Chet Raymo, “When The Morning Stars Sing Together”

“When The Morning Stars Sing Together”

by Chet Raymo

“A Chinese proverb: A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song. Which might be an acceptable epigraph for this blog. I can’t imagine anyone coming here looking for answers. Certainly, providing answers is the last thing on my mind. I would like to think you come for song.

We are, I think, by and large, a community who distrusts answers, at least answers that are vehemently held. We are made uncomfortable by stridency. By dogma. By the desire to proselytize. We wear our truths lightly, gaily, as a song bird wears its feathers. We are grateful to those who push back the clouds of ignorance and hold the reins of passion. With Blake, we sing their praises, a song we have spent a lifetime learning. We sing to celebrate. We sing because we have a song.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Toxic People..."

"Toxic people systematically destroy others because if they cannot bask in the light then no one else deserves to. Lost people suffer in their darkness, happily dragging your light down into their personal hell so you can listen to all their woes. Soulless people, lacking empathy, suck the light from others to taste that which they can never understand. People can't be helped until they want to be helped. You can't be there for others who need you if any one of these types destroy you. Save yourself... it's not a sin to love from a distance."

- L.M. Fields

"We’re All 'Flagellants' Now"

"We’re All 'Flagellants' Now"

by Jeffrey Tucker

"The old FedEx envelope was clever, a work of art even, optimistic and colorful, signifying speed and progress. What a beautiful contrast to the plainness of the U.S. Postal Service. For years, I can recall dropping off these treasures and paying maybe $10 to assure their delivery across the country, even the world. For me, it was a fabulous symbol of an improved life, living proof that progress was baked into the historical trajectory.

But a few days ago, the clerk at the FedEx office confirmed a different ethos. There was no doing business without a scan of my government-issued ID. I asked for confirmation: So if I did not have this, there is simply no way that I could send a package? Confirmed. Then came the envelope. It was the color of the brown bag I took to school when I was a kid. Serviceable, drab, dull. Also the new one is stamped with a big green marker: recyclable. There is no design, no art, certainly no beauty. It’s all gone.

Its main message is suffering. What happened to the old envelopes? They’ve been replaced, the clerk explained firmly, with no more detail. A recycle exhortation suggests shortage. We have to reuse everything because there just isn’t enough to go around. We must sacrifice. The color suggests privation. It’s an aesthetic of sadness and penance. Then of course the price tag came: $26 for delivery not tomorrow but in two days. So compared with some years ago, we pay 2½ times as much for service half as good as it was.

Don’t complain. It’s just the new way. It’s the new way of life. What happened to progress? It’s been replaced. The new path is flagellantism: in politics, culture, economics and everywhere.

The flagellants were a medieval movement of public penitents that roamed from town to town in garbs of woe, flogging themselves and begging as penance for pestilence and war. They were infused with a fiery, apocalyptic and millenarian passion that they could see terrible moral realities to which others were blinded. The theory was that plagues were being visited upon the Earth by God as punishment for sin. The answer was contrition, sorrow and acts of penance as a means of appeasement, in order to make the bad times go away.

It’s true that there were people who did so in private but that was not the main point. The central focus and purpose of the flagellant movement was to make one’s suffering public and conspicuous, an early version of the virtue signal. In the guise of personal sorrow, they were really about spreading guilt to others. They would show up at any public celebration with a message: Your happiness is causing our suffering. The more you party, the more we are forced to bear the burden of the need to be in pain for your sins. Your joy is prolonging the suffering of the world.

Flagellantry is most recognizable in the aesthetic. The first signs I recall seeing of this occurred immediately during the panic of March 2020 when it was proclaimed from on high that a terrible virus was visiting the U.S. Read on for the ugly details…"

"Flagellantism: The New Political Ritual"

by Jeffrey Tucker

"Joseph Campbell was correct about the role of religious impulses in the human mind. They never go away. They just take on different forms according to the style of the times. Every single feature of traditional religion found a new expression in the COVID religion.

We had masking rituals that were rather complicated but learned and practiced quickly by multitudes: mask on while standing and mask off when sitting. We had sacramentals like social distancing and communion with vaccination. Our holy water became sanitizer and our prophets on Earth were government bureaucrats like Fauci.

Flagellantism did not disappear once the old president left and the new one came. Even after the pandemic ended, there were new signs that God was angry. There was the ever-present climate change which was a sign of Earth’s anger for being drilled and carved up for energy sources. And the bad country said to be responsible for the unwelcome invader of the White House - Russia - was now rampaging through the holy land of its neighbors.

In addition, the broader problem was capitalism itself, which gave us things like meat, gasoline, fur and other signs of evil. And what gave rise to capitalism? The answer should be obvious: imperialism, colonialism, racism and the existence of whiteness - each of which called for mass penance.

The pandemic unleashed it all. It was during this period that corporations decided that profitability alone required signs of suffering and hence the rise of ESG and DEI as new ways to assess economic value of corporate culture. And new practices were added to the list of the highly suspect: monogamy, heterosexuality and religious traditions such as Christianity and Orthodox Judaism that should now be regarded as deprecated, even as part of the underlying problem.

