"When I See..."

"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair." 

- Blaise Pascal

Ahh, but it does, especially these days...

The Daily "Near You?"

Wheat Ridge, Colorado, USA. for stopping by!

"The Day..."

“The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smiles; and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone. Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night’s heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but angels of God.”

- Jerome K. Jerome

The Poet: Shel Silverstein, “Where the Sidewalk Ends”

“Where the Sidewalk Ends”

“There is a place where the sidewalk ends

And before the street begins,

And there the grass grows soft and white,

And there the sun burns crimson bright,

And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark street winds and bends.

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The place where the sidewalk ends.”

- Shel Silverstein

"Why Modern Society Doesn’t Think Critically – George Orwell’s 'Animal Farm'"

Full screen recommended.

The Psyche, 11/21/25

"Why Modern Society Doesn’t Think Critically – 

George Orwell’s 'Animal Farm'"

"Why does modern society no longer think critically? Why do so many people repeat ideas instead of questioning them? And why did George Orwell foresee this mental decline decades before the digital age? In this video, we dive deep into 'Animal Farm' - Orwell’s brilliant allegory that reveals how societies slowly surrender their ability to think, how language is weaponized to shape perception, and how truth becomes flexible in the hands of power. Through psychology, philosophy, and real-world parallels, we explore how modern life mirrors the farm: endless noise, emotional manipulation, groupthink, and the disappearance of independent thought."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from 

pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which."

"Animal Farm"

by George Orwell

Biographical note: "George Orwell, 1903-1950, was the pen name used by British author and journalist Eric Arthur Blair. During most of his professional life time Orwell was best known for his journalism, both in the British press and in books such as "Homage to Catalonia," describing his activities during the Spanish Civil War, and "Down and Out in Paris and London," describing a period of poverty in these cities. Orwell is best remembered today for two of his novels, "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four."

Description: Power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely- and this is vividly and eloquently proved in Orwell's short novel. "Animal Farm" is a simple fable of great symbolic value, and as Orwell himself explained: "it is the history of a revolution that went wrong." The novel can be seen as the historical analysis of the causes of the failure of communism, or as a mere fairy-tale; in any case it tells a good story that aims to prove that human nature and diversity prevent people from being equal and happy, or at least equally happy.

"Animal Farm" tells the simple and tragic story of what happens when the oppressed farm animals rebel, drive out Mr. Jones, the farmer, and attempt to rule the farm themselves, on an equal basis. What the animals seem to have aimed at was a utopian sort of communism, where each would work according to his capacity, respecting the needs of others. The venture failed, and "Animal Farm" ended up being a dictatorship of pigs, who were the brightest, and most idle of the animals.

Orwell's mastery lies in his presentation of the horrors of totalitarian regimes, and his analysis of communism put to practice, through satire and simple story-telling. The structure of the novel is skillfully organized, and the careful reader may, for example, detect the causes of the unworkability of communism even from the first chapter. This is deduced from Orwell's description of the various animals as they enter the barn and take their seats to listen to the revolutionary preaching of Old Major, father of communism in Animal Farm. Each animal has different features and attitude; the pigs, for example, "settled down in the straw immediately in front of the platform", which is a hint on their future role, whereas Clover, the affectionate horse" made a sort of wall" with her foreleg to protect some ducklings.

So, it appears that the revolution was doomed from the beginning, even though it began in idealistic optimism as expressed by the motto "no animal must ever tyrannize over his own kind. Weak or strong, clever or simple, we are all brothers." "When the animals drive out Mr. Jones, they create their "Seven Commandments" which ensure equality and prosperity for all the animals. The pigs, however, being the natural leaders, managed to reverse the commandments, and through terror and propaganda establish the rule of an elite of pigs, under the leadership of Napoleon, the most revered and sinister pig.

"Animal Farm" successfully presents how the mechanism of propaganda and brainwashing works in totalitarian regimes, by showing how the pigs could make the other animals believe practically anything. Responsible for the propaganda was Squealer, a pig that "could turn black into white." Squealer managed to change the rule from "all animals are equal" to "all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." He managed to convince the other animals that it was for their sake that the pigs ate most of the apples and drank most of the milk, that leadership was "heavy responsibility" and therefore the animals should be thankful to Napoleon, that what they saw may have been something they "dreamed", and when everything else failed he would use the threat of "Jones returning" to silence the animals. In this simple but effective way, Orwell presents the tragedy and confusion of thought control to the extent that one seems better off simply believing that "Napoleon is always right".

Orwell's criticism of the role of the Church is also very effective. In 'Animal Farm', the Church is represented by Moses, a tame raven, who talks of "Sugarcandy Mountain", a happy country in the sky "where we poor animals shall rest forever from our labors". It is interesting to observe that when Old Major was first preaching revolutionary communism, Moses was sleeping in the barn, which satirizes the Church being caught asleep by communism. It is also important to note that the pig-dictators allowed and indirectly encouraged Moses; it seems that it suited the pigs to have the animals dreaming of a better life after death so that they wouldn't attempt to have a better life while still alive...

In "Animal Farm," Orwell describes how power turned the pigs from simple "comrades" to ruthless dictators who managed to walk on two legs, and carry whips. The story may be seen as an analysis of the Soviet regime, or as a warning against political power games of an absolute nature and totalitarianism in general. For this reason, the story ends with a hair-raising warning to all humankind: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which."

