Monday, January 23, 2023

"The United States Is Insolvent"

"The United States Is Insolvent"
by Michael Snyder

"You can call everyone for dinner, because our goose is cooked. We are so deep in debt that the only way we can keep the entire system from collapsing is to keep borrowing even more money. Perhaps you have been through a similar scenario with your own personal finances. When you simply do not have enough money to pay your bills, borrowing more money can seem like a really easy short-term solution. Unfortunately, the U.S. government has been doing this for decades, and now our national debt spiral has reached a terminal stage. Even if we gathered up all of the money that exists in every bank account in America, we could not pay off the national debt. The debt level is exploding upwards at an exponential rate, and the only way that the federal government can continue to pay the bills is to keep borrowing and spending colossal mountains of money that we must borrow from someone else.

As I write this article, the U.S. national debt is sitting at 31.4 trillion dollars. 
Click image for larger size.
But the total value of all goods and services produced in the United States last year was only about 25 trillion dollars. Our leaders in Washington could try to reverse course by balancing the budget, but that would lead to a short-term economic disaster.

Just think about it. What do you think would happen if a couple trillion dollars of government spending was suddenly sucked out of the economy? We would immediately plunge into a horrifying economic depression.

Sadly, the truth is that we have been borrowing from the future to make the present a lot more pleasant. We are enjoying an artificially-inflated standard of living that we do not deserve, and we have been using debt to fund that artificially-inflated standard of living. But now a day of reckoning is here.

Of course it isn’t just the federal government that has gone completely insane. Our state and local governments are collectively more than 3 trillion dollars in debt.

Corporate debt in the United States has 
now surpassed the 12 trillion dollar mark.
Click image for larger size.
And total U.S. household debt is now over 18 trillion dollars.
Click image for larger size.
As the U.S. economy has slowed down in recent months, an increasing number of Americans have turned to credit card debt. So now credit card debt is rising at an exponential rate while the savings rate has dropped to a historic lowAnd at this point the average rate of interest on credit card balances is the highest ever.

I don’t even have the words to describe how self-destructive we are being. On every level of society, debt levels are absolutely skyrocketing. We are literally committing national financial suicide, but many people don’t seem to care. And many people don’t seem to care because they don’t even understand what is happening.

At this point, our “system of education” has produced hordes of completely clueless individuals that can barely even function in a modern society. If we had a population that was properly educated and properly informed, they would be absolutely horrified by what our leaders have been doing to us.
Full screen recommended.
But instead, our leaders have been free to systematically destroy our financial future for a very long time, and very few of us have even cared enough to object.

Unfortunately, we have reached a point where there is no turning back. We have already destroyed the reserve currency of the planet. We have already created rampant inflation. The Federal Reserve has been feverishly hiking interest rates, but that is dramatically raising debt service costs at every level of our society, and it is also causing economic activity to slow down all around us.

Companies all over America are now laying off workers, and that even includes Google…"On Friday, Alphabet-owned Google announced it was cutting 12,000 employees, roughly 6% of the full-time workforce. While employees had been bracing for a potential layoff, they are questioning leadership about the criteria for layoffs which surprised some employees, who woke up to find their access to company properties cut off. Some of the laid-off employees had been long-tenured or recently promoted, raising questions about the criteria used to decide whose jobs were cut.

Shortly after CEO Sundar Pichai’s initial email to employees Friday morning, Google’s search boss Prabhakar Raghavan sent an email to employees saying he “also feels the responsibility to reach out” and asking for them to save questions for next week’s town hall. There will be “bumps in the road” as the organization moves forward with the layoffs, Raghavan noted."

Why is Google doing this? No corporation in the entire country is stronger than they are. If there is one company in America that should not be laying off workers, it is Google.

Of course just about every large tech company is laying off workers these days.
Microsoft is laying off workers.
Amazon is laying off workers.
Facebook is laying off workers.
Twitter is laying off workers.

We haven’t seen anything like this since 2008, and that is because we haven’t had an economic crisis like this since 2008. So many people are going to lose their jobs in the months ahead. And the economic pain that we will experience in 2023 will be just the beginning, because the entire system is starting to come down all around us.

Did you actually think that we could go on the greatest debt binge in all of human history and that everything would work out just fine somehow? That is not how the real world works. We sat by and did nothing while our leaders made disastrous decisions for decades, and now we will be forced to watch in horror as the consequences of those decisions play out right in front of our eyes."

"Be Open Minded..."

Sunday, January 22, 2023

"The Only Absolute..."

"Never perceive anything as being inevitable or predestined. 
The only absolute is uncertainty."
- Lionel Suggs
"Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science - by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans - teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us."
- Carl Sagan

"Have It Done..."

”Never explain. Never apologize. 
Have it done and let them howl.” 
- Winston Churchill

"What Are The Facts?"

