Tuesday, July 6, 2021

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "What I Have Learned So Far"

"What I Have Learned So Far"

"Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of - indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone."

~ Mary Oliver

"Homeowners In Danger, Foreclosures Inevitable; Dollar Collapse Imminent; Cost Of Living Skyrockets"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/6/21:
"Homeowners In Danger, Foreclosures Inevitable; 
Dollar Collapse Imminent; Cost Of Living Skyrockets"

Gerald Celente, "Trends in The News"

Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, "Trends in The News"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over hype and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in the increasingly turbulent times ahead."

The Daily "Near You?"

Rancho Cordova, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Curveballs..."

"Just when we think we figured things out, the universe throws us a curveball. So, we have to improvise. We find happiness in unexpected places. We find ourselves back to the things that matter the most. The universe is funny that way. Sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong."
- "Dr. Meredith Grey", "Grey's Anatomy"

"Survival..."

 

"Grotesque Shape of Things to Come"

"Grotesque Shape of Things to Come"
by Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "The Sunday papers raised the alarm about “Global Climate Change.” Apparently, people are sweltering almost everywhere – from Dubai to Canada. The newspapers showed frightening maps, with most of the Northern Hemisphere – like Hell itself – colored bright red. Some columnists claimed that large parts of the Earth could soon be uninhabitable if action weren’t taken. Others were confident that we could turn down the world’s thermostat, if we just put our minds to it; that is, if we got behind the elite’s program for climate regulation. “The Ecological and Solidarity Transition,” the French call it. “The Green New Deal,” is how they’re describing it in the U.S.

Liberation: But here in Ireland, it’s hard to get too worked up about the heat. July the 4th was much like every other summer day – with the temperature in the 60s and showers that made it seem even cooler. On the apocalypse maps, Ireland was light green.

Almost every family in Ireland has relatives – often very distant – in America. The 4th of July holiday is well known. Even our minister mentioned it in his sermon at mass on Sunday. “This is America’s Independence Day,” he began, “the day they celebrate their liberation from Britain. And, of course, we got the message on this side of the Atlantic, too, that we could liberate Ireland from Britain. It took another 146 years.

And yes, we can liberate ourselves from a government. We can change the people who rule us – either by force of arms or simply by voting for a different candidate. But we can’t change who we are… or the fundamental rules by which we live. Those rules were never voted on… and never fought over. You can deny them. You can ignore them. But you can’t liberate yourself from them. They are part of who we are… and what we are.”

You can ignore the laws of economics, he might have added. But you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring them. You can “print” all the money you want, for example. You can manipulate prices. You can run trillion-dollar deficits. You can pay people for not working… and keep zombie businesses alive with “stimmy” money.

Elite Thinking: The elite of a society are supposed to think about these things. About the future. About consequences. About the lessons of the past. About the electric bill, when you leave the lights on… and about what happens when you give a trucker the finger or spend all your money on lottery tickets.

The proles may exercise their muscles… toting that barge and lifting that bale… But the 10% should use their brains. They should be rational… aware of history. They are supposed to lead, not follow. They are supposed to remember dangers and help the society avoid them. They should calm the mob… and throw cold water on irrational exuberance. They are supposed to do good, not just do well for themselves. They are supposed to think about consequences. What amazes us is how little real thinking the thinkers do.

In ancient Ireland, the Brehon Law established that there were five classes of people. The elites were kings and nobles, but included free people with property… and the thinkers. The “ollambh,” or ollave, were the highest class of thinkers… the “professors.” A “shanachie”’ was a professor of history. He was supposed to know consequences… and make sure the kings remembered them, too.

Patrick Weston Joyce’s "A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland", explains: "As a Shanachie or Historian, the ollave was understood to be specially learned in History, Chronology, Antiquities, and Genealogies of Ireland… He should know by heart 350 Historical and Romantic Stories. He was supposed to know the prerogatives, rights, duties, restrictions, tributes, etc. of the king of Ireland and of the provincial kings. As a learned man, he was expected to answer reasonable questions and explain difficulties. Once admitted to the coveted ranks, the guerdon was splendid; for he was highly honored, had many privileges and received princely rewards and presents."

Mr. Joyce then seems to have described the arc of life for all elites… But as might be expected, they often abused their position and privileges by unreasonable demands, so that many of them, while admired for their learning, came to be feared and hated for their arrogance.

Power Corrupts: What every group wants is more power… more status… and more wealth. An elite has power. Left unchecked, power corrupts it. It becomes arrogant. Then, it is very hard to resist using the government to get what it wants. That is the story, grosso modo, that we follow every day – in which America’s elite, funded by fake money, has become corrupt, incompetent, and self-serving. Instead of helping us remember the lessons of the past, it wants us to forget… and to believe that the ancient laws no longer apply. The elite has stopped thinking, in other words. More proof tomorrow…"

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Genesis Of Our American Collective Meltdown"

"The Genesis Of Our American Collective Meltdown"
by Victor Davis Hanson

"This Fourth of July holiday we might have paused for a moment from our festivities to ask how we collectively lost our minds over the last 15 months - and are we yet regaining any semblance of our sanity?

A pandemic caused by the leak of a Chinese-engineered virus and its coverup was cause enough for nationwide madness. But the spread of COVID–19 was followed by a nationalized and often politicized “flatten-the-curve” quarantine that soon ensured a stir-crazy nation. Tens of millions saw no people, and heard nothing human other than what was fed to them through television and computers. No wonder they grew paranoid, conspiratorial, and angry, and soon forgot the therapeutic nature of personal interaction and the shared humanity of being in the physical presence of others.

Our first self-induced recession came next and lasted over a year, destroying all the hard work of the prior three years. Next ensued the death of George Floyd and a subsequent 120 days of rioting, looting, and arson. The immediate costs were $2 billion in damage, over 25 deaths, 14,000 arrests, and a Lord of the Flies anarchy with no-go zones in our major cities. A McCarthyite frenzy followed, as remote-controlled America hunted down the supposed “racists” among us - while career agendas, personal grudges, and ideological hatred fueled the cancel culture.

