Monday, July 12, 2021

"The Scale Of The Nightmarish Crisis Currently Unfolding In Our Western States Is Being Compared To Hurricane Katrina"

"The Scale Of The Nightmarish Crisis Currently Unfolding 
In Our Western States Is Being Compared To Hurricane Katrina"
by Michael Snyder

"One of the worst natural disasters in the history of our country is unfolding right in front of our eyes. In the entire history of the United States, we have never seen heat in the western third of the nation like we have in 2021. In the entire history of the United States, we have never seen drought in the western third of the nation like we have in 2021. Needless to say, countless numbers of farmers and ranchers are deeply suffering because of the heat and drought, and it is being projected that this is going to be one of the worst years for wildfires that we have ever experienced. As you will see below, this crisis is being compared to Hurricane Katrina, but Hurricane Katrina only lasted for a few days. The crisis that we are now facing has already stretched on for many months, and there is no end in sight.

Let me start by discussing the record-breaking heat. Yet another heat wave is baking the western third of the nation right now, and it is being reported that the high temperature in Death Valley actually reached 130 degrees on Friday… "On Friday, the temperature at Death Valley soared to 130 degrees, breaking the previous daily record high of 129 set back in 1913, according to the National Weather Service. This reading comes within 4 degrees of the all-time world record of 134 F set there in 1913. The 134-degree mark happens to be the world record for the highest temperature ever measured on Earth."

Unfortunately, things didn’t really cool off during the weekend. The high temperature in Death Valley was 129 degrees on Saturday, and it was expected that the same high temperature would be hit on Sunday… "AccuWeather expected the temperature in Death Valley to reach 129 degrees Sunday, which would tie for the daily record high. Death Valley hit the same temperature Saturday. The world record high is 134 degrees."

Forecasters called for Las Vegas to hit another all-time high, as it did Saturday with a temperature of 117 degrees. On Saturday, St. George, Utah, also hit 117, setting another tie for an all-time high, according to the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City.

There are moments every summer when conditions get really hot, but so far this summer the heat has been absolutely relentless. The extremely high temperatures that we have witnessed this month follow the hottest June that the continent of North America has ever experienced…"Researchers have confirmed what millions of Americans and Canadians who just endured scorching temperatures probably already suspected: Last month was the hottest June on record in North America.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), an agency supported by the European Union, said that average surface temperatures for June in North America were about one-quarter of a degree Fahrenheit (0.15 of a degree Celsius) higher than the average for June 2012, the previous record-holder.

At the same time, there has been very little meaningful precipitation in the western third of the nation this summer, and the latest map from the U.S. Drought Monitor is the worst that I have ever seen. The state of Utah is being hit particularly hard, and one official is openly admitting that this is “the worst drought in the state of Utah’s history”… "That official, Dave Ure, speaking just after a tour of waterworks facilities in Summit County, put the situation in stark terms. “We are in the worst drought in the state of Utah’s history right now, and the only thing compared to it is the droughts back in 1895 and 1933,” Ure said."

If you don’t live in the western third of the nation, it is going to be difficult for you to grasp how desperate things are becoming. This isn’t just a drought. What we are witnessing right now is a mega-disaster of epic proportions, and scientists are telling us not to expect relief for the foreseeable future.

Farmers and ranchers are having a particularly difficult time. They can’t operate successfully without water, and one rancher in Utah told Fox News that this crisis is “going to equal or surpass the amount of people that that were impacted by Hurricane Katrina”… Ron Gibson manages 1,500 head of cattle in Northern Utah but may soon lack the resources to sustain his herd. Scorching temperatures and the absence of rain have created a depletion in feed supply for cattle farmers like Ron. With watering rights in his area cut about 70% in efforts to preserve the water supply, more farmers are forced to outsource their feed, and the high demand has driven up the price four times greater than usual. “When we look at the amount of impact that this kind of disaster is going to have on the country, it’s going to equal or surpass the amount of people that that were impacted by Hurricane Katrina,” he told Fox News.

Hurricane Katrina absolutely devastated one major city, but this crisis threatens to cripple one-third of the entire nation. The longer the drought drags on, the lower water levels get, and at this point reservoir levels are getting dangerously low… "Reservoir levels are dropping throughout the West, as the drought tightens its grip on the region and intense summer heat further stresses both water supply and the surrounding landscape. Many reservoirs are at or approaching historic low levels due to lackluster rainy seasons combined with increasing temperatures due to climate change.

The drought crisis is perhaps most apparent in the Colorado River basin, which saw one of its driest years on record, following two decades of less-than-adequate flows. The nation’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead near Las Vegas, is at its lowest level since the lake filled after the construction of the Hoover dam in the 1930s; it currently sits at 1,069 feet above sea level, or 35% of its total capacity. It supplies water to Arizona, Nevada, California and Mexico."

