Thursday, January 18, 2024

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up, 1/19/24"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up, 1/19/24"
WHO Wants Total Control, Stop CV19 Shots, Trump Wins
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) wants total control in the next pandemic, and a pandemic is surely coming. They already have a name for it. They are calling it “Disease X.” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is an Ethiopian Director-General of the World Health Organization, and he wants this control by May of 2024. It’s control over forced vaccinations, and there is zero dissension allowed in a surreal attack on free speech over the entire planet. This was the most important story coming out of the demonic Deep State World Economic Forum where they are planning to either kill or enslave all of mankind.

Karen Kingston has released new information about the “highly toxic lipid nanoparticles or mRNA” ingredients found in the CV19 bioweapon vax that continues killing and disabling people. Top scientists in Japan are calling for “all mRNA vaccines to be stopped immediately.” You will never hear this from the Lying Legacy Media who are bought-and-paid-for propaganda shills. They are all fully vaxed and will pay dearly for covering up this genocide/democide for the Deep State.

Donald Trump had the biggest victory in the history of the GOP primary in Iowa. Trump won 98 of 99 counties and would have won them all if party switching cheating was not involved. This is scaring the heck out of the Deep State because they may be brought to justice for the many crimes they have committed against humanity, including the CV19 murder and disability program they keep pushing. There is much more in the 52-minute newscast."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these
 stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 1/19/24:

Gerald Celente, "Middle East War Worsening: Prepare, Here's What's Next!"

Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 1/18/24
"Middle East War Worsening: 
Prepare, Here's What's Next!"
"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."
Comments here:

Jeremiah Babe, "What's Coming Is Worse Than Any Recession, Economy Is Severely Wounded"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/18/24
"What's Coming Is Worse Than Any Recession, 
Economy Is Severely Wounded" 
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, “A Year And A Day


2002, “A Year And A Day

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The spider-shaped gas cloud on the left is actually an emission nebula labelled IC 417, while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the right is dubbed NGC 1931 and is both an emission nebula and a reflection nebula.
About 10,000 light-years distant, both nebulas harbor young, open star clusters. For scale, the more compact NGC 1931 (Fly) is about 10 light-years across.”

"Alone"

"We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and - in spite of "True Romance" magazines - we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely - at least, not all the time - but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness."
- Hunter S. Thompson,
“The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman”

"I Am Done"

"I Am Done"
by OHMama

"I was born at the end of Gen X and the beginning of the Millennial Generation, and grew up in a middle class town. Life was good. Our home was modest but birthdays and Christmas were always generous, we went on yearly vacations, had 2 cars, and there was enough money for me to take dance classes and art lessons and be in Girl Scouts.

My 1940s born Dad raised me to be patriotic and proud, to love the war bird airplanes of his era as much as he does, and to respect our flag and our country as a sacred thing. I grew up thinking that being an American was the greatest gift a person could have. I grew up thinking that our country was as strong, and honest and true as my Dad. I grew up thinking I was free.

As an adult, I have witnessed the world I grew up in fall to ruin. I have watched as our currency and our economy have been shamelessly corrupted beyond redemption. Since we’ve been married, my husband and I TWICE had our meager investment savings gutted by the market that we were told to invest in, now that pensions no longer exist and we working stiffs are on our own. We will be working until we die, because the Social Security we’ve been forced to pay into has also been robbed from under us.

I have watched as our elected officials enter Congress as ordinary folks and leaves as multi millionaires. I have watched my blue collar husband get up at an ungodly hour every day and come home with an aching back that we pray will hold out long enough to get him to old age in one piece. Outside of shoes, socks and underwear, almost everything my family wears was bought used. We’ve been on one vacation in 12 years.

We don’t have cell phones, or cable, or any sort of streaming services, just a landline and internet. We hardly ever eat out. Our house is 1400 square feet, no air conditioning. I cook from scratch and I can and I garden and I raise chickens for eggs and meat and I moonlight selling things on Etsy. Still it is barely enough to pay the bills that go up every year while service quality and the longevity of goods goes down. What I just described is the life you can live on 60K a year without going into debt.

At last calculation, when you consider all of the federal, state and local taxes plus registration and user fees, Medicare and SS payroll taxes, almost a third of what my family earns is stolen by the govt each year. What’s left doesn’t go far, just enough to cover the basics and save a little for when the wolf howls at the door.

I watched as my family’s health insurance was gutted and destroyed. Our private market insurance, which we had to have because my husband’s employer is too small to have a group plan, was made illegal. We were left with the option of either buying an Obamacare plan with unaffordable deductibles and insanely ridiculous out of pocket maxes, or paying the very gov’t that destroyed our healthcare a fine for not buying the gov’t mandated plan that we cannot afford. We now have short term insurance that isn’t really insurance at all, and I live in fear of one of us getting injured or sick with anything I can’t fix from the medicine cabinet.

I have watched as education, which was already sketchy when I was a kid, became an all out joke of wholly unmathematical math, gold stars for all, and self-loathing anti-Americanism. My family has taken an enormous financial hit as I stay home to home school our child. At least she’ll be able to do old-fashioned math well enough to see how much they are screwing her. A silver lining to every cloud, I guess.

