"16 Harsh Truths That Make Us Stronger "

"16 Harsh Truths That Make Us Stronger "

by Marc Chernoff

"1. Life is not easy. Hard work makes people lucky, it's the stuff that brings dreams to reality. So start every morning ready to run farther than you did yesterday and fight harder than you ever have before.

2. You will fail sometimes. The faster you accept this, the faster you can get on with being brilliant. You'll never be 100% sure it will work, but you can always be 100% sure doing nothing won't work. So get out there and do something! Either you succeed or you learn a vital lesson. Win, Win.

3. Right now, there's a lot you don't know. The day you stop learning is the day you stop living. Embrace new information, think about it and use it to advance yourself.

4. There may not be a tomorrow. Not for everyone. Right now, someone on Earth is planning something for tomorrow without realizing they're going to die today. This is sad but true. So spend your time wisely today and pause long enough to appreciate it.

5. There's a lot you can't control. Wasting your time, talent and emotional energy on things that are beyond your control is a recipe for frustration, misery and stagnation. Invest your energy in the things you can control.

6. Information is not true knowledge. Knowledge comes from experience. You can discuss a task a hundred times, but these discussions will only give you a philosophical understanding. You must experience a task firsthand to truly know it.

7. You can't be successful without providing value. Don't waste your time trying to be successful, spend your time creating value. When you're valuable to the world around you, you will be successful.

8. Someone else will always have more than you. Whether it's money, friends or magic beans that you're collecting, there will always be someone who has more than you. But remember, it's not how many you have, it's how passionate you are about collecting them. It's all about the journey.

9. You can't change the past. As Maria Robinson once said, "Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending."  You can't change what happened, but you can change how you react to it.

10. The only person who can make you happy is you. The root of your happiness comes from your relationship with yourself. Sure external entities can have fleeting effects on your mood, but in the long run nothing matters more than how you feel about who you are on the inside.

11. There will always be people who don't like you. You can't be everything to everyone. No matter what you do, there will always be someone who thinks differently. So concentrate on doing what you know in your heart is right. What others think and say about you isn't all that important. What is important is how you feel about yourself.

12. You won't always get what you want. As Mick Jagger once said, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need."  Look around. Appreciate the things you have right now. Many people aren't so lucky.

13. In life, you get what you put in. If you want love, give love. If you want friends, be friendly. If you want money, provide value. It really is this simple.

14. Good friends will come and go. Most of your high school friends won't be a part of your college life. Most of your college friends won't be a part of your 20-something professional life. Most of your 20-something friends won't be there when your spouse and you bring your second child into the world. But some friends will stick. And it's these friends, the ones who transcend time with you, who matter.

15. Doing the same exact thing every day hinders self growth. If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting. Growth happens when you change things, when you try new things, when you stretch beyond your comfort zone.

16. You will never feel 100% ready for something new. Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means you won't feel totally comfortable or ready for it. 

 

And remember, trying to be someone else is a waste of the person you are. Strength comes from being comfortable in your own skin."

- http://www.marcandangel.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Farmington, Maine, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"For Those Who Deny The Problems With The Vax"

"For Those Who Deny The Problems With The Vax"

by aka.attrition

"The question of whether the vax is causing excess death or other health related problems is not answered by looking around at our own lives and seeing whether anyone we know has died after taking the vax or whether we know anyone suffering adverse side-effects. Our observable population sample is too small and may reflect all sorts of biases and sampling issues.

The question is also not answered by amateur-hour armchair analysts youtubing and surfing sites whose content is created by equally amateur-hour content creators. Or by saying, see I took the jab but I’m not dead. And neither is my friend or the guy on TV. You cannot anecdotal your way to the answer.

The question is answered by applying a high level understanding of math and statistical analysis to various sources of reliable data, or data which is as reliable as one can get, and calculating the actual stats across a large population of subjects. It is answered by comparing current death rates and rates of major health problems with known and established prior baselines. It is answered with math. Not your opinion or guesswork.

Now the problem is that most of us do not have the necessary working knowledge of math and are not trained to analyze complex sets of data. So what to do? Well one option is to find someone who does know how to do that and try as best possible to follow their thought processes and analysis to see how they get to their answers.

One of the smartest people in the room is The Ethical Skeptic whose website contains detailed analysis of the vax problem and the conclusion is very clear that we have a major excess death problem, a major increase in serious disease problem, and it’s getting worse.

I am not going to post TES’s articles as they are long and complex and you can find them yourself on his website: The Ethical Skeptic . He (I assume) has written, amongst many other articles, 3 articles in a series entitled “Houston We Have A Problem”. You can find Part 1 of 3 here: "Houston We Have A Problem" Part 1 of 3. Here is just the introduction:

Seven of the major eleven International Classification of Diseases codes tracked by the US National Center for Health Statistics exhibit stark increase trends beginning in the first week of April 2021 – featuring exceptional growth more robust than during even the Covid-19 pandemic time frame. This date of inception is no coincidence, in that it also happens to coincide with a key inflection point regarding a specific body-system intervention in most of the US population. These seven pronounced increases in mortality alarmingly persist even now.

