Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"
Full screen mode recommended.
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, November 14, 2020
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the colorful study in cosmic contrasts shares this well-composed, nearly 1 degree wide field with open star cluster Messier 21 (top right).
Click image for larger size.
Trisected by dust lanes the Trifid itself is about 40 light-years across and a mere 300,000 years old. That makes it one of the youngest star forming regions in our sky, with newborn and embryonic stars embedded in its natal dust and gas clouds. Estimates of the distance to open star cluster M21 are similar to M20's, but though they share this gorgeous telescopic skyscape there is no apparent connection between the two. In fact, M21's stars are much older, about 8 million years old.”
"The Real Glory..."
"The image that comes to mind is a boxing ring. There are times when you just want that bell to ring, but you're the one who's losing. The one who's winning doesn't have that feeling. Do you have the energy and strength to face life? Life can ask more of you than you are willing to give. And then you say, 'Life is not something that should have been. I'm not going to play the game. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to call "out". There are three positions possible. One is the up-to-it, and facing the game and playing through. The second is saying, "Absolutely not. I don't want to stay in this dogfight." That's the absolute out. The third position is the one that says, "This is mixed of good and evil. I'm on the side of the good. I accept the world with corrections. And may the world be the way I like it. And it's good for me and my friends." There are the only three positions."
- Joseph Campbell
“How Buster Douglas Beat Mike Tyson”
by johnnysmack7
“Going into the fight, Mike Tyson was the undefeated and undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. He held the WBC, WBA, and IBF titles. Despite the several controversies that marked Tyson’s profile at the time, such as his notorious, abusive relationship with Robin Givens; the contractual battles between longtime manager Bill Cayton and promoter Don King; and Tyson’s departure from longtime trainer Kevin Rooney, Mike Tyson was still lethal in the ring, scoring a 93-second knockout against Carl “The Truth” Williams in his previous fight. Most considered this fight to be a warm-up bout for Tyson before meeting up with then-undefeated number 1 heavyweight contender Evander Holyfield (who was ringside for the fight). Tyson was viewed as such a dominant heavyweight that he was not only viewed as the world’s top heavyweight, but often as the number one fighter in the world pound-for-pound (including by “Ring Magazine”), a rarity for heavyweights.
Buster Douglas was ranked as just the #7 heavyweight by Ring Magazine, and had met with mixed success in his professional boxing career up to that point. His previous title fight was against Tony Tucker in 1987, in which he was TKO’d in the 10th round. However, a string of six consecutive wins gave him the opportunity to fight Tyson. In the time leading up to the fight, Douglas faced a number of setbacks, including the death of his mother, Lula Pearl, 23 days before the fight. Additionally, the mother of his son was facing a severe kidney ailment, and he had contracted the flu on the day before the fight.”
- http://www.knockouts2sleep.com
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“The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back.
That’s real glory. That’s the essence of it.”
- Vince Lombardi
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Full screen mode recommended.
At 2:40 of this video Douglas takes a tremendous uppercut and goes down, kneeling to clear his head; look closely...you can see him wondering to himself if he should get up. No one at all expected him to, but he reached for something deep inside himself, found an inner strength perhaps even he was unaware of, and got back up to continue the fight. The rest, as they say, is history… and real glory. – CP
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The Poet: Langston Hughes, "Life is Fine "
"Life is Fine "
"I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.
I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.
But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!
I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby,
And thought I would jump down.
I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.
But it was High up there! It was high!
So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love -
But for livin' I was born.
Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry -
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.
Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!"
- Langston Hughes
Kahlil Gibran, "The Madman"
"The Madman"
by Kahlil Gibran
"It was in the garden of a madhouse that I met a youth with a face pale and lovely and full of wonder. And I sat beside him upon the bench, and I said, “Why are you here?” And he looked at me in astonishment, and he said, “It is an unseemly question, yet I will answer you. My father would make of me a reproduction of himself; so also would my uncle. My mother would have me the image of her seafaring husband as the perfect example for me to follow. My brother thinks I should be like him, a fine athlete. And my teachers also, the doctor of philosophy, and the music-master, and the logician, they too were determined, and each would have me but a reflection of his own face in a mirror. Therefore I came to this place. I find it more sane here. At least, I can be myself.” Then of a sudden he turned to me and he said, “But tell me, were you also driven to this place by education and good counsel?”