I’ve sat by and held my tongue as I was called deplorable and a bitter clinger and told that I didn’t build that. I’ve been called a racist and a xenophobe and a chump and even an “ugly folk.” I’ve been told that I have privilege, and that I have inherent bias because of my skin color, and that my beloved husband and father are part of a horrible patriarchy. Not one goddamn bit of that is true, but if I dare say anything about it, it will be used as evidence of my racism and white fragility.

Raised to be a Republican, I held my nose and voted for Bush, the Texas-talking blue blood from Connecticut who lied us into 2 wars and gave us the unpatriotic Patriot Act. I voted for McCain, the sociopathic neocon songbird “hero” that torpedoed the attempt to kill the Obamacare that’s killing my family financially. I held it again and voted for Romney, the vulture capitalist skunk that masquerades as a Republican while slithering over to the Democrat camp as often as they’ll tolerate his oily, loathsome presence.

And I voted for Trump, who, if he did nothing else, at least gave a resounding Bronx cheer to the richly deserving smug hypocrites of DC. Thank you for that Mr. President, on behalf of all of us nobodies. God bless you for it.

And now I have watched as people who hate me and mine and call for our destruction blatantly and openly stole the election and then gaslighted us and told us that it was honest and fair. I am watching as the GOP does NOTHING about it. They’re probably relieved that upstart Trump is gone so they can get back to their real jobs of lining their pockets and running interference for their corporate masters. I am watching as the media, in a manner that would make Stalin blush, is silencing anyone who dares question the legitimacy of this farce they call democracy. I know, it’s a republic, but I am so tired of explaining that to people I might as well give in and join them in ignorance.

I will not vote again; they’ve made it abundantly clear that my voice doesn’t matter. Whatever irrational, suicidal lunacy the nanny states thinks is best is what I’ll get. What it decided I need is a geriatric pedophile who shouldn’t be charged with anything more rigorous than choosing between tapioca and rice pudding at the old folks home, and a casting couch skank who rails against racism while being a descendant of slave owners.

I’m free to dismember a baby in my womb and kill it because “my body my choice”, but God help me if I won’t cover my face with a germ laden Linus-worthy security blanket or refuse let them inject genetically altering chemicals into my body or my child’s. I can be doxed, fired, shunned and destroyed for daring to venture that there are only 2 genders as proven by DNA, but a disease with a 99+% survival rate for most humans is a deadly pandemic worth murdering an economy over. Because science. Idiocracy is real, and we are living it. Dr. Lexus would be an improvement over Fauci.

I am done. Don’t ask me to pledge to the flag, or salute the troops, or shoot fireworks on the 4th. It’s a sick, twisted, heartbreaking joke, this bloated, unrecognizable corpse of a republic that once was ours.

I am not alone. Not sure how things continue to function when millions of citizens no longer feel any loyalty to or from the society they live in.

I was raised to be a lady, and ladies don’t curse, but f**k these motherf**kers to hell and back for what they’ve done to me, and mine, and my country. All we Joe Blow Americans ever wanted was a little patch of land to raise a family, a job to pay the bills, and at least some illusion of freedom, and even that was too much for these human parasites. They want it all,  mind, body and soul. Damn them. Damn them all."

"15 Big Restaurant Chains That Are Falling Apart In 2024"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 1/18/24
"15 Big Restaurant Chains That Are Falling Apart In 2024"
"Discover the 15 major restaurant chains facing a perilous future in 2024. From beloved fast-food giants like Krystal and Pie Five Pizza to iconic buffets like Old Country Buffet and Furr's Fresh Buffet, explore the challenges, closures, and financial woes shaping the uncertain destiny of these American culinary institutions. The aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, lawsuits, and changing consumer preferences contribute to the struggles, leaving the fate of these once-thriving establishments hanging in the balance. Will 2024 mark the end for these iconic restaurants? Watch to find out."
Comments here:

The Poet: Charles Bukowski, "Darkness Falls"

"Darkness Falls"

"Darkness falls upon Humanity
and faces become terrible things
that wanted more than there was.

All our days are marked with
unexpected affronts - 
some disastrous, others less so,
but the process is
wearing and continuous.

Attrition rules.
Most give way,
leaving empty spaces
where people should be.
And now,
as we ready to self-destruct,
there is very little left to kill,
which makes the tragedy
less and more,
much, much more."

- Charles Bukowski

The Daily "Near You?"

Columbia, Tennessee, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Free Download: Mark Twain, "Letters From the Earth"

"Mark Twain's 'Letters From the Earth'"
by Wikipedia

“Letters from the Earth” is one of Mark Twain's posthumously published works. The essays were written during a difficult time in Twain's life; he was deep in debt and had lost his wife and one of his daughters. Initially, his daughter, Clara Clemens, objected to its publication in March 1939, probably because of its controversial and iconoclastic views on religion, claiming it presented a "distorted" view of her father. Henry Nash Smith helped change her position in 1960. Clara explained her change of heart in 1962 saying that "Mark Twain belonged to the world" and that public opinion had become more tolerant. She was also influenced to release the papers due to her annoyance with Soviet propaganda charges that her father's ideas were being suppressed in the United States. The papers were edited in 1939 by Bernard DeVoto. The book consists of a series of short stories, many of which deal with God and Christianity. The title story consists of eleven letters written by the archangel Satan to archangels, Gabriel and Michael, about his observations on the curious proceedings of earthly life and the nature of man's religions. Other short stories in the book include a bedtime story about a family of cats Twain wrote for his daughters, and an essay explaining why an anaconda is morally superior to Man.

