Friday, June 28, 2024

Adventures With Danno, "Aldi 'Saver Deals" Everywhere!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/28/24
"Aldi 'Saver Deals" Everywhere!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Aldi and are finding all kinds of their Aldi Saver Deals! As grocery prices continue to rise in most of our main supermarkets, Aldi has put together some pretty amazing sales that we should definitely take advantage of! We show you all of the savings, so get your notepad ready!"
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Dan, I Allegedly, "The New Scam Epidemic: How They're Stealing Millions"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 6/28/24
"The New Scam Epidemic:
 How They're Stealing Millions"
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Jeremiah Babe, "Emergency Broadcast: CNN Debate Goes Panic Mode, America On Thin Ice"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/28/24
"Emergency Broadcast: CNN Debate Goes 
Panic Mode, America On Thin Ice"
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Bill Bonner, "Make 'Em Laugh"

"Make 'Em Laugh"
Trillions of dollars in debt will be marked down, written off, 
or inflated away. This fake wealth will disappear, in other words. 
The voters, already restless, will sharpen the guillotine.
by Bill Bonner

"This is how our republic ends. Not with a debate but with a snivel between 
two candidates vying to demonstrate how utterly unqualified either is to lead us."
- Comment found on the Internet

Poitou, France - "We connect the dots. We look for patterns. Sometimes right. Sometimes wrong. Always in doubt. And always with a jolly demeanor. Which is probably easier to do from abroad than at home. ‘Laugh and know,’ said the Roman philosopher Martial. You don’t always know; but you can always laugh.

Words alone cannot describe last night’s presidential debate farce. That’s why God gave us laughter. We laughed at Trump. We laughed at Biden. The two geezers volleyed their much-rehearsed lies... like blind tennis players, hitting the ball only occasionally and only by accident. And then we laughed at the reporters. At least they realized that there was no substance to the debates, so they focused on Biden’s ‘raspy voice.’

Did either candidate mention the huge, dark cloud hanging over the US economy? America’s monetary experiment was expected to show that governments and central bankers are perfectly capable of running a money system. We don’t need no stinkin’ gold to keep it honest, said Milton Friedman (or words to that effect). Last night, we saw two reasons why he was wrong.

Inherent Value: This is not the first time the experiment has been run. Always and everywhere, the results have been the same - ‘paper’ money always returns to its inherent value…zero. Because the people who run governments and their central banks are merely human, all too human. Inevitably, many of them will be morons. But as we all know, we’re so much smarter today. As Hitler may or may not have remarked to Goebbels, “Okay... invading Russia didn’t work out for Napoleon... but now we have tanks!”

Past experiences with paper money (unbacked by gold) failed. But this time will be different, said Richard Nixon’s financial advisors. Now we have PhDs! And since the dollar was the go-to currency for the entire world, and since the PhDs go to the same universities and study the same misguided economists, their mistakes spread far and wide. Here’s Tom from his July Monthly Strategy Report published on Wednesday: "Today the Japanese yen set new 38-year lows against the US dollar. The last time the yen was this cheap against the dollar was in 1986. Savers in Japan have realized the government is not going to protect the real value of their yen-denominated savings. They’re panicking."

The Big Picture is simple. We’re in the initial stages of an epic government debt crisis. They spent, promised, printed and bailed out more than they can ever repay. The State is the apex creditor. But unlike a hedge fund, a bank or big corporation, no one stands behind the State to bail it out when it gets in trouble.  Now there’s a gigantic default coming. The run on Japan’s currency is just an initial symptom. But there’s more to that pattern. The yen may be down against the dollar. But the dollar is down too. Since 1986, it has lost - based on official inflation figures - 65% of its value. Against gold, the loss is 84%.

Our hypothesis is that after 1971 the fake money and fake interest rates led to flakey, fakey GDP and fictitious asset values. Debt (coaxed by Fed interest rates that were below zero, in real terms, for almost the entire period, 2007 to 2022) grew to the point where much of it can never be repaid. In the US, total debt approaches $100 trillion. Worldwide it is over $300 trillion.

In the next downturn, already underway, trillions of dollars’ worth of this debt will be marked down, written off, or inflated away. This fake wealth will disappear, in other words... and the voters, already restless, will sharpen the guillotine and look for necks. Did either Biden and Trump mention that? We didn’t think so."

Research Note, by Dan Denning: Inflation was a hot topic in last night’s Presidential debate, although neither candidate noted (nor took the blame for) the 22% expansion in money supply over the last four years - a permanent shift higher in the price level. This morning, thanks to a ‘cool’ inflation report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), interest rate cuts may be back on the menu in the second half of 2024.

The BEA said the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, the core personal consumption expenditures index (PCE) was up 2.6% on an annualized basis. Core PCE excludes food and energy costs (because they’re volatile). ‘Suprecore’ PCE, which excludes food, energy, and housing costs, was also up 2.6% year-over-year. Both numbers were in line with Wall Street estimates and still above the Fed’s 2% target for inflation.

