Thursday, June 29, 2023

"Only Human..."

“The acceptance of ambiguity implies more than the commonplace understanding that some good things and some bad things happen to us. It means that we know that good and evil are inextricably intermixed in human affairs; that they contain, and sometimes embrace, their opposites; that success may involve failure of a different kind, and failure may be a kind of triumph.” - Sydney J. Harris

And, of course, the universal and inevitable excuse…
“A person who is going to commit an inhuman act invariably
excuses himself to himself by saying, “I’m only human, after all.”
- Sydney J. Harris

I've always wondered...
Everyone says “Only human…” compared to what?
Full screen recommended.
Billy Joel, "Only Human"

"Could Be Worse..."

"I'd been in hairier situations than this one. Actually, it's sort of depressing, thinking how many times I'd been in them. But if experience had taught me anything, it was this: No matter how screwed up things are, they can get a whole lot worse."
- Jim Butcher
Dig your way out, they said...

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal: Crash Coming, It's All Over In October"

Full screen recommended.
Very strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 6/29/23
"Trends Journal: 
Crash Coming, It's All Over In October"
"In today's Trends in the News, Gerald Celente, discusses the multitude of issues plaguing our world today and explains how to prepare, prevail and prosper in the face of them. The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
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Gerald's in fine form today, lol

"The Worst Housing Crash Of Our Lifetime Is About To Wipe Out All Of Your Money"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 6/29/23
"The Worst Housing Crash Of Our Lifetime 
Is About To Wipe Out All Of Your Money"

"We’re already in the midst of a historic housing market crash that is shaping up to become the biggest since at least the 1940s. This downturn is going to affect all of us and have far-reaching repercussions for the US economy and financial markets. With home values plunging in recent months, the net worth of millions of families is at huge risk, and many of these households are already underwater on their mortgages, facing foreclosure, and losing their homes in 2023. Experts say this is a “very frightening time” for the entire real estate industry, and new data reveals disturbing similarities to the 2008 disaster and why we all should worry about what’s coming next. That’s what we’re going to expose today.

Home prices surged by 38.1% since 2020, according to figures released by Fortune. To put it into perspective, even a 28% drop in housing prices like it happened in 2009, would not put home prices back at their historic norms. Right now, higher mortgage rates are making homes less valuable and more costly. In other words, even though price corrections have already begun all across the country, higher rates are elevating mortgage payments and making it more expensive for buyers to purchase a home.

But since November 2022, housing prices have started to fall by an average of 2.4% month-over-month, according to the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index. Experts are predicting that in the third quarter of 2023, US properties may lose on average 15% of their value. Several other indicators point to a further home price correction in the subsequent quarters. For instance, U.S. home construction has been falling for five straight months, with single-family housing starts plunging by almost 5% in Q1, according to a Commerce Department report.

Moreover, institutional homebuyers are already preparing for a major downturn and reducing their purchases now so they can snap up better deals after the big crash occurs. For example, YieldStreet reduced buying levels by 90%, while Blackstone-owned Home Partners of America also slowed their purchases by 88%. “We’re pretty much on pause across all home buying strategies,” Tejas Joshi of Yieldstreet told Fortune.

With economic conditions deteriorating month after month, a drag down in business activity and rising unemployment is “creating the largest housing correction since 1945,” said Mitch Roschelle, a founding partner at Macro Trends Advisors. “The current correction already stands as the second largest in the post-World War II economy,” Roschelle emphasizes.

And many US families are already feeling the impact of the current housing bubble burst. Households that experienced increases in their net worth during the peak of the bubble are now facing the “reverse wealth effect,” according to best-selling finance author and former Wall Street analyst, John Rubino. With the value of their houses plunging significantly, families are losing their purchasing power and coping with tighter budgets, which is resulting in slower spending and economic growth, Rubino notes.

That has been particularly detrimental for middle-class households, which tend to be heavily leveraged, with their homes as primary assets. Credit conditions are already tight, and housing and economic activity are already weakening, a crash is already underway, and the numbers indicate that the worst is still ahead of us. For US homeowners, the pain has only just begun. We’re now watching the death of the American dream, and the next few chapters are going to be even more disturbing than what we’ve seen so far."
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"Heading Into An Economic Deep Freeze; Spending Is Slowing; Home Sales Plunge; Fed Will Hike"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/29/23
"Heading Into An Economic Deep Freeze; 
Spending Is Slowing; Home Sales Plunge; Fed Will Hike"
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The Daily "Near You?"

South Kortright, New York, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Monstrous Thing..."

"The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured - disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui - in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off."
- Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer”

"In Retrospect..."