"What are the facts? Again and again and againwhat are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what the stars foretell, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable verdict of history - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"
- Robert A. Heinlein

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sherlock Holmes"

And always remember...
"When a learned man argues with an idiot two fools debate."
- Fu-shi

Musical Interlude: Moody Blues, "The Day We Meet Again"

Full screen recommended.
Moody Blues, "The Day We Meet Again"

"The Inevitable Housing Crisis Is Killing The American Dream"

Full screen recommended.
"The Inevitable Housing Crisis Is 
Killing The American Dream"
By Epic Economist

"Not so long ago, it was the American Dream that if you work hard enough, you can build a better, richer, and fuller future for yourself and your family. A big component of that American Dream was to own a house. Because that's how you create wealth for generations. But just a short quick look around you would be enough to establish that today's broken market is translating into a broken American Dream. Living a better life than the previous generation, in a home you own has become a pipe dream for millions

Nearly 11 million low-income Americans are paying more than 50% of their annual income on housing. And it is still not enough because America is facing a critical housing shortage. Times of high inflation, a brewing mortgage crisis and a worsening homelessness epidemic have shattered the quality of American family life. But this is just the beginning and things will only get worse. In today's Video, we explain the inevitable housing crisis that is killing the American Dream.

Affordable housing started to decline two decades ago, and it has only gone from bad to worse in the last few years. Just in the last two years, home prices are up more than 30 percent. And that's not the case in just a few BIG cities. In fact, the U.S. now has close to 500 cities where the average cost of a home is a million dollars. Just 12 months ago, a family that could earn $80,000 a year could afford payments on a modest home. But a year later, that income requirement has shot up to $108,000. So in one year, more than 4 million renter households can no longer buy a median-priced home.

But if the rising costs were not enough, insane mortgage rates are making sure to price out the middle class completely. Mortgage rates are now increasing faster than in any period in recorded history. And in a matter of months, the typical cost of owning a home has gone up by tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mortgage rates have escalated from less than 3 percent in 2021 to nearly 7 percent - the highest they have been in 20 years.

This becomes an even bigger deal when you take into account the mass shortages of homes in America. The number of available homes today is 40 percent lower than it was just 2 years ago which means that millions will continue to be priced out. Experts connected to the housing market are warning that the inevitable housing crisis will be based on a single reality: Housing supply is at a record low and we aren't doing enough to change that. This supply shortage has left the country in need of at least 5 million housing units immediately. But the progress on that is nowhere to be seen.

The housing shortage has become a chronic problem but there's no end in sight, especially, in the current climate of economic uncertainty. Ever-increasing interest rates, fears of an impending recession, and a choked supply chain mean that home builders are hesitant to go all out. So the housing gap becomes bigger and bigger. But even if more homes are built, it will not matter as affordability is moving towards an all-time low.

And this is not a big city problem anymore. Years of neglect and months of economic chaos have ensured that home prices have soared all over the country. Even areas traditionally seen as affordable are no longer viable substitutes. The locations that were seen as alternative moving options are disappearing quickly.

Failing to find starter homes that fit the already stressed budget, many Americans are pushed into Rental properties. But it shouldn't come as a shock to anyone that things are arguably worse there. As middle America fails to find affordable housing, millions of Americans face evictions and housing insecurity. The result is homelessness.

What America needs is access to affordable housing as soon as possible. While millions risk falling into housing insecurity, the policymakers remain slow as ever. Unfortunately, things could get even worse. It took years to get to this point and it may take decades to get out of it."
Comments here:
o
"It took years to get to this point and it may take decades to get out of it." And what happens to many millions of families and people meanwhile? Oh yeah, send $121 BILLION and God knows how much more to Ukraine and wherever else, give $7 TRILLION to the Wall St. criminals and their 1% masters... and what about you, Good Citizen? You already know the answer...

"WEF... RIP" (Excerpt)

"WEF... RIP" (Excerpt)
A eulogy for our moral betters, 
high on hallowed Davos ground.
By Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires - Excerpt: "Welcome back to another Sunday Session, dear reader, that time of the week when we gather at the virtual watering hole to vent our spleen, lament the obscene and foment revolt against the elitist machine... all with the abiding help of a glass or two of Bill’s high altitude Malbec. (You know... “in vino veritas,” and all that...)

As patient readers/reading patients already know, we’ve been ruminating of late over a theory of history... not ours, per se, but rather one handed down by the ancients. We’ve been looking at cycles... those short-, medium- and long-term undulations of the ages. Briefly stated, we’ve been examining the concept of enantiodromia, which holds that all things, at all times, are in the process of becoming their opposite.

It was Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher, who first noticed the universal phenomenon, observing that, when it comes to the natural world around us, “change is the only constant.” A phoenix rises from the ashes... as a youthful body decays. The many who are first shall be last... as the many who are last, shall be first. Powerful empires yield to decadence... as barbarians gather at the gates. (The clever ol’ Ephesian also reminded us, and for the same reason, that “a man cannot step in the same river twice.” Not only has the river changed, but so too has the man.)