Free download George Orwell’s “Animal Farm" here:

- http://www.huzheng.org/geniusreligion/AnimalFarm.pdf

"How It Really Is, And Will Be"

 

All Federal, State and global debt in real time...

- https://www.usdebtclock.org/

Michael Snyder, "A Trillion Dollars Goes Poof!"

"A Trillion Dollars Goes Poof! The Epic Cryptocurrency Crash 

That We Are Watching Is A Major Warning Sign For Global Markets"

by Michael Snyder

"The ride up was a lot of fun for crypto investors, but now many of them are getting wiped out by the ride down. For a long time, people were using borrowed money to make absolutely enormous returns in the cryptocurrency market. Unfortunately, that bubble is bursting and an epic cryptocurrency crash is now upon us. The price of Bitcoin has fallen to the lowest level that we have seen in more than six months, and other major cryptocurrencies are getting slammed even harder. In many cases we are seeing forced liquidations take place, and it certainly wouldn’t take much for this panic to bleed over into the stock market. There have already been plenty of signs that the AI bubble is beginning to burst, and once investors start rushing for the exits it could easily turn into a stampede.

The amount of money that crypto investors have already lost is staggering. On October 6th, Bitcoin had a market cap of 2.48 trillion dollars. As I write this article, it has a market cap of 1.72 trillion dollars. That is a loss of more than 750 billion dollars in less than two months. Let that sink in for a moment.

Those that got in at the top of the market are getting absolutely crushed. On August 22nd, Ethereum had a market cap of 583.2 billion dollars. Today, it has a market cap of 341.6 billion dollars. That is a loss of more than 241 billion dollars in less than three months.

On July 21st, XRP had a market cap of 201.4 billion dollars. Today, it has a market cap of 120.1 billion dollars. That is a loss of more than 81 billion dollars.

On September 18th, Solana had a market cap of 134.4 billion dollars. Today, it has a market cap of 73.6 billion dollars. That is a loss of more than 60 billion dollars.

This last example is my favorite. On January 17th, Dogecoin had a market cap of 61.4 billion dollars. Today, it has a market cap of just 22.5 billion dollars. That is a loss of more than 38 billion dollars. In other words, Dogecoin has lost nearly two thirds of its value since January 17th. If you invested in Dogecoin, I hope that you got out in time.

When you total all five of the examples that I have shared above, the collective losses come to well over a trillion dollars. There are more than 17,000 other cryptocurrencies that are being actively traded, and most of them have been getting monkey-hammered in recent months as well. Speculative bubbles can be fun, and if you time things just right you can make a lot of money. But if your timing stinks, you can end up being the one holding the bag when the wheel stops spinning.

In the days ahead, a lot more bubbles are going to burst because the real economy is steadily deteriorating. Earlier today, CNBC posted an article that declared that we are in “a structural goods recession”, and anyone that looks at the numbers objectively cannot deny this…"For the first time in 2025, rates for van, flatbed, and refrigerated loads in October were all lower on both a month-over-month and year-over-year basis, according to the DAT Truckload Volume Index. “Freight volumes in the third quarter and October reflect what we’re seeing in the broader goods economy, with shippers drawing on inventory built up earlier in the year to reduce their exposure to tariffs and weak consumer demand,” said Ken Adamo, DAT chief of Analytics. “As a result, the traditional peak holiday shipping season looks virtually non-existent this year,” Adamo said.

Van truckloads were down 3% compared to September, and 11% year over year. Refrigerated truckloads were down 2% month over month, and 7% year over year. Flatbed truckloads were down 4% month over month and 3% year over year. The reduced level of dry van and temp-controlled loads that are moving now through the supply chain are goods moving from distribution centers to retailers. The causes of the trade decline range from weakness in housing and manufacturing to energy costs, and shippers pulling forward imports earlier in the year and building inventories to reduce tariff impacts."

Meanwhile, the number of corporate bankruptcies just continues to soar. According to Zero Hedge, through the month of October the number of corporate bankruptcies in the U.S. had already nearly reached the grand total for the entire year of 2024…"First came the spectacular implosions of subprime auto lender Tricolor and auto-parts supplier First Brands. Then came the regional-bank fiasco, prompting JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon to warn that more late-cycle accidents may be ahead. Add in signs that lower-income consumers are tapped out, frothy valuations across the AI equity sphere, and even Bitcoin sliding below $100,000, and it’s no surprise that many are beginning to wonder whether mounting financial stress signals the early stages of a broader downturn."

Another flashing red warning sign is new data from S&P Global this past week, showing that through October, 655 companies have filed for bankruptcy, nearly matching the 687 total for all of 2024. S&P Global data showed that in October alone, there were 68 new corporate bankruptcies filings. In August, there were 76 filings, the highest monthly tally since at least 2020.

As even more large companies get into financial trouble, we will see even more mass layoffs. Today, everyone is talking about how Verizon is planning to cut “13% of its workforce”…"Verizon CEO Dan Schulman said in a Nov. 20 letter to employees that the wireless telecom is cutting 13,000 employees, or about 13% of its workforce, as it seeks to “evolve as a company” by slashing costs and restructuring operations.

The company employed 99,600 workers at the end of 2024, according to its most recent annual report. “Our current cost structure limits our ability to invest significantly in our customer value proposition,” prompting the need to “evolve as a company,” Schulman wrote in the letter, which was posted on Verizon’s website."

