Monday, June 26, 2023

"The Competence Crisis, Or, Why Society Will Collapse For A Silly Reason"

"The Competence Crisis, Or, 
Why Society Will Collapse For A Silly Reason"
by John Wilder

“As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.” – "Idiocracy"

I’ve written about Idiocracy before. It’s a good movie, and Mike Judge has a great sense of humor and timing. I would probably pay money to listen to him to read his phone list in Butthead’s voice. Unless Disney® got the money.

Anyway, Idiocracy was a funny movie. Unfortunately, it has proven to be prophetic in more ways than one. Recently, and article is making the rounds on /places/ about the topic of Idiocracy titled "Complex Systems Won’t Survive the Competence Crisis" (LINK). It’s by Harold Robertson, who I assume is not related to Robert Haroldson. His bio on Palladium lists him as an “asset class head and institutional investor at a multi-billion dollar pool of capital”. That makes me think he’s totally using a made up name or has all the money he can eat, since the thing he says in the article are so against The Narrative.

There are some difficult truths there. First, no matter how much everyone would like unexceptional people to be able to perform at exceptional levels, it’s simply not the case that that can happen. One of my favorite stories of Lee Iacocca was about his first day leading Chrysler®. Like most folks, on their first day, he was shown his office. Unlike most folks on their first day, he was informed that he had a personal chef, and he should request what he’d like to have for lunch. Lee said, “Oh, I dunno. How about a hamburger?” When you’re the boss, you can have a hamburger.

The hamburger was delivered, right on time. Iacocca took a bite. It was the very best hamburger that he had ever had in his life. He requested to talk to the chef. “This was the best hamburger that I’ve ever had. How did you do it?” The chef smiled, pulled a ribeye out of the fridge, and put it into the meat grinder.

I love that story. What you get depends on what you start with. Sure, you could grind up an old catcher’s mitt or that opossum that roots around in the garbage and cook it into a burger, but it wouldn’t be great chow. The material that you start with determines the end results.

In that article by Harold Robertson, he discusses a point I’ve been trying to make for years here – complex systems and societies are exceptionally fragile things – the more complex, the more fragile. Civilization is a house of cards – it takes millions of people doing their jobs exceptionally well every day just to keep it going.

It’s like the Red Queen and Alice from "Through the Looking Glass." "Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing." "A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

The people running the complex systems we depend upon every day have to run, looking out and maintaining just what we have installed to make it work. Miss a scheduled maintenance? An entire city can have a power outage. An example in real time is South Africa. Currently, many locations have no electricity for sixteen hours a day, and regular supplies of fresh, clean water are a dream of a distant path.

Can’t happen here? What about California with the nearly annual cascading power outages? What about the city of Jackson, Mississippi being mis-managed to the point of collapse? What about Flint, Michigan, making the water acidic and leaching the lead out of the pipes? Or the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio?

None of these technologies are under 100 years old. Sure, there have been advances in the way that they are done, but trains have been around longer than your mom, and clean drinking water has been around ever since we figured out that we should keep the lepers with typhoid away from the wells.

As the article notes, for a long time in the 20th century there was a relatively ruthless winnowing process in life for competence and intelligence. The young men who ran NASA in the 1960s were young, sure, but also amazingly competent. Gene Kranz, the “failure is not an option” guy, was only 35 when he was the Chief Flight Director for Apollo 11. The “Kranz Dictum” is simple: Tough and competent.

That was another time. Tough is replaced with Trigger Warnings and Competent is replaced with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Now we find ourselves in Idiocracy. Promotions aren’t based on competence, they’re based on...other factors. The armed forces of the United States, for instance, is top-heavy in white men. That is, people who were actually born men.

Since there are too many of them, regardless of competence, the new officers that will be promoted will be promoted by criteria other than competence. This is why I advised both The Boy and Pugsley to avoid .mil. Incompetence at a Pizza Hut® ends up with really crappy pizza delivered poorly. Incompetence in the military results in everyone being killed. The use of low IQ troops in Vietnam (at the time called the “Moron Corps”) resulted in triple the death rate, despite what Forrest Gump might indicate.

We’re now doing the very same thing. We’re pulling the spark plugs from the engine, and wondering why it doesn’t run. Don’t believe me?

