Monday, August 8, 2022

“Life Lessons From a Psychiatrist Who’s Been Listening to People’s Problems For Decades”

“Life Lessons From a Psychiatrist Who’s Been
Listening to People’s Problems For Decades”
by Thomas Oppong

“How you approach life says a lot about who you are. As I get deeper into my late 30s I have learned to focus more on experiences that bring meaning and fulfilment to my life. I try to consistently pursue life goals that will make me and my closest relations happy; a trait that many individuals search for their entire lives. Nothing gives a person inner wholeness and peace like a distinct understanding of where they are going, how they can get there, and a sense of control over their actions.

Seneca once said, “Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.” “No people can be truly happy if they do not feel that they are choosing the course of their own life,” stated the World Happiness Report 2012. The report also found that having this freedom of choice is one of the six factors that explain why some people are happier than others.

In his best-selling first book, “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now”, Dr Gordon Livingston, a psychiatrist who’s been listening to people’s problems for decades, revealed thirty bedrock truths about life, and how best to live it. In his capacity as a psychiatrist, Dr Livingston listened to people talk about their lives and the many ways people induced unhappiness on themselves. In his book, he brings his insight and wisdom to the subjects of happiness, fear and courage.

“Life’s two most important questions are “Why?” and “Why not?” The trick is knowing which one to ask.” Acquiring some understanding of why we do things is often a prerequisite to change. This is especially true when talking about repetitive patterns of behavior that do not serve us well. This is what Socrates meant when he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” That more of us do not take his advice is testimony to the hard work and potential embarrassment that self-examination implies.”

Most people operate on autopilot, doing the same things today that didn’t work yesterday. They rarely stop to measure the impact of their actions on themselves and others, and how those actions affect their total well-being. They are caught in a cycle. And once you get caught in the loop, it can be difficult to break free and do something meaningful. Past behavior is the most reliable predictor of future behavior.

If your daily actions and choices are making you unhappy, make a deliberate choice to change direction. No matter how bleak or desperate a situation may appear to look, you always have a choice. “People often come to me asking for medication. They are tired of their sad mood, fatigue, and loss of interest in things that previously gave them pleasure. ”…“Their days are routine: unsatisfying jobs, few friends, lots of boredom. They feel cut off from the pleasures enjoyed by others.

Here is what I tell them: The good news is that we have effective treatments for the symptoms of depression; the bad news is that medication will not make you happy. Happiness is not simply the absence of despair. It is an affirmative state in which our lives have both meaning and pleasure.” “In general we get, not what we deserve, but what we expect,” he says.

Most people know what is good for them, they know what will make them feel better. They don’t avoid meaningful life habits because of ignorance of their value, but because they are no longer “motivated” to do them, Dr Livingston found. They are waiting until they feel better. Frequently, it’s a long wait, he says. Life is too short to wait for a great day to invest in better life experiences.

Most unhappiness is self-induced, Dr Livingston found. “The three components of happiness are something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to. Think about it. If we have useful work, sustaining relationships, and the promise of pleasure, it is hard to be unhappy. I use the term “work” to encompass any activity, paid or unpaid, that gives us a feeling of personal significance. If we have a compelling avocation that lends meaning to our lives, that is our work, ” says Dr Livingston.

Many experiences in life that bring happiness are in your control. The more choices you are able to exercise, and control, the happier you are likely to be. “Happiness is an inside job. Don’t assign anyone else that much power over your life,” says Mandy Hale. Many people wait for something to happen or someone to help them live their best lives. They expect others to make them happy. They think they have lost the ability to improve their lives.

The thing that characterizes those who struggle emotionally is that they have lost, or believe they have lost, their ability to choose those behaviors that will make them happy, says Dr Livingston. You are responsible for your own life experiences, whether you are seeking a meaningful life or a happy life. If you expect others to make you happy, you will always be disappointed.

You can consistently choose actions that could become everyday habits. It takes time, but it’s an investment that will be worth your while. “Virtually all the happiness-producing processes in our lives take time, usually a long time: Learning new things, changing old behaviors, building new relationships, raising children. This is why patience and determination are among life’s primary virtues,”

Most people are stuck in life because of fear. Fear of everything outside their safe zones. Your mind has a way of rising to the occasion. Challenge it, and it will reward you. Your determination to overcome fear and discouragement constitutes the only effective antidote to that feeling on unhappiness you don’t want. Dr Livingston explains. “The most secure prisons are those we construct for ourselves. I frequently ask people who are risk-averse, “What is the biggest chance you have ever taken?” People begin to realize what “safe” lives they have chosen to lead.”

“Everything we are afraid to try, all our unfulfilled dreams, constitute a limitation on what we are and could become. Usually it is fear and its close cousin, anxiety, that keep us from doing those things that would make us happy. So much of our lives consists of broken promises to ourselves. The things we long to do — educate ourselves, become successful in our work, fall in love — are goals shared by all. Nor are the means to achieve these things obscure. And yet we often do not do what is necessary to become the people we want to be.”

As you increasingly install experiences of acceptance, gratitude, accomplishment, and feeling that there’s a fullness in your life rather than an emptiness or a scarcity, you will be able to deal with the issues of life better.

Closing thoughts: Dr Livingston’s words feel true and profound. The real secret to a happy life is selective attention, he says. If you choose to focus your awareness and energy on things and people that bring you pleasure and satisfaction, you have a very good chance of being happy in a world full of unhappiness, uncertainty, and fear."

"Someday..."

"Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be."
- Orson Scott Card

"Cometh the Horsemen: Pandemic, Famine, War"

"Cometh the Horsemen: Pandemic, Famine, War"
Michael Yon and Dr Jordan B Peterson
"We are heading into one of the most epic famines in world history, where the poor will freeze in the dark and burn in the sun while they starve. Michael Yon, one of America’s youngest Green Berets at 19 years old, joins Dr Jordan B Peterson to discuss the current state of affairs across the globe. Michael has traveled and lived over half of his life abroad in more than 80 countries. Author of three books in the United States and three others in Japan, he is America’s most experienced combat correspondent."

Brutal, honest truth...

"The Decline and Fall of the Western Empire"

"The Decline and Fall of the Western Empire"
by Batiushka

"Sometime in the future a learned academic will be writing a weighty tome with the title "The Decline and Fall of the Western Empire." Perhaps the Contents Page will include, among others, twelve chapters with titles something like this: World War One. World War Two. Korea. Vietnam. Palestine. Iran. Nicaragua. Afghanistan. Iraq. Syria. Ukraine. Taiwan.

Indeed, Karin Kneissel, the former Austrian Foreign Minister, is at present writing a book with the working title "A Requiem for Europe." In an interview with Asia Times on 31 July she declared that ‘European countries are growing ever weaker on the international stage and their places are being taken by Asian countries’. She said that the Europe ‘where she was born and grew up and to which she was devoted no longer exists’. ‘European leaders, through ignorance and arrogance, are neglecting the existing geopolitical realities and basic principles of diplomacy and this has created a dangerous situation’.

She added: ‘This is connected with Eurocentrism. We believe that we are so great that nobody can do without us…It seems to me that Europe needs Russia more than Russia needs Europe. If I am right, then is it really in the interests of the Old World to treat Moscow as an enemy, inclining Moscow to Beijing? Today Europeans are more and more disillusioned and desperate and this may cause mass disorder and anti-government violence’.

Kneissel, who is from Central Europe, makes it sound as if Europe is living in the past, before 1914, when it was politically central to the world, instead of being a more or less irrelevant political backwater as it is in 2022. What is certain is that the physical fall of an empire is always preceded by its spiritual fall. What did this spiritual fall consist of?

Firstly, there were two generations of Euro-American (‘World’) Wars with their genocidal and sadistic human sacrifices of tens of millions of young people, especially young Russian and Chinese. This led to the breakdown of nation states and national identities, at least in Western Europe. Secondly, there were two generations of Cultural Wars designed to break down family life. The first began in the 1960s. Then ‘single parents’ became the norm, no longer biological father, biological mother and biological children, the basic building block of all societies and nation-states. After only one generation of this War, with the appearance of stepfathers, stepmothers and stepchildren, with no biological links between them, a revolting and long suppressed disease came to the fore once more. It is called pedophilia.

Thirdly, this breakdown of family life continued over two generations has in the last decade caused a Gender War. There are no longer any father, mother, son or daughter because family breakdown means that children have no father/mother role models, with the result that few know who they are any more or how to behave and relate. And so we see the great confusion, the invention of Parent One and Parent Two, of legalised same-sex ‘marriage’ almost everywhere in Western Europe, promoted by increasing numbers of homosexual politicians, and the adoption of children by same-sex couples.

In the Ukraine, under pressure from its Transatlantic and Western European sponsors, it is proposed to introduce this same-sex ‘marriage’. Here is the price that Ukrainians have to pay for the billions of dollars of suicidal arms it receives for promoting ‘Western values’. Usually if you sell, something, you receive something in return. But if you sell your soul to satan, you not only receive nothing in return, but you even have to pay for the sale. Spiritual fall always precedes the fall of the State. In the Ukraine many have noticed the satanic tattoos and pentagrams on the bodies of the Neo-Nazi thugs who formed the elite of the Kiev regime armed forces and many have seen videos showing their satanic rituals.

All of this is in the name of ‘equality’ and ‘human rights’. This is the end of the Roman Empire, which is today called the Western world. This is ending ignominiously in the US-provoked war in the Ukraine, into whose hellish fires of sulphur and brimstone all Europe is casting itself. As it was in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, so it is today in the days of Eurosodom and Gomerica.

The extraordinary thing is the self-justification of the Western world for its own suicide and its refusal to admit that anything is wrong with it. On the contrary, only its ‘values’ of ‘freedom, democracy and human rights’ are correct and must therefore be spread throughout the ‘free world’. All who do not accept its ‘values’, which in fact are anti-values because they are destructive, not constructive like real values, must be mocked, slandered and, if necessary, bombed into submission. Today’s Western world is visibly coming to resemble medieval frescoes showing the torments of hell, which are what spiritual death is. The Western world has been demonised, the demons have been called up from the bowels of hell to occupy it and visibly and mockingly inflict its ‘Western values’.

Just over fifty years ago, in 1971, a popular American singer called Don McLean, almost prophetically, sang of these torments, that is, of spiritual death, in a song called ‘American Pie’. Describing how America had lost its faith in the previous decade of the 1960s, he sang that ‘for ten years we’ve been on our own’ and how he saw ‘Satan laughing with delight’, and that ‘the church bells all were broken/And the three men I admire most/The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost/They caught the last train for the coast/Singin’, this’ll be the day that I die’.