It was during this period when I found myself on an apartment hunt and observed a newly remodeled offering. I asked why the owner had not replaced the flooring. I was corrected: These are new floors. Impossible, I thought. They are gray and ghastly. That’s the new fashion, I was told. Looking it up, it was true. Gray flooring was being installed everywhere.

How does wood become gray? It dies. It starts to decay. It is swept away by rivers and floats around for years, alternatively soaked, baked by the sun and soaked again, until every bit of color is drained away. It becomes driftwood, a survivor of the elements and a symbol of the brutality of the cycle of life. Gray flooring is therefore the ideal symbol of the age of suffering, the proper material on which to move back and forth pondering the evils of the world.

In a world governed by flagellantism, ugly formlessness rises to replace aspirational art and imaginative creativity. This is why public art is so depressing and why even the clothing we can afford at the store all looks dreary and uniform. In this world, too, gender differences disappear as luxurious signs of decadence we can no longer afford.

Two other anecdotes. The overhead bins on the flight just now were largely empty, simply because most passengers chose the cheaper basic economy fare. This also requires they have no carry-on luggage and hence be forced to pay for checked luggage or travel with all their belongings in a backpack. We’ve gone from gigantic Louis Vuitton steamer trunks to stuffing things in pockets and hiding them from authorities.

Another case in point. I asked the man in the high-end shoe shop why none of the shoes had leather soles. Instead all shoes have these cushy rubber soles that seem weak and pathetic, and make no noise when one steps. “Everything has changed since COVID,” he said. “All shoes are house shoes now.”

I had no words and walked away, my entire thesis confirmed. Sure enough, all the data we have suggests the mighty triumph of flagellantism. Fertility is down dramatically. Life spans are shortening. People are sicker. Excess deaths are rising. We learn less, read less, write less, create less, love less.

Personal trauma is everywhere. The groceries are more expensive so we eat whatever we can, when we can, while hoping for breezes and whatever sunlight there is to provide just the essential energy we need to slog through another day.

Degrowth is the economic model of flagellantism, reducing consumption, embracing privation, acquiescing to austerity. We no longer declare recessions to be on their way because recession is the new way we live, the realization of the plan. The word “recession” implies a future of recovery, and that is not in the cards.

“Decolonization” is another watchword. It means feeling so guilty about the space you inhabit that your only moral action is to stay put and reflect on the sufferings of those you have displaced. You can of course say a prayer of supplication to them, so long as you never appropriate any aspect of their culture, since doing so would seem to affirm your rights as a human being.

You want joy, beauty, color, drama, adventure and love? It’s not gone entirely. Park yourself on a yoga mat on your gray floor and open your computer. Stream something on one of many streaming services you have been provided. Or become a gamer. There you will find what you seek. The experiences you seek you can only observe as an outsider looking in. It is not participatory. Social distancing never went away; it is how we live in a new age of unending penance.

So, you see, it’s not just about eating bugs. It’s about a whole theory and practice of life and salvation itself, a new religion to replace all the old ones. Cough up your government-issued ID, send your package if you must, think twice before complaining about anything on social media and figure out a way to channel your depression and despair into quiet humble gratitude and acquiescence. Don’t forget to recycle. The flagellants have taken over the world."

- https://dailyreckoning.com/

o

"In a scene from the 1975 film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," a group of monks are depicted singing plainchant while on a procession through the streets of a medieval village. After chanting the first few lines of text, the monks abruptly hit themselves in the face and repeatedly do so during their procession. Although this scene was undoubtedly filmed for comedic purposes, and the movie, in general, propagates a number of historically questionable stereotypes of the Middle Ages, the act of monks singing while engaging in self-harm is historically sound. In fact, this scene reflects the practices of a group of traveling medieval flagellants who would whip themselves while singing songs of penance for the purpose of placating God."

- https://www.medievalists.net/

"Cruelty: the Trump Regime Cuts Off Food Stamps Starting November 1!"

Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, 10/17/25

"Cruelty: the Trump Regime Cuts Off 

Food Stamps Starting November 1!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Holiday Layoffs Are Here, No Christmas for Millions"

Orlando Miner, 10/17/25

"Holiday Layoffs Are Here, No Christmas for Millions"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Big Sandy, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Rolf Jacobsen, "When They Sleep"

"When They Sleep"

"All people are children when they sleep.

There's no war in them then.

They open their hands and breathe

in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.

They pucker their lips like small children

and open their hands halfway,

soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.

The stars stand guard

and a haze veils the sky,

a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.

If only we could speak to one another then

when our hearts are half-open flowers.

Words like golden bees

would drift in.

God, teach me the language of sleep."

- Rolf Jacobsen,

"The Roads Have Come to an End Now"

“Incidit In Scyllam Cupiens Vitare Charybdim”

“Incidit In Scyllam Cupiens Vitare Charybdim”

by Steve Candidus

“One of the great things about ancient Greek Mythology is that the stories all teach a lesson. They don’t end with – and the moral of the story is – though. They leave it to the reader to figure them out. So in addition to being just plain fun to read they are wonderful teachers about life. Perhaps the best thing about this one is that we still use the expression it contains exactly the same way that the ancient Greeks intended it almost 3,000 years ago. That almost never happens. Language is fluid and the meanings of words and expressions changes from one generation to another, but this one is an exception. The everyday expression it contains is one that we often refer to without really knowing where it came from.

