Jim Kunstler, "Mad to the Max"

"Mad to the Max"

by Jim Kunstler

“I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for the press to 

have a consistent narrative about how dangerous Trump is.” 

- Hillary Clinton

"If anything like civil war ignites in this country, the sides will not be the political Red and the Blue but the sane and the insane. Now it happens, unfortunately, that the insane are driving the engine of government. They have been at war with the people of this land for years, depriving them of livelihoods, stuffing them into prison, breaking the social contract, wrecking the country’s relations with the rest of the world, and belaboring the peoples’ minds with one insulting absurdity after another.

They comprise a bizarre coalition of the permanent bureaucracy, the Democratic Party, and the news media. The permanent bureaucracy includes its own machine for making war on citizens: the intel blob, whose tentacles reach into other agencies: Homeland Security, the State Department, the so-called Justice Department, the Pentagon, the myriad Public Health offices, and the shadowy clique that stands-in for a disabled president in the White House.

You can tell they are insane because they are driven by a single motivation: to remain in power for no other purpose than to escape responsibility for their many crimes against the people. This is insane behavior because it depends on the proposition that reality does not matter, that reality is optional, that there is no such thing as truth, and if it happened to exist, to be a thing, it would have no greater value to the human project than its opposite, untruth.

The greatest absurdity of the moment, is the idea that Americans might desire to continue under the rule of this evil coalition devoted to unreality and untruth, that is, to vote for candidates of the Democratic Party. Its greatest crimes, of course, are the lawless measures taken to pervert the very elections that might allow them to retain power in office.

Some of it is well-hidden and abstruse, such as the machinations of election lawfare manager-in-chief, Marc Elias, who for many years has used the courts and the state legislatures to fiddle election rules that make it impossible to account for who is actually casting the votes. This, you understand, is insane. What sovereign people would seek to institutionalize election fraud?

Some election crime is just in your face. The open border policy may have many nefarious angles, but an obvious one is stuffing the voter rolls with live bodies that have names attached, which can be bundled and harvested in ballot form like so many sheaves of oats. No one is fooled by this. Yet the Democratic Party has its heavy hand on the lever of power that controls entry to the country. Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security allows this to happen and bullshits Congress in open committee hearings. Congress has impeached him for this affront and the Democratic majority Senate has declined to hold the attendant trial - because stuffing the voter rolls with illegal immigrants allows them to remain in power.

The remedies for this dastardly mess are pretty simple and straightforward: return to paper ballots cast on one election day, requiring voter ID that amounts to proof of citizenship. Everything else - computerized (hackable) ballot-counting machines, mail-in ballots, early voting, automatic voter registration by means of other government transactions that have nothing to do with elections (motor-voter acts) - only insures election fraud. Sane people do not seek to defraud themselves.

It is widely suspected by the not-insane that even the attempt at massive voter fraud may not avail to put over the paramount candidate of the insane: Veep Kamala Harris. Nobody believes that she is capable of being president. But the insane don’t seek a capable president - in fact, the opposite. They want a president who can only function with direction and management of the blob, by the blob, and for the blob. The blob’s motives, besides seeking to avoid responsibility for its prior crimes, are a license to commit new crimes, especially crimes that expand the many perquisites and privileges of being in power. These include the fortunes to be made in control of the nation’s wealth, and the sadistic pleasure derived from punishing and humiliating their not-insane opponents. For instance, running the insane Ukraine war, with its fabulous kickbacks for the military contractors and office-holders...and making you witness more drag queen story hours.

Due to the possibility that sane citizens, despite calculated election fraud, might elect Mr. Trump, who opposes all that psychotic, criminal nonsense, the coalition of the permanent bureaucracy, the Democratic Party, and the news media appears to have few options left besides murdering Mr. Trump. The first two would-be assassins show a train of association with the intel blob. Thomas Crooks (or, at least one of his many cell phones) traveled repeatedly to a downtown DC building adjacent to the FBI HQ; Ryan Wesley Routh has alleged links to the Arlington, Va., Maximus Company, a CIA cut-out - perhaps explaining how the otherwise indigent Routh funded his global travels. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla) disclosed yesterday that the DHS knows of five assassination teams targeting President Trump, three connected with foreign governments, two domestic.

The most mystifying element in the coalition of the insane is the news media - that is, the cable news networks plus The New York Times/WashPost axis - who have tirelessly broadcast the mantras that Mr. Trump seeks to quash our democracy and that he is a new Hitler who must be stopped at all costs. The inflammatory barrage has had an obvious effect. But the mystery is: what’s in it for these news companies to go along with their insane and desperate partners: the blob and the Dems?

