Judge Napolitano, Judging Freedom, 10/20/22:
"Scott RItter - Ukraine Russia War Latest"
Comments here:
Good Citizen, don't you want to know where the $70 BILLION
we sent to Ukraine went, which you will pay for?
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, October 20, 2022
"Blood On The Tracks"
George Galloway, 10/20/22:
"Blood On the Tracks: Gonzalo Lira: Don't Be Fooled
That Russia Is Losing The War, The Worst Is Yet To Come"
"Zelensky’s troops are paying a huge blood price for the empty ground that Russia hasn’t wanted, says Gonzalo Lira from the front line."
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "Be Ready For Anything! Watch For A False Flag Event, Ignore The Fake News Propaganda"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 1020/22:
"Be Ready For Anything! Watch For A False Flag Event,
Ignore The Fake News Propaganda"
Comments here:
"Have Bank Bail-Ins Already Started?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 10/20/22:
"Have Bank Bail-Ins Already Started?"
"Banks will not be bailed out. They will be bailed-in using your money. Banks are already starting to collapse around us. The fractional banking system is a complete joke. It is at zero right now and your money is not safe."
Comments here:
"A Cold Day in Hell"
"A Cold Day in Hell"
A look at what happens when vernacular economies break down.
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman
Delray Beach, Florida - "In the news this week, The Hill: "Home sales declined the most on record in September as mortgage rates surged and pushed prospective buyers out of the once-hot housing market, according to a new report. A report from the real estate company Redfin shows the number of homes sold fell by 25 percent and new listings dropped by 22 percent last month, marking the biggest declines on record in both categories - excluding numbers at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in April and May 2020. Although prices have declined recently, sky-high mortgage rates have pushed monthly payments up by more than 50 percent year over year, according to the report."
Middle class Americans store much of their wealth in their homes. If house prices are cut in half, so is much of their wealth. And, houses are typically a leveraged asset, a liability as well as an asset. They owe money on it. As their asset declines, the gap between the asset and the liability narrows… and sometimes closes altogether. Then, they are ‘under water,’ with no more asset left. Only liability.
But household wealth is not an easy-come, easy-go matter. It is the story of who we are and where we came from. It is a vernacular story; it echoes personal challenges, successes and failures over many years. We might have labored for an entire 40-year career in coal mining, truck driving or biological research. We invested in Amazon… we missed Tesla… and how were we supposed to know the market would turn down in 2022?
Blood, Sweat & Years: In a normal, honest, give-and-take world, people do the best they can with what they’ve got. They suffer failures… they enjoy successes; they spend much of the money they earned. But they made their mortgage payments and saved as much as they could. And now those savings are stained with sweat… and often tears. And then, when they go to their graves, a lawyer does a financial obituary, adding up the hours worked…subtracting the pizzas ordered; he comes up with a final tally.
But sometimes an anti-vernacular event – a rip-off – intrudes. The novelist Stefan Zweig described hyperinflation in Germany in the early 1920s. “The mark plunged down, never to stop until it had reached the fantastic figures of madness – the millions, the billions and trillions. Now the real witches’ sabbath of inflation started….
I sent a manuscript to my publisher on which I had worked for a year; to be on the safe side I asked for an advance payment of royalties on ten thousand copies. By the time the check was deposited, it hardly paid the postage I had put on the parcel a week before.
On street cars one paid in millions, trucks carried the paper money from the Reichsbank to the other banks, and a fortnight later one found hundred thousand mark notes in the gutter; a beggar had thrown them away contemptuously. A pair of shoelaces cost more than a shoe had once cost; no, more than a fashionable shoe store with two thousand pairs of shoes had cost before; to repair a broken window cost more than the whole house had formerly cost, a book more than the printer’s shop with a hundred presses.
Teachers had been held in high esteem in German society – before this episode of hyperinflation. But the poor professors’ wages were cut down to nothing by the inflation. They had to roll up their sleeves to pick through the garbage… or turn their daughters out onto the street to prostitute themselves… so that the family might eat."
We’ve seen a more modest version of this with our own eyes.
Promises Broken: We had a meeting with the then-president of Argentina in the late ‘90s. He had connected the Argentine peso to the US dollar, one to one. Everything seemed fine. And he swore that they would never abandon ‘the peg’ with the dollar. “It would be disastrous,” he predicted.
But just months later, we got to see how disastrous it was. The government had spent too much money. It could no longer afford to redeem pesos for dollars. So, it ‘broke the peg.’ Bank accounts were seized. Accounts that had been in dollars were converted to pesos. People who saved in dollars, ‘just to be safe,’ suddenly found their wealth clipped of 65% of its value.
Salaries were slashed by inflation. Picking through trash became common. Some people looked through the trash to find something to eat. Others pulled out the cardboard boxes which they could sell for pennies to recyclers. There were riots and demonstrations… which ended in the election of one of the most corrupt and incompetent governments in Argentina’s history. Inflation rose. The peso was worth about 30 US cents in the early 2000s. Now it is worth less than half a penny.
Civilized, vernacular order broke down. People came to see that the system was unfair… and that it rewarded people who cut in line. Each payday, they felt cheated. “What’s the point of working,” they asked themselves. And then…“These guys are crooks… and they’re getting rich. I should be a crook too.” When that happens, the whole system breaks down.
China’s Great Leap Forward: In the late 1950s, China began an ambitious campaign to modernize itself. Led by Mao Tse Tung and the communist party, the Chinese embarked on a great crusade. The whole society – its government, politics, economics, finances, and industries…all were all brought together, like an attacking army, to transform China into a modern industrial powerhouse.