“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.”
– "The Fourth Turning", Strauss & Howe

"Fed Admits 'Catastrophe' Coming For US Companies; Yield Curve Inversion Worsens"

Gregory Mannarino PM 6/29/23
"Fed Admits 'Catastrophe' Coming For US Companies; 
Yield Curve Inversion Worsens"
Comments here:
o

"How It Really Is"

 

"They Stole So Much Money"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/29/23
"They Stole So Much Money"
"The inspector generals report just came in and we find out that over $200 billion was stolen during the health crisis. We are getting warnings from the most Monday in business says that the consumer has no money."
Comments here:

Bill Bonner, "Urban Hell"

"Urban Hell"
Debt... defaults... dereliction... 
welcome to the new abnormal...
by Bill Bonner

London, England - "We took the Eurostar to London yesterday. How it brought back memories! Waking up before dawn…finding an early morning taxi…long lines at the train station…For 10 years, we lived in Paris but worked in London. Those were the days when employees were supposed to show up for work at the office. So, we usually took the train up to London on Tuesday morning and came back on Thursday evening. Not much has changed. Except, most of the people on the train yesterday were tourists, few were the business travelers we used to see. The new ‘laptop class’ doesn’t need to come to the office. It reacts to ‘data’…opinions…direction – on line, without even getting out of bed.

It is all a bit puzzling. Leaving Paris in the early morning, the city seemed to be coming alive, just as it always did. It was hard to find a taxi…and young people flew by on their bicycles. The ‘eboueurs’ were noisily tossing garbage cans around. Groups of Arabs and Africans gathered around the Gare du Nord. Then, in London, too…it seemed normal. Normal people. Normal busy-ness. Normal crowds of tourists in the summer. Why do Paris and London seem so ‘normal?’ We noticed the same thing in Dublin. It is full of normal people, not just people on welfare or with gender ambiguity or mental problems.

“London is not normal at all,” said an English friend at dinner. “We English are mad about property. And for the first time in a generation, property prices in London are falling. We have all the same problems as US cities. They’re just not so visible…yet.”

Not So Lucky…Today, we continue our descent into Urban Hell, to find out what’s going on. In Baltimore, our guess is that full-time, in-the-office workers are a relic of the past. In our own business, we are consolidating, putting unnecessary space up for sale. But other companies are doing the same thing. So, who is going to buy it? Fortunately, we never financed our buildings. We bought them to use, not to speculate. But many urban real estate owners are not so lucky.

Which brings us to the third thing to whack US cities (after decades of shyster politics…and then covid panic lockdowns): higher interest rates. Alert readers are probably already racing ahead of us…they are wondering, as we are, if cities themselves are not a relic of an earlier age, soon to be discarded like a beer can along the highway of progress. But we’ll come back to that...

In 2020, the Primary Trend of interest rates had been down for 40 years – substantially boosting prices for almost all assets, including urban rental space...and making leveraged real estate speculators rich. But in July of that year, the interest rate cycle hit bottom; the Fed’s policy rate was ‘effectively zero.’ The 10-year US treasury bond yield dropped under 3%. And so did 30-year mortgages. Since then, most interest rates have approximately doubled, posing a huge problem for people who need to refinance. Here’s Markets Insider:

"Fed economists say a historic 37% of US companies are in big trouble - and warn that could worsen the fallout from fighting inflation "The share of nonfinancial firms in financial distress has reached a level that is higher than during most previous tightening episodes since the 1970s," Ander Perez-Orive and Yannick Timmer said in a recent note. Debt-ridden companies will balk at spending money on new equipment or facilities, hiring more people, and ramping up production… That could lead to the Fed's rate hikes having some of the most devastating impacts of any of its tightening cycles over the past four decades, they noted."

Look at the numbers. Imagine that you paid $100,000 for a building, with 90% financing at 3%. You have $10,000 of your own money at risk…and you expect to carry the rest at a cost of $2,700 per year. If you have $5,000 of net rental income, you subtract the financing cost and are left with $2,300 – a very good return on a $10,000 investment.

But then, let’s say your interest charge doubles, to $5,400. Meanwhile, your rental income has been cut in half – to only $2,500. Now, you are losing money…with a negative return of 29% per year. And your equity capital has been wiped out. The building was capitalized at 20 times rent. Now that rents are only $2,500, that would suppose a capital value of only $50,000 –a 50% loss.

As rents fall and interest rates rise, real estate investors’ sharpen their pencils. They find the Old Time Religion; they don’t want to pay 20 times rent. They want to pay less than 10 times rental income. This will lower the value of the building from $100,000 to as low as $12,500. In other words, it will do to your commercial real estate roughly what the Russian army did to Bakmut.

And this situation is not getting better. It’s going to get worse. The Washington Post: "With inflation in the United States still excessive, most Federal Reserve officials expect to raise interest rates further this year, Chair Jerome Powell told a House committee Wednesday. “Inflation pressures continue to run high, and the process of getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go,” Powell said on the first of two days of semi-annual testimony on Capitol Hill."

Moneywise: "Patrick Carroll, founder and CEO of CARROLL, sounded the alarm about the state of the U.S. commercial real estate market in a recent interview with CNBC. “The party’s over, unfortunately,” he said. “The office market’s going to be destroyed, hotels are going to be destroyed - it’s going to be ugly."

