Wednesday, December 9, 2020

"Invasion Of The Body Snatchers - Psychological Warfare Disguised As A Pandemic Threat"

"Invasion Of The Body Snatchers - 
Psychological Warfare Disguised As A Pandemic Threat"
by John W. Whitehead

“Look! You fools! You’re in danger! Can’t you see? 
They’re after you! They’re after all of us! 
Our wives...our children...they’re here already! You’re next!”
- Dr. Miles Bennell, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956)

"It’s like 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' all over again. The nation is being overtaken by an alien threat that invades bodies, alters minds, and transforms freedom-loving people into a mindless, compliant, conforming mob intolerant of anyone who dares to be different, let alone think for themselves.

However, while Body Snatchers - the chilling 1956 film directed by Don Siegel - blames its woes on seed pods from outer space, the seismic societal shift taking place in America owes less to biological warfare reliant on the COVID-19 virus than it does to psychological warfare disguised as a pandemic threat.

As science writer David Robson explains: "Fears of contagion lead us to become more conformist and tribalistic, and less accepting of eccentricity. Our moral judgements become harsher and our social attitudes more conservative when considering issues such as immigration or sexual freedom and equality. Daily reminders of disease may even sway our political affiliations. Various experiments have shown that we become more conformist and respectful of convention when we feel the threat of a disease… the evocative images of a pandemic led [participants in an experiment] to value conformity and obedience over eccentricity or rebellion.

This is how you persuade a populace to voluntarily march in lockstep with a police state and police themselves (and each other): by ratcheting up the fear-factor, meted out one carefully calibrated crisis at a time, and teaching them to distrust any who diverge from the norm."

This is not a new experiment in mind control. The powers-that-be have been pushing our buttons and herding us along like so much cattle since World War II, at least, starting with the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, which not only propelled the U.S. into World War II but also unified the American people in their opposition to a common enemy.

That fear of attack by foreign threats, conveniently torqued by the growing military industrial complex, in turn gave rise to the Cold War era’s “Red Scare.” Promulgated through government propaganda, paranoia and manipulation, anti-Communist sentiments boiled over into a mass hysteria that viewed anyone and everyone as suspect: your friends, the next-door neighbor, even your family members could be a Communist subversive.

This hysteria, which culminated in hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where hundreds of Americans were called before Congress to testify about their so-called Communist affiliations and intimidated into making false confessions, also paved the way for the rise of an all-knowing, all-seeing governmental surveillance state.

The 9/11 attacks followed a similar script: a foreign invasion mounts an attack on an unsuspecting nation, the people unite in solidarity against a common foe, and the government gains greater war-time powers (read: surveillance powers) that, conveniently enough, become permanent once the threat has passed.

The government’s scripted response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been predictably consistent: once again, in order to fight this so-called “foreign” foe, the government insists it needs even greater surveillance powers.

As we’ve seen since 9/11 and more recently with the COVID lockdowns, those in power have always had a penchant for enacting extreme measures to combat perceived threats. However, unlike the modern America police state, the American government circa the 1950s did not have at its disposal the arsenal of invasive technologies that are such an intrinsic part of our modern surveillance state.

Today, we are watched and tracked 24/7; data is collected on us at an alarming rate by governmental and corporate entities; and with the help of powerful computer programs, American domestic intelligence agencies sweep our websites, listen in on our telephone calls and read our text messages at will. Now with the COVID pandemic and its offshoots such as contact tracing and immunity passports, the governmental landscape is even more invasive.

Yet no matter the threat, the underlying principle remains the same: can we hold onto our basic freedoms and avoid succumbing to the soul-sucking dredge of conformity that threatens our very humanity?

This conundrum is at the heart of the 1956 classic 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers,' which was based on a 1954 science fiction novel by Jack Finney (and later remade into an equally chilling 1978 film by Philip Kaufman). 'Body Snatchers' not only captured the ideology and politics of its post-war era but remains timely and relevant as it relates to the worries that plague us today. Filmed with only seven days of rehearsal and 23 days of actual shooting, 'Body Snatchers' is considered one of the great science fiction classics.

'Body Snatchers' is set in a small California town which has been infiltrated by mysterious pods from outer space that replicate and take the place of humans who then become conforming non-individuals. Miles Bennell, the main character, is a local doctor who resists the invaders and their attempts to erase humanity from the face of the earth.

At the very least, the film conveys a double meaning, serving as both a mirror of a particular moment in history and a compass pointing to a growing societal illness. Following World War II with the emerging military empire, the atomic bomb and the Korean War, Americans were confused and neurotically preoccupied with domestic threats, the polio pandemic and international political events, not much different from today’s populace preoccupied with domestic and international political drama, terrorism and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet Siegel’s film delves beneath the surface to confront an even more sinister threat: the dehumanization of individuals and the horrifying possibility that humanity could become infused as part of the societal machine. Central to the film is one key speech delivered by Bennell while hiding from the aliens: "In my practice, I see how people have allowed their humanity to drain away...only it happens slowly instead of all at once. They didn’t seem to mind. All of us, a little bit. We harden our hearts...grow callous...only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is."

As Siegel makes clear, it is not Communists or terrorists or even viral pandemics that threaten our well-being. The real enemy is invasive governmental measures - something we now see happening across the country - and, thus, totalitarian conformity. And resistance must be against all government measures that threaten our civil liberties and against all kinds of conformity, no matter the shape, size or color of the package it comes in.