The following work is the result of thousands of hours of dynamic data tracking and research on the part of its author. The reader should anticipate herein, a journey which will take them through the methods and metrics which serve to identify this problem, along with a deductive assessment of the candidate causal mechanisms behind it. Alternatives as to cause which include one mechanism in particular, that is embargoed from being allowed as an explanation, nor even mere mention in some forums.

At the end of this process, we will be left with one inescapable conclusion. One which threatens the very fabric and future of health policy in the US for decades to come.

Try to take the time to work through these articles, try and follow his Twitter page where he regularly posts about the excess death problem we are experiencing and how there is no doubt at all that it is related to the vax-not-vax: The Ethical Skeptic on Twitter:

Click image for larger size.

Here is a tweet worth reading and then delving into deeper to understand how he comes to this conclusion: "And finally, it goes without saying that our Public Health Missteps with Covid constitute the most deadly man-made event in US history by far. Over 1 million victims of our hubris and ignorance."

He is not the only one calling out this problem but he is certainly one of the most in-depth analysts out there. Edward Dowd is another in this class. And just to round this off, here is an article from the UK’s BBC just 3 days ago (and when the government mouthpiece starts to run articles like this then you better be paying attention): UK Excess Deaths "Excess deaths in 2022 among worst in 50 years." "More than 650,000 deaths were registered in the UK in 2022 – 9% more than 2019. This represents one of the largest excess death levels outside the pandemic in 50 years."

But I’m sure anecdotal opinion and youtubing amateur shock-jock content creators is a more reliable source of evi-dense to the con-trary."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

Related:

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

o

Hat tip to the Burning Platform for this material.

o

Very informative Comments here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"What Matter..."

"What matter if this base, unjust life

Cast you naked and disarmed?

If the ground breaks beneath your step,

Have you not your soul?

Your soul! You fly away,

Escape to realms refined,

Beyond all sadness and whimpering.

Be like the bird which on frail branches balanced

A moment sits and sings;

He feels them tremble, but he sings unshaken,

Knowing he has wings."

– Victor Hugo

"The Story Of Man..."

“The sands of time blew into a storm of images... images in sequence to tell the truth! Glorious legends of revolutionaries, bound only by a desire to be true to themselves, and to hope! Parables of colliding worlds, of forbidden love, of enemies healing the wounds of circumstance! Projected myth of persecution through greed and selfishness... and the will to survive! The Will to survive! And to survive in the face of those who claim credit for your very existence! We survive not as pawns, but as agents of hope. Sometimes misunderstood, but always true to our story. The story of Man."

- Scott Morse

“What a chimera then is Man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?”

- Blaise Pascal

This always suggested, despite ourselves, 

the relentless March of Man towards our unknown destiny...

"How It Really Is"

 

"I'd Still Swim..."

"If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told

 the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I'd still swim. 

And I'd despise the one who gave up." 

- Abraham Maslow

"Human Infected with Super Virus. It's Hitting the Fan"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 1/13/23:

"Human Infected with Super Virus. It's Hitting the Fan"

"Human infected with bird flu for first time in Ecuador; More mysterious explosions in Europe; X-Class solar flares; unprecedented weather unfolding has scientists baffled; inflation and CPI is hiding something; NATO prepares for existential conflict that will determine global monetary supremacy."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Very High Prices At Kroger! Got Eggs? Hunting Down The Best Deals!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 1/14/23:

"Very High Prices At Kroger! Got Eggs? 

Hunting Down The Best Deals!"

"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing some very high prices. With prices for groceries on the rise we are on the hunt to try and find some of the best sales on items to try and save as much money as we can. It's getting rough out here as stores continue to struggle getting products in."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Has Our Luck Finally Run Out?"

"Has Our Luck Finally Run Out?"

by Charles Hugh-Smith

"Long-term cycles escape our notice because they play out over many years or even decades; few noticed the decreasing rainfall in the Mediterranean region in 150 A.D. but this gradual decline in rainfall slowly but surely reduced the grain harvests of the Roman Empire, which coupled with rising populations resulted in a reduced caloric intake for many people. This weakened their immune systems in subtle ways, leaving them more vulnerable to the Antonine Plague of 165 AD.

The decline of temperatures in Northern Europe in the early 1300s led to “years without summer” and failed grain harvests which reduced the caloric intake of most people, leaving them weakened and more vulnerable to the Black Plague which swept Europe in 1347.

I’ve mentioned the book "The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire" a number of times as a source for understanding the impact of natural cycles on human civilization. It’s important to note that the natural cycles and pandemics of 200 AD didn’t just cripple the Roman Empire; this same era saw the collapse of the mighty Parthian Empire of Persia, the kingdoms of India and the Han Dynasty in China.

In addition to natural cycles, there are human socio-economic cycles of debt and decay of civic values and the social contract: a proliferation of parasitic elites, a weakening of state finances and a decline in the purchasing power of wages/labor. The rising dependence on debt and its eventual collapse is a cycle noted by Kondratieff and others, and Peter Turchin listed these three dynamics as the key drivers of decisive discord of the kind that brings down empires and nations. All three are playing out globally in the present.