Water restrictions have already been implemented in many areas, but if this drought persists we are eventually going to see water restrictions that are far more draconian than we have ever seen before. Needless to say, a lot of people living in the region won’t like that at all.

Of course the hot, dry conditions have also created an ideal environment for wildfires, and right at this moment hundreds of thousands of acres are currently burninghttps://www.usatoday.com/story/news/weather/2021/07/11/western-united-states-wildfires-california-oregon-arizona/7932453002/… "More than 300,000 acres are burning across six states across the western United States on Sunday as the region battled yet another brutal heat wave that shattered records and strained power grids. The largest, the so-called Bootleg Fire, burned across 143,607 acres in Oregon and was 0% contained. Officials in neighboring state California asked all residents to reduce power consumption quickly after the fire knocked out interstate power lines, preventing up to 4,000 megawatts of electricity from flowing into the state."

We are being told that this is going to be one of the worst years for wildfires in our history, and it may end up topping the list by the time it is all said and done. This isn’t just a “bad summer” we are talking about. What we are facing is a crisis that is unprecedented in size and scope, and scientists are telling us that it isn’t going to end any time soon."

"The Trouble With Trouble"

"The Trouble With Trouble"
by Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "America desperately needs leadership; it gets jesters, jokers, and jackasses instead. How come? To make a long story short, the elites control the government. The government controls the “printing press.” The printing press gives them wealth and power. How can they resist They sit in their panelled studies… pour a shallow glass of whiskey… open their laptops… and look at their 401(k)s. “Another good month,” they say to themselves.

Infinite Cash: Stocks are trading at all-time highs. On Friday, the S&P 500 index, compared to sales, hit a new record. And the Tobin’s Q ratio, comparing a stock’s market value to the cost of replacing the asset behind it, has never been higher. This stock market bonanza has helped the elites transfer trillions to themselves ($30 trillion is our guesstimate… and we’re sticking with it). They also use this cornucopia of almost infinite cash – fake money from the Federal Reserve – to fund their own grab bag of wishes, fantasies, and claptrap theories.

Zombie Companies: But why is there so little (almost none at all) dissent from the programs and schemes that are bound to ruin the country? Why are there no wise men? No selfless graybeards? For one thing, in a world of free money, there’s almost no penalty for being a numbskull. And no reward for prudence. You run your business at a loss? No problem. Just borrow whatever you need. Almost one out of four of the companies on the Russell 3000 Index are not making enough money to pay even the interest on their debts. That’s 44% more companies than last year. And last year, these zombies owed about $1 trillion. Now, it’s almost $2 trillion.

When wobbly companies borrow, they call the loans “junk bonds.” Typically, investors demand a premium for lending to these companies, for the obvious reason – it’s likely that the loans will never be repaid. And when investors are feeling particularly fearful – say, during a financial crisis, like we saw in 2008 – the yield on these junk bonds goes up. In 2008, for example, investors demanded a real yield (over inflation) of 20%.

Can’t Lose: But guess what? Last week, the Bank of America’s index of junk bond yields fell below 4% – which puts it below the level of consumer price inflation. So now, the riskiest companies – those voted least likely to succeed – are able to borrow money at a profit! Wall Street gamblers have never had it better. At today’s federal funds rate… and today’s consumer price inflation…the carry cost for the big speculators is hugely negative. In other words, if they just took money directly from the Federal Reserve… paid the 0.25% interest (the Fed’s current key lending rate)… and gave back the money a year later… they’d make 4.75%!

Spreading Rot: But the rot spreads out… like gangrene. The universities all benefited from the feds’ student loan program. (Not to mention all the federal grants and giveaways to professors willing to debase themselves by studying “‘diversity.”)And even the Pentagon has taken advantage of the public in the Bubble Epoch. The military budget was $300 billion in 1989 – when America’s last serious enemy, the Soviet Union, gave up. At the time, former U.S. Secretaries of Defense estimated that the budget could be cut in half with no loss of national security. Instead, the budget doubled!

Whole new industries – with their own lobbyists – are eager to climb on board this bus. Move over lobbyists for Goldman Sachs and Raytheon. Make room for the Green Lobby… funded by… you guessed it… funny money. NFTscryptosmeme stocksbillionaire space cadets , whee! There’s no penalty for self-indulgence… and no reward for hard work, self-discipline, and careful planning.

Big Hurrah: This is not supposed to happen. Cooler heads are meant to prevail. Old-timers are supposed to say: “This just isn’t right; it makes no sense. You folks over the Fed have gotta unwind this madness.” Call in the old grumps… the wet blankets… the spoil sports! But wait… The old-timers are corruptible, too. They have their stock portfolios. They have their contracts, their tenured professorships, their cryptos… and their reputations, too.