What’s in it for Joe Khan, Executive Editor of The Times? His paper lies and spins unreality incessantly. He surely makes a comfortable salary, but he can’t be getting rich...that is, really rich...millions. Apparently, he publishes unreal stories because he’s insane. He believes things that are not true. Nor are his reporters getting really rich. They just appear to be blinded by sheer hatred - rising to insanity - and perhaps also by the lurking fear that their many published lies, dating back to RussiaGate, will eventually disgrace them professionally if allowed to be pursued and revealed by the sane.

The temperature is rising in this political crucible. Something is going to melt down. It’s looking pretty clear now who can take the heat, and who can’t."

- https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com/

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "The Royal Albert Hall Concert"

Full screen recommended.

Ludovico Einaudi, 

"The Royal Albert Hall Concert:

 Lady Labyrinth and Nightbook" ( 2010 )

"A Look to the Heavens:

“A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly.

The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160728.html

Chet Raymo, “What Not to Believe”

“What Not to Believe”

by Chet Raymo

“In Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra, I came across this epigraph from Euripides: "Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." I have no idea which of Euripides' plays the quote is from, but it strikes me as a suitable source for reflection. Credulity is the default state of a human life. Children are born to believe, to accept as true what they are told by adults. An innate credulity has survival value in a dangerous world. If a grown-up says "There are crocodiles in the river," it is probably best to stay out of the water.

Skepticism, on the other hand, must be learned. I was late in realizing that I didn't have to believe the received "truth." My best teacher was a somewhat older Panamanian secular Jew I went to graduate school with at UCLA. We took our brown-bag lunches together in the university's botanical garden, and spent the hour talking about physics, religion, and the "meaning of life."

Moises was the first person I had encountered after sixteen years of Catholic education who mentioned the word "skepticism." "Why do you believe that?" he would ask, and often I had no answer except that it was what my family and teachers told me was true. The idea that I might actually examine the basis for my beliefs was a rather new concept. In matters of religion, like almost everyone else in the world, I had embraced uncritically the faith story into which I was born.

And thus began my search for "a judicious sense of what not to believe." When later, as a teacher, I wrote a little column for each issue of the college newspaper, I called it "Under a Skeptical Star," from a line of the Scots poet/scholar William MacNeile Dixon: "If there be a skeptical star I was born under it, yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment." A liberating sense of what not to believe opened the door to a vastly more interesting world whose diverse and astonishing riches I continue to explore to this day."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"At The Approach Of Danger..."

“At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other, even more reasonable, says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man’s power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.”

- Leo Tolstoy, “War and Peace”

“All our mortal lives are set in danger and perplexity: one day to prosper,

and the next – who knows? When all is well, then look for rocks ahead.”

- Sophoclese, “Philoctetes”

○

Free Downloads:

A little light reading from Tolstoy…   

Freely download “War and Peace”, by Leo Tolstoy, here:

- https://www.planetebook.com/war-and-peace/

Freely download “Seven Tragedies of Sophocles- Philoctetes” here:

- https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/

The Poet: William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"

"The Second Coming"

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

- William Butler Yeats, January 1919

"Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world," indeed...

The Daily "Near You?"

Sapulpa, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Never, Ever Forget..."

"Never, ever forget that nothing in this life is free. Life demands payment in some form for your "right" to express yourself, to condemn and abuse the evil surrounding us. Expect to pay... it will come for you, they will come for you, regardless. Knowing that, give them Hell itself every chance you can. Expect no mercy, and give none. That's how life works. Be ready to pay for what you do, or be a coward, pretend you don't see, don't know, and cry bitter tears over how terrible things are, over how you let them become."

- Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls "

"I Pity You, Too..."

“Said a philosopher to a street sweeper, “I pity you. Yours is a hard and dirty task.” And the street sweeper said, “Thank you, sir. But tell me, what is your task?” And the philosopher answered saying, “I study man’s mind, his deeds and his desires.” Then the street sweeper went on with his sweeping and said with a smile, “I pity you, too.”

- Kahlil Gibran

Bill Bonner, "Excrement Employment"

"Excrement Employment"

Over time elites ‘solve’ more and more problems. Their problem

 solving inevitably brings directives, statutes, agencies and commissions, 

along with fees, jobs, power, and more wealth - for themselves.

by Bill Bonner

Dublin, Ireland -  “I’d like to do the job sooner,” said a roofer in France. “But I can’t find workers. They all want to go to college and get jobs in the city. Air conditioned offices. Coffee machines. That kind of thing.” Today we wonder what kind of thing that is.