This is one of the tales of Odysseus who was the heroic king of Ithaca and of whose ten-year journey back to Greece after the Trojan War was immortalized in Homer’s ‘Odyssey’. There was a point in his journey when his ship had to enter a narrow straight. It was a passage so narrow that it could only be made under special conditions. They had to have both the wind at their backs and the current in their direction. However, once committed it was impossible to turn back.

Unknown to the sailors the straight was guarded by two deadly perils. On the one side, it was guarded by Scylla. Scylla was a six-headed monster that disguised itself as a rock. On the other side, it was guarded by Charybdis, a terrible deadly whirlpool born of the sea god Poseidon.

In olden times, it was common to refer to any place that a ship came to rest on land as being in a hard place. It didn’t matter if it was blown on shore by a storm, grounded on a reef or brought up intentionally for repair. If it was on shore, it was on a hard place as opposed to the soft place – water.

It also applied to a ship that had foundered. A ship that sinks will eventually rest on the bottom. The land at the bottom of the ocean is therefore called a hard place. It used to be a common term, but it has since pretty much fallen out of practice in common language today. A deadly whirlpool such as Charybdis could take a ship and send it straight to the bottom – a hard place.

So, now as we return to the story of Odysseus we see that their ship had entered a narrow straight and that straight was guarded by two evil perils with hardly enough room for a ship to pass between them. They were forced to choose between the six headed monster ‘Scylla’ disguised as a rock or the dreaded whirlpool ‘Charybdis’ that would surely send them to a hard place and they could not turn back.

There is a Latin proverb from this story, “Incidit in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim” which translates to, “He runs on Scylla, wishing to avoid Charybdis.” In modern day English, we simply say, “They were between a rock and a hard place”. And now you know…”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

John Wilder, "27 Thoughts For Friday"

"27 Thoughts For Friday"

by John Wilder

“I thought so. You remember our business 

partner Marsellus Wallace, don’t you Brett?” 

– "Pulp Fiction"

"I’ve trotted out lists of thoughts from time to time. The lists change based on (hopefully) me getting more wisdom over time. Anyway, here’s this year’s list:

1. Be on time. Seriously, it’s simple. People notice, and people care. It’s a basic principle of respect for someone not to waste their time waiting for me.

2. Never be a little late to work or a little early to leave. Especially on a regular basis. Being late an hour once every quarter is much better than being late a minute each day for sixty work days. An hour looks like something happened. A minute looks like I don’t care.

3. Little changes at the start make big difference in the result. I’ve seen many people start their careers and become experts at the subject of their first assignment. Many of them made a lot of money by knowing a whole lot about a little.

4. Choosing not to decide is a choice. I love reminding people that “doing nothing” is always an option. But it is a choice. And it has just as many consequences as “doing something”.

5. For me, opportunities always showed up when I needed them, even if I didn’t understand it at the time. Thankfully in my case the opportunities weren’t subtle.

6. After college, in a high achieving profession, it becomes rarer and rarer to be the smartest guy in the room, and someone in the room is often an expert at something in which I’m a novice. True humility allows a good leader to understand the capabilities they need, and not have to be “right” all the time.

7. The biggest fights are over the smallest things. It seems that no one ever snaps over the house being on fire on the day the insurance payment was late – it’s that the trash wasn’t taken out on time and we have to hang on to it for another week.

8. People understand $10,000 more than they understand $10,000,000. The difference between $10,000 and $11,000 means more to most people than the difference between $10 million and $10 billion. Most people can’t understand more than seven magnitudes of anything.

9. Outcome is less important than process. When working on life, I try to not care about what the outcome will be. I go in, make the best choices I can, and do the best work that I can. If it works, it works, if it doesn’t, I try to adjust to be better next time.

10. Outcome is still important. Dead is dead, so sometimes the outcome is final.

11. The last outcome is always final. How many refunds?

12. No refunds.

13. Nothing breeds success like success, and nothing breeds failure like failure. I’ve been on streaks where I literally could not lose. I’ve been on streaks where I couldn’t win.

14. Corollary to 13: I’m never as bad or as good as my failures or successes. The streaks where I couldn’t win set me up with the habits I needed to win.

15. Beating myself up is a loser’s game.

16. Most people don’t think about me very much and will have a hard time remembering my name after five years. As much as I like to think I’m the center of my story (and I am) I’m only a minor player in the stories of most other people.

17. Corollary to 16: Except where I’m their personal villain. Then I live on forever and will definitely have someone who will want to be at my funeral, if nothing more than to make sure I’m dead.

18. Protect the relationships with the people that genuinely do care about me in a positive way so maybe the sad people at my funeral will outnumber the happy ones.

19. Listen to people, really listen. They tell me amazing things if I just listen. One time I was interviewing a guy and he mentioned committing a felony at a previous job. Yeah, I kept a straight face. No, he didn’t get the job.

20. If someone says I’m wrong, I need to have the humility to embrace that and see if they’re right. Especially when my first impulse is to try to defend myself. Even if I’m not wrong, I at least understand why they thought I was wrong.

21. When I’m wrong, admit it and apologize. It’s amazing how admitting error makes other think I’m more trustworthy. And apologies? Why not apologize, have some sort of problem with that?

