"Bleeding Out"

"Bleeding Out"

by Jim Kunstler

“The difference between you and me,” Mr. Trump said to the ever more ghostly Joe Biden, fading mentally late in the action on the debate stage, “is that I’m not a politician and you are, and you’re a crooked politician.” Millions watching this spectacle might not have noticed, due to the media’s near-complete blackout of news detailing the Biden family’s adventures in systematic global moneygrubbing, but the Democratic candidate for president has political Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever of credibility, now gushing out of every pore and orifice.

Twitter and Facebook may try to squelch the story, but the evidence is all over the Internet now, like blood on a crime scene, in verifiable emails, texts, Snapchats, memoranda, and bank records that Ol’ White Joe Biden is at the center of a decades-long influence-peddling spree, selling his personal services to China, Russia, Ukraine, and any other country seeking favors in US government policy, and that this slime-trail of grift disqualifies him from holding high office as much as the irreversible rot of his cognitive abilities.

The “Laptop from Hell” affair has twelve more days to play out before the November 3 vote and the Democratic Party is in a terrible jam. Do they ask Mr. Biden to step aside, or do they keep running with him while the barrage of allegations and hard evidence pours down on them like so many mortar rounds on a besieged bunker? It’s obvious now that one way or another, voters are actually being asked to elect Kamala Harris president - but who asked for her? Only the disgraced and disabled head of the ticket, Joe Biden, desperate for a non-white running mate. Elsewise, she was so disliked by voters that she skulked out of the Iowa caucuses, ending her own run. Is Hillary ironing her purple pantsuit up in Chappaqua, awaiting the emergency call from her DNC?

The early 2020 impeachment gambit has finally blown up in the Democrats’ faces, too, as it’s now obvious the phony furor over Mr. Trump’s phone call to Ukraine President Zelensky was ginned up to smother any inquiry into Hunter Biden’s $83,000-a-month services to the Burisma gas company and its crooked chief, Mykola Zlochevsky, with help from then US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and several of her staff, as well as then Secretary of State John Kerry.

Interestingly, figures associated with Mr. Kerry (the 2004 Democratic party nominee), Devon Archer and Christopher Heinz (Mr. Kerry’s stepson) also happened to be business associates of Hunter Biden’s, and therefore the Biden family syndicate. Mr. Archer is currently under conviction, awaiting sentencing, on a federal securities fraud rap. If US attorneys out of the DOJ have any interest in talking to him, they have a lever to incentivize his testimony about many of the transactions involving Burisma in Ukraine and the Chinese companies that were funneling payments to the Bidens for “introductions” to US persons of influence.

The Democrats have a whole lot of bad behavior to defend, ranging far beyond the Bidens to the decades-long activities of the Clintons in their charity frauds, the related Uranium One matter - in which $150-million in Russian money found its way into the Clinton Foundation - and the deal that set up transfers of US secret computer tech to Russia’s Skolkovo project, which eventuated in Russia’s development of hypersonic weapons. Not to mention the RussiaGate coup operation to overthrow the president using false allegations supplied by Mrs. Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, and scores of high officials in a range of executive agencies.

Ironically many of those same schemers are at it again in the recent letter by a long list of former Intel spooks trying to discredit The New York Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop as “having all the earmarks” of a Russian disinformation op. At the top of the list of that letter’s signers, you’ll find John Brennan, CIA chief under Obama, and James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence - both of them progenitors of the RussiaGate coup and liable to prosecution for seditious conspiracy. Can you smell their desperation?

Something else may be turning now, though, on this titanic hairball of corruption and deceit: mainstream media reporters starting to jump into lifeboats to save their reputations by actually reporting honestly on developments in this web of stories. The few early adapters to truth-telling may be the only survivors. The ones who stick with the ship of deception are going down into cold and darkness. And if President Trump wins reelection - a possibility despite polling that, in many cases, is just propaganda - the public will learn exactly how the Democratic Party became the enemy of the people."

- https://kunstler.com/

○

Related:

"Blockbuster Report Reveals How Biden Family Was Compromised By China"

"Corruption at Highest Levels of Gov., Not Going Away"

"How It Really Is"

 

Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/23/20: "Election Plays, Markets, More"

Gregory Mannarino,

AM 10/23/20: "Election Plays, Markets, More"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 10/23/20"

by David Leonhardt

10/23/20

"• Reopened elementary schools do not seem to be causing significant virus outbreaks, according to data from random testing in the United States and Britain.