Plot and Plat: In human affairs, this phenomenon tends to express itself in the centralization and decentralization of political power. And nowhere on our pale blue dot does such centrifugal force congeal as it does in Davos, Switzerland, for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF). There, in the rarefied air of smug and hubris, the planet’s moral exemplars gather to look down their long noses at the flailing peasants of the flatlands, mired as we are in the filth and disgrace of our own ignorance.

There do they plan and plot our future, deciding everything from what we will own (nothing) to how we’ll feel about it (grateful), from where we will live (in special “zones”) to how we will travel (barely at all and only with their permission), to how we will transact with our fellow chattel (via their Central Bank Digital Currencies) and of course, what temperature the planet should be half a century from now... and the sacrifices we peasants need to make in the meantime.

Alas, there is a growing resentment among the herded masses who, clearly too stupid to know what’s good for them, have dared question the mandates, prohibitions and impositions of their higher ups. So much so, in fact, that some have even gone so far as to suggest that, lacking popular support, the WEF at Davos is all but dead. We have no idea if such a claim is overblown... but we took the liberty of preparing a eulogy for our dearly departed, just in case. See below..."

"WEF… RIP"
by Joel Bowman

"Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and caldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good."
~ From "Macbeth", by some dead white guy.

"Lo, you coven of cackling elites, gathered ‘round your bubbling cauldron, stirring in your ESG, your DIE and your MMT... your time here on earth was oh so brief, we hardly knew ye!

While you convened this week in your mountain hideaway, behind your jackbooted Praetorian guard, we read in the unpopular press – which is to say, here on Substack, where journalists still do real, investigative reporting... where they research, rather than regurgitate stories... and where they are not afraid to speak truth to power, rather than act as its lapdog, its bullhorn, or (to coin a phrase) its laphorn – we read, and we learn, of your untimely demise.

Not without a certain schadenfreude – it’s true, Germans really do have a word for everything! – do we observe your withering attendance. Even with the platoon of prostitutes shuttled in for the gabfest, the atmosphere must have been decidedly frigid. Like the funeral party of a disgraced clergyman, mourners gathered around the open casket, unsure whether to weep... or to spit.

We note the snubs, the declines, the “Je me vois malheureusement obligé de refuser” from so many of your most ardent shills and sycophants, the lifeblood of your cabal. Of the G8 leaders, seven heads of state declined. No Macron, no Meloni... no Kishida, no Sunak... no Biden, no Trudeau... and as for Mr. Putin, well, wasn’t that all a bit awkward. One of the most promising students to graduate from the World Economic Forum Young Leaders program... (More on Klauss Schwab’s “penetrative power” below.)

Deafening Silence: Similarly, nine of the ten wealthiest people on the planet had fancier fêtes to grace. Messrs. Bezos, Gates and MetaZuck all took a pass on this year’s event, as did the Arnaults, Ambanis and the Bettencourts. And as for Mr. Musk, a video he’s allowing to circulate on Twitter, showing journalists asking (gulp!) tough questions to a Big Pharma exec, threatens to tear the whole charade asunder...
Watch video on Twitter:
The video shows a pair of reporters, Avie Yemini and Ezra Levant, questioning Pfizer CEO, Albert Bourla, over the efficacy of a drug that governments around the world mandated on his company’s behalf, off the back of which they made squillions. Needless to say, it wasn’t the kind of sweet pillowtalk the mainstream press ordinarily whispers in such eminent ears.

We saw the clip yesterday, when it “only” had 10 million views. Naturally, it’s been banned from Facebook, Instagram and YouTube (Big Tech and Big Pharma being rather cozy bedfellows), but over on the Little Blue Bird, Mr. Bourla’s silence is deafening. (Trigger warning: the mainstream media do not want you to see this and will not cover it, hence our passing it along for your adult consideration...)

This video has now been BANNED on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. The WEF wants it scrubbed, and their lackeys are happy to oblige. Thank you @elonmusk for not caving. 7.3M views and counting. The public want answers. MORE: WEFreports.com

Moving right along..."
Full article is here:
o
Nuremberg trials, with Nuremberg penalties, broadcast live...
 "The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing 
the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world." 
o
"Anyone involved in initiatives to nudge people into receiving these injections is a murderer. I would seek the harshest penalties. No one involved had any excuse for not spending a short time establishing for themselves what the real-world performance of these injections has been to date. It’s not even necessary to venture beyond the official data.

Murderers. They need arresting, charging, and trying. They won’t listen to science or logic. Let them deal with the suffering."
- Dr. Michael Yeadon
"CV19 Virus & Vax About Control Not Health – Dr. Michael Yeadon" 
o
"CV19 Vax Destroys Hearts & Brains of Billions of People
 – Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi"

Musical Interlude: Adiemus, “Adiemus”

Full screen recommended.
Adiemus, “Adiemus”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The beautiful Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, is easy to find with a small telescope in the nebula rich constellation Sagittarius. About 5,000 light-years away, the colorful study in cosmic contrasts shares this well-composed, nearly 1 degree wide field with open star cluster Messier 21 (top right).
Trisected by dust lanes the Trifid itself is about 40 light-years across and a mere 300,000 years old. That makes it one of the youngest star forming regions in our sky, with newborn and embryonic stars embedded in its natal dust and gas clouds. Estimates of the distance to open star cluster M21 are similar to M20's, but though they share this gorgeous telescopic skyscape there is no apparent connection between the two. In fact, M21's stars are much older, about 8 million years old.”