Looks like there’s no IQ test to get into Congress. Look at Fetterman or Feinstein, who have the mental function of a three- or four-year-old. Yet? They’re Senators. Look at AOC, who thinks that, if Congress passes a law that defies the law of physics, like making electric cars mandatory, that water will run uphill, dropped plates will unbreak themselves, and everyone will have prosperity.

Competence is crucial to our way of life, and it is, sadly, not evenly distributed. I won’t opine as to why, because I don’t know why. But to doom civilization because the idea that competence and intelligence can be created because we really, really, really, want competence to be there? That’s Idiocracy in action."

"A Little Late..."

 

"How It Really Is"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 6/26/23
"Urgent Need For More Debt, Expect 
Huge Entitlement Program Expansion And More War!"
Comments here:

"When In Rome"

"When In Rome"
by Jeff Thomas

• Over its last one hundred years, the State steadily devalued the currency by 98%

• The high cost of government - particularly, growing entitlements and perpetual warfare, coupled with a diminished number of taxpayers, led the government to massive debt, to the point that it could not be repaid.

• Those citizens that were productive began to exit the country, finding new homes in countries that were not quite so sophisticated but offered better prospects for the future.

• The decline in the value of the currency resulted in ever-increasing prices of goods, so much so that the purchase of them became a hardship to the people. By governmental edict, wage and price controls were established, forcing rises in wages whilst capping the amount that vendors could charge for goods. The result was that vendors offered fewer and fewer goods for sale, as the profit had been eliminated.

If the reader is a citizen of the EU or US, the above history may seem quite familiar, with the one exception that strict wage and price controls have not (yet) been implemented. Still, the history is accurate; it is the history of Rome.

The Roman denarius pictured above features the profile of the emperor Diocletian, circa 301 AD, at the time when he issued the edict mentioned above. Like the US dollar that followed 1700 years later, the denarius was the most recognised and most respected currency of its day, as it was almost 100% silver. However, it was steadily devalued by successive emperors during the Era of Inflation from 193 to 293 AD. This was done by diminishing the amount of silver in the coin until it was made entirely of base metal, with a thin silver wash. Just as the US Federal Reserve devalued the US dollar 98% between 1913 and 2023, Rome devalued the denarius over a similar period of time.

Still, there will be those who will claim that, as the dollar is the world’s default currency, it must regain its former strength. I’m afraid not. In 193 AD, the denarius enjoyed a similar position to that of the US dollar today. Yet, having been devalued, it never regained its worth - in fact, not to this very day, even as a relic. The denarius pictured above was recently offered on eBay for the ‘Buy Now’ price of $28.80. Not a very impressive increase in value for a coin that has survived for 1700 years.

History Repeats: We would like to think that, even though some current governments are following the Roman road to ruin with remarkable similarity, the outcome will somehow be brighter - that we will not witness the Fall of the Empire in our modern world. Surely, this time around, political leaders will ‘do the right thing,’ and place their own personal ambitions below the need to salvage the mess that they have created.

Again, I’m afraid not. As stated in Kershner’s First Law, historically, "When a self-governing people confer upon their government the power to take money from some and give it to others, the process will not stop until the last bone of the last taxpayer is picked bare."

Here’s a similar insight, this time from G. Edward Griffin: "When it is possible for people to vote on issues involving the transfer of wealth to themselves from others, the ballot box becomes a weapon with which the majority plunders the minority. That is the point of no return, the point where the doomsday mechanism begins to accelerate until the system self-destructs. The plundered grow weary of carrying the load and eventually join the plunderers. The productive base of the economy diminishes further and further until only the state remains."

Still, it will be argued that modern political leaders have the histories of previous empires to look back on and will therefore not repeat their mistakes. But, again, this is not the case. There have always been those who warned the State away from this pattern of self-destruction, as the following quote, attributed to Cicero, 55 BC, attests: "The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance."

The pattern has existed for over 2000 years, and historically, empires have followed the pattern to ruin with extraordinary consistency, regardless of warnings.

Continuing Examples: But before we finish here, the observant reader may point out that his country has not instituted wage and price controls, as in ancient Rome, and that the present Empire may therefore not experience the predictable collapse that such controls would bring about.

In considering this question, it would be helpful to look at Venezuela and Argentina, two countries that are following a path very similar to the EU and the US, but happen to be a bit further along in the pattern. They have, in fact, instituted such controls, with the result that their economies are nearing collapse.

