Tuesday, August 30, 2022

"The Elephant In The College Classroom"

"The Elephant In The College Classroom"
by Tom Purcell

“Half of that goes to the bank for your college fund!” That’s what my father told me in the 8th grade, when I got my first paycheck for waking up at 5:30 a.m. to ride my bike a few miles to Cool Springs Driving Range before school, where I plucked golf balls for a dollar an hour.

My dad had six kids to feed on a single income, after all. Paying my full college tuition bill was never going to be an option. There was only one option for me: work.  When I got a little older I started mowing lawns to make more money than the driving range could ever pay.

When I got my driver’s license at 16, I decided I’d become a stone mason. Retaining walls were all over the place in hilly Pittsburgh. I hit the motherlode with that entrepreneurial decision and by the time I was 17 I had four people working for me. The “young man saving for college” line resonated with customers, and I was able to fund almost all of my first-year college costs with the money my back-breaking labor was able to net.

Money was still tight, though. After paying for my first year of college, I needed to borrow some money for the next three years - and I was grateful that those government-backed funds from banks were available to me. But to keep my borrowing to the bare minimum I worked all year while in college.

I worked in the Penn State cafeteria, waking early to help prepare breakfast, then clean dirty plates. I sold my plasma twice a week - a money-making enterprise that nearly killed me and terrified my mother. During my senior year, I became manager of a creepy rooming house. It was dank and old, but it was cheap and, in addition to the free rent, the owner paid me to shovel coal into the auger, maintain the lawn and make frequent household repairs.

The high point of my college-work career was becoming a bouncer at Penn State’s legendary Rathskellar bar - still the coolest thing I ever did.

I see now I was lucky to attend college in the early 1980s. Myelearningworld.com reports that in the last 50 years college tuition costs have risen five times the inflation rate. If tuitions had kept pace with inflation, public universities would be charging an average of about $20,000 a year - HALF of what they are charging today.

Why have college costs grown so rapidly? The simple answer: Easy money. As the borrowing limits of government-backed and direct government college loans have increased, so have tuitions. The $1.7 trillion in student debt held by millions of young people today is in large part due to tuition inflation. Colleges took full advantage of all that easy loan money students were getting and jacked up their prices.

Now President Biden wants to forgive $10,000 in college-loan debt for millions of kids who willingly took it on - even though college grads, over time, eventually earn more than most of those who did not attend college. The trouble is, debt cannot simply be “forgiven” - especially when it amounts to more than $300 billion. It can only be transferred to taxpayers like me who scrimped and saved and took on a dozen crummy jobs to avoid taking on student-loan debt. That’s the big, fat elephant in the college classroom.

Here’s another certainty: Repaying other peoples’ debt obligations is going to be as fun as plucking golf balls off dew-covered grass at 5:30 a.m. every morning."

"The Unfairness Of Mass Student Loan Forgiveness"

$300 BILLION?!!!
"The Unfairness Of Mass Student Loan Forgiveness"
Reposted from May 9, 2022
by Rich Manieri

“You wanna borrow, you gotta pay the man.” Rocky Balboa was right, even way back in Rocky I. Rocky didn’t break Bob’s thumb like Mr. Gazzo told him. Bob was late on his payments and Gazzo didn’t like it. “How come you didn’t break this guy’s thumb like I told you?” “I figure if I break the guy’s thumb he gets laid off and he can’t make the payments…” “Let me do the figurin’ Rock! Just let me do the figurin’! These guys think we’re running some kind of charity or something.”

Rocky, Philly palooka though he was, had a tender heart. Still, he collected the debt because he understood the deal. Whether you’re borrowing from a loan shark on the docks or from a major lending institution – and the difference is sometimes negligible – a loan is an agreement, a contract. “You wanna dance, you gotta pay the band,” Rocky reminded the terrified Bob.

President Biden, however, is working his way toward turning the basic principles of borrowing, understood by everyone from the ancient Mesopotamians to South Philly leg breakers, upside down. He wants to cancel student loans on a mass scale. A terrible idea in the presidential pantheon of terrible ideas. He’s already canceled some $17 billion in student loans for 725,000 borrowers through what the White House calls “targeted relief.” But that was clearly just an hors d'oeuvre.

Biden appears to be considering forgiving $10,000 of student debt per borrower. Who will pay for this? We will. And by “we” I mean those of us who paid cash the old fashioned way, or took out loans and paid them back, or who never even attended college. It’s such a bad idea than even Biden himself poo pooed it which, like many other things, he’s apparently forgotten.

"The idea that you go to Penn and you’re paying a total of 70,000 bucks a year and the public should pay for that? I don’t agree,” Biden told New York Times columnist David Brooks in an interview last year. Right, Mr. President. So, what changed?

For starters, Biden’s popularity is plummeting like Wile E. Coyote from a cliff and that little dust cloud you see when he hits the dirt is the Democrats’ fate in the looming midterms unless something changes. In short, Biden needs a win and he appears willing to pursue it through executive action despite rising inflation and a shrinking economy. The timing for this will never be good but it’s difficult to imagine it being much worse.

If there’s any good news, it’s that Biden doesn’t appear prepared – at least not yet – to go as far as socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who wants to forgive all, yes all, $1.7 trillion of student loan debt. The whole scheme seems grossly unconstitutional and illegal.

My family wasn’t wealthy by any stretch but my mother, who never attended college, managed our finances with ruthless efficiency. She operated by one simple axiom – don’t buy anything you can’t afford. She was also loath to take out any loans unless she knew she could pay them back in short order. My parents put my sister and me through college, debt free. There was no magic involved. They sacrificed. There were no expensive vacations or cars. They lived comfortably but simply, always within their means.

So, the Biden administration is effectively saying to people like my mother and millions of others who paid, or are in the process of paying back students loans, “You’ve done pretty well for yourself so we want you to pay back the loans of some strangers, like the kid who borrowed 70,000 bucks a year to go to Penn.” This is, above everything else, a wealth redistribution scheme straight from the Sherwood Forest School of Economics. And really, Robin Hood and his Merry Men were just a bunch of thieves in silly underwear anyway.

College tuition is too high and has risen at rates that far surpass inflation. Of course, one of the reasons tuition is so high is because virtually anyone can get a loan, regardless of their ability or intention to pay it back. If this sounds familiar it’s because similar loan practices led to the catastrophic burst of the housing bubble in 2008. We tend to learn little from history.