I think that Verizon is going to continue to lose market share to competitors such as T-Mobile. It just isn’t being run very well. You can fool people for a while, but reality will always catch up with you eventually. We live at a time when the greatest economic and financial bubbles in our history are starting to burst. I hope that you have positioned yourself for what is coming next, because it is certainly not going to be pleasant."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Everyone is Hunkering Down - Affordability Crisis is Here"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 11/21/25

"Everyone is Hunkering Down - 

Affordability Crisis is Here"

"Middle class collapse is hitting hard, and in today's video, I break down what it means for America right now. From the affordability crisis to skyrocketing restaurant closures, we're seeing the middle class struggle like never before. I’m taking you through the latest developments while filming outside the Bellagio during the Formula 1 race in Las Vegas - it’s a wild scene! We’re talking about financial pullbacks, businesses barely scraping by, and how the rich and poor divide is becoming more apparent. Plus, I share startling stats on restaurant closures and the growing trend of jackpotting ATMs. It’s clear that the middle class is the backbone of society, but what happens when they can’t spend anymore? You’ll see how this is affecting everything from home values to the economy as a whole."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Michael Bordenaro, 11/21/25

"Out Of Business! All 553 Stores Are Closing!"

"It's amazing that you can have businesses that have been around for well over 130 years and even survived the great depression but the economy today is so bad that, only now today they are going out of business. In many ways, this is the worst economy that we have ever experienced considering on the surface things look good but underneath it's anything, but."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Jay Reed, 11/21/25

""Today Is Your Last Day" 

Kroger Just Fired Thousands Using An AI Phone-Call"

"“Today is your last day.” Thousands of Kroger employees heard those words - not from a manager, but from an AI phone call. In a shocking move, Kroger has begun using automated systems to handle mass layoffs, leaving workers blindsided, angry, and humiliated. This isn’t just a company cutting costs - it’s a glimpse into the cold, automated future of the American workforce."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

The Unfolded States, 11/21/25

"10 Big Grocery Chains Closing 

Stores Across America in 2025"

"Americans once believed their neighborhood grocery stores would always be there - bright aisles, familiar brands, and chains that felt too rooted to ever disappear. But in 2025, that belief is breaking apart. Behind shuttered storefronts and empty parking lots, a nationwide grocery unraveling is accelerating faster than anyone expected. From historic names like Piggly Wiggly to modern players like Amazon Fresh and everyday staples like Kroger, Safeway, and Family Dollar - entire sectors of the U.S. food system are being squeezed by inflation, razor-thin margins, aging infrastructure, and a consumer base struggling to keep up. This isn’t just about store closures. It’s about how the American grocery landscape itself is shifting under immense financial pressure.

In this investigative countdown, we break down the ten major grocery chains now cutting locations, retreating from cities, or collapsing outright. Using the latest verified data on closures, operating costs, debt loads, and consumer patterns, we examine what’s truly happening - and what these changes mean for small towns, older adults, working families, and the future of food access in America. A new reality is emerging - one where even the biggest names can vanish almost overnight."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

John Wilder, "Self-Control, Scarlett Johansson, and Cigars: The Keys To Happiness"

"Self-Control, Scarlett Johansson, and Cigars: 

The Keys To Happiness"

by John Wilder

"There’s a dirty little secret nobody in 2025 wants to hear while they’re doom-scrolling on their $1,600 iPhone in a $6 latte haze of mild caffeination in a room filled with hipsters: If everything is awesome all the time, nothing is awesome ever again.

I’ll share an example. There’s a particular Macanudo Maduro® that I love. But if I smoke it every single day, by week three it’s just a brown mouth-trash I’d light up without thinking, same as a Swisher Sweet™. That ribeye, mashed potatoes, corn and, oh, yeah, baby, gravy I used to save for my birthday? Eat it nightly and suddenly it’s just Tuesday protein.

That OnlyFans™ subscription I swore was “art”? Congratulations, I’ve turned Scarlett Johansson’s doppelgänger into wallpaper. (I’ve never been on OnlyFans©, but wanted an excuse to show a picture of Scarlett Johansson’s, um, assets.)

If I do this, my brain now reads “epic” as “baseline.” That is how luxury murders my joy. It’s inflation, but inflation of things that should be spiritually uplifting. If I flood the zone with dopamine, suddenly nothing matters anymore. I become that guy who needs a $400 bottle of wine to feel what normal people feel from a $12 Malbec on a Saturday night dinner with someone they love.

I figured this out slowly. I asked myself, “Why don’t you like that Macanudo™ as much anymore?” I mean, I’ve never treated myself like a Roman emperor with a Costco card: steak whenever, cigars whenever, and Johnny Walker Blue© whenever. But the cigar pointed me towards thinking about what sparking joy is really about.

Sunday only: the good cigar. Monday and Wednesday: a reliable but unremarkable daily drivers. Perfectly fine, but not the king.What a difference!

That Sunday Maduro® became a religious experience. I’d finish putting Monday’s post (yes, I write Monday’s post on Sunday night because I don’t have time travel), hit the hot tub, light the good cigar, and actually taste every note - cedar, cocoa, black pepper, the tears of my enemies, all of it. The other days? I enjoyed the lesser sticks more because I knew something glorious was coming. As the dead Raul Julia said, “There are two things worth living for. One is a good cigar. The other is a better one.”