In this context, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a political expression of long-brewing discontent with precisely these issues: the rise of self-serving parasitic elites, the decay/corruption of the social contract and state finances and the decades-long decline in the purchasing power of wages/labor.

Which brings us to karma, a topic of some confusion in Western cultures more familiar with Divine Retribution than with actions having consequences even without Divine Intervention, which is the essence of karma. Broadly speaking, the U.S. squandered the opportunities presented by the end of the Cold War 40 years ago on hubristic Exceptionalism, wars of choice, parasitic elites and an unprecedented waste of resources on unproductive consumption.

Now the plan – for lack of any real plan – is to borrow trillions of dollars to fund an even more spectacular orgy of unproductive consumption, on the bizarre belief that “money” can be conjured out of thin air in essentially infinite quantities and squandered, and there will magically be no consequences of this trickery in the real world.

Actions have consequences, and after 30 years of waste, fraud and corruption being normalized by the parasitic elites while the purchasing power of labor decayed, the karmic consequences can no longer be delayed by doing more of what’s hollowed out the economy and society.

Which brings us to luck. As a general rule, historians seek explanations which leave luck out of the equation. This gives us a false confidence in the predictability and power of human will and action and cycles. Yes, cycles and human action influence outcomes, but we do a great disservice by shunting luck into the shadows as a non-factor.

If Emperor Pius had chosen someone other than Marcus Aurelius as his successor, someone weak, vain and self-absorbed like so many of Rome’s late-stage emperors, then Rome would have fallen by 170 AD as the Antonine Plague crippled finances and the army, and the invading hordes would have swept the empire into the dustbin of history. It can be argued that only Marcus Aurelius had the experience and character to sell off the Imperial treasure to raise the money needed to pay the soldiers and spend virtually his entire term in power in the front lines of battle, preserving Rome from complete collapse. That was good judgement by Pius but also good luck.

As we ponder luck, consider the estimate that had the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago struck the Earth 30 minutes earlier or later, it would not have generated the Nuclear Winter that destroyed the dinosaurs. (A direct hit in deep water would have spawned a monstrous tsunami, but no dust cloud. A direct hit on land would have raised a dust cloud but without the water vapor/steam generated by the vaporization of millions of gallons of sea water, the cloud wouldn’t have risen high enough to encircle the planet.) That was bad luck for the dinosaurs, and good luck for the mammals who replaced them.

The global economy has been extraordinarily lucky for 75 years. Food and energy have been cheap and abundant. (If you think food and energy are expensive now, think about prices doubling or tripling, and then doubling again.)

In our complacency and hubris, we attribute this to our wonderful technologies, which we assume guarantee us permanent surpluses of energy and food. The idea that technology has reached hard limits or that it could fail doesn’t occur to us. We’ve taken good luck to be our birthright because it’s all we’ve known. We attribute this good fortune to things within our control–technology, wise investments and policies, etc. The possibility that all these powers that we consider so godlike are insignificant doesn’t occur to us because we’ve enjoyed the favorable winds of luck without even being aware of it.

We are woefully unprepared for a long run of bad luck. My sense is the cycles have turned and the good luck has drained from the hour-glass. Energy and food will no longer be cheap and abundant, our luck in leadership will vanish, and our vaunted technologies will fail to maintain an abundance so vast that we can squander the finite wealth of soil, water, resources and energy on mindless consumption.

I’m reminded of a line from an Albert King song, "Born Under a Bad Sign" (composed by Booker T. Jones and William Bell): “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.” The next five years might have us singing this line with feeling."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com

o

Albert King, "Born Under a Bad Sign"

"Russia's Super Duper Uber Winter Offensive"

Full screen recommended.

Defense Politics Asia, 1 /13/23:

"Russia's Super Duper Uber Winter Offensive"

"There are many talks, predictions and analysis by everyone on how Russia will do it's winter offensive. Or would it even happen? And with the change in leadership structure for the Russian Special Military Operation, the winter offensive is looking really likely to happen soon.

DPA believes the 3 deputy commanders of the SMO will be split into managing 3 fronts, with each taking full charge of one front.

Surovikin is likely to carry on his "good work" on the Eastern Front that the fighting is currently raging.

Oleg Salyukov, whom is the commander of all Russian ground forces, is reported to be visiting troops in Belarus. Which is a signal that he would be in charge of the Northern Front. But we do not think Belarus would want to change the status quo, and thus the invasion from the north is unlikely to come from Belarus, but from Russia itself.