Still, in a last ditch effort to avoid realizing the inevitable, we may argue that Venezuela and Argentina are third world countries, and therefore we might still expect a more positive outcome. Not so, unfortunately. The US has also trod this ground before. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930, a last ditch effort by the US to stave off depression, triggered similar tariffs in Europe, assuring a deeper depression on both sides of the Atlantic. The US will continue to follow the pattern; it just hasn’t reached the tariff stage yet. We might therefore list such a tariff under "Coming Attractions."

An ever-greater number of people are coming to the realization that the EU and US have become runaway trains, trains that are headed for a cliff. More troubling, the firemen are clearly shovelling the coal into the engine at an alarming rate, speeding up the train rather than slowing it.

Most of us would prefer not to acknowledge that the train is headed for the cliff. This is understandable, as no one relishes the idea of jumping off a moving train. It’s not a pleasant choice to have to make. The reader may consider whether jumping off the train now may be preferable to the alternative."
o
"A runaway train... no way to slow down..."
Jethro Tull, "Locomotive Breath"

"Ready to Rumble"

"Ready to Rumble"
Cage-fighting ultra-billionaires, smug complacency,
 the debt time bomb and plenty more...
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

Poitou, France - "What an exciting weekend…with the fight of the century! On Saturday, the Wagnerians were on the road to Moscow to confront Putin. By Sunday, a ‘deal’ had been worked out. But we’re talking about something much more amusing, the upcoming battle between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. The two ultra-billionaires, both serious martial art enthusiasts, were set to square off after Musk – supposedly prompted by Zuckerberg’s move to compete with Twitter – issued a challenge.

It was probably a joke; Musk proposed a “cage match.” The Zuck shot back “send me location.” So, the fight is on…maybe. We hope so. It would be entertaining. And extremely lucrative for everyone involved – ringside seats, hotel bookings, broadcast rights, T-shirts and memorabilia…it would probably be the single most profitable event in history. Vegas odds-makers are going 3-2 for Musk.

Gentlemanly Combat: Settling rivalries with a battle of champions is a venerable way to spare the money and lives that would be lost in a real battle. It’s also much more honorable. In the Bible, David and Goliath faced each other single handedly. So did Achilles and Hector in Homer’s Iliad.

Typically, the cost of war is borne by those who are least responsible for it – taxpayers and draftees. Instead, why not just let the deciders settle it on live TV…and make a profit on it? Zelenskyy and Putin, for example, are fighting over who controls the eastern section of the Ukraine, traditionally a “borderlands” area. How about a cage match?

While disputes between nations are often resolved by force, elections are usually a matter of fraud. “He’ll keep us out of war,” promised supporters of Woodrow Wilson. “He’ll create a Great Society,” they pledged for Lyndon Johnson. “He’ll make America great again,” they vouchsafed on Donald Trump’s behalf. Once elected, the president then undertakes to reward his campaign donors. Voters are often forgotten or stabbed in the back.

Think about how much expense, corruption and bombast could be avoided by replacing national elections with cage matches. Hillary vs. Donald…Donald vs. Joe. Who knows which way these rumbles would go…but they could hardly be worse than the verdict of the voters.

Back on the Beat: But let’s move on…the Fed has paused. Stocks are still high. Unemployment is still low. And the credit catastrophe, if there is one, is still ahead. As to the coming catastrophe…David Rosenberg, former head economist at Merrill Lynch, is on the case. DNyuz: "He… cautioned that investors appear overly optimistic today, just as they were nearly 25 years ago. For example, they’ve roughly tripled Nvidia’s stock price this year, lifting its market capitalization to north of $1 trillion. They’ve also more than doubled the stock prices of Tesla, Meta, and other popular tech names too. “The smug complacency in 2000 looks eerily similar to what we have on our hands today,” Rosenberg said, adding that a recession is “coming sooner than you think.” He noted the inverted yield curve is signaling a 99% chance of a recession, and based on past economic cycles, that may mean the downturn arrives before the end of this year.

Speculators so loved US commercial real estate …and were so sure that the lowest interest rates in 5,000 years would stick around for years more…that they looked to make easy money buying property in the heart of America’s most dynamic cities. For an entire generation, they were in-the-money. Interest rates went down. The players could refinance…and refinance…even ‘taking out equity’ as the price of the buildings went up while interest rates went lower. Then, in 2009, the Fed began a “zero interest rate” policy…holding its key lending rate below the rate of inflation for most of the next 14 years. It was a dream come true for leveraged real estate speculators.