It’s the same with food, but that’s a future Friday post lurking six months to a year out. I’ll just say, my Friday dinner tastes far better than yours. This is the stoic hack nobody markets because you can’t sell it in a pump bottle or an app or a subscription: deliberate deprivation creates anticipation, and anticipation is the multiplier of pleasure. I can’t recreate the first time I ever had an experience, but I can create enough anticipation to make that experience feel pretty damn good.

The problem is we are a society that is now based on hedonism. Hedonism is spiritual communism: from each according to his credit limit, to each according to his appetite. And like all communist systems, it ends with everyone equally miserable, standing in bread lines for experiences that used to be thrilling.

Look around. We are the richest society in human history and somehow producing the most miserable humans in human history. Suicide rates, antidepressant prescriptions, anxiety, porn addiction, 340% of Gen Z identifying as LGBTQ because vanilla life is so boring they need a new operating system to feel anything and get attention from people who are stuck with their noses in their phones.

This is all downstream of one fatal error: We removed the delay between desire and gratification.

• Want food? DoorDash in six minutes.

• Want sex? Swipe.

•Want entertainment? Infinite scroll.

• Feel bad that someone in Guatemala doesn’t have Hulu®? Invite them all the Squatamalans to come to the United States. Hell, the government will even pay.

• Want validation? Post a thirst trap, harvest likes, repeat until dead inside.

Congratulations, you’ve removed the space where soul is honed to a keen edge! You’ve eliminated the Monday through Saturday of life, the part where you suffer, anticipate, work, wait, and gone straight to an endless Sunday that, paradoxically, feels like nothing at all.

Real joy is not the peak. Real joy is the climb knowing the peak exists. That’s why lifting weights is the ultimate red-pill metaphor for life. Nobody loves the squat rack at 5:30 a.m. in January. But every man who has ever built a body he’s proud of loves having built it. The soreness, the sacrifice, the mornings you didn’t feel like it. That’s the lead up to the Sunday cigar. The physique is just the flavor that hits when you finally light it. Same with marriage, family, wealth, mastery of anything worth doing.

There is no substitute for the iron. You do not get strong without moving heavy things repeatedly while in mild to moderate discomfort.

• You do not get wealthy without years of saying no to stupid purchases.

• You do not get a great marriage without years of not banging the secretary.

• You do not raise great kids without years of being the bad guy who enforces bedtimes.

Every single thing worth having in this life is on the far side of self-control. Which brings us to the trad-right punchline nobody wants to say out loud: our current societal upheaval is not a bug. It is a feature. We spent seventy years removing all friction from life and now we’re reaping the whirlwind of a generation that has never been told no, never waited for anything, never suffered real consequences. The result is not utopia. The result is boys who can’t change a tire, girls who think chastity and modesty are personality disorders, and an entire culture addicted to rage and victimhood because pleasure no longer works on them.

The pendulum is swinging back, hard. It’s swinging back because young men are waking up in droves, hitting the gym, deleting porn, deleting social media, reading the ancients, building families, and discovering something wild: When you voluntarily embrace the Monday through Saturday of life, the discipline, the wait, the work: Sunday actually shows up. And when Sunday shows up after six days of earning it, my God, it is glorious. This scares the GloboLeft so much they even call is fascism.

So, keep your constant luxury. Keep your endless treats, your participation trophies, your “you deserve it” culture. I’ll keep my three cigars a week, my Thursday dinner, my Sunday Macanudo™, and the deep, soul-level satisfaction that comes from knowing I earned every single drag as I stare out into the infinite horizon of the sky.

Because the secret the stoics knew, that our ancestors knew, that every man who ever built something great knew is this: Heaven is only Heaven if you’ve walked through Hell to get there. And brother, I plan on enjoying the hell out of that walk. See you on the other side. I’ll save you a seat. And a good cigar."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/18142-2/

Bill Bonner, "Everybody Loves A Ponzi"

Mugshot of Charles Ponzi, August 1920.

"Everybody Loves A Ponzi"

by Bill Bonner

"Perhaps there is still time to defeat history."

by Daniel Oliver

Baltimore, Maryland - "Mr. Oliver must be an unreconstructed optimist. An un-mugged Democrat. A man enjoying his first vote…or his second marriage. The history he is referring to is the one we know so well. It is the history of booms and busts…and of great nations laid low by the ‘fatal conceit’ of their leaders. All bubbles burst. All paper currencies become worthless. All empires decline and fall.

it is a repeatable, predictable, investable history – at least to some extent. That is, the actual course of future events – as determined by chance, ideas, culture and technology – is completely unknowable.

After all, who could have foreseen that a Serbian anarchist would have lit the fuse on the most devastating blow-up in human history…a war in which the most advanced nations on the planet fought to the death? The combatants had little to gain. And yet, they went at each other hammer and tongs…for four long years. And at the end of it, England and France were bankrupt. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was kaput. The House of the Hohenzollern was finished in Germany. And in Russia, the Tsar and his family were killed and a crackpot new creed – communism – took root.

But human action – the sturm and drang of human emotions…the cycles of greed and fear…and the pattern of life itself…from its promising beginnings to its inevitable decline and fall…blockheadishness, envy, fightin’ spirit, innovation…angels and devils - you can count on them all. They leave the footprints we know as ‘history.’ Follow them, if you can. The trouble with history is that it is unforgiving. Like double entry bookkeeping, for every credit, there’s a debit. Attached to every rise is a fall. You can’t get one without the other.