They were silent when Fed chief Alan Greenspan gave them his famous “Greenspan Put” in the late 1980s. They said nothing when dot-coms went to the moon… or when houses became speculative investments. And they cheered when another Fed chief, Ben Bernanke, bailed out Wall Street in 2008… and gave another big hurrah when the Jerome Powell Fed stepped up the bailouts in 2020. And the stimmy checks? Well… if they help keep the peace… why not?

No Objection: And now, watching their accounts rise and preparing for retirement, they raise no objection… neither to the fake money… nor to the $3 trillion deficits… nor to any of the daffy policies that will surely end in tears. But the trouble with trouble, as they say, is that it starts out as fun. The elite graybeards forgot the lessons of the past and enjoyed more than 30 years of dabbling, dibbling, and doodling at the public’s expense. And now, the party is wrapping up. And the graybeards have nothing more to say."




The Daily "Near You?"

Vaudreuil, Quebec, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Edward Hirsch, "I Was Never Able To Pray"

"I Was Never Able To Pray"

"Wheel me down to the shore
where the lighthouse was abandoned
and the moon tolls in the rafters.
Let me hear the wind paging through the trees
and see the stars flaring out, one by one,
like the forgotten faces of the dead.
I was never able to pray,
but let me inscribe my name
in the book of waves
and then stare into the dome
of a sky that never ends
and see my voice sail into the night."

- Edward Hirsch

"Humanity Today..."

"Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life."
- Edward O. Wilson

“One of the penalties of being a human being is other human beings.”
- Christopher Morley, “Hide and Seek”

Jim Kunstler, "A Bodyguard of Lies"

"A Bodyguard of Lies"
by Jim Kunstler

"A bunch of readers sent me a video on the Odysee platform that seems to have lit up the Internet over the weekend, a conversation between the international lawyer Reiner Fuellmich and a character named David Martin, PhD, CEO of M-Cam, a company that researches and advises on intellectual property and patents, especially in medicine. Dr. Martin is “a fellow” at the University of Virginia School of Business Administration and formerly an assistant professor at UVa’s School of Medicine. Mr. Fuellmich is a German national who claims to be bringing a case to the world court to prosecute various parties for hoaxing the world over the coronavirus we call Covid-19.

Mr. Fuellmich’s claim is based on the allegation that the world has been played by “a PCR test pandemic,” not by a novel coronavirus, saying that the PCR test is entirely unreliable, but was used to generate millions of “cases.” Dr. Martin claims that scores of patents were filed as far back as 2008 on features found in Covid 19 - the spike protein, the polybasic cleavage site, and the ace-2 receptor binding domain - by people doing “bioweapons” research at the University of North Carolina (e.g., Dr. Ralph Baric) as well as the US Military’s DARPA, the Wuhan, China, virology lab, and Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), much of it intermediated by Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance, and allegedly involving a criminal conspiracy with several pharmaceutical companies to make a lot of money off an engineered global health emergency. He claims further that the mRNA vaccines are “medical devices” designed to induce illness.

This complex story has its charms (Fuellmich & Martin are very good talkers) and has undergone serial debunkings by some of the usual debunkers, themselves not necessarily reliable organs of debunkery, such as The Washington Post. Dr. Martin appears to be associated with the “Plandemic” crowd and with some marginal crypto-religious groups inveighing against Jewish conspiracies and freemasonry - two big red flags for me.

But we live in a time when reality is exceptionally slippery and there are parts of the story that are now accepted as real in the emergent consensual reality of what actually happened. For instance: that Dr. Anthony Fauci funded gain-of-function research using Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance as a conduit. And the numerous patent records do exist within the stated time-line. The scientific and legal facts around all this are abstruse, and most college-educated (and beyond) Americans might have trouble processing the story.

But this leads to another story that lit up the Internet over the weekend: the 35-piece Twitter thread put out by blogger/podcaster Daryl Cooper under the username “Martyr Made” analyzing why half the country is so angry about being bamboozled by the authorities over the past five years, and why they now doubt the results of the 2020 election. It lit up the Internet because it was concise and clear, showing the immense bad faith that Americans have been subjected to and the resulting institutional perfidy. As I have said here many times, much of this trouble with reality goes back to RussiaGate, the mendacity of which can hardly be over-stated. Here’s an even more concise edited string of Mr. Cooper’s most pungent points:

"The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1… Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could… It’s hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of gov’t as a conspiracy… Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army… They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them (conservatives). They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov’t official, because they feel most betrayed by them… Many of them don’t know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it’s probably true.”

