You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, 4/28/23
"The Stock Market Black Hole Just Got Worse!
FED Admits Inflation Is Still Rising!"
Comments here:
o
o
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, April 28, 2023
Gregory Mannarino, "The Stock Market Black Hole Just Got Worse!"
"Strange Prices At Costco! Stock Up Before It's Gone! What's Coming?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 4/28/23
"Strange Prices At Costco!
Stock Up Before It's Gone! What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are at Costco, and are noticing price increases on many different items. With prices going up all around the world, we continue our mission to find the best deals on groceries, to help save everyone money. We do try some new products from Costco today that we highly recommend!"
Comments here:
"‘I Cry Quietly’: A Soldier Describes the Toll of Russia’s War"
Full screen recommended.
"‘I Cry Quietly’:
A Soldier Describes the Toll of Russia’s War"
"For Valentyn, a Ukrainian soldier in the Donetsk region, the war’s death toll is more than a statistic. He is tasked with moving wounded troops - and dead bodies - away from the front lines, often under Russian fire."
"Under Russian Fire,
A Ukrainian Soldier Evacuates the Wounded"
By Yousur Al-Hlou and Masha Froliak
Near Kremmina, Ukraine - "The sound of artillery launching and landing along the front line punctures the stillness of the forest just a few miles away, where combat medics are waiting to receive the wounded. On the horizon, a military vehicle moves along a dusty road and screeches to a halt when it reaches the trees. A soldier named Valentyn parks it there for natural camouflage from Russian drones scouting for Ukrainian military positions.
A group of soldiers, visibly shaken, quickly unloads three bodies that have just been recovered from the front line, placing each one into a plastic body bag and zipping it closed. Their position was shelled and then attacked by a drone, they say. “They’re shooting at you from all sides. You turn, you run, they hit you, and it’s impossible to get away,” said Maksym, who survived the attack. “This is a big tragedy for us.” “One more body is left behind with the Russian soldiers,” he added.
While much of the world’s attention has fixated on the bloody urban battle taking place in Bakhmut, Russia’s campaign in eastern Ukraine is also raging in forests and fields about 50 miles north of the city, near Kreminna. Here, soldiers take positions in trenches surrounded by tall, slim trees, crouching to avoid the direct line of sight of their Russian enemies. “People say it’s harsh in Bakhmut,” said Valentyn, who joined the army seven months ago. “But it’s harsh here, too.”
For the past month, Valentyn has been stationed at this evacuation point, traveling back and forth to the front line almost daily to rescue wounded soldiers and recover the dead. His job requires him to drive directly toward Russian forces, and he has come under fire at times. “There is nothing good about it,” Valentyn said. “What is this war for?”
Ukrainian and Russian military officials have been reluctant to release data on casualties within their ranks, though the U.S. government and military experts estimate that both sides have suffered significant losses in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
For Valentyn, the work of responding to the casualties has been both grim and relentless. “There is blood everywhere,” he said, while cleaning it from his vehicle. “It has a smell. Especially fresh blood.” Bright red liquid trickled through his fingers as he rinsed out a bloodied cloth. He drained the cloth and used it again to wipe off the back seat. “It’s difficult to see young boys die,” Valentyn said. “Sometimes I cry quietly.”
In calmer moments when there is no one to evacuate, Valentyn travels deep into the forest to transport soldiers to and from the contact line, where Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are sometimes positioned just hundreds of meters apart. He said at least one group of soldiers couldn’t make it to their position because Russian troops had already taken it over.
“Every day is scary here,” said Viktor, a soldier who returned with Valentyn. “I feel constant anxiety, for our country and our lives.” His stoic face reflected the fear and horror known only to those who had witnessed the fight in the forest. “Those who haven’t been there will never understand.”
Don't you dare look away! You, and me and all of us have paid at least $200 billion for this nightmare! The blood he's cleaning up is on all our hands, too...
Thursday, April 27, 2023
"Putin Assassination Attempt In Moscow; Troops Deployed Atop Nuclear Reactors"
Canadian Prepper 4/27/23
"Putin Assassination Attempt In Moscow;
Troops Deployed Atop Nuclear Reactors"
Comments here:
o
Scott Ritter, 4/27/23
"Leaked Documents Reveal Ukraine
Planned An Attack on Moscow"
Comments here:
"The Crash Of A Lifetime Is Unstoppable, We Got Massive Trouble"
Jeremiah Babe, 4/27/23
"The Crash Of A Lifetime Is Unstoppable, We Got Massive Trouble"
Comments here:
"Walmart Is Falling Apart Before Our Eyes As Multiple Store Closings Begin"
Full screen recommended.
"Walmart Is Falling Apart Before Our Eyes
As Multiple Store Closings Begin"
by Epic Economist
"As it turns out, Walmart is facing challenges bigger than anyone thought. A second round of store closings was just announced, and the company is saying that half of its stores in one major U.S. city will be permanently shut down because they are losing tens of millions of dollars every year. Many locations are underperforming right now as shoppers complain about double-digit price increases at Walmart and turn to other retailers for “greater” value. The big-box retail chain is also in a complicated financial condition, missing investors’ earnings expectations and reporting growing cash flow problems. The situation has become so alarming that one industry CEO is warning about a flood of bankruptcies in the sector in 2023 as America’s biggest retailers cope with an increasing amount of distress.