All this was antecedent to our first election in which Election Day voting was incidental, not essential, to the outcome. This was also our first presidential campaign in which the incumbent was stricken by a pandemic virus. And his opponent, due to his age and infirmity, simply reverted to the 19th century style of staying home and outsourcing the electioneering to the Democratic-media complex. Biden’s basement became the equivalent of the “front-porch” of homebound candidates of a century and more ago.

The derangement was then capped off, first, by a buffoonish riot at the Capitol followed by a Reichstag-fire style militarization of Washington, D.C., in a “never let a crisis go to waste” psychodrama. Then came a novel second and unprecedented presidential impeachment, without a special prosecutor, witnesses, or cross examinations. It was based on the myth of a deadly “armed insurrection” fueled by President Trump, which purportedly led to the murder of a police officer. Later most of the writs of the House impeachment were proven fantasies, from the idea of “armed” and “well-organized” to “murderous” revolutionaries. The only mysteries were the identity of the unnamed officer who fatally shot an unarmed female protester and military veteran, and why the government has still not released thousands of hours of video detailing the riot.

That impeachment charade was followed by a trial in the Senate - without the chief justice presiding - of a president, who was no longer in office.

The finale was the promise of a “moderate” good ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton - the supposed correction to Trump. In reality, Biden’s first 150 days proved, as the cynics predicted, that he was mere cover and conveyance for the implementation of the most radical agenda since the 1930s.

So we can cut America some slack when we ponder why the entire country is now descending into a collective madness, given the amount of propaganda and media distortion pumped out during the quarantine, and since.

The Chaos of Daily Living: Within the space of about 6 months in 2021, the costs of the essentials of life have skyrocketed - food, gasoline, housing, appliances, cars and trucks, and building materials. Non-ending streams of stimulus money, huge deficits, and pent-up demand so far have ensured that Americans would pay such spiking prices. And soon radical inflation may trigger 1970s stagflation and then recession, as the “why-go-to-work?” checks and consumer zeal finally cease, but the government printing machine keeps going. What good is free government money if spiraling prices eat away the entitlement?

California is the worst run of our states. But it is also always a helpful bellwether of where we are descending. The state has plenty of oil and natural gas. There are still remnants of a once thriving nuclear and hydroelectric industry. But power outages are now commonplace - to the point that, like Third-Worlders, we merely shrug when the lights go out as if it were a green way of reducing carbon emissions.

Forty million people driving on roads and highways intended for 20 million people - 27 percent of them not born in America - becomes a “Road-Warrior”-like wildness intended to discourage the kind of driving to which we became accustomed in the 20th century. Any trip over 200 miles cannot be calibrated by traditional “arrival times.” Ad hoc repairs on ancient roads paralyzes traffic not already slowed by accidents. Speeding and traffic violations are commonplace. Either the population ignores or does not know the law, or a paranoid law enforcement is reluctant to enforce the laws, or there are simply too few patrol cars responsible for too many drivers.

Gas can range from $4.00 to over $5.00 a gallon; $100 fill-ups are common. To go to a California Home Depot or Lowes store is to be amazed at grades of plywood priced at nearly $90 a sheet.

Californians are leaving in droves, but housing costs are still soaring. Californians love nice houses. But those who have them don’t like to allow anyone to build new ones for others.

A horrendous drought has dried up reservoirs and dropped the water tables of most aquifers. Privately, Californians know that it was madness not to build reservoirs, all cancelled over 30 years ago, or to allow the California Water Project’s infrastructure to decay, or to continue to allow scarce fresh water to flow into the sea, or not to invest in new technologies of underground water savings and storage.

But they also know that as long as the Bay Area’s activists have sufficient supplies of water (from their own early 20th century, far-seeing politicians who created the huge Hetch Hetchy transference and won first-dibs allotments from the subsequent California Water Project), they will continue to push green agendas, the disastrous consequences of which the elite avoid, given their own wealth and power.

High-speed rail is a tragic joke. It is inert and unfinished. The ostentatious half-built overpasses stand like modern graffiti-stained versions of Stonehenge. Its only ostensible purpose seems to have been a green plan to siphon money from road repair and expansion.

Mention San Francisco to a Californian, and the same, monotonous warnings arise: don’t go there! And if you must, don’t park there - since smashing into a car and stealing its contents are viewed as understandable redistribution rather than criminal acts. Others advise to check constantly the soles of your shoes: human and animal excrement is ubiquitous as the city’s sanitation regresses to something resembling Old Cairo or medieval London.

I drive often to the central Sierra. For the last 4 years the talk there was “Why don’t they do something about the millions of trees that have died from drought and bug infestation?” The locals now say of the incinerated forests “Why don’t they do something about the millions of those charred black trees?” Such sincere questions assume people matter more than ideology. They don’t.

In a state where defecation on the sidewalks apparently hurts no one, drought and fires consuming a forest are also OK - as long as it is likewise deemed a function of nature. In California, logging an acre of timber is insurrectionary; 400,000 acres going up in smoke is “stuff happens.”

Policies and Politicians: The truth is that the necessities of life - safety, affordability of the essentials, transportation, power, and fuel - are now iffy. If 15 years ago, Americans more or less saw each other as fellow citizens rather than as members of rival tribes, now they are resegregating into Dark Age bands. In place of oral bards and mythic sagas, we have dry and racist “critical race theory.”

There is no media credibility left after assuring us for years that the Steele dossier was the gold standard, that Robert Mueller’s dream team would prove “collusion,” that Donald Trump sicced the federal police on demonstrators for a cheap photo-op stunt, that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation, and that only conspiracists could make a looney connection between COVID-19’s ground zero origins in Wuhan and a nearby level 4 virology lab, with ties to the Chinese military.

The current chaos of everyday life of course follows from national policy and politics. The streets are on a reverse trajectory into the 1970s, since crime is redefined as either tolerable collateral damage, “equity,” or a collective indictment of society rather than one of individual culpability. When mayors claim that burning a police precinct is a mere loss of “brick and mortar,” or taking over downtown Seattle is just part of a “summer of love,” or when the architect of the “1619 Project” claims looting is not violence, then crime is no longer crime.