That’s a pretty deft summation of what has gone on in this country for a matter of years: complete institutional betrayal. Most of the political establishment is implicated in this, but mainly the Democratic Party as a whole, certain members of the Republican congressional leadership (Senators McConnell, Burr, Rubio and others), officers of the permanent DC bureaucracy, and most damningly, the press. I would also throw in the judiciary, especially the DC federal courts.

So, don’t expect that half of the country to comply with directives or mandates about anything until some of that is corrected, especially the RussiaGate piece. The person assigned to correct that, of course, is named John Durham, now special prosecutor. Many Americans have given up on him for the excellent reason that they have seen one seemingly criminal event after another unspool before them (the Eric Ciaramella/CIA impeachment op; the malicious treatment of General Flynn by Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, the Hunter Biden laptop affair, the Fauci gain-of-function funding) with no attempt at formal adjudication, and a bodyguard of lies provided by the news media - and through it all, John Durham is missing-in-action.

It’s been a very long wait and remarkably, absolutely nothing has leaked out of his office in all these months. Is it really possible that Mr. Durham will just slip away down history’s memory hole without ever registering what he spent the last two years doing? Personally, I don’t think that’s possible. It is possible, though, that Attorney General Merrick Garland is interfering with Mr. Durham’s investigation in ways we don’t know about. If so, that would an invitation to some pretty grave civil unrest."

"Moderna Rep Admits Everyone Is Part of Huge Experiment" (Excerpt)

"Moderna Rep Admits Everyone Is Part of Huge Experiment"
by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Except: "In the featured video, which aired June 22, 2021, independent reporter Stew Peters plays an audio recording made by a young woman who suddenly developed Guillain-Barre syndrome after her Moderna injection. Her neurologist believes her condition is the direct result of the COVID shot. Please view the video on Rumble, Google Blogger will not permit it to be embedded: 

While the neurologist filed an adverse event report with the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), the woman decided to report it to Moderna as well. The Moderna rep does not appear the least surprised by the injury, and appears to admit he’s received similar reports before.

Everyone Who Gets the Jab Is Part of the Safety Trial: During that call, the Moderna representative reads her the following disclaimer: “The Moderna COVID-19 vaccine has not been approved or licensed by the Food and Drug Administration, but it has been authorized for emergency use by the FDA under an emergency use authorization to prevent coronavirus disease 2019, for use in individuals 18 years of age and older.

There is no FDA-approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19. The EUA for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is in effect for the duration of the COVID-19 EUA declaration, justifying emergency use of the product unless that declaration is terminated or the authorization is revoked sooner.”

The rep also points out that all clinical trial phases are still ongoing, and that long-term protective efficacy against COVID-19 is unknown. When the patient asks whether everyone who gets the COVID shot - even if they did not specifically sign up to be a trial participant - is in fact part of the clinical trial, he replies, with a chuckle, “pretty much, yeah.”

So, in a nutshell, while vaccine makers, health authorities, mainstream media, social media platforms like Facebook and public advertisements tell you the vaccine has undergone rigorous testing, has been “approved” and is safe and effective, none of those claims are true.

The shots have received emergency use authorization only, which is completely different from regular FDA approval and licensing. They don’t know how effective the shot is, or how long the effects last, and they don’t know if it’s safe, because the trials have not been completed. In fact, the public vaccination campaign is a big part of those trials, whether people realize it or not.

Children Are Being Coerced into Medical Experimentation: This makes the push to inject children and teens all the more disturbing. Vaccine manufacturers have received EUA for children as young as 12, and parents are now being told their children “must” participate in what is a medical experiment.

People are being told it’s their social “duty” to participate in a medical experiment. People are told they have to participate in a medical experiment or lose their job or educational prospects. What’s happening here is no different than being told you “must” participate in a new cancer drug trial in order to keep your job or attend school. It’s completely absurd, unethical and illegal.

When people do get the shot, they are not informed that they’re taking part in a medical experiment and they’re not asked to sign a consent form (as this particular requirement is waived under EUA rules). While consent forms are waived under an EUA, providing truthful information about potential side effects is not.

It’s really important to realize that coercing people to participate in medical experimentation violates long-established research ethics rules. If you wanted to perform a medical study and decided to lure participants with free ice cream or a free Playstation, the ethics committee would shut down your project.

The problem here is that the COVID-19 injection trials have no oversight boards. There’s no Data Safety Monitoring Board, no Clinical Event Committee and no Clinical Ethics Committee. This despite the fact that such oversight is standard practice for all human research. If such committees do exist, they’ve not been announced and no standard reports have been published.