And I answered, “No, I am a visitor.”
And he answered, “Oh, you are one of those who live in the madhouse on the other side of the wall...”
"The War Against Will"
"The War Against Will"
by Paul Rosenberg
"The modern world will allow you to join any of a thousand collectives, but it will punish you for standing on your own, as a self-willed entity. People who commit this crime understand that they are outlaws in the present world. And if at first they don’t understand that, the world makes sure they know.
The world as it is, then, is the enemy of will. This is nothing new, of course, governments have been at war against will since they began: How else can you get people to blindly obey you, to hand over half their income, and to thank you for it? People who possess a full and active will must be convinced to do things, and governments couldn’t function if they had to do that.
The present world is built around the restraint of will, and not just on the government level. Advertising, for example, is more or less devoted to implanting subconscious desires and subverting the will with them. In dysfunctional families, manipulating one another – whether by guilt, ridicule, being left out of Papa’s will or whatever – is the currency of the realm.
And so obedience, consumption and acquiescence have become cardinal virtues, and the avoidance of immediate pain the prime directive. As we might paraphrase an old apostle, this world’s God is the belly.
The Willful, For Whom Heaven And Earth Were Created: All human creativity functions on individual will. Everyone interested in creativity knows this, and here are just a couple of passages to make the point:
"Everything that is really great and inspiring is
created by the individual who can labor in freedom."
- Albert Einstein
"This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the
individual human is the most valuable thing in the world."
- John Steinbeck
It is the active will of individuals that has created everything good in this world. Really, life comes down to a choice between creativity and entropy:
• The world (the realm of officialdom, acquiescence and so on) is an incarnation of entropy, winding down and collapsing once the fuel left to it by creative men and women of the past is burned out.
• The creatives, who are willing to take blows in defense of their willfulness, and who bless the world in myriad ways
The willful, then, are creativity incarnate; the universe is and ought to be dedicated to beings of their type. It should also be populated by beings of their type, and I think someday shall be.
This is not to say that entropic people can’t make their way out of entropy and join the creatives; in fact they can, and do, on a daily basis. Still, it is a gulf that must be crossed, and the only way across is to act on one’s own will, alone, and for purely self-generated reasons. That is the price.
The Automated War On Will: The great threat of the modern world is a system I call Descartes’ Demon, the Big Data/AI personalized manipulation system that is already in daily use. I held back talking about this for years, seeing that it was too much for people to bear, but the beast has progressed so far that I can’t see holding back any further.
The Matrix, as it turns out, was all too true, and its world is now the world of Facebook, Twitter and especially Google. The real-life version of The Matrix is functional, right now. (See here for explanation, or here for illustration.) What personalized manipulation is really all about is the subversion of individual will. And if you don’t think it’s happening, pull up YouTube on your smart phone, then ask your friend to pull it up on his or hers: You’re already receiving personalized pages. The world is deeply committed to passing this off as trivial and ridiculing those that don’t. But it isn’t trivial; it’s a present and actual war against free will.
We Are Inherently Creative: Humans are inherently creative beings. We cannot create matter out of nothing, but we can mold it to an infinite number and variety of uses. We are the fountains of new and beneficial action in the universe. And we ought to function that way.
I’ll leave you with a few words from Albert Schweitzer: "Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among the crowd and in opposition to it… It is only an ethical movement which can rescue us from the slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals." This is what we need… and we need it now."