Still, if you’re going to borrow, you gotta pay the man. Rocky understood. So did Bob. I wish the politicians advocating for loan forgiveness in the name of “fairness” understood how unfair it is."
"The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
- Thomas Sowell
Baffled...
Consider what you're working with here...
"What It’s Like Being a Millennial (Give Me the Respect I Didn’t Earn)"
"Millennials are the most advanced crop of humans that our species has 
ever seen.  Here's everything you'll ever need to know about being a Millennial."
"We're so freakin' doomed!"
- The Mogambo Guru

"Student Loan Forgiveness Proves All Those College Degrees Really Are Worthless"

"Student Loan Forgiveness Proves All 
Those College Degrees Really Are Worthless"
by Tyler Durden

"Back when I taught at UCLA, I was constantly amazed at how little so many students knew. Finally, I could no longer restrain myself from asking a student the question that had long puzzled me: ''What were you doing for the last 12 years before you got here?''
- Thomas Sowell

"What is a college degree actually worth? We know what secondary schools charge for the “opportunity” to study with them, but this does not really tell us much about the value of the services they offer. On average, college tuition costs around $10,000 per year for a person studying in their home state, and $25,000 a year for those studying out-of-state. Federal student loans can cover these costs, but this is the application of public tax dollars with the expectation of returns; it is not supposed to be free money. And to be clear, NO ONE is entitled to a secondary education, let alone for free.

The average interest rate on a student loan is around 5% these days, and such loans include stipulations that they cannot be erased through bankruptcy. The argument among people who support loan forgiveness is that the cost of a degree is too high and the loans are impossible to pay or escape. On top of that, many of these graduates can't even get a job once they leave college.

Surveys over the past couple years show that at least 45% of college graduates are unable to find a job once they enter the private sector. Those that can find a job usually end up working outside the scope of their field of study. Keep in mind this is happening during a period of very low official unemployment.

The result? Four year or eight year degree holders end up working side-by-side with high school graduates in lower wage jobs. This is extremely common and is fueling a rise in worker discontent. Their fantasies of six-figure incomes and a life of prestige suddenly hit a wall called reality, and now these students are angry and in debt to the tune of $36,000 or more on average.

But do they have a right to be angry? No, not really. The problem with this line of thinking is once again about real world value. When these students chose their field of study, were they considering the value of the work they would eventually be able to do? Were they considering the job that their degree would afford them, or were they only thinking about how easy it would be to take those particular classes?

As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis recently noted: “It’s very unfair to have a truck driver have to pay back a loan for somebody that got a PhD in gender studies. That’s not fair. That’s not right.”

This is an accurate assessment. The loan could have been used for anything – any field of study with limitless potential for job growth and success, but 45% of these kids chose idiotic majors with zero earning potential. The money was wasted on nothing, and now, many of these graduates that made foolish decisions are being rewarded for it with loan forgiveness by the Biden Administration.

What's worse is that these same children now act as if they were “victimized” by receiving the loans in the first place. No one made them take the loans, and no one made them pick a field of study that was lazy and worthless. They can't use the excuse that the jobs market is unfavorable, because according to Joe Biden this is the “best employment environment ever.”

So what is the root disconnect? What is the question that no one is asking? Well, if the degrees were worth the cost of the loans then wouldn't it be easy for graduates to pay them off as high level producers and money makers? Why does the federal government need to step in at all? Shouldn't graduates be able to pay off their loans with the vast number of jobs available under Joe Biden? Why would they need the help if the economy is flying?

There are multiple points to make here:

1) Someone has to pay for the debt that is created, it doesn't disappear because Joe Biden says so. It gets added directly to the national debt and the deficit and every taxpayer has to take on that cost, along with the increased drag on the economy. Why should we pay for the mistakes of a bunch of low expectation college kids, or for educational services that add no value to the financial system?

2) Is it legal for Joe Biden to essentially buy votes from college students by offering them free tuition as long as he stays in office? Isn't this what he is doing, or is this really Joe giving the kids a break from the goodness of his heart? Because we all know if Joe can do this successfully once, he will do it again.

3) Loan forgiveness only confirms what many of us already suspected; that at least half of all degrees are worthless and pointless. If they were worth something, then there would be no need for forgiveness because the graduates would be able to pay off their loans without aid.

4) If we accept the fact that half of student loans are for worthless degrees, then we also have to then ask why they were given out in the first place? Shouldn't student loans for necessary fields such as STEM fields or business fields be prioritized and loans for meaningless fields like social sciences be turned down? Why not only give loans in fields where there are insufficient applicants and a high demand for trainees? Why not incentivize students to take on a field of study that is difficult and needed? Wouldn't this be smarter than adding hundreds of billions (potentially trillions) of dollars onto the national debt with the stroke of a pen?

5) Finally, maybe it is good to make people pay for their mistakes? Maybe this builds character and forces them to work harder to rectify their lives. If we subsidize their mistakes, then won't they simply learn that they can continue doing whatever they please without consequences? Doesn't this incentivize stupidity?"
"Incentivize stupidity?" Well, look around! We've been astoundingly, astonishingly successful at incentivizing stupidity, haven't we? Not that these brain-dead clowns need any encouragement...

"It Will Happen Suddenly"

"It Will Happen Suddenly"
by Jeff Thomas

"As the Great Unravelling progresses, we shall be seeing many negative developments, some of them unprecedented. Only a year ago, the average person was still hanging on to the belief that the world is in a state of recovery, that, however tentative, the economy was on the mend. And this is understandable. After all, the media have been doing a bang-up job of explaining the situation in a way that treats recovery as a general assumption. The only point of discussion is the method applied to achieve the recovery, but the recovery itself is treated as a given.

However, as thorough a distraction as the media (and the governments of the world) have provided, the average person has begun to recognize that something is fundamentally wrong. He now has a gut feeling that, even if he is not well-versed enough to describe in economic terms what is incorrect in the endless chatter he sees on his television, he now senses that the situation will not end well.

I tend to liken his situation to someone who suddenly finds all the lights off in his house. He stumbles around in the dark, trying to feel his way. Although he can picture in his mind what the layout of his house is, he is having trouble navigating, often bumping into things. This is similar to the attempt to see through the media and government smokescreens during normal times.