Myocarditis Update: Peters also addresses an increasingly common side effect, namely myocarditis, i.e., heart inflammation. Animal research performed by Masonic Medical Research Institute researchers in collaboration with the Boston Children’s Hospital was posted on the preprint server bioRxiv, June 20, 2021.

The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein subunit directly damages the heart and causes myocarditis by triggering an exaggerated immune response - a cytokine storm - in the heart cells.

The study, “Selectively Expressing SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein S1 Subunit in Cardiomyocytes Induces Cardiac Hypertrophy in Mice,”7 found that the spike protein itself (without the rest of the virus) “directly impairs endothelial function.” As it turns out, the S1 subunit of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein activates NF-kB, a protein that controls not only the transcription of DNA but also cellular survival, cytokine production and secondary inflammation.

This disease process does not involve the ACE2 receptor but rather the toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), which is responsible for the detection of pathogens and the initiation of innate immune responses. In summary, the research showed spike protein subunit “caused heart dysfunction, induced hypertrophic remodeling and elicited cardiac inflammation.”

“Since CoV-2-S does not interact with murine ACE2, our study presents a novel ACE2-independent pathological role of CoV-2-S [SARS-CoV-2], and suggests that the circulating CoV-2-S1 [CoV-2-spike protein subunit 1] is a TLR4-recognizable alarmin that may harm the CMs [cardiomyocytes, i.e., heart cells] by triggering their innate immune responses,” the authors state.

In short, the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein subunit directly damages the heart and causes myocarditis by triggering an exaggerated immune response - a cytokine storm - in the heart cells. Importantly, hypertrophic remodeling means this is a permanent reshaping and damage of the heart, which refutes claims that the hundreds of myocarditis cases reported to VAERS are of little concern and that their hearts will eventually heal. I believe those assumptions will be found to be wrong, and that many of them may be left with permanently damaged hearts.

‘They Knew What They Were Doing’: As noted by Jane Ruby, Ph.D., on the Stew Peters Show, this research should have been done before these injections were put out into the public domain. Instead of conducting rigorous animal trials, vaccine makers are using the public as guinea pigs in one of the biggest experiments in human history, making tens of billions of dollars in profits while enjoying absolute immunity from any damage their experimental jabs cause.

By falsely labeling these gene modification tools as vaccines (because gene therapy does not qualify as a pandemic treatment that can be granted immunity against liability), they’ve been given the green light to conduct human experimentation without remuneration, informed consent or liability under the guise of a public health emergency.

There’s no way these gene therapies in any rational society would have been released to be tested on this many human subjects, including pregnant women and children, were it not for this sinister misrepresentation.

Here’s the most disturbing part, though: It appears these COVID injections may have been designed to cause this kind of cell damage on purpose. Why? Because the researchers also tested the natural spike protein subunit of another coronavirus called NL63. This virus was chosen because it, like SARS-CoV-2, uses the ACE2 receptor for entry into the human cell. The NL63 spike protein did not, however, trigger this kind of heart damage. “They knew what they were doing when they engineered this mRNA to make this particular spike protein,” Ruby says."
View this complete article here:

"How It Really Is"

 

"Economic Market Snapshot PM 7/12/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot PM 7/12/21"
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/12/21:

“Must Know Now Updates”

"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
July 11th to 13th, Updated Daily
Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Daily Job Cuts
Commentary, highly recommended:
And now, the End Game...
Oh yeah...

Must Watch! "Consumers Living Off Credit Cards; Financial Disaster; Texas Living"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/11/21:
"Consumers Living Off Credit Cards; 
Financial Disaster; Texas Living"

Sunday, July 11, 2021

"The SBA Has Really Let Down Small Business - Welcome to Texas"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, IAllegedly, PM 7/11/21:
"The SBA Has Really Let Down Small Business - Welcome to Texas"
"The SBA has really let down small business in America. All of their delays have made it horrible for people to get access to money. We keep hearing story after story that it will come."

Musical Interlude: Giovanni Allevi, “Back To Life”

  Full screen recommended. 
Giovanni Allevi, “Back To Life”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Massive stars, abrasive winds, mountains of dust, and energetic light sculpt one of the largest and most picturesque regions of star formation in the Local Group of Galaxies. Known as N11, the region is visible on the upper right of many images of its home galaxy, the Milky Way neighbor known as the Large Magellanic Clouds (LMC).

The above image was taken for scientific purposes by the Hubble Space Telescope and reprocessed for artistry by an amateur to win the Hubble's Hidden Treasures competition. Although the section imaged above is known as NGC 1763, the entire N11 emission nebula is second in LMC size only to 30 Doradus. Studying the stars in N11 has shown that it actually houses three successive generations of star formation. Compact globules of dark dust housing emerging young stars are also visible around the image.”

