Thursday, June 2, 2022

"She’s Gonna Blow: It’s Weimar, But Where Is Our Adolf?"

"She’s Gonna Blow: 
It’s Weimar, But Where Is Our Adolf?"
by Fred Reed

"As the sentient have presumably noticed, the United States is in crisis, the country’s problems are profound, intrinsic, without solution, and worsening. When a population reaches the point of despair, even desperation, when it sees a darkening future for itself and its children, people yearn for a strong man who will forcibly put things right. Yet it is unlikely that helicopters of Marines from Quantico will descend on the White House and announce the dictatorship of some general. Military officers are too well paid and comfortable to worry about the country. It is hard to imagine an American Mussolini. Trump is a caricature and no one else comes to mind. Yet “unrest” - less euphemistically, “chaos” on the order of Mr. Floyd’s massive riots, is possible. We have seen it. We can see it again.

Consider America today. By comparison with Japan, China, Korea, it is a barbarity, a dumpster, an asylum, an abattoir, an astonishment. San Francisco loses conventions because of needles and excrement on the sidewalks. Almost weekly we see multiple shootings in stores, high schools and, now, grade schools. Murders of whites by blacks run at thirty a month, the news being suppressed. In cities across the country crime is out of control, the tax bases moving out, bail abolished so criminals are freed in hours. stores leave to escape undiscouraged shoplifting and robbery. Seven hundred homicides a year in Chicago, 300 in Baltimore, and at least twice as many shot but survive, similar numbers in a dozen cities. For practical purposes law does not exists in these ungovernable enclaves. 

Sexual curiosities, once called perversions, flourish with American embassies hoisting flags in support of transsexualism Mobs topple historical statues. Many tens of thousands live on sidewalks and a hundred thousand a year die of opioid overdoses. The country drops math requirements and English grammar in schools, AP courses, and SATs as racist. The economy declines, jobs have left for other climes, medical care in beyond most people’s means, government is corrupt and incompetent, and wars are unending. There is actual hatred between racial, political, and regional groups. Ominously, gun sales are up.

How is this going to end well? How did we get here? America has never been a nation in the correct sense of the word, a people sharing values, language, a culture. Rather it has been, and is, a collection of peoples having little and common and, often disliking each other. West Virginia has nothing in common with Massachusetts which has nothing in common with the Deep South which has nothing in common with coastal California which has nothing in common with Cavalier Virginia which has nothing in common with Latinos who have nothing in common with blacks.

Until perhaps the early Sixties, the regions got along with each other reasonably well because there was little communication between them. Roads were poor, the internet was not even on the horizon. Radio stations and newspapers were local, reflecting the surrounding culture and taste. The central government was remote and had little influence locally. Each region lived as it wished.

Providing a degree of commonalty was that the country was overwhelmingly white, European, Anglophone and, at least nominally, Christian. It was socially conservative, largely consisting of small towns. The resulting culture was unsophisticated but civilized. In the suburbs of Washington (I was there) you really could leave your bike anywhere and it would be there when you came back. In summer children really could play great sprawling multiblock games of hide-and-seek after dark and no one worried. In high school in rural Virginia (I was there too) the boys had guns for hunting deer and shooting varmints in the bean fields and you could leave your .410 in the back seat of your jalopy in the school’s parking lot. Nobody thought of shooting anyone. It wasn’t in the culture. If a thing isn’t in the culture, it doesn’t happen. You don’t need policemen. The boys didn’t use bad language around the girls or vice versal and nobody even thought of disrespect to teachers. There were class clowns (I may know somewhat of this), but no real misbehavior. It wasn’t in white, technically Christian, semi-rural culture.

Then many things happened. In no particular order: The reach of the federal government grew and grew. Washington, which had been a distant city concerning itself with foreign policy and the economy, could now impose its values on remote society. It did.

Washington discovered the “separation of church and state,” which had lain unnoticed in the Constitution since 1789. In regions of deep religiousness, it became illegal to recite the Lord’s prayer, to have creches on the town square at Christmas, or two sing carols on the public streets. It had nothing to do with meticulous adherence to the Constitution, but everything to do with the discovery by angry minorities that they could impose on majorities. In short, like many movements to come, it was a revenge operation. It has become a de facto program of de-Cristinization, weakening a source of social cohesion and leading to anger.

The federal government began to dictate what could be taught in local schools. Teachers were forbidden to mention Creationism because a judge in Philadelphia, who appeared to have the scientific grasp of a potato chip, said this transgressed the doctrine of separation. The decision had little practical relevance as there was no likelihood that hearing of Genesis would turn students away from the study of biochemistry. It was, however, an early manifestation of class snobbery against what was seen as primitive Christianity that would later coalesce into hostility toward the Deplorables.

Remote anonymous committees in New York wrote highly ideological textbooks imposed on distant states which did not share those ideologies. The effectiveness of this relied on the principle that outraged parents in Arkansas would have no idea how to oppose distant bureaucracies of whose existence they were unaware and whose phone numbers they could not find. American government is democratic while not allowing the people to exercise power. It is a brilliant system, until it explodes.

Compulsory racial integration, as distinct from desegregation, was an untarnished disaster. Few wanted it, and few want it. The people who imposed it did not, and do not, send their children to black schools. The races transparently do not want to live together. If blacks move into white neighborhoods, “white flight” occurs and if whites move into black neighborhoods, blacks furiously complain of gentrification.

