John Campbelljohn, "Knocked Down"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
"A Look to the Heavens"
"This colorful cosmic skyscape features a peculiar system of galaxies cataloged as Arp 227 some 100 million light-years distant. Swimming within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, Arp 227 consists of the two galaxies prominent on the left; the curious shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue, spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470. The faint, wide arcs or shells of NGC 474 could have been formed by a gravitational encounter with neighbor NGC 470. Alternately the shells could be caused by a merger with a smaller galaxy producing an effect analogous to ripples across the surface of a pond.
Remarkably, the large galaxy on the right hand side of the deep image, NGC 467, appears to be surrounded by faint shells too, evidence of another interacting galaxy system. Intriguing background galaxies are scattered around the field that also includes spiky foreground stars. Of course, those stars lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. The field of view spans 25 arc minutes or about 1/2 degree on the sky."
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100211.html
"Write Your Worries On The Sand..."
“I walked slowly out on the beach.
A few yards below high-water mark I stopped and read the words again:
WRITE YOUR WORRIES ON THE SAND.
I let the paper blow away, reached down and picked up a fragment of shell.
Kneeling there under the vault of the sky,
I wrote several words, one above the other.
Then I walked away, and I did not look back.
I had written my troubles on the sand.
The tide was coming in.”
- Arthur Gordon
"15 Reasons Why You Should Be Prepping Like Crazy Right Now"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 11/20/24
"15 Reasons Why You Should Be
Prepping Like Crazy Right Now"
"You should be feverishly preparing for the extremely turbulent times that are ahead of us. The November events are going to bring a lot of chaos to our streets, and what will happen next is anyone's guess. Stores can be looted, delivery trucks can be targeted, resulting in delays that might leave shelves empty for weeks. A lot can happen, and the challenges naturally brought on by fall and winter could further complicate matters.
Behind the scenes, forces are building to spark shortages, strain household budgets, and make essential supplies harder to come by. The food we eat, the energy we rely on, the products we need daily - all of these are becoming less secure as we move towards the final months of 2024.
At the moment, supply chains are faltering, resources are thinning, and the cost of essentials is ballooning. The question isn’t just about convenience; it’s about our preparedness to face a season unlike any we’ve seen before. Imagine reaching for pantry staples only to find prices that seem to climb daily, or checking in at your local pharmacy to find they’re out of basic medications. For some, it may mean cold nights due to rising energy costs or rationing essentials because stores can’t keep up with demand. If ever there were a time to prepare like never before, this is it.
In this video, we’ll walk through 15 pressing reasons why you should consider preparing for what lies ahead. We’ll break down the challenges, back them up with facts and insights, and show why a bit of planning today could make all the difference in the months to come. Let's get ready for a season that’s shaping up to be anything but ordinary. Without further ado, here are 15 Reasons Why You Should Be Prepping Like Crazy Right Now."
Comments here:
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Adventures With Danno, 11/20/24
"Walmart Wants You To Know This
& It's Very Disturbing"
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "You Can’t Get a Loan"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, PM 11/20/24
"You Can’t Get a Loan"
"The shocking truth about loan denials in 2024 is here! Banks are tightening their belts, and it's getting harder to borrow money. I'll break down the latest stats on credit card, mortgage, and auto loan rejections. Plus, we'll dive into the green energy scheme causing headaches for UK homeowners and why UPS is facing a bleak holiday season. "
Comments here:
"Doug Casey On The Looming Debt Crisis and What Lies Ahead"
"Doug Casey On The Looming
Debt Crisis and What Lies Ahead"
by International Man
"International Man: The financial position of the US government has been gradually deteriorating for decade. With annual interest expenses on the federal debt now exceeding the defense budget - and on pace to surpass Social Security - has the situation reached a tipping point?
Doug Casey: People have been observing this trend since the late 1960s; the idea of the federal debt getting irredeemably out of control isn’t new. But I think that we’ve finally reached a genuine tipping point. In other words, when you keep racking up debt at interest, with growing deficits every year, bankruptcy is inevitable. But now it’s also imminent.
90% of the US government’s spending is baked in the cake. It’s not just that the spending is mandated by law and enthusiastically promoted by the agencies that dispense it. Government spending has totally corrupted the country, from welfare moms to giant corporations. They’ll all squeal like stuck pigs if the spending stops. I expect the accumulated distortions it’s caused to come unglued in the next few years.
