Friday, March 24, 2023

"A Companion..."

"Someone once told me that time is a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, that reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we live it. After all, Number One, we're only mortal."
- Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 3/24/23"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 3/24/23"
Ignoring CV19 Bioweapon Deaths, 
Radioactive Ukraine, More Bank Calamity
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"More and more people are falling over dead from the CV19 bioweapon vax. Many are young people like 19-year-old boxing champion Jude Moore, who fell over dead this week with no known reported cause of death. Is anyone interested in why people are falling over dead in record numbers? Does anyone ask if the person is vaxed? Why are doctors “baffled”? Is America going to wake up to the genocide that is happening all around them? All questions will be answered in the affirmative sooner than later.

Don’t fall for the propaganda that Ukraine is winning the war with Russia. NATO wants to turn the tide for the obliterated Ukraine army. So, it is offering Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons to burn through Russian tanks. Russia says it is a form of nuclear warfare, and it will respond in kind. DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years, and it contaminates everything it touches–forever!! The move is desperate and highly dangerous for all living things. In Ukraine, where these weapons are used, nothing will ever recover from the radioactive fallout.

The Fed raised interest rates even though we were told, once again, the Fed was going to pause and even cut interest rates. What is going on? The Fed appears to be protecting the U.S. dollar while printing money for bank bailouts. It’s QT and QE, or tightening and printing, at the same time. It looks like the Fed is desperate to hold the financial system together. Is your money really insured? There is much more in the 45-minute news cast."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these 
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 3/24/23:

The Daily "Near You?"

Lawrenceville, Georgia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"All Earthly Empires Die"

"All Earthly Empires Die"
by Bill Bonner

"'Amor fati' was Nietzsche’s famous expression. It is a Latin phrase with connections to the Stoic writings of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Literally translated, it means “love of fate.” It is a white shoe yearning for mud. It is a turkey looking forward to Thanksgiving. Or an investor stoically preparing for a bear market.

We use the term to describe the grace and courage you need to meet a complex, unknowable, and uncontrollable future. You don’t know whether the Earth is warming or cooling… whether it is good or bad… or whether you can do anything about it. You don’t know who’s doing “equal work.” You don’t know what equality is… how to measure it… or what to do about it. You don’t know who the bad guy is. It may even be you. It recognizes that we are all God’s fools, living in a world of ignorance, headed towards we don’t know where. Using our brains, we can make progress in our physical, material world. Technical thinking yields pyramids and Eiffel Towers.

Ignorance Everywhere: But there is another part of life, which has a mind of its own. It does not bend readily to our desires or yield to our intelligence. It is the part of life whose purposes are unknown. The first and most important Commandment, according to Jesus, was not to fight it, but to love it.

But ignorance can be a charm. You just have to take it seriously. And appreciate it. Recognizing your own ignorance will inform your newfound modesty. You will be aware of it. And fiercely proud. Nobody will be humbler than you are! And since you are so chummy with ignorance, you will see it everywhere – in every headline, every public announcement, every speech on the floor of the Senate… and every crackpot comment from every dummy voter in the empire.

In private affairs, you reduce uncertainty by getting as close to the subject as possible. That is, you avoid secondhand “news” and try to find out for yourself. The more you know about a company, for example, the more confident you can be about investing in it. That’s why the insiders always have the inside track, an advantage that is increased by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s phony “level playing field” propaganda. In public affairs – policy discussions, economics, politics – as you get closer, you become less cocksure. That is, the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.

In an interesting university study, people were asked to pick out Ukraine on a map… and whether they approved of military intervention in that country. Curiously, the further off they were on the geography (the average guess was 1,800 miles off), the more they favored forceful intervention. In public affairs, ignorance and confidence vary inversely.

Moral Certainty: When we first moved to Baltimore in the 1980s, we noticed this phenomenon in another context. Baltimore was a disaster. Crime, drugs, poverty, venereal disease, broken homes, unwed mothers, corruption – name a social problem; Baltimore had it. And while its leaders had been noticeably unable to solve any of these problems right in their own back yard, the city’s politically correct politicians were loud and clear on one issue: apartheid had to end… in South Africa. Had they ever visited South Africa? Could they find it on a map? Probably not. But they were sure they knew how to make it a better place.

“Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority,” wrote Baltimore’s own H.L. Mencken. “The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on ‘I am not too sure.’”

“I am not too sure,” would eliminate many of the world’s myth-driven, self-inflicted ills – pointless wars, dumb arguments, pogroms, persecutions, and lynchings. And reckless spending of other people’s money.

Imagine a wise Hitler entertaining the idea of building Auschwitz as a “final solution” to the “Jewish problem.” “Hmmm… I’m not too sure that would solve it… In fact, I’m not too sure there is a problem!”

Imagine Simon de Montfort readying to attack the town of Albi to exterminate the “heretics.” When told that half the people in the town were good Catholics, de Montfort replied: “Kill them all. God will recognize His own.” Suppose he had thought twice… “Hmmm… Maybe this is not such a good idea… Maybe killing people is not what Christianity is all about… Maybe the heretics aren’t so bad… Maybe I’ll take the afternoon off.”

Unwarranted Confidence: The barroom blowhard… so sure he is right about everything… is generally the dumbest guy in the place. And the most dangerous. He’s the one who will stir up a mob… and get himself elected president. The whole system of modern public policy is built on false knowledge and unwarranted confidence. The elite claims to know what is best for you. That is how every politician can claim his proposals would “benefit the American people.” But the only program that would benefit the American people would be to let them decide for themselves what would benefit them. Give them back their money. Stop bossing them around. End the wars. Stop the empire. But who would suggest such a thing?

A book that appeared in 2018, "Psychology of a Superpower: Security and Dominance in U.S. Foreign Policy", by political scientist Christopher Fettweis, argued that power really does corrupt, and that when a nation or an empire gets too much power, its elite develops new opinions.