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"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 11/14/20"
NOV 14, 2020 4:33 PM: "NJ Reports New Record Jump In Daily COVID-19 Cases: Live Updates"
NOV 14, 2020 12:40 PM: "US Tops 170k New COVID Cases For First Time As 11 Million-Mark Nears: Live Updates"
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Nov. 14, 2020 12:25 AM ET:
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 53,453,200
people, according to official counts, including 10,818,611 Americans.
Nov. 14, 2020 12:25 AM ET:
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count◆
Updated 11/14/20, 11:25 AM ET
Click image for larger size.
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A "Must Read":
"Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell Admits The Truth: 'We’re Not Going Back To The Same Economy'”
"Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell Admits The Truth:
'We’re Not Going Back To The Same Economy'”
by Michael Snyder
"Even Jerome Powell is admitting that the boom years are over. For months, I have been trying to explain to my readers that the debt-fueled “prosperity” that we were enjoying prior to the COVID pandemic won’t be coming back, and initially I received quite a bit of criticism for saying that. But that criticism has subsided, because at this point pretty much everyone can see the truth. Despite stimulus package after stimulus package, and despite unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve, we continue to be mired in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Fear of the virus continues to drag down the overall level of economic activity, more businesses are going under with each passing day, and the layoff announcements never seem to end.
Normally, Federal Reserve officials try very hard to be relentlessly optimistic. But during a European Central Bank panel discussion on Thursday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell openly admitted that “we’re not going back to the same economy”: “We’re not going back to the same economy,” Powell said. “We’re recovering, but to a different economy and it will be one that is more leveraged to technology, and I worry that it’s going to make it even more difficult than it was for many workers.” The central bank leader said he was referring specifically to “relatively low-paid public-facing workers who are bearing this brunt,” many of whom are women and minorities.
His use of the phrase “a different economy” really got my attention. When I am trying to break some really bad news to someone in a gentle way, I will often use the word “different” to describe what things will be like moving forward, and I think that Powell is doing the same thing here. He knows that there is no way that things will “return to normal” any time soon, and he is quite correct to be particularly concerned about how this will affect low paid workers.
Low paid workers have been losing their jobs at a much higher rate than anyone else, and the job losses just keep rolling in. On Thursday, we learned that another 709,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, and that number is more than three times higher than what we witnessed during a typical week in 2019: "The Labor Department report showed an eleventh straight week that new jobless claims totaled below 1 million. But new claims have not yet broken back below 700,000 since the start of the pandemic and have held sharply above levels from before the outbreak. Throughout 2019, new initial unemployment claims were coming in at an average of just over 200,000 per week."
As of October 24th, a total of 21.16 million Americans were bringing home some type of unemployment assistance. One year ago, that number was just 1.45 million. In other words, we are in the midst of a national unemployment nightmare. And many analysts are deeply concerned that the new wave of lockdowns that is now starting to happen around the nation will cause a renewed surge in layoffs:
"As colder weather sets in and fear of the virus escalates, consumers may turn more cautious about traveling, shopping, dining out and visiting gyms, barber shops and retailers. Companies in many sectors could cut jobs or workers’ hours. In recent days, the virus’ resurgence has triggered tighter restrictions on businesses, mostly restaurants and bars, in a range of states, including Texas, New York, Maryland, and Oregon. “The risk may be for more layoffs as coronavirus cases surge and some states impose restrictions on activity,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, an economist at the forecasting firm Oxford Economics.
Yesterday, I discussed the fact that one of the experts on Joe Biden’s new COVID-19 advisory board wants a full national lockdown for at least a month once Biden is in the White House. Needless to say, that would make the economic depression that we are currently suffering through a whole lot worse. But of course there are a lot of Americans out there that simply are not going to put up with any more lockdowns. In fact, one new survey has found that only 49 percent of all Americans “would be very likely to stay home for a month if health officials recommend it”:
"Fewer than half of Americans say are very likely to comply with another lockdown, despite growing concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, the latest Gallup polling shows. About 49% of Americans polled between October 19 and November 1 said they would be very likely to stay home for a month if health officials recommend it following a coronavirus outbreak in their community, down from 67% in the spring."