‘Extend and Pretend’: But now, they face a ‘whole new ballgame.’ Bloomberg reports: "The World’s Empty Office Buildings Have Become a Debt Time Bomb." "In New York and London, owners of gleaming office towers are walking away from their debt rather than pouring good money after bad. The landlords of downtown San Francisco’s largest mall have abandoned it. A new Hong Kong skyscraper is only a quarter leased.… the trouble in property is set to play out for years."

Bloomberg continued: "The ‘Extend and Pretend’ Real Estate Strategy Is Running Out of Time." "It’s not that the market participants had forgotten the lessons of the global financial crisis that followed the 2000s boom. It’s that they remembered them. Faced with delinquent loan payments, lenders decided to be patient: Instead of foreclosing on properties whose value was plummeting, they lengthened loan terms and ignored short-term valuations. They called it “extend and pretend” …

In the commercial property slump of 1992, for example, Donald Trump was nearly ruined. He was as much as $900 million in the hole. But extending and pretending worked for him as it did for others. The Fed was committed to low interest rates…and the bull market in bonds (with lower and lower yields) that began in 1982 was only about half over. As rates went down, the value of properties went up – especially in New York. By 2016, when he ran for president, Mr. Trump said he was worth $10 billion. So, it was no accident that he told the Fed to cut rates when he got into the White House. He was a “low interest rate guy,” he said."

As long as the bear market in yields (falling interest rates/rising bond prices) continued, you could survive a tight real estate market just by maintaining your cool. You refinanced…and waited for the buyers/renters to come back. But what about now? Stay tuned…"
o
Joel’s Note: “Commercial property may be facing an even more treacherous correction.” That was from Bill… looking around the corner back in April. And now, the rest of the mainstream news is catching on, too…A “debt time bomb” screamed Bloomberg on Friday… A “financial storm” chorused yesterday’s Financial Times. “‘Zombie’ buildings abandoned during commercial real estate ‘apocalypse’” added the New York Post over the weekend.

And here’s Fortune, piling on…"The office real estate crash will be so sharp and deep that Capital Economics thinks office values are unlikely to recover by 2040 According to Morgan Stanley, almost $3 trillion in commercial mortgages will be up for refinancing in the next couple of years. That’s a lot of debt to roll over at higher rates. (For perspective, $3 trillion is larger than the entire GDP of the United Kingdom – $2.7 trillion.)"

And now, stress is mounting…"Commercial Real Estate (CRE) mortgage delinquencies rose to 3% in the first three months of 2023, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. A report from MSCI Real Assets reckons “troubled CRE assets” (that is, properties that are forced to be sold as owners can't afford to pay their mortgages), jumped by 10% in the first quarter, to about $64 billion. Another $155 billion it labeled as “at risk.”

Who will bear the brunt of the impact, should a full-blown crisis emerge? Smaller, regional banks finance around 60% of all commercial real-estate debt in the country…"We are very focused on commercial real estate situation,” Jerome Powell told the House Committee on Financial Services last week."

Hmm… just like the Fed was focused on “transitory” inflation? What if the failures of Signature Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic were not the end of the crisis, but just the tip of the proverbial iceberg?"

"Has Any Of It Been Right?"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/26/23
"Has Any Of It Been Right?"
"Has any of the economic news been right? We have heard so much information over the last two years. That just doesn’t seem right. Everything they tell us doesn’t come true. What do you think?"
Comments here:

"Massive Price Increases At Sam's Club! Stock Up On The Deals! What's Coming?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/26/23
"Massive Price Increases At Sam's Club! 
Stock Up On The Deals! 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 skyrocketing prices and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Dead Economy; US Manufacturing Hits Lowest Level Ever"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/26/23
"Dead Economy; US Manufacturing Hits Lowest Level Ever"
Comments here:

"Economic Market Snapshot 6/26/23"

   

"Economic Market Snapshot 6/26/23"
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: creditequity valuationfunding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United Statesother advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Job cuts and much more.
Commentary, highly recommended:
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
And now... The End Game...
o

Sunday, June 25, 2023

"WW3 Update: They Are Planning Something Big, Get Ready!"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/25/23
"WW3 Update: They Are Planning Something Big, Get Ready!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Steve Cutts, "A Brief Disagreement"
"A visual journey into mankind's favorite pastime throughout the ages."