When all is said and done, however, the real threat to freedom (in the fictional world of Body Snatchers and in our present-day America) is posed by an establishment - be it governmental, corporate or societal - that is hostile to individuality and those who dare to challenge the status quo. The mob hysteria, sense of paranoia, fascist police and the witch hunt atmosphere of the film mirror the ills of a 1950s America that is frighteningly applicable to present American society.

Acknowledging that 'Body Snatchers' portrayed the conflict between individuals and varied forms of mindless authority, Siegel stated, “I think the world is populated by pods and I wanted to show them.” He explained: "People are pods. Many of my associates are certainly pods. They have no feelings. They exist, breathe, sleep. To be a pod means that you have no passion, no anger, the spark has left you. Of course, there’s a very strong case for being a pod. These pods, who get rid of pain, ill-health and mental disturbances are, in a sense, doing good. It happens to leave you in a very dull world but that, by the way, is the world that most of us live in. It’s the same as people who welcome going into the army or prison. There’s regimentation, a lack of having to make up your mind, face decisions. People are becoming vegetables. I don’t know what the answer is except an awareness of it."

All of the threats to freedom came about because “we the people” stopped thinking for ourselves and relinquished control over our lives and our country to government operatives who care only for money and power.

While the specific game plan for turning things around is complicated by a police state that wants to keep us at a disadvantage, the solution is relatively simple: Don’t be a pod person. Pay attention. Question everything. Dare to be different. Don’t follow the mob. Don’t let yourself become numb to the world around you. Be compassionate. Be humane. Most of all, think for yourself."

"How Are Things Going, Joe?"

"People are sad. People are broke. People are worried about money, people are worried that they're not enough and not amounting to anything and they don't feel good about themselves. People have rough times, and everybody's pretending it's not true, and we need to break that veneer."
- Eve Ensler
"You go up to a man, and you say, 'How are things going, Joe?' and he says, 'Oh fine, fine... couldn't be better.'  And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn't be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody's having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much." 

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."
- Kurt Vonnegut, "Mother Night"

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/8/20"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/8/20"
Dec. 8, 2020 2:07 PM ET: 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 67,949,100 
people, according to official counts, including 15,113,900 Americans.
At least 1,550,500 have died.

"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, 
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.

Musical Interlude: Alan Parsons Project, “Ammonia Avenue”

Alan Parsons Project, “Ammonia Avenue”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Globular clusters once ruled the Milky Way. Back in the old days, back when our Galaxy first formed, perhaps thousands of globular clusters roamed our Galaxy. Today, there are less than 200 left. Many globular clusters were destroyed over the eons by repeated fateful encounters with each other or the Galactic center. Surviving relics are older than any Earth fossil, older than any other structures in our Galaxy, and limit the universe itself in raw age.
There are few, if any, young globular clusters in our Milky Way Galaxy because conditions are not ripe for more to form. Pictured above by the Hubble Space Telescope are about 100,000 of M72's stars. M72, which spans about 50 light years and lies about 50,000 light years away, can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Water Bearer (Aquarius).”

"A Wise Man Once Said..."

“A wise man once said you can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. What he meant is nothing comes without a price. So before you go into battle, you better decide how much you’re willing to lose. Too often, going after what feels good means letting go of what you know is right, and letting someone in means abandoning the walls you’ve spent a lifetime building. Of course, the toughest sacrifices are the ones we don’t see coming, when we don’t have time to come up with a strategy to pick a side or to measure the potential loss. When that happens, when the battle chooses us and not the other way around, that’s when the sacrifice can turn out to be more than we can bear.”
- “Dr. Meredith Grey”, “Grey’s Anatomy"

Chet Raymo, “On Saying ‘I Don't Know’"

“On Saying ‘I Don't Know’"
by Chet Raymo

"When Charles and Emma Darwin bought the house that would be their family home for forty years, at Downe, sixteen miles south of London, one of Charles' first improvements was to have the flints removed from the property's chalky meadow. The glassy stones were more than an agricultural nuisance; they were a puzzle to be solved. The countryside about Downe is pretty much pure chalk, and Darwin was confident he knew where the chalk came from: the calcerous deposits of the myriad planktonic organisms that lived in a sea that was once superincumbant upon the land. But what was the origin of the flints and how did they find their way into the chalk?

Tramp across any plowed field in England's chalky North or South Downs and these fist-sized nodules of pure, hard, yellow silica are common underfoot. In the white cliffs along the English Channel they can sometimes be seen interspersed in the chalk as dark bands. The flints are chemically very different from chalk, and their presence in the otherwise pure calcium carbonate has long been something of a geological mystery.

Darwin was baffled. The most plausible modern explanation is that the nodules had their origin in siliceous sponges that grew on the sea floor and other siliceous marine microfossils. When these organisms died, their substance dissolved in sea water and was dispersed within the carbonate ooze, then precipitated out around other organic remains in a process called petrification. This modern explanation sounds a little iffy to me. I'm no geologist, but if someone asked me where the flints came from, I'd say with Darwin: "I don't know." Those three little words - "I don't know" - may be modern science's most important contribution to the world. Yes, we have learned an astonishing amount about how the world works, but of equal significance is our growing awareness of how much we don't know. The physician/essayist Lewis Thomas wrote: "The greatest of all the accomplishments of twentieth-century science has been the discovery of human ignorance."