The Left says it has not defunded the police because there are still police to be seen. But progressives have done something far more insidious: America has destroyed police deterrence by a year of anti-police venom, by prosecutors selectively and asymmetrically exempting the arrested, and by prompting police retirements, resignations or simple slowdowns. There is now in the minds of all big-city cops a constant cost-to-benefit calculation: going into the inner city has become a lose/lose/lose/lose/lose proposition in which a 911 call from the danger zone can get an officer killed, injured, fired, suspended, imprisoned, or rendered a fool, as the successfully arrested are summarily let go.

The country has gone mad with debt. Both parties are responsible for the massive spending. The Republican defense is that Democrats would spend even more - and, if they are lavishing entitlements to buy votes, why shouldn’t we? The Left’s excuse is not just the old idea of redistribution, but a new revolutionary myth that money and debt are really irrelevant constructs. A novel economic pseudoscience has revised or discarded the oppressive idea of having to pay back what was borrowed.

Traditionalists and conservatives always assumed that the military, the intelligence and investigatory agencies, and the prosecutorial industry were at least above politics, defenders of traditional and constitutional norms, and completely professional in their service.

No longer. There is now a new military-industrial-intelligence-legal complex. Its hierarchy is politically weaponized, and amply renumerated. The careers of John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, General Mark Milley and a score of retired 4-stars officers, Robert Mueller and his dream team, and the Department of Justice are characteristically determined and calibrated by politics rather than competence.

The usual consequences follow: half the country no longer trusts its once esteemed FBI, CIA, or military. And when these agencies veer from their assigned tasks, it is no wonder that they miss impending signs of terrorism in Boston, Fort Hood, and San Bernardino, had little clue that the “JVs” of ISIS were expanding in Iraq, and never really informed the American people about the costs, the benefits, the stakes and the likely future of the two-decade Afghan war. In the 1960s the Left sought to tarnish the reputation of what they saw as hated government institutions and failed; in the 2020s, the Left diminished the reputation of what they now saw as useful and malleable institutions and succeeded.

America does not quite know what will follow from the first months of the Biden Administration. Already, it has managed to destroy the idea of a border, with an anticipated 2 million entering the country illegally over a 12 month period. It demolished the idea of the police and prosecutorial deterrence curbing crime. It is ending the trajectory of America’s natural gas and oil renaissance that enriched the country, and freed it from Middle East entanglements. And it killed off the notion that government should seek to ensure that race is not how we collectively define the content of our individual characters.

Abroad: Meanwhile, our enemies and rivals - China, Iran, and Russia especially - are giddy at what America has become. The American Left, they believe, has done a much better job of denying Chinese culpability for a Chinese-engineered virus than had the Chinese communist media.

When billionaires, such as Michael Bloomberg, see China as essentially democratic (“The communist party wants to stay in power in China, and they listen to the public. Xi Jinping is not a dictator.”), when Charles Munger applauds their clampdown on outspoken capitalists like Jack Ma (“I don’t want the, all of the Chinese system, but I certainly would like to have the financial part of it in my own country, Communists did the right thing. They just called in Jack Ma and say, ‘You aren’t gonna do it, sonny.’””), and when Bill Gates believes that in the midst of the pandemic, a lying China had done “a lot of things right in the beginning,” we can conclude America’s richest are placing their bets on a Chinese-Communist controlled 21st century, and will adjust accordingly.

Our adversaries can’t quite believe their good fortune. Had they thought up ways to divide and impoverish America, to see its cities burned, and looted, to weaken its economy and currency, to erode the unity of its once feared military, and to entrench the most effective critics of America in America - not in Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, or Tehran, but in corporate boardrooms, campuses, newsrooms, Hollywood, Wall Street and the Pentagon - they could not have improved on what has happened in 2020-21, the era of our collective meltdown.”

"A Critique of mRNA Vaccines"

"A Critique of mRNA Vaccines"
by Martin Armstrong

"This is a reasonable 25-minute video on COVID-19 and the mRNA vaccine. Pathologist Dr. Ryan Cole discusses the virus & the vaccine including how it works & the spike protein impact. Also, he discusses the implications of vaccination for people who already have COVID-19 antibodies. The real question: why are governments mandating vaccines or pushing them? Have they just been bribed?

There is no independent review standing between the companies and the people. That is our greatest problem - TRUST. Meanwhile, Twitter bans anyone for even claiming a family member died from the vaccine. This is really getting out of hand. Twitter should be shut down as an agent of propaganda. How will we ever get the truth with all this political censorship?"
Hat tip to The Burning Platform

Please view this video on Rumble, 
since Google Blogger won't allow embedding.
Related, an absolute Must Read:

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/6/21 "Crude Oil Surging. Out Of Control Inflation"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/6/21
"Crude Oil Surging. Out Of Control Inflation. 
OPEC And Central Banks Are Playing A Dangerous Game"

Monday, July 5, 2021

"California Begs For More Electricity As Shift To Renewable Power Leaves State In The Dark"

Full screen recommended.
"California Begs For More Electricity As Shift 
To Renewable Power Leaves State In The Dark"
by Epic Economist

"The state of California is currently facing the worst drought in 1,200 years and, as a consequence of such extreme weather conditions, water in key reservoirs is dropping to dangerously low levels, which is forcing the shutdown of major hydroelectric power plants and leaving the state in the dark amid one of the hottest summers ever recorded. The relentless drought and extreme heat, both worsened by climate change, are critically straining California's already-taxed electric grid, and pushing the water supply at Northern California's Lake Oroville to deplete rapidly. Early last month, the water level in Lake Oroville - the state's second-largest reservoir - was so low that hundreds of houseboats were hauled out because there wasn’t enough water to hold them. Today, however, state officials revealed the water level in the lake is even lower. In fact, water is at such "alarming levels" that the Edward Hyatt Power Plant is being forced to close for the first time since it opened in 1967, according to California Energy Commission spokesperson Lindsay Buckley.