On the last trading day of the first half of the year, the ‘tame’ inflation numbers have investors pricing in two Fed rate cuts in the next six months. As a reminder, the last ten rate cutting cycles have coincided with a recession and corrections in the S&P 500. The chart below shows the Fed funds rate (in blue) and recessions (the grey vertical lines). Be careful what you wish for."

Jim Kunstler, "Joe Biden Catches Cold"

"Joe Biden Catches Cold"
by Jim Kunstler

“Biden’s entire closing statement is the political equivalent 
of the blue screen of death. It’s just one long frozen glitch.” 
- Sean Davis, the Federalist

"Maybe ninety-seconds into last night’s long-awaited debate spectacle, the consensus must have jelled among the woke-and-broken news media mavens that their champion, “Joe Biden,” was not quite killing it out there at the podium. CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash acted like witnesses at a ritual sacrifice. And afterward, the CNN post-mortem panel seemed genuinely shocked that months of playing pretend had skidded to such an ignominious finish.

Which raises a great many questions, starting with: why on earth did the Democratic Party and its media handmaidens persist in pretending month-after-month that “Joe Biden” was a fit candidate for another four-year term? Last night, he didn’t appear capable of even finishing the current term. Why did they usher him so jauntily into the nomination? And what are they going to do about that now? And what were their motives for all that pretending? “Joe Biden” circulates among scores of astute officials every day. Did they all fail to notice his incapacity? Or has the whole thing been a sham and a lie all along? Was this just the culminating hoax by the Party of Hoaxes of a long string of hoaxes against the nation going back to 2015?

To the question of motives, the answer is obvious: the news networks have worked tirelessly (and with stunning dishonor) to hide their collusion with the government in gaslighting the public. More to the point, they’ve concealed the appalling truth that the CIA, DARPA, and their many intel blob subsidiaries conducted a silent coup over the USA and have been running our country’s affairs disastrously behind the “Joe Biden” façade - and that the coup actually started well before Mr. Trump’s 2016 inauguration. You know it, and they know that you know it.

More acutely, now that “Joe Biden” has been revealed as a hoax president, whole legions of public officials appear liable to criminal charges of the most serious degree: sedition, treason, mass murder, fraud, malfeasance, and in the case of the president himself, influence peddling and bribery. They must be desperate to avoid accounting for all that, losing their accrued fortunes to legal fees and going to prison (or worse). For example, outed just this week: news that then-CIA Director in 2020, Gina Haspel, knew about and participated in the infamous operation using 51 former Intel officers to cover up the veracity of Hunter Biden’s laptop days before the election.

They knew the laptop was real. Their colleagues over at the FBI knew it was real. They all knew it was stuffed with deal memos, legal memoranda, and emails that clearly laid out a long-running bribery operation among Biden family members and their lawyers. They knew it in 2019 when the Democratic Party moved to impeach Mr. Trump for inquiring about the Biden family’s money-grubbing activities in Ukraine - where, by the way, we may have fomented the war with Russia in part to cover up the culpability of all involved, including especially the State Department and their embassy staff in Kiev. The FBI and its bosses in the DOJ also withheld the laptop from Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers during the 2020 impeachment, though it contained massive exculpatory evidence to explain just why he made that fateful phone call to the newly elected Zelensky.

It’s obvious that the ruling blob now has to deep-six “Joe Biden.” The problem is they must induce him to renounce the nomination of his own will. The party’s nominating process is so bizarrely complex that it would very difficult to just shove him out. Another problem is that the party had to peremptorily declare “JB” their legal nominee before the August convention in order to keep him on the ballot in Ohio with its 17 electoral votes (due to some arcane machinery in the state’s election laws).

As per above, the debate fiasco calls into serious question whether “Joe Biden” is competent to even serve out this term. He (or shadowy figures pulling strings behind him) are making profoundly hazardous decisions right now, such as last week’s missile attack that killed and wounded civilians on the beach in Crimea. Are you seeing how easily “Joe Biden” might start World War Three? All of which is to say that pressure will soon rise to use the 25th amendment to relieve him of duty, leaving you-know-who in the oval office. If Joe Biden actually has to resign as president, he also loses the ability to pardon his son, Hunter, and peremptorily his other family members who shared bribery money received from China, Ukraine, and elsewhere.

If he won’t resign, and the party can’t force him off the ticket, the blob could have no choice except to bump him off. I imagine they would get it done humanely, say late at night sometime, in bed, using the same method as for putting down an old dog who has peed on the carpet one too many times. Or, if that can’t be managed and he clings to his position, maybe the party could cobble up some new nominating rules impromptu. And then, who could they slot in from the bench?