Textual references make clear that sections, at least, of “Letters from the Earth” were written shortly before his death in April 1910. (For instance, Letter VII, in discussing the ravages of hookworm, refers to the $1,000,000 gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr. to help eradicate the disease – a gift that was announced on October 28, 1909, less than six months before Twain's death.)"
o
Excerpt: "Letters From the Earth"
by Mark Twain

"This is a strange place, an extraordinary place, and interesting. There is nothing resembling it at home. The people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane. Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the "noblest work of God." This is the truth I am telling you. And this is not a new idea with him, he has talked it through all the ages, and believed it. Believed it, and found nobody among all his race to laugh at it.

Moreover - if I may put another strain upon you - he thinks he is the Creator's pet. He believes the Creator is proud of him; he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes, and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to Him, and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea? Fills his prayers with crude and bald and florid flatteries of Him, and thinks He sits and purrs over these extravagancies and enjoys them. He prays for help, and favor, and protection, every day; and does it with hopefulness and confidence, too, although no prayer of his has ever been answered. The daily affront, the daily defeat, do not discourage him, he goes on praying just the same. There is something almost fine about this perseverance. I must put one more strain upon you: he thinks he is going to heaven!"
Freely download "Letters From the Earth", by Mark Twain, here: 

"Our Planet..."

"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds;
our planet is the mental institution of the universe.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The United States Has The Biggest Government In The History Of The World By A Very Wide Margin"

"The United States Has The Biggest Government
 In The History Of The World By A Very Wide Margin"
by Michael Snyder

"How does it feel to have the largest government that the planet has ever seen? When I was growing up, I was taught that we had a capitalist system and that we had a limited federal government. Of course neither of those things has been true for a very long time. Today, the United States has the biggest government in the history of the world, and it gets even bigger with each passing year. Running that gigantic government requires more money than we actually have, and so we are going into staggering amounts of debt. But there is no way that our politicians will ever agree to reduce the size of the federal government to an appropriate size. So we are stuck with this system until the day when it finally collapses. Let me give you some numbers that illustrate what I am talking about.

- Approximately 3 million people work directly for the federal government.

- The federal government spent 6.13 trillion dollars in 2023. That figure is larger than the GDP of every nation on the entire planet except for the U.S. and China.

- More than 70 million Americans are on Social Security.

- More than 65 million Americans are on Medicare.

- More than 81 million Americans are on Medicaid.

- More than 41 million Americans are on food stamps.

Of course there are many more programs that hand out money to the population on a regular basis. We have reached a stage where most U.S. households are at least partially dependent on the federal government. We very much prefer not to call ourselves “socialists”, but that is precisely what we are. Sadly, if we attempted to go back to the way things were 100 years ago, most Americans would not know how to survive.

The massively bloated federal government that so many of us depend upon constantly consumes enormous mountains of money. We cannot provide enough money to keep it going, and so the federal government has been piling up insane amounts of debt. Since 1980, the size of the U.S. national debt has gone from 1 trillion dollars to 34 trillion dollars.

The combined wealth of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ken Griffin, Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio and George Soros would not be enough to even pay the interest on our national debt for a single year…"The combined net worth of the most prominent billionaires in the United States would not be enough to pay a single year’s interest payment on America’s ballooning national debt, which currently stands at an astonishing $34 trillion.

The combined net worth of some of America’s most prominent billionaires, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Ken Griffin, Mark Cuban, Ray Dalio, and George Soros, adds up to approximately $726 billion according to data compiled by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Meanwhile, the net interest on our national debt is currently at $730.8 billion, dwarfing the sum for previous years."

We are now at a point where the national debt has become a major national crisis, and the percentage of Americans that believe that our politicians should do something about this has been going up…"A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 57% of Americans said reducing the budget deficit should be a top priority for the president and Congress, up from 45% the year prior."

But the politicians in Washington don’t have the stomach to do anything about the wild spending. They know that if we tried to live within our means, it would instantly plunge the U.S. economy into a horrifying economic depression. And voters wouldn’t like that at all. So instead they are just going to try to keep the party going for as long as they can.

In fact, the size of the federal deficit in December was 52 percent larger than for the same month a year earlier…"The U.S. federal government posted a December deficit of $129 billion, up $44 billion or 52% from a year earlier as outlays rose while receipts fell from December 2022 levels that were swelled by pandemic-deferred tax payments, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Thursday.

The Treasury said that outlays for December rose 3% to $559 billion, a December record, partly as a result of higher Social Security outlays and interest on the public debt. Receipts for the month fell 6% to $429 billion."