“I Can’t Wait For the Day When Life Finally Makes Sense”

“I Can’t Wait For the Day When Life Finally Makes Sense”
by Rania Naim

“I can’t wait for the day when life finally makes sense, when we find the silver lining in every tragedy, when we learn the lesson from each mistake and when we understand why our hearts needed to get broken a few times to let love in.

I can’t wait for the day that we understand why we met the right people at the wrong time or the wrong people at the right time and why our lives didn’t align to bring us together. I wonder if it’s because they’re the wrong ones for us or because we still have a lot of growing up to do and we’re meant to be with someone who understand who we’re becoming not who we were.

I can’t wait for the day that we understand the lesson behind every struggle. Why we struggled to be successful, why we struggled to find love, why we struggled to reach our dreams and why we lost people who meant the world to us. I wonder if we needed these lessons to learn how to appreciate life and feel the pain of others or we just needed to learn that there is no living without suffering.

I can’t wait for the day that we understand why we had to hate ourselves to love ourselves, why we had to destroy ourselves to build ourselves up again and why we had to start over just before we got to the finish line. I wonder who saved us or who inspired us to save ourselves.

I wonder if we are meant to be reborn a few times so we can learn how to truly live. I want to know what triggered us to change and how we can no longer recognize who we used to be.

I can’t wait for the day that we understand why we keep falling for the wrong ones over and over again, why we can’t forget those who hurt us and why we sometimes can still forgive them and take them back. I want to understand how our hearts operate, how they function, how they move us to do things we would never do and lead us to places that we know we shouldn’t go to. I’m curious to know why we listen to it, why we follow it blindly like it never got us lost before, why we trust it even though it left us broken and why do we always go back to it for questions when it keeps giving us the wrong answers. I wonder if there will come a day when we stop listening to it and if we’ll ever be truly alive without it.

They say everything happens for a reason and I truly believe that, but I also want to know what this reason is and why it chose us. Why some reasons keep recurring and why some reasons leave us even more perplexed. I want to understand why we go through certain things, what’s the message behind it and what if we never respond to this message, what if we just ignore it and keep living, what will happen then? Will our lives get lost in translation? 

I can’t wait for the day that life makes sense – some days I understand why certain things happened and others I’m not so sure, but all I know is that somehow we’ll connect the dots and someday we’ll complete the puzzle, until then, we have to learn how to live our lives without trying to understand it and we have to learn how to be comfortable with the irony and uncertainty of life; otherwise we’ll lose our common sense trying to make sense of the life we’re living.”
"Maybe we accept the dream has become a nightmare. We tell ourselves that reality is better. We convince ourselves it's better that we never dream at all. But, the strongest of us, the most determined of us, holds on to the dream or we find ourselves faced with a fresh dream we never considered. We wake to find ourselves, against all odds... feeling hopeful. And, if we're lucky, we realize in the face of everything, in the face of life - the true dream is being able to dream at all."
- "Dr. Meredith Grey", "Grey's Anatomy"

The Daily "Near You?"

Morrill, Maine, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Container Shipping Shortage Triggers Freight Rate Spike Of 500 Percent: The Worst Is Still Ahead"

Full screen recommended.
"Container Shipping Shortage Triggers Freight Rate 
Spike Of 500 Percent: The Worst Is Still Ahead"
by Epic Economist

"The global shipping industry is facing the worst crisis in the history of container freight - and a massive wave of disruptions is ahead. According to the big boss of a major logistics business, Rob Lewis, the operations director of Meachers Global Logistics, a "perfect storm" is leaving global supply chains in total chaos as freight rates just skyrocketed to the highest level ever recorded. This catastrophic mess in global supply chains started during the first rounds of lockdowns when countless businesses were shut down and shipping companies reduced the number of cargo vessels being sent out. However, when stimulus money started to frenziedly fuel consumer demand, global supply chains simply couldn't cope with the unexpected boom in business.

As a result, it's getting incredibly difficult - and expensive - for stores to restock their shelves, while manufacturers, carmakers, and builders can't get the parts they need, and farmers - particularly small farmers and ranchers across the U.S. - simply cannot afford to export their products anymore. All of these reasons, analysts say, are contributing to a huge jump in consumer prices. But so far, most people remain unaware of the full impact the current shipping crisis will have on higher prices for consumer goods.

Those increased shipping costs and delays are starving the economy of the products it needs and contributing to widespread shortages. But not only consumers and retailers are being affected: most American exporters are reporting that shipping companies are so desperate to rapidly get containers back to China that they're just emptying the containers and promptly returning to the Pacific without waiting to fill them back up with products made in the U.S. Consequently, this is leading millions of small U.S. exporters to the edge of financial ruin and only expanding our ballooning trade deficit.