Shoppers are noticing that prices at the big-box retailer have continued to rise in 2023 despite inflation numbers cooling down. For several quarters now, Walmart is losing sales and losing shoppers. As previously reported by GOBankingRates, a study from the value investing site ValueWalk found that Walmart grocery prices climbed by 21.5% over the past 12 months.
According to Walmart CFO John David Rainey, shoppers will have to prepare themselves for another year of price increases. In an interview with Reuters, the executive said the world’s biggest retailer might still have to raise prices to deal with higher costs. “We’re assuming that this year is going to be somewhat anomalous… [We’re] still feeling the effects of higher prices,” Rainey said.
However, this may further squeeze the company’s bottom line as more and more customers turn to discount stores. The outlook for Walmart in 2023 has suffered a drastic shift. In January, executives seemed to believe in the retailer’s ability to recoup its 2022 losses and report strong sales growth this year. But those views were shaken, and this week, the big-box store chain just announced another round of closings, citing poor financial performance at several locations.
The stores affected this time are located in DC, Georgia, Florida, Hawaii, Indiana, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. The retailer confirmed it will lay off thousands of store employees and hundreds of hundreds of workers at five fulfillment centers across the US.
More worryingly, Walmart is permanently shuttering half of its stores in the city of Chicago. “The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago – these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years,” it revealed.
Walmart’s troubles should alarm everyone in the industry. According to CNBC, due to its massive size and substantial market share, Walmart is considered a barometer for the nation's economy as a whole. So any trends we're seeing in Walmart will likely be reflected in your local grocery store as well.
Everything is falling apart faster than anyone predicted, and even the biggest chains are struggling to survive in such a difficult environment. If the biggest retailer in the world is coping with this many challenges, smaller companies will likely experience even more serious problems this year. The retail apocalypse spares no one, and the next chapters of this crisis will chill many people to the core."
Comments here:
Gerald Celente, "GDP Number Weak; Prepare: Worst Is Yet To Come"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 4/27/23
"GDP Number Weak; Prepare: Worst Is Yet To Come"
Comments here:
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current
events forming future trends. Find out more here: - https://trendsjournal.com
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Some spiral galaxies are seen nearly sideways. Most bright stars in spiral galaxies swirl around the center in a disk, and seen from the side, this disk can appear quite thin. Some spiral galaxies appear even thinner than NGC 3717, which is actually seen tilted just a bit. Spiral galaxies form disks because the original gas collided with itself and cooled as it fell inward. Planets may orbit in disks for similar reasons.
The featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a light-colored central bulge composed of older stars beyond filaments of orbiting dark brown dust. NGC 3717 spans about 100,000 light years and lies about 60 million light years away toward the constellation of the Water Snake (Hydra)."
Chet Raymo, "Know Thyself"
"Know Thyself"
by Chet Raymo
"The ancient Greek aphorism, attributed to Socrates and others. Good advice, I'm sure. If only we knew what it means. Is it the same as the "examination of conscience" we were asked to perform as young Catholics? "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." Well, yes, it is good to ask ourselves if we have lived up to our highest moral aspirations. But surely "Know thyself" means more than that.
Does it mean to be aware of our self-awareness? That is to say, not to act impulsively, but reflectively. Thoreau's "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Or perhaps it means to apply the method of scientia to the problem of consciousness, treat the mind like a fish that can be dissected at the lab bench, watch the brain flickering on the display of a scanning machine as the subject is stimulated with love, sex, fear, music, pain. Neuroscience. Daniel Dennet's book audaciously titled "Consciousness Explained." There is a line from a poem by Jane Hirshfield, in which she questions herself: "A knife cannot cut itself open/ yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."
Is it hopeless then? Is there an essential absurdity in a thing knowing itself? Does knowing necessarily imply a knower more complex than the thing known? Is it possible that we might fully understand, say, the neurology of the sea slug Aplysia, that favorite subject of experimental neurobiologists with only 20,000 central nerve cells, big nerve cells, ten times bigger than human neurons, but not the workings of the human brain, with its 100 billion nerve cells, each one connected to thousands of others?
Hirshfield's poem is titled "Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant." Perhaps that is the best we can do. To know ourselves in those fleeting moments of recognition than come now and then, often unbidden, sometimes as the result of a chance encounter with beauty or with ugliness, sometimes bidden out of the silence and solitude of meditation - a flash upon one's inward eye that is, perhaps, all the ancients were asking for when they asked us to "know ourselves."
○
"Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant"
"Moment. Moment. Moment.
- equal inside you, moment,
the velocitous mountains and cities rising and falling,
songs of children, iridescence even of beetles.
It is not you the locust can strip of all leaf.
Untouchable green at the center,
the wolf too lopes past you and through you as he eats.
Insult to mourn you, you who mourn no one, unable.
Without transformation,
yours the role of the chorus, to whom nothing happens.
The living step forward: choosing to enter, to lose.
I, who am made of you only,
speak these words against your unmasterable instruction -
A knife cannot cut itself open,
yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."
~ Jane Hirshfield
“Life, Explained To You”
“Life, Explained To You”
Author Unknown
“On the first day God created the dog. God said, “Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. I will give you a life span of twenty years.” The dog said, “That’s too long to be barking. Give me ten years and I’ll give you back the other ten.” So God agreed.
On the second day God created the monkey. God said, “Entertain people, do monkey tricks and make them laugh. I’ll give you a twenty-year life span.” The monkey said, “Monkey tricks for twenty years? I don’t think so. Dog gave you back ten, so that’s what I’ll do too, okay?” And God agreed.