The usual suspects are like the cast of a freak show, each one displaying one grotesque deformity after another. Gavin Newsom we understand: the party’s base of batshit-crazy women may all want to bear his child, but that limbic instinct to mate with a six-foot-three haircut-in-search-of-a-brain might not work with any other voter demographic - and Newsom has the failed state of California hanging around his neck. All Mr. Trump would have to do is broadcast the scene from a San Francisco street-cam on “X” (Twitter) 24/7.

Hillary has been stealthily flapping her leathery wings overhead for weeks as this debacle approached. She may still own the actual machinery of the Democratic Party - having purchased it through the Clinton Foundation some years back when the party was broke and needed a bailout. She could just command the nomination by screeching “Caw Caw” from the convention rostrum. Whatever happens, it will look terrible.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan? An inveterate and notorious intel blob tool, Whitmer has allowed herself to be used repeatedly by the FBI to frame and persecute conservatives in her state as well as using her state AG Dana Nessel to go after political enemies there, especially poll workers who cried fraud in the sketchiest Michigan voting districts.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. Like Dreamboat Newsom in California, Mr. Pritzker is busily running Illinois (and especially Chicago) into bankruptcy and chaos. Looks aren’t everything, but if Dreamboat gives the vapors to Karens across the land, the Illinois governor will get them shrieking in terror as from the sight of King Kong on Skull Island

Who else is there? Michelle O, of course, who will be instantly branded as a catspaw for her husband seeking a fifth term - as Barack himself has averred in so many words: just hanging out in the background, managing things in his jogging suit. That would be the ultimate Banana Republic set-up for us and I don’t think the voters will go for it. It all boils down to the Party of Chaos being thrust into chaos. Can it even survive “Joe Biden?”

Then there is Mr. Trump himself. He remains the object of widespread rabid loathing, yet more and more Americans are coming to appreciate his opposition to Woke Marxist chaos and intel blobbery-gone-wild in our land. His performance last night featured his usual jumpy locutions and incomplete sentences, but in contrast to the current president, he looked neither senile nor an agent of sinister forces dedicated to bringing our country to its knees. Had Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. been present both of the others would have been badly outclassed verbally and intellectually. If Mr. Trump survives the blob’s efforts to delete him before November, I’m sure Mr. Kennedy will play a prominent role in another Trump administration. He knows exactly where the rot is and how to roust it out."

Thursday, June 27, 2024

Jeremiah Babe, "Nike Sends Economic Warning As Sneaker Sales Slow"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/27/24
"Nike Sends Economic Warning As Sneaker Sales Slow; 
US Vehicles Are Falling Apart, Major Recall"
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"15 Things To Buy Right Now To Get Ready For The Next Disaster"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 6/27/24
"15 Things To Buy Right Now 
To Get Ready For The Next Disaster"

"We're all familiar with that apocalyptic movie scene in which hordes of people start rushing to the grocery store and fighting each other over basic supplies because they didn't stock up on essentials, and were caught off guard by an unexpected event. Would you be one of them if that happened today? We don't even have to go back that far in history to find similar situations where Americans emptied grocery shelves in record time, and saw innocent customers becoming aggressive looters as panic and anxiety started to bring the worst out of people.

After the food chain is disrupted, basic staples can face astronomical price increases. It is often in the middle of such a scenario that people also realize their money doesn't have the same value it once had. That can certainly be chaotic, and in many cases, quite frightening. Even though we've been through it just a few years ago, - during the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdowns, - people's memories are short, and many believe we're far from experiencing anything like this again. But they should think twice."
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Musical Interlude: The Civil Wars, "Kingdom Come"

Full screen recommended.
The Civil Wars, "Kingdom Come"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"This intergalactic skyscape features a peculiar system of galaxies cataloged as Arp 227 some 100 million light-years distant. Swimming within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, Arp 227 consists of the two galaxies prominent right of center, the curious shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue, spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470. 
The faint, wide arcs or shells of NGC 474 could have been formed by a gravitational encounter with neighbor NGC 470. Alternately the shells could be caused by a merger with a smaller galaxy producing an effect analogous to ripples across the surface of a pond. The large galaxy on the top lefthand side of the deep image, NGC 467, appears to be surrounded by faint shells too, evidence of another interacting galaxy system. Intriguing background galaxies are scattered around the field that also includes spiky foreground stars. Of course, those stars lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. The field of view spans 25 arc minutes or about 1/2 degree on the sky."

"Life..."

"Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that's why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that's why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living."
- Alysha Speer

"The joke was thinking you were ever really in charge of your life. You pressed your oar down into the water to direct the canoe, but it was the current that shot you through the rapids. You just hung on and hoped not to hit a rock or a whirlpool."
- Scott Turow

"Life's funny, chucklehead. You only get one and you don't want to throw it away. But you can't really live it at all unless you're willing to give it up for the things you love. If you're not at least willing to die for something - something that really matters - in the end you die for nothing."
- Andrew Klavan

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"

"In a Dark Time"

"In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood-
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks- is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is-
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind."