Millions upon millions of lives were turned upside down by the lockdowns that were previously instituted, and the economic damage caused by another round of lockdowns would be incalculable. But it appears that more lockdowns are coming anyway, and that means a lot more economic suffering is ahead.
Prior to the pandemic, 38-year-old Victoria Perez was working two jobs, but she quickly lost both of them once COVID came along. Now she and her children are living in city housing in Oakland, California, and they are just one step away from being homeless: "Among them is Victoria Perez, who was working two delivery jobs before the pandemic struck. Having lost both jobs in the spring, she is now living with her children in city-subsidized housing near Oakland, California, and hoping to avoid homelessness. The city housing, provided to people at heightened risk of the coronavirus, lasts only through December. Perez, 38, is a cancer survivor."
After the holiday season, what is she supposed to do if she can’t find a new job? Being homeless is bad enough. When you add children to the equation, we are talking about the sort of nightmare scenario that nobody should ever have to go through. Unfortunately, the ranks of the homeless are absolutely exploding all over the country as the U.S. economy crumbles right in front of our eyes.
In 2021, I am anticipating the biggest wave of traffic in the history of The Economic Collapse Blog as our ongoing economic implosion accelerates even more. I have been hearing from so many people out there that are deeply hurting right now, and I wish that I had better news for everyone. Sadly, the consequences for decades of exceedingly foolish decisions are catching up with us, and saying that we are heading into a “different economy” is definitely a major understatement."
"The Great Reset" Already Happened
"'The Great Reset' Already Happened"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"The global elites' techno-fantasy of a completely centralized future, The Great Reset, is addressed as a future project. Too bad it already happened in 2008-09. The lackeys and toadies tasked with spewing the PR are 12 years too late, and so are the critics listening to the PR with foreboding. Simply put, events outran our understanding of them. The future already manifested while we were trying to cram the present arrangement into an obsolete conceptual framework.
In broad-brush, the post-World War II era ended around 1970. The legitimate prosperity of 1946-1970 was based on cheap oil controlled by the U.S. and the hegemony of the U.S. dollar. Everything else was merely decoration.
The Original Sin to hard-money advocates was America's abandonment of the gold standard in 1971, but this was the only way to maintain hegemony. Maintaining the reserve currency is tricky, as the nation issuing the reserve currency has to supply the global economy with enough of the currency to grease commerce and stock central bank reserves around the world.
As the global economy expanded, the only way the U.S. could send enough dollars overseas was to run trade deficits, which in a gold standard meant the gold reserves would go to zero as trading partners holding dollars would exchange the currency for gold. So the choice was: give up the reserve currency and the hegemony of the U.S. dollar by jacking up the dollar's value so high that imports would collapse, or accept that hegemony was no longer compatible with the gold standard. It wasn't a difficult decision: who would give up global hegemony, and for what?
Many other dynamics changed around the same time: social, cultural, political. These charts reflect the end of the postwar era and the ushering in of a new era.
Again in broad-brush, the key economic dynamic was the decline of labor's share of the economy in favor of capital. Those who had only their labor to sell lost purchasing power, while those who could borrow or access capital benefited enormously. The charts below tell the story: labor's share of the national income has stairstepped lower for 50 years (since 1970) while the super-wealthy's share has outpaced everyone else 15-fold. The dominance of financial capital is visible in the third chart, as private-sector financial assets are now 6 times the nation's GDP, double the percentage of the postwar era.
This capital-friendly era was rocket-boosted by financialization in the 1980s, technology in the 1990s and globalization in the early 21st century. You can see each advance of capital's top tier--the top 0.1% - in the chart below: the top 0.1% first pulled away in the 1980s financialization, stutter-stepped in the early 1990s and then exploded higher as technology fueled capital's leverage and exposure to the gains reaped by computers and the Internet.