Charles Darwin was certainly not adverse to saying "I don't know," and did so frequently in his many letters to family and friends. He was especially ready to confess his ignorance with regard to the big questions, the questions traditionally addressed by religion. Like Einstein and other great scientific minds after him, he was deeply conscious of the profound mystery of existence, and reluctant to cover his ignorance with myth and fable.

In a letter to the American biologist Asa Gray, Darwin wrote: "I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can."

The physicist Heinz Pagels might have been describing Charles Darwin when he wrote: "The capacity to tolerate complexity and welcome contradiction, not the need for simplicity and certainty, is the attribute of an explorer. Centuries ago, when some people suspended their search for absolute truth and began instead to ask how things worked, modern science was born. Curiously, it was by abandoning the search for absolute truth that science began to make progress, opening the material universe to human exploration."

Consciousness of our ignorance is a very modern thing, and an open door to mystery. Darwin counted himself an agnostic, but in his reverence for the creative agency of nature I would count him a devoutly religious man. "There is a grandeur in this view of life," he famously wrote on the last page of "The Origin of Species"; the grandeur Darwin spoke of has more of the divine about it than did any Olympian diety.

Today, Darwin's home has been lovingly restored to what it was in his lifetime, and a visitor can almost feel the spirit of the great man moving through the rooms that once bustled with happy family life. A collection of flints is arrayed on a table in Darwin's cluttered study, as they might have been when Darwin sat beside them pondering their meaning. Those glassy stones were a adamantine reminder of how rich was the mystery of existence and how little of it he yet understood.”

"Acceptance..."

"Acceptance is a crucial step forward for those who prefer the idea of living this life over simply existing within it. Accept all that you've said and what you've done, because you cannot change your past. Accept the idea of the unknown, because the future is the unknown waiting patiently to reveal itself. Accept the person you have become thus far in your journey, because you are the only person who will be there with you when you finish it. Do all of this so that you may never find yourself having to accept regret that haunts you at two a.m., leaving you sweaty and broken hearted. All you have is this minute; not this hour, or this day, or this year. Live in this minute so that you won't get stuck simply existing with your guilty past, or with nothing but anxiety for the future."
- Margaret E. Rise

"Market Fantasy Updates PM 12/8/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates PM 12/8/20"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"The more I see of the monied classes, 
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Gregory Mannarino, PM 12/8/20:
"Freak Show: Market Hits All-Time New High;
 I Reveal A Secret!"
Updated live.
Daily Update (Dec. 8th to Dec. 10th)
Insanity... 
And now... The End Game...

The Daily "Near You?"

Arkansas City, Kansas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Science Ãœber Alles"

"Science Ãœber Alles"
by Bill Bonner

"But the Earth does move!"
– Physicist and philosopher, Galileo Galilei, 
recanting his recantation, after being tried for heresy.

WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "Now in its tenth month in the U.S., the coronavirus is becoming as familiar as bad breath. And many of the things we knew for sure about it in March… well… we’re not so sure anymore.

At first, we were told that face masks weren’t important. Later, we were told that the public health officials simply lied scientifically; they were afraid people might buy up all the available masks… thus depriving the “first line defenders” of their precious armor. Then, face masks became compulsory. “The science” tells us that they help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But if that were so, how come places that require face masks don’t have lower case counts? According to the COVID Tracking Project, there is no difference in caseloads between places where face masks are required by law… and places where they are not. We don’t know whether face masks help or not. But neither do the “scientists.”

Evolving Science: Today, we write with no new information. Instead, we have an old observation: Science is overrated. Every society has its elites – people with brains, ambition, talent, and confidence. These elites turn to government to get power. Then, they use that power to get money.

In the very old days, they claimed a special relationship with God. Today, it is scientific Truth that sits on their shoulders and whispers in their ears. But science is never fixed… never solid… never, ever figured out. Instead, it drifts on a river of uncertainty… picking up useful insights along the way… but never knowing where it is going, and never arriving at its final destination. One hypothesis is put forward. And then, discredited, another takes its place.

Aristotle wrote his essay, "Physics", in the 4th century BC. Then came Ptolemy… Copernicus… Galileo… Newton… and Einstein. And then, leaving Einstein like a baby abandoned in the bullrushes, came Werner Heisenberg, with his quantum physics. Each one brought not just an incremental improvement, but a revolution. Each one came up with a better model. But none discovered the Complete Truth.

Always in Doubt: Only a quack scientist would ever say, “Lockdowns and face masks work.” Real scientists know that lockdowns and face masks are only ways to implement a hypothesis…that the coronavirus can be slowed by putting up barriers, which itself is just part of another hypothesis…that we should slow down the virus rather than let it speed up, a subset of still another hypothesis that it is better not to get the virus than to get it…which is just a subset of a further hypothesis, and so on.

Scientists never know anything for sure. Everything is a hypothesis. And it is only valid until it is disproven. Always and everywhere is doubt. We have only a few pieces of the puzzle. Yes, we add pieces from time to time… And yes, we have a better picture today than we had 100 years ago. But a real scientist knows that a few more pieces might alter the scene completely.

Brightest and Best: Pharaoh claimed to be a god himself. Later kings and queens claimed to have been divinely appointed. And now, we have leaders who think they have the right to boss us around – as long as they get a majority vote in the Electoral College.

When few people could read, the elites were said to have the Truth available to them – and only them – in the sacred books. And then, when reading and writing became ubiquitous, the Truth was made available to all through the public schools. There, children were taught to pledge allegiance to the flag and to the Republic for which it stands. In “civics” class, they learned that democracy inevitably puts the brightest and best in command.