This week, amid continued reports of container shortages, shipping capacity constraints, port congestion, and a sudden uptick in consumer demand, new data released by Drewry Supply Chain Advisors indicated that the cost of shipping goods from Asia to Western countries has exploded to new highs. In 2020, the average port-to-port spot rate from Shanghai to Los Angeles was at around $1,500 per 40-foot container, but in the week ended July 8, 2021, that price had soared to $9,631, marking an increase of over 500% from early 2020.

Drewry says this phenomenon is a major “market shock” that likely began shortly after stimulus money started fueling an e-commerce boom in June 2020. However, a recent study has shown that those skyrocketing freight costs are having a detrimental impact on small and medium-sized exporters. "This competitive environment affected many but especially all the SMB exporters who were burdened by these high costs,” it said. The study estimated that this year alone, almost $200 billion in losses resultant from non-shipped products will weigh upon the balance sheets of small and medium American businesses. In other words, the "economic boost" provided by the Federal Reserve is actually causing our economy to stall as millions of U.S. businesses simply cannot afford to send their products overseas.

Needless to say, U.S. consumers haven't seen the worst of rising prices just yet. Part of the reason why consumer prices have been surging recently is due to a global container shortage aggravated by congestion in several key ports. But another reason why it's getting so hard for companies to find space in shipping containers is that a new virus outbreak in China has led authorities to shut down several key ports for weeks, clogging several spots critical to global trade, triggering a shipping backlog that could take months to clear and cause to shortages during the year-end holiday shopping season.

Although the rate of infections has improved since then, for global trade, the damage has been already done. In other words, Americans are about to experience exceedingly painful years of inflation. The ongoing freight crisis is just one of the many factors contributing to the surge in consumer prices. Keeping in mind that our country is going through the most devastating drought ever recorded, with millions of acres of crops being destroyed or abandoned due to the lack of irrigation water, while commodity prices have been reaching new highs and more shortages are expected to happen in the coming months, food costs are set to explode to levels most people aren't prepared for. Meanwhile, numerous industries are still waiting to get the imported products they need to properly operate - and the longer the imbalances between supply and demand persist, the more devastating will be the effects for both businesses and consumers."

Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/11/21: "Markets, A Look Ahead: BANNED! Y@uTube is Playing Games"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/11/21:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: BANNED! Y@uTube is Playing Games"

"How It Really Is"

 

Greg Hunter, "Censoring Reality"

"Censoring Reality"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter has been predicting the financial system is going to go down. It’s not a matter of if, but when. One of the things that will make this coming so-called “reset” even worse is people are going to be totally blindsided because accurate and truthful information is censored. Holter explains why, “One thing that is extremely dangerous, and I know it has affected USAWatchdog.com, you have had your channel taken down by YouTube. The amount of censorship that is going on across the board, and it’s censorship of conservatives, but it is censorship of reality. It’s censorship of truth. That is so dangerous. If you read the book "1984", we are out-Orwelling George Orwell. The way I view this is very dangerous, and it’s part of the planned reset. Quite simply, if you get taken down or information is taken down, that information is directly over the target.”

Holter says there are huge changes coming to the financial system in the coming “reset.” Holter says, “You are looking at a system that is upside down in the belief that everything is going to be fine because everything is insured. You cannot eliminate risk. You can only move risk from one to another or another. You cannot eliminate risk. The risk is there, it is systemic.”

Systemic risk is plaguing all major markets, according to Holter, “It is the everything bubble. Everything is in a bubble. What they have done is create the most leveraged system in the history of history. I hate to say this, and I have not said this publicly, but I view this as a depopulation event. The vaccine is part of it, but the big depopulation event is crashing markets and crashing the credit markets. People are not going to be able to go to their Walmart or their local grocery store or wherever because goods are not going to be available. If you live in the city, God help you because I have no idea how you are going to survive.”

In closing, Holter warns, “The powers that be have told us that we are going to have a “reset.” Everybody wants to know what the reset is going to look like. The reset, in my opinion, is going to be the rug being pulled out from under everything. The real estate sector, which is 25% of the economy, is going to collapse. You have equities at all-time highs, all-time high valuations, not points. This is a coordinated effort, and they are going to pull the plug. Once the average person realizes the workforce has been impaired, that’s going to bleed over into the equity market, credit market and the real estate market. The real estate market is in the process of ending these eviction moratoriums–it’s all over for the real estate market. So, there is your reset.”

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with financial 
writer, precious metals expert and broker Bill Holter of JSMineset.com.