Alas, these extremes are not stable or sustainable, and so each wave ends in a devastating crash. The income of the top 0.1% took a hit as the dotcom bubble burst, but then China's entry into the WTO saved the day as rampant globalization and additional extremes of financial leverage and fraud boosted their fortunes in the 2000s.
The dual extremes of financialization and globalization created the 2008 bubble, and its collapse almost took down the entire global capital house of cards. Central banks, ultimately financed by the Fed to the tune of $29 trillion, twice the size of America's entire GDP, instituted The Great Reset under the usual guise of "emergency measures" which then became permanent policies.
The Great Reset led to the hyper-centralization of control over the global economy's money as central banks coordinated unprecedented money-printing and financial repression, which includes zero-interest rate policies (ZIRP), as the debt-bubble would pop if rates aren't nailed down to zero.
All the PR being spewed about The Great Reset is the final frantic flailing of a system that's drowning in its own excesses. The 50-year long era of the few enriching themselves as the expense of the many has ended, for the same reason eras of extreme exploitation always end - the elites got too greedy and overshot the economy's ability to sustain their rapidly expanding share of the income and wealth.
Put another way: the elites have cannibalized the system so thoroughly that there's nothing left to steal, exploit or cannibalize. The hyper-centralized global money control has run out of rope as the cheap oil is gone, debts have ballooned to the point there is no way they'll ever be paid down, and the only thing staving off collapse is money-printing, which holds the seeds of its own demise.
Allow me to summarize the only way The Great Reset envisioned by global elites can actually manifest: The Martians arrive towing huge meteorites of pure lithium and gold, and rather than incinerating the global elites, they hand the global elites the meteorites to further their concentration of wealth and power.
Short of that science fiction, this sucker's going down. The Great Reset has already run its course after 12 long years of artifice, fraud and trickery. So global elite shills, lackeys, factotums, toadies and apparatchiks - prepare for your Wil-E-Coyote moment of truth."
Musical Interlude: Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feels So Bad" (Ben-E.dit)
Moby,
"Why Does My Heart Feels So Bad" (Ben-E.dit)
Full screen mode recommended.
Friday, November 13, 2020
"Watch This!"
"Watch This!"
by Dmitry Orlov
"There are times in my career as a collapse observer and systematizer when my running commentary can quite reasonably be pared down to just two words: “Watch this!” The current severe stage of the financial and economic collapse sequence that was initiated in 2008, which is being artificially masked (no pun intended) by the Covid “pandemic,” and now a hung and fraudulent US election on top of it is just such an occasion: why not just sit back and watch the world burn? But I happen to be in a particularly good and sprightly mood today, and when I get that way few things can hold me back from holding forth and bloviating prophetically.
Let’s start with a quick jaunt down memory lane. I first realized that the USA was going to follow the general trajectory of the USSR back in 1995. I also immediately realized that the USSR was rather well prepared for collapse whereas the USA was about to be blindsided by it, and so, as a public service, I thought I should warn people. “And a fat lot of good that did!” some of you might immediately exclaim. But you would be wrong: lots of people have written to me to say how much better adjusted they are psychologically now that they have heard and accepted my message, for now they are ready to accept collapse with equanimity and poise. This is sure to make their company less tedious moving forward.
And so I had my “Eureka!” moment in 1995, and a decade later, in 2005, I went public with my observations. I got a surprisingly sympathetic response from some particularly enlightened people (even if they said so themselves). And now, a quarter of a century after my initial insight, as the US enters national bankruptcy and institutional collapse, the whole world is being treated to an end-of-empire spectacular election extravaganza starring none other than the consummate showman and impresario extraordinaire Donald Trump. He used to run beauty pageants, while this one is more of an ugliness pageant, but then beauty is rare and always fades while ugliness is commonplace and usually just gets uglier, making it a much safer bet. And so let’s accept it as a parting present to the world from a vanishing nation that gave us horror flicks, reality television and three-ring circuses with sideshow freaks.