And these enlightened leaders claim to be guided neither by gods nor by tradition nor by self-interest… but by “The Science.” With their Ph.D. advisers, they can be counted on to make the best decisions in every arena – foreign policy, domestic policy, money matters, public health issues… you name it.

Scientific Socialism: The Nazis claimed, for example, that their master race theories were based on the science of eugenics (improving the human race), which was very popular before Hitler gave it a bad name. Margaret Sanger, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, John Maynard Keynes, and Linus Pauling all favored it to one degree or another. Germany’s race laws were supposedly based on California’s eugenics laws of the early 20th century.

Over in the Soviet Union, meanwhile, the Bolsheviks advertised that their whole system was based on science, from the Kremlin to the Gulag Archipelago. “Scientific socialism” they called it. The term was used by German philosopher Friedrich Engels, among others, to describe a society ordered along supposedly rationalist – rather than traditionalist – lines. Why leave it to the capricious “market” to decide who gets what, in other words? The Communist Party elite could decide it themselves.

Constitutional Rights Trump Science: And in today’s America, many people are ready, once again, to bow before the graven image of Science. Here’s Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, claiming that science should overrule the U.S. Constitution: "When it ruled this week against New York state’s decision to limit religious gatherings in a few high-incidence parts of New York City, the court proved the dangers of scientifically illiterate judges overturning government decisions that were based on scientific evidence.

Quick-witted readers will realize that the Constitution clearly gives citizens the right to go to church. The Supreme Court did not say – in this year of The Plague – whether it was a good idea or not. It merely pointed out the obvious fact that observing the fundamental law of the land, as written in the Constitution, is not optional. Neither the mayor, the city council, nor the governor had the right to ignore it."

Dear Readers who have been doing their homework also know that the “science” supporting lockdowns… close-outs… and button-ups is weak, at best. Wearing a mask may or may not prevent you from spreading the virus… or from getting it; we don’t know. But we also know that the Constitution was written to limit the power of the feds – even when there’s a nasty bug going around.

Recall, too, that science worshippers went into hysterics when Amy Barrett, during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings, dared to doubt the Global Climate Change creed. Said Ms. Barrett: "I don’t think that my views on global warming or climate change are relevant to the job I would do as a judge. Nor do I feel like I have views that are informed enough, and I haven’t studied scientific data. I’m not really in a position to offer any kind of informed opinion."

Fake scientists cannot tolerate open minds. It is like knocking over tombstones, says Shana Lazerow, a busybody in California: "The people who will be impacted the most are the low-income communities of color who already bear a disproportionate burden of our society’s industrial activities. Striking down our climate protections is a specific act of racism."

Suspend Your Disbelief: But here at the Diary, our beat is money… And that is where we find the most strident and most delusional of the science disciples. There, they must not only suspend their disbelief… they must leave their good sense dangling, too, like a heretic hung from a willow tree. Stay tuned."

"A Little Late..."

 

"A Resolving Picture"

"A Resolving Picture"
by Jim Kunstler

"Much as Chief Justice John Roberts would like to be the finger down the Deep State’s throat to trigger the up-chucking of Mr. Trump from the nation’s gullet, it looks like he won’t get his chance in the new 6-3 disposition of the US Supreme Court. So far, it is Justice Samuel Alito in the lead, preparing a landing zone for the President’s case against the state of Pennsylvania in its shabby-ass attempt to stuff its ballot boxes with iffy mail-in votes. I believe that case is going to be heard, and Justice Robert’s position will be moot.

The problem over in PA is that its Act 77 bill passed before the election by the state legislature to expand absentee balloting (i.e., mail-in voting) did not comply with the PA state constitution, and required a constitutional amendment, which never happened. Could be pretty cut-and-dried. While the SCOTUS is thought to be reluctant to intervene in state constitutional issues, a case involving federal elections may prove an exception. And then there are other issues with the states of Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona. A lot of electoral votes there.

The virtual takeover of US elections by the Dominion vote tabulation company was a stealth operation probably enabled by the connivance of scores of elected officials at both the federal and state levels - senators, congressmen, governors, and on down. It’s been going on for years due to the secrecy of the op and the complacency of the public, with a little help from the Democratic Party’s friends in the news media. Did money change hands? Potential criminal violations abound.

What on earth was Canada-based Dominion, with its grotty Smartmatic software - connected to Venezuela and to George Soros’s would-be world-changing Open Society Foundation, and very possibly to China’s ruling party - doing in charge of counting our votes? Perhaps serving something other than America’s national interest. We’ll soon find out in a way that will make a lot of heads explode.

An awful lot has been churning in the deep background for months before the election. Mr. Trump was onto the mass write-in vote scam enabled by the media-assisted hysteria over Covid-19. The wheels of genuine US intel against national security threats still turned in spite of whatever Deep State perfidy had been aimed at Mr. Trump himself from Day One in office, and the president made use of his own private counter-intel hackers to suss out the game - which was finally to overthrow him by ballot fraud. The result was Executive Order 13848 issued in September 2020, which specified foreign interference in elections as “an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security” and laid out some pretty stringent remedies.