• Hospitalizations in Europe are rising steadily. This map shows which countries are being hit hardest.

• The Food and Drug Administration formally approved remdesivir as the first drug to treat Covid-19."

Oct 23, 2020, 8:36 AM ET:

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 41,798,700 

people, according to official counts, including 8,455,282 Americans.

      Oct 23, 2020 8:36 AM ET: 

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

◆

Oct. 23, 2020 at 11:36 a.m. ET: "Coronavirus Update: U.S. Death Toll Tops 223,000; Rural Hospitals Are Filling and the Dakotas Lead the Nation by New Infections"

◆

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

OCT 23, 2020 8:47 AM: "World Reports Record Jump In COVID-19 Cases As Outbreak Explodes Across Europe, Midwest: Live Updates"

◆

Updated 10/23/20, 6:24 AM ET

Click image for larger size.

- https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 10/23/2020"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 10/23/2020"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"If you are a staunch Biden supporter, you probably thought he did pretty well in the last Presidential debate of the 2020 election season. If you are a Trump supporter, you probably thought the President won. The fact is this debate did not settle much, but it did draw some gaping wounds on former Vice President Biden. Biden finally admitted that he does want to do away with the oil and natural gas business. That is going to hurt him in States like Texas and Pennsylvania. Also, news of his son Hunter’s damning emails showing the Biden family cashing in was not denied by Joe, but simply passed off as Russian propaganda.

The Hunter Biden emails are real, and the trouble for Joe Biden is real too. Now, two of Hunter’s business associates are rolling over on the Bidens. They are confirming the emails and providing new material damning to Joe and family. This opens Joe up for many more questions about son Hunter and family with news of money received from places like China, Ukraine and Iraq. This is not going away before Election Day.

Another 787,000 people filed for first time unemployment claims last week. That was less than the week before, but not a good indicator as more than 60 million have filed claims since March. The good news is GM will invest $2 billion in the USA to get ready for new electric vehicles coming out under the General Motors brand. Why did they decide to build in the USA and not China? Maybe somebody at GM got nervous doing business with a totalitarian communist regime?"

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he talks 

about these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.

"Hunger Crisis Getting Worse! 1 In 3 US Families Don't Have Enough Food To Put On The Table"

"Hunger Crisis Getting Worse! 1 In 3 US Families 

Don't Have Enough Food To Put On The Table"

by Epic Economist

"Kitchen tables across America are the clearest picture of the damages brought by the economic collapse. As the sanitary outbreak lingers, millions upon millions are fighting against the hunger crisis. In recent times, demand for food banks has spiked so high that projections already show pantries won't have enough to feed everyone. Food insecurity levels are surging for several different groups and no one is really immune - from children to college students to the middle class, and many others. 

At the same time, while the World Food Program was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its fight against hunger, recent U.S. data points out that tighter crop supplies could aggravate even more the food-inequality crisis that’s expanding around the globe. For that reason, we decided to gather the most recent figures that can translate the reality no one wants to show us: the rising famine emerging amongst American families. Today, we are going to analyze the U.S. hunger crisis by the numbers, exposing this harsh situation that has been growing by the day. So stay with us, don't forget to give this video a thumbs up, share it with friends, and subscribe to our channel not to miss the next chapters of the 21st-century economic depression.

Before all of this meltdown has started, rates for American families facing food insecurity had been gradually declining. Right now, the number of groups who are lacking consistent access to enough food is skyrocketing. As the economic downturn and a second wave of viral cases have been severely disturbing people's prospects to resume their lives, new estimates present some of the worst rates of hunger spikes in America in decades. 

This crisis has been challenging families, communities, and the social safety net in a very disconcerting manner. However, since last year a significant amount of U.S. households were already experiencing food insecurity, and this year's economic disaster has just made the situation much worse. In 2019, approximately 13.7 million households, or 10.5% of all U.S. households, undergone food insecurity at some point. That accounts for over 35 million Americans who were either unable to purchase enough food to meet their needs or unsure of where their next meal would come from, reported the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

From those 35 million, over a third had limited access to food to the point of having their eating patterns critically impacted and their food intake was reduced. The other two-thirds managed to obtain enough food but had to survive on less varied diets or use the help of food assistance programs. 

This year, on the other hand, the number of food-insecure groups more than doubled, hitting as many as 23% of all U.S. households, roughly 1 in every 4 families were affected as a result of the economic havoc that has been pushing millions out of their jobs, according to one estimate by researchers at Northwestern University. Even more concerningly, 1 in every 3 families with children is coping with food insecurity - which is double the rate since 2018, and a higher proportion than at the peak of the Great Recession, according to a new analysis from The Hamilton Project.  During "regular" times, households with children were almost 1.5 times more likely to face food insecurity than households without children, USDA data pointed out. 