Within the sweeping panoramic tableau of the 2020 election, Trump (our hero) appears bathed in a golden sunset glow of nostalgia for lost American greatness which he forever promises to rekindle. Rest assured, Trump or no Trump, America will never be great again. But Trump’s magic halo extends out from his resplendent orange cranial plumage and enfolds all those who pine for the lost Pax Americana and fear and loathe what America is fast becoming—which is, to put it bluntly, a holding tank for degenerates of every stripe presided over by a freak show. They pine for a time when men were manly and women womanly, when secretaries were flattered when their bosses took time away from their busy schedules to rub up against them, and when everyone was either a WASP, or worked hard on trying to look and act like one, or kept to their assigned station in life and knew better than to get too uppity. They want to believe that the ethnic melting pot can still produce noble alloys, preferably Corinthian bronze, and certainly not clinker or slag.
Arrayed against our fearless orange-hued leader, who at 74 is no spring chicken himself, is a ghoulish gaggle of geriatric gerontocrats.
There is Joe Biden, 77, whose brain ran away and joined a circus some years ago but who imagines himself to be president-elect, or senator, or vice-president, or something. Having spent eight years lurking in the shadows as Obama’s VP, Biden is as fit to lead as a pig is kosher after rubbing its side against a corner of a synagogue. To assist Biden in his dodderings there is his party-appointed nanny, Kamala Harris, a mere slip of a girl at 56.
Also haunting the balcony of the American mausoleum is Nancy Pelosi, 80, who still runs the House of Representatives even though proper employment for her at this point would be up on a pole keeping the birds off the corn. There is also Bernie Sanders, 79, a sad pagliaccio whose permanent role in the political Commedia dell’Arte that the Democratic Party stages every four years is to simulate democracy by cheerleading crowds of young imbeciles in Act I, to feign death after falling off his pogo stick in Act II, and to stagger to his feet, wave and smile for the curtain call.
Last but not least, there is the horrid harpy Hillary Clinton, who is relatively young at 73 but whose putrid smell and cadaverous, ghastly visage are not longer fit for public display except in most delicately contrived circumstances. Hidden even further backstage is the suppurating cadaver of George Soros who, at 90, is still pulling the strings and wreaking havoc in the US and around the world. (His minions had recently spread color revolution to Armenia, in turn causing it to “elect” Pashinyan, a choice imbecile and a traitor, who then lost a big chunk of Armenian territory to Azerbaijan.) I could mention quite a few other financial corpses and oligarchic cadavers, but will refrain, to avoid giving you nightmares. Nobody lives forever, not even Henry Kissinger, 97, and so all we have to do is wait.
In healthy societies, older leaders age out and make room for younger leaders who take over for them after a lengthy period of study and apprenticeship. In sick societies, older leaders cling to power with no one competent there to replace them and once they die are replaced by traitors and criminals. The USSR and the USA are two such examples. The late Soviet serial gerontocracy of Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, who for a time haunted the balcony of the Lenin mausoleum and, once dispatched to the netherworld, were swiftly replaced by the traitorous duo of blabbermouth Mikhail Gorbachëv and Drunk President Boris Yeltsin, was a tragedy for Russia. The resulting die-off was of the same order of magnitude as the losses incurred during World War II. In accordance with the worn-out cliché about history repeating, the current American gerontocracy is more of a farce than a tragedy, but its results are likely to be no less lethal for the population.
To complete this ghastly tableau, in the ongoing US presidential election, an almost-dead candidate and his charming assistant have been voted for by an army of the undead: voters that have mailed in their ballots in spite of being deceased. I have spot-checked a bit of the incriminating evidence myself, and I am pretty sure that there were over 11,000 such voters in a single Michigan county alone. But this is by no means a local scam: among many other vote-counting shenanigans, it appears that there was a nationwide effort to order mail-in ballots for dead people, fill them out for Biden, and mail them in. You might say that this is a human rights issue: why deprive dead people of their right to vote? Isn’t it about time to stop discriminating against the dead? Perhaps LGBTQ should be amended to LGBTQD for “Dead.” But why stop there? Why not also add a “U” for the unborn and stop this unpardonable discrimination against abortions?