When two cultures have utterly different views of acceptable language, dress, behavior, study, and curricula, mixing them does not work. In the schools, academic standards fell. Discipline became a problem. Across America, cities burned because of conflict between black populations and white police. Eurowhite culture, it turned out, was incompatible with Negro culture. The potential for yet greater disaster seems great, and no one has a solution. There probably isn’t a solution.

The Constitution, which once provided political stability withered, being ignored or interpreted into unrecognizability by judges or made irrelevant by changes in technology and society. Freedom of speech, which meant that I could say that the President was a fool and should be removed from office, became freedom of expression, meaning that porn sites, accessible to children of nine years, could upload videos of a German Shepherd copulating with a beautiful blonde tied down to a bed. Some doubted that the writers of the Constitution had this in mind when providing the Bill of Rights, but none could gainsay the Supreme Court or the federal power.

The behemoths of the electronic media imposed political censorship. Being private enterprises, they could not be disciplined. They became more and more an arm of the central government, which became more and more the property of the Northeastern coastal elites. Entities with names like Google, Twitter, and Facebook cleansed themselves of content thought inappropriate, websites delisted, credit card accounts closed. People disappeared by the electronic media were almost as disappeared as those disappeared in Latin America, though less bloodily. The intention and effect are the same.

An unexpected effect of censorship was that those doing the censoring also censored themselves. The media, talking to each other, reading each other, having no contact with or interest in the silenced and deplorable, had no idea of the anger out there. This brought us Floyd and Trump as deep wells of undetected anger exploded. The media are doing it again.

The current regime in Washington appears deliberately and intensely divisive. Biden has attacked the South, supporting renaming of military bases in deliberate affront. A thorough racist, he frequently denounces whites. He denounces Trump and his supporters, nearly half of America. He has ostentatiously chosen black women as justice of the Supreme Court, member of Federal Reserve, Vice President, and White House spokeswoman. While these may or may not be competent, he announced them as diversity hires. He is poised to assault owners of guns, sure to provoke fury, has involved America in another war, and wants a federal Ministry of Truth to prohibit ideas he doesn’t like. Profoundly partisan, he makes no attempt to calm things or promote tranquility.

The universality of the internet made difficult or impossible the maintenance of distinct values or mores. It became impossible for the cultivated to inculcate in their children manners, good English, and appreciation of learning when the electronics bathed them in not only the traditionally low culture of America but also the anticivilization of the ghetto. America undergoes both enforced peasantrification and homogenization. Anger grows.

Congress and the Constitution largely ceased to function, leaving Presidents to rule by executive order, this not being entirely distinguishable from dictatorship. This included the making of war, which became both common and beyond public influence. The legislature no longer governed but was the storefront for special interests of immense power. There remained no body interested in the wellbeing of the country. This led to offshoring of jobs, poverty in Appalachia, the Rust Belt and rural Deep South, the impoverishing influx of cheap Mexican labor, Donald Trump, and intense regional hatred. Here we are.

This can’t last. The hatreds are intense, the guns everywhere, anger growing at crime, something akin to economic desperation appearing. Washington will leave nowhere alone, will not address national problems, will always give priority to its military, its wars and its empire over domestic needs. The hostility that fueled the Floyd riots, the burning cities, the looting and vengeful vandalism, are still there. She’s going to blow. Watch."

"A Sad Fact..."

"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."
- Richard Ford

The Daily "Near You?"

Delaware, Ohio, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"What If..."

"What if when you die they ask, "How was Heaven?"
~ Author Unknown

A truly terrifying thought...

Gregory Mannarino, "Keep Your Eyes On The Debt Market! It's A Ticking Time Bomb!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/2/22:
"Keep Your Eyes On The Debt Market! It's A Ticking Time Bomb!"

"Now Even The Elite Are Openly Admitting That America Is Facing An Absolutely Enormous Economic Crisis"

"Now Even The Elite Are Openly Admitting That America
 Is Facing An Absolutely Enormous Economic Crisis"
by Michael Snyder

"Not too long ago, the elite were trying to put a happy face on our growing economic problems. It was obvious that things were trending in a very alarming direction, but they kept assuring us that any bumps in the road were just temporary and that a new golden age of prosperity was just around the corner. Needless to say, there were dead wrong, and now some of them are publicly admitting the truth. For example, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon just publicly stated that an economic “hurricane” is rapidly approaching…

"Jamie Dimon is no meteorologist, but the JPMorgan Chase CEO is predicting an economic “hurricane” caused by the war in Ukraine, rising inflation pressures and interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. “Right now it’s kind of sunny, things are doing fine. Everyone thinks the Fed can handle this,” Dimon said at a Bernstein conference. “That hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way.”

JPMorgan Chase is one of the most important financial institutions in the entire world. So it is a really big thing for Dimon to make a statement like this. Of course he is right on target. An economic hurricane is coming, and it is going to be far more horrible than most Americans could possibly imagine right now.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also just said something that is making a lot of headlines. Last year she insisted that high inflation would just be “transitory”, but now she is openly admitting that she “was wrong”… “I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take. As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy […] that I, at the time, didn’t fully understand.”

.@SecYellen on inflation being transitory: “I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take. As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy […] that I, at the time, didn’t fully understand.” https://t.co/AlrXn4kT0r pic.twitter.com/9tqxo0iA3B
— The Hill (@thehill) June 1, 2022

It isn’t exactly a surprise that she turned out to be completely wrong about high inflation being transitory. We knew that she was wrong when she said it. But I will give her credit for publicly admitting a mistake. Many in Washington will never do such a thing under any circumstances.