- Theodore Roethke

Kahlil Gibran, "You Are My Brother..."

“You are my brother, but why are you quarreling with me? Why do you invade my country and try to subjugate me for the sake of pleasing those who are seeking glory and authority?

Why do you leave your wife and children and follow Death to the distant land for the sake of those who buy glory with your blood, and high honor with your mother's tears?

Is it an honor for a man to kill his brother man? If you deem it an honor, let it be an act of worship, and erect a temple to Cain who slew his brother Abel.

Is self-preservation the first law of Nature? Why, then, does Greed urge you to self-sacrifice in order only to achieve his aim in hurting your brothers? Beware, my brother, of the leader who says, "Love of existence obliges us to deprive the people of their rights!" I say unto you but this: protecting others' rights is the noblest and most beautiful human act; if my existence requires that I kill others, then death is more honorable to me, and if I cannot find someone to kill me for the protection of my honor, I will not hesitate to take my life by my own hands for the sake of Eternity before Eternity comes.

Selfishness, my brother, is the cause of blind superiority, and superiority creates clanship, and clanship creates authority which leads to discord and subjugation.

The soul believes in the power of knowledge and justice over dark ignorance; it denies the authority that supplies the swords to defend and strengthen ignorance and oppression - that authority which destroyed Babylon and shook the foundation of Jerusalem and left Rome in ruins. It is that which made people call criminals great men; made writers respect their names; made historians relate the stories of their inhumanity in manner of praise.

The only authority I obey is the knowledge of guarding and acquiescing in the Natural Law of Justice.

What justice does authority display when it kills the killer? When it imprisons the robber? When it descends on a neighborhood country and slays its people? What does justice think of the authority under which a killer punishes the one who kills, and a thief sentences the one who steals?

You are my brother, and I love you; and Love is justice with its full intensity and dignity. If justice did not support my love for you, regardless of your tribe and community, I would be a deceiver concealing the ugliness of selfishness behind the outer garment of pure love.”

- Kahlil Gibran

"The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning Spanish Poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Love Letter to Life"

"The Donkey and the Meaning of Eternity: Nobel-Winning
 Spanish Poet Juan Ramón Jiménez’s Love Letter to Life"
by Maria Popova

Excerpt: "Beneath our anxious quickenings, beneath our fanged fears, beneath the rusted armors of conviction, tenderness is what we long for - tenderness to salve our bruising contact with reality, to warm us awake from the frozen stupor of near-living. Tenderness is what permeates Platero and I (public library) by the Nobel-winning Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez (December 23, 1881–May 29, 1958) - part love letter to his beloved donkey, part journal of ecstatic delight in nature and humanity, part fairy tale for the lonely.

Living in his birthplace of Moguer - a small town in rural Andalusia - Jiménez began composing this uncommon posy of prose poems in 1907. Although it spans less than a year in his life with Platero, it took him a decade to publish it. At its heart is a simple truth: What and whom we love is a lens to focus our love of life itself.

The tenderness with which Jiménez regards Platero - whom he addresses by name over and over, like an incantation of love - is the tenderness of living with wonder and fragility. He celebrates Platero’s “big gleaming eyes, of a gentle firmness, in which the sun shines”; he reverences him as “friend to the old man and the child, to the stream and the butterfly, to the sun and the dog, to the flower and the moon, patient and pensive, melancholy and lovable, the Marcus Aurelius of the meadows.” He beckons him: “Come with me. I’ll teach you the flowers and the stars.”

And so he does: "Look, Platero, so many roses are falling everywhere: blue, pink, white, colorless roses… You’d think the sky was crumbling into roses… You’d think that from the seven galleries of Paradise roses were being thrown onto the earth… Platero, it seems, while the Angelus is ringing, that this life of ours is losing its everyday strength, and that a different strength from within, loftier, more constant, and purer, is causing everything, as if in fountain jets of grace… Your eyes, which you can’t see, Platero, and which you are mildly raising skyward, are two beautiful roses."

Together, poet and donkey traverse the Andalusian countryside in a state of rapturous harmony with each other and the living world: "Through the low-lying roads of summer, draped with tender honeysuckle, how sweetly we go! I read, or sing, or recite poetry to the sky. Platero nibbles the sparse grass of the shady banks, the dusty blossoms of the mallows, the yellow sorrel. He halts more than he walks. I let him.
[…]
Every so often Platero stops eating and looks at me. Every so often I stop reading and look at Platero."

There are echoes of Whitman in Jiménez’s exultations: "Before us are the fields, already green. Facing the immense, clear sky, of a blazing indigo, my eyes - so far from my ears! - open nobly, welcoming in its calm that indescribable placidity, that harmonious, divine serenity which dwells in the limitlessness of the horizon."