Alexei Kim, would then naturally be in charge of the southern front, with either an amphibious operation in the western part of Odessa oblast, or east of Odessa in the Mykolaiv oblast, OR, to start a Zaporizhzhia Offensive towards Zaporizhzhia city through to Dnipro city. Watch the full video for the full analysis."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"On The Road To Economic Hell; Get Healthy And Debt Free Now!"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/13/23:

"On The Road To Economic Hell; 

Get Healthy And Debt Free Now!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Target: Civilization"

"Target: Civilization"

by Jeffrey Tucker

"Two weeks ago, Southwest Airlines had a massive meltdown but they weren’t the only airline affected. Flight delays ruined vacations and travel plans for millions the world over. It was never clear why. Oh sure, blame the weather but that has become a strangely opaque excuse. You look outside and the weather seems fine but then someone snaps at you: Can’t you see that the snow is bad in Buffalo?

So on it goes and when the weather excuse runs out, they blame the airlines themselves. And I’m sure there is plenty of blame to go around. One party that always seems to evade responsibility is the FAA itself. The other morning the FAA itself grounded all planes in the U.S. for three hours. Why? It was some computer glitch. We still don’t get it really. It sure felt like a lockdown. Maybe it was all deliberate to get us used to a system that doesn’t work. Maybe we’ll travel less. Maybe we’ll just give up.

OK, you can call me paranoid, and maybe I’m wrong in my speculations about this incident but look at the bigger picture, whether it is forcing electric cars on us or floating the idea of banning gas stoves. The bottom line is that there are people out there who want to control how we live.

Burn No More: The latest thing on the chopping block is the gas stove. The Biden administration’s Consumer Product Safety Commission has floated the idea of a national ban on them based on some cockamamie study that they cause health and respiratory problems.

You say that they can never get away with it? Think again. These regulators are unbearably powerful. They have every intention of carrying out their wishes, and are enjoying every minute of it. They have disdain for Congress and scoff at your protests. They believe they alone are in charge and you have nothing to say about it.

Think of all the stuff they have already wrecked. Look around at your household appliances. Energy-use and water restrictions have degraded the washing machine, refrigerator, dishwasher, the shower, the toilet, clothes dryers, steamers and irons, dishwashers, freezers, and so much more. Even the refrigerators are shrinking in size, all in the interest of institutionalizing austerity.

The clothes washers no longer use enough water to get things clean. The result is that our clothing is dull and dirty compared only to a generation ago. You can add all the liquids you want and it still won’t work. Sure, you can add bleach but that only wrecks the fabric. When was the last time you saw sheets that were truly bright white? There is a reason for this. It’s all deliberate, and caused by overregulation of appliances. Really clean absolutely requires roiling hot water and lots of it, plus phosphates to whisk the soap away. Without that, you get what you have today: dull and dirty everything.

Sadists in Charge: All this should be a clue about what’s going on. There are sadists in charge of the regulatory apparatus. It’s not really about saving water and energy. Even if it were, that alone would be objectionable. The whole point of energy and water is to serve the human experience, not to impose privation on the planet.

Then there’s the attack on the gas-powered car, which allows us to drive long distances even in cold weather and fully control the machine. The electric vehicle is another matter. It makes us wholly dependent on the grid and limits our mobility. In cold weather, it is worse. You end up having to stop every few hours to beg for a charge and wait another hour if you are lucky enough to find a working machine. After a while, demoralization sets in and you decide it is not worth it.

Sure, there are things you can do to outsmart this imposed impoverishment, such as hack your showerhead with a corkscrew to remove the flow stopper. But there is no fixing the toilet, the dishwasher (which now runs for hours just to leave spots), or the refrigerator (which will break in five years anyway).

In time, they want now to get rid of your ability to cook with fire, thus removing from our lives a crucial primal connection to our roots and innate desire to be around it. Ever sat by a bonfire? Everyone stares for hours because it meets an inner need. No one stands around an induction stove. They’re downright creepy. The only technology these people approve of is a thoroughly censored smartphone. They want everything to work like that: centralized, anodyne, and feeding you nonstop propaganda.

How Will We Cook Our Bugs? The very notion that an electric stove is better than a gas one would be disputed by any competent chef in the entire world. Instead of cultivating instincts based on what you see in the flames, you must trust some digital display to know the temperature, which is absurd. I can’t prove it but the heat itself seems different, like the difference between incandescence and fluorescence. One seems real, the other fake.

I’ve cooked on both and absolutely dread electric stoves. There are loads of dishes that require real fire, all of which would be impossible to make otherwise. I was just in a Mexican restaurant that put their chefs on display using stoves with flames that lap up 14 inches over the air and sear the fresh-made pasta as it is swished around in the pan. There is simply no way to do this otherwise.

Fine, if you want some new tech, great. Go for it. But don’t pretend that you are really cooking. You are buying into the baloney. Also, I’ve met very few people who have used both gas and electric who would honestly choose electric. But if they do, again, fine. But don’t force that choice on everyone else. That regulators say it is bad for our health tells all that you need to know about them. They want us living in a fully sanitized, boring, and unworkable environment in which we never have contact with anything real.

Above all else, they are somehow out to demonize fossil fuels, as if electricity doesn’t use coal too and the trucks that transport it and deliver it don’t use gas. They have even degraded the basic gas can so that it no longer works properly. Oh, we should also mention that gas itself, which now includes corn which is sticky, wrecks engines, and causes the gas itself to degrade over time.