Rather than seeing itself as one of many nations that must get along with each other, its elites begin to see that they have a special role to play. They become the one, “indispensable” nation, as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it. They are the world’s only hope in combatting evil, which they do, as then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo elaborated, with “the righteous knowledge that our cause is just, special, and built upon America’s core principles.”

Thus endowed with a special mission and special powers, and subject to the special rules of the only nation with a trillion-dollar-per-year military/empire budget, the elite develop, in Fettweis’s judgment, a fatal combination of unrestrained hubris, unrealistic paranoia, and unrepentant ignorance. They see danger everywhere, without undertaking any serious study (they assume knowledge comes automatically with raw power). And they think they have not only the right, but the means, to do something about it, even if the danger is largely fantasy.

Damned to Hell: But people always come to think what they need to think when they need to think it. “All earthly empires die,” wrote St. Augustine in 413, a few years before the Vandals destroyed his city and finally brought down the Roman Empire in the West.

The elite contribute, by taking up the myths that help it die. Certainty and ignorance vary proportionally, both on the individual and on a national level. The surer a nation is of its myths… its exceptionalism… its manifest destiny… its policies… and its position at the right hand of God… the more it is damned to Hell."

"Don’t Waste Time, That’s All You Have"

"Don’t Waste Time, That’s All You Have"
by John Wilder

"One of Seneca's (Dead Roman Philosopher Dude) most famous quotes is, "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it." What surprises me is that Seneca wrote this before Twitter® existed. But even back in the time of Rome, there were ways to waste time. I’m thinking Facebook® might be that old.

Regardless, his message is timeless: every moment that we’re breathing here on Earth is precious. We may not always get a choice as to how we spend our time (Ted Kaczynski seems to be booked every day) but the true crime is to waste time. Oh, and blowing people up.

I have been as guilty as anyone of wasting time. And one of the biggest wastes of time is to become consumed by negative thoughts and emotions. In reality, most of the time (most) the things that irritate me are small. How small? So small that if I pack up my emotions, and really assess as to why I’m mad, it just looks silly. When Hillary reflects on why she’s mad, well, she calls the Suicide Hotline and places an order.

But that reflection is crucial. It’s called self-control, and although it appears to be unfashionable in certain locations (Chicago, I’m looking at you) it is the only way to be successful. If I threw a temper tantrum when (spins wheel) I drop a sock on the floor, I think there’s a simple word for that in the English language: Leftist feminist the ATF unstable.

No, when I’m upset I stop. I take a deep breath. I ask myself, “Does it matter?” Most of the time, it doesn’t. At all. Very few of the things that have irritated me matter at all over any rational timeframe. The old two rules apply: 1. Don’t sweat the small stuff. 2. It’s all small stuff.

The second question is, can I control whatever the situation is or influence it? If the answer is no, then that’s like being mad that the Sun is coming up in the morning. Even if it’s my mistake, it’s sillier than being angry over the English coal minimum price subsidy in the 1800s or...anything that happened in 1619.

One concept I’ve come across recently is "amor fati," which is Latin for “put armor on fat people”. Oh, wait, my translator was wrong. It really means, "love your fate." I think I first heard a variation of this when I was a kid: “You get what you get, and you’ll like it, and grease up the fat people so we can put plate mail on them.”

The reality of amor fati is this, though: I am where I am, and I have a choice. I can get up every morning and be mad, or I can be happy where I am. Does that mean I’m content? No. Does that mean I’m not going to fight like hell? No. Does that mean I’m not going to try to change certain things with the fire of a thousand suns? No.

It does mean that if life sucks, I can still find meaning, still find purpose, and still try to create the change that I seek to create. It’s not complacency. Heck, Seneca himself was one of the richest dudes in all of Rome. That didn’t just happen. He didn’t just wake up one morning, and say, “Holy crap, I have an amazing amount of money. How did that happen?” Seneca embraced what he had, and tried to better himself, and change himself. He did okay.

Our choices are our choices, but even more than that, we always have the choice how we feel, even Ted Kaczynski. We may have lost everything else, but we always retain that. We should not be overcome by fear or despair. To be clear – those are just about the most negative things we can let into our lives, unless you know one of the women on 'The View.'

The only proper way to deal with tough times is to face into them. Our obstacles make us stronger. Each obstacle we face with virtue and excellence improves us. Except for bullets. Those sound like they really suck.

Regardless of all of that, the first point is still the most important: our lives aren’t too short – our lives are exactly as long as they are. Deal with it. Love it. Use your time – every minute. Every second you waste? It’s wasting your life. Now, go make something happen."
The Alan Parsons Project, "Time" 

"Very Little Competition..."

 

Indeed...

"That Sinking Feeling"

"That Sinking Feeling"
Failing banks, falling stocks and Schrödinger's deposits...
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

San Martin, Argentina - "The stock market took off like a rocket yesterday morning. MarketWatch: "Dow jumps 300 points as fears about banking stability, credit crunch ease."

The Dow fell 530 points on Wednesday as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s comments that her department hadn’t discussed blanket protections for bank deposits appeared to overshadow a Fed interest rate hike and press conference, as well as the release of the central bank’s latest batch of economic projections. Investors reassessed the market’s negative reaction to events late in the previous session. The bad news was now good news. Down was up. Left was right.

The Fed raised rates by 25 basis points (0.25%). In the morning, investors thought they saw Janet Yellen at work. But by the afternoon they were sure it was Paul Volcker, raised from the dead, and sneaking back into the Fed. The rocket turned its nose down, the Dow gave up all its AM gains…and then bounced at the end of the day.

$50 Trillion in Fake Wealth: Which leads us to an observation: we are in a tricky transition period. Between inflation and deflation. And the next few years will probably be a lot like yesterday…confusing. The Fed will appear to fight inflation. Jerome Powell will put lifts in his shoes and do an impersonation of Paul Volcker. But the entire elite class is deeply afraid of deflation (which would mean giving up as much as $50 trillion in fake wealth). It will continue with its ‘stealth pivot,’ stick to a tried-and-true way to protect its bubble gains…and rip off the masses with inflation.