On the third day God created the cow. “You must go to the field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves, and give milk to support the farmer. I will give you a life span of sixty years.” The cow said, “That’s kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. Let me have twenty and I’ll give back the other forty.” And God agreed again.
On the fourth day God created man. God said, “Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. I’ll give you twenty years.” Man said, “What? Only twenty years? Tell you what, I’ll take my twenty, and the forty the cow gave back, and the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back, that makes eighty, okay?” “Okay,” said God, “You’ve got a deal.”
So that is why the first twenty years we eat, sleep, play, and enjoy ourselves; the next forty years we slave in the sun to support our family; the next ten years we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren; and the last ten years we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.”
“Life has now been explained to you.”
"Here We Are..."
"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."
- Kurt Vonnegut
o
But perhaps there's something that transcends "no why..."
"If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not."
- Viktor Frankl
"15 Signs That Amazon Stores Are In Deep, Deep Trouble"
"15 Signs That Amazon Stores Are In Deep, Deep Trouble"
By Epic Economist
"When even one of the most powerful and better-established retailers in the whole world is scrambling to navigate through the storm that is hitting the retail sector right now, then you know for sure that something really scary is happening. Amazon, the largest online retailer and tech powerhouse in the globe, is coping with a series of challenges that range from billionaire losses, crashing stock value, mass store closings, layoffs, negative profits, and a chilling outlook for 2023 and beyond. At this moment, we are watching one of the biggest players in the market being absolutely crushed in the brick-and-mortar sector as high inflation and soaring interest rates affect businesses and consumers alike.
For example, Amazon is shuttering dozens of Whole Foods stores all over the U.S. as cash-strapped consumers turn to big-box and discount retailers to stretch their dollars as far as they possibly can. A source familiar with the matter told Insider that many more locations may soon be on the chopping block given that the organic grocery chain is struggling with declining profits for several quarters now. Even CEO Andy Jassy has admitted that Amazon is postponing new store openings and canceling plans for new locations until they figure out how to differentiate themselves from other established competitors in the market.
Since Amazon bought the organic supermarket chain in 2017, very little has been done to boost the growth of the business, says Lesley Hansell of Riverbend Consulting, a retail consultancy firm. Amazon is failing to adapt to the food sector’s wafer-thin profit margins. And the company is losing the competition against other major grocery retailers who already have consumers in their pocket. Retail consultant Richard Hyman said that Amazon decided to enter a highly competitive industry without fully considering where it fits in this market, and it is going up against food retailers that have had decades to master a complicated trade. “Being big on its own is nowhere near enough to be good,” he told Insider. “Amazon is not a retailer, it’s a tech company, and their absolute core competence is in tech, where they should’ve stayed.”
While Walmart, the largest grocer in the U.S., has over 25% of the grocery market share, according to Euromonitor, Kroger has just over 8%, and Albertsons has roughly 5%, Amazon commands just 1.2% of sales in the grocery market. If anything, Amazon seems lost when it comes to opening a viable grocery chain, says retail consultant Brittain Ladd, who formerly worked as a strategist for the company’s grocery business. “Unfortunately, Amazon right now does not have any strategy for physical grocery stores, just a bunch of ideas,” Ladd highlighted. “
This is the carnage we’ve been warned about, and the worst is yet to come! Many factors will continue to impact Amazon’s brick-and-mortar business, especially if the company doesn’t make the necessary changes to restructure its operations and understand consumer behavior in the physical retail environment. Many more doors could be shuttered for good in the months ahead, hundreds of thousands of jobs are on the line, and the potential of a financial and economic downturn just makes the situation increasingly threatening. The retail sector is facing the most drastic shift we have ever seen in our lifetime, and not even the biggest names in the industry will be able to escape from it! Today, we decided to compile several facts that reveal why Amazon’s retail stores are being financially eviscerated and why they are doomed to fail."
Comments here:
"In All Seriousness..."
"Thomas Edison said in all seriousness: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labor of thinking"- if we bother with facts at all, we hunt like bird dogs after the facts that bolster up what we already think- and ignore all the others! We want only the facts that justify our acts- the facts that fit in conveniently with our wishful thinking and justify our preconceived prejudices. As Andre Maurois put it: "Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage." Is it any wonder, then, that we find it so hard to get at the answers to our problems? Wouldn't we have the same trouble trying to solve a second-grade arithmetic problem, if we went ahead on the assumption that two plus two equals five? Yet there are a lot of people in this world who make life a hell for themselves and others by insisting that two plus two equals five- or maybe five hundred!"
- Dale Carnegie
"The World Is On The Brink Of A Catastrophic Population Collapse"
"The World Is On The Brink Of A
Catastrophic Population Collapse"
by Michael Snyder
"Have we already reached peak global population? Birth rates have been declining in wealthy countries for years, and now they are way below replacement level all over the industrialized world. Birth rates are still above replacement level in some poor countries, but they are steadily trending down as young people in those nations embrace cultural values from the wealthy countries. Meanwhile, average life expectancy is falling in the United States and elsewhere, and the number of excess deaths has spiked dramatically all over the planet during the past couple of years. If we cannot find a way to reverse these trends, we will witness a catastrophic population collapse. It is just a matter of time.
According to CNN, the number of births per woman has fallen by more than half since 1950…"In 1950, women typically had five births each; globally, last year, it was 2.3 births. By 2050, the UN projects a further global decline to 2.1 births per woman.