But soon, as his government undergoes collapse, he will be getting some bigger surprises. He will find that the furniture has inexplicably been moved around. Objects are not where they are supposed to be, and it is no longer possible to reason his way through the problem of navigating in the dark.

Many of those who observe the daily news reports are beginning to figure out that they are being fed misinformation. Many are beginning to recognize that neither political party truly represents them or, for that matter, is even concerned for their welfare. These folks are now navigating in the dark.

But the bigger surprises have not yet occurred. There will be a certain amount of lead-up, plus a great deal of confusion, but the actual occurrences will be sudden. No one will be able to predict the dates on which they occur, except those very few people who control the triggers to these events.

Crashes in the Markets: Major bull markets rarely end with a whimper. They end with a major upside spike. And, unfortunately, brokers and investors alike tend to think that, if the market has been up for the last week, the last month, or the last year, it can be expected to be up again tomorrow. This makes them prime pickings for governments who may choose to falsely inflate a given market, creating an upside spike to encourage investors to toss their last few coins into the pot, just before the bottom drops out.

In previous eras, it could take time for people to sell, and even in panic times, the bloodletting was not instantaneous. However, with the Internet, all that is necessary is a major sell-off by one entity - one that goes through the stops of a large number of investors, and in a flash, the market goes though the floor. (Editor’s note: Stops are orders placed with a broker to sell a security when it reaches a certain price.) The average investor wakes in the morning to find that he has been wiped out.

Commitments by Governments: Should there be a currency crash, as is expected in many countries, promises made by governments will be abandoned suddenly, as though they had never existed. Whilst millions of people will find themselves lost, unable to function without their entitlements, governments will evade their guilt through finger-pointing. Tories will blame Labour; Labour will blame the Tories. (The equivalent will take place in other countries.) The net result will be the disappearance of entitlements, either in part or in total. The public will take out its anger through increased hatred of whichever party it is that they already consider to be the evil one. They will fail to understand that collapse was unavoidable.

Assumed National Strengths Will Vanish: International alliances will fall away. Former allies will suddenly not be at the side of the failing nation. Former friends will sign alliances with the other side. Trade agreements will suddenly cease. Wealth, initiative, and favor will flow to the new foremost country and its allies.

All of the above will happen incrementally - not by any means on the same day - but in each case, the actual occurrence will be sudden. Just as Julius Caesar was at his peak of power when his fellow members of the Senate drew their knives, a powerful nation is coddled right until the time of its fall. In this regard, the US will see the greatest abandonment of loyalties that any nation will experience. (The greater the empire, the greater the pretense of loyalty to it. And the greater the abandonment when the fall comes.)

When an empire collapses, it dies slowly. Unless it comes to an end through conquest, it deteriorates in a series of sudden jolts. Its leaders grasp at anything that might cause a delay, even if this means a worse outcome in the end. The process may take years and even decades. However, it is in the first few years that the major events occur - the events that create the most significant damage.

This occurs for two reasons. The first is that the leaders of the country, believing in their own power, believe that they can maintain control of their trade, their overseas control, their military, etc. and find that, when the crashes come, the rats desert the ship in every area. The second reason is that any empire builds its strength upon lies and exaggeration as much as it builds on its true attributes. After a crash, these lies and exaggerations fall away, and in a short time, it becomes clear that the empire was, in its latter stages, a house of cards.

The warning signs are already taking place but are not heavily publicized. The stage is set, and we are approaching the first major events.

The victims in this play are, unfortunately, the average people, who simply hope to have a decent life. They will be caught unawares and unable to even understand what has occurred, let alone take action to save themselves. Those who have not spent the previous years educating themselves and preparing an alternative life will suffer most greatly.

All who live in a country that is undergoing collapse will be negatively. There is little comfort in being one of the least injured, both during the actual event and during the terrible time that is sure to follow. Some will do better than others, but to live on this slim hope is much like being fortunate enough to live on the outskirts of Hiroshima in 1945. The political and economic climate is constantly changing... and not always for the better. It's clear the situation in the US, Europe, and other parts of the world will continue to deteriorate."

Monday, August 29, 2022

"System Is Dying, Get Your Money Out Of The Bank; It's All Gonna Crash; Restaurant Industry Is Done"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/29/22"
"System Is Dying, Get Your Money Out Of The Bank; 
It's All Gonna Crash; Restaurant Industry Is Done"
Comments here:

"People Line Up For Days To Buy Coal Ahead Of Winter Because They Feel What Is Coming"

Full screen recommended.
"People Line Up For Days To Buy Coal Ahead 
Of Winter Because They Feel What Is Coming"
by Epic Economist

"This is going to be an extremely bitter and cold winter for millions of people from all over the globe. The rush to hoard energy supplies is rapidly accelerating as soaring prices and concern about potential shortages continue to cause anxiety for countless families. In many places, widespread street demonstrations have already begun. New reports reveal that homeowners are lining up for days to buy coal, firewood, and alternative heating sources ahead of the winter. The cost of living crisis is plaguing several major economies around the world, and people are getting increasingly furious with their governments’ inaction. This is set to be the most devastating energy crisis the planet has ever seen and we must start bringing attention to this issue before it’s too late.

A recent exposé published on ZeroHedge reported that mindblowing gas and electricity prices are leading households to seek alternative energy sources as global energy production sharply declines. Over the past month, demand for firewood has shot up by 100% and it is expected to go even higher, according to Deutsche Bank analysts. On top of that, countless people have started lining up their cars and trucks outside coal mines to be able to secure supplies before they run out.

At this point, soaring demand is forcing mines to ration supplies or offer the fuel to individual buyers via online platforms, in limited amounts, the report adds. Artur, who did not want to share his full name, said he had “collected paperwork from his extended family in the hope of picking up all their fuel allocations at once.” However, ZeroHedge analysts argue that despite the struggle to buy the supplies they need, “these households are probably in better shape than the ones relying on natural gas, whose price is rising by 10-20% every day, and is now almost literally in the stratosphere.”