International Man: President Trump has appointed Elon Musk to run the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Do you think it will have any meaningful impact on the US government’s financial problems, or is it just a token gesture to distract and entertain the public?
Doug Casey: I think that Trump is sincere, as are Elon and Vivek. But what we’re dealing with are absolutely massive entrenched programs. What’s worse, Trump has promised that he would not alter Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and military spending. Those things alone add up to something like 80% of the federal budget. It’s very hard to get the number exactly, because the US government’s accounting is so complex. I’m reminded of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s comment on 9/10/01, saying that the Pentagon couldn’t track $2.3 trillion of spending.
On top of those things, you have to add the interest on the official national debt, which is over a trillion dollars a year. That debt is absolutely going higher as the debt burden grows, compounded by rising long-term interest rates. I’m not even counting another perhaps $150 trillion of contingent liabilities and off-balance sheet debt.
Can Elon and Vivek do anything about this trend? I suggest everybody visit https://www.usa.gov/agency-index. You’ll see hundreds of government agencies and departments listed - page through it. Few of them serve any useful purpose. In fact, almost all of them are wasteful and destructive. They’re bureaucracies employing drones (all of them with fat salaries, benefits, and pensions) to shuffle paper, basically to distribute tax dollars to favored entities. They should all be abolished.
Elon and Vivek should have a field day abolishing scores, even hundreds, of these departments and agencies. But will they be able to do it? I really question that, because individual Congress-critters have vested interests in their continuation - as do the other groups I mentioned earlier.
Can Trump do it by executive order? It’s highly questionable. Could he arm-twist the Senate and the House to abolish these agencies? Not much, especially since most of the Congress is not really ideologically aligned with Trump, even the Republicans. Forget about the Democrats.
International Man: Do you expect the debt crisis to erupt during Trump’s second term, and how do you think he will handle it?
Doug Casey: The government’s running a $2 trillion per year deficit right now. That’s ironic, in that Trump has always identified himself as the "king of debt." The only way out is to totally delete these agencies. Just replacing the personnel with "better people" is a mistake. Why? Because cutting costs means you’re just filling the piggy bank, so the next administration can gleefully empty it, and be heroes when they hire even more of the very same zombies that you fired. The only way to solve this problem is to abolish these agencies. Don’t reform them, but make sure they cease to exist. Pull them out by the roots and sow Agent Orange in the soil where they grew.
The US Constitution has mostly been interpreted out of existence. Or blatantly ignored, like the 9th and 10th Amendments. The government is force and should be limited in a civil society. The implies a military, to protect citizens from force from abroad. Police, to protect them from domestic crime. And a court system to adjudicate disputes without reverting to force.
All the other requirements of society should, could, and would be handled by entrepreneurs. In fact, a good argument can be made that the "essential" tasks of government are too important to be left to the type of people who are inevitably drawn to governments.
International Man: What do you think should be done about the US federal government’s growing debt problem?
Doug Casey: Let me make a radical proposal that will shock almost everybody reading this now. I suggest defaulting on the debt, for several reasons.
Number one, it’s immoral. It’s criminal to impose the repayment of that debt on the next generations of unborn Americans. The debt is so large that they’ll be turned into serfs or indentured servants to pay it back.
And the question is: Pay it back to who? We don’t "owe it to ourselves," which is what the liberals always used to say. It’s owed to particular people and institutions who have enabled the government to do all the destructive things that it does. They should be punished. I have no sympathy for the owners of government debt. In fact, these politically-wired people have enriched themselves at the expense of the average guy, who has few assets. It’s correct that they be punished.
There’s another reason. The debt the US government has is like a 100-story building that’s wobbling and is about to fall. There are two possibilities. You can wait for it to fall randomly and unpredictably. Or you can devise a controlled demolition. That’s the best alternative.
Of course, it can be "repaid" by printing. That’s the runaway inflation option, which would be as disastrous as a nuclear war for both the United States and the world at this point. However, there’s a very bright side to the default scenario: After a government default, all the real wealth - farms, factories, mines, buildings, technologies - would still exist. They’d just change ownership. Various government assets should be sold off. There’s obviously much more to be said about all this. I’m simply pointing out that the king has no clothes.