At this point, it should be obvious to everyone that we are in the midst of an absolutely horrifying inflation crisis. On Wednesday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States jumped another nickel to $4.67. But the real story is the crazy prices that we are starting to see out on the west coast. For instance, one gas station in Los Angeles is now charging more than 8 dollars a gallon for regular gasoline…

"A Chevron station in downtown Los Angeles on the corner of Alameda Street and Cesar E. Chavez Avenue is charging customers over $8 for regular gasoline causing some locals to complain about price gouging, KTTV Los Angeles reported on Tuesday. In a statement to KTTV, Chevron pointed out that the majority of its California branded stations are independently owned and that “unique” factors are contributing to gas prices in the Golden State."

How soon will we see someone break the 10 dollar a gallon threshold? Will it be by the end of the summer? In some cities, the price of a gallon of gasoline is already higher than the hourly minimum wage. That is nuts!

Of course diesel prices have been rising even faster, and this is putting a tremendous amount of financial strain on America’s farmers. If you doubt this, just check out what Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller just told Maria Bartiromo…"When Bartiromo noted “filling a tractor daily now costs farmers $1,000 – twice what it was a year ago,” Miller responded, “it’s through the roof, but it’s not just diesel. It’s fertilizer prices. It’s parts. We can’t get new tractors, new combines. We can’t get new tillage equipment,” he stressed. “So we have to keep running our older equipment, which we can’t get parts for. And so it’s just a whole comedy of errors, and it just multiplies on top of itself.”

When costs go up for farmers, they inevitably get passed on to consumers. And we have already been seeing food prices spike dramatically. Just check out these numbers from April…"Food grains - including corn and wheat - were up 2.8 percent for the month and 45 percent compared with a year ago. Feed grain prices increased 7.8 percent from the prior month and 33 percent from a year ago.

The poultry and egg index jumped 22 percent from March and 94 percent from a year earlier. The April market egg price, at $2.21 per dozen, is 81.0 cents higher than March and $1.64 higher than April 2021. The price of chickens raised for meat, at $1.05 per pound, is 15.3 cents higher than March and 49.7 cents higher than a year ago. At 95.3 cents per pound, the April turkey price is 2.5 cents higher than the previous month and 18.5 cents higher than April 2021. Milk prices climbed 4.12 percent in April and are up 47 percent compared with a year earlier."

In the entire history of our nation, we have never seen anything like this. But as I keep warning my readers, this is just the beginning. In fact, one prominent Texas farmer is warning that food prices “are going to double”…“People don’t realize what’s fixing to hit them,” said Texas farmer Lynn “Bugsy” Allen. “They think it’s tough right now, you give it until October. Food prices are going to double.”

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what it will do to our country if food prices double from their already extremely inflated levels? People will go absolutely bananas. But this is exactly the type of scenario that I have been warning about for years. Eventually, food will become such a prime target for thieves that we will actually see armed guards escorting grocery store delivery trucks. And civil unrest will erupt all over the planet as millions upon millions of poor people get hungrier and hungrier.

Unfortunately, even though so many are now sounding the alarm, the vast majority of the population still has no idea what is coming our way." *
* Isn't it a little late in the game for this?
No point saying here it comes... it's here.
Robert Palmer, "You're Gonna Get What's Coming"

"Stocking Up At Kroger! Preparing For More Price Hikes!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 6/2/22:
"Stocking Up At Kroger! Preparing For More Price Hikes!"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger and are noticing a lot of price increases! Times are getting tough, so we are seeking out things to stock up on at Kroger. We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
“People don’t realize what’s fixing to hit them,” said Texas farmer Lynn “Bugsy” Allen. “They think it’s tough right now, you give it until October. Food prices are going to double.”

"How It Really Is"

 

Me too! lol

Wednesday, June 1, 2022

"Brace For Electricity Shortages That Will Scare The Living Daylights Out Of You"

Full screen recommended.
"Brace For Electricity Shortages That Will 
Scare The Living Daylights Out Of You"
by Epic Economist

"America’s energy crisis is getting worse by the day, and U.S. consumers are about to face a triple threat: simultaneous shortages of electricity, oil, and gas. The recent closure of key power plants is leaving the country without enough generation capacity ahead of the summer. At this point, rolling blackouts are already a certain fate. On top of that, national reserves of oil and gas have hit dangerously low levels, and this means Americans are not only going to pay a heavy price but also scramble to get adequate supplies of energy in the coming weeks.

On the very same day that the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released a report warning the U.S. electric grid doesn’t have enough generation capacity and that blackouts are expected to occur all across the country this summer, an important clean energy power plant was shut down in Michigan. The Palisades Power Plant, an 811-megawatt nuclear facility was deactivated due to a mechanical problem, leaving the Midwest without critical energy supplies and at risk of “energy emergencies during peak summer conditions,” according to NERC.

Palisades was located very close to the area served by the Mid-continent Independent System Operator (MISO), the region that NERC identified as being particularly short on energy supplies. NERC noted the MISO region has 3,200 megawatts less generation capacity this summer than it did last year. In contrast, consumer demand is expected to increase by a considerable margin over the next few weeks, which led NERC to warn that “extreme temperatures, higher generation outages, or low wind conditions” will mean that the Midwest is highly susceptible to “load-shedding to maintain system reliability” — the industry’s preferred term to describe rolling blackouts.

At the moment, around 25 percent of the country’s nuclear plants are at risk of shutting down due to economic reasons, according to the DOE. Palisades was just the first one to go on a long list of planned closures. Since 2013, 12 commercial reactors have been closed — including in New York, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Iowa — and none have opened. At least seven more have announced closure plans in the next three years, including Diablo Canyon, the last remaining nuclear power plant in California.