In any case, dead voters for Biden turn out to be just the tip of an entire iceberg of election fraud. There are also the over 1.8 million nonexistent yet registered voters discovered by Judicial Watch back in September. Add to that the faulty voting system, creepily named “Dominion,” which miscounted votes to favor Biden. Add to that the undeservedly kid-gloved and fawning press coverage afforded to Biden and the US mass media’s overwhelmingly hostile attitude toward Trump. Add to that the fraudulent poll data which, just as prior to the 2016 election, was contrived to make a fraudulent Biden victory seem plausible. Add to that the amply funded organizations such as BLM and Antifa (in which the “Anti-” prefix is gratuitous, this organization in fact being very much “Fa…”) which have been ordered to protest, loot and riot in many major US cities, moving their mercenaries from location to location, where they then recruit useful idiots among the locals. What this adds up to is a vast, brazen, carelessly self-incriminating conspiracy to overthrow a sitting president through election fraud.
If you believe even for a moment that I am scandalized, disgusted and outraged by this trampling of the sacred principles of democracy, then pardon me while I shake my head sardonically while quietly chuckling to myself. No, I am not the least bit upset. In fact, this development fills me with optimism for the future. I believe that this ghastly institutional failure is a wonderful development that offers great hope to the rest of the world, and perhaps even to the US itself, although the political environment in the US appears to be rather hopeless irrespective of how horribly or wonderfully its ridiculous electoral system can be made to function.
In any case, it would be futile to try to give the US some semblance of a democratic election system. It would be like trying to clean up a beach by picking up empty beer cans around a beached whale. The presidency, after four years of ham-handed efforts to unseat a president using false evidence, is a failed institution. Congress, which now nonchalantly overspends federal revenue by a factor of three, is a fiscal zombie. The Federal Reserve, which is now a pure pyramid scheme, is a financial zombie. And then there is the rest of the ridiculously bloated US economy, which is waiting for a stiff gust of wind to cause ephemeral wealth to flood out of stocks and bonds and into cash, much of it evaporating in the process and the rest causing a tsunami of consumer price inflation.
In the course of this spectacle, the false image of the US as a shining city on a hill, a beacon for huddled masses yearning to breathe free and a beneficent global policeman safeguarding “universal human rights,” enforcing “universal human values” and spreading “freedom and democracy” around the world is being stomped into the dirt, having excrement poured all over it, and being stomped into the dirt some more. As the curtain descends on this final act of Pax Americana, the image of the orange enfant terrible and the senile puppet with his child-nurse in tow playing on the teeter-totter of electoral dysfunction on the playground of second childhood will forever remain etched into the retinas of the whole world. The whole world will then be able to move on and look for worthier role models and for less corrupt policemen. And that’s progress!
The collapse of the USA will make the collapse of the USSR look like a stroll through a leafy park and a boat ride on a placid pond. I’ve been saying this for 15 years now. My message is still there, for all those who wish to understand what’s been happening and to keep their sanity."
“Small Business Gutted; Economy Shutting Down Again; Auto Sales Slow Down; More Job Losses Coming”
Jeremiah Babe,
“Small Business Gutted; Economy Shutting Down Again;
Auto Sales Slow Down; More Job Losses Coming”
"The Housing Debt Bubble Is Going To Burst: Be Ready For Housing Market Crash!"
"The Housing Debt Bubble Is Going To Burst:
Be Ready For Housing Market Crash!"
by Epic Economist
"The housing debt bubble is about to explode and bleed over the fragile U.S. economy. With nearly 100 billion dollars in accumulated debt, the housing market will face a lot more torment as another round of lockdowns is looming. Many determinants will play a decisive part in the burst of this massive bubble, and in this video, we're going to analyze each and every one of them.