Burning Down the House: Do you see what’s happening here? It’s all deliberate. All the things we love and that make life grand are being taken away from us. The larger truth here is that this war on civilization has been going on for decades. History is supposed to move forward with ever higher living standards. That progress has stopped!

The trajectory must end now. Decades of regulations need to be repealed. The whole population needs to rise up and say no to the forced austerity and rule by the elite cadre of techno-primitivists. They have driven down the standard of living by force and are far from done with us yet.

Some good news from the GOP-controlled House: they’re talking about abolishing the IRS and maybe the income tax itself. Neither will happen of course, but such ideas were never in the public sphere in my lifetime. There’s a mighty revolt afoot in the land today. It’s about time!"

- https://dailyreckoning.com/

"Why China Will Shut Down The Australian Economy In 2023"

Full screen recommended.

"Why China Will Shut Down The Australian Economy In 2023"

by Epic Economist

"For the past decade, China has been growing rapidly. Rapid urbanization and industrialization mean that China is in need of minerals and raw materials. And China’s development thirst has been fulfilled by Australia. Beijing is Australia’s largest trading partner, accounting for nearly one-third of Australia’s exports and one-fifth of Australia’s imports.

In 2019, China accounted for 82 percent of Australia’s iron ore exports. And guess what? Australian coal is home to China’s thermal power stations. But this economic bond is more complex than you think. Australia is also a leading supplier of liquified natural gas to China. This year, the LNG exports are somewhere between 18-19 billion Australian dollars. And if you think this is just it. You are mistaken.

China has also become the engine of Australia’s services sector. Universities in Canberra, Melbourne, and Sydney are home to significant enrollments from Chinese students. As of June 2019, there are around 164,317 Chinese students completing their education on Aussie turf.

Australia might be on its knees And if the Chinese economy does not stabilize in the next few months, we are afraid it would be an economic winter in Melbourne, Canberra, and the entire of Australia.

Inflation is galloping and the unemployment rate is rising in China. At first glance, you might argue that once things get right, Australia would be back to business. Some could also argue that this is short-term. And once Omicron is controlled, Chinese students and tourists would resume their pre-Covid spending habits. But things might never go back to the normal. Especially when it comes to trade between China and Australia. The reason lies in China’s property market crash.

For the last 3 decades, the property sector has been the main fuel for the Chinese economy. Despite the current geopolitical environment, a sudden decoupling from China would be a big mistake since it accounts for almost 40 percent of Australia’s exports. However, it would be wise for Australia to pursue a policy of trade diversion and look for alternative buyers.

For example, when China refused to buy Australian coal in 2020, it went to Indonesian markets. This created demand gaps in India, Japan, and South Korea, which was fulfilled by Australian coal. See, Australia needs to be smart. Dark times await. The clouds of harsh economic winters will remain for a while."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

"A 1968 Musical Interlude"

Mason Williams, "Classical Gas"

o

Full screen recommended.

Paul Mauriat, "Love is Blue"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. M6 can best be seen in a dark sky with binoculars towards the constellation of Scorpius, coving about as much of the sky as the full moon. 

Like other open clusters, M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars, although the brightest star is nearly orange. M6 is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110906.html

The Poet: Jane Hirshfield, "The Task "

"The Task" 

"It is a simple garment, this slipped-on world.

We wake into it daily - open eyes, braid hair - 

a robe unfurled

in rose-silk flowering, then laid bare.

And yes, it is a simple enough task

we've taken on,

though also vast:

from dusk to dawn,

from dawn to dusk, to praise, and not

be blinded by the praising.

To lie like a cat in hot

sun, fur fully blazing,

and dream the mouse;

and to keep too the mouse's patient, waking watch

within the deep rooms of the house,

where the leaf-flocked

sunlight never reaches, but the earth still blooms." 

- Jane Hirshfield

"Sometimes..."

 

"Douglas Macgregor: This Is Much Worse Than They're Telling You"

Full screen recommended.

Redacted, 1/13/23:

"Douglas Macgregor: 

This Is Much Worse Than They're Telling You"

"Col. Douglas MacGreggor joins Clayton Morris to 

talk about the devastating realities on the battlefield in Ukraine."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

A Must Read! "America’s Dumbest War"

"America’s Dumbest War"

By Bob Moriarty

"According to documents put out by a report service working for Congress the US has launched 251 foreign military interventions in the last thirty years. The report also says the US started more than 80% of all military conflicts since the end of World War II. We are in luck because the US (Stanford University IT Department says that using the words America or American should be forbidden) may well have fought their next to last war because it is having unintended consequences no one could have forecast. Actually that is not true either. They were forecast.

Before I dive into why this war is so obscenely stupid and self destructive, I’d like to comment about something I have learned about life in general. To succeed overall, you need to be good at something. It could be singing. It could be writing. It could be working as a mechanic or a cook. Actually it could be nearly anything. You just need to find something you are good at.