"I Know..."

“I know the world seems terrifying right now and the future seems bleak. Just remember human beings have always managed to find the greatest strength within themselves during the darkest hours. When faced with the worst horrors the world has to offer, a person either cracks and succumbs to ugliness, or they salvage the inner core of who they are and fight to right wrongs. Never let hatred, fear, and ignorance get the best of you. Keep bettering yourself so you can make the world around you better, for nothing can improve without the brightest, bravest, kindest, and most imaginative individuals rising above the chaos.”
- Cat Winters

"In The Time Of Your Life..."

"In the time of your life, live - so that in good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart. Be the inferior of no man, nor of any man be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret. In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it."
- William Saroyan

Must View! "People Are Broken And Defeated, This Is Getting Bad; More Proof Of Economic Collapse; RV Industry"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 1/22/23:
"People Are Broken And Defeated, This Is Getting Bad; 
More Proof Of Economic Collapse; RV Industry"
Comments here:
And we've sent $112 BILLION to Ukraine?! 
SHAME, SHAME on us for this disgrace!

"This Could Make Banks Close"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 1/22/23:
"This Could Make Banks Close"
"Banks are having a very difficult time when it comes to bad loans and credit card charge offs. People are behind on their debt and it’s exponentially rising every month. This is going in the wrong direction."
Comments here:

Douglas Macgregor, "Everything Is Pure Ukraine Propaganda! Russians Fire 60,000 Artillery Rounds A Day!"

Full screen recommended.
Douglas Macgregor, 1/22/23: 
"Everything Is Pure Ukraine Propaganda! 
Russians Fire 60,000 Artillery Rounds A Day!"
Comments here:

The Daily "Near You?"

White House, Tennessee, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Kahlil Gibran, “The Garden of the Prophet”

“The Garden of the Prophet”
by Kahlil Gibran

“Oftentimes we call Life bitter names, but only when we ourselves are bitter and dark. And we deem her empty and unprofitable, but only when the soul goes wandering in desolate places, and the heart is drunken with over-mindfulness of self.

Life is deep and high and distant; and though only your vast vision can reach even her feet, yet she is near; and though only the breath of your breath reaches her heart, the shadow of your shadow crosses her face, and the echo of your faintest cry becomes a spring and an autumn in her breast.

And Life is veiled and hidden, even as your greater self is hidden and veiled. Yet when Life speaks, all the winds become words; and when she speaks again, the smiles upon your lips and the tears in your eyes turn also into words. When she sings, the deaf hear and are held; and when she comes walking, the sightless behold her and are amazed and follow her in wonder and astonishment.”
Read online here:

The Poet: Robert Frost, “Acceptance”

“Acceptance”

“When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened.

Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, ‘safe!’

Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.”
- Robert Frost

"The Heart Has Its Reasons..."

“Passion doesn’t count the cost. Pascal said that the heart has its reasons that reason takes no account of. If he meant what I think, he meant that when passion seizes the heart it invents reasons that seem not only plausible but conclusive to prove that the world is well lost for love. It convinces you that honor is well sacrificed and that shame is a cheap price to pay. Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Parnell and Kitty O’Shea. And if it doesn’t destroy it dies. It may be then that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one’s life, that one’s brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one’s expended all one’s tenderness, poured out all the riches of one’s soul on a poor drab, a fool, a peg on which one hung one’s dreams, who wasn’t worth a stick of chewing gum.”
- W. Somerset Maugham
“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”
- Sydney J. Harris

Laurence Gonzales, “The 12 Rules of Survival”

The 12 Rules of Survival”
by Laurence Gonzales

“As a journalist, I’ve been writing about accidents for more than thirty years. In the last 20 or so years, I’ve concentrated on accidents in outdoor recreation, in an effort to understand who lives, who dies, and why. To my surprise, I found an eerie uniformity in the way people survive seemingly impossible circumstances. Decades and sometimes centuries apart, separated by culture, geography, race, language, and tradition, the most successful survivors – those who practice what I call “deep survival” – go through the same patterns of thought and behavior, the same transformation and spiritual discovery, in the course of keeping themselves alive.

Not only that but it doesn’t seem to matter whether they are surviving being lost in the wilderness or battling cancer, whether they’re struggling through divorce or facing a business catastrophe – the strategies remain the same. Survival should be thought of as a journey, a vision quest of the sort that Native Americans have had as a rite of passage for thousands of years. Once you’re past the precipitating event – you’re cast away at sea or told you have cancer – you have been enrolled in one of the oldest schools in history. Here are a few things I’ve learned that can help you pass the final exam.

