"Looking for a Reason to Believe: The Benefit of the Doubt Is Cracking"

"Looking for a Reason to Believe: 

The Benefit of the Doubt Is Cracking"

By Paul Rosenberg

"Those of us who pursue positive change are very often frustrated. We see the necessity of change all too clearly, and we can explain how it should come about, but it never seems to happen. The truth, however, is that change does come; it just comes more slowly than we’d like, and in ways that differ from those we imagined.

One real change I like to point out is the passing of blind trust in politicians. In the 1950s and ‘60s, most people spoke of politicians with respect and even with reverence. Now it’s almost standard for people to agree that they’re liars and thieves. That’s a very significant change, even if it did take several decades to unfold.

So, a significant change has occurred in our time, and over a very broad base. Still, most people are hanging on, and often desperately, to old ways that should really be abandoned.

The Automatic Benefit of the Doubt: It’s a bit troubling to see how blindly, and for how long, people give the benefit of the doubt to hierarchy and its operators. They can know that a system is abusing them, and they can complain about it at length, but still they grasp at reasons to keep believing in it. Here’s what I mean:

• During the bad spots of the Middle Ages, people would be abused by the clergy but say, “If only His Holiness knew!”

• During the reign of the USSR, people in the Gulag would often say, “If only Stalin knew!”

• In our time, people hold Political Party A or Political Party B as grave evils, while pretending that the combination of A + B is good and noble.

Still, such blind biases do eventually break. Stalin, after all, is gone, along with his USSR. The Protestant reformation broke the domination of the Church. And the delusions of our time will die as well.

“Still, I Look to Find a Reason to Believe”: If there were such a competition, I’d nominate Rod Stewart’s song, "Reason To Believe," as the Anthem of the Age. Regardless of how badly they are abused, people have a very hard time letting go of their hierarchies; they’ve taken emotional refuge in them, after all. Even when sharp pain forces them to examine the hierarchy that constantly tells them, “Obey or we’ll hurt you,” the impulse to maintain belief erupts. Here’s how the song expresses it:

"If I listened long enough to you,

I’d find a way to believe that it’s all true.

Knowing that you lied,

straight-faced while I cried.

Still I look to find a reason to believe."

Humans have a real problem with that last line: looking for reasons to believe. It flies in the face of both logic and honesty, but people not only do it, but vigorously defend it. As for specific reasons to believe, they’re endless. Seldom are humans quicker and cleverer than when justifying their previous actions.

Why This Is a Good Sign: When people are desperately grasping for reasons to believe, it’s because the benefit of the doubt is cracking beneath them. Otherwise, why would they fight so wildly? The circumstances of our modern world are propelling people toward this break. Every time a ruling system tells gigantic lies, censors the public square, surveils their own people and frightens the masses for their own benefit, belief in their system cracks a little.

More and more people are conceding that it’s not just “one bad actor” here or there, but that Joe Stalin really is evil, that the clergy really is corrupt, and that hierarchies are abusive by nature. The whirlwind of distractions and slogans arrayed against moral clarity are losing their effectiveness. Little by little, humanity’s blind devotion to authority is cracking. Someday, it will break."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

o

Rod Stewart, "Reason To Believe" 

The Daily "Near You?"

Cluj-napoca, Cluj, Romania. Thanks for stopping by!

"Real Courage..."

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

~ "Harper Lee", "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Dan, I Allegedly, "Car Crash Economy - Used Car Prices Plummet!"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 11/18/23

"Car Crash Economy - Used Car Prices Plummet!"

"Hey, I have a riveting update on the car market. The numbers don't lie - we're in a bear market for the auto industry, and used car prices are dropping faster than ever. In this video, we'll dissect the shocking stats from Manheim and discuss how car inventory spikes and interest rates are reshaping the industry. Plus, we've got some insights on ransomware attacks and the latest in cybercrime – you won't believe what these hackers are doing!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Toxic People..."

"Toxic people systematically destroy others because if they cannot bask in the light then no one else deserves to. Lost people suffer in their darkness, happily dragging your light down into their personal hell so you can listen to all their woes. Soulless people, lacking empathy, suck the light from others to taste that which they can never understand. People can't be helped until they want to be helped. You can't be there for others who need you if any one of these types destroy you. Save yourself... it's not a sin to love from a distance."

- L.M. Fields

"How It Really Is"

 

"Huge Warning Signs From Big Banks JP Morgan, Bank Of America & Morgan Stanley"

Full screen recommended.

The Atlantis Report, 11/18/23

"Huge Warning Signs From Big Banks

 JP Morgan, Bank Of America & Morgan Stanley"

"Troubling signs are emerging from major financial institutions such as JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley, casting a cloud over the economic landscape. The sudden shift of Bank of America from a cautious stance to a more aggressive one raises concerns about a significant downturn. Concurrently, the Federal Reserve is scrutinizing Morgan Stanley's wealth division for client vetting practices, prompting questions about overall financial stability. These developments strongly show an impending economic crisis, underscoring the need for investors to exercise caution and engage in strategic planning during these uncertain times."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"A New Type Of Dementia Plagues America"

"A New Type Of Dementia Plagues America"

by John Mac Ghlionn

"In the United States, it's estimated that at least 7 million people over the age of 65 have dementia. If current trends continue, by the end of the decade, more than 9 million Americans are expected to suffer from this loss of cognitive functioning - that's equivalent to the population of New York City.

Memory impairment isn't just affecting the elderly. By 2050, the number of U.S. adults over the age of 40 living with dementia is expected to more than double, from 5.2 million to 10.5 million. To compound matters, there’s a new type of dementia plaguing Americans, one that’s affecting people much younger than 40. It’s called digital dementia, and millions of unsuspecting, young Americans are at risk.