In some countries, it is lower. In the US the 1950s, it was 3.6 births per woman, it slipped to 1.6 in 2020, according to the World Bank. In Italy, it was 1.2; in Japan, it was 1.3; in China, 1.2. In January 2022, the country announced the birth rate fell for the fifth year in a row, even with the repeal of the one child policy, allowing couples to have up to three children as of 2021."
Here in the United States, we haven’t been making enough babies to replace ourselves for a very long time. In fact, we are being told that our fertility rate “has been generally below the replacement level since 1971”…"America’s fertility rate has been generally below the replacement level since 1971 and consistently less than the replacement level for more than a decade. Population projections do not envisage the country returning to the replacement level any time soon." It is likely that the slide in our fertility rate will actually accelerate in the years ahead, because large numbers of young adults in the U.S. simply do not want to have children.
Earlier this week, I came across an article that greatly saddened me. It explained that there has been “a surge in vasectomies” among young males in the United States in recent months. Now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, a lot of young males want to make absolutely certain that no “accidents” happen. But if we do not replace ourselves, we are going to have some very serious societal problems on our hands.
Our population is rapidly aging, and we need millions upon millions of young workers to support our extremely expensive Social Security and Medicare systems…"The number of Americans aged 65 years and older has increased to approximately 56 million, or 17 percent of the population — nearly double the 1960 level of 9 percent. With the growing numbers of older Americans, the large-scale exit of Baby Boomers from the labor force and rising health care expenditures per person, the U.S. government faces rapidly rising costs and worrisome expected insolvencies in the near future of programs such as Social Security and Medicare."
Europe is facing similar problems.At this point, fertility rates are well below replacement level in every single EU country…"In 2021, France had the highest fertility rate among the EU member states with 1.84 live births per woman according to Eurostat, the statistical office of the EU. Malta had the lowest rate with 1.13 live births. This average for the EU as a whole was 1.53." If so much migration was not happening, population levels throughout the EU would already be steadily shrinking.
But if you think that things are bad in Europe, just check out what is happening in Asia. The average woman gives birth to just 1.4 children in Japan, and the rate is even lower in South Korea…"The fertility rates are 1.1 children in South Korea and 1.4 in Japan. The prospects in both cases are alarming, with Japan’s population, which today stands at almost 126 million, dropping to 104 million in 2050 and a mere 72 million in 2100. The figures in South Korea’s case, now with 52 million people, are 46 million by 2050 and 24 million in 2100."
Look at those numbers again. South Korea’s population will fall by more than half if their fertility rate stays at the current level. So what happens if the fertility rate continues to drop?
In China, population decline has become a major national crisis. According to the New York Times, the Chinese population is falling so fast that India will soon take the number one spot by default…"Despite the rollback of China’s one-child policy, and even after more recent incentives urging families to have more children, China’s population is steadily shrinking — a momentous shift that will soon leave India as the world’s most-populous nation and have broad rippling effects both domestically and globally."
The change puts China on the same course of both aging and shrinking as many of its neighbors in Asia, but its path will have outsize effects not just on the regional economy, but on the world at large as well. Just like so many in the western world, young people in China put very little value on marriage and family these days. As a result, the fertility rate in China has dropped to a depressingly low level of just 1.15 per woman…"China’s fertility rate plummeted to 1.15 children per woman in 2021, far below the replacement level of around 2.1 live births per woman needed to ensure a broadly stable population in the absence of migration."
Russia is also wrestling with huge demographic challenges. Despite government incentives that encourage having children, the Russians will need approximately “1 million new migrants every year until the end of the century to maintain its current population levels”…"Russia would need to attract as many as 1 million new migrants every year until the end of the century to maintain its current population levels, according to research cited by the RBC news website on Thursday. Russia’s population has declined for the past four years in a row and dropped by half a million people last year alone, standing at 146.45 million people at the start of 2023."
But at least the poor nations are making up for the selfishness of the wealthy nations, right? To a certain extent, but the truth is that fertility rates are falling in South America, Africa and the Middle East too. Through education and entertainment, the values of the wealthy countries are being exported all over the world, and this is depressing fertility levels everywhere.
So even if the population of the globe is not dramatically reduced by war, famine, disease, unprecedented natural disasters and all of the other things that I warn about in my latest book, it is still likely to fall precipitously in the years ahead because our values have infected the entire planet. What we choose to believe about marriage, family and children has very serious consequences, and now we really are on the brink of the most serious fertility crisis in all of human history."
Bill Bonner, "Saints and Sinners"
"Saints and Sinners"
A closer look at our better angels in government.
by Bill Bonner
"And one was straight, and one was a queen,
and one was a fraudster pretending to be green:
they were all of them saints of mammon, and I mean,
God help me to be one too."
~ Apologies to Lesbia Scott whose hymn, “I sing a song to
the saints of God” was a favorite in the Episcopal Church
Dublin, Ireland - "The well-meaning elite have so many reasons to feel good about themselves. When they look in their mirrors in the morning, they must all see halos over their heads…or perhaps they just gaze upon their beatific smiles – an outward sign of inner grace.