Once you find something that you are good at, you need to do more of it. Frankly there are a couple of things I am good at that somehow manage to pay the bills but there are hundreds of more tasks I am pretty useless at. So do more of what you are good at and less of the things you are not good at and you will get along just fine.

Can I give you a classic example? Let’s say you work for the government. You got your job because basically you are a freak. You think that you would make a great luggage thief. You take a flight; you stand around the luggage area after the flight and see a bag you would like so you walk off with it. Alas, the baggage area has cameras all over so you get caught.

That would be something you would not be good at. So you should avoid doing it in the future for a happy life. While you didn’t actually get fired for being a freak and a thief, you are not better off; you are worse off so you should avoid doing that again. But you are a freak working for Biden/Obama so you steal a second high value piece of luggage from a totally different airport after a different flight. Also equipped with dozens of totally different cameras. You get caught a second time.

If you are good at something do more of it. If you are bad at something, do less of it. Else there will be consequences. In the Biden administration being a freak is not an opportunity killer. It’s a basic requirement. And it’s not really the Biden administration because Biden himself is pretty much a freak. He should be in an old folk’s home wearing diapers. Or at least wearing diapers. But this is really the third term of the Obama administration with Obama pulling the strings of his minions, Susan Rice, Victoria Nuland and Avril Haines.

If you were good at fighting wars or even just stealing luggage from airports clearly you should focus on that for a happy life. Alternatively, if you are not good at fighting wars or stealing luggage, you should probably avoid both.

If I was to go down the list of the 251 interventions since 1990 I could probably find one or two that clearly America somehow was better off. It might be a stretch to conclude that. After all, wars are bloody expensive and well, bloody. I was in a war once. We lost. Big surprise. I came to the conclusion that no one really wins any war. All that happens is that one side loses a lot more than the other and eventually realizes it is something they are not good at so they stop fighting.

Saying America won World War II is actually silly. First of all we lost 415,000 of our young men and it cost a lot of money. And you should take into account the fact that the Soviet Union actually fought the 80% of the Germans who died. So if anyone “won” World War II, it wasn’t the US.

But you couldn’t possibly have 251 conflicts in thirty years without someone being better off. That of course would be the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) that both Eisenhower and MacArthur warned us about. The MIC doesn’t care about winning a war. They certainly don’t care about how many young Americans die fighting stupid wars. Their blood represents dividend checks for Raytheon or Lockheed-Martin or DuPont. We now have the MIC running the Defense Department with the FBI, the CIA and the DOJ responsible for determining whom the figurehead president should be.

But to give them credit where credit is due, the MIC and CIA have done the most magnificent job possible with the war in Ukraine. They took a clown running the most corrupt country in Europe, perhaps in the world, that stole millions of dollars from his fellow Ukrainians and murdered another 14,000. Elected on a platform of ending the conflict with Russia and eliminating widespread corruption, he did neither and seems to be controlled by very real Nazis."

Full, highly recommended article here:

- http://www.321gold.com/

Hey Good Citizen! Don't you want to know what YOU 

and all of us have paid $121 billion for?

The Daily "Near You?"

Fairmont, Minnesota, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Davos Men"

"Davos Men"

"Your moral betters prepare for their annual, 

world improving confabulation."

By Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

Paris, France - "Paris is gray. But not grim. People are out and about. Face masks have almost disappeared. But everybody grumbles…and in France, as in America, elite deciders are making everyday life harder. One thing: they’ve banned the use of outdoor heaters, which were ubiquitous in sidewalk cafes. You used to be able to sit outside near the gas heater and enjoy the street life. No more…

Meanwhile, we are working our way through a list of things that can go wrong. The World Economic Forum (WEF) calls it a “polycrisis.” We prefer the half-word “cluster” as it is more descriptive of the disaster to come. Inflation, for example. The WEF’s Global Risks survey signals higher living costs as one of its near-term flash points. And here’s the latest. CNBC reports: "Inflation just dropped to 6.5% - but the 'most important' factor in predicting if it will keep falling is up 0.4%"

In Thursday's CPI report, "services less rent of shelter" showed a 0.4% increase in December. …since wages are "the largest cost in delivering these services," [Powell] said, that might indicate out-of-control wage growth…

There is “sticky” inflation…and inflation of the Teflon variety. The non-sticky inflation includes things that go up and down readily – such as oil and commodities. The ‘sticky’ inflation comes from things such as wages and shelter, that don’t get marked-to-market on a daily basis.

Yesterday’s numbers tell us that the sticky part may become a tar baby – hard to get rid of. In the ‘services including rents’ category, for example, prices are up more than 7%. Much of that is wages. And nobody takes a wage cut to fight inflation.

“Davos Men”: WEF is a sinister organization. It believes the common man is a dope – which, of course, he is. But it also believes that it – or rather its adherents, the great and the good from all over the world – are geniuses, which they are not. They are human too…just better at school…or better at getting their names in the paper…or simply lucky enough to have no tender feelings nor nuanced thoughts that might keep them from making fools of themselves. With no real weight – neither inner dignity nor outward-facing principles – they rise to the top, like plastic bottles, floating in a fetid swamp.