The trouble with the Western world is that it does not want to listen. Indeed, in the same year, McLean, who was brought up a Catholic, wrote another song called ‘Vincent’. His words there echo, perhaps even more prophetically in relation to the current refusal of the West, bound by the shackles of its narcissistic self-obsession, to listen. It listens not just to Russia, but to any voices of common sense and universal tradition anywhere in the world, even from within its own midst:"
"They would not listen, they did not know how,…
They would not listen, they’re not listening still,
Perhaps they never will."

"How It Really Is"

Loza Alexander, "Lets Go Brandon"

"Massive Price Increases Everywhere! What's Next? What's Coming?"

Adventures with Danno, 8/8/22
"Massive Price Increases Everywhere! 
What's Next? What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are starting to notice more empty shelves in the grocery stores, and massive price increases! We discuss this situation along with a massive candy shortage that is all over the news stations across the country. It's getting rough out here as stores continue to struggle to get in products!"
Comments here:

"Commercial Real Estate Crash is Happening - Stores Can't Keep Up with Price Increases"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 8/8/22:
"Commercial Real Estate Crash is Happening - 
Stores Can't Keep Up with Price Increases"
"Commercial real estate is in huge trouble. Grocery stores are spending all their time just raising prices. 75% of families feel that inflation is destroying them and they can’t keep up with it."
Comments here:
Tommy Bites Homestead, 8/8/22:
"Alert! Happening Now - Banks Are Closing! 
Pharmacies Are Closing; Protect Your Money"
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Get Your Money Out Of The Banks Now!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/8/22:
"Get Your Money Out Of The Banks Now!"
Comments here:

Bill Bonner, "Crossing the Channel"

Omaha Beach, Normandy
"Crossing the Channel"
With Irish families, English retirees, Polish truck drivers and young lovers...
by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - "We spent the weekend anxious and unsettled. We were worried about the Judgment of History. What will Wikipedia say about us in the year 5,000… about America… about our wars and our economy? Will we even rate a footnote? Not that we know more than anyone else. But it amuses us to imagine it… guessing that History will be a shrewder judge than today’s analysts.

We had time to think about it inasmuch as we were captive on the W.B.Yeats… a ferry making its way from Dublin to Cherbourg over 18 hours… and then spent another 6 hours in solitary reflection, driving down to our house south of Poitiers.

We’re pleased to report that life on the W.B.Yeats has returned to normal. We took it often from Ireland to the continent… and it was always a pleasure. But during the lockdowns, the vessel was almost deserted… plying the North Atlantic like a ghost ship. On Saturday, though, it was back to its old self – jolly and comfortable.

There are four categories of travelers: young families, retired couples, Polish truck drivers, and lovers. It is vacation season; young Irish families head for warmer temperatures in France. Some, with trailers attached to their cars, will drive all the way down to Spain or Italy. On Saturday, children of all ages ran around the decks, scarcely supervised. No doubt, when the heads were counted on arrival in France, a few must have been missing, having fallen overboard somewhere off Land’s End.

There were French retirees, too, coming home from their holidays on the Emerald Isle. You can’t mistake the French; their clothes are much cooler, chic-er than the Irish. The women wear scarves and are so elegantly turned out that they could walk off the boat directly into a garden party. They are thinner too… and look like they have been dressed in at the Bon Marche especially for their trip.

The Polish truck drivers, meanwhile, have taken the trip so often, it must have lost its charm. They gather in the “Truckers Bar”… eat and drink copiously… and then retire to their staterooms to rest.

It was the lovers – perhaps on their honeymoon – who caught our eye. A pair of them is sitting in front of us as we write. He is hefty… and not so young. He eats a dessert or two… drinks a large glass of Guinness, and then another, to flush them down. He has a goatee beard, glasses… and dark hair. She is his opposite. Model-thin… blond… with nothing to eat in front of her. She has passed the first blush of youth, too. But the two act as if they had just found love for the first time in their lives. He holds her tight. They look out at the sea. He strokes her shoulder. He kisses her on her lightly-fleshed cheek. He caresses her narrow neck. He is the ardent lover; she the object of his affection. Oh my… now he is tousling her hair… and whispering in her ear…we are going to have to move… this is too distracting!

The D-Day Route: The voyage begins in the late afternoon. The custom is to assemble in the bar, have tea, and watch the ship pull out of Dublin Harbor. Then, we settle into our cabins and prepare for dinner, a civilized affair in a nice restaurant. After dinner, we rejoin our accommodations and spend the night in maritime serenity… rocked gently to sleep by the swells of the North Atlantic. In the morning we went back to the restaurant for breakfast… and there were the lovebirds again… looking a little tired. Perhaps the moonlit night had not brought them the same quiet repose as it has afforded us!

Soon, it was time to disembark. Our job – and the real purpose of the trip – was to bring our old horse van back to France where it would undergo treatment for old age and malfunction. So, upon hearing the captain’s command, we found our vehicle on a lower deck and made our way out onto dry land… at Cherbourg. Soon after, we were driving down the Cotentin Peninsula on our way to Poitou.

The main road out of Cherbourg is long and straight. It is the same route taken by the US Army in WWII. For this is near where US and allied troops landed on D-Day… and then found themselves bottled up on the peninsula. Nowhere else on earth have dead people been turned into such a tourist attraction. Signposts advertise the American cemetery… the German cemetery… the Canadian cemetery along the way. Billboards offer to help us “Relive the D-Day Experience.”