America’s “empire of money” really has reached the endgame. Our debt spiral is out of control, our currency is rapidly losing value, and everyone can see that our entire system will inevitably collapse. But for the moment, the talking heads on television continue to tell everyone that our leaders know exactly what they are doing, and millions of people actually believe that nonsense."
o

"So We All Ran Around..."

“So we all ran around in mad, mindless, meaningless circles, as if we were in a cotton-candy eating contest where the grand prize was getting kicked in the face. We were oblivious to everything around us that no truly sane person would ever tolerate. And we needed someone else to tell us to stop it.”
- Edward M. Wolfe

"What Are The Facts?

“What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!” - Robert A. Heinlein

“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful ideas from the worthless ones.”
- Carl Sagan

And always remember...
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sherlock Holmes"

Hey, who lied and told you any of this was easy?

"How It Really Is"

 

"Bamboozled..."

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."
- Carl Sagan

Dan, I Allegedly, "The Bank of Elon is About to Open"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 1/18/24
"The Bank of Elon is About to Open"
"We had heard that Elon Musk wanted to have his company be the go to payment processing company in the future. He wants to be a bank. He just became one step closer to that. Plus, experts are warning that the real estate market is about to tank. Things are getting bad."
Comments here:

Bill Bonner, "Revenge of the Outsiders"

The World Economic Forum conference venue in Davos is 
secured with barriers and barbed wire on a slope. What are they so afraid of?
"Revenge of the Outsiders"
Milei rips WEF, Schwab on the back foot and the natives grow restless...
by Bill Bonner

"Do not be intimidated either by the political class or the 
parasites who live off of the state. The state is the problem itself."
~ Javier Milei

Baltimore, Maryland - "On Monday, Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte warned the World Economic Forum, gathered in Davos, Switzerland, that the natives were getting restless. If elites weren’t careful, he said, there could be a revolt of the masses. WEF founder, Klaus Schwab sees the mob forming…and identifies its ringleaders: “An anti-system which is called libertarianism, which means to tear down everything which creates some kind of influence of government into private lives.”

And what’s this? The outsiders are winning key elections. Donald Trump won the Iowa Republican primary contest – by a strong margin. Geert Wilders won in the Netherlands. And in perhaps the most exciting and impressive turnaround yet, Javier Milei took over the jefe role in Argentina. Here’s The Guardian: "From Helsinki to Rome and Berlin to Brussels, far-right parties are climbing steadily up the polls, shaping the policies of the mainstream right to reflect their nativist and populist platforms, and occupying select ministerial roles in coalition governments. It remains to be seen whether any of these ‘populists,’ ‘authoritarians’ or ‘right wing nut cases’…depending on your point of view …can actually steer the ship of state away from the rocks."

Dazzling and Spellbinding: Some, such as Donald Trump, seem to have no stars to guide them. For four years, he was in the control room at the White House, floating like a drunken boat, getting nowhere. His mixture of bluff, bluster and BS…resulted only in more of the same – debt, decree and dysfunction.

But Milei is another matter. He is like what Ronald Reagan might have been if he had had time to read Hayek and Bastiat, study classical economics, philosophy and history…and if the CIA hadn’t misled him, leaving him to believe that the Soviet Union was a great military threat, when in fact, it was a dying empire.

Like it or not, Milei has a coherent theory about the way the world works…and, from our point of view, a much more attractive one. And on Wednesday, he explained it to the assembled hacks, jackasses and deep staters at Davos. Like Daniel walking into the lions’ den, he had a message that was so unexpected …so inhabitual in all public discussion… so at odds with the whole Davos philosophy…it was dazzling and spellbinding: "We’re here to tell you that collectivist solutions are never the answer to the real problems that have afflicted the world. Free market capitalism is not only the only system to relieve poverty it is also the only moral system. The state is not the solution. The state is the problem. Long live freedom, dammit!"

Milei to WEF: F-Off! Milei was challenging the fundamental creed of the Davos group. They are the elite of the elite…captains of industry (there are 800 leading CEOs in attendance), along with heads of state from all over the world. They are movers… shakers…the intellectuals and power brokers who’ve created many of the problems we now face. But whatever the challenge, real or imagined, they are ready to meet it head-on, with more ‘solutions’ that increase their own prestige and power. And there was Milei, yesterday, standing in front of them…and telling them all, essentially, to F-off.

Davos Man aims to control your money, your time, your home, your car…your entire life. And your thoughts. One of his chief worries for 2024 is that the common man might have thoughts he can’t control. A WEF report: “Some governments and platforms... may fail to act to effectively curb falsified information and harmful content, making the definition of ‘truth’ increasingly contentious across societies.”

The WEF has the full and final TRUTH, of course…and urges censorship for the good of the planet…along with the quest for equality…or to help the homeless (unless they are made homeless by a Davos-attending nation!) or make people use the proper pronouns…and now they want us all to live in small, energy efficient apartments, take only one trip a year, eat no meat, and drive an EV. We will “own nothing, but we will be happy.” They want us to vote democratic and read The New York Times. And, oh yes, at every meeting, we should acknowledge an Indian tribe that may or may not have once inhabited the land on which we stand.

