on Earth’s highest mountain, with the heavens seemingly not so far away. He is “ready to ascend to the stars.” Finally, Dante looks down upon the stars from above, from the luminous realm of Paradise. He has experienced “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” The beauty of that final destination, the Empyrean Sphere that encloses the created universe in divine brilliance, taxes the poet’s powers of description:
“I saw light in the shape of a river
Flashing golden between two banks
Tinted in colors of marvelous spring.
Out of the stream came living sparks
Which settled on the flowers on every side
Like rubies ringed with gold…”
Nothing in Dante’s experience could have prepared him for the splendors of the heavens as revealed by the Hubble. The photograph of colliding galaxies in Corvus is a work of genius in the tradition of the “Divine Comedy” – imagination in service to humankind’s loftiest aspirations and longings.
In Dante’s time, astronomy was one of the seven liberal arts – with grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, and music – required of every student who aspired to a university degree. Of all the secular sciences, astronomy was deemed most likely to lead one to the contemplation of things divine. Yesterday’s Hubble pic made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, which is about as close to the divine as I ever get. Dante’s “Divine Comedy” is based on the medieval astronomical conception of the world – a system of concentric spheres centered on the Earth and bounded just up there by the Empyrean.
In the Hubble photograph of colliding galaxies we see something akin to Dante’s paradisal vision, but it is not a cosmos centered on the Earth. Here are other Suns and other Earths being born, in prodigious numbers, massive stars destined to die soon as supernovas, and other less massive stars that will live long lives, perhaps evolving life or consciousness on their planets. We see in the Hubble photograph a universe of a fullness and dimension that makes Dante’s human-centered cosmos of concentric spheres seem like a dust mote in an immense cathedral.
Astronomy is no longer a required course of study in our universities, and it’s something of a shame. Who can look at the photograph of colliding galaxies and not be moved to rapture? An understanding of the size, age, and prodigality of the universe should be part of every liberal arts graduate’s intellectual furniture.”
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
Freely download “The Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri, here:
Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy – Inferno”
Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy – Purgatorio”
Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy – Paradiso”
The Poet: Anne Sexton, “Courage”
“Courage”
“It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.
Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you’ll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you’ll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.”
~ Anne Sexton
“More To Come…”
“More To Come…”
By Jeff Thomas
“Years ago, when visiting the US, I’d often watch late night television. Just prior to each interval, in order to ensure that viewers would sit through the adverts, the show would run a panel that said, “More to Come.” This, of course, was effective, as the viewer would be anticipating that the best part of the program would come in a later segment and would be more likely to continue watching.
Today, we’re looking at the reverse of that situation. The program we’re watching is The Decline and Fall of the American Empire and those who recognize the decline are viewing with ever-increasing trepidation, the developments that are unfolding there. Even those of us who are not American and don’t live there are glued to our screens, as we’re aware that were viewing the early stages of a collapse that promises to be the greatest social, political and economic event that we’re likely to see in our lifetimes.
Following World War Two, the US was in a boom beyond anything the world had ever seen. The Americans came to the war late, after having built up their manufacturing capacity for war dramatically, at the expense of the Allied powers in Europe. And they did this, essentially for free. It was paid for with the gold from the vaults of the European allies. After the war, Europe was trashed and it would take decades for them to get on their feet again. Meanwhile, the US had been going flat out in production, had first-rate modern factories and, most important, held the majority of the world’s gold.
The 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement ensured that the US dollar would become the world’s default currency and, later, become the petrodollar, ensuring American hegemony over much of the rest of the world. There can be no doubt that, in the first decades after the war, the US had an amazing run and was, arguably, one of the best places to live in the world.
But, unfortunately, as so often happens, American political and industry leaders became full of themselves and couldn’t resist going out on limb to gain even more for themselves. In so doing, they turned the US from the world’s foremost creditor nation into the world’s foremost debtor nation. Worse, when they reached this unprecedented point, they opted to just keep going.
Worse still, it would appear that today’s leaders are aware that the mother of all bubbles that they’ve created is going to pop sometime in the near future, as they’re preparing themselves for the mother of all pushbacks from the populace when the crashes come.
The FBI, CIA, NSA, and a host of other authorities have either been created or expanded, allowing the creation of the world’s foremost police state. And, beginning in 2001 with the Patriot Act, have created a host of laws to assign authority to any of those bodies to exert ever-increasing control over the population. Capital controls, migration controls, higher taxes, confiscation of deposits in banks and quite a bit more have been passed in legislation, including the ability to declare the US in its entirely to be a “battle zone,” through which habeas corpus and the court system can be suspended nationally.
Yipes. (Or, blimey, depending on where you’re from.) At this point, any American who’s paying attention could be forgiven if he’s genuinely frightened at where his government is going with all this.
And so, we come back to the title of this essay – “More to Come.” A regular flow of proposed laws is now coming down the pipeline that would have been considered the stuff of a bad movie a few decades ago, but is now only too real and threatening to the freedoms of the average citizen. Instead of “more to come” meaning that the best is still on the way, the opposite would appear to be the case, and the worst is here, now.
But, how can this be, we ask ourselves. Surely those in power – the politicians, the industrialists, the central bankers, etc., must have seen this coming and, if that’s so, surely they’d have done something to stop it. Well, historically, that’s never been the case. Those in the greatest positions of power have never suddenly reversed an empire when it was about to self-destruct. What they tend to do instead is to guard against becoming casualties of the disaster they’ve created.
So, is that what’s happening this time around? In a word, yes. The Bernie Madoffs of the world go to jail. However, those who commit the same fraudulent acts from within the system never go to jail. For example, if the heads of a bank commit massive fraud, the bank pays an enormous fine. The fine is then paid by the stockholders. And should the fine be large enough to crash the bank, the bankers can appeal to the government to bail them out, as they’re “too big to fail.” Thus, the taxpayers pick up the bill.
At this point, what we’re witnessing is an era in which laws are regularly being passed to ensure that the creators of the bubble will get a “Get Out of Jail Free” card and others will sustain the losses.
This is the very essence of what happens in an endgame run. Just as a hitman who places a bomb in a building makes his exit before the bomb can go off, the creators of bubbles safeguard themselves before the economic bomb can go off. They have no intention of being around to live with the resultant devastation that they’ve put into play.
Pete Townshend wrote prophetically, “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” in 1971, in which he hopes that the latest gang of leaders will be better than the last. In the final line of the song, he grimly announces, “Meet the new boss – same as the old boss.”
And, in fact, this is the usual outcome. Perhaps the reason why empires collapse much in the same way, time and again, and their citizens consistently fail to see it coming, is that empires general last a long time before collapsing. The Venetian Republic lasted 200 years. The Spanish Empire lasted just over 120 years. Holland lasted 130 years, Russia – 200, the UK, just under 120. And it’s been much the same for the others. In every case, they last longer than a single lifetime, so it’s rare that any individual sees more than one empire collapse in his own lifetime and doesn’t understand that empires don’t end with a whimper. They end with a crescendo, not unlike the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”
We are witnessing the collapse of the world’s foremost empire. This is not mere conjecture. The US has all the symptoms that we’re now coming close to the final stages. And, if history plays out yet again, as it has repeatedly, we can expect that, in the lead-up to the collapse, the controls by governments will become increasingly draconian. As we consider, “more to come,” we should be braced for the likelihood that the worst controls are yet to be revealed.”
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