International Man: Given everything we’ve talked about, what is your outlook for US Treasuries and bonds in general? How should investors position themselves for the looming debt crisis?
Doug Casey: Bonds, in general, are a triple threat to your capital. First of all, interest rates are going up. Yes, it’s notoriously hard, if not impossible, to predict the direction of interest rates. They’ve been going up for the last two years, after a 40-year decline. With the dollar being debased as rapidly as it is, long-term bond buyers are going to insist on much higher rates. When interest rates go up, bond prices go down.
Number two is the currency risk. As I’ve often said, the US dollar itself is the unbacked liability of a manifestly bankrupt government, and it’s headed toward reaching its intrinsic value. The dollars the bonds are denominated in are rapidly losing value. From the government’s point of view, it’s "inflate, or die."
Number three is the default risk. That’s obvious to buyers of corporate and municipal debt. It’s why outfits like S&P rate their creditworthiness from AAA down to D. They apply the same ratings to national governments. In the past, people have bought US Treasuries, figuring there was no default risk. But at this point, with government debt and spending so out of control, I think some type of default is a real risk. FWIW, the US lost its AAA rating some years ago; it’s now only AA+. Government is not a magical entity - even the US government. You don’t want to own bonds at this point, other than as a way to speculate on interest rates.
How should investors position themselves for the looming debt crisis? There are two possibilities. One is a credit collapse, where the amount of debt in the world becomes unsustainable, and simply can’t be repaid. You’d have a credit collapse, where trillions of dollars are wiped out in a deflation. The other alternative is the government keeps printing dollars, leading to runaway inflation. Governments almost always choose the latter.
No one knows, for sure, which it’s going to be at this point. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has accumulated hundreds of billions in Treasury bills, apparently betting that short-term rates will keep up with currency debasement while protecting the company from a stock market collapse. Fair enough. But it doesn’t cover all the bases. And Buffet himself won’t always be there…
To preserve capital, I suggest looking at my old friend Harry Browne’s Permanent Portfolio plan. He divides your assets into four equal-sized baskets, essentially gold, stocks, T-bonds, and cash, rebalancing the portfolio every year to keep the percentage of each equal. It’s a good way of automatically buying low and selling high. I’ve always thought it was a smart way to preserve capital. My friend Porter Stansberry is resuscitating, modifying, and improving Harry’s original formula. I’ll explain how when he registers the fund to execute the plan.
Other than a permanent portfolio approach, the only thing that makes sense to me is learning to speculate, which presents risks if your intention is to preserve capital. Or to simply buy gold and Bitcoin, since they’re the only financial assets that aren’t simultaneously somebody else’s liability."
"This Is Why Nobody Will Do Anything Until It's Too Late"
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"This Is Why Nobody Will
Do Anything Until It's Too Late"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"OK, I get it: we all like Hollywood endings: the superhero saves the world, the evil conspiracy is uncovered and the villains get their just desserts and the impossible romance overcomes all the odds. This is why there are Hollywood endings: we are hard-wired to thrill to happy endings and a successful conclusion to the Hero's/Heroine's Journey. We will tolerate a Tragic Hero/Heroine or the occasional Anti-Hero/Heroine, but there is still a moral victory of some sort to cheer.
The real world doesn't follow a storyline, it operates according to the dictates of systems: inputs are taken up by processes which then generate outputs. If the outputs and processes don't change, the outputs don't change either.
One prevalent manifestation of human hubris is the idea that getting someone to agree with us about something or other is some sort of victory, as if human opinions matter. They don't, unless they change either inputs or processes in extremely consequential ways. Tweaking inputs or policies might make us feel warm and fuzzy ("I'm part of the solution!") but they are too modest to change the system's inputs and processes. The net result is the outputs remain the same.
Put another way: labeling something or other a hoax or an existential threat doesn't change anything in the systems that generate consequences. Whatever is going to happen as output is going to happen regardless of what humans label it or their opinions about it ("El Nino really sucks!").
Existing processes constrain our choices. This is why it's difficult to be an environmentally-sustainable saint. Let's say we're concerned about climate change and the destruction of the planet's biosphere. Let's say we want to lower our carbon footprint and "do the right things" to reduce the negative impact of our consumption and lifestyle.