All across the globe, and including here in the U.S., skyrocketing costs for energy are already crippling economic output, and heaping pressure on politicians to resolve the crisis with winter just a few months away. This Monday, natural gas prices were about six times higher than they were at this time last year, with the panic spreading across nations ahead of peak winter demand. Numerous families out there are being absolutely stunned by the size of their energy bills, and a severe backlash has been brewing in some places. In fact, a separate Reuters report revealed that very large demonstrations are happening in a number of different countries.

It’s safe to say that this is just the beginning. A lot of government officials are worried that there simply won’t be enough energy supplies for everyone, and that shortages and outages may leave a large share of the global population in a very dangerous situation. That’s extremely alarming considering that over 50% of the U.S. population uses natural gas to heat their homes. This is especially troubling news for those at the bottom of the economic food chain, who are now expected to spend almost 70% of their incomes on energy alone.

A lot more chaos is going to erupt in every corner of this country sooner than most people think. Authorities aren’t taken this crisis seriously enough, and we’re the ones who are supposed to face the consequences of their “wait and see” approach. If you can, we would like to encourage you to do what you can to become more independent from the power grid. The worst is yet to come. Energy bills are about to hit extraordinary heights, and this is going to cause excruciating pain all over the western world."

Gerald Celente, "The UnCommunist Manifesto: A Message of Hope, Responsibility and Liberty for All"

Gerald Celente, 8/29/22:
"The UnCommunist Manifesto: 
A Message of Hope, Responsibility and Liberty for All"
Gerald Celente interviews Mark Moss and Aleksandar Svetski, the authors of "The UnCommunist Manifesto: A Message of Hope, Responsibility and Liberty for All"
"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."

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

Full screen recommended. Incredible...
Liquid Mind, “My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“In one of the brightest parts of Milky Way lies a nebula where some of the oddest things occur. NGC 3372, known as the Great Nebula in Carina, is home to massive stars and changing nebulas. The Keyhole Nebula (NGC 3324), the bright structure just above the image center, houses several of these massive stars and has itself changed its appearance.
The entire Carina Nebula spans over 300 light years and lies about 7,500 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. Eta Carinae, the most energetic star in the nebula, was one of the brightest stars in the sky in the 1830s, but then faded dramatically. Eta Carinae is the brightest star near the image center, just left of the Keyhole Nebula. While Eta Carinae itself maybe on the verge of a supernova explosion, X-ray images indicate that much of the Great Carina Nebula has been a veritable supernova factory.”

Chet Raymo, “Living In The Little World”

“Living In The Little World”
by Chet Raymo

"My wisdom is simple," begins Gustav Adolph Ekdahl, at the final celebratory family gathering of Ingmar Bergman's crowning epic “Fanny and Alexander.” I saw the movie in the early 1980s when it had its U.S. theater release. Now I have just watched the five-hour-long original version made for Swedish television. Whew!

But back to that speech by the gaily philandering Gustav, now the patriarch of the Ekdahl clan and uncle to Fanny and Alexander. The family has gathered for the double christening of Fanny and Alexander's new half-sister and Gustav's child by his mistress Maj. A dark chapter of family history has come to an end, involving a clash between two world views, one - the Ekdahl's - focussed on the pleasures of the here and now, and the other - that of Lutheran Bishop Edvard Vergerus, Fanny and Alexander's stepfather - a stern and joyless anticipation of the hereafter. It is not the habit of Ekdahls to concern themselves with matters of grand consequence, Gustav tells the assembled guests. "We must live in the little world. We will be content with that and cultivate it and make the best of it."

The little world. I love that phrase. This world, here, now. This world of family and friends and newborn infants and trees and flowers and rainstorms and- oh yes, cognac and stolen kisses and tumbles in the hay. The Ekdahl's are a theatrical family; we will leave it to the actors and actresses to give us our supernatural shivers, says Gustav. "So it shall be," he says. "Let us be kind, and generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world."

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "I Want A Lot"

"I Want A Lot"

"You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.

So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.
But what you love to see are faces
that so work and feel thirst...

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

“Today Is Mine..."

“Today is mine. It is unique.
Nobody in the world has one exactly like it.
It holds the sum of all my past experiences and all my future potential.
I can fill it with joyous moments or ruin it with fruitless worry.
If painful recollections of the past come into my mind,
or frightening thoughts of the future, I can put them away.
They cannot spoil today for me.”
- Alcoholics Anonymous

Gregory Mannarino, "Shocker! Both The BIS And The IMF Warn Of Much Higher Inflation To Come. Be Ready"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/29/22:
"Shocker! Both The BIS And The IMF Warn 
Of Much Higher Inflation To Come. Be Ready"
Comments here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Edgewood, Maryland, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Now WHAT Is This? Someone Just Flew Over The Circuit"

Full screen recommended.
"Now WHAT Is This? 
Someone Just Flew Over The Circuit"
"Belgian F1 Fans Stunned By Man Flying Over Track; 
Could This Be Mysterious 'Jetpack Man'?"

"Empty Shelves Everywhere At Walmart! Not Good! This Is Crazy!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 8/29/22:
"Empty Shelves Everywhere At Walmart! 
Not Good! This Is Crazy!"
"In today's vlog we are shopping at Walmart only to find lots of empty shelves, and very high prices! From frozen goods, to meat and dairy. Items are missing everywhere! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products."
Comments here:

"People are Shorting Zillow Stock - A Very Grim Forecast"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 8/29/22:
"People are Shorting Zillow Stock - A Very Grim Forecast"
"We are seeing energy bills completely skyrocket. People are betting against Zillow. There will be massive layoffs during the upcoming dark when that’s projected."
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! Bond Market Again Becoming Unstable, Stock Market Set To Fall"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/29/22:
"Alert! Bond Market Again Becoming Unstable,
 Stock Market Set To Fall"
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

"The Psychology of Totalitarianism" (Excerpt)

"The Psychology of Totalitarianism" (Excerpt)
by Robert W Malone MD, MS

Excerpt: "A European perspective. Guest substack editorial by Dr. Mattias Desmet. This is his first substack essay, and you can find his new substack here. I suggest you consider subscribing to it."