At the time, China was an agrarian society. Most people still tilled the soil… and stuck to their traditional ways of life. It wasn’t the most sophisticated economy in the world. But it was capable of supporting 600 million people. In Mao’s new plan, farmers were forced onto collective farms. Private plots were made illegal. People who tried to keep their own gardens were branded as ‘counter-revolutionaries,’ and often tortured, imprisoned, killed outright, or worked to death.
So too, the customs of the countryside were banned. Weddings, funerals, feasts – traditional rituals of vernacular society – were outlawed. They were replaced by propaganda meetings and ‘struggle sessions,’ in which the ‘deniers’ and unreconstructed peasants were beaten… forced to admit their crimes… and often killed.
Early on, Mao had played a little trick on his enemies. He invited criticism. This flushed out his adversaries, conservative intellectuals, and ‘bourgeois elements.’ Later, these people were targeted. The intellectuals were sent to the countryside, where they were worked and starved. The resistors were tortured, tried, and executed. Critics learned to keep their mouths shut. Even at the height of the madness… when millions were dying, and it was obvious that the modernizing crusade was a ghastly failure… there was very little criticism or debate.
Mao knew nothing about metallurgy. Somehow, he became convinced, in the way confident ignoramuses often are, that the peasants could make steel in backyard furnaces. Millions of trees were cut down to fire up these primitive steel mills. Billions of man-hours were wasted trying to do what couldn’t be done. The result was only a few lumps of useless pig iron.
Meanwhile, those left on the farms were given new directives – from bureaucrats who knew nothing about farming. They were told to plow deeper, in the belief that the roots would have more room to grow… and to plant the seeds closer together to increase the harvest. Then, the deciders set productivity quotas based on their fantasy projections and confiscated almost all the food the farms actually produced.
Elsewhere, crops went unharvested because so many people had been diverted into the fruitless campaign to make steel in backyard ovens. The result was the largest famine in history – manmade… and unnecessary. How many died? Maybe 30 million. Maybe 50 million. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, historians who wrote what many consider the definitive biography, Mao: The Unknown Story, reckoned 70 million. Of course, no one knows exactly. But the suffering was on a scale not seen since the Black Death haunted Europe. Whole families tried to survive by eating tree bark and clay… but starved to death anyway. There were widespread reports of cannibalism. Trying to escape or begging were punishable – even by death.
In addition to the famine, the communist police and militia did their part. In their efforts to force the Great Leap Forward onto the people, they are said to have tortured and killed more than 2 million of them.
The Next Great Crusade: China’s Great Leap Forward is worth studying. Because it is recent history; it happened during the lifetimes of many people reading this. Science was already well developed – including chemistry, metallurgy and agriculture. China, for all its faults, had automobiles and trains… it had tractors and trucks. And it had a civilized culture that was thousands of years old.
And yet, its elite – then in charge of the communist party – thought they knew better. Even when they saw that their new crusade would actually reduce China’s GDP and its population – they refused to admit failure. Instead, they stuck with it, only gradually and quietly dropping the worst elements of the program.
Chairman Mao, by the early ‘60s, was responsible for causing the deaths of millions of his countrymen. But he was neither disgraced nor hung… instead, he was a hero, and reclaimed power in 1966. Then, he began yet another Great Crusade, the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in maybe a million more deaths.
How was it possible? How did so many people allow themselves to be bullied and bamboozled into such lethal programs? People are neither always good nor always bad… neither always smart nor always dumb…but always subject to influence. And the influences are not always good ones. The big-mouths, the meddlers, and the power-mad monsters always cause problems. And then, they offer solutions that are worse than the problems they are meant to solve.
There is no record of any public crusade, intended to make the world better, that actually did so. The Great Crusades of the middle ages, the religious wars of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, the French Revolution and the Terror, WWI, the Russian Revolution, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union… Prohibition, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism – all were disasters.
And now, the people who brought you these marvelous mishaps bring you another big campaign. It may be the most ambitious crusade in human history. Like the Great Leap Forward, it is led by fanatics. Dissent is repressed as “misinformation.” And it will up-end our traditional, vernacular economy.
There are now 8 billion people on planet earth. They depend on fossil fuel. More important, they depend on the system that brought us fossil fuel – a system of bid and ask… please and thank you… give and take…that is, they depend on a vernacular economy that gives them what they want – fairly, freely, and effectively. Take away that economy… substitute central planning by bureaucrats and party hacks, armed with statistics, quotas, rifles, tear gas, penalties, subsidies, and ‘printing-press’ money…and what do you have?
A cold day in hell."
○
Joel’s Note: Just sticking on housing for the moment… it is perhaps unsurprising, given the precipitous fall in both home sales and listings for the month of September, that homebuilders would be suffering a lack of confidence in the market. A survey out this week from the National Association of Home Builders shows homebuilder confidence plunged for the tenth straight month in October, to its lowest level since 2012. The New York Post had the details…
"The NAHB index fell eight points to 38 in October – five more points than economists had expected. Index readings below 50 are considered a sign of negative sentiment among homebuilders. The latest downturn occurred as mortgage rates creep toward 7%. Coupled with still-high home prices, the higher rates are driving many prospective homebuyers out of the market due to an affordability crunch."
Remember, these are the folks with their finger on the pulse, who build homes for a living. As such, sentiment among homebuilders is often considered a “forward indicator” for health in the housing sector. Take note.