The closure of such plants is also going to result in higher electricity costs because generators are forced to burn more natural gas to produce more power to meet the demand, and right now gas prices are absolutely soaring. According to CNBC’s Kelly Evans the energy crisis will keep getting worse: “It’s hard to see how energy prices get back to “normal” anytime soon, and the risk of bigger price spikes and worse supply problems looms very large this summer,” Evans noted.

But it’s not only the coming power shortages that will impact consumers this summer. Fatih Birol the head of the International Energy Agency has warned that the energy crisis now underway will be far more “severe and longer-lasting than the oil price shocks of the 1970s,” since it's applying pressure on three separate fronts. "Back then it was just about oil," he said. "Now we have an oil crisis, a gas crisis and an electricity crisis simultaneously."

In short, the closure of key power plants will increase carbon emissions, reduce energy affordability, and hurt the resilience and reliability of America’s electric grid. And the lack of enough fuel reserves may result in serious disruptions that may paralyze the U.S. economy. America is facing the worst energy crisis in the modern era, and the government is whistling past the graveyard. Wise leaders would be doing everything possible to expand energy capacity, ensure reserves, and strengthen infrastructure. Alas, we do not have wise leaders. What we will have instead is soaring energy bills, absurd prices at the pump, broken supply chains, and devastating shortages in every corner of the nation."

"The New Great Depression Has Begun; They Are Going To Punish The Economy And You; Stockpile Food Now"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/1/22:
"The New Great Depression Has Begun;
They Are Going To Punish The Economy And You; Stockpile Food Now"
Related:
Excerpt: "Looming Price-Hikes On Food Set 
To Hit Americans Even Harder This Fall"
"In its effort to contain inflation, the Federal Reserve has launched what many expect to be an ongoing series of interest rate increases, which are already taking a toll on stock and housing markets, with job losses likely to follow. As weary as Americans have become from paying record high gas and grocery prices, however, another round of price hikes is making its way through the food supply chain and is expected to reach consumers this fall.

“People don’t realize what’s fixing to hit them,” said Texas farmer Lynn “Bugsy” Allen. “They think it’s tough right now, you give it until October. Food prices are going to double.”
Full article here:

"Biden’s Loose Lips May Sink Ships"

"Biden’s Loose Lips May Sink Ships"
by Jim Rickards

"In yesterday’s reckoning, I discussed the currency wars. Today, it’s back to the shooting wars. There’s already one going on in Ukraine. But did President Biden just increase the chances of another shooting war, this one with China? Let’s get started, first in Ukraine…

Russia’s assault is slow and brutal, but it is proving effective in achieving Russia’s goals. Those objectives include building a land bridge from Russian territory to Crimea (and possibly beyond to Odessa), cutting Ukraine off from access to the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea and surrounding Ukrainian troops in the east behind a wall of control that runs roughly from Kharkiv to Kherson and Mykolaiv. Once that wall of control is established, the Ukrainian army trapped behind the line will have no choice but to surrender or face annihilation.

Media Silence: It is estimated 10,000 or more Ukrainian army troops in eastern Ukraine are under Russian artillery barrage. This battle may take weeks to play out, but Russian victory is likely given the extent to which the Ukrainians are outnumbered and outgunned. If the Ukrainian forces fall, there will be little left in the east to stop a Russian consolidation that would give control of about a third of Ukraine to Russia.

This unfolding battle is not what you’ll be hearing about in legacy media outlets in the West. But don’t be lulled into false confidence by propaganda and bad reporting. Russia is winning the financial war, and they’re winning on the ground. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to pursue a policy of escalation against Russia.

Poking the Bear Even Harder: Biden and the Pentagon seem to have no understanding of the dangers of escalation and no capacity to act with the needed restraint. We’ve seen this play out already in Ukraine where the U.S. has first supplied weapons, then money, then intelligence, then financial sanctions and more.

Russia has responded in kind with its own countersanctions and its own advanced weaponry including anti-drone missiles and precision artillery strikes. The latest move in the wrong direction comes from Biden. Biden announced Tuesday that he intends to send advanced rocket artillery systems to Ukraine. That’s a complete reversal from the day before, when he said the U.S. would not deliver the rockets to Ukraine.

The administration justified its initial refusal to send them on the grounds that Russia may perceive the move as a step too far, a serious provocation. What changed in the course of a day? Did they suddenly decide that it wasn’t that provocative after all? Regardless, this type of vacillation is indicative of a policy team that doesn’t really know what it’s doing from one day to the next.

Special Forces for Embassy Duty? The administration is also now considering sending special forces to guard the U.S. embassy in Kyiv. Special forces include units such as Delta Force, Green Berets, and Navy SEALS. U.S. embassies around the world have routinely been guarded by the U.S. Marine Corps who are highly experienced and capable in this duty. Special forces aren’t needed for protection, but are quite capable of going on offense and conducting sabotage and training. This assignment is another form of escalation and gets the U.S. more deeply entangled in a face-to-face war with Russia.

This is another step on the escalatory path to direct conflict and potentially, nuclear war with Russia. But did Biden just provoke war with China too?

Biden Turns Teddy Roosevelt Upside Down: In September 1901, just days before becoming president, Theodore Roosevelt remarked, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” The idea was that the ability of the U.S. to project military force should be strong but kept in the background. Diplomacy was better than war. The “big stick” acted as a deterrent.

Today, Biden’s motto seems to be: Speak loudly and carry no stick at all. Biden is now threatening war with China over Taiwan, while simultaneously cutting the military budget and failing to give our military the technological edge it needs to compete with Russian hypersonic missiles and the Chinese space force.