On top of that, California energy grid officials are urging residents to reduce power consumption, particularly during the evenings when electricity demand is at its peak. If consumers don't reduce their electricity use during the peak time of the day, the state's grid might experience widespread power outages and suffer from damaged power lines. In essence, this situation highlights this is going to be a long, hot summer of higher electricity bills, periodic rationing, and blackouts for millions of households and businesses. Needless to say, those increased energy costs will also add to the inflationary pressures plaguing the U.S. economy.

To make matters even worse, Lake Oroville isn't the only one with dwindling water levels. A similar situation is occurring at the Hoover Dam - which forms Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the entire country, and produces enough electricity for approximately 8 million Americans. Now, the worsening drought is resulting in record-low water levels, and seriously compromising the efficiency of hydropower generation at Hoover Dam, as water is used to spin turbines to produce electricity. According to the latest data released, energy capacity at the dam already fell by roughly 25 percent. In short, Californians are not only facing the devastating effects of extreme heat but also the combination of a critical water crisis and a disastrous energy crisis that is adding chaos to what should be a joyful summer.

In addition to calling out for power-saving measures, state officials have been asking California residents to also reduce their water consumption as much as possible during the hot summer months. They are even requesting consumers to take shorter showers, fix leaks at home, plant drought-tolerant trees, and reduce watering home landscapes. But some officials have taken more "draconian" approaches and declared a water shortage emergency also issuing mandatory water restrictions that are punishable by fines in case consumers do not comply.

With meteorologists anticipating even hotter temperatures in the coming months, the state’s increasing reliance on gas-fired plants is going against its goal of transitioning to carbon-free electricity. “Our systems and infrastructure were designed and built in previous decades, to work in our old climate,” Diffenbaugh said. “As the Earth gets warmer, triggering extreme conditions, those systems are getting stretched - unfortunately beyond their capacity.” At this point, the crisis is getting so alarming that state energy officials have asked the California Independent System Operator, which runs most of the grid, to contract for additional power capacity for July and August, otherwise, it won't be able to meet demand during the evening when solar production decreases, according to a joint statement released last week from the grid, utility, and energy agencies.

In the meantime, the government continues to take a number of steps that already epically failed in the past. And knowing the state's measures aren't enough to avoid catastrophic outages just as seen in 2020, the state's grid operator is begging for more electricity. Notably, even Bloomberg, which doesn't hesitate when it comes to criticizing non-green sources of power, is admitting that California's problem is the state’s aggressive push to cut its carbon emissions by recklessly shifting to renewable energy without properly planning or coming up with a plan B considering seasonal weather changes. In other words, while Californians are learning the hard way that the state's grid has become extremely vulnerable to critical disruptions, politicians simply cannot deny that California's "green" push has been a complete disaster because now, millions of people will be left in the dark during hot summer days, while countless other tragedies and casualties continue to emerge on the horizon."

"A Patriotism of the Heart"

"A Patriotism of the Heart"
by Brian Maher

"Since yesterday was July 4th, it is a fine time to reflect on patriotism - what we believe it is - and what we believe it is not. So today we republish our musings on the distinction between patriotism and nationalism.

Here is the trouble with America’s jingos, warhawks, drum-beaters, glory hounds, world-improvers and idealists: They are not patriotic. A jolting, nearly scandalous claim, it is true. Do these Americans not cry tears red, white and blue? Do they not yell about American “greatness”... American “exceptionalism”... the “shining city” atop the hill?

That and more they do, yes. Yet they are not patriotic. That is the curious case we haul before the jury today. Yes, we are stepping away from our normal beat of manna and markets… and reflecting upon the virtue of patriotism. This, at a time when fists furl in the direction of Iran, China, Russia and other hellcats that menace the happiness of the United States. (We first doff our cap to the late writer Joseph Sobran, upon whose insights we rely today).

Country or Empire: Famed English writer G.K. Chesterton once denounced Rudyard Kipling’s “lack of patriotism.” The fellow’s lack of patriotism? What does Chesterton mean Kipling was chief rah-rah man for the British Empire, its loudest bugler. English civilization overtopped all rival powers, he bellowed — as Everest overtops all rival peaks. And as was proper… Great Britain gave the law in all four corners of Earth.

From Kipling’s story Regulus, citing Virgil’s Aeneid: “Roman! let this be your care, this your art; to rule over the nations and impose the ways of peace…” Substitute Britain for Rome and you have Kipling. Why then did Chesterton deny his patriotism? The reason is subtle. Subtle… yet critical.

“He Admires England, but He Does Not Love Her”: Chesterton argued that Kipling admired England because she was powerful. He did not love her because she was England: He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reasons. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.

Now Chesterton. He loved England as England — its customs, its eccentricities, its people. Even, if you can believe it, its “food.” A man loves his mother. It is a wordless love, wide and deep. He requires no reason. He requires no justification. And as he loves his mother, so he loves his country.

Be it China, be it Russia, be it Chile, be it Romania… it is all one. Sobran: "Of course Chesterton was right. You love your country as you love your mother - simply because it is yours, not because of its superiority to others, particularly superiority of power."

A Spacious Patriotism: Does the other fellow believe his own mother towers 900 feet over all others? Well, friends, maybe he does believe it. But that in no way irritates, annoys or threatens the other fellow. No harm flows from it. After all...

Adults allow children to cherish the fiction that reindeer fly and round men descend chimneys... A husband allows his wife to cherish the fiction that she is a superior cook or automobile operator… as a wife allows her husband to cherish the fiction that he is a skillful and formidable lover... or that his bald head is ennobling.

These are benevolent fictions conducive to the domestic peace and happiness. In that spirit, the patriot’s attitude toward the foreigner is relaxed. It is accommodative. It is spacious. He understands this fellow’s affection for his country is essentially the affection for his mother. But a Kipling does not love his country as a man loves his mother. His country must show all others its dust. It must outrace them all… else he feels diminished.

