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So, we rise from the rubble...
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Tuesday, May 12, 2026
"A Tale Told By An Idiot..."
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Freely download "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare" here:
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Download Spiritual Texts as Free PDF E-books
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Musical Interlude: Delta King's Blues, "Ain’t Nobody Skipping Old Age"; "I Ain’t Lazy, I’m Worn Out"
Delta King's Blues, "Ain’t Nobody Skipping Old Age"
"You can run, you can hide… but time’s still gonna find you. “Ain’t Nobody Skipping Old Age” is a grounded, truth-telling Delta King’s Blues tune about inevitability, acceptance, and the shared road everyone’s gotta walk. A steady, no-frills acoustic guitar keeps the groove honest, like footsteps that don’t turn back. The harmonica blows plain and knowing, like it’s seen every man try - and fail - to outrun the years. The rhythm moves slow and certain, built for facing reality without flinching. This is blues about truth you can’t dodge. For folks who understand that getting older ain’t optional - but how you carry it is. Ain’t nobody skipping old age… so you might as well walk it your way. "
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Delta King's Blues, "I Ain’t Lazy, I’m Worn Out"
"Don’t call it lazy… call it years of carryin’ too much.“I Ain’t Lazy, I’m Worn Out” is a hard-earned, slow-burning Delta King’s Blues tune about exhaustion, responsibility, and the difference between quitting and simply being tired. A heavy, weathered acoustic guitar drags each chord like boots after a long shift. The harmonica breathes low and weary, sounding like a man finally sitting down after too many miles. The groove moves slow and stubborn, built for folks who still show up - even when the tank’s near empty. This is blues for the overworked and overlooked. For anyone mistaken for lazy when they’ve just been carrying life too long. I ain’t lazy… I’m just tired in places sleep can’t fix."
"Ah, You Miserable Creatures!"
"Ah, You Miserable Creatures!"
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great!
You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything!
Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
- Frederic Bastiat
Any questions?
" US Moral Compass"
"Morals? We ain't got no morals! We don't need no morals!
I don't have to show you any stinking morals!"
Concept gleefully stolen from here:
"Moral compass?!"
Morals? Surely you jest., fool... This is 'Murica!'
"The Paradox of Virtue: The Reign of Evil in Society"
Full screen recommended.
The Psyche, 11/2/25
"The Paradox of Virtue: The Reign of Evil in Society"
"Why does evil seem to dominate a world that claims to be moral? Why do manipulation and deceit often triumph while honesty and virtue struggle to survive? In this video, we explore The Paradox of Virtue - a journey through the minds of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, two philosophers who dared to expose the hidden machinery behind morality, compassion, and power. You’ll discover: Schopenhauer’s idea of the Will to Live - and how ego disguises itself as virtue. Nietzsche’s challenge to traditional morality - and why he saw “goodness” as the mask of weakness. How both thinkers reveal that evil is not an external force but a reflection of the unconscious human soul. And the ultimate truth: that real virtue is not purity, but the integration of both light and shadow. This is not a video about right and wrong - it’s about awakening. Because the highest form of goodness is not innocence… it’s understanding."
Comments here:
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"We work in the dark. We do what we can to battle the evil that would otherwise destroy us. But if a man's character is his fate, it's not a choice but a calling. Sometimes the weight of this burden causes us to falter from the fragile fortress of our mind, allowing the monster without to turn within. We are left alone staring into the abyss, into the laughing face of madness."
- Fox Mulder, "X-Files"
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself
does not become a monster, when you gaze long
into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”
- Nietzsche
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Freely download “Beyond Good And Evil”, by Friedrich Nietzsche, here:
"How It Really Is"
Full screen recommended.
Delta King's Blues,
"I Remember When a Dollar Meant Something"
"How Then..."
"How, then, shall we face the future? When the sailor is out on the ocean, when everything is changing all around him, when the waves are born and die, he does not stare down into the waves, because they are changing. He looks up at the stars. Why? Because they are faithful..."