Biden was on a tour of Asia last week meeting with key allies in Tokyo including the leaders of Japan, Australia and India. The meeting was clearly about efforts to counter the rise of China, yet China was not singled out by name and there was nothing on the agenda specific to the situation in Taiwan. But when asked by a reporter if the U.S. would use force to defend Taiwan, Biden answered “Yes.”

Decades of “Strategic Ambiguity” Down the Drain: For decades, the U.S. has carried out a policy of strategic ambiguity regarding whether the U.S. would come to the aid of Taiwan if it were invaded by China. Most observers quietly believed the U.S. would help Taiwan militarily, yet that policy was never proclaimed publicly in order not to provoke China needlessly. With that single word, Biden threw the policy of strategic ambiguity out the window.

Here’s the real problem: Biden may have provoked a war with China over Taiwan, rather than deterring one. China considers Taiwan part of China and has repeatedly said it will control Taiwan eventually by one means or another, including an invasion. The invasion planning looks at Chinese force projection capabilities and the defenses of the Taiwanese. But it must also take into account the likely response of the U.S. If the Chinese thought that the U.S. might respond, but that such a commitment might weaken over time, China could find it in its own best interests to wait until U.S. interest waned.

On the other hand, if China were certain that the U.S. would respond and saw the U.S. getting stronger over time, they could find it optimal to invade sooner than later. The purpose of strategic ambiguity was to keep the Chinese guessing. By negating strategic ambiguity, China might conclude that now is the time to strike. So, Biden’s big mouth and shoot-from-the-hip approach have made war with China more likely. And unlike Roosevelt, Biden has no big stick to back up his big mouth.

The Navy Prepares for War on… Climate Change: Any war with China over Taiwan would primarily be a naval and air war. But last year, a watchdog report demonstrated that the U.S. Navy is unprepared for a war with China. The report cites limited resources for shipbuilding and maintenance, as well as training shortcomings and low morale. The report also claims the Navy is stretched too thin because of extended missions far from U.S. bases.

Meanwhile, the Secretary of the Navy just announced that he thinks the greatest threat to the Navy is climate change, not the Chinese Navy. A new report, “Climate Action 2030,” discusses Navy plans to “build climate resilience,” “reduce climate threat,” “reduce its greenhouse gas emissions,” “stabilize ecosystems” and “achieve … net-zero emissions by 2050.” Topics in the report include “Climate-informed decision-making,” “Integrating Climate considerations into the Budget Process,” “Electrification of Tactical Ground Vehicles” and “Worldwide Climate Health Partnerships.” It’s all for the purpose of “integrating climate action into every aspect of the Department of Navy mission.” Let’s just say the Chinese Navy has a much different set of priorities."

Canadian Prepper, "I Told You So..."

Canadian Prepper, 6/1/22:
"I Told You So..."
This will mark a major escalation in events in Ukraine.

Gregory Mannarino, "JPM CEO Jamie Dimon Warns: 'An Economic Hurricane Is Coming'; Very Important Updates"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 6/1/22:
"JPM CEO Jamie Dimon Warns: 'An Economic 
Hurricane Is Coming'; Very Important Updates"

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)"

Liquid Mind, "My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)"
Full screen highly recommended.
"In this galaxy, there's a mathematical probability of 3 billion Earth-type planets. And in all of the universe, 2 trillion galaxies like this. And in all of that... and perhaps more, only one of each of us."
- "Dr. Leonard McCoy"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“You may have heard of the Seven Sisters in the sky, but have you heard about the Seven Strong Men on the ground? Located just west of the Ural Mountains, the unusual Manpupuner rock formations are one of the Seven Wonders of Russia. How these ancient 40-meter high pillars formed is yet unknown.
The persistent photographer of this featured image battled rough terrain and uncooperative weather to capture these rugged stone towers in winter at night, being finally successful in February of last year. Utilizing the camera's time delay feature, the photographer holds a flashlight in the foreground near one of the snow-covered pillars. High above, millions of stars shine down, while the band of our Milky Way Galaxy crosses diagonally down from the upper left.”

"For Nothing Is Fixed..."

"For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
- James Baldwin

Free Download: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is, as the title suggests, a simple story of one day in the life of Ivan Shukov Denisovich, a prisoner in a Soviet concentration camp. Shukov, a simple Russian peasant fighting for Stalin in WWII, is imprisoned for treason – a crime he did not commit – and has spent the last 8 years in concentration camps. Shukov’s day begins at 5.00 a.m. with the clang of the reveille – he is, along with the other prisoners, marched out into the bitter cold, stripped and searched for forbidden objects, and then sent to work until sundown, without rest, without a full stomach. In this slim 143 page-novella, we follow Shukov’s grueling routine and see how he struggles to maintain his dignity in small, subtle ways. On this day, he has scored some small triumphs for himself – he has swiped an extra bowl of mush at supper, found a piece of metal that can be used as a knife to mend things, replenished his precious tobacco supplies and also has had a share of a small piece of sausage before lights out. Thus, at the end of the day (and the novel), he thinks to himself that it has been “A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day.” He must survive only another 3653 days more.”
Freely download “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”, 
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, here:
"The Chain Of Obedience"
“The death squads and concentration camps of history were never staffed
by rebels and dissidents. They were run by those who followed the rules.”

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "A Walk"

"A Walk"

"My eyes already touch the sunny hill,
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance -
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"Vitae Summa Brevis"

"Vitae Summa Brevis"

"They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses;
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream."