"At the end of February 2020, the global village began to shake on its foundations. The world was presented with a foreboding crisis, the consequences of which were incalculable. In a matter of weeks, everyone was gripped by the story of a virus - a story that was undoubtedly based on facts. But on which ones? We caught a first glimpse of “the facts” via footage from China. A virus forced the Chinese government to take the most draconian measures. Entire cities were quarantined, new hospitals were built hastily, and individuals in white suits disinfected public spaces. Here and there, rumors emerged that the totalitarian Chinese government was overreacting and that the new virus was no worse than the flu. Opposite opinions were also floating around: that it must be much worse than it looked, because otherwise no government would take such radical measures. At that point, everything still felt far removed from our shores and we assumed that the story did not allow us to gauge the full extent of the facts.

Until the moment that the virus arrived in Europe. We then began recording infections and deaths for ourselves. We saw images of overcrowded emergency rooms in Italy, convoys of army vehicles transporting corpses, morgues full of coffins. The renowned scientists at Imperial College confidently predicted that without the most drastic measures, the virus would claim tens of millions of lives. In Bergamo, sirens blared day and night, silencing any voice in a public space that dared to doubt the emerging narrative. From then on, story and facts seemed to merge and uncertainty gave way to certainty.

The unimaginable became reality: we witnessed the abrupt pivot of nearly every country on earth to follow China’s example and place huge populations of people under de facto house arrest, a situation for which the term “lockdown” was coined. An eerie silence descended -ominous and liberating at the same time. The sky without airplanes, traffic arteries without vehicles; dust settling on the standstill of billions of people’s individual pursuits and desires. In India, the air became so pure that, for the first time in thirty years, in some places the Himalayas became once more visible against the horizon.

It didn't stop there. We also saw a remarkable transfer of power. Expert virologists were called upon as Orwell’s pigs - the smartest animals on the farm - to replace the unreliable politicians. They would run the animal farm with accurate (“scientific”) information. But these experts soon turned out to have quite a few common, human flaws. In their statistics and graphs they made mistakes that even “ordinary” people would not easily make. It went so far that, at one point, they counted all deaths as corona deaths, including people who had died of, say, heart attacks.

Nor did they live up to their promises. These experts pledged that the Gates to Freedom would re-open after two doses of the vaccine, but then they contrived the need for a third. Like Orwell's pigs, they changed the rules overnight. First, the animals had to comply with the measures because the number of sick people could not exceed the capacity of the health care system (flatten the curve). But one day, everyone woke up to discover writing on the walls stating that the measures were being extended because the virus had to be eradicated (crush the curve). Eventually, the rules changed so often that only the pigs seemed to know them. And even the pigs weren’t so sure.

Some people began to nurture suspicions. How is it possible that these experts make mistakes that even laymen wouldn’t make? Aren't they scientists, the kind of people who took us to the moon and gave us the internet? They can't be that stupid, can they? What is their endgame? Their recommendations take us further down the road in the same direction: with each new step, we lose more of our freedoms, until we reach a final destination where human beings are reduced to QR codes in a large technocratic medical experiment.

That's how most people eventually became certain. Very certain. But of diametrically opposed viewpoints. Some people became certain that we were dealing with a killer virus, that would kill millions. Others became certain that it was nothing more than the seasonal flu. Still others became certain that the virus did not even exist and that we were dealing with a worldwide conspiracy. And there were also a few who continued to tolerate uncertainty and kept asking themselves: how can we adequately understand what is going on?"
View this complete article here:

"Why Are So Many Bad Things Happening To America In 2022?

"Why Are So Many Bad Things
 Happening To America In 2022?"
by Michael Snyder

"Have you ever wondered why we just keep getting hit by one thing after another? I grew up during a time when it seemed like America was endlessly blessed, but now everything around us seems the opposite of blessed. Our economy is imploding, inflation is out of control, the housing market is starting to crash, our weather patterns have gone completely nuts, the western half of the nation is enduring the worst drought in 1,200 years, we are dealing with three major pandemics simultaneously, we are losing our proxy war with Russia in Ukraine and it looks like war with China is just around the corner, and on top of everything else our political system is failing because liberals and conservatives deeply, deeply hate one another. And if you think that there is hope on the horizon, you are going to be severely disappointed. The current crop of politicians in Washington is the worst that we have had in our entire history, and all of the “solutions” they give us just seem to make matters even worse.

This weekend, I came across a very intriguing article in the Jerusalem Post entitled “Is God punishing the United States of America?” It was authored by a prominent businessman named Sherwin Pomerantz, and it really got me thinking. Could it be possible that there is a common thread that connects all of the bad things that are constantly happening to us?

In his article, one of the points that Pomerantz makes is that America’s political system is coming apart at the seams right in front of our eyes…"Politically, whether people want to admit it or not, the country is in the midst of a civil war, though for the moment, not one where both sides have taken up arms, one against the other (although that, too, could eventuate)."

Sadly, he is right on target. There is so much politically-motivated hatred in our country today. Liberals deeply hate conservatives and conservatives deeply hate liberals. It would seem that it is only a matter of time before the entire system shatters.

On another note, Pomerantz believes that it is no coincidence that our weather patterns have gone totally haywire and that our nation is being constantly hit by natural disaster after natural disaster…"Then there is the weather. On average, the US experiences fewer than 1,500 tornadoes a year. Through June, there have already been 940 reported tornadoes there, which means the country is on track to see 2,000 or more, a 33% increase year-on-year.

The nightly news out of the US for the past few months shows tens of millions of people under extreme weather risk every day, often in three different areas of the country simultaneously (upper Midwest, East coast and the Southeast region). In the west, a long period of drought has been drying up reservoirs and spawning massive forest fires. National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) statistics show that as of July 5, 34,478 fires have already burned 4,582,301 acres. This is above the 10-year average of 27,346 fires, and twice the average of 2,026,917 acres burned. The odd thing is that very little of this occurs just north of the US in Canada, or just south in Mexico. It all seems to be centered in the US."

I did find it odd that Pomerantz only briefly mentioned the drought, because it is actually a really big deal. At this moment, the western half of the nation is in the midst of the worst multi-year megadrought that the region has experienced in 1,200 years, and this is having an absolutely devastating impact on agricultural production.

For example, we are now being warned that a very serious shortage of tomatoes could soon be coming…"As endless supply chain-related food shortages force people to adjust their grocery lists, another essential ingredient is becoming scarce. Along with avocados, cream cheese, chickpeas, and olive oil, the supply of tomatoes has started to dwindle. But this time it’s California’s catastrophic drought conditions denying farmers the water needed to grow the versatile vegetable that’s to blame. Due to the shortage, the price of byproducts like ketchup, salsa, and spaghetti sauce has started to surge.