Our old friend Stanley, a carpenter with whom we worked in the 1960s, had no desire to relive that experience. He had lived it the first time, in 1944. As a young soldier, he landed at Omaha Beach. “Stanley,” we once asked him. “What was it like? What were you thinking?” “I wasn’t thinking a damned thing. I just was running as fast as I could to get across that beach. We were sitting ducks out there.”

US and allied forces landed at beaches all up and down the peninsula – Omaha, Utah, Pointe du Hoc… and built a makeshift harbor at Arromanches. At Ste. Mere Eglise, US paratroopers from the 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment came down right on top of the Germans. Local resistance fighters had set out flares to guide them, but one of the flares set a house on fire and the light from the fire helped the Germans see the parachutes coming down. Many soldiers were riddled with bullets before they got near the ground.

Private John Marvin Steele was one of the lucky ones. His parachute got tangled up on a church spire. Hanging on the side of the church, he played dead. He was soon captured by the Germans… but escaped in the confusion. His story was recalled in the movie “The Longest Day.”

None of the objectives for D-Day were achieved. But Allied troops and materiel kept coming and they were eventually able to fight their way down the peninsula and break out across the open roads of Normandy.

In Search of Lost Time: Today, there are museums all along the way, including a museum dedicated to the civilians caught up in the war. There is also a museum for the Bayeux Tapestry, commemorating another invasion across the same English Channel, but in the opposite direction. In 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, crossed the channel and conquered England. But we had no time for museums. We were driving south.

After WWII France enjoyed a marvelous period of peace and growth. There was a 30-year boom – known as the “Trente Glorieuses” – when everything in France seemed to work well. Indoor plumbing, central heating and mechanized farming became widespread. French cinema, fashion, and technology were widely admired and copied. France even anticipated the internet by more than 20 years with its “Minitel.” French food, too, was regarded as the best in the world.

Warren, another old friend of ours, had been a WWII photographer and later worked for LOOK magazine. He moved to Paris in the 1950s. “Those were the wonderful years,” he recalled, wistfully, many years later. “France was cheap. It was open and dynamic… and the quality of life was unmatched. Every year, we would motor down to the South for the summer season. We had a Citroen DS… you know, those wedge-shaped cars… one of the wheels could fall off and it would keep running. We would stop at nice restaurants along the way. It would take a few days to get down to Nice, but it was worth it."

“When you ‘motored’ to the South,” Warren continued reminiscing, “you would organize your itinerary so as to arrive in the best restaurants for lunch or dinner. There were a lot to choose from… and bars and brasseries too. You would stop for lunch… spend a couple of hours eating… drink a bottle or two of wine… a white to begin, followed by a rich Burgundy or Bordeaux with the meat course… and, of course, later, a shot of cognac with a cigar... That was really living.”

“Motoring” to the South, was very different from what we were doing on Sunday. We were headed south, but we weren’t motoring. We took the highways… the ‘autoroutes’… and only left them to stop for gas or a cup of coffee. “Everybody is in a hurry today,” Warren explained. “Nobody has the time to ‘motor’ anywhere. And they don’t have the time for a good meal. It’s fast travel and fast food… the faster the better.”

Too Late: In 4 hours, driving our horse van, we crossed much of France, from Cherbourg to Tours… then south of the Loire river. Almost all of it was done at about 70 miles per hour… and almost all on the auto-route, paying tolls in exchange for avoiding traffic lights. It was only after we got off the highway and passed the magnificent Chateau de Touffou, where David Ogilvy lived his final years, that we saw the traces of the “Trente Glorieuses.” Now we were on secondary roads, passing through small towns with their restaurants, bars and gas stations – where people used to gather in the evening – now all closed.

In 1981, Francois Mitterand was elected president. His government nationalized key industries and imposed a system of controls and regulations that have bedeviled the French ever since. The economy slowed down… but the pace of life picked up. People no longer had the time for ‘motoring.’ They took the new freeways, as we did, racing to their next destination. Nor did they feel they had the time… or perhaps the money… or the taste… to appreciate a couple of hours of mid-day dining. Restaurants soon found their traditional customers ‘too busy’ to enjoy a leisurely meal. Fast food replaced fine food. And then, the small, quality restaurants began to go out of business. Now, in many towns in France, as in America, it is hard to find a good restaurant.

In the 1990s, David Ogilvy invited us for dinner. He was perhaps the greatest ‘ad man’ who ever lived. We were flattered… and keen to meet him. But we were busy and had to put it off… and then, finally, when we were ready to get together, it was too late. We came for dinner and found that David was indisposed, his wife explained that he had recently been diagnosed with alzheimer’s disease and no longer socialized. A few months later, he was dead. “Tout casse, tout passe,” say the French. Everything breaks and goes away."

Jim Kunstler, "The Sickening Quickening"

"The Sickening Quickening"
by Jim Kunstler

Do you still doubt that the federal bureaucracy and the elected government parasitically attached to it seek to harm the people they rule (i.e., us) by any means necessary? They’re still pushing Covid “vaccines” in a futile effort to eliminate the control group of their massive eugenics experiment - that is, the unvaccinated, who are not getting the many vaccine-induced diseases behind the rise of all-causes mortality in people under 65.

But the vaxx scam isn’t working anymore. Too many people have already been hurt, or killed, or seen friends and relatives go down mysteriously and they’re taking a pass on any more shots. Parents have evidently seen enough to not bring their little children in for the life-altering mRNA treatments. The CDC, the FDA, and their cohorts hide their information, lie when pressed, and pretend that they are acting scientifically. But really, at this point, many public health officials must be secretly wondering how they will evade prosecution.