The main one was a requirement for the top executive agencies - DOJ, DOD, Homeland Security, Treasury plus the Director of National Intelligence (Mr. Ratcliff) - to deliver an assessment within 45 days of the election. We’re now in the sweet-spot of that 45-day delivery period when something has to pop. Looks a little like the AG, Mr. Barr, has been dithering and wriggling painfully over this, and even making noises about resigning. But he may have already surrendered his credibility, with the foot-dragging of the FBI under Christopher Wray and the agency’s apparent lack of interest in election fraud. The consequences of EO 13848 will roll out with him or without him.

The real action was over at the Department of Defense, where the President hastily cleaned house this fall and installed the trustworthy Christopher Miller as SecDef, along with top aide Kash Patel and Joshua Cohen-Watnick as Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. Mr. Cohen-Watnick had been an assistant to General Michael Flynn, former Director of Defense Intelligence, in his brief tenure as National Security Advisor before getting sandbagged by Barack Obama and James Comey.

Both Mr. Cohen-Watnick and General Flynn are intimately familiar with the apparatus of Defense Intelligence, of course, and have been actively using it to identify DNC and Joe Biden activists who played a role in election irregularities as well as foreign actors. This wasn’t any RussiaGate type bullshit; it was the real deal. EO 13848 includes this provision:

"The report shall identify any material issues of fact with respect to these matters that the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security are unable to evaluate or reach agreement on at the time the report is submitted. The report shall also include updates and recommendations, when appropriate, regarding remedial actions to be taken by the United States Government, other than the sanctions described in sections 2 and 3 of this order.”

The “remedial actions” are interesting. They include pretty severe sanctions against any “persons” (entity or company) involved in or enabling foreign interference in elections: attaching property in the US, blocking trade, and an array of financial restrictions and penalties. The EO does not spell out criminal penalties that might fall under the sedition and treason statutes, but expect these to be activated as the law provides. Quite a few political celebrities and figures in the news and social media may have exposed themselves to liability in this. If it doesn’t mean the end of Facebook or Twitter, it may spell the end of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey running them. Also include the less-well-known execs at The WashPo, The New York Times, and several cable news networks.

Eventually, Mr. Trump will have to personally deliver the bad news to Joe Biden that he and Dr. Jill won’t be attending the inaugural ball on January 20 (live or on Zoom). Sound too wild to be true? Well, stand by on it. We’ll know soon enough."

"Covid Is Toppling America's 'Points of Failure' Dominoes"

"Covid Is Toppling America's 'Points of Failure' Dominoes"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"America's many points of failure - leverage points where a break brings down the entire system - are falling like dominoes, a process catalyzed by Covid. These systemic points of failure have been masked for the past 20 years by the widespread distribution of trillions of dollars, either printed or borrowed. There's no point of failure that can't be glued together or covered up a bit longer with fountains of cash. That's the American way of solving problems: just throw more money at it.

Unfortunately for America, substituting borrowed trillions for real problem-solving generates its own set of problems, problems that increase the system's vulnerability to collapse. Healthcare/sickcare is a leading example of this: as the corruption, pay-to-play and profiteering deepened, the federal government's endless borrowed trillions boosted healthcare/ sickcare from 5% of the nation's economy to roughly 20% today. "Covid Is Revealing the Cancerous Underbelly of U.S. Healthcare".

As I've noted for a decade, this has created an enormous fragility: healthcare is now so immense that it will bankrupt the nation all by itself. Once the corrupt, pay-to-play, profiteering sectors such as healthcare and banking become "too big to fail," then the Federal Reserve and Treasury are obliged to bail them out or continue funding their spiraling-out-of-control demands.

Speaking of "too big to fail," look at the voracious monster the Fed's endless monetary goosing has incentivized - a financial system addicted to Fed "free money," soaring debt, accelerating leverage and near-infinite speculation.

Given that the Fed has effectively promised to backstop all of Wall Street's bets, bail out every major player and never let the stock market falter for longer than three weeks, the Fed has created this incentive structure: there is no risk at all in borrowing billions, leveraging it into tens of billions and then dumping these multiplying billions into the most speculative bets available. And so that's what every fund manager, hedge funder, punter, gambler and guru has done, and been richly rewarded for doing so.

There's just one tiny little second-order consequence of the Fed's incentivizing debt, leverage and speculation: wealth and income inequality have reached such extremes that they've unraveled the social order. Social cohesion: gone. The social contract: shredded. Social disorder: in the first inning of a very long game.

Now the Fed is backtracking while it laughingly claims its policies didn't have anything to do with America's skyrocketing wealth/income inequality. That the Fed is well aware of the destructive consequences of its endless quantitative easing is evidenced by their recent proposals (FedNow) to start sending "free money" directly to households via a new system of household accounts at the Fed. (Look for an initial rollout by 2022.)

Sorry Fed, it's too late. The dominoes are already toppling, and every point of failure is being exploited by the catalyzing effects of Covid, either first-order or second-order effects. Every weak point - corruption, incompetence, bureaucratic sclerosis, self-serving insiders, counterproductive complexity, regulatory thickets, clinging to the past, and most especially doing more of what's failed spectacularly - will give way, bringing down existing systems with a momentum that will surprise all those who thought every system in America was rock-solid and forever.

Two words will define 2021: acceleration and amplitude. The catalyzing effects will accelerate throughout all the interconnected systems like wildfire and the consequences will move rapidly from linear (predictable) to non-linear (geometric, unpredictable) as each weakness is amplified by the self-reinforcing dynamics unleashed as every point of failure triggers another failure in a connected system."

Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/8/20: "Be Ready For An EPIC Engineered Crisis In The Debt Market To Hit"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/8/20:
"Be Ready For An EPIC Engineered 
Crisis In The Debt Market To Hit"
“Wall Street had been doing business with pieces of paper; and now someone asked for a dollar, and it was discovered that the dollar had been mislaid. It was an experience for which the captains of industry were not entirely prepared; they had forgotten the public. It was like some great convulsion of nature, which made mockery of all the powers of men, and left the beholder dazed and terrified. In Wall Street men stood as if in a valley, and saw far above them the starting of an avalanche; they stood fascinated with horror, and watched it gathering headway; saw the clouds of dust rising up, and heard the roar of it swelling, and realized it was only a matter of time before it swept them to their destruction... But it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair, "The Moneychangers"

"How It Really Was, And Is"

 
Click image for larger size.

Related:

DEC 8, 2020 12:55 PM: "Rand Paul: No Scientific Evidence "Tyrannical" Lockdowns Work"

DEC 8, 2020 9:54 AM: "Admiral Giroir Slams Bans On Outdoor Dining As Without Scientific Basis"

"The Most Beautiful Lies..."

"Memories and feelings of nostalgia are nothing more than cruelties; they are the most beautiful lies we will ever convince ourselves to believe. We chase the false hope so fiercely that we nearly push ourselves past the edges of our sanity, longing for that which can never be in our possession again. These edges are blurred by our regrets and desperation all throughout the darkest hours of the night, until finally we are set free from the illusions and the ghosts of our past with the rising of the sun... and we are changed in some small, yet permanent way."
- Margaret E. Rise

Monday, December 7, 2020

"Hedge Funds Wait For Housing Crisis; Real Estate Utopia; Food Is A Luxury; Signs Of Uncertainty"

Jeremiah Babe,
"Hedge Funds Wait For Housing Crisis; Real Estate Utopia;
Food Is A Luxury; Signs Of Uncertainty"

"This Is Going To Be The Worst Winter For The U.S. Economy In Modern Times"

"This Is Going To Be The Worst Winter For 
The U.S. Economy In Modern Times"
by Epic Economist

"The darkest, toughest winter this country has ever experienced since the 1930's Great Depression has just started. A new round of lockdowns is about to wreak havoc on hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the nation, pushing workers to unemployment days before a period that used to be marked by celebration and festivities. Americans are about to lose the aid that has been helping them to stay afloat during the current recession and many are having to make aching decisions in face of their lack of income and growing debt. 

Living paycheck-to-paycheck, more than 60% of the population is about to face major struggles as the economic activity freezes once again. Over 33 million are already under stay-at-home orders and many more are to come since we seem to be at the worst peak of the outbreak ever registered. In this video, we expose the damaging effects of the shutdown of our economy on our businesses and our lives. 

Amid a tragic spike in confirmed viral cases and hospitalization rates, several governors decided that the best they could do to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control would be to enforce rigorous lockdowns that have been choking the life out of our economic activity. 

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has issued a stay-at-home order and about 33 million Californians, which represents 84% of the state’s population, are going to have their right to free movement temporarily removed, being impeded from gathering indoors and outdoors, and having their daily lives significantly disrupted since hundreds of thousands of businesses are being obligated to shut down their operations. 

The Orange County Supervisor Lisa Bartlett has described how some business sectors are being “unfairly punished” by the new regulations. A matter that should be the government's responsibility through the enaction of efficient education about safe health measures and effective public policies that could indeed help to bend the curb has turned out to be a huge bill that is going to be ultimately paid by small business owners.

There are alternatives for the shutdown, but authorities waited for the situation to get calamitous to start taking action, and now that hospitals are completely overwhelmed governors seem to think that it's reasonable to radically close some sectors of the economy without pondering about the consequences. Several small business that operated in California for generations and now are finding themselves on the verge of extinction. 

Rory Cox, the founder of the San Francisco Small Business Alliance, said to be talking with numerous small business owners around the city, and every story is sadder than the next. Several Bay Area small businesses that survived the first round of lockdowns but were left hanging by a thread are currently facing their inevitable downfall. During the first time, outdoor dining was still allowed if owners and customers followed safety protocols. But this time around, there is no compromise.

The truth is, in spite of the strict rules, people didn't stop gathering, they are just choosing different kinds of locations. Most of these private reunions have little to no regulation at all regarding health safety measures, which shows how the governmental response hasn't been actually successful in mapping and controlling the surge of viral cases.

In fact, due to the massive wave of lay-offs prompted by the shutdowns, a recent survey found that one in four Americans, or nearly 63%, have disclosed not to feel that their income is stable. Living paycheck-to-paycheck since March, and without any further federal aid on the horizon, a quarter of the respondents to the poll affirmed they've built up over $10,000 in credit card debt while covering their expenses. 

What used to be the most festive part of the year, is now becoming marked by the struggles of millions of Americans who are being forced to make aching decisions in face of the growing number of lay-offs during this holiday season. Each number on these rates has a name and a story. These workers have been relying on unemployment benefits that are about to expire the day after Christmas. 

Authorities have stripped away any real prospects for an economic recovery with the enforcement of new lockdowns. And Congress doesn't seem to bother in enacting another stimulus relief to ease the pain of those most affected by the economic downturn. Now, millions upon millions were left to struggle with the effects of a crisis that was perfectly avoidable, and unfortunately, there will be a lot more pain for our great workers and our once-great nation over the next chapters of this devastating economic collapse."