This longing for the infinite accompanies the young man and the old donkey as they cross the hills and valleys on their daily pilgrimages: "The evening extends beyond its normal limits, and the hour, infected with eternity, is infinite, peaceful, unfathomable."

Again and again, Platero’s presence magnifies the poet’s relishing of beauty, deepens his contact with the eternal: "I remain in ecstasy before the twilight. Platero, his black eyes scarlet with sunset, walks gently to a puddle of crimson, pink, and violet waters; he softly immerses his lips into the mirrors, which seem to liquefy as he touches them."

Punctuating these ecstasies are the inevitable spells of melancholy stemming from the fact that the price of being awake to life is being also awake to mortality. Aware that this enchanted life with his beloved Platero is only for the time being, Jiménez reaches into the sorrow of the future to consecrate it with joy: "Platero. I shall bury you at the foot of the large, round pine in the orchard at La Piña, which you like so much. You will remain alongside cheerful, serene life. The little boys will play and the little girls will sew beside you on their little low chairs. You will get to hear the verses that the solitude will inspire in me. You’ll hear the older girls singing when they wash clothes in the orange grove, and the sound of the waterwheel will be a joy and a solace to your eternal peace. And all year long the goldfinches, greenfinches, and vireos, in the perennial freshness of the treetop, will create for you a small musical ceiling between your tranquil slumber and Moguer’s infinite, ever-blue sky."
Full, wonderful article is here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Scottsboro, Alabama, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Free Download: Robert D. Hare, "Snakes In Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work"

"Over the last thirty years, the United States has been taken over by an amoral financial oligarchy, and the American dream of opportunity, education, and upward mobility is now largely confined to the top few percent of the population. Federal policy is increasingly dictated by the wealthy, by the financial sector, and by powerful (though sometimes badly mismanaged) industries such as telecommunications, health care, automobiles, and energy. These policies are implemented and praised by these groups’ willing servants, namely the increasingly bought-and-paid-for leadership of America’s political parties, academia, and lobbying industry.

If allowed to continue, this process will turn the United States into a declining, unfair society with an impoverished, angry, uneducated population under the control of a small, ultrawealthy elite. Such a society would be not only immoral but also eventually unstable, dangerously ripe for religious and political extremism.

Thus far, both political parties have been remarkably clever and effective in concealing this new reality. In fact, the two parties have formed an innovative kind of cartel - an arrangement I have termed America’s political duopoly. Both parties lie about the fact that they have each sold out to the financial sector and the wealthy. So far both have largely gotten away with the lie, helped in part by the enormous amount of money now spent on deceptive, manipulative political advertising."
Charles Ferguson, "Predator Nation" May 21, 2013
o
Freely download "Snakes In Suits: 
When Psychopaths Go To Work", by Robert D. Hare, here:
o
Freely download "Punishment And Privilege: 
The Politics Of Class, Crime, And Corporations In America" here:

"Why Are People So Reluctant..."

"Why are people so reluctant to believe that sociopaths and narcissists can use the power of the pen to prey on people? Because they are well spoken and organized? We would contend that these are the most dangerous of the emotionally warped with a need to acquire, dominate and control, because they are smarter and more calculating than the impulse murderers, burglars, rapists, thieves, and pedophiles.

There is a need for economic law and enforcement as there is a need for the less cerebral, hairy knuckled criminal law and enforcement. The notion that people become naturally good, rational and well-adjusted because they are wearing a suit is ludicrous, especially to anyone who has worked with many of those who move in the upper echelons of money and power.

Some of the scariest people we have ever met were articulate and pathologically driven borderline psychopaths with a need to acquire political and economic power. It is the focus of their illness that makes them powerful. They are not distracted by the diffusion of emotional responses that color most people's actions. They have a need, and the will to satisfy it, no matter what it takes.

There will always be those at the extremes who need to 'take it to the limit,' with a well stocked foreign retreat in case things get ugly. But for most of us, restoring a sense of justice and order and putting the nation back into some kind of working balance will be high on the priority list, if not for ourselves, then for our families."
Jesse, "Predator Class," 26 December 2008

“The Meaning Of Good And Evil In Perilous Times”

“The Meaning Of Good And Evil In Perilous Times”
by Brandon Smith

"Perhaps the most destructive idea ever planted in the minds of the general public is the notion that nothing in this world is permanent – that all things can and must be constantly changed to suit our whims. The concept of impermanence fuels what I call “blank slate propaganda.” The usefulness of the blank slate as a weapon for social control should be explained before we examine the nature of good and evil, because these days it infects everything.