Business Insider: "A 2021 survey by Pew Research... asked people from around the world what made their lives meaningful... in the US, only 17% mentioned work as a source of meaning. That was a sharp decline from when Pew asked the same question four years prior — a full one-third of Americans mentioned their jobs as a source of meaning in 2017, double the 2021 rate. Increasingly, it seems that more people feel like their jobs don't matter.

The academic David Graeber coined the term "bullshit jobs" in 2013 to describe jobs where, he wrote, "the person doing it believes it pointless, and if the job didn't exist it would either make no difference whatsoever or it would make the world a better place."

Elites get the good jobs. They get the money. They get the beautiful women and the handsome men. And the big houses. And the fast cars. They live in the good neighborhoods, shop at the high-end stores, live longer and eat in the fancy restaurants. Is it any wonder that every mother wants her babies to grow up and join them? Roofing? Forget it. Plumbing? Dirty. Farming? What, you want to live in Nebraska? Mining? You’re going to destroy the earth. Manufacturing? Let the Chinese do it; they sweat... we think... remember?

Over time, elites ‘solve’ more and more problems. Their problem solving inevitably brings directives, statutes, agencies and commissions... along with fees... jobs... power... and more wealth - for themselves, of course. Then, the gap between them, and the rest of the population, widens.

But the elites are elite for a reason. They have more training, more education and more expertise; they are better connected, better informed and richer. They don’t stock the shelves at Walmart; they manage its advertising, its recruiting, its legal team, its product development and marketing. They analyze the numbers and make decisions. The elite have the prestige jobs - judges, architects, doctors, foreign policy specialists, scientists, priests, and engineers. Naturally, they earn more. But a society only needs so many judges. And only so many people can make it through the rigors of medical school.

So, as the number of young people who want to enter the elite classes grows... something must be found for them to do. This creates a whole ‘second tier’ of faux elites... who fill government, universities and health care industries. They are not professors of physics... nor are they qualified teachers, anaesthesiologists or trained emergency room nurses. Nor are they elected politicians (for which, too, the need is very limited).

Instead, they are DEI officers... inspectors... clerks and paper pushers in a society swamped by decrees, rules, and red tape. They are ‘educators,’ rather than real teachers. They are ‘health administrators,’ rather than real doctors or nurses. They are ‘security professionals,’ rather than real cops. They are ‘artists,’ who depend on grants rather than paying customers. There is even a whole group of people who call themselves ‘scholars,’ even though they actually do no research or scholarly thinking. They are just hangers-on in the education industry.

Taken together, they are the college-educated foot soldiers of the empire... fetchers, water carriers and porters for the real elites. They add to the complexity and the costs, doing meretricious busywork... often with ‘bullshit jobs’ that slow us all down... and make us all poorer."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Gerald Celente, "Interest Rates Down, Market And Gold Up, Nuclear War On Horizon"

Strong language alert.

Gerald Celente, 9/19/24

"Interest Rates Down, Market And Gold Up,

 Nuclear War On Horizon"

"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/

"How It Really Is"

Yeah, Joe and Kamala, the right track straight to Hell...

Too bad the joke's on US!

"That's why they call it the American Dream.

Because you have to be asleep to believe it."

- George Carlin

Gregory Mannarino, "'We The People' Are Done, Corporate Profits And Executive Bonuses Will Skyrocket"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/19/24

"'We The People' Are Done, Corporate Profits

 And Executive Bonuses Will Skyrocket"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand

 our banking and monetary system, for if they did, 

I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

-  Henry Ford

Judge Napolitano, "Prof. John Mearsheimer: Is Israel on the Brink?"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/19/24

"Prof. John Mearsheimer: Is Israel on the Brink?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/19/24

"INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern:

 Weekly Intel Wrap"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "5,000 Banks Gone - Is Yours Next?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 9/19/24

"5,000 Banks Gone - Is Yours Next?"

"Your bank is dying, and you need to know NOW! In today's video, I'm diving into the shocking wave of bank closures happening across the country. From Vermont to California, banks are disappearing, leaving many in banking deserts. What does this mean for you? More than 5,000 branches have closed since 2021, and the trend isn't slowing down. Soon there will be no more bank branches."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "River Of Stars"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "River Of Stars"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way. About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and astronomers in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of each other's grand spiral star systems.