Meanwhile, desperate sellers are already lowering prices at quite the clip. According to Redfin, a record 7.9% of home listings reported price drops for the month ending Oct. 9, compared to just 4% over the same period last year, as rising rates dampen demand. Based on the current median home asking price and the 6.92% average long-term mortgage rate, buyers are looking at a 51% increase in their monthly mortgage rates year-over-year, from $1,698/month this time last year, to $2,559 today. According to the Census Bureau, around two thirds of Americans (65.5%) own real estate."
"This Is Going To Be A Winter Like No Other"
"This Is Going To Be A Winter Like No Other"
by Michael Snyder
"It is starting to get cold outside. Are you ready for a winter that will be unlike any other? As I have been documenting on The Economic Collapse Blog for months, the nightmarish global energy crisis that has erupted is not going to end any time soon. In fact, it has the potential to get a whole lot worse in 2023 and beyond. Energy prices have already risen to absolutely absurd levels, and now winter is coming. Unfortunately, many forecasters are warning that this winter is going to be a doozy. Colder than normal temperatures are expected across much of the northern hemisphere, and if that actually happens that would put a tremendous amount of strain on the system.
For example, just look at what New England is potentially facing. According to the Wall Street Journal, residents of the six states which make up the region could actually experience “rolling blackouts” if this turns out to be a really cold winter…"New England, which relies on natural-gas imports to bridge winter supply gaps, is now competing with European countries for shipments of liquefied natural gas, following Russia’s halt of most pipeline gas to the continent. Severe cold spells in the Northeast could reduce the amount of gas available to generate electricity as more of it is burned to heat homes.
The region’s power-grid operator, ISO New England Inc., has warned that an extremely cold winter could strain the reliability of the grid and potentially result in the need for rolling blackouts to keep electricity supply and demand in balance. The warning comes as executives and analysts predict power producers could have to pay as much as several times more than last year for gas deliveries if severe weather creates urgent need for spot-market purchases."
New England will likely be directly competing with the European Union for dwindling supplies of natural gas this winter. Unfortunately, there is probably not going to be enough to go around. Europeans have been urged to conserve energy for months, but much of the population is not heeding those warnings. As a result, many EU countries could also be facing blackouts in the months ahead…"The European Union could face blackouts this winter as the continent faces an ongoing energy crisis amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, but Brussels is preparing for worst-case scenarios, according to EU Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarčič. Asked in an interview published Tuesday by Germany’s RND media network whether EU countries would need disaster relief due to the energy crisis, Lenarčič responded: “Yes, that is quite possible.”
If the power is completely shut off where you live for several hours on one of the coldest days of the year, what will you do? You might want to start thinking about that.
In Ukraine, much of the country is without power right now. The Russians have started to systematically go after the nation’s power grid, and at this point approximately 30 percent of all Ukrainian power stations are not functioning…"Blackouts have struck more than 1,000 towns and villages in Ukraine after a series of Russian attacks. The Kremlin has killed more than 70 people in the past fortnight after ordering rocket and drone strikes on Ukrainian cities. President Volodymyr Zelensky said 30% of Ukraine’s power stations have been knocked out in the blitz. Sections of Kyiv have been left without water and power following further blasts today."
The Russians can completely destroy the Ukrainian power grid if they wish to do so. Will they go that far? Needless to say, the weather is already starting to get really cold in some parts of Ukraine, and we are being warned that a long-term lack of power could result in an unprecedented humanitarian crisis…"WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Henri P. Kluge said at the media briefing that the organization is working to anticipate and prepare for the challenges of the approaching “brutal” winter in its humanitarian response to Russia’s war on the country.
Kluge remarked that risk of COVID-19, frostbite, hypothermia, pneumonia, stroke and heart attack will likely increase among Ukrainians who are living “precariously,” whether in substandard shelters, without access to heating or by regularly moving to different locations."
I got the chills just reading those two paragraphs. It is starting to get cold here in the United States as well. In fact, some cities near the Great Lakes just received more than a foot of snow…"The cold front has seen freeze alerts issued for more than 89 million Americans in states in its path, already offering rounds of snow, rain, and high speed winds in the Great Lakes. More than 13 inches of snowfall recorded in cities near the lakes such as Ironwood and Marquette, as well as up to four inches in nearby Minnesota and Wisconsin."
And we are being warned that “the coldest air of the season” is now hitting the South…"The coldest air of the season so far has the South in its grip and near-freezing temperatures could set new record lows across a wide swath of the region into midweek.
AccuWeather meteorologists have been tracking a powerful disturbance since last week as it swept out of Canada and into the central and eastern United States. While this storm continues to bring the first snowflakes of the season to parts of the Midwest and Northeast, areas farther south will be in line for a dose of cold air that some may not be accustomed to handling so early in the season."
It already feels like winter for tens of millions of Americans. But the official beginning of winter is still more than two months away. That is not a good sign. For years I have been urging my readers to become less dependent on the power grid, but up until now being dependent on the power grid hasn’t been a problem. However, now things are changing in a major way. Energy prices are absolutely skyrocketing, and officials all over the globe are warning of “blackouts” this winter. I hope that you got prepared ahead of time, because this winter is going to exceedingly challenging for millions upon millions of people."