The Heroes of 2020: Today, we salute the saints, the heroes. Michael Chertoff. Leon Panetta. Michael Hayden. Jim Clapper. John Brennan. How do we know they are heroes? The mainstream press says so. They are the ‘Heroes of 2020’ who saved us from the truth. All former spooks…heads of various government agencies, they spent much of their careers peeking in windows, opening other people’s mail, and spreading misinformation. As experts in this kind of thing, they signed an open letter, three weeks before the election of 2020, assuring us that the New York Post’s scoop about Hunter Biden was false. The laptop story, they said, was a “Russian (dis)information operation.”
They ought to know! And their public declaration led to a thousand headlines. Here’s Politico, with the leading example: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former officials say.” It sounded conclusive. And it dismissed a line of questions that might have derailed the Biden presidential campaign.
But it wasn’t Russian disinfo. It was American disinfo fed to us by former public servants of the highest rank…people we were supposed to trust. And that’s another thing the great and good can feel great and good about: protecting the public from ‘wrong think’…and honest elections. In this case, these people were paid to know what was going on. But they either didn’t know what they said they knew…or didn’t want to say what they really knew. So, they lied.
Michael Morell, former Deputy Director of the CIA, explained why he did it: “Because I wanted him [Joe Biden] to win the election.” Hmmm. Had they not misled them, voters might have chosen the wrong candidate. What saints! And thousands more like them!
Capital for the Cronies: They are not only saving our democracy…they are saving the entire planet. Do they not separate their trash…turn down their thermostats…and serve vegetarian-only meals on their private planes? Did they not support Biden’s ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ knowing that it had nothing to do with inflation and everything to do with rewarding crony industries in the ‘green’ sector?
Are they not banishing racism, white supremacy, and homo-trans-weirdo-phobia? Do they not run the “Equality” flag up the pole every morning and salute, before checking to see how much their ESG stocks have risen?
Did they not ‘stimulate’ the economy with an addition of $8 trillion to the Fed’s balance sheet…and $27 trillion in extra federal debt (aka “money printing”) so far this century? Did they not stop the corrections of 2001…2008…and 2020?
Are they not protecting the sovereignty of the Ukraine, insisting that Russians respect the results of the CIA-led coup of 2014…and keep the border right where Lenin, Stalin, and Khruschev put it? Did they not rise to their feet (perhaps suppressing a laugh) and applaud heartily when Zelensky spoke to a joint session of Congress?
And just to make sure that everyone knows who’s in charge, do they not – Republican and Democrat alike – support spending $1.5 trillion annually (according to figures from Winslow Wheeler, including veterans’ benefits, aid, loans, and other foreign policy spending) to keep the empire in business?
With so many things to be proud of…how lightly they must trod…skipping from one fantasy to another… conveniently forgetting all the chaos and misery they’ve wrought so far. Aren’t they – Biden, Pelosi, McConnell et al…all the old humbugs and ‘heroes’ who have pulled the strings for the last half a century – responsible for it?
America’s $33 trillion in debt…its $1 trillion trade deficit…$8 trillion squandered on wars (this century)…prisoners tortured…1 million lives lost – where are the investigations…the tribunals…the war crimes trials? Have we no lampposts from which to hang these people? Activists and politicians are almost always scoundrels. For every Sophie Scholl there are a hundred John Browns. For every one who resists evil, dozens are ready to cause it.
Just Stop… Protesting: And in last weekend’s Financial Times, we are given more examples of what we least need. More heroes! “Greta Thunberg and her fellow students in the Fridays for Future movement, and the young people of color (!...aren’t white activists heroes too?) who launched the global Movement for Black Lives after George Floyd’s murder in 2020…
"Recent protests by Just Stop Oil activists interrupting the World Snooker Championships in Sheffield, by animal rights demonstrators invading the course at the Grand National and by French opponents of pension reform storming the Paris headquarters of luxury goods company LVMH…" According to Yarmin, they are all saints, selflessly ‘taking a stand,’ often illegally, to protest something they don’t like.
Oddly, there is no mention of the Trump activists who stormed the Capitol, January 6, 2020. Nor of the demonstrations led by the Hitler Youth in the 1930s…nor of Mao’s hit squads in the Cultural Revolution…nor of those who seized the Bastille and executed its commander in 1789… nor of those who massacred the Swiss Guards in the Sack of Rome in 1527… nor of Gavrilo Princip’s bold move, when he took the law into his own hands, assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand, and started WWI…nor of the mob that began the Petrograd food riots of 1917 that led to the Bolshevik Revolution.
But what a charm it must be to have a mind so untarnished by history…so untainted by nuance or ambiguity…that it can believe any damn thing it wants."
"Major Price Increases At Kroger! This Is Crazy! What's Next?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 4/27/23
"Major Price Increases At Kroger!
This Is Crazy! What's Next?"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases on groceries! This is not good as we are also seeing some empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products, and also charging extremely high prices! "
Comments here:
"Putin Rushed To Kremlin; Attack On St. Peterburg Airbase; Biden Sends Nukes To Korea"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 4/26/23
"Putin Rushed To Kremlin;
Attack On St. Peterburg Airbase; Biden Sends Nukes To Korea"
"Sources claim that Vladimir Putins motorcade was rushed to Kremlin (video), meanwhile Ukraine claims to have entered Russian held side of Dnipro river, possible attacks on St. Petersberg airbase, China makes one last ditch attempt to broker peace before SHTF."
Comments here:
"Ukraine Has Suffered Over 300,000 Killed In Action"
Douglas Macgregor, 4/26/23
"Ukraine Has Suffered Over 300,000 Killed In Action"
Comments here:
So, Good Citizen, YOU and all of us have paid at least $200 billion for
this horror. Are you proud? And how does all this positively affect your life?