Speaking about the tomato shortage, Head of the California Tomato Growers Association Mike Montana said the golden state desperately needs rain. “We are getting to a point where we don’t have inventory left to keep fulfilling the market demand,” he told Bloomberg News. California, which grows a quarter of the world’s tomatoes, is in the middle of a historic drought that has stoked massive wildfires while drying up reservoirs. It has also become a major threat to the agriculture industry."

When I was growing up, I never once imagined that there could ever be a shortage of tomatoes in this country. But things have changed, and life in the U.S. will never again be like it was when I was a little boy. Although to be honest I am having flashbacks to the 1970s with all of the inflation we are witnessing right now. In fact, if the inflation rate was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would be higher than anything that we experienced during the Jimmy Carter era.

Over the past couple of years, our politicians in Washington have gone on the most dramatic borrowing and spending binge in human history, and the “experts” at the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of fresh dollars into the financial system. Of course that was going to cause inflation, and now we have a colossal mess on our hands.

I really like how Steve Bannon recently summed up what we are now facing… "Every time you get a paycheck you’re falling behind because of inflation. Your real wages, sixteen months in a row (now let me think, how long has the Biden Administration been around here – about 18 months). Every month since they’ve been here real wages are down.

Ok so you’re losing, your treadmill, you’re losing every day in your wages and now the little bit of equity you have in the world, the little bit of net worth you’ve got in the world, the bottom’s fallen out on that. Ok. You are screwed. Let me be blunt. Let me do some Harvard Business School math for you – You’re screwed."

The Federal Reserve is recklessly hiking interest rates in a desperate attempt to battle inflation, but everyone knew that this would inevitably cause a housing crash. And as I pointed out last week, a housing crash has already begun. This July, new home sales were about 30 percent lower than they were last July…"The plunge in home sales is just stunning. Sales of new single-family houses collapsed by 12.6% in July from the already beaten-down levels in June, and by nearly 30% from July last year, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 511,000 houses, the lowest since January 2016, and well below the lockdown lows, according to data from the Census Bureau today."

Sadly, this is just the beginning. If the Fed keeps raising rates, things will get far worse. Meanwhile, we find ourselves battling three major pandemics all at once. Despite everything that our health authorities have done, COVID is still with us and will be with us for many years to come. If that wasn’t bad enough, a bird flu pandemic has erupted this year which has resulted in tens of millions of our chickens and turkeys being wiped out. On top of that, a new monkeypox outbreak continues to spread at an exponential rate all over the planet. Is it just some sort of a bizarre coincidence that we are now facing three major pestilences simultaneously? 

Of course this article would not be complete unless I talked about the war. We are now deeply involved in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, and it is not going very well. And if both sides continue to escalate matters, we could eventually find ourselves in a nuclear conflict with Russia which would have the potential to ultimately kill billions of people. In addition, the warmongers in the Biden administration have also brought us to the brink of a war with China. More U.S. politicians keep flying over to Taiwan, and at some point the Chinese are going to decide that they simply cannot take any more provocations. Also, it is just a matter of time before Iran and Israel go to war. And once that happens, the U.S. will inevitably decide to intervene.

In this article, I have covered war, plagues, economic collapse and natural disasters among other things. Could it be possible that all of these things are happening at this specific moment in human history for a reason? And could it be possible that we were warned in advance that all of these things would be coming?

My hope is that this article will get people thinking. All of human history has been building up to a grand crescendo, and we get to be here for it. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the population has no idea what is ahead, and so most of them are going to be absolutely blind-sided by the cataclysmic events that are rapidly coming our way."

"Doug Casey on the End of Western Civilization"

"Doug Casey on the End of Western Civilization"
by International Man

"International Man: The decline of Western Civilization is on a lot of people’s minds. Let’s talk about this trend.

Doug Casey: Western Civilization has its origins in ancient Greece. It’s unique among the world’s civilizations in putting the individual - as opposed to the collective - in a central position. It enshrined logic and rational thought - as opposed to mysticism and superstition - as the way to deal with the world. It’s because of this that we have science, technology, great literature and art, capitalism, personal freedom, the concept of progress, and much, much more. In fact, almost everything worth having in the material world is due to Western Civilization.

Ayn Rand once said “East minus West equals zero.” I think she went a bit too far, as a rhetorical device, but she was essentially right. When you look at what the world’s other civilizations have brought to the party, at least over the last 2,500 years, it’s trivial. I lived in the Orient for years. There are many things I love about it - martial arts, yoga, and the cuisine among them. But all the progress they’ve made is due to adopting the fruits of the West.

International Man: There are so many things degrading Western Civilization. Where do we begin?

Doug Casey: It’s been said, correctly, that a civilization always collapses from within. World War 1, in 1914, signaled the start of the long collapse of Western Civilization. Of course, termites were already eating away at the foundations, with the writings of people like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx. It’s been on an accelerating downward path ever since, even though technology and science have been improving at a quantum pace. They are, however, like delayed action flywheels, operating on stored energy and accumulated capital. Without capital, intellectual freedom, and entrepreneurialism, science and technology will slow down. I’m optimistic we’ll make it to Kurzweil’s Singularity, but there are no guarantees.

Things also changed with the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. Before that, the US used gold coinage for money. “The dollar” was just a name for 1/20th of an ounce of gold. That is what the dollar was. Paper dollars were just receipts for gold on deposit in the Treasury. The income tax, enacted the same year, threw more sand in the gears of civilization. The world was much freer before the events of 1913 and 1914, which acted to put the State at the center of everything.

The Fed and the income tax are both disastrous and unnecessary things, enemies of the common man in every way. Unfortunately, people have come to believe they’re fixtures in the cosmic firmament. They’re the main reasons - there are many other reasons, though, unfortunately - why the average American’s standard of living has been dropping since the early 1970s. In fact, were it not for these things, and the immense amount of capital destroyed during the numerous wars of the last 100 years, I expect we’d have already colonized the moon and Mars. Among many other things…

But I want to re-emphasize that the science, the technology, and all the wonderful toys we have are not the essence of Western Civilization. They’re consequences of individualism, capitalism, rational thought, and personal freedom. It’s critical not to confuse cause and effect.