"Texas AG Urges Prosecution Over "Grotesque" 'Child-Friendly' Drag Show Near Dallas"
"Texas AG Urges Prosecution Over "Grotesque"
'Child-Friendly' Drag Show Near Dallas"
A Comment: You know, folks, I've been doing this blog for 14 years, thought I'd seen it all, and then ran across this. I'm not posting the article, read it at the link, but this shows just how far we've fallen into total, absolute disgrace. How could any parent expose their child to such vile, absolutely repulsive and disgusting conduct and say it's ok while laughing? Look at the parents in that picture, laughing and cheering! Look at the words to that song, and you play it to children in school? OMG... I don't give a damn who you are, who you love, how you love them, be Proud all you want, that's none of my business. But this is outrageous, damn you, you monsters, for exposing the children to this! And god damn these parents, they deserve only utter contempt and disgust.
I was horrified reading this, then so furious and enraged I wanted to vomit. Shame, shame on us! This isn't just an isolated incident, everywhere you look it reflects the character of what we as a country have become. And I thought, I'm too well informed to not know the unimaginable horrors on their way - you haven't seen anything yet! - and I thought, we deserve it all, and we'll get it too, and should, and I won't feel the slightest pity for them. I always believed, despite the enormous evidence to the contrary, that given the chance we as a people were basically good, morally decent and honorable folks doing their best. Sadly, I was wrong, so wrong, all along... - CP
"Strange Prices At Kroger! Stock Up Now! What's Coming?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 10/20/22:
"Strange Prices At Kroger! Stock Up Now! What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
"Scott Ritter on the Possibility of Peace and the Operation in Belarus"
Bryton's Thoughts, 10/20/22:
"Scott Ritter on the Possibility of Peace
and the Operation in Belarus"
Comments here:
"A Few Updates About The NATO Crusade Against Russia" (Excerpt)
by The Saker
Excerpt: "Intro: setting the current context: Before we take a look at some of the most interesting recent developments, I think that it is important to clearly state something which needs to be repeated almost constantly: what we are witnessing today is not a war between Russia and the Ukraine, but between Russia and the united, consolidated, West. In practical terms this means that Russia is at war with the United States and NATO, the latter being no more than a docile, if ineffective, instrument for the former. Furthermore, since some NATO countries are now playing a crucial role in the war against Russia (UK, Sweden, Poland and the Ukraine, the latter being a de facto NATO member), I submit that the best and simplest way to describe this was is to say that it is a NATO Crusade against Russia.
As for Banderastan, it is already a full NATO member state with about the same rights as all the other NATO members states besides the US: none. Right now, the so-called “Ukrainian forces” are already composed of anywhere between 40% to 80% composed of foreign fighters (depending on the importance of the location) and include plenty of actual NATO personnel. By the way, most of the ex-Soviet kit held by former WTO members has been destroyed by Russia, which poses a very thorny problem to NATO: they cannot ship more Soviet kit to Banderastan, and if they ship their own, they will not only lose it forever but the general public (or, at least, those who need to know) will know that western weapons systems are anything but a Wunderwaffe: some is very good, some okay, most of it is useless against a modern adversary. Remember the “awesome” Bayraktars? Where are they now? The same goes for all the other Wunderwaffen of course…
Why a Crusade? Many reasons, ranging from the fact that western imperialism was born with the original Crusades to the fact that, as always, the West is hating and trying to destroy Russia with a truly religious fervor, albeit a clearly satanic one (all western Crusades were satanic in inspiration, but that is a topic for another time).
By the way, understanding this has major force planning implications for Russia. First, the SMO in the Ukraine is only one special case in a much wider war which, in reality, already involves most of our planet (at least in economic and political terms). Second, while Russia has to conduct her SMO, she also has to prepare for an overt, full-scale, war with the West, possibly a nuclear one. Simply put: Russia has to keep the vast majority of her resources and capabilities ready for much larger conflict than the one we are currently witnessing. Put differently, Russia does not want to commit the same mistake as the one made by NATO when it flooded Ukraine with so much weapon systems that it now lacks them for its own use. With this in mind, I suggest that we look at a few interesting developments."
Read full, highest recommended article here:
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
MUST VIEW! Canadian Prepper, "Martial Law Declared! Nuclear Readiness Alert!"
Canadian Prepper, 10/19/22:
"Martial Law Declared! Nuclear Readiness Alert!"
"Things are spiraling out of control."
Comments here:
○
Related:
An absolutely must read:
"Prepare For The Great Economic Destruction"
Gerald Celente and Gregory Mannarino, 10/19/22:
"Prepare For The Great Economic Destruction"
"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."
Comments here:
○
"People Skipping Meals As Food Prices Triple: Prepare Yourself For Planned Starvation"
Full screen recommended.
"People Skipping Meals As Food Prices Triple:
Prepare Yourself For Planned Starvation"
by Epic Economist
"In an ominous sign of the turbulent times we're all living in, we're starting to see people go through some really extreme things. According to new research, millions of people in America are skipping meals every day because of the high cost of food. Even in the world's richest country, families are depriving themselves of their basic necessities due to the worst cost of living crisis in a generation. In some states, nearly 75 percent of U.S. households can’t afford enough to eat. Conditions are getting exceedingly hard for our population, and to make things worse, a number of factors are now converging to create the biggest food crisis we’ve witnessed in our lifetime.