This was none of our goddamned business!
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times, 4/27/23
"Putin's Kalibr Missiles Strike Mykolaiv; Russia Unleashes
324 Attacks On Bakhmut, Kharkiv In A Day"
Russian missile strike has killed one person, and injured 23 others in Mykolaiv. Ukraine claimed that Russia fired four Kalibr cruise missiles in overnight attack. Meanwhile, Russian forces pounded Bakhmut and Kharkiv along the frontline. Ukraine's armed forces said that Russia unleashed 324 attacks in the past day."
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Wednesday, April 26, 2023
"Zombies Are Playing Video Games While US Economy Is Being Destroyed; More Banks In Big Trouble"
Jeremiah Babe, 4/26/23
"Zombies Are Playing Video Games While US Economy
Is Being Destroyed; More Banks In Big Trouble"
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"Rent Prices Soar 150% And Trigger Perfect Storm For Evictions"
Full screen recommended.
"Rent Prices Soar 150% And Trigger
Perfect Storm For Evictions"
By Epic Economist
"A perfect storm for evictions is forming all around us. A new report reveals that rents are rising four times faster than incomes in the United States. In recent years, the rate of rent price growth has tripled, making housing increasingly unaffordable for millions of Americans. For some households, it now takes more than three full-time workers to afford the typical two-bedroom rental. Researchers found that in many areas, rent prices shot up over 200%, and are likely to continue to rise in 2023. This means that many struggling U.S. families are about to lose their homes as they fall behind payments, and evictions start to pile up all across the country. That’s what we’re going to break to you in today’s video.
Over the past three years, home prices jumped by almost 47%, and today, they remain about 38% more expensive than they were in 2019. Higher mortgages are also pricing many would-be homeowners out of the market. As a result, demand for rents is soaring, and a shortage of affordable rental units is creating a perfect storm for evictions, experts say.
Right now, rental vacancy rates are at the lowest level since 1984, which is giving landlords, especially corporate landlords, much more power to mark up prices for a limited number of available units. On the other hand, we all know by now that wages aren’t keeping pace with rising rents in the U.S.
In point of fact, wages aren’t keeping pace with anything these days, and 58% of renters are currently living paycheck to paycheck. About the same rate, or 57% to be precise, are now paying more than 30% of their income on rent.
In cities with minimum wages above $7.25, it takes an average of 2.5 full-time minimum wage workers to make the typical two-bedroom rental affordable, meaning renters would spend no more than a third of their income on rent. In cities with a $7.25 minimum wage, it takes an average of 3.5 full-time workers to meet this threshold. “Income disparity does really play a big role and impact the affordability outlook for a lot of renters,” Chen added.
From 1985 to 2022, the national median rent price rose 151%, while overall income grew just 35%. That’s to say, the average rent rose over 4 times faster than wages. Overall, the cost of living in the U.S. increased by 89% since the mid-1980s, according to the firm’s calculations. In other words, Americans have experienced a steep decline in their purchasing power across the last four decades, and they have been forced to move to cheaper, subpar units or spend significantly more of their earnings on rent.
We’re going to see cases of evictions reaching crisis levels in the months ahead, especially as big companies start to layoff their workers en masse. Many renters are hanging by a thread at this point, and as the economic downturn that is now unfolding all around us accelerates, millions of U.S. households will be pushed over the edge."
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"A Look to the Heavens"
“A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly.
The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”
Chet Raymo, "The Meaning Of Life"
"The Meaning Of Life"
by Chet Raymo
"There is only one meaning of life, the act of living itself."
– Erich Fromm
"I had heard from a high-school student in the midwest who had read my book 'Skeptics and True Believers,' in which, as you may know, I take to task all forms of faith that lack an empirical basis, including astrology and supernaturalist religion. He writes: "Are we just meaningless beasts roaming a meaningless Earth with the sole purpose of popping out babies so we can raise them to live longer, more meaningless lives?"
A good question, the best question. What we have learned about our place on Earth does indeed suggest that we are beasts, related even in our DNA and molecular chemistry to other animals. And, yes, the driving purpose of all animal life would seem to be "popping out babies." But our uniquely complex human brains allow us to be more than beasts, more than baby-poppers. As far as we know, humans are the most complex thing in the universe, and in our desire to gain reliable knowledge of the universe the universe becomes conscious of itself.
As for myself, I don't need stars or gods to give my life meaning. I work at meaning every day, in the love of family and friends, in caring for my own little pieces of the Earth, in art, in science, and in making myself conscious of the mystery and beauty - and terror - of the cosmos.
"Or is there a possibility that there may be more?" asks my midwestern correspondent. Yes, there is almost certainly more to existence than what we have yet learned. Just think how much more we know than did our pre-scientific ancestors. But that still greater knowledge will have to wait for minds other than my own. My children and grandchildren will know far more than I, and in that growing human storehouse of reliable knowledge I hope they will find some greater measure of meaning.
In the meantime, I attend to the fox that sometimes walks across my windowsill, the morning glory seedlings that reach achingly for the sun, and the moon that hangs like a great milky eye in the sky. Francis Bacon said that what a man would like to be true, he preferentially believes. That's a mistake I try to avoid. I choose instead to believe what my senses tell me to be palpably true."