Collectivism vs. Voluntarism: Milei spoke directly…and with the authority of someone who has ‘been there, done that’ against ‘collectivism.’ And here, we clarify. ‘Collectivist’ solutions don’t work. But the reason they don’t work is not that they involve collective action. We all work ‘collectively’ – together in one form of another. A company is a collective undertaking. So is a family. And a church. A tribe. A town. All of them involve groups of people working more or less together, following certain rules…with more or less the common goals…guided by free markets that tell us what things are really worth. And even the simplest product, such as a common pencil, takes as many as a million different people – from the one who plants the tree to the one who puts on the paint – with hundreds of different skills, machines, languages, and beliefs.

Man is a social animal. He cannot exist unless two of his species get together. And then, he cannot prosper unless he works with others…to hunt…to reap…to build…to exchange the fruits of one for the services of another. Capitalism is a collectivist undertaking. It requires near-constant exchanges and interchanges between people who are never fully independent of one another.

The difference between capitalism and the kind of collectivism that Milei is talking about is that the former is voluntary; the latter is not. The collectivist elite – many of whose big shots you find at Davos – produce no pencils…and, often, nothing else. We have no choice; we are forced to follow their rules and policies, whether we want to or not. Those policies – always favoring the insiders at the expense of everyone else – ruined Argentina over an 80-year period…and killed some 100 million people, worldwide, in the 20th century.

Capitalism has its elites too. But they are only elite so long as they provide goods and services to everyone else. When they fail, they are quickly sidelined. By contrast, collectivist elites, once they get power, are almost impossible to get rid of. Win-win becomes win-lose. And ‘The People’ get poorer.

We waited for the end of Milei’s speech. How would the elite react? Would they recognize that Milei was telling them that they were wasting their time and despoiling the world? Would they turn off his mic? Would they walk out? In the event, they sat in silence…and then gave him a polite applause, the kind reserved for honest preachers. The crowd must have known he was right; but they didn’t want to hear it."
o

Adventures With Danno, "Massive Price Increases At Kroger! This Is Ridiculous! What's Next!?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 1/18/24
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! 
This Is Ridiculous! What's Next!?"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are noticing massive price increases on groceries! We are noticing a huge surge on price increases to the likes we have not seen in a while. It is important now more than ever we are paying attention and stocking up on sales as we see them. It's getting rough out here as many food items are becoming unaffordable!"
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Must View! Scott Ritter, "Everything Israel Is Doing Is Warcrime"

Scott Ritter, 1/17/24
"Everything Israel Is Doing Is Warcrime"
Comments here:

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Jeremiah Babe, "Things Will Get Much Worse, Very Powerful Forces Will Impact US Economy"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/17/24
"Things Will Get Much Worse, 
Very Powerful Forces Will Impact US Economy"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Dance of Life"

Full screen a must for this beautiful video!
Peder B. Helland,
"Dance of Life"

"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).”

The Poet: David Romano, "If Tomorrow Starts Without Me"

Full screen recommended.
David Romano, "If Tomorrow Starts Without Me"
Read by Tom O'Bedlam
o
"Dog's Last Day"
So sadly beautiful...

Bill Bonner, "Revolt of the Masses"

Fire at the water tower, Place du Palais Royal,
February 24, 1848, By Eugéne Hagnauer.
"Revolt of the Masses"
Are "the people" finally losing faith in the infinite wisdom of their deciders?
by Bill Bonner

"Workers of the world, unite.
You have nothing to lose but your chains."
~ Karl Marx

Baltimore, Maryland - "Among the jitter and jive from Davos this week comes this gem. The elites are beginning to worry about a revolt of the masses. CNBC reports: "A growing detachment between political leaders and populations presents the biggest risk in a busy election year, according to Allianz CEO Oliver Bäte. The Allianz Risk Barometer published this month noted that political risk was already at a five-year high in 2023, with some 100 countries considered at high or extreme risk of civil unrest. Asked on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday what he considers the main global risk at present, Bäte pointed to a lack of trust from populations in their governments across major democracies..."

Why might The People lose faith in their deciders? What went wrong in the 21st century’ is becoming a popular subject for historians. Here’s Ed Snowden, now ‘on the lam’ in Moscow: "If I had to explain how the American Century collapsed in just 3 points, I might say: * Impoverishing the worker via union-busting & off-shoring * Unleashing the state by abandoning the gold standard * Continuously erasing essential liberties post-9/11."

“Exorbitant Privilege”: Snowden gets 2 out of 3, which is not bad. The end of the gold standard allowed government spending, debt, and cockamamie projects to increase enormously. And, he’s right that the feds took advantage of a fearful population, post-9/11, to grab more power in the Patriot Act. Union busting and off-shoring, too, may have contributed to lower compensation for the working classes, but the real source of the trouble was the funny money itself. Rather than make things and trade with other producers, Americans could buy on credit.

That is the benefit of what Giscard d’Estaing called the ‘exorbitant privilege’ of having the world’s reserve currency. After 1971, other countries took America’s green paper and treated it as real money.