They won’t when fraud is proven in a court of law. Even with all the lies and redactions issued by the CDC and the FDA, the evidence is piling miles high that the Pfizer and Moderna drug trials were covered-up botches and the entire administration of the vaccine program has been an unnecessary disaster. Fraud vitiates immunity from liability. The pharma companies will go out of business and their profits will be clawed back in countless lawsuits. The drug company executives will go to prison along with Rochelle Walensky, Anthony Fauci, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, and many of their lieutenants.

My personal theory is that the Covid-19 release was wholly and entirely about getting rid of Donald Trump and nothing else, in order to protect the permanent bureaucracy, a.k.a. the deep state, which was faltering in its countless turpitudes against the people, including the FBI and DOJ’s complicity in the criminal frauds and seditions of RussiaGate, and the CIA’s complicity in the “whistleblower” shenanigans behind Trump impeachment No. 1. The “long game” in the Covid-19 scam of 2020 was obviously to set-up the loosest mail-in voting apparatus possible to enable maximum ballot fraud in that year’s elections. The catch is, the Covid-19 play did not protect the deep state; it only further demonstrated its malevolence.

“Joe Biden” - or the gang operating behind the Potemkin President - now seeks to keep some sort of public health emergency declaration in force, this time over the laughable monkeypox, to pave the way for more maximum ballot fraud via mail-in votes in the 2022 midterms. Watch as they attempt to shut down public polling places. Who will stop them? Individual state’s attorney generals could sue on the grounds of the federal government’s abrogating the states’ constitutional duty to manage their own elections. Or perhaps the states will defy the feds and just keep their polling place open, calling their bluff. What will the Federal Election commission and AG Merrick Garland do then? Nullify the votes? (Invite a civil war?)

The regime must know that the next Congress is going to rip the face off the deep state and likely impeach “Joe Biden” for accepting bribes from countries hostile to the USA. Mr. Garland might try a maneuver to convict Hunter Biden on a Mickey Mouse tax crime in order to put all that laptop evidence under seal, but I doubt that will protect the Big Guy in an impeachment proceeding, if he lives until January. For the moment, they’ve got “JB” stuffed in a White House closet somewhere with an unshakable return of his Covid symptoms. They can only keep him out of sight so long. He’s living proof, on two cloven feet, that Covid vaccines don’t work, and that sort of screws their whole pooch.

The Party of Chaos is otherwise basking in the glow of victory from Senate passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, an all-out assault on the American public, which said public is already well onto. It’s yet another demonstration that legislation accomplishes the opposite of what its name declares its intentions to be. Reduce inflation caused by exorbitant government spending with a whole lot more government spending (of money that isn’t there)? Yeah, that’ll work, I’m sure (not). Double the size of the IRS in order to amp up harassment of the party’s political adversaries? I’ll tell you why that won’t work out as planned: The IRS will get 85,000 “diversity, inclusion, and equity” hires, meaning new dimensions in institutional incompetence and torpor.

As for “climate action,” expect only further economic destruction, probably deliberate and certainly idiotic. It’s not feasible financially, even with subsidies, to switch-out all the internal combustion cars and trucks for electric vehicles, which would have to run on power generated at its source mainly by natural gas and coal. Nor, on the other hand, can the federal government make oil more affordable. Rather, Americans will just have to drop-out from mass motoring and long-range trucking, which implies major changes in our living arrangements. That is exactly what’s actually happening now, by the way.

Most of these coming changes are beyond the control of government. They are historically emergent - the zeitgeist is in charge of them, not “Joe Biden” or Pete Buttigieg. The cheap energy age is over, and that salient fact will determine most of what happens going forward, including the inability of overgrown central governments to manage anything competently. The more grandiose their attempted work-arounds look, the more certainly they’ll fail. And, as that happens, government at the gigantic scale will shed legitimacy."

"‘The Average American Is Getting Screwed Harder Than A Monkeypox Spreader At A San Francisco Orgy'"

"‘The Average American Is Getting Screwed Harder 
Than A Monkeypox Spreader At A San Francisco Orgy'"
by Jim Quinn

"Never ending covid infected basement dummy and his lesbian black diversity hire bubble headed bimbo press secretary keep blathering about our great economy and tremendous jobs market, as they desperately try to convince the ignorant masses they aren’t really drowning under the strain of a rampant stagflationary depression.

Everyone knows they are lying and having their left-wing media mouthpieces supporting their lies is useless. The chart below explains our current situation. Real disposable income (after inflation) has been down or flat for 15 months in a row. It’s amazing how stimmies made millions feel rich for about a year. The Fed printing fiat and the government dispensing it as fast as it was printed created the illusion of wealth. Now we sit down to a banquet of consequences.
The raging inflation has wiped out any temporary income gains and will continue to do so as we enjoy Biden’s stagflationary depression. And what do the Democrats do? They pass a $750 billion Inflation Reduction Plan that increases inflation and will require the Fed to keep printing. As a cherry on top, the chart uses the government manipulated inflation rate. In reality, the current 9% inflation rate is actually 18% when measured as it was in 1980 when Volker boosted the Fed Funds rate to 20%.

If the Dems think people will be voting in November on the issues of abortion, gun control and climate change, they are f**king delusional. The average American is getting screwed harder than a monkeypox spreader at a San Francisco orgy. They will vote their pocketbook, as if the limp RINOs will do anything to reverse course."
"Conclusion: you’re screwed either way."