And here is where wondering recommences. How long will the ugliness persist? What will it mean for cities? Interest rate cycles last a notoriously long time. The most recent upswing, ending in 2020, for example, began in 1980 – 43 years ago. Before that, the downside moves (higher yields) lasted from the end of WWII until 1980 – about 35 years. Now, imagine how this cycle will affect urban property. What will our cities look like when the cycle finally reaches its end? As always…more to come…"

"Independence Day Sale At Kroger! Massive Holiday Sale! Don't Miss This!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/29/23
"Independence Day Sale At Kroger! 
Massive Holiday Sale! Don't Miss This!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are noticing that they are having a huge sale on holiday items! We are stocking up and showing the best deals as we take you shopping with us. It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Anna From Russia, 6/29/23
"Real Life in Russia under Sanctions;
 Russian Economy; Russian Supermarket!"
Comments here:

Greg Hunter, "Living in a Coup with Massive Election Rigging & War – Martin Armstrong"

"Living in a Coup with Massive Election Rigging & War – 
Martin Armstrong"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong was forecasting “chaos” in 2023, and that’s exactly what we got. His cycle work says don’t look for it to get better anytime soon. Armstrong explains, “We are in the midst of a coup. We have all these people who have been neocons for 30 years. Even Ron Paul said recently that the neocons have been waging war for 30 years and have not won a one single one. This is what they live for. Look at the clip of Lindsey Graham saying this is the best money we ever spent killing Russians. How can you take pleasure in that statement that this is the best money we ever spent killing Russians? This is not defense. These are the words of a psychopath in my mind. They are not about to accept anybody who is going to be against war. The neocons are in full control of the government - period. We are living in the time of a coup. The United States is not the free country you thought it was...”

Armstrong also predicts that the neocons will rig the 2024 election so Biden (or some other neocon) gets a second term. Is there any way to stop this election rigging and fraud in 2024? Armstrong says, “I don’t believe so. Our computers show that holy hell breaks loose starting in 2025. I think the problem will be the cheating will be in everybody’s face this time.”

Armstrong also says the neocons will try to start a war before the 2024 election so Biden will win because a wartime president has never lost an election. Armstrong says the cheating will be necessary because the real poll numbers for Biden are in the single digits and not the 40% approval ratings the Lying Legacy Media tells you. Armstrong contends Biden’s approval number is still stuck at 9.5% with his deadly accurate Socrates computer program, but the big reason for Biden and his crew to worry is the real inflation number. Armstrong says, “Inflation is subsiding a little bit, but it is basically still over 26%.”

Armstrong says Biden’s approval numbers are so low and inflation is so high that they have to have war with Russia. War is the reason they had to remove Trump out of the White House because Trump was against constant war. Armstrong adds, “No way they are going to allow a free election. It you think the CIA cannot rig the vote, I don’t know what planet you live on.”

Don’t expect Fed Head Jay Powell to lower interest rates. It will be just the opposite. Armstrong explains, “What is Powell looking at? War is the number one cause of inflation. He can’t say because you people are dumping all this money into Ukraine, inflation is only going to go higher because then he is criticizing the government. So, he just says he’s looking at ‘international considerations.’ Look what the Vietnam war did. It broke the back of Bretton Woods. War is always the number one problem. The neocons only care about winning, and they do not care about the country. The do not care about your 401-k or your retirement. They could care less.”

In closing, Armstrong warns, “Russia is like a wild animal, and if it is cornered, it will attack.” This means the whole thing in Ukraine could go nuclear if Russia is pushed into a corner. And what about all that debt the western world has built up? Armstrong says, “They intend to default on all the sovereign debt. I don’t see this succeeding. I think it’s all going to collapse. The reason why they are doing this is they realize they are losing power. They feel it slipping out of their fingers. The more that happens, the more they become aggressive. That’s what this is all about.” There is much more in the 53-minute interview.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with Martin Armstrong,
 cycle expert and author of the new book “The Plot to Seize Russia.” 

Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Scott Ritter, "The Possible Fate of Odessa and Kharkov"

Scott Ritter, 6/28/23
"The Possible Fate of Odessa and Kharkov"
Comments here:

"Most Americans Are Broke As Prices Keep Going Up; Get Ready To Lose Your Job And Your House"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/28/23
"Most Americans Are Broke As Prices Keep Going Up; 
Get Ready To Lose Your Job And Your House"
Comments here:

"A Retirement Nightmare Is Already Upon Us And It Will Destroy Millions Of American Families"

Full screen recommended.
"A Retirement Nightmare Is Already Upon Us 
And It Will Destroy Millions Of American Families"
by Epic Economist

"Money problems are impacting US households in numerous ways. With workers coping with stagnant wages and the soaring cost of necessities, financial troubles are leading to higher divorce rates, adults moving back home with their parents and older Americans getting more economically insecure as they help their children with recurring expenses, which has been compromising their ability to save for their future. All of that is contributing to the ongoing retirement crisis. Experts say conditions are set to aggravate even further in 2024 when we reach what they call “peak 65,” when the number of 65-year-olds hits the highest level in history. However, most of them remain unprepared for retirement, and broken families play a major role in this worsening situation, new research shows. That’s why today, we decided to expose how the degradation of American families is making seniors in the United States more financially vulnerable than ever before.