A major health epidemic, digital dementia occurs when one part of the brain is overstimulated and another part of the brain is understimulated. When we mindlessly use digital devices, the frontal lobe, which is responsible for higher-level executive functions, gets little, if any, use. Meanwhile, the occipital lobe, the visual processor located at the back of the brain, gets bombarded with sensory input. Slouched over and spaced out, people, both young and old, are abusing their brains, day in and day out. Preteens and teens are particularly at risk for two reasons:An American 8 to 12-year-old spends an average of 4.7 hours a day scrolling their lives away. That’s around 70 days in a given year. The prefrontal cortex (PFC), the brain region responsible for planning and decision-making, doesn’t fully develop until the age of 25.

Digital dementia impedes both short-term and long-term memory. Moreover, as research shows, excessive screen time during brain development increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, in adulthood. Not surprisingly, excessive screen time is intimately associated with digital addiction. This, in turn, fuels digital dementia, which results in the shrinking of the brain’s gray matter. White matter facilitates communication between gray matter areas. But without gray matter, which plays a critical role in emotions, memories, and movements, there’s really nothing to communicate. White matter helps the traffic get from A to B. Grey matter, on the other hand, is the traffic.

It gets worse. As Gurwinder Bhogal, an excellent British-Indian writer, recently noted, not only is “gray matter shrinkage in smartphone-addicted individuals” a growing problem, the Western average IQ is declining - rapidly, he added.

This has been the case for decades. The decline of brain power has been particularly notable in America. Lead exposure, and, more recently, the effects of draconian lockdowns, have had deleterious effects on Americans’ IQs. As technology continues to rise, IQ continues to decline. Is there an association? The answer appears to be yes.

What we're witnessing is the Flynn effect in reverse. Named after James R. Flynn, the renowned intelligence researcher who passed away in 2020, the Flynn effect refers to a steady upward shift in IQ test scores across generations. In recent times, however, that steady upward shift has transformed into a spiraling nosedive. This isn't surprising. In fact, as our lives become more intertwined with technology, and as we outsource more of our thinking and doing to search engines and ChatGPT-like systems, we should expect this nosedive to increase in velocity.

As Mr. Bhogal noted, common sense suggests that the decline in IQ is “at least partly the result of technology making the attainment of satisfaction increasingly effortless, so that we spend ever more of our time in a passive, vegetative state.” “If you don’t use it," he added, “you lose it.” Indeed. By "it," of course, he means your brain. But brain function isn't the only thing being lost.

The rise of digital dementia, digital addiction, and lower IQ scores is a reflection of a much broader problem. The United States isn’t just struggling with demographic decline; it’s also wrestling with the unholy trinity of spiritual, psychological, and intellectual decline. The country is becoming fatter, sicker, older, and dumber. The movie "Idiocracy" wasn’t a parody; it was a prophecy.

As intelligence levels continue to plummet and test scores continue to fall in the likes of math and reading, the United States risks becoming a society of brainless, aimless individuals, a nation consisting of millions of obese zombies. Contrary to popular belief, societal collapse doesn’t occur overnight; it occurs in increments, a death by a thousand cuts. The biggest threat to the United States isn't necessarily external; it's posed by the numerous digital devices in our hands and homes. Technology has consumed both our minds and our souls; are we going to get either of them back?"

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

o

o

Hat tip to ZeroHedge for this material.

Col. Douglas Macgregor, "Middle East Crisis Analysis"

Full screen recommended.

Begin Invest, 11/18/23

Col. Douglas Macgregor, 11/18/23

"Middle East Crisis Analysis"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Scott Ritter, "Israel Will Lose; Netanyahu Will Be Overthrown; Palestinian State Will Be Established"

Full screen recommended.

Scott Ritter, 11/18/23

"Israel Will Lose; Netanyahu Will Be Overthrown;

 Palestinian State Will Be Established"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

MUST VIEW!

Full screen recommended.

Scott Ritter, 11/18/23

"No Bunker, No Guns Under Al-Shifa Hospital; 

Israel 100% Violates Laws Of War"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"Scott Ritter is a former Marine intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union, implementing arms control agreements, and on the staff of General Norman Schwartzkopf during the Gulf War, where he played a critical role in the hunt for Iraqi SCUD missiles. From 1991 until 1998, Mr. Ritter served as a Chief Inspector for the United Nations in Iraq, leading the search for Iraq’s proscribed weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Ritter was a vocal critic of the American decision to go to war with Iraq. His new book, "Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika: Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union," is his ninth.

Adventures With Danno, "Strange Prices At Dollar Tree!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 11/18/23

"Strange Prices At Dollar Tree!"

"In today's vlog, we are at Family Dollar and are noticing some strange price increases on groceries. We continue to see many stores raise prices on many food items, as families continue to struggle to put food on the table!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Stop Using Walmart Self Checkout; The Economy is Failing"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/17/23

"Stop Using Walmart Self Checkout; The Economy is Failing"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Una Mattina"

Full screen recommended.

Ludovico Einaudi, "Una Mattina"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Dragon (Draco). Its eye-catching tail is about 280 thousand light-years long and features massive, bright blue star clusters. 

One story goes that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of Arp 188 - from right to left in this view - and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their gravitational attraction. During the close encounter, tidal forces drew out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust forming the spectacular tail. The intruder galaxy itself, estimated to lie about 300 thousand light-years behind the Tadpole, can be seen through foreground spiral arms at the upper right. Following its terrestrial namesake, the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older, the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210621.html

Dan, I Allegedly, "Alexa? Am I Getting Fired?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 11/17/23

"Alexa? Am I Getting Fired?"