Sunday, August 7, 2022

"A Matter Of Life And Death: Americans Will Be Without Medicine Once Trade With China Stops'

Full screen recommended.
"A Matter Of Life And Death: Americans Will Be
 Without Medicine Once Trade With China Stops'
by Epic Economist

"A serious conflict between the U.S. and China is brewing, and if you're against it, you must make your voice heard while you still can because once it starts, it will be too late. Geopolitical strategists are already alerting that if tensions between the U.S. and China continue to rise, the standard of living of millions upon millions of Americans will be seriously impacted as the overwhelming majority of products we consume every day that come from the Eastern economic superpower would quickly disappear from U.S. store shelves. At the same time, the confrontation between the Chinese government and Taiwan means that the production of critical components such as semiconductors and microchips would dramatically collapse. Today, Taiwan is the biggest producer of microchips in the entire world, and if this production stops, the whole U.S. economy would come to a crashing halt. The stakes are incredibly high, and yet, no one seems to be paying attention to these emerging threats.

Nancy Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan triggered a furious response from China at a time when international tensions already are elevated by Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine. The Chinese government promptly warned that there would be a military response, and now the entire globe is anxious to see what that will be. The latest reports reveal that Chinese forces are already gathering near the coast for a potential invasion, but there’s still uncertainty over a full-blown aggression against Taiwan. Strategists argue that instead of launching an attack overnight, China is far more likely to overtake a couple of the small islands right off the Chinese coast that currently belong to Taiwan.

And if that’s the case, the Biden administration would feel compelled to respond very aggressively. Right now, both sides keep raising the stakes, which means that tensions could escalate into a full-blown conflict in the Pacific very rapidly. And once a geopolitical battle begins, our trading relationship with China would immediately come to a halt. Needless to say, the American population is not prepared for that. A clash of such immense proportions would hurt our economy very badly in countless ways. A very worrying consequence this conflict might bring is a widespread shortage of medicine.

Rep. Bill Posey noted that “eighty percent of the drugs that Americans depend on come from overseas. China, whose pharmaceuticals have been subject to numerous recalls, is the largest manufacturer. As a result of this reliance, the U.S. has not produced basic medicines like in the case of penicillin since 2004.”

Rosemary Gibson, a senior adviser with the Hastings Center and an author of “China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine,” said in an interview with the New York Times that “if China shut the door on exports of core components to make our medicines, within months our pharmacy shelves would become bare and our health care system would cease to function.”

That’s a very alarming possibility, especially considering that things are escalating quickly. All Americans are equally vulnerable to illness — that’s why we all should be equally concerned about a looming medicine shortage. Tens of millions of Americans are dependent on pharmaceutical substances, and if they can’t get their pills, their lives would be at risk. Now, all of these people are at risk of being left without the critical medications they need to maintain their health. Unfortunately, that’s only one of the consequences a conflict with China would bring.

If the two biggest economic superpowers of the world start battling each other, the whole planet would suffer the repercussions of this cataclysmic conflict. Americans would experience a horrifying and widespread supply chain collapse that's unlike anything they have ever seen. The risks are still growing, and we would like to advise you to pay very close attention to what happens next."

"Urgent Warning: Prepare For Inflation Tidal Wave; Everything Bubble Just Got Bigger"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/7/22:
"Urgent Warning: Prepare For Inflation Tidal Wave; 
Everything Bubble Just Got Bigger"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Foy Vance, "Make it Rain"

Foy Vance, "Make it Rain"

"A Look to the Heavens"

 "A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.


Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”

"Even With Good People..."

"Cause even with good people, even with people that
you can kinda trust, if the truth is inconvenient,
and if the truth doesn't, like, fit, they don't believe it."
- Marie Adler

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "The Journey "

"The Journey"

"One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
 Mend my life! 
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save." 

- Mary Oliver

"The Whole Problem..."

The Daily "Near You?"

Chicago, Illinois, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"A Winter of Anger"

"A Winter of Anger"
by Raúl Ilargi Meijer

"It is very simple: if you’d ask most citizens of whichever EU country if they are willing to risk being unable to feed and heat their children in order to support Ukraine and Zelensky, they would say NO. Hell no! But that is what they’re all being pushed towards. Food prices look to at least double from here, after they’ve doubled once already, while energy prices are set to triple or worse. And there’s no logical reason for it.

This is not due to some inevitable market mechanism, it’s because the west decided to halt all Russian imports after the latter’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine. All western leaders found that reason enough to cut all, or nearly all, imports from Russia. Gas, oil, fertilizer, food. Essentials. They could have been sitting around a negotiating table, but chose not to. Which only works as long as things remain sort of affordable. And then, it does not.

Problem is, they had and have no alternative to the Russian supplies of these goods (and there’s many more). See, this is how we know they don’t make their own decisions. Those are made in Brussels and Davos, and then the “leaders” have to carry out the preconceived programs, and they will.

No elected official on his/her own would risk to destroy their own country’s energy or food safety, with elections coming up every few years. But their WEF/Davos connections have changed that “logic”. The WEF makes sure no western leader gets elected who is not a member of their club. There’s only one path to power these days.

But these people grossly underestimate the effect that hunger and cold - will - have on their citizens. The first signs of that are visible in the protests of truckers and farmers, but that’s just a start. You just wait till the cold sets in, and the running blackouts, and the hunger. Wait till people have to feed their kids scraps from a bare table in a cold dark home.