America’s retirement system is broken, and has been failing to provide workers the independence they need to maintain their standard of living post-retirement.But the truth is that this crisis is much more complex than it seems, and new research shows that broken families are also having a significant impact on the finances of older Americans. Analysts at Barron’s point to family issues as one of the biggest threats to retirement. Over generations, parents have set up their kids to success, but today, that assistance is costing much more than it did in the past and also lasting far longer. For instance, the cost of a four-year private college averages $48,500 a year, double what it did in the late 1980s. However, many college students now graduate with a load of debt that makes it hard to survive on an entry-level salary without financial help from mom and dad. New data from Pew Research shows that more young adults are living with their parents than with romantic partners for the first time since the late 1800s.

Seeing their children experiencing financial hardship, almost three-quarters of respondents acknowledged putting their children’s interests ahead of their own retirement needs. On top of that, even though those children are adults and away from home, their parents are still spending money on them. Too much money. In 2022, nearly 80% of parents gave some financial support to their adult children - to the tune of $500 billion a year, according to estimates by consulting firm Age Wave. That’s twice what parents put into retirement accounts, according to a survey from Bank of America.

Moreover, financial troubles are one of the main reasons why American couples continue to divorce at increasingly higher rates with each passing year. And that can also wreak havoc on retirement savings and people’s overall financial way of life, the analysts highlight.

“Whatever assets that will be left over after the divorce will be cut in half,” explains Rachael Burns, CFP, certified divorce financial analyst. Couples typically split living expenses, which can help them boost their retirement savings. “But once you cut the marital cord, you’ll likely be on your own and see a spike in cost of living based on your new single status,” Burns outlines.

It seems that no matter how much they’ve tried to reach financial security, more and more risks continue to emerge. One unexpected financial setback can throw them off the edge and push them right back to square one. And considering just how big the population of seniors is getting, it is clear that this crisis isn’t just going to affect older Americans, but our society as a whole."
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Musical Interlude: 2002, "We Meet Again"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "We Meet Again"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It's hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait, though.
Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy sports characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars. Remarkably, this deep image also finds NGC 3521 embedded in gigantic bubble-like shells. The shells are likely tidal debris, streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past."

"The Worst Part..."

"Our world is not safe. It is a toxic swamp populated by predators and parasites. The odds are stacked against us from the moment of conception. We survive only because we fight the elements, hunger, disease, each other. And, although civilization promises us safe harbor, that promise is a fairy tale. Only the storm is real. It comes for each of us. And we cannot win. We can only choose how we will suffer our defeat. We can meekly take our beatings, and die like lemmings, finding solace in the belief that we shall one day inherit the earth. Or, we can plunge into the chaos with eyes wide open, taking comfort instead from the bruises, scars, and broken bones which prove that we fought to live and die as gods."
 - J.K. Franko, "Life for Life"
"The worst part is wondering how you'll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you'll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it's treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself."
- Louis-Ferdinand Celineo
"In the movie 'The Lion in Winter', when the sons, in the dungeon, think they hear Henry coming down the stairs to kill them:
Richard: "He's here! He'll get no satisfaction out of us! Don't let him see you beg! Take it like a man!"
Geoffrey: "You chivalric fool! As if the way one falls down matters!"
Richard:  "Well, when the fall is all that's left, it matters a great deal."

"What The World Needs Now"

"In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. You can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization and filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love. What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black."
- Robert F. Kennedy, on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Full screen recommended.
"What The World Needs Now"
by Tom Clay
"Detroit DJ brought this out early in 1973 and it was seen as
a celebration of the message behind that spread
by John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy."

"This Is Your Life..."

“This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.
Every breath is a choice.
Every minute is a choice.
To be or not to be.
Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice.
Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.
If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume
and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?"
- Chuck Palahniuk
"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make,
who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"
- Stephen Levine

"We Don't Have A Clue..."

We don’t have a clue what’s really going down, we just kid ourselves that we’re in control of our lives while a paper’s thickness away things that would drive us mad if we thought about them for too long play with us, and move us around from room to room, and put us away at night when they’re tired, or bored.”
- Neil Gaiman

The Daily "Near You?"

Frisco, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Col. Doug Macgregor, "The Russian Army Has Finished It"

Col. Doug Macgregor, 6/28/23
"The Russian Army Has Finished It"
"Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current
 geopolitical events in the United States of America and the world."
Comments here:

"This Is Actually Terrifying"

"This Is Actually Terrifying"
by Jim Richards

"The “coup” in Russia is over but there’s a very worrying development going on in Ukraine right now that should frighten everyone. That’s the growing risk of a nuclear war. I’m not being hyperbolic. Let’s break it all down…

President Biden is accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of preparing to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The theory is that if Russia is in danger of military collapse in Ukraine, Putin will resort to the use of tactical nuclear weapons out of desperation. But you can basically rule that out because Russia isn’t losing the war in Ukraine. In fact, it’s winning the war and continues to gain momentum. Russia is crushing the much-anticipated Ukrainian offensive and is either advancing or holding the line in other sectors.