What can we know? What are we all?
Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,
with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

"Something Very Bad Is About To Happen - Weak People Are Going To Deal With Very Tough Times"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/25/23
"Something Very Bad Is About To Happen - 
Weak People Are Going To Deal With Very Tough Times"
Comments here:

"Meat Prices Will Triple In The Coming Weeks As Grocery Stores Struggle With Shortages"

Full screen recommended.
"Meat Prices Will Triple In The Coming Weeks 
As Grocery Stores Struggle With Shortages"
by Epic Economist

"If you’re planning to buy some beef to throw on the grill over the next few weeks, expect to pay up to three times more than you did just a couple of years ago, when our domestic supply was plentiful due to a historic cattle selloff. Since 2021, ranchers have been coping with drought and record feed prices, which forced many of them to send their animals for slaughter earlier than usual. And while that led to a higher supply and steadier prices back then, now it is resulting in falling production, empty shelves, and a painful spike in prices at grocery stores. According to industry sources familiar with the matter, we’re about to see the worst of meat shortages, and costs are about to explode for US consumers, who may have to trade their traditional steaks for cheaper alternatives for the rest of the year and into 2024.

Our domestic beef cow herd is currently at its smallest size since 1962. And now ranchers who fatten cattle have finally gained leverage in sales negotiations over the meatpackers that dominate the market. The US Department of Agriculture reports that tightening cattle supplies are expected to cause a significant year-over-year decrease in beef production, the first decline since 2015.

The biggest thing that looms large in the minds of market analysts right now is how the recession is going to affect the meatpacking industry from now on. Despite the predictions for demand reduction, these companies are likely to pass on even higher costs to consumers as they pay more to ranchers and feeders for their shrinking supply of cattle. Last month, live cattle futures prices reached a record 177.700 cents per pound for the front month. The peak was up 26% from a year earlier and 118% from the same period in 2021.

Paying more for cattle cuts into the meatpackers' profitability. That’s why they have to charge more for ground beef and steaks at a time of high inflation. For that reason, analysts forecast that beef prices can actually triple at the stores this year. In 2021, the average retail price for choice beef in the first quarter was about $7.60 a pound, 0.6% lower than a year earlier, Agriculture Department data show. In May, reports have shown that beef prices reached up to $20.99 in certain stores, three times higher than they were just a couple of years ago.

Some shoppers are trading down by going for cheaper items or shopping at bargain stores. Supply chain issues and a reluctance to strike deals with suppliers while commodities prices surge are also contributing to widespread shortages of everyday items, including carbonated beverages, oils, fruits, vegetables, grains, and nuts.

It is safe to say that by the end of the summer, supplies will get even tighter, and shelves will look even barer than they are right now. The shortages we’ve been warned about are already here, and they will only aggravate from this point on. It's time to ensure a reliable supply of essentials before items vanish from stores and retailers start to charge even more for their products. So stock up on what you can because the months ahead are going to be exceedingly difficult."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Sound of Invisible Waters"

Deuter, "Sound of Invisible Waters"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Why is the sky near Antares and Rho Ophiuchi so colorful? The colors result from a mixture of objects and processes. Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. Gaseous clouds whose atoms are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Backlit dust clouds block starlight and so appear dark.
Antares, a red supergiant and one of the brighter stars in the night sky, lights up the yellow-red clouds on the lower center. Rho Ophiuchi lies at the center of the blue nebula near the top. The distant globular cluster M4 is visible just to the right of Antares, and to the lower left of the red cloud engulfing Sigma Scorpii. These star clouds are even more colorful than humans can see, emitting light across the electromagnetic spectrum.”

Rumi, "The Guest House"

"The Guest House"

"This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond."