- Soren Kierkegaard
"Nearly 400 Earthquakes Rock Southern California – Will A Cataclysmic Seismic Event Soon Rip The San Andreas Fault Wide Open?"
by Michael Snyder
"One day it will happen. As millions of people living in Southern California go about their daily lives, a cataclysmic earthquake will suddenly strike. The geography of the California coastline will be permanently changed, and the ground on the western side of the San Andreas fault will drop by several feet. Since much of Southern California is just barely above sea level, the Pacific Ocean will start rushing in. What I have just shared with you is not the plot to some really bad disaster movie. As I have documented repeatedly over the years, this is a scenario that scientists are telling us will happen someday. Millions of lives will be at risk when “the Big One” finally strikes. Could it be possible that “the Big One” will strike a lot sooner than most people think?
The shaking that we have witnessed over the past 72 hours has been extremely alarming. On Saturday, the city of Brawley was rocked by more than 150 earthquakes… A reported earthquake swarm rattled Imperial County on Saturday, with over 150 recorded quakes in the city of Brawley, south of the Salton Sea - including one 4.5 magnitude. The United States Geological Survey has recorded at least 29 quakes over 2.5 magnitude, but well over 150 earthquakes total, including small ones, have been recorded on Saturday, according to the Caltech Seismological Laboratory.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. The shaking continued throughout the night and into the next day. On Sunday, Brawley continued to experience constant earthquakes. This included a magnitude 4.0 quake, a magnitude 4.4 quake, a magnitude 4.5 quake, and a magnitude 4.7 quake… More than 150 earthquakes were recorded during the earlier phase of the swarm, totaling close to 400 by 08:00 UTC on May 11. The sequence was centered near Brawley and the southern Salton Sea region within the Brawley Seismic Zone. The M4.7 earthquake was registered at 07:10 UTC on May 10, at a depth of 14 km (8.7 miles), according to the USGS, which received nearly 200 reports of people who felt it. Shaking was felt across parts of Imperial County and elsewhere in Southern California. Additional notable earthquakes reported during the sequence included an M4.5 at 03:39 UTC on May 10, an M4.4 at 02:22 UTC on May 10, and an M4.0 at 03:13 UTC on May 10.
The total number of earthquakes in this multi-day swarm is approaching 400, and the shaking still hasn’t stopped. In fact, there have been more earthquakes in Southern California just within the past hour. I have no idea why this isn’t getting more attention from the big news networks, because this is an extremely unusual multi-day event.
One woman that lives in the area said that the earthquakes “just kept on coming and coming and coming and coming”… “I was just scared. All of a sudden, it was a big jolt, and everything started moving. I was like, ‘Holy crud.’ They just kept on coming and coming and coming and coming. And as we’re speaking right now, I do feel it rumbling beneath me.” Kathleen Singh said.
If the ground in a particular area keeps shaking for several days in a row, that should get our attention. At times, multiple earthquakes have been hitting within a single minute…
This earthquake swarm has erupted right in the middle of the Brawley Seismic Zone in Imperial Valley. The Brawley Seismic Zone connects the Imperial Fault to the San Andreas Fault. And that is the one that we really want to watch.
Will this swarm of hundreds of earthquakes trigger activity along the San Andreas Fault? Hopefully not. But it certainly isn’t a good sign that some small quakes have been registered directly along the San Andreas Fault within the past hour. And this entire week has been a very active time for seismic activity in California…
In fact, this past week in general has been active with earthquakes in the Golden State, stretching from the North Coast down through the Inland Empire and into the Imperial Valley. Within the past 7 days, 1,334 earthquakes have been recorded in California and Nevada.