As for the view from planet Earth, this sharp image shows off M33's blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along the galaxy's loosely wound spiral arms. In fact, the cavernous NGC 604 is the brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 4 o'clock position from the galaxy center. Like M31, M33's population of well-measured variable stars have helped make this nearby spiral a cosmic yardstick for establishing the distance scale of the Universe."

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

"You Can Never Tell..."

"You can never tell what people have inside them

until you start taking it away, one hope at a time."

- Gregory David Roberts

“9 Short Quotes That Changed My Life and Why”

“9 Short Quotes That Changed My Life and Why”

by Ryan Holiday

“Like a lot of people, I try to collect words to live by. Most of these words come from reading, but also from conversations, from teachers, and from everyday life. As Seneca, the philosopher and playwright, so eloquently put it: “We should hunt out the helpful pieces of teaching and the spirited and noble-minded sayings which are capable of immediate practical application – not far-fetched or archaic expressions or extravagant metaphors and figures of speech – and learn them so well that words become works.”

In my commonplace book, I keep these little sayings under the heading “Life.” That is, things that help me live better, more meaningfully, and with happiness and honesty. Below are 9 sayings, what they mean, and how they changed my life. Perhaps they will strike you and be of service. Hopefully the words might become works for you too.

○

“If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.”

- Nassim Taleb

This little epigram from Nassim Taleb has been a driving force in my life. It fuels my writing, but mostly it has fueled difficult personal decisions. A few years ago, I was in the middle of a difficult personal situation in which my financial incentives were not necessarily aligned with the right thing. Speaking out would cost me money. I actually emailed Nassim. I asked: “What does ‘saying’ entail? To the person? To the public? At what cost? And how do you know where/when ego might be the influencing factor in determining where you decide to go on that public/private spectrum?” His response was simple: If it harms the collective, you speak up until it no longer does. There’s another line in Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar.‘ Caesar, having returned from the conquest of Gaul, is reminded to tread lightly when speaking to the senators. He replies, “Have I accomplished so much in battle, but now I’m afraid to tell some old men the truth?” That is what I think about with Nassim’s quote. What’s the point of working hard and being successful if it means biting your tongue (or declining to act) when you see something unfair or untoward? What do you care what everyone else thinks?

○

“It can have meaning if it changes you for the better.”

- Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl, who was imprisoned and survived three separate Nazi concentration camps, lost his wife, his parents, job, his home and the manuscript that his entire life’s work had gone into. Yet, he emerged from this horrific nightmare convinced that life was not meaningless and that suffering was not without purpose. His work in psychology – now known as logotherapy – is reminiscent of the Stoics: We don’t control what happens to us, only how we respond. Nothing deprives us of this ability to respond, even if only in the slightest way, even if that response is only acceptance. In bad moments, I think of this line. It reminds me that I can change for the better because of it and find meaning in everything – even if my “suffering” pales in comparison to what others have gone through.

○

“Thou knowest this man’s fall;

but thou knowest not his wrassling.”

- James Baldwin

As James Baldwin reflected on the death of his father, a man who he loved and hated, he realized that he only saw the man’s outsides. Yes, he had his problems but hidden behind those external manifestations was his own unique internal struggle which no other person is ever able to fully comprehend. The same is true for everyone – your parents, your boss, the person behind you in line. We can see their flaws but not their struggles. If we can focus on this, we’ll have so much more patience and so much less anger and resentment. It reminds me of another line that means a lot to me from Pascal: “To understand is to forgive.” You don’t have to fully understand or know, but it does help to try.

○

“This is not your responsibility, but it is your problem.”

- Cheryl Strayed

Though I came to Cheryl Strayed late, the impact has been significant. In the letter this quote came from, she was speaking to someone who had something unfair done to them. But you see, life is unfair. Just because you should not have to deal with something doesn’t change whether you in fact need to. It reminds me of something my parents told me when I was learning to drive: It doesn’t matter that you had the right of way if you end up dying in an accident. Deal with the situation at hand, even if you don’t want to, even if someone else should have to, because you’re the one that’s being affected by it. End of story. Her quote is the best articulation I’ve found of that fact.

○

“Dogs bark at what they cannot understand.”

- Heraclitus

People are going to criticize you. They are going to resist or resent what you try to do. You’re going to face obstacles and a lot of those obstacles will be other human beings. Heraclitus is explaining why. People don’t like change. They don’t like to be confused. It’s also a fact that doing new things means forcing change and confusion on other people. So, if you’re looking for an explanation for all the barking you’re hearing, there it is. Let it go, keep working, do your job. My other favorite line from Heraclitus is: “Character is fate.” Who you are and what you stand for will determine who you are and what you do. Surely character makes ignoring the barking a bit easier.