But let’s keep an open mind. The most glaring and immediate challenge for investors is the AI bubble. Moneywise: "With U.S. stocks powering higher, enthusiasm is running hot. But billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones says today’s environment is giving him flashbacks to the dot-com boom - and not in a warm, fuzzy and nostalgic way."

The historical pattern is undisputed. As more money is ‘invested’, prices rise. Investors’ gains go up. This draws in ‘momentum’ investors…and the returns go higher. So far this year, the Nasdaq has gained 28%. If you had borrowed at 5%, you’d have a 23% gain on money that you never earned or saved.

Everybody loves a good Ponzi! As it draws in more money, the excitement grows. The ‘investment’ becomes more profitable…more attractive…and appears less risky (everybody’s doing it!). And today, the CAPE ratio (cyclically adjusted price earnings) has only been at this level once before…in 1999. What next? As to the Ponzi scheme that doesn’t collapse,’ history is silent. There are none on record.

Busts trail behind bubbles…like alimony payments behind a runaway husband. The only exceptions are theoretical. Output could catch up. Then, there may be no need for a correction to return to a more normal price/earnings ratio. But it has never happened. Not with the promise of the ‘20s – internal combustion engines and electrical appliances. Nor with the promise of the ‘60s – the Nifty Fifty market dominators. Nor with the promise of the ‘90s – the dot.coms. Each time, there were successes…but not enough to avoid a broad market sell-off.

And this time, can AI pay off enough so that the markets ‘defeat history’ by not falling? ChatGPT tells us that the total invested in AI is around $1.5 trillion. Palantir, which uses AI to keep tabs on people, is selling for more than 100 times sales…and 400 times earnings. At those levels, it is not an investment; it’s a pure speculation. You are betting that other speculators will come in with more money…lifting the price even further.

In order to be a solid investment at a decent price, the company would have to increase output (earnings) by 30 times. That is what it would take to get to a ‘sustainable’ P/E. And, again, search the historical record all you want. You will find no substantial company that has ever done it. A tiny start-up can have dramatic growth in profits, sales, and its stock price; but not a company already valued at nearly half a trillion dollars. Even Apple, one of the most successful corporations in history, grew its sales by only 4x over the last 15 years.

What history shows is that normalcy is more likely to be achieved by a sharp fall in the price…rather than a spectacular rise in earnings. Defeat history? We wouldn’t count on it."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Jim Kunstler, "The Monsters' Ball"

"The Monsters' Ball"

by Jim Kunstler

"The old joke goes: A-list actor is having lunch with studio chief. Studio chief says, 'Didja hear so-and-so (well-known Hollywood agent) dropped dead this morning. His heart.' A-list actor says, 'Gee, I didn’t know he had one.'

Kind of brings to mind the late Veep Dick Cheney, who actually did have a heart, but one so grotesquely diseased that he had his first near-fatal infarction at age thirty-seven, followed by surgeries galore, and finally, at age 71, a heart transplant that, quite remarkably, kept him going another thirteen years - long enough to function behind-the-scenes as a senior Deep State cheerleader and strategist through the Trump years. Daughter Liz Cheney, of course, did the political dirty-work, most notably on Nancy Pelosi’s sketchy J-6 Committee, prior to being voted out of office in the 2022 Republican primary for Wyoming’s at-large U.S. House seat with 28.9 percent of the vote to Harriet Hageman’s 66.3 percent.

And so, yesterday, Dick Cheney’s funeral took place at Washington’s National Cathedral, the greatest assemblage of bloodsuckers since the Hammer Film Studio went out of business in 1979. Joe Biden was there, perky as all get-out for somebody with stage-four prostate cancer, shaking hands with Mike Pence, who pulled him over the finish line in 2021. John Brennan, coupster superbus was there. Ditto John Bolton (awaiting trial). Most cheekily of all, Dr. Fauci, the father of Covid-19 and its little helper, the Covid vaxx, was seated next to MSNBC’s loss-leader, Rachel Maddow, who famously declared in 2021, “The virus stops with every vaccinated person!” (Not.)

Also on hand, former president “W,” Mitch McConnell, Al Gore, Nancy P, Adam Schiff, Chief Justice Roberts, Veep-of-all-Veeps, Kamala Harris, and many more. Mysteriously absent: both Clintons and both Obamas - though Bill’s office explained that he had “a scheduling conflict.” Notably uninvited: President Donald Trump and Veep JD Vance, a downright snub, let’s be plain about it. And with it, perhaps a message: Behold the whole gang that has labored tirelessly for a whole decade to run you out of office and stuff you into a prison cell is here to gossip and plot against you some more! Nyah, nyah...

The contrast was pretty stark: MAGA against everybody else inside the DC Beltway. Mr. Trump was certainly at the funeral as a sort of spectral presence, since you can be sure that the only thing they were chattering about was how they were finally going to get him... somehow! (After years of spectacular failure and astonishing reversal-of-fortune.) You might also sense what desperation lurks behind their elitist bravado. Some of these birds are headed into court themselves, perhaps to prison. The prospect must seem acutely unreal to them.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has become the Scarlet Pimpernel of US political history, brave, intrepid, and resourceful, driven by a chivalric hatred of tyranny and injustice while seeming to be a comedian, mocking his persecutors as he escapes one plot after another. Don’t you wish you’d been a fly-on-the-wall at the funeral, and whatever after-party they were all at? The odor of fear must have been eye-watering.