But as long as buildings aren’t falling down and people aren’t dying, most people outside of the affected areas won’t pay much attention. Unfortunately, “the Big One” is going to happen sooner rather than later. In my latest book, I have an entire chapter dedicated to the great earthquake that is coming to Southern California. The following is a short excerpt from that chapter…
"If the San Andreas fault does rupture all at once, scientists have warned us that it could produce an earthquake that would be powerful enough to cause the ground on the western side of the San Andreas fault to suddenly drop several feet. Since most of southern California is just barely above sea level, that would allow water from the Pacific Ocean to come pouring in.
Can you imagine the kind of death and destruction that such a disaster would cause? It would look like much of the southern California coast had just gone into the Pacific Ocean, but actually the Pacific Ocean would suddenly be covering vast stretches of the coast that have now dropped several feet lower than they were previously. Researchers tell us that similar catastrophes have actually happened along the west coast in the past, and it is just a matter of time before it happens again."
If you live in southern California, it critical for you to understand that it is just a matter of time before “the Big One” strikes. I have been attempting to sound the alarm about what is going to happen for years, but of course most of those living in the region are not interested in such warnings. Scientists have warned that the San Andreas Fault is way overdue for a major earthquake. Once it finally becomes unstuck, it could suddenly rip wide open all at once. When that day finally arrives, you won’t want to be living anywhere in Southern California. Sadly, most people won’t believe warnings such as this until it actually happens. At that point, it will be too late to do anything about it."
Adventures With Danno, "Major Price Increases At Dollar General"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 5/12/26
"Major Price Increases At Dollar General"
Comments here:
"Millions of Americans Are Living in Third World Conditions"
Full screen recommended.
Across The States, 5/12/26
"Millions of Americans Are Living in Third World Conditions"
"America’s cost of living crisis is no longer just about inflation - it’s about how millions of working people are falling behind even while staying employed. This video breaks down why rent, groceries, healthcare, and everyday bills are crushing the middle class across the United States. Here’s the reality most people feel but can’t fully explain: paychecks got bigger, but life got even more expensive. Housing costs are eating up half of many workers’ income, savings are disappearing, and even a small emergency can push families into debt. What most people miss is that this pressure isn’t limited to low-income households anymore. From rising medical debt to wage stagnation and record homelessness, the financial system is changing in ways that don’t always show up in official economic headlines. The gap between stable living and financial stress has become dangerously thin for millions of Americans."
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Delta King's Blues, "Ain’t Nothing Cheap No More"
"Prices go up… pockets stay the same. “Ain’t Nothing Cheap No More” is a gritty, real-life Delta King’s Blues tune about rising costs, hard days, and stretching every dollar till it begs for mercy. A dusty, no-frills acoustic guitar grinds out a slow groove like counting coins on a worn kitchen table. The harmonica sighs low and tired, echoing the weight of every bill that won’t wait. The rhythm stays steady and grounded, built for folks who know what it means to make do. This is blues about everyday struggle. For anyone who’s watched the world get expensive… while life stayed just as hard. It ain’t that we got less… it’s just everything costs more."
"Inflation Warning: The Worst May Still Be Ahead For Americans"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Report, 5/12/26
"Inflation Warning:
The Worst May Still Be Ahead For Americans"
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "Nobody’s Paying Rent Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 5/12/26
"Nobody’s Paying Rent Anymore"
"New York City real estate is entering dangerous territory as more tenants stop paying rent and landlords face mounting losses, bankruptcies, and abandoned apartment buildings. In this video, Dan from i Allegedly breaks down the growing “Mamdani Effect,” where rent freezes, tenant activism, and economic pressure are colliding with skyrocketing insurance costs, property taxes, and maintenance expenses. Major property owners in the Bronx and Brooklyn are unloading thousands of units at massive losses while everyday Americans struggle to keep up with rent, utilities, and debt.
Dan also covers the collapsing Florida housing market, rising foreclosures, overpriced travel, airline cutbacks, exploding insurance premiums, consumer debt, and why the next 60 days may be critical for homeowners trying to sell real estate. From New York City housing chaos to the broader economic slowdown, this video explains why affordability is collapsing across America and what it means for renters, homeowners, landlords, and the middle class moving forward."