Meanwhile, Russian arms factories are churning out massive amounts of weapons and ammunition while the West is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find enough weapons and ammo to send to Ukraine. It’s a war of attrition and there’s no practical way that Ukraine can win that war. So why would Putin need to use nuclear weapons? The answer, of course, is that he wouldn’t. He’s winning the war.

Nuclear Swordsmanship: But such warnings about Putin using nuclear weapons are not new. Biden has been accusing Russia of threatening to use nuclear weapons since the start of the war last February. Some perspective is needed to assess this claim. For the record, the United States is the first and only country to conduct a nuclear war, which it did between Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, killing about a quarter-million civilians.

Putin has made it clear that Russia will not use nuclear weapons unless the U.S. or NATO allies do so first. The U.S. has not made a similar pledge.

Biden based his threat assessment on the fact that Putin recently moved tactical nuclear weapons to its ally, Belarus, which is closer to Kyiv. That’s true, but it conveniently ignores the facts that the U.S. has placed nuclear weapons in Germany, that the U.K. and France are nuclear powers in their own rights and that U.S. Navy submarines and destroyers with nuclear missiles are deployed around Russia. Belarus also had nuclear weapons when it was part of the Soviet Union prior to 1991. In short, there was nothing particularly provocative about Putin’s move relative to prior positioning and the U.S. deployment of nukes.

MADness! What is provocative is a recent article by Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Rubin recommended that the U.S. should provide tactical nuclear weapons to the Ukrainians themselves. The rationale is a version of the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, MAD, that maintained stability between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union (really Russia) during the Cold War. The idea is if each side has enough nuclear weapons to survive a first strike by the other and launch a second strike of its own, then neither side will start a nuclear war because it would be destroyed in turn.

There’s merit to the MAD doctrine subject to a long list of conditions including large arsenals, secure command-and-control procedures, good communication between the protagonists (such as the “hot line”) and rational leadership on both sides. None of those conditions applies to Ukraine. It would have a modest arsenal (not enough to survive a first strike), has weak command-and-control, has almost no communication with Russia and has desperate and insecure leadership. It’s almost as if Rubin’s proposal is designed to force Putin to attack any Ukrainian nuclear capacity as a way to justify escalation by the U.S. and get U.S. and NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine.

That’s a short path to World War III. Any talk of giving Ukraine nuclear weapons is reckless. Rubin’s idea could be behind Putin’s plan to move nuclear weapons to Belarus as a way to dissuade the U.S. from going further. Of course, Putin’s actions in Belarus are an example of escalation, which may be exactly what Rubin and the other warmongers in the U.S. wanted. Simply put, Rubin’s idea is reckless and moves the world closer to nuclear war.

When you hear Biden talk about Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons, it’s critical to bear in mind that the U.S. is the real threat and is acting with a view to escalating the war and dragging NATO into a direct war with Russia.

Will Ukraine Conduct a “False Flag” Attack on a Nuclear Power Plant? But that’s not all. There’s the possibility that an increasingly desperate Ukraine could try to stage a “false flag” attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP) in the Kherson region and blame it on Russia. Both Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and the head of Ukrainian intelligence services have warned recently about a possible Russian attack on the plant. In other words, they could be putting the conditions in place for a false flag attack. “See, we warned you this would happen!”

Such an attack could potentially spread nuclear radiation throughout the region and possibly beyond. It wouldn’t be on the level of Chernobyl because the plant is operating at a much smaller capacity than Chernobyl. But still, it would be seen as an unacceptable war crime by Russia, which would spark international outrage and set the stage for direct NATO intervention. Incidentally, ZNPP is currently under Russian control, but much of the surrounding territory is still held by the Ukrainians.

How might an attack on the plant go down? Here’s some more detail: Ukraine (under direction of the U.S. and with U.S. help) could send a commando team to the facility, plant heavy explosives and then detonate them in a way intended to cause a partial meltdown and release of radiation. Prevailing winds would carry the radiation in the direction of Romania, Poland and Slovakia, all of whom are members of NATO. Once the radiation reaches those countries it will be regarded as an “attack” on NATO members. This will trigger Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which says that an attack on one is an attack on all.

Sens. Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, in fact, just proposed legislation stating that Russian nuclear weapons use in Ukraine would be considered a direct attack on NATO. Bombing a nuclear power plant isn’t the same as employing tactical nuclear weapons, but do you really think they’d draw that distinction?

The Article 5 trigger would provide legal cover to the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany and the rest of the coalition to send troops to Ukraine to prop up the failing offensive. The next step would be direct combat between U.S. and Russian troops. And that’s a direct gateway to World War III.