Saturday, July 10, 2021

Supertramp, "Take The Long Way Home" (Penguins)

Full screen! lol
Supertramp, "Take The Long Way Home" (Penguins)

"A Look to the Heavens With Chet Raymo'

“Learning And Yearning”
by Chet Raymo

“This photograph of the Eagle Nebula made by a rather modest telescope - the 0.9 meter instrument at Kitt Peak, Arizona - appeared on APOD (click to enlarge). I sat in front of the computer screen for ten minutes, breathless. One tiny corner of the Milky Way Galaxy, one of tens of billions of galaxies that we can potentially see with our telescopes! At the center are the so-called "Pillars of Creation" from a famous Hubble photograph.
I recall when the Hubble photograph appeared in the media hundreds of viewers claimed to see the face of Jesus in the billowing clouds. Which prompted these observations from "Skeptics and True Believers": "In an article on the psychological basis of belief, the psychologist James Alcock proposed that two aspects of the human brain might be called the "yearning unit" and the "learning unit." He probably didn't mean these terms to be taken literally, as referring to separate compartments of the brain, but yearning and learning are certainly central to the way we interact with the world. It is hard to imagine how we can be fully human without a little of each. Finding the proper balance between the two is a task that can keep us occupied for most of our lives.

We yearn when we dream of fulfillment, of greater happiness, of knowing more. We yearn when we love, when we laugh, when we cry, when we pray. Yearning is wondering what is around the next bend, over the rainbow, beyond the horizon. Yearning is curiosity. Yearning is the driving force of science, philosophy, and religion.

Learning is listening to parents, wise men, shamans. Learning is reading, going to school, traveling, doing experiments, being skeptical. Learning is looking behind the curtain for the Wizard of Oz, touching the stove to see if it's hot, not taking anyone's word for it. In science, learning means trying as hard to prove that something is wrong as to prove it right, even if that something is a cherished belief.

Yearning without learning is seeing Elvis in a crowd, the fossilized footprints of humans and dinosaurs together in ancient rocks, weeping statues. Yearning without learning is buying tabloid newspapers with headlines announcing "Newborn baby talks of Heaven" and the like. Yearning without learning is looking for UFOs in the sky and the meaning of life in horoscopes.

Learning without yearning is pedantry, scientism, dogmatic belief. Learning without yearning is believing that we know it all, that what we see is what we get, that nothing exists except what can be presently weighed and measured. Learning without yearning is science without a heart, without a dream, without a hope of beauty. Yearning without learning is seeing the face of Jesus in a gassy nebula. Learning without yearning is seeing only the gas."

"A Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness"

"It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are. Without forgiveness, our species would’ve annihilated itself in endless retributions. Without forgiveness, there would be no history. Without that hope, there would be no art, for every work of art is in some way an act of forgiveness. Without that dream, there would be no love, for every act of love is in some way a promise to forgive. We live on because we can love, and we love because we can forgive."
- Gregory David Roberts, "Shantaram"
"A Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness"

"If I have harmed anyone in any way
either knowingly or unknowingly
through my own confusions
I ask their forgiveness.
If anyone has harmed me in any way
either knowingly or unknowingly
through their own confusions
I forgive them.
And if there is a situation
I am not yet ready to forgive
I forgive myself for that.
For all the ways that I harm myself,
negate, doubt, belittle myself,
judge or be unkind to myself
through my own confusions
I forgive myself."

"Tell Yourself..."

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
- Louise Erdrich

The Daily "Near You?"

Woodbine, Maryland, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Heart of Humanity"

"The Heart of Humanity"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and we will come out the other side. The last thing most of us want to hear or think about when we are dealing with profound feelings of sadness is that deep learning can be found in this place. In the midst of our pain, we often feel picked on by life, or overwhelmed by the enormity of some loss, or simply too exhausted to try and examine the situation. We may feel far too disappointed and angry to look for anything resembling a bright side to our suffering. Still, somewhere in our hearts, we know that we will eventually emerge from the depths into the light of greater awareness. Remembering this truth, no matter how elusive it seems, can help.

The other thing we often would rather not hear when we are dealing with intense sadness is that the only way out of it is through it. Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and the faith that we will come out the other side. With courage, we can allow ourselves to cycle through the grieving process with full inner permission to experience it. This is a powerful teaching that sadness has to offer us—the ability to surrender and the acceptance of change go hand in hand.

Another teaching of sadness is compassion for others who are in pain, because it is only in feeling our own pain that we can really understand and allow for someone else’s. Sadness is something we all go through, and we all learn from it and are deepened by its presence in our lives. While our own individual experiences of sadness carry with them unique lessons, the implications of what we learn are universal. The wisdom we gain from going through the process of feeling loss, heartbreak, or deep disappointment gives us access to the heart of humanity."