1. Perceive and Believe: Don’t fall into the deadly trap of denial or of immobilizing fear. Admit it: You’re really in trouble and you’re going to have to get yourself out. Many people who in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, died simply because they told themselves that everything was going to be all right. Others panicked. Panic doesn’t necessarily mean screaming and running around. Often it means simply doing nothing. Survivors don’t candy-coat the truth, but they also don’t give in to hopelessness in the face of it. Survivors see opportunity, even good, in their situation, however grim. After the ordeal is over, people may be surprised to hear them say it was the best thing that ever happened to them.

Viktor Frankl, who spent three years in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, describes comforting a woman who was dying. She told him, “I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard. In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.” The phases of the survival journey roughly parallel the five stages of death once described by Elizabeth Kubler Ross in her book "On Death and Dying": Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In dire circumstances, a survivor moves through those stages rapidly to acceptance of his situation, then resolves to do something to save himself. Survival depends on telling yourself, “Okay, I’m here. This is really happening. Now I’m going to do the next right thing to get myself out.” Whether you succeed or not ultimately becomes irrelevant. It is in acting well – even suffering well – that you give meaning to whatever life you have to live.

2. Stay Calm – Use Your Anger: In the initial crisis, survivors are not ruled by fear; instead, they make use of it. Their fear often feels like (and turns into) anger, which motivates them and makes them feel sharper. Aron Ralston, the hiker who had to cut off his hand to free himself from a stone that had trapped him in a slot canyon in Utah, initially panicked and began slamming himself over and over against the boulder that had caught his hand. But very quickly, he stopped himself, did some deep breathing, and began thinking about his options. He eventually spent five days progressing through the stages necessary to convince him of what decisive action he had to take to save his own life.

When Lance Armstrong, six-time winner of the Tour de France, awoke from brain surgery for his cancer, he first felt gratitude. “But then I felt a second wave, of anger. I was alive, and I was mad.” When friends asked him how he was doing, he responded, “I’m doing great. I like it like this. I like the odds stacked against me. I don’t know any other way.” That’s survivor thinking. Survivors also manage pain well. As a bike racer, Armstrong had had long training in enduring pain, even learning to love it. James Stockdale, a fighter pilot who was shot down in Vietnam and spent eight years in the Hanoi Hilton, as his prison camp was known, advised those who would learn to survive: “One should include a course of familiarization with pain. You have to practice hurting. There is no question about it.”

3. Think, Analyze, and Plan: Survivors quickly organize, set up routines, and institute discipline. When Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with cancer, he organized his fight against it the way he would organize his training for a race. He read everything he could about it, put himself on a training schedule, and put together a team from among friends, family, and doctors to support his efforts. Such conscious, organized effort in the face of grave danger requires a split between reason and emotion in which reason gives direction and emotion provides the power source. Survivors often report experiencing reason as an audible “voice.”

Steve Callahan, a sailor and boat designer, was rammed by a whale and sunk while on a solo voyage in 1982. Adrift in the Atlantic for 76 days in a five-and-a-half-foot raft, he experienced his survival voyage as taking place under the command of a “captain,” who gave him his orders and kept him on his water ration, even as his own mutinous (emotional) spirit complained. His captain routinely lectured “the crew.” Thus under strict control, he was able to push away thoughts that his situation was hopeless and take the necessary first steps of the survival journey: to think clearly, analyze his situation, and formulate a plan.

4. Take Correct, Decisive Action: Survivors are willing to take risks to save themselves and others. But they are simultaneously bold and cautious in what they will do. Lauren Elder was the only survivor of a light plane crash in high sierra. Stranded on a peak above 12,000 feet, one arm broken, she could see the San Joaquin Valley in California below, but a vast wilderness and sheer and icy cliffs separated her from it. Wearing a wrap-around skirt and blouse, with two-inch heeled boots and not even wearing underwear, she crawled “on all fours, doing a kind of sideways spiderwalk,” as she put it later, “balancing myself on the ice crust, punching through it with my hands and feet.” She had 36 hours of climbing ahead of her– a seemingly impossible task. But Elder allowed herself to think only as far as the next big rock. Survivors break down large jobs into small, manageable tasks. They set attainable goals and develop short-term plans to reach them. They are meticulous about doing those tasks well. Elder tested each hold before moving forward and stopped frequently to rest. They make very few mistakes. They handle what is within their power to deal with from moment to moment, hour to hour, day to day.

5. Celebrate your success: Survivors take great joy from even their smallest successes. This helps keep motivation high and prevents a lethal plunge into hopelessness. It also provides relief from the unspeakable strain of a life-threatening situation. Elder said that once she had completed her descent of the first pitch, she looked up at the impossibly steep slope and thought, “Look what you’ve done. Exhilarated, I gave a whoop that echoed down the silent pass.” Even with a broken arm, joy was Elder’s constant companion. A good survivor always tells herself: count your blessings – you’re alive. Viktor Frankl wrote of how he felt at times in Auschwitz: “How content we were; happy in spite of everything.”