The latest rate increase, for example, still leaves Fed monetary policy in inflationary territory, with its key rate more than a full percentage point below the level of consumer price increases. The feds also have promised to spare bankers and their large depositors from the losses they deserve. And this month, the Fed’s balance sheet is growing again, after a year of small declines. The $626 billion of QT (the reduction of the Fed’s asset holdings…which is deflationary) may have already been erased (by more QE to bail out the banks, which is inflationary.)

Nor is the federal government showing any sign of cutting back on spending. There’s ‘monetary’ inflation. There’s also ‘fiscal’ inflation. Aside from actually ‘printing’ money, the feds boost inflation by spending money they don’t have. And we’re looking at $1 trillion+ deficits from here to eternity. But sticking with the banks…

The Discipline of Capitalism: Why not let them fail? Bad restaurants go out of business. Bad poker players lose their money. Mismanaged banks are supposed to go bankrupt, too. That is the discipline of capitalism. Can committees of bureaucrats and hacks do better? Can central planners improve on the way private markets allocate capital and price assets? Can politicians with no ‘skin in the game’ make better investments than investors with their own money at risk?

If so, it’s news to us. As far as we know, the discipline of capitalism is the driving force of human progress. It rewards successes. And it rejects failures. We learn. We do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. We get richer. Everyone is better off by getting rid of bad chefs and bad bankers…even the poor who, in rich countries, enjoy central heating, TV, AC, automobiles and hamburgers. But the benefits of capitalism are not guaranteed. At any given time, there is always a tension – the wealth and power of the here and now…against the unknown wealth, power, technology and knowledge of tomorrow.

The steel plow was much more effective than the wooden model. Capitalism quickly put the wooden plow makers out of business. Had the feds been on the case, however, we might still be turning the earth with oaken blades. Lobbyists for the wooden plow makers would have argued that metal plows would put them out of business…and destroy jobs.

Steve Jobless: Think of the whole Information Age revolution…Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Meta… If the powers-that-were had only seen how they would shift advertising revenues from existing powerful beneficiaries – The New York Times, NBC, Vanity Fair Magazine etc – and how these new media would become the major channel for indoctrinating and misleading the public… they might have gotten control of them earlier…or prevented them from ever seeing the light of day. Imagine the scene. California, 1975. A knock on the garage door:

“Are you Steven Jobs?” “Yes…” “We’re from the FBI. Is that a personal computer you’re building?” “Yes…why?” “Because it is prohibited. National security. You’ll have to come with us.” “Huh?” “We can’t tell you anymore. It’s classified.”

The future is only allowed to happen at all because the elite don’t see it coming. And now the Silicon Valley companies are here, firmly entrenched…representing billions in new wealth…and part of the elite themselves. Just two companies, Microsoft and Apple, are equal in value to a fifth of US GDP.

Naturally, the politicos are eager to control them…and enlist them in their propaganda efforts. The feds – and indeed today’s whole elite – represent the here and now. They’re the ones with ‘influence.’ They write the newspaper columns. They give campaign contributions and hire lobbyists. They have the money. They have the power. Their goal is to protect it…by preventing the future from ever happening. The future, if it were allowed to happen naturally, would deflate their power and their overpriced assets. Bad banks would go broke….as they should. Speculators would lose money. And the elite, who are responsible for such monstrosities as our monetary policy, $90 trillion of debt, the Covid Hysteria, and the War on Terror, would lose their influence and reputations.

It is in order to prevent that future that the feds subsidize, restrict, control, tax, mislead, and defraud….printing up trillions in new money in order to inflate away excess debt. The cost of their ‘mistakes’ is thus borne by ordinary households and businesses. Like a baby whose head is intentionally deformed, the future survives, but misshapen and retarded. "

Joel’s Note: "Another day… another bank run. So it must seem in the anxious minds of depositors, whose funds are locked away in Maybe Land, like Schrödinger's cat. Are they safe in the vault? Are they gone with the wind? Nobody knows… until everyone withdraws.

We saw some videos of long lines around First Republic Bank in the days following SVB’s collapse… but, for the most part, those jittery scenes haven’t been a feature of this particular crisis. Why? “There's a reason you don't see people lined up at banks to get their money out,” observes BPR Macro Man, Dan Denning. “They don't need to. They're all on their phones. Mobile banking via the smart phone is one element of this crisis that's new. It accelerates the panic. You can move money faster from a dangerous place to a safe place. You can for now, anyway…”

We’ve wondered in this space before if all this stress on the financial system is not quite as accidental as it appears… whether it’s not part of what Dan calls the “controlled demolition” of the traditional banking sector, in order that a “new order” may come to replace it. If nothing else, governments are experts at breaking things… then “offering” (read: mandating) the so-called “solution.” Continues Dan…

“How long will it be before there are 'glitches' with mobile banking apps. And how long will it be before someone says that's why everyone needs access to the FedNow system for payment processing and instant settlement – “secure,” “safe,” “fast,” and “free.” A convenient way to invite all those savings to migrate straight into government accounts...where they will be stuck in Treasuries, financing government deficits and debt. But liquid! And safe!”

If you’re going to panic, you might want to do so early and beat the mob. Here’s BPR investment director, Tom Dyson, inspiring little confidence in the system with his take on the situation…"The reason the banks are collapsing is because depositors have found higher interest rates (and more safety) in money markets and T-bills. So deposits are draining out of the banking system and pouring into the Fed’s reverse repo facility and government debt securities. It’s causing the banking system to wobble, especially at the edges." The Fed’s 0.25% rate hike [on Wednesday] will only put more energy into this trend.

This is just the beginning. Like there’s a big storm offshore, and we’ve just felt the first bands of rain and the first hurricane-strength gusts of wind. It’s going to be a big one."