In a recent article, the economy expert Patrick Hill has described the events that will inevitably trigger the housing debt bubble burst. Hill argues that the initial push to this domino fall is the uncontrolled growth of the virus. This month, the U.S. had a 44% increase in daily registered cases, and while hospitalizations have been persistently rising in 42 states, new lockdown proposals are considering to shut down the entire economy for weeks.
When lockdowns close the economy, consequently, economic activity significantly contracts, particularly in sectors that rely on foot traffic. With limited operations or no functioning at all, and left without any revenue for weeks or even months, companies most affected by the lockdown are forced to let their workers go.
The labor market already faced several rounds of massive lay-offs. According to the Department of Labor data, right now there are over 22.6 million workers on continuing unemployment assistance. This level of unemployment is 22 times the 1 million figure from a year ago. However, millions of workers haven't qualified for extended benefits and the total number of unemployed workers is much higher than those recorded by the federal agency, a much more realistic rate of unemployment is around 26%. Yet, a lot more trouble is coming for the labor market.
Last week, the World Travel & Tourism Council announced that 9.2 million jobs could be lost in the sector if barriers to global travel remain in place. And the lockdown hasn't even been fully implemented in the U.S. yet, which means that the sector is only going to face more hardships from now on, unemployment rates will skyrocket, and as a result, personal income will sharply drop.
Previously, consumers' personal income received assistance from several sources. But now, a substantial budget squeeze has begun. In the absence of a steady income and further federal aid, unemployed workers can't find the means to make ends meet, and are missing rent and home mortgage payments. A study forecasts that by 2021 the housing market will have accumulated at least $100 billion in rental and mortgage debt.
In face of a growing number of rental delinquencies, landlords are also dealing with extra pressure to afford their mortgages. And ever since the federal moratorium expired courts have been in favor of landlords' demands and evictions rates are steadily climbing. Approximately 16% of all U.S. renters will face eviction by January 2021.
To avoid eviction, consumers are using credit cards to make their rental payments. This indicates that consumers only reallocated their debt from rent to credit cards, and while unemployed or on reduced income assistance, their debt shortly becomes unsustainable. Defaulting on their credit cards will hurt their credit score and make it more difficult to obtain other housing because they have an eviction record.
In this sense, while renters can't meet their payments, their landlords still have to pay the mortgage on their building. And even though some small business landlords have demanded the eviction of their delinquent tenants to find a paying renter, by the 1st quarter of 2021, millions of people will have been evicted or will have poor credit, and finding another paying tenant will become a difficult mission.
That’s to say, since small business landlords are experiencing a sharp income decline and reduced prospects for new paying tenants, they will likely default on their mortgage. Likewise, homeowners are expected to default on their mortgages just as well. "With unemployment increasing and lockdowns forecast, there may be an increase in the number of forbearance plans," Hill says "other homeowners who don’t qualify for forbearance are delinquent in making payments.”
All of these factors are being layered one upon the other, creating a perfect economic storm. Additionally, consumer spending is also expected to shrink in the first half of next year since the bottom 80% of consumers facing deep financial suffering.
For that reason, experts say that from now on, any periods of quietness in the markets are only going to be a pause for us to prepare for an economic catastrophe. This isn’t the end of the storm, it is just the eye, the worst is yet to come."
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"A Look to the Heavens"
“Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax galaxy cluster.
This impressively sharp color image shows intense star forming regions at the ends of the bar and along the spiral arms, and details of dust lanes cutting across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the central black hole.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100820.html
The Poet: W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"
"September 1, 1939"
"Defenseless
under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out
wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame."
- W.H. Auden
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"On September 1, 1939, the German army under Adolf Hitler launched an invasion of Poland that triggered the start of World War II (though by 1939 Japan and China were already at war). The battle for Poland only lasted about a month before a Nazi victory. But the invasion plunged the world into a war that would continue for almost six years and claim the lives of tens of millions of people."
"Never Be A Spectator..."
"Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you."
- Christopher Hitchens
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