- Ernest Dowson
“Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam”
is a quotation from Horace’s “First Book of Odes”:
“The shortness of life prevents us from entertaining far-off hopes.”

Celente and the Judge, "Washington's Killing the Constitution"

Full screen recommended.
Celente and the Judge, 6/1/22
"Washington's Killing the Constitution"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

The Daily "Near You?"

DeMotte, Indiana, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Energy Supply Prices To Hit Catastrophic Levels As Resources Running Out"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 6/1/22:
"Energy Supply Prices To Hit Catastrophic
 Levels As Resources Running Out"
"Jeremy Grantham warns about natural gas and oil 
prices to rise to all-time high as resources running out."

"Anyone..."

 

Bill Bonner, "Accident Ahead!"

"Accident Ahead!"
The Feds stumble and fumble toward a massive pile-up for all...
by Bill Bonner

Dublin, Ireland - "A joke told by our priest in church: A woman sees on the news that a car is driving the wrong way on the freeway. She calls her husband, who is on his way into town. “Watch out, dear,” she says. “Some idiot is driving the wrong way.” “Are you kidding?” he replies. “There are dozens of them. All going the wrong way.”

Going the wrong way can be fatal. And highway rules are often cited as evidence for the need to get everyone going the same way. How you do that is the dot we’re trying to connect today. Why it matters will be obvious soon enough. When the feds cut supply (shutting down the economy in the Covid Panic), and then boosted demand (printing up new money and passing out gimmie/stimmie checks) what would happen next was almost a foregone conclusion – prices would rise.

An Obvious Observation: This was not ‘rocket surgery;’ it was just the most basic and obvious observation. The only people who couldn’t see it were those who were paid to be blind – those at the Fed, the Treasury Department, and on Wall Street. Bloomberg: "Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen gave her most direct admission yet that she made an incorrect call last year in predicting that elevated inflation wouldn’t pose a continuing problem. “I was wrong about the path inflation would take,” Yellen said in an interview that aired Tuesday on CNN. “There have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that have boosted energy and food prices and supply bottlenecks that have affected our economy badly that at the time I didn’t fully understand.”

It took Ms. Yellen many years of higher education (Brown, Yale, Harvard, the London School of Economics) and 23 years feeding at the federal trough to miss the point. For her, formerly Fed chief and now US Treasury secretary, it was like knocking down houses and then being surprised by homelessness. And yet, this is the woman – along with Jerome Powell – who is supposed to guide the US to a ‘recovery.’ How likely is that?

We made a slightly more subtle point yesterday: that an economy is not circular… it is linear. It never really ‘recovers’ anything. That is, it never goes back “to what it was.” Time only goes one way. An economy too. Once the sun has set, the day is gone forever. And an economy never recovers from the damage inflicted by people like Janet Yellen; it simply moves on the best it can.

Stumbling and Fumbling: But what is happening in the US economy goes way beyond Madame Yellen’s stumbling and fumbling. It is more basic than the Fed’s falsifying the cost of capital… or the deficit spending of the federal government. It goes to the heart of how wealth is created – and to how people end up on the wrong side of the road.

As we noted last week, ultimately, people become richer by working, inventing, saving… and so forth. The more they are left alone, generally, the more wealth they create. We’ve seen, too – in many examples (the Soviet Union comes rushing to mind) – that you can’t force the issue. You can’t just command people: ‘get to work; make us wealthier.’ And if you could trick them into it – by holding down interest rates…or printing money – there would be a lot more rich people in the world.

It’s not quite that simple. There are rules you must follow if you’re going to have a wealthy society. But they are not commands – neither by Josef Stalin nor by Janet Yellen. The rules that allow people to get richer are not decrees from dictators, nor laws passed by Congress. They are vernacular rules that people follow because they help them all get where they want to go.

Consensus vs Command: In the US, for example, people drive on the right side of the road. Here in Ireland, they drive on the left side. People cannot decide for themselves which side of the road to drive on. Some cannot drive on the right and some on the left. They all have to agree. And then, the person who bucks the trend and drives on the ‘wrong’ side of the road is a menace to himself and everyone else.

There are other important rules too – don’t steal, don’t kill, say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’ don’t counterfeit money, don’t lie. These are ‘consensus’ rules… that people follow because they help us all get where we want to go. Are they sometimes ignored? Are there rule breakers? Of course… some people will always end up on the wrong side of the road.

Some people end up on the wrong side of the law, too. But more interesting is that the law sometimes ends up on the wrong side of ‘the people.’ You can pass a law to back up a consensus rule. But without a consensus, the law is merely a command. It doesn’t help people get where they want to go… it forces them to go somewhere else. Not back to an economic ‘recovery,’ but somewhere they don’t want to go. More to come…"

"Consumers Are Hitting A Breaking Point Worldwide"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 6/1/22:
"Consumers Are Hitting A Breaking Point Worldwide"
"It makes a difference where you live. The consumers around the globe are absolutely fed up with everything from high rents, high gas prices and food prices. Inflation is getting to a critical point around the globe. "

"How It Really Is"

 

"Are You Upset About Inflation? If So, You Aren’t Alone"

"Are You Upset About Inflation? If So, You Aren’t Alone"
by Michael Snyder

"All of a sudden, just about everyone is upset about inflation. It would have been nice if everyone would have been this upset back when our leaders were making the exceedingly foolish decisions that resulted in this crisis. In May 2012, the federal government was 15 trillion dollars in debt. Now we are 30 trillion dollars in debt, but our politicians continue to spend money as if tomorrow will never come. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has pumped trillions of dollars that they created out of thin air into the financial system in recent years. For a very long time, I passionately denounced what our leaders were doing, because I knew what would happen. Now a day of reckoning has arrived, and millions upon millions of Americans are absolutely desperate for things to return to normal. Unfortunately, that simply is not going to happen.