"A fantastic internal memo from Amazon was exposed. It showed that there were going to be hundreds of people in the Alexa division getting fired. Plus, I went to the practice round for the Formula One race in Las Vegas and you get to see some of the footage of that too."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Ranchers Warn The Worst Collapse In Cattle Production Will Make Meat Prices Double This Winter"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist 11/17/23

"Ranchers Warn The Worst Collapse In Cattle 

Production Will Make Meat Prices Double This Winter"

"Being a carnivore has never been so expensive. According to the USDA, beef prices soared to another record high this week, and are expected to face a 100% increase next month compared to the same period a year ago. Steaks will likely be out of the dinner table of many Americans in the coming months as shortages already started leaving grocery shelves empty. Even cheap meats like ground beef are about to shoot up in price due to the lowest supply in decades, the Department said.

The nation’s shrinking cattle herd combined with surging input costs at U.S. farms and ranches have pushed wholesale meat costs to over $8 per pound, official data shows. Analysts predict that the figure could jump above the $ 10 mark in December due to the seasonal spike in demand. As a comparison, beef costs in 2022 were hoovering around the ten-year average of $5 per pound. The rapid price appreciation means that you will have to pay double what you paid a year ago to bring your favorite cut home this winter.

In fact, meat inflation at U.S. stores can be even higher given that the USDA forecast was for wholesale prices, not consumer prices. Adding rising labor and transportation costs to the mix, a pound of ground beef could be selling for $8.99 next month. A pound of sirloin is expected to reach $14.00, while T-bone, and ribeye, can reach $15.39 and $21.99 per pound, respectively.

“Relative to other proteins, beef prices are likely to stay elevated for the next couple of years due to tighter supplies,” according to Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute sector manager Courtney Schmidt. “All consumers will be paying more for all beef products for several more years,” added Wells Fargo’s Chief Agricultural Economist Michael Swanson.

Retailers are already reporting leaner deliveries and falling meat supplies at stores. Ranchers, who would normally thrive on record prices, are instead struggling to maintain their business. Low rainfall in prime cattle-raising land is turning green pastures into dust fields. Limited supply and increasing costs are likely to cause changes in food service menu items. “The prices of menu items may go up, including burger patties, as businesses try to maintain their profit margins,” Wells Fargo’s Swanson said.

Fast food chains, including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Shake Shack, are some of the biggest buyers of meat in the U.S. market. In 2024, they might have to conduct another round of price hikes to offset the rising cost of beef. These companies are also being encouraged to launch more plant-based alternatives to reduce their environmental footprint amid climate change.

In other words, we will have to get used to eating meat alternatives instead of the real thing. Beef is becoming a delicacy reserved only for the bourgeoisie. For now, this crisis will continue to add pressure on ranchers, restaurateurs, and average consumers. Until cattle numbers grow, input costs decline, and the economic storm abates, Americans will be forced to either change their diets or pay the price."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Canadian Prepper, "Massive Grid Down Event, What You're Not Being Told"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 11/17/23

"Massive Grid Down Event, What You're Not Being Told"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"It's Not the End of the World"

"It's Not the End of the World"

by Jeff Thomas

"Periodically, I’ll encounter someone who has read one of my essays and has decided not to pursue them further, stating, "You’re one of those ‘End of the world’ guys. I can’t be bothered reading the writings of someone who thinks we’re all doomed. I have a more positive outlook than that." In actual fact, I agree entirely with his latter two comments. I can’t be bothered reading the thoughts of a writer who says we’re all doomed, either. I, too, have a more positive outlook than that.

My one discrepancy with such comments is that I don’t by any means think that the present state of events will lead to the end of the world, as he assumes. But then, neither am I naïve enough to think that if I just hope for the best, the powers that be will cease to be parasitical and predatory out of sympathy for me. They will not.

For any serious student of history, one of the great realizations that occurs at some point is that governments are inherently controlling by nature. The more control they have, the more they desire and the more they pursue. After all, governments actually produce nothing. They exist solely upon what they can extract from the people they rule over. Therefore, their personal success is not measured by how well they serve their people, it’s measured by how much they can extract from the people. And so, it’s a given that all governments will pursue ever-greater levels of power over their minions up to and including the point of total dominance.

It should be said that, on rare occasions, a people will rise up and create a governmental system in which the rights of the individual are paramount. This was true in the creation of the Athenian Republic and the American Constitution, and even the British Magna Carta. However, these events are quite rare in history and, worse, as soon as they take place, those who gain power do their best to diminish the newly-gained freedoms. Such freedoms can almost never be destroyed quickly, but, over time and "by slow operations," as Thomas Jefferson was fond of saying, governments can be counted on to eventually destroy all freedoms.

We’re passing through a period in history in which the process of removing freedoms is nearing completion in many of the world’s foremost jurisdictions. The EU and US, in particular, are leading the way in this effort. Consequently, it shouldn’t be surprising that some predict "the end of the world." But, they couldn’t be more incorrect.

Surely, in 1789, the more productive people of France may have felt that the developing French Revolution would culminate in Armageddon. Similarly, in 1917, those who created prosperity in Russia may well have wanted to throw up their hands as the Bolsheviks seized power from the Romanovs.