The Patriot Loves His Country Regardless: The United States of America stables many such gentlemen. They are dizzied, wobbled, staggered by a higher American vision. Their eyes roll perpetually heavenward. To these fellows, America must always be up to something big in this world. She must be forever charging up San Juan Hill, going over the top, storming Omaha beach, bearing any burden, paying any price... She must be beating the Russians to the moon, beating the world at basketball, beating democracy into someone’s head.

Tall deeds, some of these, and fantastic attainments. But would the patriot love America less if she fell short of the glory… if her history was a page mostly blank? He would not. It is - after all - his country. And he loves her as he loves his mother.

But to that certain species of American, America must dazzle and glitter upon the world’s stage. She must be the “indispensable nation.” If not indispensable… then dispensableIf dispensable, then unworthy of his love. Hence his lack of patriotism. He is Kipling.

The Difference Between the Patriot and the Nationalist: Sobran takes their measure: "Many Americans admire America for being strong, not for being American. For them America has to be “the greatest country on Earth” in order to be worthy of their devotion. If it were only the second greatest, or the 19th greatest, or, heaven forbid, “a third-rate power,” it would be virtually worthless… Maybe the poor Finns or Peruvians love their countries too, but heaven knows why - they have so little to be proud of, so few “reasons.”

And so Sobran trains his cannons on the nationalist ideologue: "The nationalist, who identifies America with abstractions like freedom and democracy, may think it’s precisely America’s mission to spread those abstractions around the world - to impose them by force, if necessary. In his mind, those abstractions are universal ideals... the world must be made “safe for democracy” by “a war to end all wars”... Any country that refuses to Americanize is “anti-American” - or a “rogue nation.” For the nationalist, war is a welcome opportunity to change the world."

We might list some names in point... but our legal counsel is wagging his finger and shaking his head. The patriot and the nationalist babble the same American tongue. The one is therefore mistaken for the other. Yet lean in. Listen closer. You will find they speak alien languages: Because the patriot and the nationalist often use the same words, they may not realize that they use those words in very different senses. The American patriot assumes that the nationalist loves this country with an affection like his own, failing to perceive that what the nationalist really loves is an abstraction - “national greatness,” or something like that. The American nationalist, on the other hand, is apt to be suspicious of the patriot, accusing him of insufficient zeal, or even “anti-Americanism.”

A Patriotism of the Heart: The patriotism Sobran hymns is a relaxed, natural, healthful patriotism. It is a patriotism of the heart. This patriotism flies no ideological flag, hauls no missionary cargo, steers by no heavenly star. It is the patriotism of the prairie, of the plain, of the lonely jackrabbit crossroad, of the greasy spoon, of the truckstop, of the front porch, of the pool hall... of Main Street.

And his fellow countrymen? The patriot takes them as he finds them. Might they sometimes neglect to wash behind the ears? Might they mistake the salad fork for the dinner fork? Well, sometimes they may. But they are his countrymen… and it does not matter to him. The patriot allows himself to laugh — not at his fellow Americans — but with them.

The nationalist, meantime, does not laugh. He hectors. He preaches. He scolds.

“Patriotism Is Relaxed. Nationalism Is Rigid.” “Patriotism is relaxed,” as Sobran concludes. “Nationalism is rigid.” We in turn conclude, paraphrasing Chesterton: "The relaxed patriot, the average American, the American who tends to his own business and sweeps his own stoop, the American who loves his country as he loves his mother - this fellow is all right. But the rigid American, the uber American, the zealous American, the American nationalist hot to put the world to rights - the American who admires America for her strength - but fails to love her as herself? This fellow... he’s all wrong."

"Two Thirds of All Restaurants Will Close"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, IAllegedly, 
"Two Thirds of All Restaurants Will Close"
"As Problems continue to mount for Restaurants you will see over 2/3 of them close. I am upping my prediction from 1/2. This is because of the high prices and the desperate owners. They are resorting to things that will inevitably drive customers away."

Musical Interlude: David Gates, "Suite: Clouds and Rain"

Full screen recommended.
David Gates, "Suite: Clouds and Rain"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Two stars within our own Milky Way galaxy anchor the foreground of this cosmic snapshot. Beyond them lie the galaxies of the Hydra Cluster. In fact, while the spiky foreground stars are hundreds of light-years distant, the Hydra Cluster galaxies are over 100 million light-years away.
Three large galaxies near the cluster center, two yellow ellipticals (NGC 3311, NGC 3309) and one prominent blue spiral (NGC 3312), are the dominant galaxies, each about 150,000 light-years in diameter. An intriguing overlapping galaxy pair cataloged as NGC 3314 is just above and left of NGC 3312. Also known as Abell 1060, the Hydra galaxy cluster is one of three large galaxy clusters within 200 million light-years of the Milky Way. In the nearby universe, galaxies are gravitationally bound into clusters which themselves are loosely bound into superclusters that in turn are seen to align over even larger scales. At a distance of 100 million light-years this picture would be about 1.3 million light-years across.”

The Poet: Wendell Berry, "Circles of Our Lives"

"Circles of Our Lives"

"Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon
within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.

Again, again we come and go,
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.

Only music keeps us here,
each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.
And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone
into the darker circles of return."

- Wendell Berry

Chet Raymo, “On Being Good”

“On Being Good”
by Chet Raymo

“Several years ago, I attended a seminar on the foundations of ethical systems. The participants quoted Plato, Jesus, Heidegger, and a host of other authorities; they trotted out every philosophical and theological reason why we can or should be good. Of course, prominent among the arguments was that old canard: Without the promise of eternal salvation or the threat of damnation, we would all be scoundrels.

No one mentioned that we are first of all biological creatures with an evolutionary history, and that altruism, aggression, fidelity, promiscuity, nurturing and violence might be part of our animal natures.

I looked around the auditorium and saw folks of every religious and philosophical persuasion, and of many cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and I thought, "Gee, I'd trust any one of these folks not to take my wallet in a dark alley." Sure, humans are capable of great evil, but most of us are pretty good most of the time, and I suspect that it has more to do with where we have been as a biological species than with where we hope to be going in some airy-fairy afterlife.