6. Be a Rescuer, Not a Victim: Survivors are always doing what they do for someone else, even if that someone is thousands of miles away. There are numerous strategies for doing this. When Antoine Saint-Exupery was stranded in the Libyan desert after his mail plane suffered an engine failure, he thought of how his wife would suffer if he gave up and didn’t return. Yossi Ghinsberg, a young Israeli hiker, was lost in the Bolivian jungle for more than two weeks after becoming separated from his friends. He hallucinated a beautiful companion with whom he slept each night as he traveled. Everything he did, he did for her. People cannot survive for themselves alone; their must be a higher motive. Viktor Frankl put it this way: “Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it.” He suggests taking it as “the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”

7. Enjoy the Survival Journey: It may seem counterintuitive, but even in the worst circumstances, survivors find something to enjoy, some way to play and laugh. Survival can be tedious, and waiting itself is an art. Elder found herself laughing out loud when she started to worry that someone might see up her skirt as she climbed. Even as Callahan’s boat was sinking, he stopped to laugh at himself as he clutched a knife in his teeth like a pirate while trying to get into his life raft. And Viktor Frankl ordered some of his companions in Auschwitz who were threatening to give up hope to force themselves to think of one funny thing each day. Survivors also use the intellect to stimulate, calm, and entertain the mind.

While moving across a near-vertical cliff face in Peru, Joe Simpson developed a rhythmic pattern of placing his ax, plunging his other arm into the snow face, and then making a frightening little hop with his good leg. “I meticulously repeated the pattern,” he wrote later. “I began to feel detached from everything around me.” Singing, playing mind games, reciting poetry, counting anything, and doing mathematical problems in your head can make waiting possible and even pleasant, even while heightening perception and quieting fear. Stockdale wrote, “The person who came into this experiment with reams of already memorized poetry was the bearer of great gifts.”

Lost in the Bolivian jungle, Yossi Ghinsberg reported, “When I found myself feeling hopeless, I whispered my mantra, ‘Man of action, man of action.’ I don’t know where I had gotten the phrase. I repeated it over and over: A man of action does whatever he must, isn’t afraid, and doesn’t worry.” Survivors engage their crisis almost as an athlete engages a sport. They cling to talismans. They discover the sense of flow of the expert performer, the “zone” in which emotion and thought balance each other in producing fluid action. A playful approach to a critical situation also leads to invention, and invention may lead to a new technique, strategy, or design that could save you.

8. See the Beauty: Survivors are attuned to the wonder of their world, especially in the face of mortal danger. The appreciation of beauty, the feeling of awe, opens the senses to the environment. (When you see something beautiful, your pupils actually dilate.) Debbie Kiley and four others were adrift in the Atlantic after their boat sank in a hurricane in 1982. They had no supplies, no water, and would die without rescue. Two of the crew members drank sea water and went mad. When one of them jumped overboard and was being eaten by sharks directly under their dinghy, Kiley felt as if she, too, were going mad, and told herself, “Focus on the sky, on the beauty there.”

When Saint-Exupery’s plane went down in the Libyan Desert, he was certain that he was doomed, but he carried on in this spirit: “Here we are, condemned to death, and still the certainty of dying cannot compare with the pleasure I am feeling. The joy I take from this half an orange which I am holding in my hand is one of the greatest joys I have ever known.” At no time did he stop to bemoan his fate, or if he did, it was only to laugh at himself.

9. Believe That You Will Succeed: It is at this point, following what I call “the vision,” that the survivor’s will to live becomes firmly fixed. Fear of dying falls away, and a new strength fills them with the power to go on. “During the final two days of my entrapment,” Ralston recalled, “I felt an increasing reserve of energy, even though I had run out of food and water.” Elder said, “I felt rested and filled with a peculiar energy.” And: “It was as if I had been granted an unlimited supply of energy.”

10. Surrender: Yes you might die. In fact, you will die – we all do. But perhaps it doesn’t have to be today. Don’t let it worry you. Forget about rescue. Everything you need is inside you already. Dougal Robertson, a sailor who was cast away at sea for thirty-eight days after his boat sank, advised thinking of survival this way: “Rescue will come as a welcome interruption of the survival voyage.” One survival psychologist calls that “resignation without giving up. It is survival by surrender.” Simpson reported, “I would probably die out there amid those boulders. The thought didn’t alarm me, the horror of dying no longer affected me.” The Tao Te Ching explains how this surrender leads to survival:

“The rhinoceros has no place to jab its horn,
The tiger has no place to fasten its claws,
Weapons have no place to admit their blades.
Now, what is the reason for this?
Because on him there are no mortal spots.”

11. Do Whatever Is Necessary: Elder down-climbed vertical ice and rock faces with no experience and no equipment. In the black of night, Callahan dove into the flooded saloon of his sinking boat, at once risking and saving his life. Aron Ralston cut off his own arm to free himself. A cancer patient allows herself to be nearly killed by chemotherapy in order to live. Survivors have a reason to live and are willing to bet everything on themselves. They have what psychologists call meta-knowledge: They know their abilities and do not over–or underestimate them. They believe that anything is possible and act accordingly.