A good question, the best question. What we have learned about our place on Earth does indeed suggest that we are beasts, related even in our DNA and molecular chemistry to other animals. And, yes, the driving purpose of all animal life would seem to be "popping out babies." But our uniquely complex human brains allow us to be more than beasts, more than baby-poppers. As far as we know, humans are the most complex thing in the universe, and in our desire to gain reliable knowledge of the universe the universe becomes conscious of itself.
As for myself, I don't need stars or gods to give my life meaning. I work at meaning every day, in the love of family and friends, in caring for my own little pieces of the Earth, in art, in science, and in making myself conscious of the mystery and beauty - and terror - of the cosmos.
"Or is there a possibility that there may be more?" asks my midwestern correspondent. Yes, there is almost certainly more to existence than what we have yet learned. Just think how much more we know than did our pre-scientific ancestors. But that still greater knowledge will have to wait for minds other than my own. My children and grandchildren will know far more than I, and in that growing human storehouse of reliable knowledge I hope they will find some greater measure of meaning.
In the meantime, I attend to the fox that sometimes walks across my windowsill, the morning glory seedlings that reach achingly for the sun, and the moon that hangs like a great milky eye in the sky. Francis Bacon said that what a man would like to be true, he preferentially believes. That's a mistake I try to avoid. I choose instead to believe what my senses tell me to be palpably true."
"Life..."
“It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours - arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additional existence. Life, in short just wants to be.”
- Bill Bryson
"They Can’t Hide This Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 4/26/23
"They Can’t Hide This Anymore"
"So many industries are having difficulties right now. The next one that’s going to come to the surface is the car industry. It is just a matter of time until Car lots start to close before our eyes."
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"The US Government Declaring War on Mexican Drug Cartels"
"The US Government Declaring War
on Mexican Drug Cartels"
By International Man
"International Man: "There has been a recent push by some US politicians of the neocon variety to use the US military against Mexican drug cartels. Senator Lindsay Graham has proposed designating them as "terrorist organizations." Representative Dan Crenshaw introduced an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to target drug cartels inside Mexico. What's your take on this?
Doug Casey: That's just what the US needs: another war, and this one on the border. The people who back the use of military force in Mexico can only be described as thoughtless warmongers with no grasp of either ethics or history. If the war against organizations like the Taliban in Afghanistan was a world-class disaster, would an invasion work out better in Mexico, which has three times the population of Afghanistan, is much richer and much better organized? And they're right on the border, which is really asking for trouble.
The solution to the drug cartel problem is to legalize all drugs. The fact is that anybody who wants drugs today can get them easily, even if they're in high-security prisons. From a practical point of view, making drugs illegal doesn't work. All it does is greatly increase the price of the drugs in the US and create huge profit margins to import them. Even if you destroyed every cartel in Mexico, people that want drugs will still want them. As long as drugs are illegal, their prices will remain high and new cartels will arise. But despite the relaxation of penalties on cannabis, it's highly unlikely drugs will be legalized. The DEA, one of the most corrupt Federal agencies, is a permanent lobby to keep them illegal. And there's way, way too much money in keeping them illegal.
The only solution is to learn a lesson from Prohibition in the 1930s. When they illegalized alcohol in the 1920s, it created the profits that allowed the Mafia to grow. It certainly didn't cut down the amount of drinking; it just increased the amount of crime. Similarly, the insane War on Drugs is responsible for the success of the cartels.
They say fentanyl, an important medical drug, kills 50,000 to 100,000 Americans per year. That's mostly because its quantity and quality are uncertain, a consequence of its illegality. But the real question is ethical: Does government have a right to "protect" people against themselves? My answer is: No. If people like it, it's their body and their business. Prohibition of alcohol—which is also quite a dangerous drug—was costly, destructive, immoral, and stupid. Fentanyl, the current bete noir of busybodies, is no different. If drugs were as easily available as aspirins through pharmacies, users would know what they were getting, and people who want them could get them at a cheap price in known doses.
Apart from recognizing that you can't protect people from themselves, it's important to look at the root of why many people get lost in drugs. The answer, I believe, is that they're trying to hide from reality and blot it out. Why is that? It's a subject for another conversation. But the irrationality and coercion caused by State intervention in private lives are part of the answer.
International Man: Mexican President Obrador has stated he will not allow the US government or military to enter Mexican territory. It's also well known that Mexican cartels have a significant presence inside the US. Suppose the US government sends the military into action in Mexico anyways. What do you think could happen?
Doug Casey: It certainly wouldn't be the first time that the US has invaded Mexico. In the 1840s, the US basically stole all the territory in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, from Mexico. I know you shouldn't say that—it sounds unpatriotic. But patriotism should be focused on American values, not necessarily on supporting the actions of politicians in Washington.
In the Marine Corp's hymn, one of the lines is "From the Halls of Montezuma" because US forces were actually fighting in Mexico City. It happened more recently when during the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s, Pancho Villa raided across the Rio Grande, and General Pershing's troops crossed into Mexico to (unsuccessfully) pursue him.
There's plenty of precedent for Americans invading Mexico, but perhaps the shoe is on the other foot now. 20 million or more Mexicans live in the US, mostly in the Southwest. Believe it or not, many of them talk about a Reconquista.
It's uncertain what effect it will have on the US border if warmongers like the smarmy and foolish little Lindsey Graham succeed in fomenting an invasion of Mexico. It could turn into a counterinvasion, an active shooting war unnecessarily created to quash the Mexican drug business. Which—insofar as it's even a real problem—is a US problem.