International Man: You mentioned that the average American’s standard of living has dropped since the early 1970s. This is directly related to the US government abandoning the dollar’s last link to gold in 1971. Since then, the Federal Reserve has been able to debase the US dollar without limit. I think the dollar’s transformation into a purely fiat currency has eroded the rule of law and morality in the US. It’s similar to what happened in the Roman Empire after it started debasing its currency. What do you think, Doug?

Doug Casey: All the world’s governments and central banks share a common philosophy, which drives these policies. They believe that you create economic activity by stimulating demand, and you stimulate demand by printing money. And, of course, it’s true, in a way. Roughly the same way a counterfeiter can stimulate a local economy.

Unfortunately, they ignore that, and completely ignore that the way a person or a society becomes wealthy is by producing more than they consume and saving the difference. That difference, savings, is how you create capital. Without capital you’re reduced to subsistence, scratching at the earth with a stick. These people think that by inflating - which is to say destroying - the currency, they can create prosperity. But what they’re really doing, is destroying capital: When you destroy the value of the currency, that discourages people from saving it. And when people don’t save, they can’t build capital, and the vicious cycle goes on.

This is destructive for civilization itself, in both the long term and the short term. The more paper money, the more credit, they create, the more society focuses on finance, as opposed to production. It’s why there are many times more people studying finance than science. The focus is increasingly on speculation, not production. Financial engineering, not mechanical, electrical, or chemical engineering. And lots of laws and regulations to keep the unstable structure from collapsing.

What keeps a truly civil society together isn’t laws, regulations, and police. It’s peer pressure, social opprobrium, moral approbation, and your reputation. These are the four elements that keep things together. Western Civilization is built on voluntarism. But, as the State grows, that’s being replaced by coercion in every aspect of society. There are regulations on the most obscure areas of life. As Harvey Silverglate pointed out in his book, the average American commits three felonies a day. Whether he’s caught and prosecuted is a subject of luck and the arbitrary will of some functionary. That’s antithetical to the core values of Western Civilization.

International Man: Speaking of ancient civilizations like Rome, interest rates are about the lowest they’ve been in 5,000 years of recorded history. Trillions of dollars’ worth of government bonds trade at negative yields. Of course, this couldn’t happen in a free market. It’s only possible because of central bank manipulation. How will artificially low interest rates affect the collapse of Western Civilization?

Doug Casey: It’s really, really serious. I previously thought it was metaphysically impossible to have negative interest rates but, in the Bizarro World central banks have created, it’s happened.

Negative interest rates discourage saving. Once again, saving is what builds capital. Without capital you wind up as an empty shell - Rome in 450 A.D., or Detroit today - lots of wonderful but empty buildings and no economic activity. Worse, it forces people to desperately put their money in all manner of idiotic speculations in an effort to stay ahead of inflation. They wind up chasing the bubbles the funny money creates.

Let me re-emphasize something: in order for science and technology to advance you need capital. Where does capital come from? It comes from people producing more than they consume and saving the difference. Debt, on the other hand, means you’re living above your means. You’re either consuming the capital others have saved, or you’re mortgaging your future.

Zero and negative interest rate policies, and the creation of money out of nowhere, are actually destructive of civilization itself. It makes the average guy feel that he’s not in control of his own destiny. He starts believing that the State, or luck, or Allah will provide for him. That attitude is typical of people from backward parts of the world - not Western Civilization.

International Man: What does it say about the economy and society that people work so hard to interpret what officials from the Federal Reserve and other central banks say?

Doug Casey: It’s a shameful waste of time. They remind me of primitives seeking the counsel of witch doctors. One hundred years ago, the richest people in the country - the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, and such - made their money creating industries that actually made stuff. Now, the richest people in the country just shuffle money around. They get rich because they’re close to the government and the hydrant of currency materialized by the Federal Reserve. I’d say it’s a sign that society in the US has become quite degraded.

The world revolves much less around actual production, but around guessing the direction of financial markets. Negative interest rates are creating bubbles, and will eventually result in an economic collapse.

International Man: Negative interest rates are essentially a tax on savings. A lot of people would rather pull their money out of the bank and stuff it under a mattress than suffer that sting. The economic central planners know this. It’s why they’re using negative interest rates to ramp up the War on Cash - the push to eliminate paper currency and create a cashless society. The banking system is very fragile. Banks don’t hold much paper cash. It’s mostly digital bytes on a computer. If people start withdrawing paper money en masse, it won’t take much to bring the whole system down.

Their solution is to make accessing cash harder, and in some cases, illegal. That’s why the economic witch doctors at Harvard are pounding the table to get rid of the $100 bill. Take France, for example. It’s now illegal to make cash transactions over €1,000 without documenting them properly. Negative interest rates have turbocharged the War on Cash. If the central planners win this war, it would be the final deathblow to financial privacy. How does this all relate to the collapse of Western Civilization?

Doug Casey: I believe the next step in their idiotic plan is to abolish cash. Decades ago they got rid of gold coinage, which used to circulate day to day in people’s pockets. Then they got rid of silver coinage. Now, they’re planning to get rid of cash altogether. So you won’t even have euros or dollars or pounds in your wallet anymore, or if you do, it will only be very small denominations. Everything else is going to have to be done through electronic payment processing.

This is a huge disaster for the average person: absolutely everything that you buy or sell, other than perhaps a candy bar or a hamburger, is going to have to go through the banking system. Thus, the government will be able to monitor every transaction and payment. Financial privacy, even what’s left of it today, will literally cease to exist.

Privacy is one of the big differences between a civilized society and a primitive society. In a primitive society, in your little dirt hut village, anybody can look through your window or pull back the flap on your tent. You have no privacy. Everybody can hear everything; see anything. This was one of the marvelous things about Western Civilization - privacy was valued, and respected. But that concept, like so many others, is on its way out…

International Man: You’ve mentioned before that language and words provide important clues to the collapse of Western Civilization. How so?

Doug Casey: Many of the words you hear, especially on television and other media, are confused, conflated, or completely misused. Many recent changes in the way words are used are corrupting the language. As George Orwell liked to point out, to control language is to control thought. The corruption of language is adding to the corruption of civilization itself. This is not a trivial factor in the degradation of Western Civilization.