12. Never Give Up: When Apollo 13′s oxygen tank exploded, apparently dooming the crew, Commander Jim Lovell chose to keep on transmitting whatever data he could back to mission control, even as they burned up on re-entry. Simpson, Elder, Callahan, Kiley, Stockdale, Ginsberg – were all equally determined and knew this final truth: If you’re still alive, there is always one more thing that you can do. Survivors are not easily discouraged by setbacks. They accept that the environment is constantly changing and know that they must adapt. When they fall, they pick themselves up and start the entire process over again, breaking it down into manageable bits. Survivors always have a clear reason for going on. They keep their spirits up by developing an alternate world, created from rich memories, into which they can escape. They see opportunity in adversity.

In the aftermath, survivors learn from and are grateful for the experiences that they’ve had. As Elder told me once, “I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. And sometimes I even miss it. I miss the clarity of knowing exactly what you have to do next.” Those who would survive the hazards of our world, whether at play or in business or at war, through illness or financial calamity, will do so through a journey of transformation. But that transcendent state doesn’t miraculously appear when it is needed. It wells up from a lifetime of experiences, attitudes, and practices form one’s personality, a core from which the necessary strength is drawn. A survival experience is an incomparable gift: It will tell you who you really are.”
Laurence Gonzales is the author of Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why” (W.W. Norton & Co., New York) and contributing editor for “National Geographic Adventure” magazine. The winner of numerous awards, he has written for Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, Conde Nast Traveler, Rolling Stone, among others. He has published a dozen books, including two award-winning collections of essays, three novels, and the book-length essay, “One Zero Charlie” published by Simon & Schuster. For more, go to www.deepsurvival.com

"I Hope I End Up..."

“I don’t want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don’t want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, “Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case.” I will turn and say to them, “It is you who are the basket case! For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn’t even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times!” And maybe, the passersby will drop a coin into my cup.”
- Henry Rollins

"When Idiocy Becomes Hardwired"

"When Idiocy Becomes Hardwired"
by Jeff Thomas

"At this point, virtually all of us over the age of forty have encountered enough "snowflakes" (those Millennials who have a meltdown if anything they say or believe is challenged) to understand that, increasingly, young people are being systemically coddled to the point that they cannot cope with their "reality" being questioned.

The post-war baby boomers were the first "spoiled" generation, with tens of millions of children raised under the concept that, "I don’t want my children to have to experience the hardships that I faced growing up."

Those jurisdictions that prospered most (the EU, US, Canada, etc.) were, not coincidentally, the ones where this form of childrearing became most prevalent. The net result was the ’60s generation – young adults who could be praised for their idealism in pursuing the peace movement, the civil rights movement, and equal rights for women. But those same young adults were spoiled to the degree that many felt that it made perfect sense that they should attend expensive colleges but spend much of their study time pursuing sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Flunking out or dropping out was not seen as a major issue and very few of them felt any particular guilt about having squandered their parents’ life savings in the process.

The boomer generation then became the yuppies as they hit middle age, and not surprisingly, many coddled their own children even more than they themselves had been coddled. As a result of ever-greater indulgence with each new generation of children, tens of millions of Millennials now display the result of parents doing all they can to remove every possible hardship from their children’s experience, no matter how small.

Many in their generation never had to do chores, have a paper route, or get good grades in order to be given an exceptional reward, such as a cell phone. They grew to adulthood without any understanding of cause and effect, effort and reward.

Theoretically, the outcome was to be a generation that was free from troubles, free from stress, who would have only happy thoughts. The trouble with this ideal was that, by the time they reached adulthood, many of the critical life’s lessons had been missing from their upbringing. In the years during which their brains were biologically expanding and developing, they had been hardwired to expect continued indulgence throughout their lives. Any thought that they had was treated as valid, even if it was insupportable in logic.

And, today, we’re witnessing the fruits of this upbringing. Tens of millions of Millennials have never learned the concept of humility. They’re often unable to cope with their thoughts and perceptions being questioned and, in fact, often cannot think outside of themselves to understand the thoughts and perceptions of others.

They tend to be offended extremely easily and, worse, don’t know what to do when this occurs. They have such a high perception of their own self-importance that they can’t cope with being confronted, regardless of the validity of the other person’s reasoning. How they feel is far more important than logic or fact.

Hypersensitive vulnerability is a major consequence, but a greater casualty is Truth. Truth has gone from being fundamental to being something "optional" – subjective or relative and of lesser importance than someone being offended or hurt.

Of course, it would be easy to simply fob these young adults off as emotional mutants – spiteful narcissists – who cannot survive school without the school’s provision of safe spaces, cookies, puppies, and hug sessions. Previous generations of students (my own included) were often intimidated when presented with course books that had titles like Elements of Calculus and Analytic Geometry. But such books had their purpose. They were part of what had to be dealt with in order to be prepared for the adult world of ever-expanding technology.