We are animals who have evolved the capacity to cherish our fellow humans and to resist for the common good our innate tendencies to aggression and selfishness, not because we have been plucked out of our animal selves by some sky hook from above, but because we have been nudged into reflective consciousness by evolution. When it comes to living in a civilized way on a crowded planet, I choose to put my faith in the long leash of the genes rather than fear of hellfire or the chance to walk on streets of gold.”

The Daily "Near You?"

Santiago De Compostela, Galicia, Spain. Thanks for stopping by!

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/5/21: "Markets, A Look Ahead: Expect An Inflationary Shock"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/5/21:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: Expect An Inflationary Shock"

"The Ice-Cream Flavor Next Time"

"The Ice-Cream Flavor Next Time"
by Jim Kunstler

"A nation mesmerized by its own weakness wanly celebrated the long-ago and faraway memory of standing up for itself, while it passively endures the current orgy of tyrannical cancellation and suppression of anyone talking back to the present folks-in-charge. Over just a few years, this tyranny has grown like a toxic slime mold from such an unlikely place, the Internet social app ecology of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, as they took over the public arena - where the battle of ideas is supposed to live - and did the government’s dirty work, complete with adorable emojis. 😃 You’re fired!

Who will stand up to Zuck, Jack, and Sundar Pichai? Who elected these megalomaniacs boss of the USA? What will it take to end their reign of terror? Some sort of… revolution? (Shhhh! That must be a dirty word, even considering we just celebrated the high point of the American Revolution: The Declaration of Independence, signed July 4, 1776.)

Don’t look to “Joe Biden,” the nation’s putatively elected leader - about whose election back in November, 2020, you are liable to hear more about as the summer stickily unspools. Zuck, Jack, and Sundar managed to protect “Joe Biden” from the stupendous depredations of his offspring, Hunter Biden, recorded in explosive detail on a laptop the public was not allowed to hear about. Don’t look to the Department of Justice, supposedly “investigating” that horde of memos and emails detailing the Bidens’ influence-peddling to the CCP and others - they’re busy surveilling “white supremacists” on the apps run by Zuck, Jack, and Sundar. And for sure don’t look to the news media, that coalition of sell-outs and quislings, busy decoding the foreign policy moves signified in “Joe Biden’s” ice-cream flavor choices. (Rocky Road means: Oh, let China have that….)

Wondering who is actually running the “Joe Biden” government? Some of us out here are. (Do you think we’re allowed to say that?) For instance, have you tried googling the name Susan Rice lately? Remember her? Maybe not. “Joe Biden” appointed her Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. From the looks of things across the country, you’d think her plate would be heaped mighty high, what with “insurrection” and other white mischief threatening to take down the republic. Anyway, I googled “news” for her. Hardly a goshdarn thing came up that wasn’t from months ago, and most of that was sheer puffery about how accomplished she is, and what a fabulous person. Don’t you wonder what her phone log looks like? All those calls to the Obama residence, day after day, hour after hour?

All of which raises the question: is the USA just floating merrily merrily down the stream of events under the beneficent reign of “Joe Biden” (Susan Rice, Barack Obama & Co…)? Or are we, rather, freefalling? I suspect it is the latter. And toward what? It being mid-year, I will venture a few guesses. Enjoy the summer while you can because Corona Virus is coming back in the fall and watch out for people who are vaccinated getting sicker than the un-vaxed. That will be a mind-bender, as if Americans are not already utterly perplexed and bewildered by one political swindle after another. The whining will drown out even the news of more “white supremacy.” But they told us….

An autumn wave of Covid-19 (one “variant” or another) would take out whatever remains of the service economy, the restaurants struggling just now to return to normality (ha!), the hair salons, the gyms, the florists, booksellers, sports, theaters, live music venues, what-have-you. Since we no longer have much of a manufacturing economy, the only thing left would be Wall Street - which was originally designed to raise money for the manufacturing and service sector but now only raises money for itself via the seemingly magical mingling of “leverage” with “liquidity” to conjure profit from black holes where the ghosts of productivity howl.

It’s some trick but, let’s face it, it’s still just a trick. Also in that picture is the weird three-legged race of deflation tied to inflation running both uphill and downhill at the same time like a nightmare out of M.C. Escher by way of Stephanie Kelton. The USA will be toting up a $3-trillion-plus deficit just for the current fiscal year at the same time that debt becomes ever more obviously unpayable. How does debt even mean anything if there is no prospect of paying it back? Especially in the form of financial instruments, namely: bonds. And how does a financial system based on debt behave when all that is the case? I guess we’re going to find out.

My guess would be a price collapse in financial instruments - abstract things represented by money - and then a collapse of money itself. You may be thinking: not a pretty picture. I know. And we thought the last days of the Soviet Union were bad in 1990. Hoo boy, are we in for a rough ride. One can hardly imagine the social side-effects of all that, but it would seem to imply people having a rather hard time finding something to eat, or getting anything else they need. Remember good ol’ Ross Perot talking about “a giant sucking sound?” Think of that against a background of things on fire. What flavor ice-cream will “Joe Biden” be ordering on Halloween?"

"How It Really Is"

Related:

Sunday, July 4, 2021

"Sorry, America, You Lost Me"

"Sorry, America, You Lost Me"
by Charles Hugh Smith 

"I happened to be in a Big Box Emporium, buying two bags of whole wheat flour, when a strange revelation struck me: almost nothing in this giant emporium was made in the USA. Apologists will quickly point out that the two bags of whole wheat flour were "made in the USA," and note the US-made items in the food, liquor and beverage aisles; but wander out of these aisles and tell me how many of the hundreds of items are made in the USA (not assembled of foreign components, but made entirely in the USA). The answer is very few.

I suppose this fact is unremarkable to the majority of Americans, but my reaction was, sorry, America, you lost me: how is this not insane to depend on sweatshops thousands of miles away to make virtually everything on the shelves and warehouses of the U.S.?