The push for never ending social “evolution” has been called many things over the decades. In the early 1900s in Europe it was called “futurism;” an art and philosophical movement that helped spawn the rise of communism and fascism in politics.The argument that all old ideas and longstanding traditions should be abandoned to make way for new ideas, new technologies, news systems etc., assumes that the supposedly new ways of doing things are superior to the old ways of doing things. Things are rarely this simple, and in most cases the new methods so proudly championed by movements for social change are usually recycled and repackaged old ideas that are notorious for failure.
The blank slate theory is designed to confuse people with self-doubt and to misrepresent the constructs of nature as constructs of society. It most effectively disrupts people’s relationship to their own moral compass by suggesting that moral compass should be completely ignored as artificial. The argument by blank slate proponents is that all boundaries are created by society instead of by inborn conscience, and that these boundaries often hold us back from achieving our goals, bettering ourselves as a species and generally getting what we want out of life.
But the things we want are not always the things we need, and this is something that movement’s for social change often refuse to grasp. If we are all blank slates and if morality and the human soul are myths, why not do whatever the hell we want, whenever we want and live life as if it is one big Roman orgy of feasting, self-medicating and overall addiction to sensation?
The problem with the blank slate concept is that while it purports that all restrictions in the human psyche are taught to us rather than being inborn and that they can be abandoned any time we want, we still can’t seem to avoid the consequences of breaking those restrictions.  People lose their sanity, societies crumble and nations fall to ruin over time the more we cast aside our principles in the name of social evolution or short term gain. It is unavoidable.
The only people who seem to benefit from the spread of the blank slate are the people already in political and economic power. For if they can convince the masses to ignore their conscience, they can then convince us to accept almost any other conditions.
To act in a manner consistent with inherent conscience, or to ignore conscience and act destructively, is a choice. It is the core pillar of free will. The choice to act destructively does not erase the reality of inherent conscience; in fact, people often have to be fooled into believing that a destructive and immoral action is a “good thing” before they are convinced to carry it out. Inherent conscience must be bypassed through trickery.
The problem with choosing to stick by one’s principles is that it is easy during times of relative stability, but increasingly difficult during times of struggle. In perilous days, the temptation to use destructive tactics to maintain an expectation of comfort or to merely survive can be high. It is no coincidence that power elites, the same people that tend to promote blank slate propaganda, also tend to deliberately engineer social crisis and chaos. But perhaps this needs a deeper explanation. We must define something most of us already understand intuitively. We must define “evil.”
Like inherent conscience and moral boundaries, blank slate theorists and social change advocates attempt to muddy the waters of what constitutes evil. Some will say there is no such thing — that evil is whatever we deem it to be in any given era depending on our biases.  Others will claim that tradition, permanence and anything in society that remains static is evil. The only “good” for them is constant change.
But evil is not as illusory and changing as these people suggest. In fact, most men and women recoil automatically from certain specific behaviors regardless of how they were raised, what environment they come from, what culture they were born into or what era they lived.  The people who don’t recoil at these behaviors are the people we have to watch out for because they are missing something integral to the heart and mind that makes the rest of us human.
In psychological terms, the characteristics of high level narcissists and sociopaths match most closely with our historic concept of evil.  And, in my view, most great evils done in history are in fact done by people with multiple narcissistic traits.  As far as global elitists are concerned, they represent a rather insidious threat, because they are narcissistic sociopaths that have organized into a predatory gang, so all the traits consistent with the behavior of your average serial killer are now magnified a thousandfold by their access to unlimited resources.
How do we identify these people? Well, this is a difficult prospect at times because narcissistic sociopaths commonly hide in plain sight.  Some people live with them for years before realizing exactly what they are. They also like to insert themselves into nonprofit organizations that claim to do good for the community as a cover for their more insidious motives.
Some traits and behaviors that are common are a lack of normal emotional response to traumatic events or joyous events, or they will mimic the responses of others to blend in but they come off as “forced” or “fake.” They have no concept of empathy; it does not exist for them.
They seek out centers of power and are drawn to positions of authority. They always seem to be demanding the efforts of others while rarely offering their own help. They make terrible leaders, always attempting to lead from a place of safety while letting their conscripts take the risks. Leading by example is a foreign concept to them.
They will lie repetitively about their accomplishments and their accolades. They will misrepresent their professional achievements in order to gain people’s trust. Ask them to prove through actions that they can do all the things they claim they can do, and they will try to avoid the test or respond indignantly and angrily.
They will gaslight their ideological enemies or people they are trying to control. They will accuse others of being “narcissists” or “sociopaths” or fascists or any moniker that will push the buttons of their target. Whatever evils they are guilty of, they will try to flip and lay at the feet of their enemies.
They always seem to have “minions” to do their dirty work for them and attack those that oppose them. People that have dealt with narcissistic sociopaths in their personal lives sometimes refer to these minions as “flying monkeys,” referencing the flying monkeys enslaved by the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. Flying monkeys are essentially useful idiots that the narcissist employs through fraud and sometimes through pay. Whenever the narcissist is under threat of being exposed, they unleash their flying monkeys onto the streets or onto the internet to undermine truth tellers.
They do not believe in moral or personal boundaries which is why they are always trying convince people that such boundaries are a myth.  They will cross moral lines, always testing the fences for weaknesses; trying to wear others down until they give up and stop fighting back.
They desperately want to come out of the shadows and into the light of day. They want to be adored as the monsters they are, rather than the fake philanthropists they portray themselves as. In order to do this, every narcissistic sociopath makes it their duty to erase the idea of conscience, whether they are part of the globalist cabal or just another ghoul down the street. Their natural inclination is to corrupt whatever they touch, and if they cannot corrupt a thing, they will attempt to destroy that thing.
Most of all, narcissistic sociopaths want everyone around them to believe that we are just like them. That “deep down” all of us are unprincipled and morally bankrupt and all it takes is a crisis or calamity, just a little chaos to bring out the devil in everyone.
But if this were really the case, then humanity would have died out long ago through endless self-destruction; something keeps bringing us back from the brink in our personal lives and in society as a whole. Conscience keeps defeating evil by refusing to grant evil people the utopia of blank slate chaos they want so badly. And this is what give me confidence that no matter how terrible our days might become there is something on our side that goes beyond the physical world.
Every crisis is a test, a test of each person and a test of our culture. Can we act with reason and courage and principle even in the worst of times, or will we be lured to make our struggle easier through malicious means? Will we do right by those around us, or will we happily trample over them in the name of “survival?”
In the end, the worst men bring the best men to the surface. This is the only “good” they will ever do.”