Comments here:
Monday, May 11, 2026
Col. Douglas Macgregor, "To All Americans: Hell is About To Explode!"
Col. Douglas Macgregor, 5/11/26
"To All Americans: Hell is About To Explode!"
Comments here:
"Alert! Hanta Virus And WW3! Doctors Not Wearing PPE! Iran Has A 'Surprise' For Us!" Comments here:
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 5/11/26
"Alert! Hanta Virus And WW3! Doctors Not Wearing PPE!
Iran Has A 'Surprise' For Us!"
Comments here:
"We All Know..."
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“We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars… everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”
- Thornton Wilder
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“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge.
That myth is more potent than history.
I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts.
That hope always triumphs over experience.
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.”
- Robert Fulghum
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“For Those Who Have Died”
“Eleh Ezkerah” (“These We Remember”)
“Tis a fearful thing
To love
What death can touch.
To love, to hope, to dream,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
Love,
But a holy thing,
To love what death can touch.
For your life has lived in me;
Your laugh once lifted me;
Your word was a gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
Tis a human thing, love,
A holy thing,
To love
What death can touch.”
- Chaim Stern
Graphic: “Into The Silent Land”,
by Henry Pegram, 1905
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“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.”
- Paulo Coelho
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“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”
- Dr. Seuss
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And we shall meet again…
Full screen recommended.
Moody Blues, “The Day We Meet Again”
"The Backdoor to Immortality: Marguerite Duras on What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death"
"Immortality in Passing: Poet Lisel Mueller, Who Lived to 96,
On What Gives Meaning to Our Ephemeral Lives"
by Maria Popova
“When you realize you are mortal you also realize the tremendousness of the future. You fall in love with a Time you will never perceive,” the poet, painter, and philosopher Etel Adnan observed as she beheld impermanence and transcendence at the foot of a mountain. “By the grace of random chance, funneled through nature’s laws,” the poetic physicist Brian Greene wrote in his beautiful meditation on our search for meaning in a cold cosmos, “we are here.” And then we are not.
We die. All of us - atoms to atoms, stardust to stardust, the mountain to the sea - you and I. The dual awareness of our improbable life and our inevitable death is what allows us to animate the interlude with love and beauty, with poems and fairy tales and poems, with general relativity and Nina Simone. It is what puts into perspective just how fleeting and vacant and self-embittering all of our angers and blames and resentments are in the end - what beckons us, instead, to “leave something of sweetness and substance in the mouth of the world.”
That is what the late, great Lisel Mueller (February 8, 1924–February 21, 2020) - one of the most original, deepest-seeing poets of our time - explores with great subtlety and profundity disguised as levity in the poem “Immortality” from her final poetry collection, the Pulitzer-winning masterpiece "Alive Together" (public library).
"Immortality"
"In Sleeping Beauty’s castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don’t even rub their eyes.
The cook’s right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy’s left ear;
the boy’s tensed vocal cords
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry pie,
fulfills its abiding mission
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.
As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene.
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can’t be changed
or broken, only interrupted.
My attention was on the fly;
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and lifespan of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later.
- Lisel Mueller
(Two centuries earlier, William Blake explored the same eternal subject though the same creature in his short existentialist poem “The Fly.”)
In the front matter of this altogether miraculous book, where an epigraph would ordinarily appear, Mueller offers a short poem that becomes a kind of chorus line for the entire collection, but emerges as an especially harmonizing counterpart to “Immortality” in particular:
Complement these fragments of the wholly transcendent Alive Together with physicist Alan Lightman on our yearning for immortality in a universe governed by decay, Pico Iyer on finding beauty in impermanence, and Marcus Aurelius on mortality as the key to living fully, then revisit Barbara Ras’s bittersweet, buoyant, perspective-calibrating poem “You Can’t Have It All” and Marilyn Nelson’s magnificent ode to how we fill our impermanence with importance, “Faster Than Light.”