This is where we substitute Hollywood endings for reality. We like to think that recycling matters. Sorry, it really doesn't change the inputs or processes enough to change the outputs in any consequential way. For example, the percentage of lithium batteries and electronic waste that are currently recycled is near-zero because the batteries and electronics aren't manufactured to be recycled in a cost-effective manner, and nobody in the system pays for costly recycling. So the really important recycling isn't being done.
I still recycle cardboard because that seems like a better choice than dumping it in the landfill, but in terms of total lifecycle costs and resource consumption of recycling versus landfill, I don't have any data. The system isn't set up to measure total lifecycle costs and resource consumption of goods, services and processes, and since we only manage what we measure, we're flying blind: the system is set up to measure "growth" (GDP) and profits, not total lifecycle costs and resource consumption.
Sorry, there's no Hollywood ending until we change the inputs (stop manufacturing lithium batteries) and/or the processes (require 99% recycling of all electronics, batteries, vehicles, etc.). This will require changing the entire manufacturing and resource supply chain systems from the ground up, globally. If we don't do that, the output can't possibly change in any consequential way.
The Hollywood ending is electric vehicles will "save the planet." Too bad this is Hollywood, not reality. Most of the consumption of resources and damage to the planet occur in the mining, smelting and manufacture of the vehicle, regardless of its fuel. Due to their massive consumption of minerals, electric vehicles consume far more of the planet's resources than an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle. All vehicles are manufactured (mining, smelting, transport, factories, etc.) with hydrocarbons. There's no difference between vehicles except electric vehicles use even more hydrocarbons in their fabrication.
Then there's the source of the fuel. An electric vehicle manufactured by burning coal and charged with electricity generated by burning coal is in fact a coal-burning vehicle. Calling it "electric" fits the happy story, but it's not actually factual: a coal-burning vehicle is an environmental disaster, regardless of labels, our opinions or the happy-ending PR. In the real world, the least destructive choice of vehicle is a small, light, old ICE vehicle that is well-maintained to conserve fuel and driven only rarely. Hey, look at me, I only drove my old 40-mile-per-gallon Civic 3,000 miles last year - I'm a saint!
Unfortunately, the real world isn't a Hollywood (or Bollywood) movie, and so I don't get to be a saint once we look at the world as a system rather than a movie. The fertilizers I use to grow food in my yard come from afar, and even the organic ones consume huge quantities of hydrocarbons in their processing, bagging and shipping. The "organic" fruit or vegetable shipped from afar is an environmental disaster compared to the organic fruit or vegetable from your own yard, but even those require inputs that are part of the system.
I stepped on airliners a few times in the past year, one long-haul and two short flights, and there is really nothing environmentally saintly about consuming immense resources by jetting around the world. Electric aircraft won't "save the world," either. They're resource-hungry, small, slow, their range is modest and their batteries are no more recyclable or long-lasting than all the vehicle batteries destined for the landfill. And alternative fuels for jet aircraft are incapable of being produced at the scale necessary to replace jet fuel. Sorry, no Hollywood ending.
To really reduce one's consumption of the planet's resources, we would have to grow our own food, get around on our own feet or zero-fuel transport (motorless bicycle or skateboard or boat) and not buy / own / use large resource-consuming devices such as vehicles, aircraft, etc. The system as currently configured makes it nearly impossible to do this. Even growing much of your own food requires delivery of fertilizers (organic or chemical, they still weight a lot). Very few places are bike-skateboard friendly. The world is set up for large, mass-produced fueled vehicles. Outside of a few cities, public transport is incapable of getting people where they need to go in any sort of time-efficient manner.
Consider the foundation of our lifestyle, the financial system. The story is "debt doesn't matter," because we can outgrow rising debt forever. Our bag of financial engineering tricks is bottomless, and there will always be another financial rabbit we can pull out of the hat. This is of course a fantasy. Debt eventually eats the system alive. So do fixed costs, entitlements, demographics and declining productivity. The inputs and processes can't be changed in any material way because they have to remain in their current scale and configuration or the financial system collapses under its own weight.