That’s when you will see who people really are. People in the west are overfed, and lazy, and not too sharp, but wait till their kids, and their families, are truly suffering. They’ve seen the example of the farmers and truckers. Wait for people to see the link between their own lives, and the farmers; then you will see who they really are.

“Leaders” like Trudeau and Rutte think they have this under control, that they can make the farmers do what their governments say they must, if need be with assistance from police or even the army. But you cannot send cops and soldiers against your farmers, because 1) they make your food, 2) the people support them, 3) they have a centuries-old democratic right to be farmers, and 4) they don’t take no sh*t for an answer.

This goes back 100s of years, much longer than the right of any politician to tell them what to do. The Dutch farmers on Friday told Rutte to prepare for the hardest actions yet, and they’re still not joking. My guess would be this time they will paralyze the country. Not because they are crazy; 10,000 of them would need to close shop if Rutte gets what he wants, and they won’t let that happen. Farmers will not idly stand by while their neighbor is forced out of business.

No, they are not crazy. They refuse to talk to Rutte, in a sign a of how much they trust him. He assigned a mediator, from his own political club, and all farmer org’s but one refused to talk to him too. The one that did, found the talk useless. Rutte wants the 10,000 scalps no matter what, but it’s just not going to happen. He is shown the limits of his power. Having been PM for 12 years, that’s a bit of a shock.

Obviously, this is all strongly connected to the past 2,5 years of measures and mandates and all. The political class got a taste of power that they did not have before, and got carried away. Well, they went too far this time. One telling number was that of US parents letting their youngest kids be vaxxed: what was it, 0.45%?! And 220 million adult Americans have either never been vaxxed or never boosted. No connection to the farmers? You wait and see.

The game is over. People’s patience with their politicians is ending. But the politicians themselves don’t see that; how could they when they censor all discontent and reports from doctors and scientists who don’t follow the “official” line? They’ve lost touch with the very world they’re supposed to represent. All they get to see is the info that is left after their own “norms” have censored the rest. They see only what they like to see.

In Europe, the Germans and Dutch will manage to be sort of OK, but only at the expense of poorer EU countries. And that won’t even be their main problem; that problem will be at home; their own farmers will come for them. And their poorest. Countries will leave the EU (and the euro). Hungary first to go?! In Greece, there’s already talk of rolling blackouts this winter, and they get most of their electricity from hydro. Italy is a shambles. How many present “leaders” will still be in place January 1 2023? How about June? After a winter of great discontent?

And they’re all telling you that “we” have to win in Ukraine first, and everything will be alright. But “we” have already lost in Ukraine, we did on February 24, and “we” should be talking to, and making peace with, Russia. Why are we not? Because we don’t want food and energy? The folks in Brussels and Davos will not be hungry and cold. But in other EU places they will be. And they will come to balance this thing out.

As for the US, I’m scared there too. Energy prices may not get as bad as in Europe, but food will be real bad (and how about housing?!). And there’s this fight between two factions going on, that starts to feel like what went on before the Civil War. I hope I’m wrong, but I feel it everywhere: Overreach."

"What a Privilege!"

"Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, 'This is what I need.' It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment - not discouragement - you will find the strength there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures, followed by wreckage, were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You'll see this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes."
~ Joseph Campbell

"What's in a Word?"

"What's in a Word?"
A ruse by any other name would still be deceit...
by Joel Bowman

"Welcome to another installment of your Sunday Session, dear reader, that time of the week when we gather at the virtual saloon, cast a wary eye across the world before us... and quietly wonder, what the hell happened?

When we last left you, one week ago, we were scrambling to catch a plane from Houston back to our home city, here in Argentina. From summer to winter, modern to classic, beltway to sidewalk, the two locales could hardly be more distinct from one and other. “It’s almost like going back in time,” wife Anya remarked as our airport taxi careened along the broad Avenida 9 de Julio. “Whenever we come home, I get the feeling like we never left.”

Indeed, Buenos Aires is the kind of city you could leave for two weeks and come back to find everything changed... or leave for two decades and return to find it just the same. Prices, for example, fluctuate daily. But the country remains firmly rooted in the past. Its Belle Epoch-style buildings. Its cafe culture. Its firm resistance to anything “politically correct.”

Local, independent supermarkets – run largely by the city’s Asian population – are still called “chinos.” People call each other, affectionately, nicknames like “gordo” (fatty), “flaca” (skinny) and even “loco” (crazy). And, contrary to what progressives in the English speaking world would have you believe, Latinos largely despise the cringeworthy “Latinx” mutilation of their elegantly gendered language.

A 2020 Pew Research poll found that, while a quarter of Hispanics in the US had heard of the gender-neutral term, only 3% actually used it themselves. Outside the US, that figure quickly approaches zero. Turns out, Spanish speakers don’t appreciate self-righteous virtue signalers (many of whom do not even speak Spanish) colonizing their language and rewriting the rules. Gee, who would have thought?

Speaking of words, you’ve no doubt heard of the hullabaloo over the dreaded “R-word” by now. It was enough to send armchair economists back to their old Funk & Wagnalls for a quick refresher. Of course, the semantic struggle regarding the technical definition of recession represents just one front in a much larger battle. More in today’s feature essay, below...
"What’s in a Word?"
by Joel Bowman

"That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet..."
~ Joan Shakespeare’s eldest brother, from Romeo and Juliet

"That which we call a ruse

By any other name would still be deceit..."
~ Joel (with apologies to William)

"As a man who has spent much of his adulthood aspiring to the life of a failed novelist, your weekend correspondent believes the right word can paint a thousand pictures. We cultivate an appreciation for words as a cobbler tends to his sole or a fencer his foil; with care and respect for their utility and precision. They help us navigate the murky, ethereal realm of ideas, allowing us to communicate complex concepts with ease and accuracy, facility and fidelity. At least, that’s the aim.