But there was a big downside. The situation was a little like that of Spain after the conquistadores had seized the gold of Mexico and Peru. Ships laden with gold arrived in Spanish ports. The Spaniards were rich. From our book, "Empire of Debt" (written with Addison Wiggin…and soon to be re-released): "…the easy money from the new territories undermined honest industry. In the bubble economy of the early 16th century, Spain developed a trade deficit similar to that of the United States today. People took their money and bought goods from abroad. By the time the New World mined petered out, the Spanish were bankrupt. The Spanish government defaulted on its loans in 1557. 1575, 1607, 1627 and 1647."

Greedy Hands: An honest economy functions as people exchange goods and services for money…and use the money to buy goods and services from others. They all become better off, together. Distort the money and you distort the whole transaction…and sour the relationship between buyers and sellers. Some people no longer have to give to get…they just have to get their hands on this cheap ‘money.’ The new money, created by the Fed passed through Wall Street. Much of it stuck to greedy hands.

No surprise then, that in the period 2009 to 2023, the fellow with a hedge fund…an IPO…a SPAC…venture capital…or just an investment portfolio… watched his stocks rise by 87% after inflation. The poor working stiff, on the other hand, put his savings into a bank account, collected almost no interest…and its real value fell by 45%. But now, America’s paper money is petering out too. The feds can still print it, but the inflation cat is out of the bag. More printing leads to higher prices and higher interest rates.

And now, the workers of the world are losing faith in their leaders. Why? Because the decisions made by the deciders were almost unbelievably bad. Iraq, Afghanistan, Patriot Act, Wall Street bailout, zero interest rates policy for 10 years, stimmies, lockdowns, Inflation Reduction Act…in every instance doing nothing would have been far preferable. And thanks to this deranged activism, by 2024, the feds had added $29 trillion to the US national debt. Are the elites stupid? Why did they make so many bad decisions?

Corrupting Power: We’ve hammered on this nail many times, but we’ll give it another whack today. The future is unpredictable. But things follow patterns. Power corrupts, as Lord Acton reminds us. There is always an elite that takes control of a society. Over time these smart ‘deciders’ find ways to make their own lives richer…more secure…or more illustrious.

Wars are losers for The People. But they are much beloved by the firepower industry; trillions of dollars come their way. Giveaways and boondoggles do little to help the common man…but they are great for the parasites, the grifters, and the insiders. Wall Street – and the whole investor class – made an estimated $30 trillion in ‘excess wealth,’ thanks to the Fed’s low rates.

But what about The People themselves? Why do they go along? How come they now cling to two proven failures – Biden and Trump? Where are the lynch mobs? Where is the rope? Where is the candidate promising real reform? Everyone plays his role in the glorious theater of history. The People, in a late, degenerate empire, have their bit parts too. They give a ‘triumph’ to their incompetent generals. They re-elect their jackass politicians. They cheer their own destruction and kiss the boots that kick them."

The Daily "Near You?"

Kinsman, Ohio, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Too Often...:

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word,
a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring,
all of which have the potential to turn a life around."
- Leo Buscaglia

"Revenge of the Real World"

"Revenge of the Real World"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"Rather than stare at empty shelves, you have two options for distraction: You can don a virtual-reality headset and cavort with dolphins in the “metaverse” or you can trade various forms of phantom wealth that always go up (happy, happy!) because of the Fed.

Neither distraction actually solves any real-world problems, a reality we can call the “Revenge of the Real World.” We've entered a peculiar phase in American history in which illusions of wealth and control are the favored distractions from the unraveling of the real-world economy and social order.

Printing trillions of currency units can't restore the global supply chain or social cohesion. Rather, jacking phantom wealth to the moon is only accelerating the collapse of the social order and the economy even as it accomplishes absolutely nothing in terms of solving real-world problems. Let's start with the core economic realities of the 21st century…

The Facts:

1. The number of high-consumption ("middle-class") people doubled from 1 billion to 2 billion. The human populace has expanded to 8,019,876,189 individuals, but poor people who don't have enough money to consume large quantities of energy, goods and services delivered by the global supply chain don't have much of an impact on global consumption of energy and resources. It's the number of people jetting around the world playing their part in the landfill economy (toss the old one, buy a new one) who drive "growth" (i.e., waste is growth).

Strangely enough, there are actual physical limits to resources being transformed into junk being dumped in the landfills. Humanity's rapacious appetite for stuff has extracted all the cheap-to-extract resources and now all that are left are the increasingly expensive-to-extract resources.

2. Corporate America offshored most of the production of essentials to exploit the low labor and energy costs, minimal environmental standards and currency arbitrage of overseas production. The net result has been an astounding increase in corporate profits. But a funny thing happened on the way to Corporate Profit Nirvana: America became dependent on foreign supply chains. In essence, we traded national security for corporate profits. Now the real-world costs of that myopic greed are becoming apparent.

3. Global supply chains have been optimized for cheap energy and cheap credit. This optimization stripped away all the buffers as a means of maximizing profits. Once the system veered outside the narrow band of optimization, the entire system lost coherence and unraveled.