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"The Backdoor to Immortality: Marguerite Duras
on What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death"
by Maria Popova
“What exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious,” Lisel Mueller wrote as she weighed what gives meaning to our mortal lives in a stunning poem - one of the hundreds that outlived her as she returned her borrowed stardust to the universe at ninety-six. And yet, by some felicitous deviation from logic - perhaps an adaptive imbecility essential for our mental and emotional survival, one of the touching incongruences that make us human - the moment something becomes precious to us, we quarantine the prospect of its loss in some chamber of the mind we choose not to enter. On some deep level beyond the reach of reason, we come to believe that the people we love are - must be, for the alternative is a fathomless terror - immortal.
And so, when a loved one dies, this deepest part of us grows wild with rage at the universe - a rage skinned of sensemaking, irrational and raw, unsalved by our knowledge that the entropic destiny of everything alive is to die and of everything that exists to eventually not, even the universe itself; unsalved by the the immense cosmic poetry hidden in this fact; unsalved by the luckiness of having lived at all against the staggering cosmic odds otherwise; unsalved by remembering that only because ancient archaebacteria were capable of dying, as was every organism that evolved in their wake, we and the people we love and the people we lose came to exist at all."
- Maria Popova
Musical Interlude: Two Steps From Hell, "Downstream"
Full screen recommended.
Two Steps From Hell, "Downstream"
“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”
"A Look to the Heavens"
"A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly.
The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”
"Lift Up Your Eyes"
"Lift Up Your Eyes"
by Paul Rosenberg
"When was the last time you tasted the sublime? When did you last feel wonder? Can you remember feeling awed by something? These are things we need, if we are to thrive. They are fuel for the higher human abilities. If we lack them, as is currently endemic throughout the West, our higher abilities will lag. For lack of better terms we can call these feelings “upward movements of the heart,” and we are diminished when there is a lack of them. Without them we fail to develop our higher capacities and insights. We slide more and more toward becoming, in one critic’s words, “mere trousered apes.”
I am certainly not the first person to notice this. Here, for example, is something Albert Einstein wrote on the subject: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
Here’s a comment from Mozart: "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence, nor imagination, nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius."
And here’s a poem from Richard Feynman:
"Out of the cradle
onto the dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.
Stands at the sea
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the universe."
We need these things.
Currents to the Contrary: Sadly, the modern West has become a mad scramble to distract as many sets of eyes as possible, and to keep them – to own them – for as long as possible. And so long as professional distractors own your imagination, you won't experience much in the way of awe.
Think of Google and Facebook; these outfits bring in billions of dollars per month, based almost entirely on how much human attention they can capture. Likewise the many news networks; they get paid according to how many people watch their images for how many minutes. These people are serious about owning your brain cycles; they employ armies of employees to count, gather, plan, and improve their ownership of your eyes. Please understand the content they deliver serves only to grasp your attention.
Certainly websites like Freeman’s Perspective also want your attention but not for its own sake. I want your attention because I think we have something worthwhile to communicate, not to own your brain. Facebook and Google want to own you… the inner you.
Likewise the lords of academia; they want your mind to bear their impress... permanently. Consider, for example, the many academics who espouse cold, rationalist, materialistic philosophies: that we are no more than preprogrammed machines, that words can never really communicate anything, that humanity is ignorant and dangerous. Have you noticed that they reek of “smarter than thou”? Then if you have the opportunity, examine their lives for beautiful acts, for loving passions, for kindness and deep benevolence. If your experience is anything like mine, you’ll notice a striking lack of those things.
The Contrasts: Among the greatest of all contrasts to the upward movements of the heart are those pertaining to dominance, status, and rulership. They are natural antagonists.
Think of drinking in the wonders of the universe, the beauty of nature, the glorious love between a good parent and their child… and then contrast those things with the blight of the dominator “protecting” you at the point of a sword… of the politician cultivating your fears like a gardener cultivates a garden… of the lover of status who feels pleasure when seeing you beneath her.