"How It Really Is"

 

“Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come, nor care beyond today.”
- Thomas Gray,
“Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College”

"Things Are About to Get Real"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 3/24/23
"Things Are About to Get Real"
"We are seeing the economy slow down dramatically.
 Today we also go to see a Home Foreclosure auction."
Comments here:

"Buckle Up, Really Bad Things Are About To Happen"

Canadian Prepper, 3/23/23
"Buckle Up, Really Bad Things Are About To Happen"
Comments here:

Jim Kunstler, "The Season is Here'

"The Season is Here'
By Jim Kunstler

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be 
hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” 
- Samuel Johnson

"Of course, the newspaper USA Today chose transgender activist Leigh Finke for its Women of the Year award because in the USA of the here-and-now (today, for instance), boundaries are a thing of the past, and if a woman of the year happens to come with the “package” that signifies male-of-the-species, you’d better ignore that and go along with the gag - or prepare for the punishments that will come down until your morale improves.

The transgender movement has crystalized into the Party of Chaos’s favored instrument for enforcing its ethos of unreality on a population obdurately stuck on thinking in categories, on making hateful distinctions between things. Better to live in a protective miasma of undifferentiated sensation than a cruel state based on pattern recognition where one is incessantly prompted to understand how objects and life-forms around us differ, where things begin and end, and what all that means relative to your own ideally amorphous existence.

Mattias Desmet, Belgian author of the 2022 book, "The Psychology of Totalitarianism," proposed that a political faction subject to “mass formation psychosis” - the group hysteria that sets the scene for tyranny - would demand that the public swallow a cavalcade of increasingly absurd ideas in order to soften up their brains, so as to make it easier for leaders (influencers) to push them in any desired direction. I would propose that we have probably achieved peak brain-softening now in this land.

The only thing left to challenge is the distinction between being alive or dead, which is exactly what you would get in Zombieland, a place that the Party of Chaos (and its mentors in the World Economic Forum) long to take you to, where you will have nothing and be happy! And never think a hateful thought, or any thought not pre-cooked for you and served up by The Party like so much dim sum. Choose that or it’s the nothingness and bliss of the grave. It’s all the same to the Party leaders. Voila: the totalitarian nirvana!

Folks are beginning to grok how all this works now after a years-long epic mind-f**k by the increasingly malevolent permanent bureaucracy running a nation on the glide-path to destruction. Not a few people around America still-capable of independent thought are less than avid for liquidation. And certainly not willing to be absorbed into the amoeba-like blob of redundant, undifferentiated protoplasm that a totalized population must be in the end-state of political Wokery.

Now, in the spring of ’23, Woke is suddenly mutating into a general wake-up call. The animals are stirring from their long sleep of compliance as ruin stalks the land. The season of concentrating the mind is here. When it becomes a matter of sink-or-swim, people once again remember the difference between being dead or alive. The test is on.

Expect three evolving dynamics to stipulate our country’s zeitgeist in the stirring months to come. First, the collapse of our project for using Ukraine to destabilize Russia, an enterprise so feckless it could have only been conceived by the dead-of-brain. Our geniuses of foreign affairs screwed the pooch on this one. It’s almost too obvious that they never cared about the people of that sore-beset land. Notice, they do not even use the word “peace” in any of their confabulations about what’s going on there, because it is the opposite of what they seek, which is…chaos unending.

Thus, others will end the project for us - namely, our antagonist there, Russia - and the regime of “Joe Biden,” for the second time in its mortifying two years-plus of rule, will be left holding its limp, generative member in its collective hand, another humiliation for our over-reaching imperial soldiery - and the deluded empty suits commanding it. Will they be able to pretend this time, as they did in Afghanistan, 2021, that there’s nothing to see here, folks? Just a blizzard of press-releases declaring “mission accomplished” or some-such other craven bullshit? I don’t think so. The reaction may be enough to bum-rush “Joe Biden” and Company out of office. His grotesque family rackets (including the Ukraine grifts) will finally and magically come to the public’s attention, and that’ll be all she wrote for “JB”- except for the historians waking from their own long catatonic spells to record the disaster they will swear they couldn’t see coming.

Next, we will go through the tipping-point where a critical mass of the population - not just in America, but throughout Western Civ, and even beyond - realizes that they have been poisoned and injured by the mRNA “vaccines” they were so eager to line up for. It will produce a special sort of collective agony centered around a raging despair that leads with astonishing speed to prosecutions. The torpor and uncertainty of the past three years evaporates and the machinery of law actually starts cranking again, and in the right way - not as a mere instrument of coercion and intimidation, but to actually seek justice.

Third will be the transformation of a raging inflation into a ruinous debt deflation that leaves Americans, one way or another, with no money. At the same time, the people will wake to the wrecking of their energy and food supply. A line will appear drawn in the ground from sea to shining sea, as by a cosmic power, and everybody… the formerly Woke, the unvaxxed, the penitent and unrepentant, the middle and lower orders especially, who suffer most harshly… will find themselves all on one side of that line in opposition to the wicked who have brought a hard rain upon them. And there you will finally see the beginning of your long-promised hope and change. No need even to wait for it. At long last, it’s upon us."
Full screen recommended.
"Mass Psychosis - How an Entire
 Population Becomes Mentally Ill"
Comments here:

"Critical Updates! Contagion Now Spreading To The Super Banks, 10 Year Yield Craters"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/24/23
"Critical Updates! Contagion Now Spreading 
To The Super Banks, 10 Year Yield Craters"
Comments here:

"U.S. Economy on the Brink of Ruin as Federal Reserve Destroys the U.S. Dollar"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted 3/23/23
"U.S. Economy on the Brink of Ruin as 
Federal Reserve Destroys the U.S. Dollar"
"The Federal Reserve raised interest rates again by a quarter percentage point, or 0.25% on Wednesday. Even though there seems to be a looming banking crisis, the Fed did this to slow inflation. Powell really is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If he had paused rate hikes, it would have caused more panic about a financial crisis. Raising rates as planned indicates a stay-the-course mentality. It may slow the economy but it will reduce the amount of free money that the government created out of thin air during the pandemic."
Comments here:

"Massive Price Increases At Sam's Club! This Is Crazy! What's Coming?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danny, 3/24/23:
"Massive Price Increases At Sam's Club! 
This Is Crazy! What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are at Sam's Club, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out some shelf stable items that we can stock up on for the future! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:

Thursday, March 23, 2023

"Aldi Faces Multiple Store Closings As The Retail Apocalypse Aggravates"

Full screen recommended.
"Aldi Faces Multiple Store Closings
 As The Retail Apocalypse Aggravates"
by Epic Economist

"With grocery prices shooting up to record levels amid soaring inflation, discount retailers like Aldi have become consumer favorites as shoppers struggle to stretch their dollars as far as possible. The popular grocery chain has seen demand ballooning over the past couple of years, but it hasn’t been immune to sharp increases in operational costs that ultimately led the company to raise prices on thousands of products. Now, sales are flatlining in many locations, supply chain problems are seemingly back, and the retail apocalypse is forcing Aldi to close up shop in many U.S. cities. The trend is accelerating far faster than economists have predicted, and a new report shows that over 1,000 retail stores are being shuttered across the U.S. as problems in the sector pile up.

Multiple chains just announced that they’ll be shuttering stores this summer, which means that your local hub could soon be gone for good. In recent weeks, customers have taken to social media to lament the loss of their favorite budget-friendly supermarket Aldi. This week alone, the supermarket chain is closing locations in Lower Burrel and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The shutdowns came after it decided to close up shop in Fort Worth, Texas, and Minneapolis, Minnesota just a couple of weeks ago.

It’s evident that Aldi has not been able to survive the retail crisis unscathed, and reports released by retail blog Best Life reveal that the company is hinting that several locations in Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Ohio, and South Carolina could be next in the chopping block. Not long ago, the grocer also shuttered a very popular store in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. An Aldi spokesperson said that the company's decision to close was "based on several factors, including repeated burglaries and declining sales."

Another problem raised by Aldi’s loyal shoppers is that in many stores across the country, they’re spotting a very limited variety of products on the shelves. Given that the company’s business model is very different from those of Costco and Walmart, it is not uncommon for Aldi to have less inventory than other retailers. But what shoppers are seeing right now goes beyond the occasional empty shelf.

Nowadays, Aldi doesn’t save me a trip to the regular supermarket, says shopper and Motley Fool’s contributor Maurie Backman. “I've found that Aldi's product offerings are not very consistent,” she continued. “There are some weeks when I'll stop in only to find that they don't have strawberries, or cucumbers, or another common product you'd expect to see at a grocery store. That can be a frustrating thing when you only have time to stop at one store.”

Inventories are seemingly so tight that now Aldi is imposing purchasing limits on some products to avoid stocks from running out. In a recent press release, the company said that it is limiting the purchase of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, lettuce, salad bags, broccoli, cauliflower, and raspberries to three of each item per customer.

With supply chain issues arising again, tighter credit conditions impacting the company’s finances, and the risk of systemic contagion from collapsing banks threatening the entire retail sector, the outlook is bleaker than it ever was. The economic downturn is likely to further damage sales rates and prompt brands to reduce their workforces even more as they concentrate only on the best performing stores. In the retail apocalypse, only the strongest will survive, and that means we might have to say our final goodbyes to our favorite brands sooner than we think."
Comments here:

Gerald Celente, "Trends In The News"

Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 3/23/23, "Trends In The News"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
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Musical Interlude: 2002, "Memory of the Sky"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Memory of the Sky"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The Cat's Eye Nebula (NGC 6543) is one of the best known planetary nebulae in the sky. Its more familiar outlines are seen in the brighter central region of the nebula in this impressive wide-angle view. But the composite image combines many short and long exposures to also reveal an extremely faint outer halo. At an estimated distance of 3,000 light-years, the faint outer halo is over 5 light-years across.
Planetary nebulae have long been appreciated as a final phase in the life of a sun-like star. More recently, some planetary nebulae are found to have halos like this one, likely formed of material shrugged off during earlier episodes in the star's evolution. While the planetary nebula phase is thought to last for around 10,000 years, astronomers estimate the age of the outer filamentary portions of this halo to be 50,000 to 90,000 years. Visible on the left, some 50 million light-years beyond the watchful planetary nebula, lies spiral galaxy NGC 6552.”

"I Would Rather Have..."

"When a bull is being lead to the slaughter, it still hopes to break loose and trample its butchers. Other bulls have not been able to pass on the knowledge that this never happens and that from the slaughterhouse there is no way back to the herd. But in human society there is a continuous exchange of experience. I have never heard of a man who broke away and fled while being led to his execution. It is even thought to be a special form of courage if a man about to be executed refuses to be blindfolded and dies with his eyes open. But I would rather have the bull with his blind rage, the stubborn beast who doesn't weigh his chances of survival with the prudent dull-wittedness of man, and doesn't know the despicable feeling of despair."
- Nadezhda Mandelstam

Judge Napolitano, "Is it China & Russia Against the US in Ukraine? - Scott Ritter"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 3/23/23
"Is it China & Russia Against the US in Ukraine?
 - Scott Ritter"
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"320,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers..."

"A Time of Unimaginable Sorrow is Upon Us"

"A Time of Unimaginable Sorrow is Upon Us"
By Stucky

"It was a nice cool sunny morning with some blue birds soaking up the sun, all in a row on the high wire. It took some time to figure out what happened. There were a few low rumbles, they seemed to be coming from north of here. We live on a farm out in the wooded hills of southern Missouri, and north would be up towards St Louis. Soon as the booming sounds started the power went off. At first, I didn’t pay much attention, but with all the military stirrings going on in the world these days, you just don’t know what to expect.