In May 2020, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was less than two dollars. Today, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States reached a brand new record high of $4.62, and we are being warned that it could soon go to “$5 a gallon or more”…"The national average for unleaded gas hit another new high of $4.62 per gallon Tuesday, according to AAA data. Prices are up more than 50% compared with last year. Analysts say gasoline prices usually peak by mid-May, but this year prices at the pump could continue to rise into July and reach about $5 a gallon or more."

Most of the time, the vast majority of the population doesn’t pay much attention to economics. But this is where the rubber meets the road, and two recent polls show very clearly that Americans are becoming increasingly frustrated…"An NBC News poll released earlier this month found that 33 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, while 23 percent approve of his handling of the cost of living. A Washington Post-ABC News poll in early May found that more than 9 in 10 Americans are concerned, at a minimum, about the rate of inflation, which has been at a 40-year high for months. That included 44 percent who say they are “upset” about the problem."

In addition, Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index has now fallen to the lowest reading that we have seen since the end of the Great Recession…"Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index measured -45 in May, down from -39 in each of the previous two months. It is the lowest reading in Gallup’s trend during the coronavirus pandemic, and likely the lowest confidence has been since the tail end of the Great Recession in early 2009."

When things go bad, who are people going to blame? More than anyone else, people are going to blame the guy in the White House. And right now the Biden administration is absolutely desperate “to contain the political damage caused by inflation”…"The White House launched a new push Tuesday to contain the political damage caused by inflation after President Biden complained for weeks to aides that his administration was not doing enough to publicly explain the fastest price increases in roughly four decades.

Aiming to demonstrate to the public that it is responding to its concerns, Biden met with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell in the Oval Office, wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about inflation and sent top aides across major networks to push the administration’s economic message."

What is Biden’s “economic message” exactly? I have been sitting here pondering that question, and I honestly cannot answer it. Every day, the story seems to change. A while back, Biden promised to do all that he could to lower gasoline prices, and he foolishly released a million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That didn’t work. So what now?

One insider told Politico that high gasoline prices are “a really difficult issue to message around”, because “you can’t deny the reality”…"The White House’s focus on gas prices is bred from two sobering political conclusions top officials have made. The first is that they have little control over the problem. The second is that as prices rise at the pump, so do Democrats’ odds of a midterm wipeout — especially as the average U.S. gallon of gas hits fresh record highs. “There really isn’t one silver bullet,” said one person familiar with the discussions. “It’s a really difficult issue to message around when you can’t deny the reality.”

If Joe Biden asked me what he should do in order to reduce gasoline prices, the first thing I would say would be to stop doing things that are counterproductive. The following comes from a recent editorial by Marc A. Thiessen…"If the Biden administration cared about high gas prices, they would be doing everything in their power to increase domestic production. After a federal judge invalidated an offshore oil and gas lease sale in January, the administration chose not to appeal and has since canceled three transactions in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Alaska — taking millions of acres off the auction block. The Post called the move “a victory for climate activists intent on curbing U.S. fossil fuel leasing,” which “effectively ends the possibility of the federal government holding a lease sale in coastal waters this year.” Worse, the administration is about to let the nationwide offshore drilling program expire next month without a new plan in place."

Moving forward, we need to remove mountains of regulations that have made it extremely difficult to build and operate new refineries in the United States. And we need far more exploration and far more drilling as soon as possible. Of course the truth is that this isn’t just a U.S. problem.

Energy prices are out of control all over the world, and they are actually much higher in Europe than they are here. In fact, soaring energy prices are a big reason why inflation in the European Union just hit a brand new record high…"Following Germany’s post-Weimar record high inflation print, the European Union’s consumer price inflation data this morning surged to a record high at +8.1% YoY (notably hotter than the +7.8% YoY expected)."

Most Americans don’t realize this, but Europe is actually much closer to a full-blown economic meltdown than we are. I expect the euro to fall below parity with the dollar in the not too distant future. And I expect a nightmarish energy crunch in Europe as supplies from Russia are restricted or cut off completely. Unless something changes, next winter is going to be a really challenging time for many European nations.

We have entered the worst energy crisis in modern history, but what we have experienced so far is just the beginning. Much worse is ahead, and the American people will become increasingly frustrated as prices just keep going higher and higher."

Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity, "Playing Russian Roulette:

Full screen recommended.
Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity,
"Playing Russian Roulette:
Oil: Is Europe Committing Economic Suicide?"

Viewer Comment:
Tarey Reilly: "OMG, Chris! What a brilliantly prepared analysis and presentation of oil supply chains, types, production, and distribution in world energy markets and the reasons why the EU's refusal to buy Russian oil will be so devastating for the European people in their everyday life in the midst of such blistering inflation. You are an inspiring and thoughtful teacher, as you have the unique gift of clarifying complicated processes and issues with great ease and compassion for us - the overwhelmed and confused. Thank you so much for this highly informative and urgent, public service message; we appreciate all you do!"