The whole wicked business appears to be lurching toward crisis now as Mr. Trump works implacably to disassemble the treasonous scaffold they operate off of. At midweek, a claque of Democratic Party Senators and Congresspersons, led by former CIA-employee, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, released a social media video appearing to prompt mutiny in America’s armed forces. Their script implied that Mr. Trump was issuing illegal orders, which officers could (and should) refuse to carry out. They offered no examples of such illegal orders.

It’s probably safe to say that they want Americans to think that any order issued by Mr. Trump as Commander-in-chief is ipso facto illegal because... because... well, because Trump! And it is all of a piece with their former rallying cry “our democracy,” flaunted by the worst gang of ballot fraudsters, free speech squashers, and lawfare lizards ever seen in this land.

Mr. Trump responded a bit intemperately on his Truth Social platform, telling the claque that their seemingly seditious act could be answered with the death penalty. He was in error on that. That is the penalty for treason outright. The law on “seditious conspiracy,” US Code Title 18 § 2384, calls for a fine of not more than $250,000 ((adjusted for inflation under 18 US Code § 3571), and a maximum prison sentence up to twenty years.

Anyway, that stunt was not exactly a win for Party of Chaos, but it does make you wonder what their next move is going to be. A "Seven Days in May" style military coup, perhaps? More likely this was a lame rearguard action by a party in retreat and disarray. The angels of justice are coming for them and they know it, despite the machinations of their allied judges to gum up every earnest Article II effort attempted since 1/20/25 to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Even while the people try to settle into the cradle of Thanksgiving hearth and harvest, the wicked creep around setting their traps."

- https://www.kunstler.com/

"The US Economy Is In Big Trouble, Consumers Are Broke"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 11/20/25

"The US Economy Is In Big Trouble, 

Consumers Are Broke"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Grocery Stores Selling Fake Food Products As Prices Explode All Around America"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 11/20/25

"Grocery Stores Selling Fake Food Products 

As Prices Explode All Around America"

"Something's not right with our food in America and people are finally starting to notice. From cloned meat and lab grown products in grocery stores showing up without our knowledge, to declining food quality and prices that keep exploding, our food system is changing in ways most people don't even realize. In this video, we look at what's really happening with our food supply, the lack of transparency, the quality issues people are experiencing, and the rising costs that are making it harder to feed our families every single week. If you've felt like something's off when you're shopping, or you've wondered why food doesn't taste like it used to, you're not alone. It's time we start asking questions about what we're eating and where it comes from."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Mike Oldfield, "Tubular Bells Finale"

Mike Oldfield, "Tubular Bells Finale"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Wisps like this are all that remain visible of a Milky Way star. About 7,000 years ago that star exploded in a supernova leaving the Veil Nebula. At the time, the expanding cloud was likely as bright as a crescent Moon, remaining visible for weeks to people living at the dawn of recorded history. Today, the resulting supernova remnant, also known as the Cygnus Loop, has faded and is now visible only through a small telescope directed toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).

The remaining Veil Nebula is physically huge, however, and even though it lies about 1,400 light-years distant, it covers over five times the size of the full Moon. The featured picture is a Hubble Space Telescope mosaic of six images together covering a span of only about two light years, a small part of the expansive supernova remnant. In images of the complete Veil Nebula, even studious readers might not be able to identify the featured filaments."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Chet Raymo, “Non-overlapping?”

“Non-overlapping?”

by Chet Raymo

“Let me posit a difference between religion and science:

Religion: Future>Present>Past

Science: Past>Present>Future.

Let me explain. Religion, as it has traditionally been understood in its institutional guise, begins with the dream of a comforting future. An escape from the apparently inescapable reality of death. Which impacts our daily lives in the present. Determines, for example, codes of morality, inspires great deeds of goodness or mayhem. Mandates rites and rituals. Appease the gods and live forever. Which requires a story to satisfy the human need for context. So we look to past reports of foundational miracles. Christ rising from the dead. Muhammad's night flight to Jerusalem. Joseph Smith's encounter with the angel Moroni.

Science, on the other hand, begins with the past. With sequences of events that appear to be causally related. The causal connection is affirmed or refuted by experiment. If such-and-such occurred in certain circumstances in the past, does it also occur in the present? We devise quantitative "laws of nature" that express our consistent experience with the past. Which can be extrapolated to predict probable futures.

Stephen Jay Gould called religion and science "non-overlapping magisteria." But they run in opposite directions in our minds. The a priori future of religion is not the same as the a posteriori future predicted by science. Nor is the a posteriori past promulgated by religion susceptible to the a priori examination of science. The opposing intellectual streams of religion and science may be non-overlapping, but the "real" worlds they hypothesize are sharply divergent. Some folks manage to hold both worlds in their minds simultaneously. To me this smacks of cognitive dissonance. For those who can pull it off, more power to them - as long as they don't restrict my freedom to dissent.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Live All You Can..."

"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much

matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.

If you haven't had that, what have you had?"

- Henry James

Col. Larry Wilkerson, "Hezbollah Rising - Israel Is In Serious Trouble"

A brutally horrifying must-view, and YOU, 

Americans, are paying for it all!