The pain caused by the highest living expenses we’ve seen since the 1970s is economically eviscerating millions of families in the US and in the entire world. A new study conducted by the UN highlights that some things that are happening right now in developing nations are “foreshadowing” what’s coming soon to America. The new report released by the UN World Food Program uncovered that nearly 9 of 10 families in Sri Lanka are skipping meals to stretch out their food supply. The analysis underlined that what’s going on in countries like Sri Lanka right now is a “sneak peek” at what life will be like in America when food shortages and food inflation really start to bite.
In America, grocery prices have spiked to record-breaking levels, and the rising costs aren’t stopping. With grocery inflation hitting 12 percent in September, marking the highest spike over a 365-day period since 1974, a survey conducted by DebtHammer revealed that we’re not so distant from the reality that’s gripping developing nations like Sri Lanka after all.
The study found that nearly half of Americans, or 45%, are skipping meals as a result of inflated, unaffordable prices. The main reason why approximately 122 million people in the nation are eating less is to cut back on food spending to be able to afford other essential expenses, such as energy, rent, and gas, researchers noted. In some states, the percentage of people eating less to be able to get by is eerily close to Sri Lanka’s. For instance, a separate survey by CouponBirds exposed that in West Virginia, more than 7 in 10 people, or 75% of all West Virginians, are skipping meals because of the skyrocketing cost of food.
If food prices continue to increase at this rate, which largely outpaces increases in wages, the inevitable consequence is an explosion in the number of people facing food insecurity. The outlook for American crop production remains bleak, which means that the food you see in your grocery stores won’t be so plentiful a few months from now. Prices are actually as low as they’ll get for a while. From now on, supplies are expected to get even tighter and food inflation is going to climb higher and higher. We must keep in mind that it takes time to grow food – and the current disruptions in food production are a recipe for disaster in the very near future. With farmers worldwide experiencing the same problems simultaneously, there’s no way out."
"Warning! Collapse Of Society - Store As Much Food As You Can"
Jeremiah Babe, 10/19/22:
"Warning! Collapse Of Society -
Store As Much Food As You Can"
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino ,"Be Warned And Be Ready - We Are On The Cusp Of A Global Debt Market Meltdown"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 10/19/22:
"Be Warned And Be Ready -
We Are On The Cusp Of A Global Debt Market Meltdown"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Sharp telescopic views of NGC 3628 show a puffy galactic disk divided by dark dust lanes. Of course, this deep portrait of the magnificent, edge-on spiral galaxy puts some astronomers in mind of its popular moniker, the Hamburger Galaxy. It also reveals a small galaxy nearby, likely a satellite of NGC 3628, and a faint but extensive tidal tail. The drawn out tail stretches for about 300,000 light-years, even beyond the right edge of the wide frame.
NGC 3628 shares its neighborhood in the local universe with two other large spirals M65 and M66 in a grouping otherwise known as the Leo Triplet. Gravitational interactions with its cosmic neighbors are likely responsible for creating the tidal tail, as well as the extended flare and warp of this spiral's disk. The tantalizing island universe itself is about 100,000 light-years across and 35 million light-years away in the northern springtime constellation Leo."
Chet Raymo, “Into The Night”
“Into The Night”
by Chet Raymo
“I first became intimate with the night sky on the sleeping porch of my grandmother’s house on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the early 1940s. A screened sleeping porch might be found attached to any southern home of a certain vintage and substance, usually on the second story at the back. On sultry summer nights you could move a cot or daybed onto the porch and take advantage of whatever breezes stirred the air. I slept there when I visited because it was the only place to find a spare bed. I was usually alone in that big spooky space, with only a thin wire mesh separating me from the many mysteries of the night.
Far off in the house I could hear the muffled voice of the big Stromberg-Carlson radio in the parlor, where grown-ups listened to news of the war or the boogie-woogie tunes of the Hit Parade. Outside was another kind of music, nearer, louder, pressing against the screen, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a million scratchy fiddles, out-of-key woodwinds, discordant timpani. These were the cicadas, crickets and tree frogs of the southern summer night, but to me at that time they were the sounds of the night itself, as if darkness had an audible element.
Some nights the distant horizon would be lit with a silent, winking illumination called “heat lightnin’.” And closer, against the dark grass of the badminton court, the scintillations of fireflies- “lightnin’ bugs”- splashed into brightness.
The constellations of fireflies were answered in the sky by stars, which on those evenings when the city’s lights were blacked out for air-raid drills, multiplied alarmingly. I would lie in my cot, eyes glued to the spangled darkness, waiting to hear the drone of enemy aircraft or see the flash of ack-ack. No aircraft appeared, no ack-ack tracers pierced the night, but soon the stars took on their own fierce reality, like vast squadrons of alien rocket ships moving against the inky dark of Flash Gordon space.
In time I came to recognize patterns, although I did not yet know their names: the Scorpion creeping westward, dragging its stinger along the horizon; the teapot of Sagittarius afloat in the white river of the Milky Way; Vega at the zenith; the kite of Cygnus. As the hours passed, the Big Dipper clocked around the Pole. And sometimes, in late summer, I would wake in the predawn hour to find Orion sneaking into the eastern sky, pursuing the teacup of the Pleiades.
One memorable Christmas of my childhood, my father received a star book as a gift: “A Primer for Star-Gazers” by Henry Neely. As he used the book to learn the stars and constellations, he included me in his activities. The book was Santa’s gift to him. The night sky was his gift to me.