Dominance, status, and rulership are the drives of the people who abuse us. And they are primary causes for our elevated experiences being diminished.
Moving Past the Blockage: We need to get away from these people and beyond these foul concepts. And once we do, life will expand. Here to make that point is a final quote, this one from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: "The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom…"
The things that contribute to our higher nature have been driven away from the Western world, and often systematically. Humans who are denuded of the higher things are far less trouble to rule, and they are far easier to manipulate… to own without their noticing. But don’t let yourself by driven away from the higher and better things:
Lay under the stars and wonder.
Look into the face of a child and experience his or her awe of the world.
Sit in the wilderness and imagine benevolence and beauty and goodness unchained.
Lie in bed and imagine yourself with a conscious sense of righteousness.
Imagine yourself with no embedded fear.
Ruminate over good things you could do in the future, over beautiful things you’d do in the right circumstances.
Politics poisons this, dominators wish to subdue it, sociopaths cannot experience it. Get as much of it as you can. Go out of your way to cultivate it.”
"The Mark Of Him..."
“The barbarian hopes, and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.“
- Hilaire Belloco
"60% Of Israel Wiped Out: The Entire System Is Collapsing Faster Than Expected"
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, 5/11/26
"60% Of Israel Wiped Out:
The Entire System Is Collapsing Faster Than Expected"
"Paul Craig Roberts: Iran's Revenge Forces US Military to Retreat!"
Dialogue Works, 5/11/26
"Paul Craig Roberts:
Iran's Revenge Forces US Military to Retreat!"
Comments here:
"Negotiations Crumble as Gasoline and Diesel Prices Rise to a National Record"
Full screen recommended.
Peak Prosperity, 5/11/26
"Negotiations Crumble as Gasoline and
Diesel Prices Rise to a National Record"
Comments here:
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 5/11/26
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 5/11/26
"Scott Ritter:
Why Iran Is Still Winning Trump's War"
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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 5/11/26
"Prof. Jeffrey Sachs:
The Economic Consequences of Trump's War"
Comments here:
"Truth Is the First Casualty of War. The Currency Is the Second"
"Truth Is the First Casualty of War.
The Currency Is the Second"
by Nick Giambruno
"The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists." - Ernest Hemingway
Thanks to the fiat currency system, governments at war can tap into a nation’s savings by financing conflict through currency debasement. Under a gold standard, governments had to have the gold or impose taxes if they wanted the funds to prosecute a war. When the gold ran out, the war stopped. But not in a fiat currency system. They can continue debasing the currency until they hyperinflate it.
That’s why there’s a simple equation you should sear into your memory: War = Inflation.
The historical pattern is clear. If the first casualty of war is truth, the second casualty is the currency. For example, the US money supply (M2) more than doubled during World War I and about tripled during World War II. During Vietnam, the money supply rose roughly 90%, and during the 2003 Iraq War era, it rose about 65%.
War is expensive. The US government often ends up financing it by going deeper into debt and debasing the currency to service that debt. How much will the war in Iran cost? Nobody knows the exact amount, but I am confident it will result in meaningful currency debasement.
According to the Iran War Cost Tracker, the conflict has cost at least $74 billion so far. Other estimates, such as those from CSIS, put the cost at around $2 billion per day. But these estimates almost certainly understate the true direct costs, not to mention the indirect costs of the war. Further, the Pentagon is now asking for an additional $200 billion in emergency war funding. And that is on top of its recent request for a 50% budget increase to $1.5 trillion.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that recently Iran destroyed at least one E-3G "Sentry" Airborne Early Warning & Control aircraft in Saudi Arabia, along with 2 or 3 KC-135 tanker aircraft in the same strike. This marked the first combat loss of an E-3 in history. Each unit costs at least $540 million. After the strike, the US likely has only around 8 operational E-3s left, with none currently in production. It remains one of the most important aircraft in the US Air Force.