This brings us to the incentives to keep the inputs and processes exactly as they are, with minor tweaks for PR purposes. The system is set up such that elites and self-serving interests have most of the wealth and political power, and if even the tiniest bit of their skim is diminished, they will instantly devote the entirety of their resources to reversing this outrage, for they all know how power works: if others manage to cut 1% from your skim, they'll sense weakness and come back for 10%.
The only incentive that counts in our stripmined world is maximizing profits and the private gains of the entrenched and powerful. To cloak this reality, the Powers That Be promote public-relations propaganda that depicts their pillage, looting, fraud and destruction as a Hollywood story we can all consume and love, just as we love our servitude once it's been properly packaged into a Hero/Heroine's Journey or a Love Story.
This is why nobody will do anything until it's too late. It's only when we run out of essential inputs and/or essential processes decay and collapse that we'll awaken to the fact that since the global system's inputs and processes materially changed, the outputs we need and love all went away.
By the time inputs and processes have materially changed, it's too late to reverse the process and go back in time. Once resource extraction processes break down, inputs are no longer available in the needed quantities to feed all the processes of globalized, industrialized production and transport. Since all these processes are tightly bound systems, that is, interconnected, the breakdown of any one supply chain or process quickly topples dominoes throughout the system.
In addition to confusing happy stories with systems, human hubris manifests in another way: we like to think that minor tweaks here and there that don't inconvenience us will magically change the negative outputs (resource depletion, environmental ruin, etc.). This is why we love the Hollywood stories about electric aircraft (our very own electric helicopter - yowza!), electric vehicles, recycling the carboard boxes from FedEx, UPS and Amazon, and so on: we get all the comforts and conveniences we're accustomed to, and we get to be environmentally-sustainable saints, too: it's all sustainable and ecological and warm and fuzzy. Except it isn't. That's a fairy tale, not a system. If you question the Hollywood ending, you're dismissed as a doom and gloomer, a discontent who grumbles about happy endings and techno-marvels.
I see this as confusing a story with a system. The story operates by its own rules: here are the obstacles and powerful villains, here are the Hero and Heroine, outmatched and under pressure, but then, against all odds, the villains lose their grip, justice is served and love triumphs.
Systems work by their own implacable rules. There are inputs and processes that generate outputs. The only way to change the outputs in a consequential fashion is to change the inputs and/or processes in a consequential fashion. Little face-saving PR tweaks are too small in scale to materially change either inputs or processes, and so the outputs won't change and indeed, can't possibly change, because that's how systems work.
So by all means, ignore all warnings and run the ship at full speed through an ice field. All too predictably, the ship collides with an iceberg and only then does anyone respond: OK, where's the Hollywood story of brave engineers saving the ship and noble passengers helping each other onto lifeboats? What do you mean, the ship will sink regardless of what's done?
Doesn't our happy-ending story map reality? Unfortunately, no. The current system is sinking and nobody will do anything other than more of what's failed until it's too late. I like a rousing story as much as anyone else, but systems aren't stories, and confusing the two won't actually fix what's not sustainable in the current system's configuration.
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This confusion of story with system will generate consequences and opportunities which I discuss in my books "Global Crisis, National Renewal" and "Self-Reliance in the 21st Century."
"Just Look At Us..."
"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality"
- Michael Ellner
○
"Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"; but there isn't one. It is like betting on the future of the human race - I might wish to lay a bet that the human race would destroy itself by the year 3000, but there is nowhere to place the bet. On the contrary, I am involved in the world and must try to see that it does not blow itself to pieces. I once had a terrible argument with Margaret Mead. She was holding forth one evening on the absolute horror of the atomic bomb, and how everybody should spring into action and abolish it, but she was getting so furious about it that I said to her: "You scare me because I think you are the kind of person who will push the button in order to get rid of the other people who were going to push it first." So she told me that I had no love for my future generations, that I had no responsibility for my children, and that I was a phony swami who believed in retreating from facts. But I maintained my position.
As Robert Oppenheimer said a short while before he died, "It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so." You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. Maybe that is the way it has got to be. Maybe I should not say anything at all about the folly of trying to put things to right but simply, on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise."
- Alan Watts
The Poet: Robinson Jeffers, "We Are Those People"
"We Are Those People"
"I have abhorred the wars and despised the liars,
laughed at the frightened
And forecast victory; never one moment's doubt.