22. Being good at several things is enough for success, if they’re the right several things. Being an expert at useless things might be fun, but mostly nothin’ times nothin’ is, hmmm, carry the nothin’ . . . nothin’.

23. If I spend my life waiting for the next thing, I’ll spend my entire life waiting and not living. The journey is the point, and rushing through it just gets me to my grave faster.

24. Past behaviors are almost always the key to predicting future behaviors. Leopards, spots, etc. When I listen to a person’s story, I realize that often they’re also telling me their future.

25. Success is based on the last thing I did, not the next. People pay to keep me around because they think I might be able to do it again.

26. Could I have done better? Could I have done worse? Yes. I did how I did. Success is based on how I change what I’m going to do to be better.

27. Power and money are not the same thing. Just ask the rich guys after Robespierre or Lenin took over.

Okay, that’s 3³ thoughts for Friday. See you on Monday!"

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Fast Food is Dead!"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 10/17/25

"Fast Food is Dead!"

"Fast food is dead - and I’m breaking down the $450M disaster behind it. Jack in the Box bought Del Taco for $575M, only to sell it for $115M. That’s a staggering $450M loss! What went wrong? From skyrocketing wages to overpriced meals that no longer scream value, the fast food industry is on shaky ground. I’ll cover why consumers are fed up, why value meals aren’t working, and how brands like Shake Shack and Five Guys are pricing themselves out of reach. Plus, I’ll share insights on Del Taco’s new owner, franchise closures, and the ripple effects across the restaurant world. We dive into how inflation, supply chain issues, and high labor costs are crushing the industry. I also touch on broader economic challenges, including consumer spending dips, commercial real estate trends, and even shocking vehicle recalls. It’s all connected, and I want to hear your thoughts - are fast food chains done for? Let me know in the comments!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

“Thoughts on Evil, Human Nature”

“Thoughts on Evil, Human Nature”

by W. Christopher Epler

“Carl Sagan, author and astrophysicist from Cornell, used to wonder if atomic weaponry would be the nemesis of most “advanced species”. A flight of fancy of sorts since whales and elephants are certainly advanced species but don’t feel the need for technology (and should we patronize them for this since they aren’t rapidly destroying the planet?). Is it possible that much of science and technology are actually synonyms of self destructive stupidity? A kind of short sighted greed, perhaps.

In any event, what has now totally blocked the evolution of the human species is pure evil. The fringe of astronomically rich sociopaths is the absolute outer limit of evil. Similarly, so do all mentally ill religious fanatics poison the march of human civilization. And, probably most of all, the Earth’s Paris Hiltons and astronomically rich parasites (and vampires – remember, it’s all really OUR wealth), necessitate convoluted social/financial structures and processes which are the “crown of thorns” or highway to hell (or your metaphor of choice) for Homo sapiens. Maybe the wrong species got killed off during the demise of the Neanderthals.

Remember, “human” is a generic word that evolution has experimented with in actually a great many forms – we’re just the form that is still standing. But what’s the problem? Not a candy ass “religious” problem or a candy ass “political” problem but THE problem? Why is our species well on its way to going extinct? Indeed, why is it a near certainly that Home sapiens are going bye bye in the relatively near future (and taking countless “innocent by-stander” species with us in the process)? However, alas, they are just a sample of evil, since evil is as omnipresent as our breath. But what IS evil? Well, we don’t have to get particularly metaphysical about this. Evil is a function of human society. It has to do with the interactions of quantities of us (or probably any advanced life form).

So there’s a decidedly “quantitative” variable here. As our numbers increase, so does the complexity of our social infrastructure. And that seems to be the rub, since invisibly and insidiously the “social game rules” are conditioned into our vulnerable, biological brains. And just here is the door to hell. This dimension can be called “consensus reality” and it’s an admixture of language (always language!), the past, memory (not always our friend), and the miscellaneous conditionings of our time, place, and families (often profoundly dysfunctional). More openly, here are the programmed religions, laws, constitutions, and “theories” we so love to worship. In short, here is the stopping point of our species. Not atomic weapons, but the accumulated programming of years of social/psychological conditioning. The “operational definition” of all of the above is thought, because consensus realty IS thought; hence the thing the human race does best is think itself to death.

On a positive note, words like liberation, transcendence, and Enlightenment are “mystical” (the shoe fits) alternatives to this “swallowed whole” existence. The intelligence limitations of our species are still sublimely unknown, but whatever pragmatic value consensus reality may offer, our lives don’t even BEGIN until we get straight that this fire storm of conditioning that has become the “mind set” of the entire human race (indeed, the very “God” of the human race), is fundamentally, radically, and biologically arbitrary and random. In the context of this piece, what this means is that the social game rules that perpetuate the “Have’s,” that justify their astronomical wealth and power, and that (worst of all!) give an obscene “righteousness” to deranged lunatics who so love to commit genocide for the glory of God, aren’t worth the toilet paper they are printed on.

And exactly here is where our species is probably doomed, since many are called but few are chosen when it comes to being true to your birthright self and finding a reality/creativity/intelligence center that trivializes millennia of evil-perpetuating conditioning. Remember phrases like, “Might makes right”, “Manifest Destiny”, “survival of the fittest” (translation, survival of the wealthiest), and the loathsomely hypocritical “Divine Right”.