○

“Life is short – the fruit of this life is a

good character and acts for the common good.”

- Marcus Aurelius

Marcus wrote this line at some point during the Antonine Plague – a global pandemic spanning the entirety of his reign. He could have fled Rome. Most people of means did. No one would have faulted him if he did too. Instead, Marcus stayed and braved the deadliest plague of Rome’s 900-year history. And we know that he didn’t even consider choosing his safety and fleeing over his responsibility and staying. He wrote repeatedly about the Stoic concept of sympatheia - the idea that all things are mutually woven together, that we were made for each other, that we are all one.

It’s one of the lesser-known Stoic concepts because it’s easier to only think and care about the people immediately around you. It’s tempting to get consumed by your own problems. It’s natural to assume you have more in common and the same interests as the people who look like you or live like you do. But that is an insidious lie – one responsible for monstrous inhumanity and needless pain. When other people suffer, we suffer. When the world suffers, we suffer. What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee, Marcus said. When we take actions, we have to always think: What would happen if everyone did this? What are the costs of my decisions for other people? What risks am I externalizing? Is this really what a person with good character and a concern for others would do? You have to care about others. It’s sometimes the hardest thing to do, but it’s the only thing that counts. As Heraclitus (one of Marcus’ favorites) said, character is fate. It’s the fruit of this life.

○

“Happiness does not come from the seeking,

it is never ours by right.”

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Eleanor Roosevelt was a remarkable woman. Her father killed himself. Her mother was verbally abusive. Her husband repeatedly betrayed her – even up to the moment he died. Yet she slowly but steadily became one of the most influential and important people in the world. I think you could argue that happiness and meaning came from this journey too. Her line here is reminiscent of something explained by both Aristotle and Viktor Frankl – happiness is not pursued, it ensues. It is the result of principles and the fulfillment of our potential. It is also transitory – we get glimpses of it. We don’t have it forever and we must continually re-engage with it. Whatever quote you need to understand this truth, use it. Because it will get you through bad times and to very good ones.

○

“You could leave life right now.

Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

- Marcus Aurelius

If there is better advice than this, it has yet to be written. For many civilizations, the first time that their citizens realize just how vulnerable they are is when they find out they’ve been conquered, or are at the mercy of some cruel tyrant, or some uncontainable disease. It’s when somebody famous – like Tom Hanks or Marcus Aurelius – falls ill that they get serious. The result of this delayed awakening is a critical realization: We are mortal and fragile, and fate can inflict horrible things on our tiny, powerless bodies. There is no amount of fleeing or quarantining we can do to insulate ourselves from the reality of human existence: memento mori – thou art mortal. No one, no country, no planet is as safe or as special as we like to think we are. We are all at the mercy of enormous events outside our control. You can go at any moment, Marcus was constantly reminding himself with each of the events swirling around him. He made sure this fact shaped every choice and action and thought.

○

“Some lack the fickleness to live as they wish

and just live as they have begun.”

- Seneca

After beginning with Seneca, let’s end with him. Inertia is a powerful force. The status quo – even if self-created – is comforting. So people find themselves on certain paths in life and cannot conceive of changing them, even if such a change would result in more personal happiness. We think that fickleness is a negative trait, but if it pushes you to be better and find and explore new, better things, it certainly isn’t. I’ve always been a proponent of dropping out, of quitting paths that have gotten stale. Seneca’s quote has helped me with that and I actually have it framed next to my desk so that I might look at it each day. It’s a constant reminder: Why am I still doing this? Is it for the right reasons? Or is it just because it’s been that way for a while?

The power of these quotes is that they say a lot with a little. They help guide us through the complexity of life with their unswerving directness. They make us better, keep us centered, give us something to rest on – a kind of backstop to prevent backsliding. That’s what these 9 quotes have done for me in my life. Borrow them or dig into history or religion or philosophy to find some to add to your own commonplace book. And then turn those words… into works.”

- https://ryanholiday.net/short-quotes/

"Reality Avoidance"

"Reality Avoidance"

by Morris Berman

"It’s quite amazing how the news is endlessly about nonsense. Filler, is what I call it. Very little of this has anything to do with reality, which the Mainstream Media and the American people avoid like the plague. What then is real?

1. The empire is in decline; every day, life here gets a little bit worse; all our institutions are corrupt to varying degrees; and there is no turning this situation around.