Counting on Magic: Now that the entire global supply chain has been optimized to maximize profits at the expense of buffers, the buffers are too thin to save the system from collapse. The entire dependency chain depends on cheap energy (all those cheap seats on wide-body aircraft were subsidizing the air cargo beneath the passengers' feet) and cheap credit, as consumers can't buy enough with earnings to keep the machine well-oiled. And firms in the dependency chain need ample cheap credit to function, as many have receivables that stretch out over 90 days. Without cheap credit, these firms would have to close down.

The status quo response would be amusing if the consequences weren't so dire: We don't need no stinking buffers! The supply chain for the landfill economy will be back up to full speed any day now, or maybe next year, but don't you worry, the conveyor belt from China to big-box stores to the landfill will be fully restored.

In the meantime, cavort with dolphins in the metaverse and trade tokens of phantom wealth to amuse yourself. We're counting on magic to put it all right, and if that doesn't work, then the real world's revenge will be something to behold. What about the precious dollar? Is it toast? Let’s think about this…

TINA: The consensus makes sense: The U.S. dollar is doomed because the Federal Reserve and the Treasury will conjure trillions of new dollars out of thin air to prop up the status quo entitlements, monopolies, cartels and debt/asset bubbles, and since little of this issuance actually increases productivity, all it will accomplish is the dilution/devaluation of the currency.

Put simply, the dollar will lose its purchasing power as the inevitable result of the need to print and borrow ever-increasing sums to pay interest on existing debts; fund bread and circuses to keep the masses placated; and keep inflating the asset bubbles in stocks, housing, bat guano, etc. to maintain the illusion of prosperity.

This destruction of the dollar is TINA writ large: There is no alternative. The only way to keep the status quo from imploding is to print as many trillions as are needed, and this inevitably devalues the currency to the point of worthlessness.

OK, we get it: TINA so the dollar dies. But let's consider TINA from the perspective of the deep state...

Will the Deep State Allow the Dollar to Crash? Destroying the purchasing power of the dollar destroys the engine of America's power, which is the ability ("exorbitant privilege") to conjure "money" out of thin air and be able to trade this "money" for cobalt, steel, semiconductors, etc. supplied by other nations.

If the dollar is destroyed by overissuance, then how do we buy the cobalt and other goodies we need to keep the aircraft carriers and all their aircraft in working order? This is a problem, for if we can't conjure "money" out of thin air and persuade everyone it still has value, then America's global influence dissipates into thin air.

So what the consensus proposes as inevitable is financial trickery will destroy America's global influence and its prosperity, and there's no alternative. In other words, the deep state will just throw up its collective hands and surrender its empire so Wall Street can continue inflating its bubble of phantom wealth, even as that destroys the dollar, America's global empire and ultimately its prosperity.

Is this really inevitable? Isn't it plausible that the deep state might rouse itself from its various distractions and take notice that once the dollar loses purchasing power the deep state loses all its power? Are there really no adults left in the room who can make this basic observation?

Wall Street or Empire? For the sake of argument, let's assume there are a few adults left who understand that the dollar is the linchpin of the entire empire and so it's actually worth protecting. And let's also assume these few adults understand that boatloads of parasites, leeches, speculators, etc. will have to be sacrificed, and all manner of politically sacrosanct bubbles, skims, scams, rackets, monopolies and cartels will have to be demolished, much to the dismay of the parasites, leeches, speculators, etc. who have gotten immensely wealthy off these bubbles, skims, scams, rackets, etc.

It seems impossible that the parasites, leeches, speculators, etc. at the top of the heap could be brought down. It's certainly a stretch, given their entrenched power. It seems much more likely that the game of incrementally devaluing the dollar will continue indefinitely. But what's the endgame of this devaluation? Is it really so faraway that the banquet of consequences will never be served? These sorts of things have a way of gathering momentum as self-reinforcing feedbacks kick in, and then the consequences are served up faster than anyone believed possible.

Which is more valuable: Wall Street's debt/asset bubbles or the global empire? You can't have both, so choose wisely. The contrarian bet is that the deep state finally awakens from its troubled sleep and decides the empire is more valuable than the bubbles, skims, scams, rackets, etc. and so the dollar will have to be defended regardless of the cost to those benefiting from its devaluation. Very few are willing to take that bet now, but let's get comfortable and watch the printing-borrowing-trillions devaluation game for a few more years and see how it plays out."