In addition, it was expected that any student be prepared to learn (at university, if he had not already done so at home), to consider all points of view, including those less palatable. In debating classes, he’d be expected to take any side of any argument and argue it as best he could. In large measure, these requirements have disappeared from institutions of higher learning, and in their place, colleges provide coloring books, Play-Doh, and cry closets.

At the same time as a generation of "snowflakes" is being created, the same jurisdictions that are most prominently creating them (the above-mentioned EU, US, Canada, etc.) are facing, not just a generation of young adults who have a meltdown when challenged in some small way. They’re facing an international economic and political meltdown of epic proportions. Several generations of business and political leaders have created the greatest "kick the can" bubble that the world has ever witnessed.

We can’t pinpoint the day on which this bubble will pop, but it would appear that we may now be quite close, as those who have been kicking the can have been running out of the means to continue. The approach of a crisis is doubly concerning, as, historically, whenever generations of older people destroy their economy from within, it invariably falls to the younger generation to dig the country out of the resultant rubble.

Never in history has a crisis of such great proportions loomed and yet, never in history has the unfortunate generation that will inherit the damage been so unequivocally incapable of coping with that damage. As unpleasant as it may be to accept, there’s no solution for idiocy. Any society that has hardwired a generation of its children to be unable to cope will find that that generation will be a lost one. It will, in fact, be the following generation – the one that has grown up during the aftermath of the collapse – that will, of necessity, develop the skills needed to cope with an actual recovery.

So, does that mean that the world will be in chaos for more than a generation before the next batch of people can be raised to cope? Well, no. Actually, that’s already happening. In Europe, where the Millennial trend exists, western Europeans have been growing up coddled and incapable, whilst eastern Europeans, who have experienced war and hardship, are growing up to be quite capable of handling whatever hardships come their way. Likewise, in Asia, the percentage of young people who are being raised to understand that they must soon shoulder the responsibility of the future is quite high.

And elsewhere in the world – outside the sphere of the EU, US, Canada, etc. – the same is largely true. As has been forever true throughout history, civilization does not come to a halt. It’s a "movable feast" that merely changes geographic locations from one era to another. Always, as one star burns out, another takes its place. What’s of paramount importance is to read the tea leaves – to see the future coming and adjust for it."

Greg Hunter, "Pfizer CV19 Bioweapon Vax Public Enemy #1"

"Pfizer CV19 Bioweapon Vax Public Enemy #1"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Karen Kingston is a biotech analyst and former Pfizer employee who understands the contracts, patents and laws that Big Pharma deals with in bringing new drugs to market. Kingston also researches and analyzes many aspects of Covid 19 and the so-called “vaccines.” Kingston says that data, government documents and patents show that the CV19 so-called “vaccine” is nothing more than a bioweapon. Kingston says this is how the everyone should view this injection that was forced onto an unsuspecting public. Kingston explains, “We need to call it what it is, and that is a bioweapon. Why is it important to call it a bioweapon? A vaccine is a biological agent. A biological agent that does not prevent infection, it doesn’t prevent disease and it wasn’t done under bona fide research, and the FDA admits it was not done under bona fide research. It causes diseases, disabilities and death. That is the definition of a bioweapon. 

We need to explain to people this is a bioweapon. Why, because then we can get out of all this vaccine law and we go into criminal law and criminal code. As a bioweapon, there is no code, there is no law in the United States or in any nation that protects an organization from unleashing a bioweapon on a civilian population. It goes against the Geneva Code. There is nothing that protects them. “We the People” need to start calling it what it is. It (CV19 vax) is a bioweapon. There is no law that protects them. There is a military contract there, but it does not give them the right to murder people.”

Pfizer says its injection was 63% of all the CV19 bioweapon vaccines used in the world (nearly 13 billion CV19 injections). Kingston says, “The reason why Pfizer is public enemy number one is they have the greatest market share. They were calling the shots with the U.S. military. In the Moderna contract, there is a clause that states you better make sure that patients are safe in your trials. It doesn’t say that in the Pfizer contract. That’s why we need to go after Pfizer because they are really acting like a criminal organization. 

It also looks like Pfizer is going to take ownership of all this bioweapon nanotechnology. Pfizer is saying we took these 30 years of research, and we have turned it into a ‘new class of product.’ I think this ‘new class of product’ is a bioweapon because it is. It doesn’t prevent disease or infection, and it was not done under bona fide research, and it results in disease, disabilities and death. I am not saying do not go after Moderna and J&J because the more pressure we put on these three titans, the better, but Pfizer is public enemy number #1.”

Kingston says the data, patents and government documents show all the CV19 so called vaccines are bioweapons, and not a single person was helped by any of these injections." There is much more in the 53-minute in-depth interview.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with biotech analyst Karen Kingston as she gives an update on the bioweapon injections and criminals behind them.