2. A crucial factor in this decline and irreversibility is the low level of intelligence of the American people. Americans are not only dumb; they are positively antagonistic toward the life of the mind.

3. Relations of power and money determine practically everything. The 3 wealthiest Americans own as much as the bottom 50% of the population, and this tendency will get worse over time.

4. The value system of the country, and its citizens, is fundamentally wrong-headed. It amounts to little more than hustling, selfishness, narcissism, and a blatant disregard for anyone but oneself. There is a kind of cruelty, or violence, deep in the American soul; many foreign observers and writers have commented on this. Americans are bitter, depressed, and angry, and the country offers very little by way of community or empathy.

5. Along with this is the support of meaningless wars and imperial adventures on the part of most of the population. That we drone-murder unarmed civilians on a weekly basis is barely on the radar screen of the American mind. In essence, the nation has evolved into a genocidal war machine run by a plutocracy and cheered on by mindless millions.

Most Americans hide from these depressing, even horrific, realities by what passes for ‘the news’, but also by means of alcohol, opioids, TV, cellphones, suicide, prescription drugs, workaholism, and spectator sports, to name but a few. This stuffing of the Void is probably our primary activity. In a word, we are eating ourselves alive, and only a tiny fraction of the population recognizes this."

- https://morrisberman.blogspot.com/

o

Read it and weep...

"Morris Berman On A Dumbed-down America"

by RoryLitwin

Excerpt: "I am sharing a passage from Morris Berman’s book from a few years ago, "The Twilight of American Culture." Berman has generously agreed to let me share this passage, which is about the deplorable state of ignorance of the American people. The facts and data in this passage are a bit old, but all signs suggest that things have gotten worse since then, not better. "The Twilight of American Culture," pp. 33-40.

Turning to Item (c),The collapse of American intelligence, we find a picture that is unambiguously bleak. The following data are going to seem invented; please be assured, they are not.

– Forty-two percent of American adults cannot locate Japan on a world map, and according to Garrison Keillor (National Public Radio, 22 March 1997,) another survey revealed that nearly 15 percent couldn’t locate the United States (!). Keillor remarked that this was like not being able to “grab your rear end with both hands,” and he suggested that we stop being so assiduous, on the eve of elections, about trying to get out the vote.

– A survey taken in October 1996 revealed that one in ten voters did not know who the Republican or Democratic nominees for president were. This is particularly sobering when one remembers that one of the questions traditionally asked in psychiatric wards as part of the test for sanity is “Who is the president of the United States?”

– Very few Americans understand the degree to which corporations have taken over their lives. But according to a poll taken by Time magazine, nearly 70 percent of them believe in the existence of angels; and another study turned up the fact that 50 percent believe in the presence of UFOs and space aliens on earth, while a Gallup poll (reported on CNN, 19 August 1997) revealed that 71 percent believe that the U.S. government is engaged in a cover-up about the subject. More than 30 percent believe they have made contact with the dead.

– A 1995 article in the New York Times reported the results of a survey that revealed that 40 percent of American adults (this could be upward of 70 million people) did not know that Germany was our enemy in World War II. A Roper survey conducted in 1996 revealed that 84 percent of American college seniors cannot understand a newspaper editorial in any newspaper, and a U.S. Department of Education survey of 22,000 students in 1995 revealed that 50 percent were unaware of the Cold War, and that 60 percent had no idea of how the United States came into existence.

– At one point in 1996, Jay Leno invited a number of high school students to be on his television program and asked them to complete famous quotations from major American documents, such as the Gettysburg address and the Declaration of Independence. Their response in each case was to stare at him blankly. As a kind of follow-up, on his show of 3 June 1999, Leno screened a video of interviews he had conducted a few days before at a university graduation ceremony. He did not identify the institution in question; he told his TV audience only that the students he had interviewed included graduate students as well as undergraduates. The group included men, women, and people of color. Leno posed eight questions, as follows:

1. Who designed the first American flag? Answers included Susan B. Anthony (born in 1820,) and “Betsy Ford.”

2. What were the Thirteen Colonies free from, after the American Revolution? One student said, “The East Coast.”

3. What was the Gettysburg Address? One student replied, “An address to Getty;” another said, “I don’t know the exact address.”

4. Who invented the lightbulb? Answers included Thomas Jefferson

5. What is three squared? One student said, “Twenty-seven;” another said, “Six.”

6. What is the boiling point of water? Answers included 115 degrees?

7. How long does it take the earth to rotate once on its axis? The two answers Leno received here were “Light years” (which is a measure of distance, not time,) and “Twenty-four axises [sic].”