A cheap Iranian Shahed-136 drone, costing roughly $7,000 per unit, was what took out the $540 million E-3. That works out to a cost asymmetry of roughly 77,286 to 1 in this strike, which has to be a record, or close to it, for the biggest cost asymmetry in a single military strike.
If the war drags on for a few more weeks and Hormuz remains closed, I think we will see an economic collapse far larger than the one caused by the global lockdowns during the Covid mass psychosis. In response to that slowdown, the US government went on its biggest money-printing binge in history and increased the money supply by 40% in a matter of months. I expect the economic disruption from a prolonged closure of Hormuz to be even greater, and thus the accompanying monetary "stimulus" to be even greater as well.
In short, the Iran war and its side effects could unleash a tsunami of new government spending, which was already in the stratosphere. How is the US government going to finance all of this spending? It will do so by issuing new debt - Treasuries - but to whom, and on what terms?
First, it is important to understand that the overwhelming majority of new issuance has been in short-term T-bills. There are dwindling buyers - suckers - willing to buy long-duration US debt. That is typical in a debt crisis. As demand for long-term bonds weakens, investors gravitate toward short-term instruments like T-bills instead of 10-year notes and 30-year bonds. It is the same pattern you see in emerging-market crises. The market shortens maturities as conditions deteriorate. Only a fool would want to lend a bankrupt government money for the long term.
Further, the Chinese are divesting their Treasuries rather than buying more. The Japanese, the single largest foreign holder, are selling Treasuries to support the yen and prop up their own warped bond market.
So, who will be buying all of the new paper the US government is likely to issue to finance the Iran war and its effects? There is only one real candidate: the Federal Reserve, which buys Treasuries with "money" it creates out of thin air by debasing the currency. As the war spending grows, the real cost will not be paid only through higher debt or bigger Treasury auctions. It will be paid through the destruction of the dollar’s purchasing power. And if the Fed becomes the buyer of last resort again, the next wave of currency debasement could be far more disruptive than most people expect."
Free Download: Richard Bach, “Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah”
“Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah”
by Richard Bach
“We are all free to do whatever we want to do,” he said that night. “Isn’t that simple and clean and clear? Isn’t that a great way to run a universe?” “Almost. You forgot a pretty important part,” I said. “Oh?” “We are all free to do what we want to do, as long as we don’t hurt somebody else,” I chided. “I know you meant that, but you ought to say what you mean.”
There was a sudden shambling sound in the dark, and I looked at him quickly. “Did you hear that?” “Yeah. Sounds like there’s somebody…” He got up, walked into the dark. He laughed suddenly, said a name I couldn’t catch. “It’s OK,” I heard him say. “No, we’d be glad to have you… no need you standing around… come on, you’re welcome, really…”
The voice was heavily accented, not quite Russian, nor Czech, more Transylvanian. “Thank you. I do not wish to impose myself upon your evening…” The man he brought with him to the firelight was, well, he was unusual to find in a midwest night. A small lean wolflike fellow, frightening to the eye, dressed in evening clothes, a black cape lined in red satin, he was uncomfortable in the light.
“I was passing by,” he said. “The field is a shortcut to my house…” “Is it?” Shimoda did not believe the man, knew he was lying, and at the same time did all he could to keep from laughing out loud. I hoped to understand before long.