Col. Larry Wilkerson, 11/20/25

"Hezbollah Rising - 

Israel Is In Serious Trouble"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Hell..."

"Many people don't fear a hell after this life and that's because hell is on this earth, in this life. In this life there are many forms of hell that people walk through, sometimes for a day, sometimes for years, sometimes it doesn't end. The kind of hell that doesn't burn your skin; but burns your soul. The kind of hell that people can't see; but the flames lap at your spirit. Heaven is a place on earth, too! It's where you feel freedom, where you're not afraid. No more chains. And you hear your soul laughing."

- C. JoyBell C.

I believe it was Sartre who said, "This is Hell, cleverly disguised just 

enough to keep us from escaping." Look at the world... look right around you.

I believe he may be right...

Dan, I Allegedly, "America Can’t Afford to Eat - What’s Next?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 11/20/25

"America Can’t Afford to Eat - What’s Next?"

"The shocking truth about food prices right now is hitting everyone hard. In this video, I’m sharing insights on how inflation, tariffs, and the current economy are making everyday essentials unaffordable for many. From skyrocketing grocery bills to restaurants struggling to keep customers, these are the challenges we’re all facing. Plus, I’ll break down what recent government actions mean for you and why relief is still weeks away."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Philadelphia’s Homeless Crisis 2025: Inside Kensington’s Hidden Collapse & Broken Lives"

Full screen recommended if you can stomach it.

US Homeless Stories, 11/20/25

"Philadelphia’s Homeless Crisis 2025:

 Inside Kensington’s Hidden Collapse & Broken Lives"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"US Unemployment Rises As Americans Prepare For A Recession"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 11/20/25

"US Unemployment Rises 

As Americans Prepare For A Recession"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

@RD-ce6bb: "We have been in a recession since 2022, 

we are now approaching Depression."

The Daily "Near You?"

Georgetown, Maine, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Paulo Coelho, "Walking the Path"

"Walking the Path"

by Paulo Coelho

"I reckon that it takes about three minutes to read my text. Well, according to statistics, in that same short period of time 300 people will die and another 620 will be born. It takes me perhaps half an hour to write a text: here I sit, concentrating on my computer, books piled up beside me, ideas in my head, the scenery passing by outside my window. Everything seems perfectly normal all around me; and yet, during these thirty minutes, 3,000 people have died and 6,200 have just seen the light of the world for the first time.

Where are all those thousands of families who have just begun to weep over the loss of some dear one, or else laugh at the arrival of a son, grandson or brother? I stop and reflect for a while: perhaps many of these deaths are reaching the end of a long, painful sickness, and some persons are relieved that the Angel has come for them. Besides these, in all certainty hundreds of children who have just been born will be abandoned in a minute and transferred to the death statistics before I finish this text.

What a thought! A simple statistic that I came upon by chance – and all of a sudden I can feel all those losses and encounters, smiles and tears. How many are leaving this life, alone in their rooms, without anyone realizing what is going on? How many will be born in secret, only to be abandoned at the door of shelters or convents? And then I reflect that I was part of the birth statistics and one day I will be included in the toll of the dead. How good that is to be fully aware that I am going to die. Ever since I took the road to Santiago I have understood that although life goes on and we are eternal, one day this existence will come to an end.

People think very little about death. They spend their lives worried about really absurd things, putting things off and leaving important moments aside. They risk nothing because they believe that is dangerous. They grumble a lot, but act like cowards when it is time to take certain steps. They want everything to change, but they themselves refuse to change. If they thought a little more about death, they would never fail to make that telephone call that they have been putting off. They would be a little more crazy. They would not be afraid of the end of this incarnation – because you cannot be afraid of something that is going to happen anyway.

The Indians say: “today is as good a day as any other to leave this world”. And a sorcerer once remarked: “may death be always sitting beside you. That way, when you have to do something important, it will give you the strength and courage you need.” I hope, reader, that you have accompanied me this far. It would be silly to let the subject scare you, because sooner or later we are all going to die. And only those who accept this are prepared for life."

- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/

"James Baldwin on How to Live Through Your Darkest Hour and Life as a Moral Obligation to the Universe"

"James Baldwin on How to Live Through Your Darkest Hour 

and Life as a Moral Obligation to the Universe"

by Maria Popova

“Yesterday has already vanished among the shadows of the past; to-morrow has not yet emerged from the future. You have found an intermediate space,” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote of life’s most haunting hour. But what we find in that intermediate space between past and future, between the costumed simulacrum of reality we so painstakingly construct with our waking lives and reality laid bare in the naked nocturnal mind, is not always a resting place of ease - for there dwells the self at its most elemental, which means the self most lucidly awake to its foibles and its finitude.

The disquietude this haunted hour can bring, and does bring, is what another titanic writer and rare seer into the depths of the human spirit - James Baldwin (August 2, 1924–December 1, 1987) - explored 130 years after Hawthorne in one of his least known, most insightful, and most personal essays.

In 1964, as the Harlem riots were shaking the foundation of society and selfhood, Baldwin joined talent-forces with the great photographer Richard Avedon - an old high school friend of his - to hold up an uncommonly revelatory cultural mirror with the book "Nothing Personal" (public library). Punctuating Avedon’s signature black-and-white portraits - of Nobel laureates and Hollywood celebrities, of the age - and ache-etched face of an elder born under slavery and the idealism-lit young faces of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Georgia, of the mentally ill perishing in asylums and the newlyweds at City Hall ablaze with hope - are four stirring essays by Baldwin, the first of which gave us his famous sobering observation that “it has always been much easier (because it has always seemed much safer) to give a name to the evil without than to locate the terror within.”