International Man: No matter what happens with the US military in Mexico, the situation at the border remains a mess. What do you think should be done?
Doug Casey: The violence of the cartels is said to be one of the motivators for migration to the US. There appear to be at least one or two million people—nobody has the exact number—annually migrating from Mexico and other places into the US. Once they arrive, many become wards of the vast US welfare system. It's a problem.
The solution, as with so many social ills, is strict observance of property rights. That implies the border should be defended. Why? The migrants usually cross the privately owned land of Americans; they have no right to trespass. Even when the land is owned by the federal or state government, they have no right to trespass. It's a question of strictly enforcing property rights.
There's a sign that often appears out west, "If you're found here at night, you'll be found here in the morning." It's a justified sentiment. Entering the US, or, more importantly, onto anybody's private property without permission, is a serious offense. Property rights are the basis of all rights.
It's hard to know exactly, but I suspect a major attraction to migrants is that they know that once in the country, they're basically guaranteed free food, medical care, schools, housing, and numerous other forms of welfare. That attracts the wrong kind of people. The immigrants of the 19th century were also penniless but got absolutely nothing when they came to the US. Now migrants get lots of freebies. Part of the answer is to eliminate any and all types of welfare both for Americans and immigrants—as well as strict enforcement of property rights.
International Man: Renowned trends forecaster Gerald Celente has said, "When all else fails, they take you to war." Do you agree?
Doug Casey: Gerald is absolutely correct. Looking at America's war history, when the US fought Germany and Japan, those countries were transformed because they were totally flattened, devastated, and dispirited—that made it easy to reform them in the image that the US government wanted.
In the Korean War, which was really a war fought against China on Korean territory, the US dropped more bombs than in all of World War II. The country was totally flattened, and South Korea also transformed itself in the image that we wanted. But Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and for that matter, Vietnam, were more on the order of sport wars against primitive countries. They were all embarrassing disasters.
What kind of war are we looking at with Mexico? Will Washington flatten the country in order to change its government? I question whether the Mexicans will accept that. Or will Washington get involved in a protracted guerrilla war where drug gangs are designated as terrorists? Randolph Bourne was right when he said: "War is the health of the State." Unfortunately, the average American seems to have lost the power of critical thinking. He robotically equates the health of the State with the health of America.
Either way, it's a bad idea for America. But Washington isn't America. The Deep State will, however, find somebody to fight. Unfortunately, it looks like Russia and China are next on the dance card, although they could certainly add Mexico to the naughty list while further bankrupting and corrupting the US.
International Man: The US government is becoming more desperate and reckless by the day. How can the average person protect themselves and profit from this situation?
Doug Casey: The US government is increasingly designating any real or imagined enemy du jour— whether they're Mexican drug cartels, the Russians, foreign separatist movements, or various American citizens—as terrorists. Once someone is termed a terrorist, the gloves are off, and it becomes possible to commit any kind of crime to combat him.
As the US destabilizes in many ways, Washington is finding its real danger lies within the country. What we're looking at is a war of the US government against numerous and various groups, as well as dissident individual citizens. The FBI, CIA, DEA, and other praetorian agencies are being transformed into domestic secret police forces.
One way to protect yourself from this is to vacate the premises until it becomes safe to live in the US again. Let me emphasize the importance of having a second residency or a second citizenship in case the US goes in the direction of so many countries in the past. And it's not just the US. Many supposedly free Western countries are becoming quite repressive.
In fact, it's dangerous being a US citizen in the US these days, at least if you speak out too loudly. It certainly concerns me personally. Even though I don't believe it's possible to change the course of events, I say what I do because it's right, not because it's smart. That said, you should plan on the US government becoming much more virulent in the future. Washington, not Mexican cartels, is the real danger.
That's absolutely the case for the next two years, while genuine Jacobins control the government. But perhaps beyond that. There's no telling who's going to be elected or what they're going to do. Since we're likely going to be in the middle of a huge financial, economic, political, social, and military crisis, anything is possible. Little of it is good. The trend in motion is probably going to stay in motion."
"We Are Mortals All..."
"We are mortals all, human and nonhuman, bound in one fellowship of love and travail. No one escapes the fate of death. But we can, with caring, make our good-byes less tormented. If we broaden the circle of our compassion, life can be less cruel."
- Gary Kowalski
The Poet: John O’Donohue, “In These Times”
“In These Times”
“In these times when anger
Is turned into anxiety,
And someone has stolen
The horizons and mountains,
Our small emperors on parade
Never expect our indifference
To disturb their nakedness.
They keep their heads down,
And their eyes gleam with reflection
From aluminum economic ground,
The media wraps everything
In a cellophane of sound,
And the ghost surface of the virtual
Overlays the breathing earth.
The industry of distraction
Makes us forget
That we live in a universe.
We have become converts
To the religion of stress
And its deity of progress;
That we may have courage
To turn aside from it all
And come to kneel down before the poor,
To discover what we must do,
How to turn anxiety
Back into anger,
How to find our way home.”
~ John O’Donohue,
from “To Bless the Space Between Us”
○
“Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.”
– Clarissa Pinkola Estes
"Inflation"
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires [the so-called wealthy "Elite"- CP], become 'profiteers,' who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie [the nearly dead middle class- CP], whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat [the always impoverished poor- CP].
As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery [Wall Street- CP].
Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
- John Maynard Keynes
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