I went inside the house, but with the power off there’s no internet, so no way to find out what’s going on. At least until the power comes back on, or until I get the generator started up. More distant thunderous booms that echo now less like thunder and more like tremendous explosions – and I’m starting to get worried. My kids are at work and the grandkids are in school. I swear I‘m seeing sparks and smoke coming from under the hood of my car, but it’s not running. Now the power line where those bluebirds were singing looks like it’s getting really hot and smoke is coming from the bucket transformer on the poles. Wow! The transformer just blew up sending a shower of sparks and molten metal flying all around the pole! I can hear blasts all over the countryside from more pole transformers exploding. All the fences are sparking and smoking. The woods around the power lines and transformers are starting to go up in extremely violent flames. And the cars are now on fire – all of them! Even the old broken-down ones out in people’s pastures. Our emergency generators are smoking – I’ve got to get them away from the houses before they burn up.

Now I’ve got an idea of what’s happening, because I’ve heard of what an EMP event could do to electrical circuits. Electromagnetic Pulse. That’s what happens when a nuclear weapon explodes. The only other thing I can think of that would do this is a coronal mass ejection from a solar flare. It happened back in 1859 and it was named the Carrington Event. Fortunately, the world did not have much electrical infrastructure back then, just telegraphs, and the induced currents caused the wires to catch fire – sort of like what’s happening to the power lines out here right now. I don’t think it’s a solar event either, because the warmongers in Washington have been beating the nuclear drums for a while, and I’ve been afraid the Russians were going to get spooked and do a first strike. I guess this is it.

A big problem for those of us who might survive a while because we live in areas that aren’t targets is that we lose all sources of information. We don’t have any way of knowing what’s happening. Don’t know if it’s a first strike or a retaliatory strike. Does Washington DC even exist anymore, or is it just a huge radioactive smoking crater? Are those beautiful, magnificient buildings of the Kremlin still standing?

How many of our big cities are destroyed? I remember seeing pictures of the devastation that was Nagasaki and Hiroshima when that monster Truman murdered all those Japanese civilians, and thinking that those bombs were tiny compared to what the psychopaths have in their arsenals today – the Russians have bombs that could literally flatten New York City and/or Houston. I cannot, nor can anyone else, begin to fathom the destruction of a 10 or 20 megaton thermonuclear weapon could wreak on a major city.

Lights go off and then nothing. No TV; no internet. No football – the treasury department that writes all the government checks is gone. Fear-crazed citizens make runs on WalMarts and grocery stores and take everything they can. No one tries to stop them; the store employees are in a panic to get home. Problem is, with no operable vehicles, the only things people can take are what they can carry by hand. Everyone has to walk, even the police are stranded out on the highways. All troopers, city cops, and sheriff deputies are trying desperately to get home to their loved ones. No cops on duty anymore. No traffic moving anymore. Just lots of people running, screaming, hoping they can just get home, and that there still is a home.

Fires are blazing everywhere from the power lines and transformers exploding. All electrical substations in the country are smoldering and blazing chaos. Forest fires are rampant and out of control all over the nation and there are no operable fire trucks. No firefighting planes or helicopters are available to fight the fires. Houses hundreds of miles away from the many ground zeros are burning both from the unchecked wildfires, and from EMP induced electrical shorts in home wiring. Almost every building in every town is on fire with no way to put them out. And these towns are far away from the targeted places where the bombs actually hit. 

This is truly a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, the like of which has never been witnessed in all of human history. There will never be electricity in this country again. Let that sink in. Freezers will thaw out and food will ruin. Untold thousands of people will perish, starting with those vaporized, then those being burned up in their homes, and there are no fire departments available to help anyone. No hospitals; doctors and nurses are gone, understandably abandoning useless smoldering medical facilities. No industry, no UPS deliveries, no more dog food for the pups. If your house didn’t burn to the ground, at least you may (for a while) have a (dark) shelter from the elements.

Huge blasts of radioactive winds blow hundreds of miles from the explosions, of which there have been many. The first wave was intended to take out the military establishment. No way of knowing, but there’s no reason to believe that anything remains of the Pentagon, DC or Langley, Norfolk, San Diego, Chicago, Houston, or any of the coastal cities where there are refineries. All cities with military infrastructure of any kind will be destroyed. The joke that has been for years a missile defense system has been exposed. The sick joke that a nuclear war could be “winnable” has also been exposed. The numbers of people succumbing to radiation sickness is beyond belief. There will be no schools, no stores, no food, and no government services; no disaster relief will be forthcoming. All banks will have ceased to function, so even if there is any money left, it won’t be worth anything. The bankers never were.

If you take medications to stay alive, you’d best have a good supply, because there won’t be any more. All livestock will either be dead from radiation, burned to a crisp in the fires, or promptly slaughtered by starving survivors, and it doesn’t matter to whom they belonged. Same with property. People will no longer obey private property signs, they will go anywhere they think there might be resources, food, water, at the risk of their lives, which aren’t worth much right now anyway. There will be no law!

Every military ship on and under the ocean, with the likely exception of a few submarines, will be sunk. All of the nuclear-powered ships will go to the bottom with reactors likely damaged, spewing radioactive contamination. Like dozens, maybe hundreds, of Fukushimas. Even the reactors that aren’t damaged will undergo meltdowns with no controls. The bible says that something will kill all of the fishes in the oceans, maybe this is how that happens.