Whenever a deterioration in rule is underway, as it is once again now, the observer has three choices:

Declare the End of the World: There are many people, worldwide, but particularly in the centers of the present deterioration – the EU and US – who feel that, since the situation in their home country is nearing collapse, the entire world must also be falling apart. This is not only a very myopic viewpoint, it’s also quite inaccurate. At any point in civilization in the past 2000 years or more, there have always been empires that were collapsing due to intolerable governmental dominance and there have always concurrently been alternative jurisdictions where the level of freedom was greater. In ancient Rome, when Diocletian devalued the currency, raised taxes, increased warfare and set price controls, those people who actually created the economy on a daily basis found themselves in the same boat as Europeans and Americans are finding themselves in, in the 21st century.

It may have seemed like the end of the world, but it was not. Enough producers left Rome and started over again in other locations. Those other locations eventually thrived as a result of the influx of productive people, while Rome atrophied.

Turn a Blind Eye: This is less dreary than the above approach, but it is nevertheless just as fruitless. It is, in fact, the most common of reactions – to just "hope for the best." It’s tempting to imagine that maybe the government will realize that they’re the only ones benefitting from the destruction of freedom and prosperity and they’ll feel bad and reverse the process. But this clearly will not happen. It’s also tempting to imagine that maybe it won’t get a whole lot worse and that life, although not all that good at present, might remain tolerable. Again, this is wishful thinking and the odds of it playing out in a positive way are slim indeed.

Accept the Truth, But Do Something About It: This, of course, is the hard one. Begin by recognizing the truth. If that truth is not palatable, study the situation carefully and, when a reasonably clear understanding has been reached, create an alternative. When governments enter the final decline stage, an alternative is not always easy to accept. It’s a bit like having a tooth pulled. You want to put it off, but the pain will only get worse if you delay. And so, you trundle off to the dentist unhappily, but, a few weeks after the extraction, you find yourself asking, "Why didn’t I do this sooner?"

To be sure, those who investigate and analyze the present socio-economic-political deterioration do indeed espouse a great deal of gloom, but this should not be confused with doom. In actual fact, the whole point of shining a light into the gloom is to avoid having it end in doom.

It should be said here that remaining in a country that is tumbling downhill socially, economically and politically is also not the end of the world. It is, however, true that the end result will not exactly be a happy one. If history repeats once again, it’s likely to be quite a miserable one.

Those who undertake the study of the present deterioration must, admittedly, address some pretty depressing eventualities and it would be far easier to just curl up on the sofa with a six-pack and watch the game, but the fact remains: unless the coming problems are investigated and an alternative found, those who sit on the sofa will become the victims of their own lethargy.

Sadly, we live in a period in history in which some of the nations that once held the greatest promise for the world are well on their way to becoming the most tyrannical. If by recognizing that fact, we can pursue better alternatives elsewhere on the globe, as people have done in previous eras. We may actually find that the field of daisies in the image above is still very much in existence, it’s just a bit further afield than it was in years gone by. And it is absolutely worthy of pursuit."

- internationalman.com

Bill Bonner, "Fake Capital"

"Fake Capital"

How fake money, lent at fake rates to

 fake investors, produced fake gains...

by Bill Bonner

Paris, France - "The most important thing to happen in the financial world so far this century is the sell-off in the US bond market. MarketWatch reports: "An investment in 10-year U.S. Treasury notes has lost a third of its value, in real, inflation-adjusted terms, in just over three years. Investments in long-term Treasurys have lost about half their value. They have fallen as much as U.S. stocks did during the global financial crisis. 10-year Treasury bonds have been a worse investment than gold bullion this year, last year, the year before that, and all the way back to 2018."

US 10-year Treasury notes have actually underperformed gold for the last 33 years. According to data reported by MarketWatch, if you’d put $10,000 into 10-year Treasuries in 1990, adjusted for inflation, you’d have approximately doubled your money. Holding gold, on the other hand, would have given you a little profit – about 15% more than if you had simply held Treasuries.

Dear Imprudence: Gold enjoys no ‘full faith and credit’ of the US government. No one backs it. No grand empire issues it or guarantees to pay interest on it. It issues no press releases, pays no dividends, has no DEI director…and doesn’t give a damn what you think. And yet this ‘nothing’ of an investment has proven more valuable than the strongest credit ‘the West’ had to offer. And in America’s publicly traded businesses, an investor might have fared even worse. Stocks have roughly tripled in this century. The broadest index, the Wilshire 5,000, has risen from 13,800 in 1999 to around 45,191 today. But gold has gone from an average around $270/oz to $2,000/oz today – a 7 times increase.

What we take from this is that something went seriously wrong with American capitalism; its best stocks and bonds have been disappointments. Speculators put billions of dollars into cryptos, NFTs, and zombie stock – leading to huge losses. Prudent investors, meanwhile, tried to protect their wealth with US Treasury bonds which pretended to be ‘safe;’ they lost a third of their money over the last 38 months.

At the peak of the bond bubble, even the smartest bankers, the most experienced corporate treasurers, and the wizzy-est whizzes on Wall Street were fumbling. JP Morgan analysts, for example, said WeWork should go public at $100 million. It turned out to be worth less than nothing.

Multiply those miscalculations and nonsense speculations by millions…all up and down the capital structure…and you get one weird, fakey economy – in which real values were falsified by fake money, lent out at fake interest rates, to fund fake investments by fake entrepreneurs in fake industries that produced fake gains. This fake capitalism did not produce real prosperity; it only worked to enrich the elite.

A Whole Bag of ****: But in July, 2020, the Primary Trend of the previous 40 years came to an end. A new Primary Trend, towards lower stock and bond prices, began…one that will probably last for decades. But we have to ask some questions; what caused* the other big moves in the bond market? What caused* the fall in bond yields (rise in bond prices) from 1920 to 1945? The answer is simple: the Great Depression and World War II.