That book, now long out of print, is still in my possession. A glance takes me back half a century to evenings on the badminton court in the back yard of our own new home in the Chattanooga suburbs, gazing upwards with my father to a drapery of brilliant stars flung across the gap between tall dark pines. He told me stories of the constellations as he learned them. Of Orion and the Scorpion. Of the lovers Andromeda and Perseus, and the monster Cetus. Of the wood nymph Callisto and her son Arcas, placed by Zeus in the heavens as the Big and Little Bears. No child ever had a better storybook than the ever-changing page of night above our badminton court. My father also taught me the names of stars: Sirius, Arcturus, Polaris, Betelgeuse, and other, stranger names, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, the claws of the Scorpion. The words on his tongue were like incantations that opened the enchanted cave of night.
He was a man of insatiable curiosity. His stories of the stars were more than “connect the dots.” He wove into his lessons what he knew of history, science, poetry and myth. And, of course, religion. For my father, the stars were infused with unfathomable mystery, their contemplation a sort of prayer.
That Christmas book of long ago was a satisfactory guide to star lore, but as I look at it today I see that it conveyed little of the intimacy I felt as I stood with my father under the bright canopy of stars. Nor do any of the other more recent star guides that I have seen quite capture the feeling I had as a child of standing at the door of an enchanted universe, speaking incantations. What made the childhood experience so memorable was a total immersion in the mystery of the night- the singing of cicadas, the whisper of the wind in the pines, and, of course, my father’s storehouse of knowledge with which he embellished the stars. He taught me what to see; he also taught me what to imagine.”
"The Only Basic Human Duty..."
"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as
you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic
human duty, the duty to take the consequences."
- P. J. O'Rourke
"Get Ready! Something BIG Is Starting And Putin Knows It"
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 10/19/22:
"Get Ready!
Something BIG Is Starting And Putin Knows It"
Comments here:
○
Related:
"The Ways We Miss Our Lives..."
"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."
- Richard Ford
"I Am Done"
"I Am Done"
by OHMama
"I was born at the end of Gen X and the beginning of the Millennial Generation, and grew up in a middle class town. Life was good. Our home was modest but birthdays and Christmas were always generous, we went on yearly vacations, had 2 cars, and there was enough money for me to take dance classes and art lessons and be in Girl Scouts.
My 1940s born Dad raised me to be patriotic and proud, to love the war bird airplanes of his era as much as he does, and to respect our flag and our country as a sacred thing. I grew up thinking that being an American was the greatest gift a person could have. I grew up thinking that our country was as strong, and honest and true as my Dad. I grew up thinking I was free.
As an adult, I have witnessed the world I grew up in fall to ruin. I have watched as our currency and our economy have been shamelessly corrupted beyond redemption. Since we’ve been married, my husband and I TWICE had our meager investment savings gutted by the market that we were told to invest in, now that pensions no longer exist and we working stiffs are on our own. We will be working until we die, because the Social Security we’ve been forced to pay into has also been robbed from under us.
I have watched as our elected officials enter Congress as ordinary folks and leaves as multi millionaires. I have watched my blue collar husband get up at an ungodly hour every day and come home with an aching back that we pray will hold out long enough to get him to old age in one piece. Outside of shoes, socks and underwear, almost everything my family wears was bought used. We’ve been on one vacation in 12 years.
We don’t have cell phones, or cable, or any sort of streaming services, just a landline and internet. We hardly ever eat out. Our house is 1400 square feet, no air conditioning. I cook from scratch and I can and I garden and I raise chickens for eggs and meat and I moonlight selling things on Etsy. Still it is barely enough to pay the bills that go up every year while service quality and the longevity of goods goes down. What I just described is the life you can live on 60K a year without going into debt.
At last calculation, when you consider all of the federal, state and local taxes plus registration and user fees, Medicare and SS payroll taxes, almost a third of what my family earns is stolen by the govt each year. What’s left doesn’t go far, just enough to cover the basics and save a little for when the wolf howls at the door.
I watched as my family’s health insurance was gutted and destroyed. Our private market insurance, which we had to have because my husband’s employer is too small to have a group plan, was made illegal. We were left with the option of either buying an Obamacare plan with unaffordable deductibles and insanely ridiculous out of pocket maxes, or paying the very gov’t that destroyed our healthcare a fine for not buying the gov’t mandated plan that we cannot afford. We now have short term insurance that isn’t really insurance at all, and I live in fear of one of us getting injured or sick with anything I can’t fix from the medicine cabinet.
I have watched as education, which was already sketchy when I was a kid, became an all out joke of wholly unmathematical math, gold stars for all, and self-loathing anti-Americanism. My family has taken an enormous financial hit as I stay home to home school our child. At least she’ll be able to do old-fashioned math well enough to see how much they are screwing her. A silver lining to every cloud, I guess.
I’ve sat by and held my tongue as I was called deplorable and a bitter clinger and told that I didn’t build that. I’ve been called a racist and a xenophobe and a chump and even an “ugly folk.” I’ve been told that I have privilege, and that I have inherent bias because of my skin color, and that my beloved husband and father are part of a horrible patriarchy. Not one goddamn bit of that is true, but if I dare say anything about it, it will be used as evidence of my racism and white fragility.
Raised to be a Republican, I held my nose and voted for Bush, the Texas-talking blue blood from Connecticut who lied us into 2 wars and gave us the unpatriotic Patriot Act. I voted for McCain, the sociopathic neocon songbird “hero” that torpedoed the attempt to kill the Obamacare that’s killing my family financially. I held it again and voted for Romney, the vulture capitalist skunk that masquerades as a Republican while slithering over to the Democrat camp as often as they’ll tolerate his oily, loathsome presence.