Greg Hunter, "Deep State Predators Need to Terrify Everyone"

"Deep State Predators Need to Terrify Everyone – Alex Newman"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Author of the popular book “Deep State” and award-winning journalist Alex Newman says Deep State globalists are afraid the world is waking up to the tyranny they are trying to impose on every country on earth including America. Things are not going as smoothly into their so-called reset as they had envisioned. Newman explains, “The Deep State is in a ‘do or die’ moment right now. They, the elites or predator class, recognize that they are now locked into this. If they try to retreat, there is no retreat. People are waking up at such a rapid rate that they are in a moment where they are going to have to go for broke and try to impose the whole agenda and damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead or they are going to be in big trouble. They are going to be prosecuted. Right this moment, there are conversations in state attorney generals’ offices all across the country, and this is a problem. People are demanding prosecution. 

Right now, the elites, or predator class, realize if they don’t move forward very quickly, they are going to lose everything. They could possibly end up facing true accountability. I think we are in a very dangerous situation now. When people get into a position like that, they don’t have a whole lot of options. Either they cancel the election or they cheat like crazy or they just collapse everything. The way things are going right now with inflation out of control, the food crisis and famine just around the corner, of course, that they engineered, and the monkey pox and bird flu, they have all their crises lined up. You realize they have a lot of options still to play. I suspect there will be some very interesting developments between now and the mid-term elections. If we had honest elections, they would be totally creamed. They would be toast, and they know that.”

Newman thinks the next move by the Deep State may be a combination of crises that could include the collapse of the buying power of the U.S. dollar and a food crisis that is already a lock in the not-so-distant future. Newman warns, “What’s going on in Russia and Ukraine, we cannot count out. There is a very real prospect of that expanding. Desperate people do desperate things. This is just like with an animal that has been backed into a corner. When you get an animal in that situation, they are really left with few options other than attack and do something dangerous, and I think that is where we are at. They recognize that they need crises to advance their agenda. They need to terrify the population, and it has to be done in a way that their finger prints are not on this, and instead of people turning on each other, they will start looking for them.”

Newman says, “The country can be turned around and it needs to be turned around, but it’s going to take work, and maybe intervention by the Good Lord.” Newman closes by saying, “There is no silver bullet.” There is much more in the 49 min. video interview."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with hard hitting journalist Alex Newman, founder of LibertySentinel.org and author of the recent book “Deep State.”

"Major Price Increases At Meijer, And Some Empty Shelves! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 6/1/22:
"Major Price Increases At Meijer, 
And Some Empty Shelves! What's Next?"
"In today's vlog we are at Meijer, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
View comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Shocker! Yellen Admits She Was Wrong! Inflation Is Not Transitory"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/1/22:
"Shocker! Yellen Admits She Was Wrong! 
Inflation Is Not Transitory"

Tuesday, May 31, 2022

"Why America Decays: The Tyranny Of Self-Interest"

"Why America Decays: The Tyranny Of Self-Interest"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"I've discussed the moral rot consuming the American Project in blog posts and my books. This moral rot - perhaps better described as civic decay - is so pervasive and ubiquitous that we are forgiven for assuming "this is the way it's always been." This inability to discern the rot is the result of the gradualness of the decay. There are many analogies: the slowly boiled frog, the way in which weight gain creeps up on us, and so on. This is the result of humanity's finely tuned knack to habituate to any new environment and normalize what would have been intolerable in the recent past.

We adapt to changing expectations, incentives, values and realities over time and forget the way our world functioned in previous eras. There are many examples of this. Many of the changes in our society, politics and economy can be traced back to the early 1980s, when financialization (and its offspring, regulatory capture and pay-to-play) began its rise to supremacy.

Forty years ago, student loans were unknown and healthcare costs did not bankrupt households. Forty years ago, relatively few Americans were obese. Go back a decade further, prior to the explosion of fast-food outlets, and a small percentage of the money Americans spent on food went to eating out/away from home, i.e. fast-food and restaurants. Eating out was a treat reserved for special occasions, not a daily ritual / birthright.

In the post-Vietnam era, Americans were wary of foreign entanglements. The Presidency wasn't quite as Imperial as it is today. Congress still held some modest power over foreign entanglements. This is no longer the case.

The most insightful way to grasp the pervasive moral rot is to examine the tyranny of self-interest: in the past, the public interest/common good still had a foothold in the nation's values, incentives and expectations. Now the public interest/common good are nothing but paper-thin PR cover for maximizing private gains by any means available, i.e. the supremacy of self-interest.

Our ability to discern the difference between serving the public interest / common good and making a modest profit doing so and harming the common good to maximize private gains has been lost. There are many such examples. The financialized self-interest behind student loans, healthcare, national defense, Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Everything - i.e. cartels and monopolies - is visible in every nook and cranny of the U.S. economy, political structure and economy.

Synthetic opioids offer a good example. Under the preposterously false guise of "serving the common good" with painkillers, Big Pharma caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans and ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands more via the devastation of addiction - addiction which Big Pharma was pleased to promote as non-addictive because this served to maximize profits.

As is now the norm, no one is held personally responsible for this completely needless public health catastrophe. A few wrist-slap fines are administered and life in America goes back to the relentless urgency to maximize private gains by any means available: fraud, deception, overbilling, embezzlement, regulatory capture, pay-to-play, and so on.

The phony PR cover for the the tyranny of self-interest is that the pursuit of maximizing profits by any means available magically benefits the public. The apologists trot out various example of planned obsolescence as "proof" that the supremacy of self-interest is the golden road to a glorious society, but all this careful cherry-picking doesn't make the moral rot and civic decay go away.

America is doomed to decay as long as we can't tell the difference between the public interest/ common good and self-interest. The two are not the same, but we've lost the ability to discern the difference. Only those societies which still have a functional public interest / common good will survive; those ruled by the tyranny of self-interest will fall."