The USSR detonated a bomb of around 50-megaton yield back in 1961. It was called the Tsar Bomba. The weapon had a 100-megaton capacity, but for safety they modified the yield. Awe inspiring is just too mild of a description of what that looked like. Since the bomb was so powerful, they calculated that the plane that dropped it had only a 50 percent chance of surviving – that is even after the plane released the weapon several thousand feet up in the air with a parachute to slow it down while the plane flew away from the scene at full speed. It did almost destroy the plane – they said the blast wave overtook the plane some 45 miles from the explosion and it lost over a kilometer of altitude before the pilot, Andrey Durnovtsev, could regain control and keep it from crashing. That thing made a mushroom cloud 37, yes 37 miles, (60 km) high! An uninhabited village, Severny, 34 miles (55 km) from ground zero was obliterated, and buildings 100 miles away were damaged! The blast would have caused third degree burns 62 miles (100 km) from the explosion. I would expect if they still have these in their arsenal, they would use one on Cheyenne Mountain. It would probably take out Denver and Amarillo, TX and certainly everything in between. Instantly vaporized. What are our “leaders” thinking?

It sounds crazy, but if this happens, I want to be at one of the ground zeros. As bad as being vaporized sounds, it would be infinitely better than surviving into the nightmarish existence that would ensue. There will be marauding gangs of survivors, undoubtedly armed, in various stages of hunger, disease, emaciation, and injury. It will probably be a situation where anyone you encounter will be apt to kill you. For one thing, they won’t know whether you are out to kill them too, or maybe you have something they want/need to survive. A can of tuna or a bowl of beans might cost your life.

The landscape will be nightmarish. Imagine a few days or weeks after the event. There will be burned out stumps on land that was beautiful forest, now riddled with stagnant pools of black muddy radioactive slime, full of human and animal bones, charred flesh, and entrails. Few buildings will exist intact, and many will perish fighting over them. There will be no light at night. Light would attract unwanted guests. No music. No one will have any idea what’s going on. There may be a few survivors in places like subway tunnels, abandoned train cars, or in remote wilderness areas, but such people will have resorted to the basest of behavior, including cannibalism, in short order. Imagine! Human beings who once inhabited a civilized nation and lived decent lives will have to worry about being killed and eaten by other human beings! Zombie apocalypse, just with regular people, not zombies, although with burns and wounds, hair falling out and all out of sorts with radiation poisoning, they probably will look the part.

I have heard people talking like they plan to survive and stay healthy by hunting and foraging. Well, if a nuclear winter follows a nuclear apocalypse, foraging is going to be slim pickings. And the deer won’t last long if they manage to survive the bombs, radiation, and fires, there’ll probably only be a few very unhealthy specimens left, but if a gunshot rings out, I’m pretty sure it will attract whatever starving people hear it, so there might be more to deal with than just dressing a deer.

Bedraggled survivors will wander in shock around former cities in hopes of disaster relief which will never come. Desperate people will offer anything – gold, jewelry, ammunition, their own bodies, for sustenance. Helpless parents will watch in horror as their children starve, hoping against hope that they will awaken from this nightmare, but when this all comes down, it’ll be too late for them.

And we still won’t know what happened. Who decided that a nuclear war would be a good idea? Who “won” the war? Did any of our leaders survive to sign a surrender, and to whom? Or did Russia or China surrender? Will there be hordes of soldiers from some faraway land invading our country after the radiation dies down?

And what of the wealthy folk who built the magnificent bunkers filled with the necessities of life in which to wait out the nuclear winter? Do they actually believe they will emerge into a second garden of Eden complete with succulent fruit trees and minstrels singing their praises? First of all, the bible speaks of a great earthquake, such as has not occurred since people have been on earth, so I think a big part of those individuals will be entombed in those lavish bunkers. So maybe a few do survive, and after some months, maybe a few years tucked away, they stumble blindly onto the surface, a hardly recognizable landscape littered with human skulls, burned out cars and buildings, and destroyed terrain. When they went into the holes, they were wealthy, but after what has transpired, of the few commoners left, no one will be interested in their gold – and those old bank accounts? Well the digital age has completely and utterly vanished, and all those millions or billions they had on their ledgers is now squat. 

Even by this time, there will undoubtedly still be a few scroungy survivors, but instead of the fawning proles these rich folks were used to in the old world, those survivors will undoubtedly have a taste for some well-fed and plump upper crust brisket, so thanks for preserving some. It won’t help their situation any when they discover that some of the survivors actually know they caused, or at least played a part in causing the disaster. The scenario described does not take into account the likelihood that hapless survivors will undoubtedly spend their time searching for air vents to the bunkers in which to pour gasoline or whatever else they can find to upset living conditions in said refuges down below. Any who survive this carnage will be on a mission and will not easily be placated!

Who knows what the final outcome will be. How many millions, or hundreds of millions of people will be counted among the slain? When this calamity happens, it will obviously involve the deaths of millions. This destruction, I believe is prophesied as the destruction of the modern Babylon in Revelation 18, and most people I’ve heard seem to think (as I do) that the place named as Babylon is the United States, and it is utterly destroyed in the space of one hour, by fire! Completely devastated to the point that (verse 22) “the music of harpists and musicians, pipers and trumpeters, will never be heard in you again,” and “no worker of any trade will ever be found in you again,” this decadent place will cease to be! According to scripture, it’s not a bad thing that this evil place is destroyed. “Rejoice over her, you heavens! Rejoice, you people of God! Rejoice apostles and prophets! For God has judged her with the judgement she imposed on you.”

Time will tell, but I’m afraid we don’t have much."
Hat tip to Stucky and The Burning Platform for this material.

"American Empire Expiration Date"

"American Empire Expiration Date"
by Jim Quinn

American Empire at 234 years:
“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy.

It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.” – John Adams
Hat tip to Jim Quinn, "The Burning Platform"

"How To Recover When The World Breaks You"

"How To Recover When The World Breaks You"
by Ryan Holiday

"There is a line attributed to Ernest Hemingway - that the first draft of everything is sh*t - which, of all the beautiful things Hemingway has written, applies most powerfully to the ending of "A Farewell to Arms." There are no fewer than 47 alternate endings to the book. Each one is a window into how much he struggled to get it right. The pages, which now sit in the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, show Hemingway writing the same passages over and over. Sometimes the wording was nearly identical, sometimes whole sections were cut out. He would, at one moment of desperation, even send pages to his rival, F. Scott Fitzgerald, for notes.