"The Sociopath Next Door"

"The Sociopath Next Door"
by Martha Stout

"Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition. In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.

You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered. How will you live your life? What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)? The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by blood lust and those who have no such appetites. Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all.

Maybe you are someone who craves money and power, and though you have no vestige of conscience, you do have a magnificent IQ. You have the driving nature and the intellectual capacity to pursue tremendous wealth and influence, and you are in no way moved by the nagging voice of conscience that prevents other people from doing everything and anything they have to do to succeed. You choose business, politics, the law, banking or international development, or any of a broad array of other power professions, and you pursue your career with a cold passion that tolerates none of the usual moral or legal encumbrances. When it is expedient, you doctor the accounting and shred the evidence, you stab your employees and your clients (or your constituency) in the back, marry for money, tell lethal premeditated lies to people who trust you, attempt to ruin colleagues who are powerful or eloquent, and simply steamroll over groups who are dependent and voiceless. And all of this you do with the exquisite freedom that results from having no conscience whatsoever.

You become unimaginably, unassailably, and maybe even globally successful. Why not? With your big brain, and no conscience to rein in your schemes, you can do anything at all. If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people's hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. Crazy and frightening - and real, in about 6 percent of the population.

The high incidence of sociopathy in human society has a profound effect on the rest of us who must live on this planet, too, even those of us who have not been clinically traumatized. The individuals who constitute this 6 percent drain our relationships, our bank accounts, our accomplishments, our self-esteem, our very peace on earth.

Yet surprisingly, many people know nothing about this disorder, or if they do, they think only in terms of violent psychopathy - murderers, serial killers, mass murderers - people who have conspicuously broken the law many times over, and who, if caught, will be imprisoned, maybe even put to death by our legal system. We are not commonly aware of, nor do we usually identify, the larger number of nonviolent sociopaths among us, people who often are not blatant lawbreakers, and against whom our formal legal system provides little defense.

Most of us would not imagine any correspondence between conceiving an ethnic genocide and, say, guiltlessly lying to one's boss about a coworker. But the psychological correspondence is not only there; it is chilling. Simple and profound, the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us, emotionally speaking, when we make a choice we view as immoral, unethical, neglectful, or selfish. Most of us feel mildly guilty if we eat the last piece of cake in the kitchen, let alone what we would feel if we intentionally and methodically set about to hurt another person. Those who have no conscience at all are a group unto themselves, whether they be homicidal tyrants or merely ruthless social snipers.

The presence or absence of conscience is a deep human division, arguably more significant than intelligence, race, or even gender. What differentiates a sociopath who lives off the labors of others from one who occasionally robs convenience stores, or from one who is a contemporary robber baron - or what makes the difference between an ordinary bully and a sociopathic murderer - is nothing more than social status, drive, intellect, blood lust, or simple opportunity. What distinguishes all of these people from the rest of us is an utterly empty hole in the psyche, where there should be the most evolved of all humanizing functions."
o

"She Studied Extreme Psychopaths. Here’s What It Taught Her About Human Nature"

Full screen recommended.
Big Think, 6/27/24
"She Studied Extreme Psychopaths. 
Here’s What It Taught Her About Human Nature"

"Are humans naturally selfless? Psychologist Abigail Marsh is using studies on psychopathy and altruism to find out. Abigail Marsh, a psychology and neuroscience professor at Georgetown University, explains how the world is impacted by those with psychopathy, and, additionally, those who practice extreme altruism. Psychopathy, she says, is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting a small percentage of people, who are different from a very early age due to their unique brain development. Conversely, she talks about people who are exceptionally altruistic - those who go out of their way to help others, often at great personal risk. These individuals are humble, believe in the goodness of others, and are highly empathetic. She concludes by explaining that acts of generosity have been increasing on a global scale, and how these trends have proven that it is possible for individuals to change their own natural levels of altruism. Through awareness and action, we can build a more caring and helpful society for ourselves and generations to come." 