Is This Really Just Conspiratorial Nonsense? You might dismiss all this talk as conspiratorial nonsense. After all, why would Ukraine want to create a serious nuclear incident on its own soil? I’d just remind you that there’s credible evidence (according to German intelligence) that Ukrainian security agencies were responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the largest act of eco-terrrorism ever conducted. In fairness, there’s also credible evidence that the U.S. carried out the attack, so it might not have been Ukraine. But it remains a legitimate possibility.

It’s also probable that Ukraine destroyed the Nova Kakhovka Hydroelectric Dam earlier this month in an effort to undermine Russia’s position in the area. The result was an environmental disaster. As with Nord Stream 2, there’s no definitive proof that Ukraine was responsible. Of course, as with the pipeline, Ukraine blamed Russia. While it’s possible Russia did it, Russia stood to lose much more than Ukraine from the dam’s destruction and the subsequent flooding. If you were a detective, Ukraine would be your prime suspect.

Assuming Ukraine was responsible for both the pipeline and dam incidents, would it be out of the question for it to stage a nuclear incident if that meant bringing NATO directly into the war? I don’t think it would be.

Again, I have no proof that Ukraine was actually responsible for the destruction of the pipeline or the dam. But it is a reasonable possibility. That’s why you shouldn’t rule out the possibility of a false flag attack on the nuclear power plant. Again, Ukraine is getting desperate and desperate times call for desperate measures. So if there is an attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in the days to come, you’ll know who was responsible. You’ll also know that the world is one step closer to nuclear war."
o

"How It Really Is"

 

Bill Bonner, "Poverty, Drugs and Political Machines"

"Poverty, Drugs and Political Machines"
A fatal combination for America's once proud down towns...
by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "An old friend writes from Baltimore: 'I was taking a post-prandial stroll the other day, up St. Paul, a left on Read, then down again on Charles. I noticed there was a single car parked inside the 1217 kraal. Two on the lot behind 808.

I noticed the fading For Sale banner on the cast-iron fence in front of the Chas. St. property. The dead and deserted lunch-time eateries heading down toward Pratt. Tumbleweeds where Kerrigan Kitikul used to make the best Chicken Pad Thai anywhere, complaining to me about the latter-day yuppies who ordered chicken without the chicken.

No chickens, no yuppies in sight. Just grad students with crap hanging from their pierced nostrils and the bored scribblings of tenth-graders permanently etched on their flabby hides. Looking up to good old George W, I pondered if the time was right to replace him with Horatio Nelson, gazing over the swells at Trafalgar... shot-to-sh*t French men o'war... the shivered-me timbers of Spanish galleons... a single oar still moving in frantic cones: a lone survivor unaware that the painted Fortuna at the bow was already winking at passing mackerel. O quae mutatio rerum (how things have changed)...'

Political Machines: Our friend was describing the carcass of our own business! Until 2020, we attracted hundreds of young workers into the city…ready to spend their money and enjoy misspending their youth. Now, they see no reason to come into the city at all. Our buildings – 10 of them in the heart of the city – are mostly empty. They had been grand houses for rich people. Then, after the rich left, they became nice places to work, with desks and computer screens amid the classical trimwork.

Yesterday, we began to describe what happened to American cities. Democratic mayors, machine politics and wars against poverty and drugs pummeled the cities over decades. Today, we drop down further, like Dante Alighieri, and continue our exploration of the circles of Hell.

Fox Business: "The business districts in a number of America’s major cities like New York and San Francisco are facing an "urban doom loop" as the workforce shifts away from office work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic – a trend that has economists raising alarm about the fiscal impacts. This was not solely the fault of Democratic city governments. While they continued to jab and punch at their own voters, the Trump Administration came at them like Mike Tyson for Evander Holyfield’s left ear. In March of 2020, Trump proclaimed ‘two weeks to stop the spread’ – a shutdown of much of the US economy. Workers suddenly didn’t have to come to the office. They could work, or not, remotely."

Or Not…Even then, it was obvious that the Covid virus was a threat to the old and the un-fit…not to the huge majority of people with 9-5 jobs. Most working people are under 65 years of age. But the overwhelming bulk of Covid victims had already retired. The Mayo Clinic reports: In the U.S., about 81% of deaths from the disease have been in people aged 65 and older. Risks are even higher for older people when they have other health conditions.

In other words, people died from the Covid much like they did everything else – when they got old. And by now, despite vaccines that promised to protect them from it, almost everyone we know has gotten Covid 19, some people more than once. And (almost!) every one of them is still alive.

The horrors of the lockdowns are largely forgiven. But they are not forgotten. Dr. Fauci, the perpetrator of the scam, is joining the faculty of our old alma mater, Georgetown, where he will be able to infect young minds. But office space is still largely vacant. During the lockdown, people in cities could scarcely leave their houses or apartments. They were trapped – often in dreadful circumstances. After all, in big cities, space tends to be expensive. Many people – especially young people – use their tiny pads just as places to sleep. The rest of the time, they are out and about – at work, at health clubs, at bars, parks and restaurants. But during the lockdown they were, well, locked down. There was nowhere to go. And nothing to do. God forbid you were trapped in a small space with someone you didn’t like.