One passage clearly challenged Hemingway more than the others. It comes at the end of the book when Catherine has died after delivering their stillborn son and Frederic is struggling to make sense of the tragedy that has just befallen him. “The world breaks everyone,” he wrote, “and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.”

In different drafts, he would experiment with shorter and longer versions. In the handwritten draft he worked on with F. Scott Fitzgerald, for instance, Hemingway begins instead with “You learn a few things as you go along…” before beginning with his observation about how the world breaks us. In two typed manuscript pages, Hemingway moved the part about what you learn elsewhere and instead added something that would make the final book - “If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them.”

My point in showing this part of Hemingway’s process isn’t just to definitively disprove the myth - partly of Hemingway’s own making - that great writing is something that flows intuitively from the brain of a genius (no, great writing is a slow, painstaking process, even for geniuses). My point is to give some perspective on one of Hemingway’s most profound insights, one that he, considering his tragic suicide some 32 years later, struggled to fully integrate into his life.

The world is a cruel and harsh place. One that, for at least 4.5 billion years, is undefeated. From entire species of apex predators to Hercules to Hemingway himself, it has been home to incredibly strong and powerful creatures. And where are they now? Gone. Dust. As the Bible verse, which Hemingway opens another one of his books with (and which inspired its title) goes: “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever…The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose…”

The world is undefeated. So really then, for all of us, life is not a matter of “winning” but of surviving as best we can - of breaking and enduring rather than bending the world to our will the way we sometimes suspect we can when we are young and arrogant.

I write about Stoicism, a philosophy of self-discipline and strength. Stoicism promises to help you build an “inner citadel,” a fortress of power and resilience that prepares you for the difficulties of the world. But many people misread this, and assume that Stoicism is a philosophy designed to make you superhuman - to help you eliminate pesky emotions and attachments, and become invincible.

This is wrong. Yes, Stoicism is partly about making it so you don’t break as easily - so you are not so fragile that the slightest change in fortune wrecks you. At the same time, it’s not about filling you with so much courage and hubris that you think you are unbreakable. Only the proud and the stupid think that is even possible. Instead, the Stoic seeks to develop the skills - the true strength - required to deal with a cruel world.

So much of what happens is out of our control: We lose people we love. We are financially ruined by someone we trusted. We put ourselves out there, put every bit of our effort into something, and are crushed when it fails. We are drafted to fight in wars, to bear huge taxes or familial burdens. We are passed over for the thing we wanted so badly. This can knock us down and hurt us. Yes.

Stoicism is there to help you recover when the world breaks you and, in the recovering, to make you stronger at a much, much deeper level. The Stoic heals themselves by focusing on what they can control: Their response. The repairing. The learning of the lessons. Preparing for the future.

This is not an idea exclusive to the West. There is a form of Japanese art called Kintsugi, which dates back to the 15th century. In it, masters repair broken plates and cups and bowls, but instead of simply fixing them back to their original state, they make them better. The broken pieces are not glued together, but instead fused with a special lacquer mixed with gold or silver. The legend is that the art form was created after a broken tea bowl was sent to China for repairs. But the returned bowl was ugly - the same bowl as before, but cracked. Kintsugi was invented as a way to turn the scars of a break into something beautiful.

You can see in this tea bowl, which dates to the Edo period and is now in the Freer Gallery, how the gold seams take an ordinary bowl and add to it what look like roots, or even blood vessels. This plate, also from the Edo period, was clearly a work of art in its original form. Now it has subtle gold filling on the edges where it was clearly chipped and broken by use. This dark tea bowl, now in the Smithsonian, is accented with what look like intensely real lightning bolts of gold. The bowl below it shows that more than just precious metals can improve a broken dish, as the artist clearly inserted shards of an entirely different bowl to replace the original’s missing pieces.

In Zen culture, impermanence is a constant theme. They would have agreed with Hemingway that the world tries to break the rigid and the strong. We are like cups - the second we are made we are simply waiting to be shattered - by accident, by malice, by stupidity or bad luck. The Zen solution to this perilous situation is to embrace it, to be okay with the shattering, perhaps even to seek it out. The idea of wabi-sabi is precisely that. Coming to terms with our imperfections and weaknesses and finding beauty in that.

So both East and West - Stoicism and Buddhism - arrive at similar insights. We’re fragile, they both realize. But out of this fragility, one of the philosophies realizes there is the opportunity for beauty. Hemingway’s prose rediscovers these insights and fuses them into something both tragic and breathtaking, empowering and humbling. The world will break us. It breaks everyone. It always has and always will.

Yet…The author will struggle with the ending of their book and want to quit. The recognition we sought will not come. The insurance settlement we so desperately needed will be rejected. The presentation we practiced for will begin poorly and be beset by technical difficulties. The friend we cherished will betray us. The haunting scene in "A Farewell to Arms" can happen, a child stillborn and a wife lost in labor - and still tragically happens far too often, even in the developed world.

The question is, as always, what will we do with this? How will we respond? Because that’s all there is. The response. his is not to dismiss the immense difficulty of any of these ordeals. It is rather, to first, be prepared for them - humble and aware that they can happen. Next, it is the question: Will we resist breaking? Or will we accept the will of the universe and seek instead to become stronger where we were broken?

Death or Kintsugi? Fragile or, to use that wonderful phrase from Nassim Taleb, 'Antifragile?' Not unbreakable. Not resistant. Because those that cannot break, cannot learn, and cannot be made stronger for what happened. Those that will not break are the ones who the world kills. Not unbreakable. Instead, unruinable."
Freely download "A Farewell To Arms", by Ernest Hemingway, here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Kingman, Arizona, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"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

And don't you ever give up...