But now not far, over the backs of some crawling years, the next
Great war's column of dust and fire writhes
Up the sides of the sky: it becomes clear that we too may suffer
What others have, the brutal horror of defeat -
Or if not in the next, then in the next - therefore watch Germany
And read the future. We wish, of course, that our women
Would die like biting rats in the cellars,
our men like wolves on the mountain:
It will not be so. Our men will curse, cringe, obey;
Our women uncover themselves to the grinning victors
for bits of chocolate."
- Robinson Jeffers
Wendell Berry, "The Great Enemy"
"The Great Enemy"
by Wendell Berry
"In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy.
In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers...
Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make. What would be the point, for example, if a majority of our people decided to be self-employed?
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means."
- Wendell Berry
Freely download
"The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays"
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"Pentagon Missing $824 Billion"
"Pentagon Missing $824 Billion"
By Martin Armstrong
"The Pentagon, funded by you - the taxpayer - has truthfully NEVER passed an audit. Washington uses the Pentagon and Department of Defense as perhaps its favorite money laundering tool. Countless funds and supplies vanish year after year, and no one is ever investigated or punished. The corruption is blatantly in our faces. The most recent gimmick of an audit revealed that the Pentagon is unable to account for an astounding $824 billion missing from its budget. This is the seventh consecutive time that the Department of Defense has at least admitted that the agency “misplaced” hundreds of billions of dollars. Where are the funds?
There are twenty-eight separate reporting agencies, also funded by the taxpayer. Fifteen of those agencies received disclaimers, nine received an unmodified audit opinion, and one received a qualified opinion, while the remaining three agencies have pending opinions. Last November, the Pentagon funneled about $187 million to the public sector to conduct these dishonorable audits. The corruption never ends. They knew ahead of the audits that the agency would not come close to passing. There is zero remorse.
The DoD has no concern for their failed audit as they have never felt repercussions for failing one. Michael McCord, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Chief Financial Officer, dared to say that he wouldn’t necessarily call $824 billion in missing funds a “failed audit.” McCord also said not to worry since the Pentagon should be able to alter its audits to pass by 2028. The government can misuse our funds, but we’d be imprisoned for failing to give them their money through taxation.
“So if someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that you call the student or the report card a failure,” McCord said. Actually, that student would be held back and forced to complete the requirements for his or her grade level. Could you steal the money from someone’s wallet and call it an act of kindness for returning the change? This severely indebted nation provided the $824 billion to this slush fund of a department. Where is our money? Why has this agency never been held accountable? I presume the pockets run deep and the number of players involved would smear a portion of the establishment domestically and internationally.
Do not forget that when a whistleblower admitted the Pentagon has $2.3 trillion in unaccounted funds, a few major buildings in New York fell and started a contagion of events. The agency has never explained the whereabouts of those funds nor has it explained the trillions that have gone missing since then. The WTC7 demolition on 9/11 destroyed the room where the Pentagon audit was taking place and also happened to be the location of my computer system. I received an explanation from the SEC that everything had simply been destroyed and no further questions were permitted.
I do hope that Donald Trump’s administration drains the swamp and holds EVERY federally funded department accountable for passing audits. This is truly a disgrace and a slap in the face to Americans who have been funding government mismanagement for generations."
Bill Bonner, "America's Special Mission"
"America's Special Mission"
Even physical borders didn’t mean much to the new immigrants.
America was not a specific place; its borders shifted hugely from 1776 to 2024.
We are all immigrants, in a constantly changing country.
by Bill Bonner
"Don’t follow leaders,
Watch the parking meters..."
- Bob Dylan
Baltimore, Maryland - "Like icebergs in the North Atlantic, the risks posed by Trump’s policies do not threaten just a slowdown in the shipping channels... but a catastrophic sinking of the whole damned fleet. We looked at tariffs yesterday, and saw how they might cause a worldwide depression, much as they did in the 1930s. Today, let’s look at deportations.
We spent last weekend at the farm... where our family has been for nearly 400 years. The first settlers, in the 17th century, simply came up the bay from their Virginia colonies and established themselves on the shores of the Chesapeake. And we are still here. But there are some new folks here too.