The list of attendees has recently been released. It includes the usual public policy jackasses…as well as a large group of people in private industry who have become “Davos Men” and are ready to lead the rest of us to the promised land. The problem is that when you look more carefully at the land they are promising, it looks more and more like a prison. It is a prison constructed by true believers, who think they know what is best for us.

Which brings us to their polycrises…and to our cluster. Included among the coming tempests – at the top of both of our lists – is the deflation of asset prices and the potential for a worldwide, 1930s-style depression. But looking out further…over 10 years… their survey focuses on bigger threats. Its top five are all related to ‘climate change.’ They think human activity is ruining the planet.

On our list, by contrast, in number 4 position, is a very different crisis – a man-made catastrophe, a little like the disaster in China of the ‘Great Leap Forward,’ in which 50 million people died – caused by an almost religious faith in ‘green’ power.

This Tilted World: WEF could be right. Maybe the planet really is warming. And maybe it will pose problems. But there are a lot of unknowns. Is the planet heating up because of something we do? We don’t know for sure. Is a warmer earth a bad thing? Don’t know. Could we stop it? We don’t know that either. Would we be better off if we tried…how much would it cost? Again, question marks. Would it be worth it? Who knows?

The risk we see is not a climate disaster, but a much more likely public policy cluster. The odds are in our favor. We know of no major, ambitious and costly public policy that wasn’t a catastrophe – from the Crusades and the Inquisition to the trenches of WWI and the jungles of Vietnam…all were disasters.

Yes, there are plenty of squishy unknowns in our cluster too. But the ground is dry. Fossil fuels are 1) cheaper than green energy, 2) already in place and ready for duty, and 3) reliable; they do the job even when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

Replacing fossil fuel with ‘green’ energy, even gradually, will almost certainly lower living standards. (Today’s standards of living depend on energy at today’s prices.) In our developed world, we sit on a fat cushion of wealth, made possible by economies using traditional energy. Would lower living standards be a bad thing? We don’t know. But what about those billions of people who sit on hard benches…for whom air conditioning and automatic transmissions are still a dream? They live on $5 a day…and barely stay alive.

We don’t know. But combined in a cluster of market correction, war, and other calamities, tilting the whole world towards an expensive and untested new energy system is risky. Some of the world’s 8 billion humans are bound to fall off."

o

Joel’s Note: In a pop-up city, nestled in the lush countryside of one of the world’s richest countries, your enlightened (yet ever so humble) overlords will soon gather to discuss your future... your children’s future... and the future of the entire planet. Chances are, you’re not going to like what they have to say. But hear them out; it’s for their own good.

Spirited on luxury private jets angel wings, thousands of personkind’s finest moral exemplars will journey to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week to engage in an cloistered mass debate over how best to organize the miracle of life here on this precious blue orb. Where you can go, and when... How much you can spend, and on what… Which ideas are permitted and which constitute “misinformation.” What is is prohibited, and what is mandatory…

And because their own ideas are so very popular, the Davos Men will only need 5,000 members of the Swiss military to protect them from the plebeians outside the city gates. That’s in addition to the thousands of ordinary uniformed police officers that will be hitting the streets… and the fighter jets that will be patrolling the skies overhead. From the official SwissInfo.ch

Ten days before the 2023 edition, the military has begun work on security installations, the defence ministry said on Friday. Like every year, the military is supporting the civilian authorities in canton Graubünden in preparation for the major event. It notes that the Swiss parliament renewed approval for 5,000 members of the Swiss army to guarantee the security of some 3,000 WEF participants for the years 2022 to 2024. The high-level event attracts wealthy, high-profile business and political figures from around the world, along with academics and other leaders of society.

Safety protocols (for them… not you), include “permanent patrolling by armed fighter jets, ground-based air defense, additional radars, increased airspace surveillance and air police service around the clock.”

All completely carbon neutral, of course. And fear not, obedient prole, while you’re being scolded for driving the kids to school in your soccer van and told “no more gas stoves for you!” your elites will be traveling to the event in private jets which, as we all know, run on compost and solar power. Hermès speed!"

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

o

Related:

"Davos 2023 – A Threat to the Entire World?"

"When We Have Time...."

“How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy. In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.”

- Charles Caleb Colton, “Lacon”

o

"The problem is, you think you have time."

- Buddha

o

“There Is No Reality Anymore…”

by Thad Beversdorf

“I‘d love to change the world, but I don‘t know what to do,

so I’ll leave it up to you…” 

“What a great lyric that is from the late 60′s, early 70′s English band “10 Years After.”* I believe this describes that uneasy feeling of discontent that sits deep in the stomach, beneath the day to day exteriors, of so many people today. The world is like a black hole in that it seems to be getting smaller and smaller as the years go by but also heavier and heavier with each passing day.