And I voted for Trump, who, if he did nothing else, at least gave a resounding Bronx cheer to the richly deserving smug hypocrites of DC. Thank you for that Mr. President, on behalf of all of us nobodies. God bless you for it.
And now I have watched as people who hate me and mine and call for our destruction blatantly and openly stole the election and then gaslighted us and told us that it was honest and fair. I am watching as the GOP does NOTHING about it. They’re probably relieved that upstart Trump is gone so they can get back to their real jobs of lining their pockets and running interference for their corporate masters. I am watching as the media, in a manner that would make Stalin blush, is silencing anyone who dares question the legitimacy of this farce they call democracy. I know, it’s a republic, but I am so tired of explaining that to people I might as well give in and join them in ignorance.
I will not vote again; they’ve made it abundantly clear that my voice doesn’t matter. Whatever irrational, suicidal lunacy the nanny states thinks is best is what I’ll get. What it decided I need is a geriatric pedophile who shouldn’t be charged with anything more rigorous than choosing between tapioca and rice pudding at the old folks home, and a casting couch skank who rails against racism while being a descendant of slave owners.
I’m free to dismember a baby in my womb and kill it because “my body my choice”, but God help me if I won’t cover my face with a germ laden Linus-worthy security blanket or refuse let them inject genetically altering chemicals into my body or my child’s. I can be doxed, fired, shunned and destroyed for daring to venture that there are only 2 genders as proven by DNA, but a disease with a 99+% survival rate for most humans is a deadly pandemic worth murdering an economy over. Because science. Idiocracy is real, and we are living it. Dr. Lexus would be an improvement over Fauci.
I am done. Don’t ask me to pledge to the flag, or salute the troops, or shoot fireworks on the 4th. It’s a sick, twisted, heartbreaking joke, this bloated, unrecognizable corpse of a republic that once was ours.
I am not alone. Not sure how things continue to function when millions of citizens no longer feel any loyalty to or from the society they live in.
I was raised to be a lady, and ladies don’t curse, but f**k these motherf**kers to hell and back for what they’ve done to me, and mine, and my country. All we Joe Blow Americans ever wanted was a little patch of land to raise a family, a job to pay the bills, and at least some illusion of freedom, and even that was too much for these human parasites. They want it all, mind, body and soul. Damn them. Damn them all."
"He Said, Ze Said: Happy Anti-vernacular Day!"
"He Said, Ze Said:
Happy Anti-vernacular Day!"
by Bill Bonner
"Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling
Calling for me to come home."
~ Will Lamartine Thompson
From a roadside cafe, South Carolina - "Driving down from Maryland to Florida, we stopped for breakfast in a small South Carolina town. At 8 am, it appeared almost deserted. But we found a café in a converted Main Street shop. Its door was so covered with yellow ribbons – recalling the local people who had served in various misbegotten wars – you could barely see through the glass.
“Hello… welcome. C’mon in,” said a portly man at a table. “Hi,” said another bunch at a different table. We looked around; they were talking to us.
The café was tiny. Maybe that made everyone in it look obese. Or maybe they really were obese. But they were friendly. “Where are y’all comin’ from,” they wanted to know. While we were exchanging basic information, we noticed that two of the men in the restaurant were wearing pistols. ‘Open carry,’ they call it. On the walls were several Bible inscriptions and hats for sale that advertised only “Jeremiah 20-11.” Music played old Christian classics. “Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling…”
They served “One Nation Coffee.” “I’m sorry,” said the waitress, “but we’re all out of grits.” Were these people the ‘Christian Nationalists’ we’ve been hearing about… the people who threaten to take over the country? Were they the “White Supremacists” President Biden says are a danger to our democracy?
We don’t know. They seemed nice enough to us. But every revolution needs its enemies – its loyalists, its bourgeois elements, its counter-revolutionaries. In the campaign to reset America into an emission-free paradise, these Trump voters will have to do! And here… we won’t exactly change the subject, but we will come at it from a different direction.
Just and True: Ver-nac-ular is an under-appreciated word. It is usually only used to describe how people talk. They use the local ‘vernacular,’ rather than an ‘official’ or ‘academic’ way of speaking. People speak differently in South Carolina, for example, than they do in New Hampshire. They have different ideas, too.
There is also ‘vernacular architecture’ to describe the way people build their houses. They develop local styles and techniques that are suitable to the area. The Swiss chalet, for example, is adapted to heavy snowfall. The adobe houses of the southwest moderate the extreme temperatures of day and night. And the Irish cottage, with its thatched roof, stays warm through long periods of humidity and cold, but it would be miserable in the ‘low country’ near Savannah.
“Common law” is a vernacular system of law. It does not depend on anyone to figure out what the law is… or to write out a law code. It is merely what has evolved, with the help of courts, lawyers, and juries made up of ‘twelve men, good and stout.’ It’s what we accept as just and true. The full body of ‘vernacular law’ develops over time as cases are decided… and then is used by future courts to guide them to just decisions. It is a kind of ‘law’ that comes from the bottom up, rather than handed down from the top.
No committee designs ‘the vernacular.’ Nobody enforces it. Nobody improves it. It’s just what happens – when it is allowed to happen. There’s not even a good word to describe the opposite of vernacular. “Standard’ could be used. Or ‘accepted’ or ‘designed’. There being no sleek word for it, we’ll invent a clumsy one: anti-vernacular.