What caused* the rise in bond yields from 1945 to 1980? Another easy question: the Eisenhower boom, followed by overspending on the Vietnam war and the Great Society.

What caused* the following Primary Trend, the spectacular fall in bond yields (and the rise in bond prices) from 1980 to 2020? Easy peasy: Paul Volcker broke the back of inflation; then, Bernanke pushed real rates below zero.

You will note the asterisk*. It reminds us that this is not science. We never know what really causes events and trends of this scale. You may say with some certainty that Gavril Princip shot Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. But as for what caused WWI, that is a whole different question with no sure answer.

The New Trend? So, we ask: what will cause the next Primary Trend, from 2020-? The obvious answer: too much spending, too much debt, too much inflation…and the Decline of the West. It’s that last item that will need most of the ****. The subject is so big…so slippery…so vague, it will be hard to get a grip on it. But for our amusement, if nothing else, let us push on, with a whole bag of **** at our side.

Executive summary: in 1980, America’s institutions were still vigorous enough to bring inflation under control. Today, they have been so enfeebled and corrupted by easy money policies, neither Congress, the White House, nor the Fed can be expected to make tough decisions. Budgets won’t be balanced. Wars won’t be stopped. Inflation won’t be brought to heel. The ‘West’ is in decline. Stay tuned..."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Saint Charles, Illinois, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Langston Hughes, "Mother To Son"

"Mother To Son"

"Well, son, I'll tell you:

Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

It's had tacks in it,

And splinters,

And boards torn up,

And places with no carpet on the floor -

Bare.

But all the time

I'se been a-climbin' on,

And reachin' landin's,

And turnin' corners,

And sometimes goin' in the dark

Where there ain't been no light.

So, boy, don't you turn back.

Don't you set down on the steps

'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.

Don't you fall now- 

For I'se still goin', honey,

I'se still climbin',

And life for me ain't been no crystal stair."

- Langston Hughes

o

"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.”

- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

"When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' 

I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'"

- Sydney J. Harris

Paulo Coelho, "Walking the Path"

"Walking the Path"

by Paulo Coelho

"I reckon that it takes about three minutes to read my text. Well, according to statistics, in that same short period of time 300 people will die and another 620 will be born. It takes me perhaps half an hour to write a text: here I sit, concentrating on my computer, books piled up beside me, ideas in my head, the scenery passing by outside my window. Everything seems perfectly normal all around me; and yet, during these thirty minutes, 3,000 people have died and 6,200 have just seen the light of the world for the first time.

Where are all those thousands of families who have just begun to weep over the loss of some dear one, or else laugh at the arrival of a son, grandson or brother? I stop and reflect for a while: perhaps many of these deaths are reaching the end of a long, painful sickness, and some persons are relieved that the Angel has come for them. Besides these, in all certainty hundreds of children who have just been born will be abandoned in a minute and transferred to the death statistics before I finish this text.

What a thought! A simple statistic that I came upon by chance – and all of a sudden I can feel all those losses and encounters, smiles and tears. How many are leaving this life, alone in their rooms, without anyone realizing what is going on? How many will be born in secret, only to be abandoned at the door of shelters or convents? And then I reflect that I was part of the birth statistics and one day I will be included in the toll of the dead. How good that is to be fully aware that I am going to die. Ever since I took the road to Santiago I have understood that although life goes on and we are eternal, one day this existence will come to an end.

People think very little about death. They spend their lives worried about really absurd things, putting things off and leaving important moments aside. They risk nothing because they believe that is dangerous. They grumble a lot, but act like cowards when it is time to take certain steps. They want everything to change, but they themselves refuse to change. If they thought a little more about death, they would never fail to make that telephone call that they have been putting off. They would be a little more crazy. They would not be afraid of the end of this incarnation – because you cannot be afraid of something that is going to happen anyway.

The Indians say: “Today is as good a day as any other to leave this world”. And a sorcerer once remarked: “May death be always sitting beside you. That way, when you have to do something important, it will give you the strength and courage you need.” I hope, reader, that you have accompanied me this far. It would be silly to let the subject scare you, because sooner or later we are all going to die. And only those who accept this are prepared for life."

- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/

"Our Best Choice..."

"Good or bad, everything we do is

our best choice at that moment." 

- William Glasser

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up, 11/17/23"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up, 11/17/23"

Gaza Cease-Fire, Joe Out Gavin In, 

US Treasury Bonds Not Safe.

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"The cries are getting louder for a so-called ceasefire with the Israeli/Gaza war that started October 7th. There is more proof coming out that Hamas is using hospitals and other civilian areas to conduct war while holding Israeli hostages. That does not seem to matter much to the people demanding the killing be stopped. Even the UN, which is notoriously against everything Israel, has passed a resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Meanwhile, reports fighting on the Israel/Lebanon border with Hezbollah is at a point not seen in nearly two decades. Hezbollah is backed by Iran and is much better trained and equipped than Hamas in the south. Is this the calm before the WWIII storm or will the ceasefire put an end to the fighting?

It is really starting to look like the Democrat party is maneuvering to dump Joe Biden in 2024 and replace him with California Governor Gavin Newsom. New Dem rules established in 2022 say they can replace any presidential candidate they want under certain circumstances–without any primaries. Even Joe wants Gavin to have his job. Seriously, Biden said this. Greg Hunter will explain.

People do not realize just how weak the U.S. financial system really is. Moody’s just gave a big warning that it may downgrade the federal government’s AAA credit rating. Could that be a disaster for interest rates and Treasury Bond sales? One financial expert contends U.S. Treasury Bonds are not safe. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has just failed its 6th audit in a row, and there are trillions of dollars “missing.” Sound familiar? Dr. Mark Skidmore and Catherine Austin Fitts brought the problem of “Missing Money” up years ago, and now it’s hitting the mainstream. Is this the tip of the financial iceberg we are about to hit as the exploding federal debt goes out of control? There is much more in the 59-minute newscast."