It's as if a war was declared on manufacturing in America and we lost - or simply surrendered.

If you want to buy a bulldozer or electric vehicle, you can Buy American, and if you buy an iPhone, the firmware is conjured in Cupertino (the phone is assembled in China of components sourced globally). But below a certain price point and outside the snacks, magazines and beer aisles, U.S.-made good are "special order" if they're available at all.

Is this because the foreign made stuff is so high quality? No, it's virtually all garbage quality. A war was declared on quality, and America lost. Virtually nothing on the shelves of America's Big Box Emporiums and fulfillment warehouses is durable; it's either designed to fail (planned obsolescence) or it's so poorly made that it breaks, fades, rips, tears, delaminates or fails, and is dutifully hauled to the landfill as part of the entire Landfill Economy. (Forget trying to repair it; it's been designed to be impossible to repair, and all the components are junk, too.)

If stuff breaks or fails in short order, it isn't cheap, no matter what the price says. It's expensive because it must be constantly replaced. A war was declared on value, and America lost. Sorry, America, you lost me. How is the transition from quality and value to junk not a complete disaster for the nation?

So what is the business of America? Marketing. Everything boils down to marketing in America. Everything is a channel to collect consumer data that can be monetized (no, you can't monetize your own data; that's not how it works) or a channel to upsell anyone ensnared in the value chain.

You may naively think an iPhone is a device for phone calls and texts. Silly you! It's nothing but a channel to upsell you Apple services. The "settings" on my old SE still have a nag notice because "setting up" your iPhone means signing up for Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Pay, Apple Skim and Apple Scam.

My Mom-in-law is in her 90s and like many in her age group, she enjoys watching TV. She lives with us and so we handle the cable TV subscription for her. She asked us to get the commercial-free English-language network from Japan, NHK, and of course this is only available in a package of rubbish channels.

Since I have a basketball hoop for my fitness amusement and have long been a roundball fan, I clicked to the NBA channel listed. It was nothing but a series of moronic adverts. I tried again later, nothing but moronic adverts. I gave up on the third try, because it dawned on me that apparently this channel doesn't actually televise any actual basketball, it only promises to do so at some later date; and in the meantime, here is an endless stream of moronic adverts.

Sorry, America, you lost me. Marketing and upselling is not prosperity or success, it's ruination.

The list of channels that are nothing but data mining, marketing and upselling is endless in America. Every subscription service is nothing more than a channel to upsell you on "Premium services."

Social media: nothing but data mining, marketing and upselling.

Internet Search: nothing but data mining, marketing and upselling.

Media, telecommunications, banking, etc.: nothing but data mining, marketing and upselling. Look at the most profitable and highest valuation corporations in America, and their sole business model and reason to exist is data mining, marketing and upselling.

The Healthcare Borg is also nothing but data mining, marketing and upselling. If you want to get a look indicating profound suspicion of your motives and beliefs, tell your healthcare provider, "I'm over 65 and don't take any meds." Within the Borg, such a statement can only mean 1) you haven't yet signed up for Medicare/Medicaid, and we need to get you in the gravy-train pronto; 2) you're some kind of nutcase who refuses medications, or 3) you're a dangerous subversive who should be reported to Facebook as a potential extremist.

The Healthcare Borg's marketing has reached extremes of absurdity. Practitioners are under extreme pressure from Corporate HQ to bill you for something on a regular basis, and so I received increasingly frantic phone calls and emails demanding I set up a telemarketing, oops, I mean telemedicine confab with my PCP (primary care physician--the Borg loves acronyms as much as the Pentagon).

I halfway expected to be accosted on the street by thugs informing me to make a telemedicine appointment or "we're gonna have to break something." Sorry, America, you lost me. When healthcare stopped being about nurturing health, especially via basic preventative measures, and became a profit center and marketing channel, the well-being of the nation spiraled into the sewer.

While I foolishly waited for a basketball game to appear on the NBA channel - how naive of me! - I clicked through a few movie channels. The offerings were the most recent batch of the super-hero genre. As a huge fan of action films, I had hopes these might reverse my disinterest in the genre. Nope. The movies were not bad, they were simply... uninteresting and derivative.

Sorry, America, you lost me. Everything that's a derivative of something that was creative and fresh decades ago is uninteresting, and virtually everything is a derivative. America is subjected to a remake of a remake of a remake, with a switch of media being the supposed creative magic.

Star Wars 24 plus the novelized version, amusement park ride, podcast, action figure and OnlyFans pages, anyone?

America's cultural obsession with super-heroes made me wonder, in a dangerously subversive fashion, what this means beneath the superficiality of reaping reliable profits. Does it now require super-human powers to survive the onslaught of exploitation, profiteering, overwork and exposure to fanatical marketing, data mining and upselling that is life in the USA?

Or does this cultural obsession reflect our fear that we're so far gone down the road of worshiping billionaires blowing billions on space tourism that only super-heroes can save us?

Sorry, America, you lost me. Many readers will write all this off as the sour rantings of some out-of-it geezer. But ask yourself: what if everything said here is correct, but nobody dares talk about it because that might make it real?"

"Happy Birthday America"

"Happy Birthday America"
by Eric Utter

"The U.S. Capitol building has been an iconic symbol of democracy for well over two hundred years, much like the U.S. itself. It remained so through the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and too many lesser crises to count, all while remaining largely accessible to the citizens whose interests those who work there are supposed to represent. However, this Independence Day finds the Capitol off-limits to all but a select few. Our elite overseers can't be expected to open themselves up to a possible "insurrection," can they? Sad.

The tragic events of the past year and a half, and our "representatives'" reaction to them, as well as our own response, have left me wondering what the Founders and other astute political observers might say to us now if they had the chance. Then I realized they would say pretty much what they said back then. Here are some of the most profound, universal - and yet timely - words of wisdom ever uttered with regard to societies, governments, and freedom:

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."  - Benjamin Franklin. COVID-19?

"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."  - Benjamin Franklin.

Sound familiar? I wonder what Franklin's preferred pronouns were.