Crime and Punishment: Imagine you are sitting down with someone in a bar, and letting him tell you what he’s been doing. That’s the vernacular. Anti-vernacular would be reading his resume. He will use different words in person than on his resume. Shorter words. Words with whose meaning is not obscure. “I’m seeking employment that will allow me to utilize my educational attainments in order to reach my full potential,” it will say on the resume. “I want a job that I can do,” he will say in private.
The vernacular is just the result of people going about their business and making their individual decisions. They develop styles, customs, and rules. They invent. They experiment. They innovate. And they say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Nobody requires them to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ But they do.
People don’t murder each other either. And not only because it is against the law. Most people agree, it’s not a good thing to do. The taboo against murder is so strong that murderers are often overcome by guilt. That was the theme of Dostoevsky’s famous book, ‘Crime and Punishment.’ It’s not the police that the killer comes to fear; it is himself.
But there are always some people who want to tell other people what to do. And the vernacular gets in their way. They want to put things down in black and white… to make them clear… to codify the rules… and make people obey them. They want to design things for other people as if they were doing it for themselves. What they do for themselves must be good. So, why not make everyone do it.? Some people even invented a new language – Esperanto; they thought it would make the world a better place.
Anti-vernacular Meddling: Like almost all public policy programs to improve the natural, vernacular world, Esperanto seemed like a good idea. Instead of many different languages – each with its own rules, words, grammar and so forth – there would be just one. This was a way to standardize, simplify, and control. Based on Indo-European tongues, and similar in style to Portuguese or Spanish, it was meant to be easy to learn and easy to use. It was more logical than a natural language. And it could easily be adapted by those in charge to boost their political and social agenda.
For example, many people in the 21st century object to an old ‘rule’ of many Indo-European languages: masculine takes precedence. What it means is that when you use a singular, gender-neutral word as a subject, such as ‘everyone,’ you follow up by referring to “him” in the third person masculine singular, as in: ‘Everyone knows that HE is a fool.’
In English, the world improvers have solved the ‘problem’ by changing the HE to a nonsensical, awkward THEY, which sounds ridiculous. Some people even insist that they be referred to in the third person as “they,” as in, “They went for a walk.” Likewise, when Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” he didn’t need to add “and women too.” Because “men” includes “women.”
In natural, vernacular languages, people say what they want… and the language evolves along with the society it serves. But in an anti-vernacular language, such as Esperanto, a small group can determine the rules for everyone. After all, it’s meant to be controlled by the authorities, whoever they are.
Every revolutionary period brings forth its language improvers. During the French Revolution, the old titles – Monsieur, Mon Pere, Monseigneur, Monsieur Le Compte – were replaced by the great leveler, Citoyen. Likewise, in the Bolshevik Revolution, “comrade” was prescribed for everyone, no matter his sex, rank or social status.
But while you can get away with a lot of anti-vernacular meddling, with little lasting damage, there are some areas where imposing a new order becomes deadly. Economics, for example. People depend on ‘the economy’ to live. As we will see tomorrow, you change the rules… and people die."
Joel’s Note: Speaking of ver-nac-ular, allow us to pause a moment, to take a virtual knee, in recognition of International Pronoun Day. You’ve heard about this pivotal calendar event already, no doubt (surely you’ve already baked the cake, hung the balloons and festooned the porch…), but for those just coming to the party…"International Pronoun Day, according to one website we saw, is meant to raise awareness for men and women human beings with feelings and lived experiences who identify as “non-binary,” that is, who choose not to use he/him, she/her pronouns. (Sooo the last 200,000 years!)
Said humans - although-not-exclusively-human-identifying-organisms - might choose, instead, to go by they/them or xie/hir (pronounced “here”) or any one of literally dozens of other pronouns, none of which are set in stone, any of which may change without notice at any given moment. (One list we saw carried the helpful caveat: This is NOT an exhaustive list. Any combination is possible!)
So, for example, an individual who chooses to identify as ve/vis on Monday, Wednesday and Friday might decide that on Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends, they prefer ze/zir. It’s all about feelz, you see? Just don’t get it wrong. In some schools and colleges, “misgendering” a student, even if they don’t formally identify as a snowflake, can lead to termination. So too in the workplace, where Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity (DIE) training means many heads, one thought.
In this context, misgendering they/hir/yo/vir/viz etc., is actually considered an act of violence. And since words have no meaning anymore anyway, that all makes perfect logical sense. If you’re still confused, just remember: according to the new and approved gender ideology, there’s no such thing as a merely “binary world.” There are only binary people, and non-binary people. One or the other. Which, come to think of it… ah, nevermind. Happy Anti-vernacular Day!"
○
"Ah, You Miserable Creatures!"
"Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great!
You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything!
Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough."
- Frederic Bastiat
How much more evidence do you need to
realize we as a society have lost our collective minds?
"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Crazy! What's Next!?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 10/19/22:
"Massive Price Increases At Aldi!
This Is Crazy! What's Next!?"
"In today's vlog we are at Aldi, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
"An Epic Collapse: The Real Estate Avalanche Has Started"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 10/19/22:
"An Epic Collapse:
The Real Estate Avalanche Has Started"
"The Economy is just starting to break away from the mountain. Real Estate will continue to crumble. It’s only going to get worse around the globe before it comes crashing down upon all of us."
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino," Alert! Debt Market Selloff Accelerates! Situation Is Dire!"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/19/22:
"Alert! Debt Market Selloff Accelerates!
Situation Is Dire!"
Comments here:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)