Fake Emergency: Many people – the trend setters – took the lockdowns as an invitation to get out of Dodge. They headed to states that were less eager to tell their citizens what they could and could not do. Small towns and suburbs were more pleasant, freer, and even cheaper. And the emigres found that they could work just as well in their new gardens – remotely – as they once worked in their cubicles. And then, when the fake emergency was over, they didn’t want to go back to work. Fox continues:

"The growing popularity of remote work has decreased the number of workers heading to the office on a daily basis and made it easier than ever for workers to live in suburban and rural areas without needing to commute. That workforce migration poses challenges for businesses reliant on sales and traffic from bustling downtowns, and risks triggering a fiscal doom loop in which cities see tax revenue dwindle and respond by raising taxes or reducing services, further exacerbating conditions for the remaining residents and businesses.

Office occupancy rates in major cities fell to just 10% by the end of 2020. Still today, only about half the workforce has returned to the desks and diners that once knew them. In response, landlords have had to reduce office values by an estimated 39% to retain renters. But the vacancy rate is running at twice the historic average. And in total, economists believe the value of New York’s commercial office space might be cut by about half a trillion dollars as a result."

Yes…city governments and the national government have both done their parts to make city life miserable. But those are just the outer rings of Urban Hell. There are more. Stay tuned..."

Gregory Mannarino, "Expect A Worldwide Banking System Crisis/Collapse"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/28/23
"Expect A Worldwide Banking System Crisis/Collapse"
Comments here:

"Brace For The Next Move"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/28/23
"Brace For The Next Move"
"We are hearing about more layoffs now. The banking industry, and the automotive industry are having massive layoffs. Get ready for what's next."
Comments here:

"What If..."

"What if when you die they ask, "How was Heaven?"
~ Author Unknown

A truly terrifying thought...

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

"Scott Ritter, Ukraine Update: Wagner is a Criminal Entity"

Redacted, 6/27/23
"Scott Ritter, Ukraine Update: 
Wagner is a Criminal Entity"
Comments here:

"Its Been Great, But The Collapse Won't Be"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/27/23
"Its Been Great, But The Collapse Won't Be"
Comments here:

"The Damage Is Unrepairable, Things Are Breaking"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/27/23
"The Damage Is Unrepairable, Things Are Breaking"
Comments here:

"15 Big Box Retailers That Report Massive Grocery Price Increases In 2023"

Full screen recommended.
"15 Big Box Retailers That Report Massive 
Grocery Price Increases In 2023"
By Epic Economist

"We’re being told that inflation numbers are going down, but when it comes to food inflation, that’s a whole different story. More than half of US food retailers are still raising prices this year, a nine percentage point jump from last year, according to BDO’s 2023 Retail CFO Outlook Survey. With major food makers, including Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, Unilever, and Coca-Cola signaling their intent to continue to push prices up despite falling sales volumes, retailers are having to pass these higher costs on to shoppers – plus a little extra. At this point, many people argue that big brands are, in fact, price-gouging their customers. Some of these companies are actually facing lawsuits over allegations of abusive price increases over the past year. Unfortunately, big names like Sam’s Club, Kroger, and even discount grocers say that the cost of essential products is about to go up even further in the second half of 2023. 

According to GOBankingRates, over the past year, Walmart grocery prices climbed by 22%, and earlier this month, the world’s biggest retailer warned that it might still have to increase prices to deal with higher costs. During an investor’s meeting, Walmart CFO John David Rainey said that the company is still facing significant challenges with its supply chain. “We’re assuming that this year is going to be somewhat anomalous. Still feeling the effects of higher prices,” Rainey said. Consequently, Walmart shoppers’ grocery bills are likely to go up by at least another 10% before the end of the year. That’s quite worrying considering that prices at Walmart stores have risen by 50% since 2020, according to consumers reports. On TikTok, one content creator decided to buy and compare the same items she did in 2020 Her shopping cart included corn mix, flour, 12-gallon nondairy milk, six eggs, two bananas, a small bundle of green Scallion, two potatoes, pinto beans, frozen mixed vegetables, and grain. According to the user, she purchased all of these items for $10.09 in 2020. She claims she made a “week’s worth of meals for one person,” sharing her receipt. As of January 2023, the shopper claims she went back to Walmart to purchase the items yet again and the total came out to $15.10, “a 50%” increase from a couple of years ago. “We need to start calling it what it is: price gouging,” one viewer stressed. “I wish they’d just stop lying to us by calling this inflation, this is 100% price gouging and I am sick of it,” a second agreed. “The ‘cheap’ butter we used to buy a year-ish ago, was 99 cents, now it’s 3 bucks,” another one shared. “I just got hamburger from Walmart for almost $6/lb. I remember it being like $3.50/lb,” another person said. Reports like that are getting increasingly more common as more and more Americans complain about soaring grocery costs at the retailer’s stores.