When I was a teenager and my friends and I were taking reality obscuring substances, one of my buddies (this means you Nichol) would stop us at certain points throughout the night for a reality check. This was just a few moments where we ‘d all gather our senses to make sure the world was still right and then we’d venture back into obscurity. I feel that reality is an old world term. There is no reality anymore. With advances in technology came unending possibilities of if you can dream it they can make it so. The ubiquitous flow of information ensures that the truth is always available but never known with certainty. It means there is no such thing as a reality check. It’s like that dream inside a dream inside a dream. Which reality is real anymore? How deep does the rabbit hole go?

We are raised with pretty standard ideals of what the world is meant to be but these ideals seem to take place only in the movies. It must be incredibly difficult for our young people to reconcile the two worlds, I know it is for me. That which they learn as a child and that which they find has replaced it as a young adult. Our leaders are despicable, arrogant and egotistical fools who pretend we elect them because we don’t see them for what they are. But we elect them because we feel we have no choice. We know what we want the world to be. We know what it should look and feel like. And we know it is not the world in which we live today. I know I’d love to change the world but I don’t know how and so I’ll leave it up to you. And so we continue to move forward down this path, each step uneasy as though something ungood is lurking just around the next corner.

We are able to put that feeling out of our minds for the most part but our subconscious is always aware that things are off. We have all kinds of self help books and new age theories that attempt to make sense of it all and explain why we just aren t happy the way we envision happy should be. Perhaps the only reality is the reality that the world isn’t what we had hoped it would be and we don’t know how to make that right. I’d love to say that if we just stand up and do the right thing, act from our hearts and have good intentions that it could change the world. But quite honestly there are ill-intentioned people that are constructing this new world in which we sub-exist.It is them and us, but they’d never say it that way. Certainly though their intention is not for us to co-exist along side them.

But so we carry on and we, move forward, to the best of our abilities. We accept the good with the bad and acknowledge that everything is a trade off. We believe that if we go to college we stand a better chance in life and so we borrow our first 10 years of post college wages to get an edge over the next guy who is doing the same. When we get out of school we know that it is time to buckle down and get serious. We put our lives on hold in order to focus on the future with the idea that one day we will be sitting on the porch with the person we love, the one we put on hold for all those years, and we will then enjoy our life’s work then.

But then we get further in debt because we need a sleeker car and we need a bigger house but it’s ok because we can just work a little more. And then the kids come and as far as we got to know them they are great, I think. But it’s ok because they just finished college and now they’ve moved back in as the job market is tough out there and so we’re paying off their student loans. Eventually they get away and begin their life’s journey and they take their debt with them. And then we realize, god I’m almost 60. But it feels great because that means soon I’ll be there on the porch getting to know the one I love again and life will be grand at that point.

But then we turn 65 and we realize all those policies that were implemented by all those well-intentioned decision makers have actually left us with very little. And we say it’s ok because we’d be bored anyway just sitting on the porch. And so we take a job waving at people in Walmart but feel like OMG how did I get here. But the shift ends and we go home anxious to spend time with the one we love because, although it’s a terrible thought, we are aware we’re both getting long in the tooth. And so we arrive home only to realize the one we love is now sick and that it’s too late for our days sitting on the porch getting to know each other again. We do everything we can but we cannot afford to help that person who stood quietly behind us all those years as healthcare costs are unrealistically out of touch with reality. And then it hits us that despite taking all the right steps to ensure we have a great life we failed to ever really be happy, to really love and to really accept love. And then it really hits us, this world provides but one shot.

Well, then that feeling of uneasy discontent that shadowed us when we were young is now an intense pain in our heart. And we look out at the world and we ask ourselves how could this have happened? I did everything they told me I was supposed to do, I did everything right! And it becomes clear that life was a chance to change the world, but we didn’t know what to do, and so we left it up to…”

- http://www.zerohedge.com/

○

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 1/13/23"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 1/13/23"

Biden Doc Doo Doo, Ukraine Sucking, Fed Interest Increase

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Vice President Joe Biden is now in doo doo after government documents have been discovered at one of his homes. They say the documents could be planted, stolen, a national security threat or just plain illegal for him to have. What will come of it? Is this going to be like the John Durham investigations with lots of fanfare and zero results? Is this a ploy to get Biden to step down? Who knows, but Biden is not going to prison for this.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took time out of his busy war schedule to speak at the Golden Globes, which was a ratings disaster. Zelenskyy reassured the audience, “There will be no third world war.” Zelenskyy has been touting how well Ukraine is doing against Russia. In the propaganda world, Ukraine is doing great. In the real world, it is still sucking. Speaking of sucking, now military brass is starting to worry about sucking U.S. war stockpiles dry after sending more than $100 billion in military help to Ukraine. There is no end in sight to the war or the money funding it.

Everybody is expecting the Fed to stop fighting inflation and start cutting interest rates. The latest CPI data says that is not going to happen anytime soon. Inflation is still more than three times above the 2% target rate at 6.5%. Also, services inflation soars to its highest level in 40 years. Rent inflation is also headed straight up. Expect more Fed rate increases–not cuts." There is much more in the 48-minute newscast.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these

 stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 1/13/23:

- https://rumble.com/