On Saturday, the manager of the farm next door, who is from El Salvador, came over to say hello. Next came a middle-aged woman from Guatemala, who helps clean once a week. And then, a whole team of six Latinos showed up to put a copper roof on our new gypsy wagon. The wagon began as a project to keep the grandchildren occupied two Thanksgivings ago. The children lost interest after a half an hour; it’s kept us busy ever since.
“Hay mucho trabajo. No hay mucho tiempo,” the foreman said to his crew. (There’s a lot of work... but not a lot of time.) “Where are you fellows from?” we asked. “We’re all from Mexico,” came the answer. “We’re the people Senor Trump wants to deport,” he added with a laugh. “But I like Trump. I think he’ll be good for business. And I think he’ll just deport the criminals.” “Well, if he deports you... ” we began a sympathetic reply, “I hope you get my roof finished first.”
This is Maryland. Not Florida, Texas, nor California. And yet, even here, much of the real work... the hard work... is done by Latinos. And while there are a lot of people we’d be happy to send back to wherever they came from, they don’t include the people who mow our lawn or fix our roof. “America is for Americans,” said Stephen Miller at a pre-election Trump rally.
What sense this makes, we don’t know. Latinos are Americans too. They’ve been in the Americas longer than we have. But “if Americans have a special gift,” we wrote in our 2003 book "The Idea of America," “it is a talent for ignoring irony and ambiguity and going on with their special mission: getting rich.”
The early settlers also ignored a lot of other things that bothered them in the Old World. Religion, for example; in the US, you could worship whatever god you chose. In 1649 Lord Baltimore decreed that: “No person... shall from henceforth be any waies troubled, molested, or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof.”
Race didn’t matter either: the country was open to immigrants - voluntary and involuntary - from Europe, Asia and Africa. And language? It was none of anyone else’s business what language you spoke. In 1890, there were more than 1,000 German-language newspapers published in the US.
Even physical borders didn’t mean much to the new immigrants. America was not a specific place; its borders shifted hugely from 1776 to 2024. We are all immigrants, after all, in a constantly changing country. Hardly anyone here speaks German anymore, but millions now speak Spanish. And while it may be a good idea to control the flow of new immigrants, sending existing immigrants back home could leave some serious holes in the US economy.
Donald Trump says these new immigrants are ‘poisoning the blood,’ of the native population. He says he will deport 15 million of them or about one quarter of the entire Latino population of America. While this seems unlikely, it would represent almost 10% of the US labor force... and 5% of consumers. And since 70% of GDP is consumption, that alone suggests a 3.5% cut to GDP... putting the US in recession. Or, if you imagine that all US output is proportional to the labor that goes into it, you can assume a drop in output of about 10%.
While GDP goes down... consumer prices are almost sure to go up. Who picks the apples? Who shingles the roofs? Who unclogs the toilets and trims the hedges? Without immigrants, costs go up and the population falls.
Illegal? Legal? Either way, hamburgers don’t get flipped and gypsy wagons don’t get roofed. And then, our ponzi-like Social Security and Medicare systems... that depend on the contributions of the new arrivals to support old people -- what keeps them from going bust?
Combined with the losses from Trump’s proposed restraint of trade and rising long-term interest rates, we could see much higher consumer prices, bankruptcies, shortages, crashing asset prices, and a depression that is almost impossible to escape. But we still haven’t gotten to the Biggest Loss Ever. Tune in tomorrow for the ‘worst case’ scenario, the End of the World as We Have Known It."
"The End of the World as We Have Known It?" OK!
Full screen recommended.
R.E.M., "It's The End Of The World
As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)"
Adventures With Danno, "I Was In Absolute Shock At Sam's Club, This Was Unbelievable"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 11/20/24
"I Was In Absolute Shock At Sam's Club,
This Was Unbelievable"
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Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Russia's Final Nuclear Warning!"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 11/19/24
"Alert! Russia's Final Nuclear Warning!
60 Days Of DEFCON Chaos Ahead; Europe Emergency Preparations"
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God help us all...
Gerald Celente, "Democrats Lose Election, When All Else Fails They Take You To War"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 11/19/24
"Democrats Lose Election,
When All Else Fails They Take You To War"
The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing
global current events forming future trends.