Food inflation will persist for many months, and that will have a huge effect on our monthly budgets and our purchasing power. We must organize ourselves and always remember to shop consciously. If you haven’t stocked up yet, we advise you to start preparing for these price hikes right now. The rest of the year is going to be very turbulent for those who didn’t get ready for these major changes, so make sure you got your needs covered because prices will only get higher from here on. For that reason, today, we decided to list which grocery stores are reporting another wave of price hikes right now."
Comments here::

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Sound of Invisible Waters"

Deuter, "Sound of Invisible Waters"

Musical Interlude: Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"

Full screen recommended.
Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"
“Reality is what we take to be true.
What we take to be true is what we believe.
What we believe is based upon our perceptions.
What we perceive depends upon what we look for.
What we look for depends upon what we think.
What we think depends upon what we perceive.
What we perceive determines what we believe.
What we believe determines what we take to be true.
What we take to be true is our reality.”
- Gary Zukav

Chet Raymo, “Very, Very, Very, Very, Very...”

 “Very, Very, Very, Very, Very...”
by Chet Raymo

"In a short story that was published posthumously in the New Yorker, the inestimable Primo Levi meditated on the limits of language. The story was called “The Tranquil Star.” He writes "The star was very big and very hot, and its weight was enormous," and realizes immediately that the adjectives have failed him: “For a discussion of stars our language is inadequate and seems laughable, as if someone were trying to plow with a feather. It's a language that was born with us, suitable for describing objects more or less as large and long-lasting as we are; it has our dimensions, it's human. It doesn't go beyond what our senses tell us.

Until fairly recently in human history, there was nothing smaller than a scabies mite, writes Levi, and therefore no adjective to describe it. Nothing bigger than the sea or sky. Nothing hotter than fire. We can add modifiers: very big, very small, very hot. Or use adjectives of dubious superlativeness: enormous, colossal, extraordinary. But, really, these feeble stretchings of language don't take us very far in grasping the very, very, very extraordinarily diminutive or spectacularly colossal dimensions of atomic matter or cosmic space and time. We can overcome the limitations of language, Levi say, "only with a violent effort of the imagination."

I spent more than forty years trying to find ways to violently stretch the imaginations of my students (and myself) to accommodate the dimensions of the universe revealed by science. I would project onto a huge screen a photograph of a firestorm on the Sun, then superimpose a scale-sized Earth, which fit comfortably inside a loop of solar fire. I would take the class into the College Quad here near Boston, where I had set up a basketball to represent the Sun, then gathered 100 feet away with a pinhead Earth; we walked together with our pin in the great annual journey of the Earth, and looked through a telescope at the marble-sized Jupiter than I had previously installed at the other end of the long Quad (the next closest star system would have been a couple of basketballs in Hawaii). We walked geologic timelines that took us from one end of the campus to the other.

In one of my Globe essays I used this analogy: “Imagine the human DNA as a strand of sewing thread. On this scale, the DNA in the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a typical human cell would be about 150 miles long, with about 600 nucleotide pairs per inch. That is, the DNA in a single cell is equivalent to 1000 spools of sewing thread, representing two copies of the genetic code. Take all that thread - the 1000 spools worth - and crumple it into 46 wads (the chromosomes). Stuff the wads into a shoe box (the cell nucleus) along with - oh, say enough chicken soup to fill the box. Toss the shoe box into a steamer trunk (the cell), and fill the rest of the trunk with more soup. Take the steamer trunk with its contents and shrink it down to an invisibly small object, smaller than the point of a pin. Multiply that tiny object by a trillion and you have the trillion cells of the human body, each with its full complement of DNA.”

Or this description from 'Waking Zero': “The track of the Prime Meridian across England from Peace Haven in the south to the mouth of the River Humber in the north is nearly 200 miles. If that distance is taken to represent the 13.7 billion year history of the universe, as we understand it today, then all of recorded human history is less than a single step. The entire story I have told in this book, from the Alexandrian astronomers and geographers to the present-day astronomers who launch telescopes into space, would fit neatly into a single footprint. If the 200 miles of the meridian track is taken to represent the distance to the most distant objects we observe with our telescopes, then a couple of steps would take us across the Milky Way Galaxy. A mote of dust from my shoe is large enough to contain not only our own solar system but many neighboring stars.”

But as hard as one tries, the scale of these things escape us. If one could truly comprehend what we are seeing when we look, say, at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Photo above, which I have done my best to convey to myself and others in a dozen ways, it would surely shake to the core some of our most cherished beliefs. Just as our language is contrived on a human scale, so too are our gods.”

"The Hand We're Dealt...:

“Bad things don’t happen to people because they deserve for them to happen. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s just… life. And no matter who we are, we have to take the hand we’re dealt, crappy though it may be, and try our very best to move forward anyway, to love anyway, to have hope anyway… to have faith that there’s a purpose to the journey we’re on.”
- Mia Sheridan

The Daily "Near You?"

Martins Ferry, Ohio, USA. Thanks for stopping by!