“Make yourself comfortable,” I said. “Can we help you at all?” I really didn’t feel that helpful, but he was so shrinking, I did want him to be at ease, if he could. He looked on me with a desperate smile that turned me to ice. “Yes, you can help me. I need this very much or I would not ask. May I drink your blood? Just some? It is my food, I need human blood…”
Maybe it was the accent, he didn’t know English that well or I didn’t understand his words, but I was on my feet quicker than I had been in many a month, hay flying into the fire from my quickness. The man stepped back. I am generally harmless, but I am not a small person and I could have looked threatening. He turned his head away. “Sir, I am sorry! I am sorry! Please forget that I said anything about blood! But you see…”
“What are you saying?” I was the more fierce because I was scared. “What in the hell are you saying, mister? I don’t know what you are, are you some kind of VAM-?” Shimoda cut me off before I could say the word. “Richard, our guest was talking, and you interrupted. Please go ahead, sir; my friend is a little hasty.” “Donald,” I said, “this guy…” “Be quiet!” That surprised me so much that I was quiet, and looked a sort of terrified question at the man, caught from his native darkness into our firelight.
“Please to understand. I did not choose to be born vampire. Is unfortunate. I do not have many friends. But I must have a certain small amount of fresh blood every night or I writhe in terrible pain, longer than that without it and I cannot live! Please, I will be deeply hurt – I will die – if you do not allow me to suck your blood… just a small amount, more than a pint I do not need.” He advanced a step toward me, licking his lips, thinking that Shimoda somehow controlled me and would make me submit.
“One more step and there will be blood, all right. Mister, you touch me and you die…” I wouldn’t have killed him, but I did want to tie him up, at least, before we talked much more. He must have believed me, for he stopped and sighed. He turned to Shimoda. “You have made your point?” “I think so. Thank you.”
The vampire looked up at me and smiled, completely at ease, enjoying himself hugely, an actor on stage when the show is over. “I won’t drink your blood, Richard,” he said in perfect friendly English, no accent at all. As I watched he faded as though he was turning out his own light… in five seconds he had disappeared.
Shimoda sat down again by the fire. “Am I ever glad you don’t mean what you say!” I was still trembling with adrenalin, ready for my fight with a monster. “Don, I’m not sure I’m built for this. Maybe you’d better tell me what’s going on. Like, for instance, what… was that?”
“Dot was a wompire from Tronsylwania,” he said in words thicker than the creature’s own. “Or to be more precise, dot was a thought-form of a wompire from Tronsylwania. If you ever want to make a point, you think somebody isn’t listening, whip ‘em up a little thought-form to demonstrate what you mean. Do you think I overdid him, with the cape and the fangs and the accent like that? Was he too scary for you?”
“The cape was first class, Don. But that was the most stereotyped, outlandish… I wasn’t scared at all.” He sighed. “Oh well. But you got the point, at least, and that’s what matters.”
“What point?” “Richard, in being so fierce toward my vampire, you were doing what you wanted to do, even though you thought it was going to hurt somebody else. He even told you he’d be hurt if…”
“He was going to suck my blood!” “Which is what we do to anyone when we say we’ll be hurt if they don’t live our way.”
I was quiet for a long time, thinking about that. I had always believed that we are free to do as we please only if we don’t hurt another, and this didn’t fit. There was something missing.
“The thing that puzzles you,” he said, “is an accepted saying that happens to be impossible. The phrase is hurt somebody else. We choose, ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what. Us who decides. Nobody else. My vampire told you he’d be hurt if you didn’t let him? That’s his decision to be hurt, that’s his choice. What you do about it is your decision, your choice: give him blood; ignore him; tie him up; drive a stake of holly through his heart. If he doesn’t want the holly stake, he’s free to resist, in whatever way he wants. It goes on and on, choices, choices.”
“When you look at it that way…”
“Listen,” he said, “it’s important. We are all. Free. To do. Whatever. We want. To do.“
o
"The bond that links your true family is not one of blood,
but of respect and joy in each other's life.
Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof."
o
Freely download “Illusions” here:
“Born in 1936, Richard Bach is an American author who has written many excellent books. His quotes are inspirational and motivational. “Jonathan Livingston Seagull;” “Illusions;” “The Bridge Across Forever;” to name only a few of his books."
Notice: This electronic version of the book has been released for educational purposes only. You may not sell or make any profit from this book. And if you like this book, buy a paper copy and give it to someone who does not have a computer, if that is possible for you.
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