Words - their exact meanings, and how they’re used - are critically important. If you don’t mean what you say and say what you mean, then it’s impossible to communicate accurately. Forget about transmitting philosophical concepts.

Take for example shareholders and stakeholders. We all know that a shareholder actually owns a share in a company, but have you noticed that over the last generation shareholders have become less important than stakeholders? Even though stakeholders are just hangers-on, employees, or people who are looking to get in on a shakedown. But everybody slavishly acknowledges, “Yes, we’ve got to look out for the stakeholders.”

Where did that concept come from? It’s a recent creation, but Boobus americanus seems to think it was carved in stone at the country’s founding.

We’re told to protect them, as if they were a valuable and endangered species. I say, “A pox upon stakeholders.” If they want a vote in what a company does, then they ought to become shareholders. Stakeholders are a class of being created out of nothing by Cultural Marxists for the purpose of shaking down shareholders.

The economic, political, and social volatility in the days and weeks ahead promises to be extreme. The impact on your savings, retirement funds, and personal freedoms could be unlike anything we’ve ever seen."

Jim Kunstler, "The Wild West"

"The Wild West"
The autumn leaves will soon be trembling, 
and you should be, too…
by Jim Kunstler

"Yes, things are wilding up nicely in Western Civ as we bid farewell to summer and the elites return from their sacrosanct vacations to the task of crashing our world. You can feel it in every quarter of public and private life. Funny, especially, is the Party of Chaos trying to label their opponents as “fascists” - by which they mean anyone opposed to chaos, the “Joe Biden” regime’s preferred mode of existence.

The West’s biggest project these days, the war it provoked over Ukraine, turned out to be a giant Acme land-mine under the West’s collective Wile E. Coyote ass. As Russia advances implacably there and financial sanctions fizzle, behold the scramble in Europe now among citizens desperate to not freeze to death in the months ahead. This is the third time in a hundred-odd years that Germany has attempted suicide, and this time it looks like it’s going to work. Farewell nice German cars, machine tools, and other symbols of industrial might. In feckless Poland, the folks are out gathering lumps of coal and scouring the forest floor for firewood - they’re forbidden by law from cutting standing timber. Mr. Macron tells France she must accept “reduced living standards.” Looks like Brexit did not go far enough as the UK holds hands with the rest of NATO tromping into economic oblivion.

Think the USA is doing better? The summer rally in financial markets was just another frame in the Loony Tunes festival that American life has become. The Fed Chair, Mr. Powell, said all the parts out loud at the annual Jackson Hole banker meet-up last week: look out below, we’ve decided to take this sucker down (in the immortal words of George W. Bush), since pretending to stoke prosperity via Modern Monetary Theory only results in, duh, ruinous inflation. This raises the question, though, as to which is more politically damaging: inflation or depression? It is really only the difference between having plenty of worthless money or having no money at all.

The institutional rot eating away at our national underpinnings got more exposed last week when Mark Zuckerberg stupidly blurted to Joe Rogan that, yes, in the fall of 2020 the FBI warned Facebook - “came to the folks on our team,” he put it, smarmily - about a Russian disinformation campaign underway, wink wink. And so, Facebook turned the volume down to zero on certain news about a laptop belonging to one Hunter Biden stuffed with selfie porn (prostitutes included), video evidence of narcotics use, and deal memos about worldwide influence peddling involving the whole dang Biden family. FBI chief Chris Wray quickly jumped in to clarify that the FBI “routinely notifies U.S. private sector entities, including social media providers, of potential threat information, so that they can decide how to better defend against threats.”

Roger that. The part Mr. Wray left out was that he and everybody else on the fabled seventh floor of the J. Edgar Hoover building knew darn well that the Biden laptop story was not Russian Disinfo, raising the question: who do they now think is supposed to believe the FBI’s obvious bullshit? And why is Chris Wray still running the FBI? And, of course, Mr. Zuckerberg surely knew the truth of the matter as well - though at the time he was busy shoveling more than $300-million into election swing districts for the express purpose of changing-out local officials with his own crew to queer the balloting in favor of international grifter “Joe Biden.”

The inventory of lies retailed by the FBI is so vast and gross that the agency had to resort to raiding Mar-a-Lago three weeks ago in defiance of all known precedent and settled law regarding presidential records. The reason: Mr. Trump, the former president, had exactly such a cataloged inventory of the FBI lies used during his term in office to overthrow him with the Crossfire Hurricane nonsense, and was prepared to introduce said evidence in the lawsuit he has initiated in a Florida federal court against Hillary Clinton and a rogue’s gallery of campaign aides and allied federal officials who assisted in concocting the RussiaGate operation. The aim of the Mar-a-Lago raid: to un-declassify all that material - via a probably illegal order by “Joe Biden” - so as to prevent it from being introduced as evidence in the lawsuit. Somehow, the news media failed to report that part of the story, and even the alt media has missed that last detail.

And now, despite walking back their guideline Covid-19 policies this month, the CDC and its sister public health agencies are ready to push a new edition of Big Pharma’s Covid (so-called) “vaccines,” despite visibly rising all-causes death numbers across Western Civ that appear, more and more, attributable only to the “vaccines.” The vaxx-happy bureaucracy will not be stopped by the captive federal justice system but the attorneys general of fifty states could each act against the program, which has violated every module of the Nuremberg Code against human medical experimentation, as well as US law. It may be too late for the medical profession to redeem its lost sacred honor.

The catch here is that, at this point in the disgraceful story, only Woked-up liberals vying for the Darwin Award will fall for the new vaxxes. Everybody else is onto the scam and hip to the danger, and mandates have worn out their welcome. Liberal Wokery has turned out to be a form of stupidly booby-trapped, self-limiting neo-Nazism. There is your Party of Chaos in a nutshell.

It remains for Mr. Trump to renounce his support for the evil fruits of the Warp Speed operation he presided over. He must face the fact that he was played, and he may be forgiven, considering all the evidence coming recently from the likes of Deborah Birx and others that he was lied to and manipulated. But he doesn’t have much more time to get it right, or else his political career will be over well before the 2024 election. That may be all for the better. America probably needs a clean sweep of our desecrated political landscape. All in all, Mr. Trump was a good soldier, brave and resolute under tremendous adversity, but he’s not the only one who can lead our country back to itself."