Of course these sayings (and even laws) are merely the tip of the iceberg. The dungeon is elsewhere. It is deep within the infrastructure of the collective human mind. Do we know that it is infinitely unjust that the elites spend more money on their wardrobes than most of us spend on our families in an entire lifetime? Do we know it is evil when religious fanatics try to steal an entire country and turn the lives of the people who have been living there for centuries into a WW2 concentration camp?

One response to these questions could be that we’re not sure if these things are evil, but almost certainly the world does know these things are filthy, evil, and infinitely unjust. However, you can know things on the “surface” of your mind that you play games with in the depths of your mind. The tragedy is that the world basically turns the other way from these evils and injustices because in the depths of our conditioning we are historically programmed to accept them. Hence, it is the deep, collective mind set that permits and justifies evil. We know better, but our “unconscious” (to use that word) “accepts” evil because we have been programmed to adapt to it for millennia.

The literally unimaginable suffering that necessarily goes with the existence of Greek God-like elites would make Jesus weep, but we accept The Haves (the evil) – indeed, most of us probably envy them. This is the paradox of evil. If we didn’t “accept” evil, it couldn’t exist! But since literally billions of us DO accept evil, that makes us an evil species.

This is not intellectualizing or empty theory. If the human race said no to “The Beast”, to the “Have’s”, to genocidal religious fanatics, to the Rockefeller’s, to the Rothschild’s, to the Bush’s, to murder in the name of God subhuman filth, to Saudi Princes, etc., etc., we could destroy them in a week. And I mean “non theoretically” destroy them in a week. Remove them from the planet as in cease to exist – now you see them, now you don’t! There are times in life you must be limitlessly aggressive. We can either watch The Beast destroy Mother Nature and our children’s future, or WE can destroy the beast. Remember, we know exactly who they are and we know exactly where they are. So what in the name of truth, beauty, and goodness are we waiting for? Certainly not for the paper bullets of religion and politics. ULTIMATE hardball is the name of this game.

Hence, looked at one way, there is great hope. Looked at another way, it is hopeless. It all comes down to how each of us deals with a lifetime of conditioning. Liberation is transcending the box. The world IS the box. So consensus reality (the home of evil) can be left. This is called being true to ourselves, or perhaps even Enlightenment. However, as a species, the probability that we will leave the box in sufficient percentages to “eliminate” evil is probably very, very small. Fortunately, even though our paralyzed and conditioned species continues to equate life with a moronically defective consensus mind set, each of us is still able to stretch our intelligence/spiritual eagle wings and leave this evil box forever. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: we’re the dogs – never the tails.”

- http://www.sott.net/

o

Freely download “Beyond Good And Evil”, by Friedrich Nietzsche, here:

- https://www.holybooks.com/wp-content/uploads/Nietzsche-Beyond-Good-and-Evil.pdf

"How It Really Is"

And you really expect these girly-men to fight the Chinese and 

Russians, real men, who are laughing themselves comatose at the thought?

If you do you're as nuts as these degenerates are...

That's my opinion, thank you - CP, Veteran, US Marine Corps

o

How the mighty have fallen...

Aww, he hurt their tender feelings...

As the great Mogambo Guru said, "We're so freakin' doomed!"

We are, and here's why...

"Inversion of Values, Part 2: The Roman Empire"

Bill Bonner, "Turn Turn Turn"

"Turn Turn Turn"

by Bill Bonner

"Madison, Connecticut - We drove up to Connecticut yesterday to attend a funeral. The leaves are still green in Maryland. Here they are bright yellow and gold. The autumn colors have not reached their peak, but it is still impressively bright.

“To everything there is a season,” said the presiding minister at the Congregationalist church, reading from Ecclesiastes, “and a time for every purpose under Heaven.” There is a time to be born. And a time to die. Were it not so, it would be a very different world. Our world is what it is. It is bound by iron laws. That which is born, must die. There’s no arguing about it. But in between birth and death there is a lot of room for mischief.

So, let’s take a look at some of the mischief. CNBC: "From bananas to toys...costs have risen since Trump’s tariffs went into effect." As any thoughtful economist could have predicted, tariffs are causing price increases. So far, according to the CNBC analysts, they are showing up most markedly in bananas, coffee, televisions, toys, and jewelry. Each category may have different drivers, but tariffs figure largely in all of them.

CNBC continues: "Overall, Americans now face an average tariff rate of 17.4% - the highest since 1935 - an increase estimated to cost households an extra $2,300 in 2025, according to the Yale Budget Lab. (These estimates include tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which remain in place while the court challenge is pending).

In our private lives, we make our choices and suffer the consequences. We don’t necessarily get what we want or what we expect, but we get what we deserve. In public life, on the other hand, we typically get what others want for us. Team Trump, for example, wants us to pay higher prices for imported goods.

And therein begins mischief on a whole different scale. Public policies rule. Some of them simply reflect common, vernacular customs that have been given a seal of approval by the government. Don’t drive too fast. Don’t kill anyone (unless the feds tell you to). Etc.

But public policies that interfere with the honest commerce and peacefui pursuits of ‘the people’ invariably make things worse. As we’ve seen, the greater the interference, the less real progress people are able to make. And today, we take up the question you haven’t asked. Why do we do this to ourselves, with policies that we know are likely to lead to misery and poverty?