~ Rumi
"Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi was a 13th century Afghan poet and philosopher who heavily influenced both eastern and western poetry. His poetry is divided into categories: the quatrains and odes of the "Divan," the six books the "Masnavi," the discourses, the letters and the "Six Sermons." Rumi's major poetic work is "Matnawiye Ma'nawi," a six-volume poem, considered by many literary critics to be one of the greatest works of mystical poetry ever written. Rumi's prose works included "Fihi Ma Fihi," "Majalese Sab'a" and "Maktubat." His prose work largely contains sermons and lectures given by Rumi to his disciples and family members. Following Rumi's death, his followers founded the Mevlevi Order, also known as the "Whirling Dervishes."
Free downloads:
Freely download "The Divan" and "The Masnavi" here:

"The Story Of Man"

"The Story Of Man"
“The sands of time blew into a storm of images... images in sequence to tell the truth! Glorious legends of revolutionaries, bound only by a desire to be true to themselves, and to hope! Parables of colliding worlds, of forbidden love, of enemies healing the wounds of circumstance! Projected myth of persecution through greed and selfishness... and the will to survive! The Will to survive! And to survive in the face of those who claim credit for your very existence! We survive not as pawns, but as agents of hope. Sometimes misunderstood, but always true to our story. The story of Man."
- Scott Morse
Vangelis, "Alpha"
This song always suggested the image of our relentless, idealized, glorious collective March of Mankind through the ages. Despite it all, despite ourselves, we survive and march onward towards our unknown destiny.

Still, some wonder about our true nature as a species, as the Apex Predator of this planet, as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did when he asked,“What can we know? What are we all? Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts.” Indeed, Angelic aspirations regardless, the historical record suggests a less benevolent but far more accurate and truthful view of the instincts of beasts within Humanity...
Steve Cutts, "MAN"
“What a chimera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?”
- Blaise Pascal

"Pride and refuse," indeed...

The Poet: Robert Frost, “Acceptance”

“Acceptance”

“When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened.
Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, ‘safe!’
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be.”

- Robert Frost

"Putin Just Dropped A Bombshell And Outplayed The Western Coup"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 6/25/23
"Putin Just Dropped A Bombshell And 
Outplayed The Western Coup"
'"We are at the most dangerous moment in war as Russian President Putin warns the West. Putin told NATO leaders to avoid trying to take advantage of the failed coup attempt that unfolded over the past few hours. Of course, the collective West had fever dreams and fantasies that Russian President Putin was about to be overthrown in a civil war, a coup instigated by Western intelligence agencies. It backfired, and now we're watching to see what NATO does next."
Comments here:
o
Scott Ritter, 6/25/23
"Ukraine Update: 350,000 - 400,000 Ukrainian Troops Killed So Far"
Comments here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"We Shall Soon Be In A World..."

“We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which furious party cries will be raised against anybody who says that cows have horns, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening the mob with the news that grass is green.”
- G.K. Chesterton

Free Download: Barbara W. Tuchman, "The Guns of August"

“Before the Leaves Fall From the Trees”
by Simon Black

"The morning of June 28, 1914 began like any other normal day. It was a Sunday, so a lot of people went to church. Others prepared large meals for family gatherings, played with their children, or thumbed through the Sunday papers. At that point, tensions had been high in Europe for several years; the continent was bitterly divided by a series of complex diplomatic and military alliances, and small wars had recently broken out. Italy and the Ottoman Empire went to war in 1912 in a limited, 13-month conflict. And the First Balkan War was waged in early 1913. Overall, though, the continent clung to a delicate peace. And hardly anyone expected that most of the next three decades would be filled with chaos, poverty, and destruction. And then it happened.

That Sunday afternoon, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated during an official visit to Sarajevo. And the world changed forever. Five weeks later the entire continent was at war with itself. But even still, most of the ‘experts’ thought it would be a simple, speedy conflict. Germany’s emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, famously told his troops who were being shipped off to the front line in August 1914, “You will be home before the leaves fall from the trees...” It took four years and an estimated 68 million casualties to bring the war to a close. But that was only the prelude.

Following (and even during) World War I, a series of bloody revolutionary movements took hold in Europe, including in Russia, Greece, Spain, Turkey, and Ireland. Then came the Spanish flu, which claimed the lives of tens of millions of people. Later, Germany sunk into one of the worst episodes of hyperinflation in human history.

Communism began rapidly spreading across the world almost as quickly as the Spanish flu, often through violent fanatics who engaged in murder and arson in order to intimidate their opponents; this became known as the ‘Red Scare’ in the United States.