"For true patriots to be silent, is dangerous."  - Samuel Adams.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."  - Thomas Jefferson.

"But a constitution of government once changed from freedom can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever."  - John Adams.

We might want to take this one to heart.

"When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty."  - John Basil Barnhill.

One of the great truisms of all time.

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular." - Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson was a Democrat. He would've been summarily canceled today.

"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms." - Hubert H. Humphrey. Trigger warning! Humphrey was a Democrat!

"When plunder has become a way of life for a group of people living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it, and a moral code that glorifies it."  - Frédéric Bastiat. We are seeing this now with our elites on Wall Street, in Big Tech, and in government. So sad.

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it." - H.L. Mencken. The most accurate description of leftists ever stated, in my humble opinion. No truer words have ever been spoken.

"I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts." - Ronald Reagan. Absolute and irrefutable.

"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln.

"We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth." - Abraham Lincoln. The last quote is from Lincoln's message to Congress on December 1, 1861. It is just as true today. We are once again at a tipping point, an existential moment.

And I leave you with another quote, this one from Toby Keith's new song, "Happy Birthday America": "Seems like everyone's pissin' on the red, white, and blue. Happy birthday America, whatever's left of you."
Full screen recommended.

Musical Interlude: 2002, "We Meet Again"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "We Meet Again"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"You can't walk along the Milky Way. Still, under a dark sky you can explore it. To the eye the pale luminous trail of light arcing through the sky on a dark, moonless night does appear to be a path through the heavens. The glowing celestial band is the faint, collective light of distant stars cut by swaths of obscuring interstellar dust clouds.
It lies along the plane of our home galaxy, so named because it looks like a milky way. Since Galileo's time, the Milky Way has been revealed to telescopic skygazers to be filled with congeries of innumerable stars and cosmic wonders."

Chet Raymo, “We Are Such Stuff…”

“We Are Such Stuff…”
by Chet Raymo

“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again.”

“Caliban is talking to Stephano and Trinculo in Shakespeare’s “Tempest”, telling them not to be “afeard” of the mysterious place they find themselves, an island seemingly beset with magic, strangeness, ineffable presences. And you and I, and, yes, all of us, find ourselves inexplicably thrown up on this island that is the world, and we too, if we are attentive, hear the strange music, the sounds and sweet airs, that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere

No, I’m not talking about the usual ubiquitous clamor, the roar of internal combustion, the blare of the television, the beeping of mobile phones. I’m not talking about the Limbaughs and the Becks, the televangelists, the blathering politicians, the twitterers and bloggers (including this one). I’m not even talking about the exquisite music of Mozart, the poetry of Wordsworth, the theories of Einstein.

I’m talking about the sounds we hear in utter silence, in moments of repose, in the heart of darkness, when we are a little bit afraid, disoriented, off kilter. A strange music that comes from beyond our knowing, a felt meaning. You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it. You’d have to be deaf not to have heard it.

Where we differ is how we describe it. Mostly, we give its source a name. Angels. Fairies. Gods or demons. Yahweh. Allah. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Nixies, E.T.s, shades and shadows. Naiads, dryads, Ariel and Puck. A host of invisible creatures who are, in one way or another, images of ourselves. And, in naming, we are a little less afraid.

And some of us are just content to listen, to take delight. Having woken to the inexplicable mystery of the world - the sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not - we let the music lull us back into a sweet slumber, a kind of dreamless dream, a reverie. Does reverie share a deep root with reverence? I don’t know.”

The Daily "Near You?"

Casper, Wyoming, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

“I Pity You, Too...”

“Said a philosopher to a street sweeper, “I pity you. Yours is a hard and dirty task.” And the street sweeper said, “Thank you, sir. But tell me, what is your task?” And the philosopher answered saying, “I study man’s mind, his deeds and his desires.” Then the street sweeper went on with his sweeping and said with a smile, “I pity you, too.”
- Kahlil Gibran

Greg Hunter, "Using Disaster Capitalism to Control All Humans"

"Using Disaster Capitalism to Control All Humans"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Investment advisor and former Assistant Secretary of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts contends CV19 and vaccines to cure it are all part of the “Going Direct Reset.” Fitts explains, “This is so simple at the root. The central bankers are using the government to shut down the main street economy, and then they are going direct and injecting money into the private equity firms and Wall Street who are running around the country buying things. Think of this as a leverage buyout of the world. We are being purchased with our own money. Also, we are liable. If you look at all the debt the government is issuing, our assets are liable for that debt. This is a continuation and consolidation of the financial coup that we have been taking about.”

Fitts goes on to say, “We have had a small group of people who have gotten away with crime, and crime that pays is crime that stays. Now, they are in full blossom. We have been talking about this, and many people have tried to stay in the middle of the road. Now, the message in 2021 is there is no middle of the road. You’ve got to pick sides. This is freedom or tyranny, and tyranny is slavery. We are talking about very invasive slavery because they are planning on installing the smart grid into our bodies. There will be 24/7 surveillance and control of your money. If you don’t behave, they will turn off your money. If they don’t want you to go more than five miles, your money won’t work further than five miles.”

Fitts says the entire CV19 virus and vaccines to fix the problem is simply part of the cruel and brutal plan. Fitts says, “There is no legal basis for an ‘emergency authorization’ even though they have done that. More important, if you look at what we know about the vaccine injuries, the type of vaccine injuries and the extent of them, it is shocking that these have not been shut down. We are talking about serious physical harm coming to the people who are taking them. There is recent information that has come out of the Japanese health agency, and one of the indications is we are seeing toxicity in the female organs. If you look at the damage that is being done, I am told it’s impossible to not know this before they started giving these injections. We may be looking at a full blown sterilization program.”

Fitts has much more to say in this 36 min interview. Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with Catherine Austin Fitts, publisher of "The Solari Report".

"How It Really Is"

 

Happy Birthday America! Ray Charles, "America the Beautiful"

Full screen recommended.
Ray Charles, "America the Beautiful"

Happy birthday America!