Take war, for example. There is a time for war…and a time for peace. War seems to be a fact of life. Even 2,025 years after the Prince of Peace, war is still ‘a thing’...and becoming even more popular. The White House has retitled the Department of Defense as the Department of War. It has also urged European nations to spend more of their resources on preparation for war. And its own military/spook complex sends warships to blow up boats in the Caribbean and makes plans for murdering people in Venezuela.

Any sober observer, looking over the history of war, perhaps like General George G. Meade, walking the field of Gettysburg before the dead were gathered up, would conclude that war is a losing proposition.

And look at Europe. Countless wars have taken place. But what really changed? The French are still French, with their 265 different cheeses...the Germans are still Germans, with their 7,000 different beers. Europe’s most costly war - World War One - was begun for no particular reason...continued only because it had begun...and ended only when Germany was too exhausted to continue. What was the point? No one knows. War is the most destructive and most dramatic public policy, but there are plenty of others.

Donald Trump says New York mayoral candidate Mamdani is a ‘communist.’ No, Mamdani replies, he’s a ‘democratic socialist.’ Whatever he calls himself, many of his policies are sure to do harm. Associated Press: "Mamdani does favor raising taxes on the wealthy to fund proposals he argues would make the city more affordable. That includes free bus service, universal childcare, and his signature issue: a freeze on rent increases for the city’s 1 million rent-regulated apartments. Opponents say a rent freeze would harm landlords, who have also been hit hard by inflation."

Perhaps nowhere has the “communist” label come up more than in relation to Mamdani’s proposal to set up a pilot program for city-run grocery stores. Billionaire John Catsimatidis, who owns grocery chains Gristedes and D’Agostino Supermarkets, said the program would “drag us down a path toward the bread lines of the old Soviet Union.”

War. Tariffs. Communism. And paper money, too. Why do we have public policies that are almost certain to be harmful? Are they like death – inescapable? Tune in next week for the provocative answer."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"Alert! Major Red Flag! Something Just Broke!"

Full screen recommended.

Prepper News, 10/17/25

"Alert! Major Red Flag! Something Just Broke!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 10/17/25

"INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson, McGovern, & Scott Ritter: 

Weekly Wrap 17 - OCT."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Dialogue Works, 10/17/25

"Larry C. Johnson & Col. Larry Wilkerson: 

Russia & Iran Are Building a War Shield!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The U.S. Economy Is Collapsing - And They’re Still Pretending Everything’s Fine"

Full screen recommended.

Finance Economist, 10/17/25

"The U.S. Economy Is Collapsing - 

And They’re Still Pretending Everything’s Fine"

"They keep telling you the U.S. economy is “resilient,” but under the surface it’s unraveling - record debt loads, surging delinquencies, hidden funding crises, and collapsing growth are converging for a collapse they refuse to admit. Watch carefully - this is what they don’t want you to see."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Michael Bordenaro, 10/17/25

"I Did Everything Right and I'm Still Going Broke!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures with Danno, "Shocking Prices At Costco"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 10/17/25

"Shocking Prices At Costco"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

John Wilder, "Hoe_Math And Why Levels Of Thought Caused This Mess"

"Hoe_Math And Why Levels 

Of Thought Caused This Mess"

by John Wilder

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?”

– "No Country for Old Men"

"There is a YouTube® creator named hoe_math that I watch regularly. I’d guess that he and I have fairly similar worldviews in many cases, and I recommend his channel (LINK). One of the trademark issues Mr. _math has discussed is the breakdown between men and women in our modern, technological age and how government has made it worse.

One thing he’s brought up several times in his videos is the concept of “levels of thinking” which I’ll just call “Levels” from here on out. It’s a variation of Maslow’s Hierarchy, but it’s been refined by Ken Wilber, to walk back the sources. But let’s stick to hoe_math.

hoe_math’s main success has been as a guy who draws stick figures with colored pencils to explain why your relationships suck and society is unraveling. Rather than Levels being a new age mystical tool, Mr. _math uses Levels as a tool, and as a powerful one. Keep in mind, it’s not reality, it’s just another way to model it. In this case, however, it explains a lot of what would otherwise be mystical behavior and magical thinking of people who really should know better.

The version of Levels that hoe_math has been distilled down to nine stages of thinking, each building on the last like a Jenga™ tower of the soul. Today, though, I want to stick to the first seven levels. Why? Because Level 6 is the root of so much GloboLeft® insanity, and Level 7 shows, maybe, a way out. Let’s climb the Levels ladder, one sticky rung at a time.

Level 1: Survival And Desire: Picture this: a toddler covered in spaghetti sauce. Life isn’t about stocks or status. It’s a confusing set of seemingly unrelated events. Life is about not dying and emotional control doesn’t yet exist. Hunger gnaws, cold bites, and that pain from having fingernails cut? That’s the worst pain the baby has ever felt. Thinking at Level 1 is pure reflex: see food, eat. See threat, run or smash. No plans, just sensory overload driving you to grab what feels good and dodge what hurts.