Of course there were some good years during the 1920s when people generally felt prosperous and happy; but it all came crashing down at the end of the decade when a severe economic depression strangled the entire world. It lasted for more than ten years, during which time the world was once again brought to an even more destructive war that didn’t end until atomic weapons obliterated the civilian populations of two Japanese cities.

Again – go back to June 1914. Who would have thought that the next 30+ years would play out so destructively? Even for the people who did predict that Europe would go to war in 1914, most leaders thought it would be over quickly. And almost no one expected it would spawn decades of chaos.

Today we’re obviously living in different times and under different circumstances. But we may be standing at a similar precipice as in 1914, staring at enormous trends that could shape our lives for years to come. Covid only scratches the surface.

We now know without a doubt, for example, how governments will respond the next time they feel there’s a threat to public health. They’ll say, “We’re listening to the scientists.” Really? The same scientists who told people they couldn’t go to work, school, or church, but it was perfectly fine for peaceful protesters to pack together like sardines without wearing masks because they’re apparently protected from the virus by their own righteousness? The same scientists who wanted to lock everyone down to prevent Covid, but are happy to accept skyrocketing rates of cancer, depression, suicide, heart disease, and domestic abuse as a result of those very lockdowns and so-called "vaccines'?

The public health consequences from this pandemic and "vaccine" will reverberate for years to come. And that doesn’t even begin to take the economic consequences into consideration. Western governments have taken on trillions of dollars in new debt this year and central banks have printed trillions more. Even with all that stimulus, however, there are still hundreds of millions of people worldwide who lost their jobs, and countless businesses that have closed.

Future generations who haven’t even been born yet will spend their entire working lives paying interest on the debts that are being accumulated today. The long-term consequences of all this are incalculable.

And then there are the social trends – the rise of neo-Marxism that’s sweeping the world so fast. It’s the Red Scare of the 21st century. They despise talented, successful people. They believe it’s greedy for you to keep a healthy portion of what you earn, but it’s not greedy for them to take it from you and spend it on themselves.

Many of the people in this movement, of course, are violent fanatics who routinely engage in arson, assault, and vandalism. Same for the social justice warriors who are just as quick to violence and intimidation; plus they’ve already commandeered the decision-making of some of the largest, most powerful companies in the world. You can’t even watch a football game or a TV commercial anymore without some commentary on oppression and victimization. And any intellectual dissent is met with intimidation or censorship.

In fact the largest consumer technology companies in the world have become our censors. We’re not allowed to share scientific information that doesn’t conform to the Chinese-controlled World Health Organization’s guidance. And news articles that don’t match their ideology are blocked.

Let’s not kid ourselves – these trends are not going away any time soon. It’s great to be optimistic, hope for the best, and enjoy the good years as they come. But it makes sense to at least be prepared for the possibility that we could be at the very beginning of a period of enormous instability that may last a very long time."
"The Guns of August" 
"In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize–winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players."
Freely download here:
“It is history that teaches us to hope. It is well that war is 
so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”
- Robert E. Lee

But we've learned nothing from history, nothing at all, and our fondness, no, love of war, has only improved the weapons...and now the seemingly inevitable probability of a nuclear war with Russia is very real...

Greg Hunter, "Cancer is Exploding Because of CV19 Vax – Dr. Betsy Eads"

"Cancer is Exploding Because of CV19 Vax – Dr. Betsy Eads"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Dr. Betsy Eads has been warning for more than a year about extreme disease and death coming because of the Cv19 bioweapon/vax. Dr. Eads has been punished by the medical community for being a CV19 vax truth warrior. Everything she predicted has happened, and it is guaranteed to get worse - much worse. Using fresh data just on breast cancers alone posted by the American Cancer Society on Cancer.org, Dr. Eads explains, “From Cancer.org, in the year 2019 for those women under 45 years old (with breast cancer), it was 26,660. It 2020, it was 26,500. In 2021 when the CV19 vax rolled out, it was 26,561. Cancer was not seen in the initial rollout because it took some time for the spike protein delivery. So, in 2022, those numbers went from 26,561 to 47,000. That is a two-fold increase. That’s a direct result of the mRNA (CV19) shots. In 2023, it went up six-fold to 297,000 breast cancer cases, and we are not even done with 2023. That may be as high as 500,000 breast cancer cases. So, cancer is exploding, and there is a direct correlation to the mRNA (CV19) vaccines. The data is just pouring out. The Department of Defense DMED data has cancers up 600% to 1,300%.”