If you’re curious about your own levels of altruism, Marsh suggests using online tests like the TriPM or HEXACO personality tests: 
The HEXACO test: - https://survey.ucalgary.ca/

"How It Really Is"

The best little whorehouse, well, anywhere...

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 6/27/24"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/27/24
"The Stock Market Will Crash 80% Or More, 
Extreme Distortions"
Comments here:
o
Gregory Mannarino, PM 6/27/24
"Why A 'Credit Freeze/Complete Lock-Up' 
Of The System May Not Be Too Far Off"
Comments here:

Bill Bonner, "Blitzkrieg"

A ruined bunker at For Douamont, 
near Verdun on the French Maginot Line

"Blitzkrieg"
by Bill Bonner

"Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery."
- Jack Paar

“It’s the creolization of France,” whispered a neighbor. “Creolization” was the type of word we used to admire. Or, at least we admired the French for using words like that. Big, Latinate words... the kind a professor of history might use... make people sound intelligent. And so it was, that when we first came to France, we thought the French were smart. Now, we realize; they are just as dumb as Americans. Maybe dumber.

The nice thing about being overseas is that the parade of dumbness becomes less annoying. Tragedy turns to comedy. Instead of the embarrassment, dread and shame you feel when you read the home media, you can have a good laugh. After all, it’s not your fellow citizens who are idiots; it’s foreigners. And it’s not your country that is on the road to ruin; it’s a foreign country.

Two of the five priests officiating at the Sunday mass were African. And ahead of them, coming down the aisle to the sound of drums beating, was a whole contingent from New Caledonia... now living in a nearby town. They were big people, like Tahitians or Hawaiians, dressed in native outfits... with colorful skirts and headbands. Much of the music for the mass was of a distinctive ‘creole’ style marked by drums and swaying islanders - even the lord’s prayer was sung to a strange, palm-tree rhythm.

Going Native: When the English colonized, they were careful to keep their English culture to themselves. Even in the jungles of Africa, they stopped their safaris to have a proper tea. An Englishman like ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ who ‘went native,’ mixing with the locals and taking up their culture, was viewed with suspicion, pity or contempt.

The French, on the other hand, were eager to share their culture. They saw colonization as a ‘mission civilisatrice.’ They expected the indigenes to put a beret on their heads and begin singing the Marseillaise. But now, the sandal is on the other foot. France and England are being invaded by their former colonial subjects. And the French worry that their civilizing mission failed. The natives did not become French; they just got French passports. And now, France itself is ‘going native.’ Our neighbor explained:

It was only a few years ago that one out of every ten people in France had foreign roots. Mostly from North Africa. Now, it’s one out of every four. French law makes it easy for people from France’s overseas departments and territories to live in France. Many are already citizens.

Immigration has become a hot button in French politics, as it is in the US. Emmanuel Macron represents the French Hillary Clintons and Pete Buttigiegs - ‘centrists,’ well-educated, technocratic, and ‘liberal’ - who claimed to be able to ‘manage’ the issue... and expect grateful immigrants to vote for them. They favor more government, more rules, more spending... and more wars to keep everyone in line.

But the recent EU elections showed how unpopular the know-it-alls have become. Bloomberg: "Even Macron’s Closest Allies Fear His Brand Is Toxic." "The day after Emmanuel Macron stunned France by calling a snap election, an uncomfortable truth emerged at an emergency meeting of top government press officials: they had to manage a deeply unpopular President in what had effectively become a referendum on his leadership. The first round of voting is scheduled for Sunday."

Broadly speaking, the ‘right wing’ taps into anti-immigrant sentiments. The ‘left wing’ appeals to immigrants themselves... and those who don’t like to see Muslim children getting massacred. In France, as in the US, political campaigns are mostly just an exchange of insults. Any comment that can be labeled “racist” or “anti-semite,” is seized and broadcast... with little regard for the actual thought - if there were one - behind it.

An example. Yesterday, the Daily Mail reported: "A far-right election candidate in France is facing prosecution for unveiling an election poster reading: 'Let's give white children a future'. The slogan is accompanied by an image of a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy..."
The kid doesn’t look especially ‘French’ to us. He looks more like the product of an earlier invasion - by the Wehrmacht in 1940."