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter as he talks about these stories 

and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 11/17/23:

- https://rumble.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

Everywhere you look, face in the phone...

Jim Kunstler, "Leaving Blobtopia"

"Leaving Blobtopia"

by Jim Kunstler

"A nation can only take so much corruption, crime, and unreality. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” said Karl Rove, veteran blobster and advisor to George W. Bush, when he uttered those fateful words. Even political junkies forget the rest of what he said: "And while you’re studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Old Karl was being too polite, you understand. What he meant to say is: We’re gonna lay trip after trip on you, all of you smart-asses watching the political scene until your over-mis-educated Ivy League brains turn into something that resembles a patty-melt so that you’re lost in a fog of incoherent blabbery, parroting whatever nonsense we proffer as we asset-strip what’s left of Western Civ.

What they call “the cognitive infrastructure” of we-the-people has been twisted, crinkled, folded, looped, and twiddled until it’s nearer a state of criticality than the ten-thousand rusted-out bridges on our county roads. This week, the FCC board voted to adopt new rules to “prevent and eliminate digital discrimination.” Sounds great, huh? Reality check: I do not think that the words mean what you think they mean. They are, rather, an invitation to the rest of the US government - any malicious blob-driven agency - to meddle with the Internet, block content that they don’t like, and conduct mind-f**kery operations to their heart’s delight. Uh-oh, I think they just destroyed the Internet.

Empire is a cruel business, especially as it unwinds. But the sore-beset people of this land may be tiring of alternate realities as the absurdities mount and the immense friction of official bad faith heats up to the point of ignition. For instance, the “news” leaked late Thursday that Special Counsel Robert Hur expects to not charge anyone in connection with the “Joe Biden” documents case. How come? Reasons. Whew, that was swift justice, compared to the Chinese fire drill instigated by that same DOJ against Mr. Trump in the Mar-a-Lago document case.

The DC blob, once so sumptuously comfortable in the days of Karl Rove and Bush II, is actually fighting for its life now, hoping desperately to not be crushed under the rubble of the institutions it is so busy toppling, such as the Department of Justice. Note to blob: if you render the Internet useless, you will accelerate the trend to local autarky. Your diktats will be ignored as government-by-blob drowns in debt, chaos, and impotence. If necessary, we-the-people will return to the traditional printing press and report on what we can actually see and hear in the vicinity around us.

In the meantime, your ability to lay trips on us is losing its mojo. You couldn’t have conjured up a more preposterous front-man for your operation than “Joe Biden.” Imagine what it was like at that long table in San Francisco when the delegation led by President Xi of China sat across from this broken old grifter and his nervous minders. The look of anguish on Tony Blinken’s sagging puss told the whole story. The point of the “summit meeting” was (for our side) to pretend, for show, that we could negotiate anything with China; the point (for China) was to show the world that America is an old whipped dog.

From where they sat in Frisco, Xi’s point men could view California’s stupendously productive Central Valley and calculate how much better China could run the place. (Did Governor Newsom already sell it to Xi on his recent visit to Beijing?) Remember: North America’s civilization is about four thousand years younger than China’s - as if those conquistadors, pilgrims, and cavaliers got here virtually last night, threw the wildest party ever, trashed the joint, and then woke up after losing twenty percent of their brain cells on ketamine and vodka.

Surely you’ve noticed the two wars underway in the other hemisphere. Our special event in Ukraine is going so poorly that the very Director of the CIA, William Burns, paid a not-so-secret call on President Zelensky Wednesday. Usually, this sort of call from one polity to another is performed by diplomats. How many of you noticed that Mr. Burns is not a diplomat? Rather, he is the blob’s consigliere, the very guy you don’t want to show up at your door with a message. You might wake up tomorrow with a horse’s severed head under the sheets. Or maybe his message is, we’ve got a nice cozy villa for you down in sunny Tristan da Cunha….

That war is a lost cause, and the cause was extremely stupid in the first place. Do you even remember what it was? I’ll tell you: to prod Russia into destroying itself. Oh? But why? Because, you know...Russia (and Trump!). There is your blob logic. Cost us something like $150 billion, a large part of that distributed among Mr. Zelensky’s circle while he sacrificed a whole generation of his country’s young men to Russian artillery fire and leaves what’s left of his sad-ass land an economic basket-case.

America is also taking the heat for Israeli-Gaza war. The reality - for those of you interested in reality - is that Bibi is doing what Bibi needs to do whether America likes it or not: a large-scale root-canal on this troublesome region, going literally deep beneath the surface to clean the rot of Hamas out from that underground tunnel world they squandered their people’s capital building. Do you think Bibi and Company do not know that the whole world is watching how they go about this operation? And do you suppose they are trying as hard as possible to not harm Hamas’s human shields? Yes, Israel’s IDF is going about this methodically and carefully, and they are determined to get the job done, no matter how many undergraduate nose-rings scream their lungs out on the Champs Elysée.

So, at this juncture, various parties are gaming out World War Three and, let’s face it, that move just doesn’t really look good for anybody. All the clever moves - Hezbollah, Iran, Turkey - just end up in an ashtray, one way or another. This would have been true whether we sent those aircraft carrier groups or not.