The good news is there are new treatments for cancer. The bad news is information on those treatments are being suppressed. Dr. Eads says, “I use science-backed papers. If you type in NIH, Ivermectin and cancer, it will spit out a bunch of papers of proof that Ivermectin treats cancer. If you go and search Fenbendazole studies from Europe, you will see at least 63 papers on Fenbendazole as a treatment for cancer, but not all cancers. There are a number of them that show the combination of Ivermectin, Fenbendazole and B17 as (treatments) and cures for cancer, but not all cancers. There is enough literature (peer-reviewed scientific studies) to support using those. They suppress those studies, and, of course, it is not going to get out into the mainstream media. Of course, that is all propaganda. On December 29, 2012, President Obama signed HR 4310. The 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Basically, section 1078 of that bill authorizes the use of propaganda inside the USA, which had previously been banned since 1948. They legalized propaganda. So, they legalized mainstream media, Big Pharma, Hospitals and doctors to put out campaigns against Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and Ivermectin.”

In February 2023, Dr. Eads predicted there would be “At least 1 billion dead or disabled from the CV19 bioweapon/vax.” Is Dr. Eads sticking by that prediction? Dr. Eads says, “Yes, I am, and, actually, it’s going to be higher than that. A paper recently came out showing 600,000 Americans a year are dying from Covid shots. That data is supported by people like Ed Dowd. He looked at the actuary numbers in life insurance companies. We don’t have good data from the hospitals because they are not reporting vaccine injuries and death. They are not correlating the deaths with the mRNA vaccines. They are doing this on purpose.”

Dr. Eads says the number of deaths from the mRNA injections may be 1.2 billion per year world-wide. Eads says, “If we allowed doctors to use Ivermectin, HCQ and CDS (Chlorine Dioxide Solution), we would not have 600,000 a year dead (from the CV19 injections), and I believe that is a low number. We would not have that, and that’s the tragedy. This is a democide.” There is much more in the 54-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks to 25-year veteran Dr. Elizabeth Eads, DO, as she continues to highlight the unstoppable deaths and permanent injuries. She offers hope and treatments for the CV19 bioweapon vax." 
o
At least understand what's killing you, and why...
"The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing
the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world."


May God have mercy on you if you've taken this shot...

"Houses Are Selling At A Loss"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/25/23
"Houses Are Selling At A Loss"
"Here’s a very interesting stat that we have not seen since 2016. The number of investor owned properties that are sold at a loss is growing. We are seeing large restaurants go out of business at a very scary pace."
Comments here:

"Major Price Increases At Walmart! This Is Crazy! What's Coming?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/25/23
"Major Price Increases At Walmart!
 This Is Crazy! What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog, we are at Walmart and are noticing significant price increases on the Great Value store brand. With most grocery stores skyrocketing in food prices, we are finding it more and more difficult to put food on the table."
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

 

Saturday, June 24, 2023

Musical Interlude: Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad"

 

Full screen recommended.
Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad"

Brutal Truth! Scott Ritter, "This Is Nuclear Suicide Unfolding Before Our Eyes"

Redacted, 6/24/23
Scott Ritter,
 "This Is Nuclear Suicide Unfolding Before Our Eyes"
"NATO is getting dangerously close to making the mother of all mistakes pushing us to the brink of nuclear war. As Ukraine's counter offensive has collapsed NATO and the U.S. are planning the next stage of this war, either repeat the mistakes of the failed counter offensive or escalating the attacks against Russia with long range weapons. Former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter joins us to explain NATO's suicide mission."
Comments here:

"A Look to the Heavens"

 "Is our Milky Way Galaxy this thin? Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is viewed edge-on from planet Earth. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile, bright NGC 4565 is a stop on many telescopic tours of the northern sky, in the faint but well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. This sharp, colorful image reveals the spiral galaxy's boxy, bulging central core cut by obscuring dust lanes that lace NGC 4565's thin galactic plane. 

An assortment of other background galaxies is included in the pretty field of view. Thought similar in shape to our own Milky Way Galaxy, NGC 4565 lies about 40 million light-years distant and spans some 100,000 light-years. Easily spotted with small telescopes, sky enthusiasts consider NGC 4565 to be a prominent celestial masterpiece Messier missed."