It is with a leaden heart, therefore, that we observe the wanton corruption of the English language on an almost daily basis. Words we once found reliable, dependable, credible, are routinely conscripted, pressed into service by linguistic vandals, made to abet one or another insidious agenda. Words like transitory... racism... vaccine... female... and now recession... have been strapped to the Procrustean bed and either amputated or elongated to suit the villainous whims of their abductors.

Witness the most recent of these lexical distortions, a definitional brouhaha bordering on the farcical. In the week preceding the second quarter’s GDP read – widely expected by “experts” to be slightly positive (consensus was for a 0.03% expansion) but which actually came back negative by 0.9% – the White House and their lapdogs in the mainstream media began a “forward messaging” campaign to defang the commonly used term, recession.

Most people, most of the time, define recession as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Not so this time around. The situation was “complicated,” chorused the neutered neckties across all the usual media outlets. The White House even put out its own blog post:

"What is a recession? While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle. Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data - including the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production, and incomes. Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year - even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter - indicates a recession."
~ White House

Wax and Blindfolds: Who are these “holistic economists,” American workers must have wondered as they waded through an economy that looked, sounded and felt very much like it was in a recession. Bonner Private Research’s resident macro analyst, Dan Denning, went through the jobs numbers on Friday and found that, not only was the real unemployment rate closer to 9.6% – as opposed to the 3.5% figure spruiked by the administration and their pets in the press – but real wages, adjusted for 40-year high inflation, were actually falling. Moreover, a meaningful portion of the jobs “created” were second and/or part time jobs, taken by people struggling to make ends meet with their primary employment. Far from the “roaring recovery” Americans are constantly assured they are experiencing, the labor force participation rate is actually the same as it was back in March... of 1977.

Never mind all that, says Mr. President. What we’re actually witnessing (if you’ll kindly close your eyes and plug your ears with wax) is the “strongest rebound in American manufacturing in over three decades.” (All together now!) “It doesn’t sound like a recession to me,” the apparently tone deaf president added after the negative GDP figures were published.

Mercifully, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was on hand to help further complicate, obfuscate and otherwise pontificate, explaining the situation from her podium: “We’re not going to define a recession from here,” Madam Secretary went on to say, insisting that the White House would instead defer to the National Bureau of Economic Research to make the call. Good move.

As it happens, the NBER has been making the call now... for over 70 years. In fact, they made the call in every single instance where GDP fell for two consecutive quarters going all the way back to 1949. That is to say, ten times the US economy logged two consecutive quarters of negative growth over the past seven decades... ten times the NBER called recession.

Words Like Weapons: Of course, the majority of those official recessions occurred before the advent of the Internet, where facts are confused with opinions and everyone claims the right to their own. Gone are the days when people consulted actual, physical, hard to doctor encyclopedias, for example, as opposed to “living” reference repositories, such as Wikipedia, which blow with the prevailing political winds.

Until as recently as July 11, to follow the current thread, the world’s largest online encyclopedia had featured the commonly accepted definition of a recession. Tucked away under the subtitle, “Definition,” it read: “In a 1974 New York Times article, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics Julius Shiskin suggested several rules of thumb for defining a recession, one of which was two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. Over time, the other rules of thumb were forgotten.”

As of July 25, however, all mention of the “two consecutive quarters” had been scrubbed from the site. An administrator also locked the page, barring users from making any edits or corrections. From July 27 onward, the wiki world would feature a new, rather more pliable definition: "In the United States, a recession is defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the market, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales."

In one section of the website, a Wikipedia user claimed the change was made to reflect the “change in posture and the definition at the United States since the White House’s experts are expanding the meaning of it.” That section has since been deleted. Nothing to see here, citizen. Move along. (h/t to the folks at Unherd for screen-shotting past posts and publishing the story.)

Needless to say, there are those among us who say that it matters not what we call a thing. “A rose by any other name,” and all that. There is a certain amount of truth there. And yes, language evolves over time. Always has. Always will. “Change,” as ol’ Heraclitus observed, “is the only constant.”

Only, we’re not talking here about the kind of natural, gradual, consensual idiomatic evolution that is always and everywhere underway... during which informal words like “dank” and “fat” and “dope” acquire positive connotations and others, such as “elite,” “skeptic” and “Brandon” morph into pejoratives. Rather, we refer to an artificial, abrupt, aggressive transformation of our language for explicitly political purposes. There is a world of difference between the two.

Unlike schoolyard slang and barroom colloquialisms, which change from venue to venue, month to month, what we are witnessing is something far more nefarious, a creeping tendency of those who “know better” to constantly redefine the key terms by which we guide our own lives and by which we are governed. Far from a case of “mere semantics,” such corruption of the language has real world consequences for millions of people.

In the end, honest people will decide for themselves the weight of a word and whether they are being deceived by their self-serving leaders. It is during these times we call to mind the words of Mr. Thomas Jefferson: It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

And that’s all from us today, dear reader.  Bill will be back with his regular daily missives from tomorrow. In the meantime, we’re heading off to grab a milanesa and a long overdue glass of malbec at one of our favorite local restaurants, Massey Familia. Whatever you’re doing this weekend, be good… or be good at it."

"How It Really Is"