Which brings us back to our land and our own troubles and our own despondent population watching everything in their lives go south. That’s the reality that can’t be switched out on command anymore. That’s the reality worth “studying.” Everybody sees something like force majeure coming at them. Bad money...lawlessness...breakdown...hunger. You can thank the blob for all of that. It’s possible to manage our affairs plainly, justly, fairly, honestly, prudently. We’ll get there. But you have to give reality the respect it deserves, just as you would if God came before you and asked if you’d behaved decently in this life. Would you try to bullshit God?"

- https://kunstler.com/

"Washington's Fiscal Doomsday Machine"

"Washington's Fiscal Doomsday Machine"

by David Stockman

"Here’s one that will make your hair stand on end: The US Treasury closed the books on FY 2023, bringing the four-year cumulative deficit to $9.0 trillion! That’s right. During the last 1,461 days (FY 2020 thru FY 2023), Uncle Sam has generated $6.2 billion of red ink each and every day including weekends, holidays and snow-days. For anyone keeping score at home, that’s $4.2 million of red ink per minute.

For the purpose of perspective, here’s how long it took to generate the first $9 trillion of US government debt: It took all of 43 presidents and 219 years to reach $9 trillion of public debt in July 2007. So the national debt clock has now accelerated to hyper-drive.

And, yes, we do mean accelerate. It turns out that when you remove the budgetary Mickey Mouse from the numbers, the federal deficit for FY 2023 clocked in at over $2.0 trillion, or double the comparable level in FY 2022. The reported numbers, of course, do not look quite as alarming, posting at $1.4 trillion last year and $1.7 trillion this year.

But as The Wall Street Journal cogently explained recently, that comparison is very misleading because it includes a $380 billion budgetary shuffle between the two years. It seems that Sleepy Joe’s student debt cancellation got recorded as a cost in September 2022, but then got canceled by the courts in FY 2023, turning it into a giant "savings"!

When the Biden administration announced its plan to forgive federal student debt held by 40 million Americans in September 2022, it logged the long-term cost of the program, $379 billion, on the budget all at once, even though effectively no money was spent on it that year… But in June 2023, the Supreme Court tossed the debt-cancellation program, meaning most of that money wouldn’t actually be spent. Rather than update last year’s deficit numbers, though, the Treasury recorded the changes as a $333 billion spending cut in August 2023.

We do not use the Mickey Mouse epithet lightly, but surely booking the next 50 years of student loan repayments during the single month of August 2023 amounts to exactly that. Still, the "Joe Biden" thing behind the teleprompter has the audacity to keep making the hideous claim that he has been slashing the federal deficit!

Actually, Biden is surrounded by the usual Keynesian suspects when it comes to fiscal policy, but even they did not historically recommend a dramatic increase in the deficit at a time of so-called full employment, when the official unemployment rate is just 3.8% and the economy is still straining under severe labor shortages. Indeed, the $2.0 trillion cash deficit for FY 2023 amounted to 7.5% of GDP - a level that was supposed to happen only at the very dark bottom of an unusually bad recession.

Needless to say, these dismal fiscal figures are just one more indictment of the baleful rule of Washington’s Uniparty. When they get done funding the nation’s $1.3 trillion Warfare State, ring-fencing $4.2 trillion per year of Social Security, Medicare and other sacrosanct entitlements, filling up the pork barrels of domestic discretionary spending to the brim, warding off any and all ideas about raising revenues and facing the music on the exploding cost of net interest on the public debt, you get a four-year $9 trillion warm-up for an even greater tsunami of red ink in the years just ahead.

Indeed, that’s now baked into the cake. The world is on the verge of breaking out into a hot war in the Middle East, and Ukraine is hanging by a thread, both owing to the neocon perfidy of the last several decades. So the $1.3 trillion comprehensive national security budget (Department of Defense, International security assistance and operations and Veterans) is going nowhere except up. Way up.

Likewise, Donald Trump has a virtual lock on the Republican nomination even if he ends up behind bars before November 2024. So, his new GOP 11th commandment will prevail. Namely, do not touch Social Security or Medicare, even though they will cost $34 trillion over the next decade, their trust funds will be insolvent by the early 2030s and trillions of those benefits represent pure transfer payments, not a return on payroll taxes contributed by beneficiaries over their working lifetimes.

As to the "pork" in the small (less than 15%) part of the budget called "non-defense discretionary spending," the Washington GOP has already signed its confession papers. Between FY 2017 (Obama’s last budget) and FY 2021 (Trump’s final budget), this fiscal component soared from $610 billion to $895 billion. That’s a 47% gain at a time when the GOP controlled the veto-pen in the White House and one or both houses of Congress.

And then you get to the real skunk in the woodpile - namely, the soaring cost of debt service owing to the long-delayed but not nearly finished normalization of interest rates. If there were ever any doubt that Washington was wandering about in financial la-la land thanks to the Fed’s drastic suppression of interest rates, the data for the weighted average cost of debt service should resolve the matter.

As it happened, on the eve of FY 2020 and the aforementioned $9 trillion public debt explosion that followed, the federal debt held by the public had already more than tripled, from $5 trillion in late 2007 to nearly $17 trillion at the end of FY 2019. Owing to the Fed’s heavy foot on interest rates, however, the weighted average interest rate on the federal debt was just 2.5% on September 30, 2019.

Then came the $9 trillion borrowing explosion, but mirabile dictu (wonderful to relate), the cost of servicing the federal debt just kept on sinking. By early March 2022, when the Fed finally pivoted to inflation fighting, the weighted average interest rate reached just 1.56%! That’s right. Washington was in the midst of the greatest spending and borrowing frenzy in recorded history, but thanks to the Fed, the average yield on the public debt had declined by 40%.