8. How many moons does the earth have? The student questioned said she had taken astronomy a few years back and had gotten an A in the course but that she couldn’t remember the correct answer.

It is important to note that not a single student interviewed had the correct answer to any of these questions. Leno’s comment on this pathetic debacle says it all: “And the Chinese are stealing secrets from us?”

– A 1998 survey by the National Constitution Center revealed that only 41 percent of American teenagers can name the three branches of government, but 59 percent can name the Three Stooges. Only 2 percent can name the chief justice of the Supreme Court; 26 percent were unable to identify the vice president. In the early 1990s, the National Assessment of Education Progress reported that 50 percent of seventeen year olds could not express 9/100 as a percentage, and nearly 50 percent couldn’t place the Civil War in the correct half century–data that the San Antonio Express News characterized as evidence of the “steady lobotomizing” of American culture. In another study of seventeen year olds, only 4 percent could read a bus schedule, and only 12% could arrange six common fractions in order of size.

– Ignorance of the most elementary scientific facts on the part of American adults is nothing less than breathtaking. In a survey conducted for the National Science Foundation in October 1995, 56 percent of those polled said that electrons were larger than atoms; 63 percent stated that the earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs (a chronological error of more than 60 million years;) 53 percent said that the earth revolved around the sun in either a day or a month (that is to say, only 47 percent understood that the correct answer is one year;) and 91 percent were unable to state what a molecule was. A random telephone survey of more than two thousand adults, conducted by Northern Illinois University, revealed that 21 percent believed that the sun revolved around the earth, with an additional 7 percent saying that they did not know which revolved around which.

– Of the 158 countries in the United Nations, the United States ranks forty-ninth in literacy. Roughly 60 percent of the adult population reads as much as one book a year, where book is defined to include Harlequin romances and self-help manuals. Something like 120 million adults are illiterate or read at no better than a fifth-grade level. Among readers age twenty-one to thirty-five, 67 percent regularly read a daily newspaper in 1965, as compared with 31 percent in 1998.

– In a telephone survey conducted in 1998, 12 percent of Americans, asked who the wife of the biblical Noah was, said “Joan of Arc” (reported on National Public Radio, 13 June 1998.)

– In 1997, as a hoax, the attorney general of the state of Missouri submitted a proposal to an international academic accrediting agency (not identified) to establish an institution he named Eastern Missouri Business College, which would grant Ph.D’s in marine biology and genetic engineering, as well as in business. The faculty would include, inter alia, Moe Howard, Jerome Howard, and Larry Fine–that is, The Three Stooges; and the proposed motto on the college seal, roughly translated from the Latin, was Education Is for the Birds. The response? Academic accreditation was granted."

Complete article is here. Read it and weep...

- https://litwinbooks.com/

o

"The Twilight Of American Culture", by Morris Berman

o

As the great Mogombo Guru said, "We're so freakin' doomed!"

And that's why...

The Daily "Near You?"

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Biggest Act Of Mass Terrorism Since September 11th"

George Galloway, 9/18/24

"The Biggest Act Of Mass Terrorism Since September 11th"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

George Galloway, 9/18/24

"Chris Hedges: ‘I’m Terrified For What Comes Next.’"

"We’ve all seen the provocations by Israel, says Chris Hedges. The consequences of this latest one on people’s pagers and electronic devices could be catastrophic. Middle East war looms."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Grocery Store Worker Tells Me Shocking News"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/18/24

"Grocery Store Worker Tells Me Shocking News; 

The FED Cuts Rates Big Today, Hyperinflation Next"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

Gregory Mannarino, "FED Cuts Deep And Sets The Stage For A Massive Dollar Devaluation Cycle"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/18/24

"FED Cuts Deep And Sets The Stage 

For A Massive Dollar Devaluation Cycle"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "Phil Giraldi: Intel, Assassinations, and War Crimes"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 9/18/24

"Phil Giraldi: Intel, Assassinations, and War Crimes"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Breaking News! IPhones, Radios, Watches, Solar Now Exploding! 'Nuclear Like' Explosion In Russia!"