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"Putin's Nuclear Order: List Of All Nuke Weapons At Russia's Disposal"
Full screen recommended.
Times Of India, 11/19/24
"Putin's Nuclear Order:
List Of All Nuke Weapons At Russia's Disposal"
"Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a new nuclear doctrine that broadens Russia's conditions for nuclear deterrence. The updated policy allows Russia to counter threats from any country possessing weapons of mass destruction or hosting foreign forces that could attack Russia. The doctrine also declares that an attack by any NATO-aligned nation will be treated as a collective aggression, potentially triggering a widespread retaliation."
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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 tonnes 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."
o
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.
Do we really want to do this? Pray to God we don't...
o
And a continent killer...
Full screen recommended.
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...
"Restaurant Closures Are Soaring As America's Biggest Chains Hit Breaking Point"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 11/19/24
"Restaurant Closures Are Soaring As
America's Biggest Chains Hit Breaking Point"
"Empty tables and soaring prices are wreaking havoc on the restaurant industry in 2024. New data shows that we're on track to see the highest wave of bankruptcies in all U.S. history as America's biggest chains struggle with rising costs, labor shortages, and a dramatic decline in sales. Every day more closings are being announced. You may have already noticed that many restaurants and fast food joints in your town are closing down right now. Even chains that used to be everywhere, like Boston Market, are rapidly disappearing. What's driving so many iconic brands out of business this year? That's what you're going to find out by the end of today's video!"
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Jeremiah Babe, "Your Kids Could Be Drafted Into A Nuclear War; Jersey Mike's Sells Out To Blackstone"
Jeremiah Babe, 11/19/24
"Your Kids Could Be Drafted Into A Nuclear War;
Jersey Mike's Sells Out To Blackstone"
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Adventures With Danno, "They Have Really Done It Now - Point Of No Return?"
Adventures With Danno, PM 11/19/24
"They Have Really Done It Now -
Point Of No Return?"
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Musical Interlude: Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"
Full screen recommended.
Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"
○
“Reality is what we take to be true.
What we take to be true is what we believe.
What we believe is based upon our perceptions.
What we perceive depends upon what we look for.
What we look for depends upon what we think.
What we think depends upon what we perceive.
What we perceive determines what we believe.
What we believe determines what we take to be true.
What we take to be true is our reality.”
- Gary Zukav
"A Look to the Heavens"
“This shock wave plows through space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Moving toward to bottom of this beautifully detailed color composite, the thin, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge on. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its narrow appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula.
About 5 light-years long and a mere 800 light-years away, the Pencil Nebula is only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter and is the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar gas.”
The Poet: William Stafford, “Starting With Little Things”
“Starting With Little Things”
“Love the earth like a mole,
fur-near. Nearsighted,
hold close the clods,
their fine-print headlines.
Pat them with soft hands -
Like spades, but pink and loving; they
break rock, nudge giants aside,
affable plow.
Fields are to touch;
each day nuzzle your way.
Tomorrow the world.”
- William Stafford
"Never Forget..."
"Take risks! That is really what life is about. We must pursue our own happiness. Nobody has ever lived our lives; there are no guidelines. Trust your instincts. Accept nothing but the best. But then also look for it carefully. Don't allow it to slip between your fingers. Sometimes, good things come to us in a such a quiet fashion. And nothing comes complete. It is what we make of whatever we encounter that determines the outcome. What we choose to see, what we choose to save. And what we choose to remember. Never forget that all the love in your life is there, inside you, always."
- Linda Olsson
"Few Really Ask..."
“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world – few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds – justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to a whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”
- Anne Rice, “The Vampire Lestat”
"Prof. Mohammad Marandi: Iran will Hit Israel Hard, Hezbollah Wipes Out IDF Invasion"
Danny Haiphong, 11/19/24
"Prof. Mohammad Marandi: Iran will Hit Israel Hard,
Hezbollah Wipes Out IDF Invasion"
"Prof. Mohammad Marandi (https://x.com/s_m_marandi) joins the show for a round up on the exploding regional war in the Middle East amid rumors Iran is backing down to Israel and Hezbollah is seeking a ceasefire in Lebanon. What's the truth? Is Israel or Iran in trouble? Is Hezbollah and the resistance losing or is Israel?'
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