Reality has interposed itself painfully ever since. By the end of August 2023, the weighted carry cost was up to 2.92%. Accordingly, the annualized run rate of federal interest expense soared from $578 billion in Q3 2019 to $910 billion in Q2 2023. That’s a 57% gain, but it is barely a warm-up for what’s coming down the pike.

Virtually every maturity of Treasury paper from 30-day bills to 30-year bonds is currently trading at +/- 5.0%, meaning that when current outstandings roll over, debt service will rise by a further $500 billion per year, even before new trillions are added to the total of Uncle Sam’s debt load.

And besides that, 5% is surely not the ultimate limit on Treasury yields. Given runaway public borrowing and the nation’s historically low savings rate, the average yield on the public debt is likely heading even higher. And there won’t be any rescue from the Fed this time, either, because inflation isn’t collapsing, meaning that a new cycle of "easy money" has only faded further down the horizon.

In this context, the core economic policy platform of the Washington GOP is a tale straight from fantasyland. That is to say, even as they want even more for the Warfare State and are loudly taking a powder on the Welfare State, they still feel compelled to demand that the Trump tax cuts be permanently extended when they expire in 2025. That would cost a cool $3.5 trillion in foregone revenue over the next decade, and that’s on top of the $25 trillion of new debt built in under current policy for the 10-year budget window ahead.

In short, the Uniparty has seconded the nation’s finances to a fiscal doomsday machine that is literally unstoppable. It’s an established trend in motion that is accelerating, and now approaching a breaking point."

- https://internationalman.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Empty Shelves At Dollar Tree! Lots Of Missing Products!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 11/17/23

"Empty Shelves At Dollar Tree! 

Lots Of Missing Products! This Is Not Good!"

"In today's vlog, we are at Dollar Tree and are noticing empty shelves everywhere. This is not good as we are finding many products missing. Cleaning products, some different foods, and no toilet paper whatsoever! We are finding more and more people having to shop at Dollar Tree due to very high prices in most grocery stores!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Scott Ritter, "Israel Kills Hundreds Of Families Every Day In Gaza, They Are Terrorists"

Scott Ritter, 11/16/23

"Israel Kills Hundreds Of Families Every 

Day In Gaza, They Are Terrorists"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Gerald Celente, Trends Journal 11/16/23"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, Trends Journal 11/16/23

"FED And ECB Pause Coming, The Ups And Downs"

"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."

- https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Walmart Warning Sign: Consumer Is Broke And Hurting, Stock Crashes"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/16/23

"Walmart Warning Sign: 

Consumer Is Broke And Hurting, Stock Crashes"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"15 Major Restaurant Chains Filed For Bankruptcy In 2023"

Full screen recommended.

The Atlantis Report, 11/16/23

"15 Major Restaurant Chains Filed For Bankruptcy In 2023"

"As the year winds to a close, we look back in retrospection at the many stormy winds that have raged in the economic scene, leaving in their wake several victims. One of the worst hit are restaurant chains, many of whom were forced to declare bankruptcy after facing dire economic hardships. These are 15 major restaurants that filed for bankruptcy in 2023."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Kevin Kern, "Another Realm"

Full screen recommended.

Kevin Kern, "Another Realm"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Galaxies of the Virgo Cluster are scattered across this deep telescopic field of view. The cosmic scene spans about three Full Moons, captured in dark skies near Jalisco, Mexico, planet Earth. About 50 million light-years distant, the Virgo Cluster is the closest large galaxy cluster to our own local galaxy group. Prominent here are Virgo's bright elliptical galaxies from the Messier catalog, M87 at the top left, and M84 and M86 seen (bottom to top) below and right of center.

M84 and M86 are recognized as part of Markarian's Chain, a visually striking line-up of galaxies vertically on the right side of this frame. Near the middle of the chain lies an intriguing interacting pair of galaxies, NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, known to some as Markarian's Eyes. Of course giant elliptical galaxy M87 dominates the Virgo cluster. It's the home of a super massive black hole, the first black hole ever imaged by planet Earth's Event Horizon Telescope."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

Chet Raymo, "Starlight"

"Starlight"

by Chet Raymo

"Poor Calvin is overwhelmed with the vastness of the cosmos and no small dose of existential angst. He is not the first, of course. Most famously the 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal wailed his own despair: "I feel engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing and which know nothing of me. I am terrified...The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me."

And he didn't know the half of it. Not so long ago we imagined ourselves to be the be-all and end-all of creation, at the center of a cosmos made expressly for us and at the pinnacle of the material Great Chain of Being. Then it turned out that the Earth was not the center of the cosmos. Nor the Sun. Nor the Galaxy. The astronomers Sebastian von Hoerner and Carl Sagan raised this experience to the level of a principle - the Principle of Mediocrity - which can be stated something like this: The view from here is about the same as the view from anywhere else. Or to put it another way: Our star, our planet, the life on it, and even our own intelligence, are completely mediocre.

Moon rocks are just like Earth rocks. Photographs of the surface of Mars made by the landers and rovers could as well have been made in Nevada. Meteorites contain some of the same organic compounds that are the basis for terrestrial life. Gas clouds in the space between the stars are composed of precisely the same atoms and molecules that we find in our own backyard. The most distant galaxies betray in their spectra the presence of familiar elements.

And yet, and yet, for all we know, our brains are the most complex things in the universe. Are we then living, breathing refutations of the Principle of Mediocrity? I doubt it. For the time being, Calvin will just have to get used to living in the infinite abyss and eternal silence. He has Hobbes. We have each other. And science. And poetry. And love."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"The Worst Part..."

"People cry not because they are weak.

It's because they've been strong for too long."

 - Johnny Depp