Every human starts at this level, but most outgrow it. Except in pathology: think severe autism or that guy at the grocery store yelling about expired coupons. And toxic masculinity? Level 1 is the primal protector that men become when times become grim: the father who stays up all night by the fire with a shotgun when the wolves are howling outside. It’s raw, unapologetic drive when there’s a positive motivation. In the negative, it’s the low-I.Q. murderer who kills someone for $5. These people stuck at this level cannot survive by themselves.

Level 2: Connect: Now the world gets a little less lonely. I’ve got senses, sure, but suddenly, so does everyone else. Thinking now shifts: life is bonding and not being alone. Emotions now project outward because at this level, people now understand that others have needs, too. And, when others are happy, I get what I want. I clean my room, I get cookies. hoe_math notes that this is where tribes form – but for people stuck at this level, there is nearly zero trust for outsiders. Probably the largest useful structure that this level produces is the family.

Level 3: Control: If the first level had no bonds, the second level had bonds between one person and another, this level is third person: the realization that other people have connections to each other. And that’s a great tool to use to get control of them. If Level 3 was a decade, it would be The Me Decade, the 1970s. Since all of humanity can live at Level 1 or Level 2, fully 92% of humanity can make it to Level 3 every day, according to hoe_math, who you should trust because “math” is in his name. At this stage, the strong exploit the week, and morality is an afterthought. If India was a level, it would be Level 3. It’s a war of all against all with a billion caste systems.

Level 4: Conform: This is all about the rules. Only 40% of humanity gets here every day. That should scare you. Yeouch! That tells you that my India comment on Level 3 is probably spot on. This is the level that gives us useful structures like functional civilizations and businesses and religion. It is here that ethics and the study of rules start. This is where morality takes over in judgements. People compete for power here, yet compete using rules that are agreed on. Chaos unchecked? No thanks. Now the flip side of the lower levels becomes apparent: selfishness breeds anarchy, so rules it is. It’s Good vs. Evil, us vs. them. Life demands order. Level 4 birthed all higher-level civilizations.

Level 5: Achieve: Now we’re into the land of libertarians, big L and little l versions. About 28% of people reach this level on a daily basis. Rules are for rubes. Freedom über alles. Good and bad? That’s subjective. Life is about results. Set goals, crunch the numbers, win big, add sawdust to the raisin bran if nobody notices. Why bow to a boss or a Bible? The Level 5 achiever is the builder, the provider, the man who turns dirt into dynasties. It’s the dad working doubles so the kids eat steak, not ramen. I think the majority of the success of the United States has been entirely due to Level 5 behavior, so therefore it is called toxic masculinity.

Level 6: Understand: Here’s where the wheels start wobbling off the cart, and also where higher-level thinking is observably worse than lower-level thinking. In Level 6, uniqueness reigns; old rules are chains. Life celebrates diversity! Every truth is a perspective, every culture is valid, except (in the Western version) that mean old Christian patriarchy. Reject hierarchies, listen to the oppressed, seek consensus, live, laugh, love. Subjectivity rules; impose nothing.

Sounds noble, right? Until you try validating all cultures and beliefs and fetishes. That’s the rot. I mean, it’s well-meaning, but it rests upon a fundamental denial of reality. Seek “understanding” without boundaries, and boom: Moslims torch the gay bar that the Level 6 people thought would be just fine right next to the mosque as hoe_math described it. Because why?

Because no matter how much Level 6 thinkers want 82 I.Q. people from Somalia to be accepting, tolerant, and embrace the gay lifestyle, they are Level 3 thinkers that want to chuck the gays off cliffs just to see what sound they make when they hit bottom. This leads to the GloboLeftElite® importing clash after clash into the nation, then cries “tolerance!” while cities burn. Truth dies on the altar of feelings.

Pathologies? Narcissistic echo chambers and spineless relativism. It’s why campuses are safe spaces for screams of GloboLeftist rage but not debate and England will tolerate rape and murder as a Moslem/Hindu team sport but not tolerate people noticing it.

Level 7: Harmonize: Finally, wisdom dawns. Despite being only 5% of the population, I would bet that most of my regular readers get here or hang out at Level 5. On either side of this, we’ve seen the mess that Level 6 is. The problem with Level 6 is that it’s based on lies. Pretty lies, but lies nonetheless.

The rules we made up at Level 4? Some of them make fundamental sense in a way that, if you ignore them, birthrates of smart people plummet and the birth of idiots is reinforced. Or crime rate increases. Or we decide that creating fiat currencies is a good thing, just like they did in Weimar Germany.

But reality exists. Those Level 4 rules aren’t random! It is folly of the highest order to ignore them. Complex systems demand rules and judgement in order to work, and mixing cultures sometimes ends up with the result that border walls are way better than immigration. This is toxic masculinity, yet again: the harmonizer is the statesman, the elder who balances freedom with fences, innovation with inheritance. It’s the patriarch reading the room - protecting the tribe by pruning threats, not hugging them. The dangers here are existential drift that leads to nihilism or half-baked gurus with books to sell.

As I said, only 5% get here regularly. Why? It takes I.Q. to juggle viewpoints, model systems empirically, and see patterns in the interactions. Low I.Q. folks stall at Level 4 conformity and Level 6 is a trap for people who want to see a beautiful world that could never exist.