Dan, I Allegedly, "What's Next For Your Wallet?"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 1/17/24
"What's Next For Your Wallet?"
Comments here:

Col. Douglas MacGregor, "Iran Launches Massive Military Move To Protect Houthis, Regional War Breaks Out"

Full screen recommended.
Col. Douglas MacGregor, 1/17/24
"Iran Launches Massive Military Move To Protect Houthis,
 Regional War Breaks Out"
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

 

Canadian Prepper, "Red Alert! WW3 Nuclear Plans Leaked! All Of Europe Mobilizing For War; Military Draft"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 1/17/24
"Red Alert! WW3 Nuclear Plans Leaked!
 All Of Europe Mobilizing For War; Military Draft; Day X"
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Fear Grips The Market As World War III Begins"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/17/24
"Fear Grips The Market As World War III Begins"
Comments here:

Adventures With Danno, "One Dollar Items - Stock Up On These Deals At Meijer!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 1/17/24
"One Dollar Items - 
Stock Up On These Deals At Meijer!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Meijer and are noticing a massive amount of food items on sale for one dollar. With grocery prices being the highest they have ever been, you don't want to miss this epic sale! Get your notepad pad ready as I take you shopping with me to show off these amazing deals!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 1/17/24
"Russian Typical Hard Discount Supermarket"
"What does a Russian typical supermarket look like in surburban Moscow? Take a look inside. How busy is it? What food items are available?
Comments here:

"Increasing Psychopathic Behavior Is A Sign That Society Is On The Verge Of Breaking Down"

"Increasing Psychopathic Behavior Is A Sign 
That Society Is On The Verge Of Breaking Down"
by Tyler Durden

"Discussions on collapse often turn to signs and signals - the economy, politics and social tensions have become increasingly unstable for many years now, and much like adding more and more weight to a man standing on a frozen lake, eventually the ice is going to break. The question is, how do we know when that moment will be?

As cultural systems begins to dissolve due to political clashes and economic decline the real evil tends to slither out of the woodwork. It happens slowly at first, then all at once. A sure sign of accelerating collapse is the growing prevalence of psychopaths and psychopathic behavior in the open.

The US appears to have entered the middle stages of such a collapse with many sociopaths and psychopaths beginning to feel that they might be able to act out their worst impulses without consequences. They are beginning to test the waters to see what they can get away with.

In the past ten years there has been a dramatic uptick in mass violence and theft. With the advent of social media it is now easier than ever for spontaneously planned riots to form with little warning, and in most cases these mobs are random in who and what they attack. They might organize in the name of politics or activism, but they tend to lash out at whatever targets are closest or easiest rather than the people they blame for their travails.

In most cases these events result in simple property destruction in urban areas, but more and more there has been an underlying and aggressive impulse to hurt people. There will come a time very soon when the the goal is not just to steal or vandalize, but to use instability as a smokescreen; a distraction the provides opportunities to harm others.

Psychopaths like to exploit the chaos of political turmoil to indulge their violent tendencies, or to convince others to do the same. If no one acts to eliminate the first wave of criminal actions during a social breakdown, then thousands of other criminals will also move to take advantage. The first wave becomes an avalanche, all because the system no longer provides sufficient incentives to behave.

The root psychology is hard to explain, but look at it this way – Imagine a spoiled toddler is kept in check by his parents in the pristine halls of a delicate museum. The toddler might throw fits, screaming and shouting because he wants to touch the many fragile items around him, but at least his parents are there to hold him back. He has not yet learned the responsibility and maturity necessary to have access to these treasures. Now imagine removing the parents entirely and telling the toddler there are no rules anymore?

The rush of joy he experiences is exhilarating; it is the feeling of sudden and unearned power. No one is around to stop him, therefore, he is going to test his own limits. He sees the ordered environment around him and he becomes frustrated. How dare this place restrict him with boundaries and structure. His first inclination is to destroy anything that he can get his hands on.

Now understand that there is a portion of any given adult population that has these same tendencies. They never grew up. They want to take or destroy what they cannot have; they are only waiting for the opportunity to do so without repercussions.

At this phase of a breakdown when the dominoes begin to topple, law enforcement generally folds and retreats, leaving the public with no first line of defense. Gangs and looters organize quickly and take territory rather than just taking people's possessions. Organized crime at the local level leads to large scale death and minimal opposition. People are so isolated and busy trying to scrape together a meager economic lifeline that they have no time or motivation to fight back.

The point of no return comes when regular people are afraid to leave their homes. Organization at the neighborhood level with an aggressive posture must be enacted or the most vicious attacks will be visited on the population.

Sometimes, though, the psychopaths we have to deal with during a collapse are within the very government that is supposed to protect our liberties. This is a situation in which the criminals are given license to use violence against the citizenry through the illusion of law. The populace is then confronted with the inevitable question - Are laws worth following when psychopaths write them?

When corrupt people run government, good becomes evil and evil becomes good. Consider the extreme double standards in place between the treatment of leftist activist mobs and conservative protesters. Look at the government and media response to the BLM riots versus their response to the Jan 6 event. In the case of the capitol "riots", police fired rubber bullets and tear gas into the otherwise peaceful crowd, then when the protesters reacted violently, they were accused of "insurrection."

Is there any example of this kind of setup used against the political left? No. Instead, the media and public officials describe the destructive mobs as "fiery but mostly peaceful." The double standard is absurd, but then again, it's meant to be. Why? Because the psychopaths among the political left were being rewarded and encouraged. Conservatives and moderates are supposed to feel defeated, making them unwilling to fight back any longer. These are the kinds of conditions that fuel unhinged and predatory people, unleashing them on the population. When psychopaths feel protected, total upheaval quickly follows."