At no time does the terror within, Baldwin argues in the third essay, bubble to the surface of our being more ferociously than in that haunting hour between past and future, between our illusions of permanence and perfection, and the glaring fact of our finitude and our fallibility, between being and non-being. He writes:

"Four AM can be a devastating hour. The day, no matter what kind of day it was is indisputably over; almost instantaneously, a new day begins: and how will one bear it? Probably no better than one bore the day that is ending, possibly not as well. Moreover, a day is coming one will not recall, the last day of one’s life, and on that day one will oneself become as irrecoverable as all the days that have passed."

It is a fearful speculation - or, rather, a fearful knowledge - that, one day one’s eyes will no longer look out on the world. One will no longer be present at the universal morning roll call. The light will rise for others, but not for you.

Half a century before the physicist Brian Greene examined how this very awareness is the wellspring of meaning to our ephemeral lives and a century after Tchaikovsky found beauty amid the wreckage of the soul at 4AM, Baldwin adds: "Sometimes, at four AM, this knowledge is almost enough to force a reconciliation between oneself and all one’s pain and error. Since, anyway, it will end one day, why not try it - life - one more time?"

After singing some beautiful and heartbreaking Bessie Smith lyrics into his essay - lyrics from “Long Road,” a song about reconciling the knowledge that one is ultimately alone with the irrepressible impulse to reach out for love, “to grasp again, with fearful hope, the unwilling, unloving human hand” - Baldwin continues: "I think all of our voyages drive us there; for I have always felt that a human being could only be saved by another human being. I am aware that we do not save each other very often. But I am also aware that we save each other some of the time."

That alone, Baldwin insists, is reason enough to be, as Nietzsche put it, a “yea-sayer” to life - to face the uncertainty of our lives with courage, to face the fact of our mortality with courage, and to fill this blink of existence bookended by nothingness with the courage of a bellowing aliveness.

In a passage that calls to mind Galway Kinnell’s lifeline of a poem “Wait,” composed for a young friend on the brink of suicide, Baldwin writes: "For, perhaps - perhaps - between now and the last day, something wonderful will happen, a miracle, a miracle of coherence and release. And the miracle on which one’s unsteady attention is focused is always the same, however it may be stated, or however it may remain unstated. It is the miracle of love, love strong enough to guide or drive one into the great estate of maturity, or, to put it another way, into the apprehension and acceptance of one’s own identity. For some deep and ineradicable instinct - I believe -causes us to know that it is only this passionate achievement which can outlast death, which can cause life to spring from death."

And yet, so often, we lose faith in this miracle, lose the perspective we call faith - so often it slips between the fingers fanned with despair or squeezes through the fist clenched with rage. We lose perspective most often, Baldwin argues, at four AM: "At four AM, when one feels that one has probably become simply incapable of supporting this miracle, with all one’s wounds awake and throbbing, and all one’s ghastly inadequacy staring and shouting from the walls and the floor - the entire universe having shrunk to the prison of the self - death glows like the only light on a high, dark, mountain road, where one has, forever and forever! lost one’s way. And many of us perish then."

What then? A generation after Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry composed his beautiful manifesto for night as an existential clarifying force for the deepest truths of the heart, Baldwin offers: "But if one can reach back, reach down - into oneself, into one’s life - and find there some witness, however unexpected or ambivalent, to one’s reality, one will be enabled, though perhaps not very spiritedly, to face another day… What one must be enabled to recognize, at four o’clock in the morning, is that one has no right, at least not for reasons of private anguish, to take one’s life. All lives are connected to other lives and when one man goes, much more goes than the man goes with him. One has to look on oneself as the custodian of a quantity and a quality - oneself - which is absolutely unique in the world because it has never been here before and will never be here again."

Baldwin - whom U.S. Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Brooks described as “love personified” in introducing his last public appearance before his death - wedges into this foundational structure of soul-survival the fact that in a culture of habitual separation and institutionalized otherness, such self-regard is immensely difficult. And yet, he insists with the passion of one who has proven the truth of his words with his own life, we must try - we must reach across the divides within and without, across the abysses of terror and suspicion, with a generous and largehearted trust in one another, which is at bottom trust in ourselves.

Echoing his contemporary and kindred visionary Leonard Bernstein’s insistence that “we must believe, without fear, in people,” Baldwin adds what has become, or must become, the most sonorous psychosocial refrain bridging his time and ours: "Where all human connections are distrusted, the human being is very quickly lost."

More than half a century later, "Nothing Personal" remains a masterwork of rare insight into and consolation for the most elemental aches of the human spirit. For a counterpoint to this nocturnal fragment, savor the great nature writer Henry Beston, writing a generation before Baldwin, on how the beauty of night nourishes the human spirit, then revisit Baldwin on resisting the mindless of majority, how he learned to truly see, the writer’s responsibility in a divided society, his advice on writing, his historic conversation with Margaret Mead about forgiveness and responsibility, and his only children’s book."

- https://www.themarginalian.org/

o

Freely download "Nothing Personal", 

by James Baldwin and Richard Avedon, here:

- https://monoskop.org/

o

Bessie Smith, "Long Old Road" (1931)