Canadian Prepper, 9/18/24

"Breaking News! IPhones, Radios, Watches, 

Solar Now Exploding! 'Nuclear Like' Explosion In Russia!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Is Boeing Going Out of Business? - Insider Tells All"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 9/18/24

"Is Boeing Going Out of Business? - Insider Tells All"

"Is Boeing on the brink of bankruptcy? Tune in as I allegedly dive deep into the insider scoop behind Boeing’s looming crisis! With exclusive details from a Boeing insider, I'm uncovering the unexpected strikes in Seattle and the company’s desperate measures to preserve cash. From halting capital expenditures to pausing promotions, Boeing's situation is dire. Join me as we explore if this aviation giant can navigate through this turbulent time or if it’s headed for a nosedive. The CFO of the company had issued a report to stop spending money. This is bad."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter"

"Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter"

The Fed almost always favors more credit at lower interest rates,

 resulting in more debt. The need to service the debt 

subtracts from the amount of money available for other things.

by Bill Bonner

Dublin, Ireland - "The big news - the rate cut expected from the Fed - will come to light in a few hours. But what a circus. Here’s the Financial Times: "Wall Street has raised its wager on the Federal Reserve making an aggressive half-point cut to US interest rates when it meets this week, with traders now putting the odds of a jumbo cut at about 64 per cent. Since late last week, investors in the futures market have steadily ramped up expectations of a bigger cut from central bank officials at this week’s meeting concluding on Wednesday — rather than the more traditional 0.25 percentage point change. The increased expectations come in the wake of US economic data that has shown the labour market slowing and inflation cooling. The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Fed was facing a close call on whether to cut rates by a quarter point or half point."

All up and down the internet, people are making predictions... making bets... and making fools of themselves over the Fed’s next move. Anticipating more ‘money printing,’ both gold and bitcoin are on the rise, MarketWatch: "The largest cryptocurrency was up more than 5% on Tuesday to around $60,945, the highest level since Aug. 27, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Bitcoin is up 45% year-to-date, while it is still 17.6% lower than its record high of $73,798 reached in March. "

And here’s Elizabeth Warren asking the Fed not for just a 25 basis point cut... nor even a 50 point cut... but a whopping three-quarter of a percent cut. Her letter to Powell warns: "If the Fed is too cautious in cutting rates, it would needlessly risk our economy heading towards a recession. A number of economists have warned of this risk since July. Former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Bill Dudley, wrote, “dawdling now unnecessarily increases the risk. The Committee must consider implementing rate cuts more aggressively upfront to mitigate potential risks to the labor market. Thank you for your attention to this matter."

Poor thing... she sounds like an economist! But a real economist would know better. It is absurd for the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee to think it knows exactly what interest rate millions of savers, borrowers, spenders and manufacturers need. It is even more absurd for Ms. Warren to butt in. Should the key rate be higher... or lower? How would she know? And if she knows how much credit should cost. How about eggs? How about houses?

Of course, she doesn’t know. And neither does anyone else. Prices are information. And the information is only useful if it comes to you untainted... unbent... and un-suborned. You can’t force it. You just have to listen... and discover it, from the voluntary bid and ask in the debt markets. The market tells us how much credit is available... and how much demand there is for it. No group of arrogant economists... nor grandstanding politicians…can possibly know better.

As we have seen, the Fed almost always favors more credit at lower interest rates, resulting in more debt. The need to service the debt subtracts from the amount of money available for other things. Then, the feds then are forced to cut back... or ‘print’ more money.

The real problem in America, as we suggested yesterday, is that there is too much [fake] money... lent at [fake] rates that are almost always too low. People borrow money to buy things they don’t really need and can’t really afford. Companies borrow money to buy back their own shares... figuring, correctly, that they will get more in dividends from their own earnings than they will pay in interest. The US government borrows too - nearly $2 trillion per year. Yes, they’re adding to the nation’s debt at an alarming rate; but maybe that will be someone else’s problem?

The deluge of money pollutes the wells... swamps the fields... and soaks carpets throughout the country. Bright, ambitious young people go to Wall Street, rather than into useful careers... because that’s where the money is. Mega-rich donors aim for control of the nation’s politics - because it is politics that controls the flow of money. Manufacturing gets shipped overseas, simply because when you are loaded up with EZ, printing press money - it is easier to buy things from the foreigners than make them ourselves. And now... today... the Fed will add more ‘liquidity’ to a saturated, rotting system."

Research Note, by Dan Denning: "With financial market near all-time highs, valuations off the charts, and inflation above target, the Federal Reserve looks set to cut interest rates later today. One effect: lower borrowing costs for a US government already over $35 trillion in debt. The chart below from The Daily Shot shows the correlation between US public debt and the inflation-adjusted gold price. Conclusion: the higher the debt goes, the higher the gold price goes."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/