So, why fixate on these? Because Level 6 thinking led, at least partially, to the trouble we’re in now. Endless “understanding” ignores that not all cultures play nice and that our people need jobs, too. Validate it all, and you get Paris no-go zones or Rotherham horrors. Level 6 whispers “coexist,” but Level 7 shouts “think about this.”

The same level of thinking that got us into this mess isn’t going to get us out of it, and, sadly we’re going to have to continue to go after and eliminate Level 6 thinking where we see it. And we will, because the result of losing? It’s Level 3. And the world already has way too much India."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

Jim Kunstler, "Insurrection Anyone?"

"Insurrection Anyone?"

by Jim Kunstler

"Friday is a perfect day to indict Schifty!"

 - Svetlana Lokhova

"Tomorrow, Saturday, October 18, you might have heard, is this year’s culminating “No Kings” protest demo all over land. We’ve been to a couple of these curious spectacles since springtime here in the Hudson River Valley, in the next town over. The crowd there was just about entirely made up of aging Boomers, joyfully re-living the halcyon days of the Vietnam protests. It was kind of like a street production of the old Broadway hit Hair, only with a cast of 75-year-olds. Let the sun shine in! But this rural, small-town corner of America is overwhelmingly geriatric. There is next to nothing for young people to do around here, so they flee at the earliest opportunity. The catch is: turns out that opportunity is rather scarce elsewhere, too.

For sure, many of these hippie elders have children, even grandchildren now, who are exactly those who are not thriving in the places they have fled to. Deep down, they don’t really know who to blame. Something has gone wrong in this country. But their placards said “Resist.” Resist what? We asked. Trump, of course. Trump, Trump, Trump, we go a’marchin’. He’s Stealing our democracy! Meaning: Trump is the one responsible for our country’s decades-long descent into economic failure, political animus, and social degeneracy. You had to wonder who is paying them to yell an empty slogan that Nancy Pelosi has repeated a million times. We are going to find out.

Tomorrow’s “No Kings” action is apt to be a bit livelier in the crisp fall weather, at least in the cities where the under-employed, debt-oppressed, hormonally-driven younger gen folk gravitate into organized cadres more prone to physically acting-out their discontents - groups like Antifa. The street action lately in places like Portland, Oregon, Chicago, and Los Angeles has gotten quite a bit rowdier since last spring.

Positions have hardened, largely because the Democratic Party is going extinct. As that occurs, its tactics wax more desperate, tending more towards riots and violence. A lot of the recent violence is in service to the project of rescuing illegal immigrants from deportation. Democratic Party leaders such as LA Mayor Karen Bass say the protesters are defending “the community.”

Community is a magic word in the argot of The Resistance. Community is a giant, warm, welcoming amoeba that absorbs all comers into its gelatinous folds, conferring solidarity and safety from outside threats such as the US immigration laws. Of course, the reason that the Democrats are so desperate to rescue illegal immigrants is that millions were allowed to enter the country on-purpose by “Joe Biden” in order to provide a gigantic legion of fresh voters inclined to elect Democrats, so the party won’t go extinct. Thus, expelling them, as the professors might say, is problematic.

Flooding the land with illegal immigrants for four years was a deliberate program, then. It was melded with such devices as the motor-voter process that automatically registers to vote anyone who applies for a driver’s license. All a state had to do was declare that anyone, citizen or not, is eligible for the driver’s license... and, cazart... newly-minted voters by the millions! It was so arrantly in-your-face that you have to wonder why nobody has moved to stop it.

But they didn’t. Not even the hated Trump, at least not yet. But we have reason to hope that motor-voter and the other devices for rigging elections can be disassembled before the 2026 midterms. Surely the mail-in ballot has lost its justification - if it even had any - now that the Covid op is bygone. How can any state justify not requiring voter ID based on proof of citizenship at registration? It’s a sign of how generally psychotic - or nefariously careless - our culture had become that there should be any question about proof of citizenship.

You might have heard the good news that the Dominion Voting Machine company was sold last month to Liberty Vote, a Missouri-based company. Dominion machines had been used in twenty-eight states, including states with the sketchiest election results: Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Dominion was previously owned and based in Canada, a country lately captured by crypto-Marxists in thrall to European banking interests. The Dominion machines have long been accused of containing modems enabling connection to the Internet, and thus to hacking. Plus, they’d contained lines of Chinese software. The new owner promises major changes in the way that votes are tabulated.

Don’t be surprised if tomorrow’s “No Kings” demo descends into violence, arson, and looting. The Democratic Party needs this happen so it can provoke the president to invoke the Insurrection Act, so they can label him “Hitler” again. It is another absolutely in-your-face move. Mr. Trump has discussed the possibility of having to invoke the act. Such a dynamic course of events will backfire badly on the desperate Democrats. More than half the country has had enough of Woke Marxist roguery. They will probably be glad to see extraordinary measures used to stop it, and to override the rogue judiciary that lets it loose on the nation.

It can’t be hard at all to discover who has been paying for this Resistance uprising that includes the “No Kings” demos. It is relatively easy to track the money trails from one bank to another, or many banks to many others, and to see which NGOs are sending all the dough... and then who among the operational units are receiving it. It is all going to be shut down. People will be charged and indicted, perhaps even mayors and governors. The charges will be serious. Stand by to see how all this unspools tomorrow."

- https://www.kunstler.com/