"Who Counts the Votes of the Presidential Electors?"

"Who Counts the Votes of the Presidential Electors?"
by Alexander Macris

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." The quote is ascribed to Joseph Stalin, although there’s little evidence that he actually said it. Nevertheless, it resonates as true. Certainly America stands in crisis now because of disagreements about the count of the popular vote.

But the President of the United States isn’t actually elected by the popular vote. He’s elected by the college of presidential electors. As I noted in a previous article, one of the most important questions in this crisis is whether the state legislatures can appoint presidential electors to cast their votes in opposition to the popular vote. But there is another question: Who counts the votes cast by the presidential electors? If “those who count the votes decide everything,” as Stalin said, then this is the most important question in American history.

The Constitutional Argument: The U.S. Constitution governs the election of the President. The controlling provision is the Twelfth Amendment, which states that: “The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.”

What does that mean? In “Preparing for a Disputed Presidential Election” (51 Loyola University Chicago Law Journal 2018), Edward B. Foley explains: "The peculiar passive-voice phrasing of this crucial sentence opens up the possibility of interpreting it to provide that the “President of the Senate” has the exclusive constitutional authority to determine which “certificates” to “open” and thus which electoral votes “to be counted.”

This interpretation can derive support from the observation that the President of the Senate is the only officer, or instrumentality, of government given an active role in the process of opening the certificates and counting the electoral votes from the states. The Senate and House of Representatives, on this view, have an observational role only. The opening and counting are conducted in their “presence” - for the sake of transparency - but these two legislative bodies do not actually take any actions of their own in this opening and counting process. How could they? Under the Constitution, the Senate and the House of Representatives only act separately, as entirely distinct legislative chambers. They have no constitutional way to act together as one amalgamated corpus. Thus, they can only watch as the President of the Senate opens the certificates of electoral votes from the states and announces the count of the electoral votes contained therein.

This interpretation of the Twelfth Amendment is bolstered, moreover, by the further observation that the responsibility to definitively decide which electoral votes from each state are entitled to be counted must be lodged ultimately in some singular authority of the federal government. If one body could decide the question one way, while another body could reach the opposite conclusion, then there inevitably is a stalemate unless and until a single authority is identified with the power to settle the matter once and for all. Given the language of the Twelfth Amendment, whatever its ambiguity and potential policy objections, there is no other possible single authority to identify for this purpose besides the President of the Senate. (emphasis added)"

Foley is not alone in this analysis. Another prominent jurist, John Harrison, makes an even more forceful case. Harrison argues in “Nobody for President,” (16 J.L. & Pol., 2000), that the most natural reading of the Twelfth Amendment grants the opening-and-counting power to the President of the Senate: "The Twelfth Amendment provides that in the presence of the two houses, [the President of the Senate] shall open all the certificates from the electors. But as history shows, there can be more than one purported certificate from a state. Indeed, multiple purported certificates may be the most common cause of dispute. The certificates that the President of the Senate is to open, however, are those of the electors, not those of non-electors. Hence, in order to know which certificates to open, the President of the Senate must know which of competing slates of electors were validly appointed.

…A natural reading [of the Twelfth Amendment] thus indicates that in one especially important context, the dispute is to be resolved by a single individual. Neither House nor Senate is given any authority over the President of the Senate when it comes to opening the certificates, and Congress by statute may not control the exercise of this constitutionally granted authority any more than it may tell the President who to pardon. (emphasis added)"

Now the President of the Senate is actually the Vice President of the United States - Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence. If Foley and Harrison are correct, then Mike Pence may be the most powerful man in America right now!

The Historical Argument: Constitutional law is not, of course, merely a matter of language analysis. The intent of the Framers, the history of the Republic, and the interpretations of past jurists all bear weight. But here, too, there is much evidence for the case that Pence has the power to open and count the votes of the presidential electors. As Foley regretfully explains: "Whatever each of us personally thinks of this interpretative argument, it is necessary to acknowledge that it has a significant historical pedigree. It routinely had its advocates in the years leading up to the disputed election of 1876. During that intense dispute, it was conveniently invoked by Republicans, since the President of the Senate was one of their own at the time. After the resolution of that ugly dispute, the argument was resurrected by some during the congressional debates that led to passage of the Electoral Count Act of 1887…"

What is the historical pedigree to which Foley refers? The Congressional Record of the passage of the Electoral Count Act records the opinion of many prominent legislators who held the view that the President of the Senate opens and counts the votes, even though some weren’t happy about it: “The counting function is vested in the President of the Senate and the Necessary and Proper Clause does not confer on Congress the power to assume unto itself the duty which the Constitution imposes on that officer.” - Sen. Wilson

“If the Constitution…does…by fair implication, vest in the President of the Senate the power and duty not only to open, but also to count, the votes, then Congress can not, by this or any other legislation, take away or transfer to any other “person or officer that power and duty; - Rep. Baker

“The Constitution says that ‘the votes shall then be counted,’ and if this mandate be addressed to the President of the Senate, that ends the question so far as the counting is concerned. The Constitution has then entrusted him with the whole power, and any legislation to direct him, would be an impertinent intrusion upon his prerogative.” - Sen. Spear

“The President of the Senate’s discretion in opening certificates shows the necessity of an amendment of the Constitution.” - Sen Morton. 

Foley, also obviously unhappy with this situation, goes on to explain: "Thus Republicans can point to the historical pedigree of this position, observing that Republicans made the same argument during the disputed election of 1876 and that at least some recent law journal scholarship has supported this position. Unembarrassed by the apparent conflict of interest caused by Mike Pence simultaneously being a candidate for reelection and arbiter of the electoral dispute, these Republicans observe that Thomas Jefferson was in essentially the same position during the disputed election of 1800 and yet the Twelfth Amendment left this provision in place when Congress rewrote the procedures for the Electoral College afterwards."

Wait, Thomas Jefferson pulled this trick? Indeed he did. The 1800 Presidential election was a contest between Jefferson, Aaron Burr, John Adams, Charles Pinckney, and John Jay. Jefferson, as the current Vice President, was the President of the Senate when it came time to count the votes. And he counted them in his own favor! Bruce Ackerman and David Fontana explain what happened in their article “Thomas Jefferson Counts Himself into the Presidency” (90 Virginia Law Review 2004, 551-643):

Thomas Jefferson was remarkably aggressive as President of the Senate. Georgia’s certificate - granting four electoral votes to Jefferson - was constitutionally defective on its face, a deficiency that was announced on the floor of Congress and reported by leading newspapers of the day. To resolve all doubts, we have located Georgia’s certificate in the National Archives, and it does indeed reveal striking constitutional irregularities…

Nevertheless, Jefferson failed to pause before counting George’s four electoral votes into the Republican column, declaring the final vote as if nothing were amiss. Had Georgia’s ballot been excluded, the vote count…would have admitted all five candidates into a runoff in the House… Without the decisive use of his power as President of the Senate, Jefferson might never have become President of the United States. (emphasis added)

Read that again: Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, the man whose face adorns Mt Rushmore, among the most revered founding fathers of our country, only became President because he used his unilateral power as President of the Senate to open and count the presidential ballots in his own favor.

Vasan Kesavan, in “Is the Electoral Count Act Unconstitutional?” (80 NC L. Rev. 2001-2002), records another example where the President of the Senate unilaterally determined the winner of the Presidential Election: "In the election of 1856, the five electors of the State of Wisconsin did not cast their votes on the day prescribed by federal law because of a snowstorm. The President of the Senate counted Wisconsin's electoral votes over the objections of both Representatives and Senators assembled in convention. When Representative Lechter objected to Wisconsin's electoral votes and moved to exclude them, the presiding officer (the President of the Senate) simply stated that no debate was in order when the votes were being read by the tellers or even after they were finished.' When Senator Crittenden then asked the presiding officer, "Do I understand the Chair to decide that Congress, in no form, has power to decide upon the validity or invalidity of a vote?,"' the presiding officer replied that it was his constitutional duty to announce the result of the electoral count and that "what further action may be taken, if any further action should be taken, will devolve upon the properly-constituted authorities of the country, the Senate or House of Representatives, as the case may be.'… 

Several Members of Congress were concerned that the decision to count Wisconsin's electoral votes would set a dangerous precedent. According to Senator Pugh, unlike the Missouri Incident which was "never likely to happen again," the Wisconsin Incident "may occur one hundred times again, if the Government should stand that many years.' Almost every Member of Congress who spoke on the subject agreed that the votes of Wisconsin should not have been counted.' (emphasis added)

And yet the votes were counted… because the President of the Senate opened and counted them. The President of the Senate’s choice was more powerful than the collective will of Congress.

Come January 2021, Vice President Mike Pence will be presented with the sealed certificates containing the ballots of the presidential electors. At that moment, the Presidency will be in his hands. And there is nothing stopping Pence, under the authority vested in him as President of the Senate, from declining to open and count the certificates from the six disputed states. If they are certificates from non-electors appointed via voter fraud, why should he open and count them? As Harrison noted, “the certificates that the President of the Senate is to open… are those of the electors, not those of non-electors.”

The President’s position going into January 2021 is thus considerably stronger than the mainstream media would have you believe. There is Constitutional language and historical precedent that gives his Vice President the unilateral power to decide the outcome of our contested election. If Trump would be king, Mike Pence could be his kingmaker."
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"Market Fantasy Updates 12/7/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 12/7/20"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"The more I see of the monied classes, 
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Gregory Mannarino, PM 12/7/20:
"Selling 'The Vaccine' VIA Fear and Intimidation"
Updated live.
Daily Update (Dec. 6th to Dec. 10th)
Insanity... 
And now... The End Game...

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Alpha”

Vangelis, “Alpha”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. M6 can best be seen in a dark sky with binoculars towards the constellation of Scorpius, coving about as much of the sky as the full moon.
Like other open clusters, M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars, although the brightest star is nearly orange. M6 is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe.”

The Poet: Jane Hirshfield, "The Task "

"The Task" 

"It is a simple garment, this slipped-on world.
We wake into it daily - open eyes, braid hair - 
a robe unfurled
in rose-silk flowering, then laid bare.
And yes, it is a simple enough task
we've taken on,
though also vast:
from dusk to dawn,
from dawn to dusk, to praise, and not
be blinded by the praising.
To lie like a cat in hot
sun, fur fully blazing,
and dream the mouse;
and to keep too the mouse's patient, waking watch
within the deep rooms of the house,
where the leaf-flocked
sunlight never reaches, but the earth still blooms." 

- Jane Hirshfield

"It's Not The Load..."

"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it."
- Lena Horne