Tragically, the food insecurity issue is hardly unique to the U.S. In a recent assessment, Bloomberg estimated that over "132 million more people globally might fall into the grip of hunger this year, including in many places that used to have relative stability". The projections are related to the USDA announcement that says world soybean stockpiles will be smaller than expected amid the growing competition over global wheat shipments, while dry weather is becoming a threat to crops in parts of South America and Europe. All things considered, global food prices are forecasted to keep climbing, as result, adequate nutrition will become even more expensive as millions are still being pushed out of work and the economic downfall deepens.

In conclusion, the UN's chief economist, Arif Husain signaled this crisis as "a hammer blow for millions more who can only eat if they earn a wage. Lockdowns and global economic recession have already decimated their nest eggs. It only takes one more shock to push them over the edge". All the factors are mounting together and leaving many with the worrying question: Has the sanitary outbreak unleashed not only a public health and economic crisis but also a humanitarian one? That's what we are going to find out on the next unfoldings of the global economic catastrophe. So keep tuned with our channel, and we see you on the next one!"

- http://www.epiceconomist.com

"America Has the Government It Deserves"

"America Has the Government It Deserves"

by Brian Maher

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want,

and deserve to get it good and hard."

-  H. L. Mencken

“Every nation gets the government it deserves,” said 18th-century French philosopher Joseph de Maistre. "If true - we suspect it is - the United States is a nation of scoundrels, cads, wastrels and spongers. For the nation has a spendthrift government perpetually on the borrow, perpetually holding out an empty hat. By some metrics, the United States presently takes on more debt in one year than it did in its first 200 years of existence. This was true before the virus invaded its shores. Now all previous projections go into the fireplace, discarded and useless.

In 2018 - merely two years past - the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected the national debt would exceed $23 trillion by 2020. Exceed. We suspect the 2018 forecast was intended to raise the hair. Yet here we are in 2020… staggering, groaning under a $27 trillion debt… which counts higher with each swing of the clock. A $27 trillion debt exceeds a $23 trillion debt nearly as a half-foot exceeds an inch, as a foot exceeds a yard. It is not merely “more.”

‘What Can I Do?’ Yet somehow the business seems beyond all human agency, beyond all control. ‘What can I do?’ a fellow wonders. His shoulders he shrugs. His head he bows. He may cluck-cluck his opposition to it all - and who does not?

The Modern Monetary Theory zanies may not oppose it. They would argue greater debt is the proper medicine. But they are not our concern today. Come back to our normal man… He is largely a man resigned. Besides, he bellows, today’s obscene debts are the fault of the big-spending politicians sitting at Washington. Not himself.

But are they? Is the glad-handing, vote-seeking politician solely to blame for the nation’s desperate finances? No, argues Paul Van de Water, senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Look thyself in the mirror, citizen, says he: "Even voters who say they’re against deficits would also prefer lower taxes. That is, the average voter sniffs the free lunch… and orders up a plateful."

We must agree with this analysis. The cost-free lunch has eternal appeal. It is a painless gain… and what a gain it can be. Once it goes upon the menu it never comes off. But ultimately the waiter lays the check upon the table… as warned Mr. Benjamin Franklin: "When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic."

And in Aristotle’s telling: "Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."

Do we condemn the voter for biting the bait? No, we do not pass judgment - we have yet to decline an expenseless meal. We merely observe… and reflect. But is it necessarily in the nature of democracies to run down the nation’s finances - to lunch free of charge? Perhaps it is not democracy as such to blame… but the character of a particular people.

Look to Athens: Ancient Athens - a democracy (with noticeable exceptions) - amassed a vast public treasury in its Golden Age. That treasury remained unmolested until the Peloponnesian War, though it was perpetually there for the taking. The citizens of Athens were free to vote themselves the bounty as they pleased. Yet they did not.

Author Freeman Tilden, from his neglected 1935 masterwork "A World in Debt": At one time the Athenians had in their citadel more than 10,000 talents of silver [roughly $165 million in 2016 dollars]; and what is more significant, they did not tap the resources until forced by the necessity of war."

Tilden cited 18th-century British philosopher David Hume on the Athenian character: "What an ambitious and high-spirited people was this, to collect and keep in their treasury a sum which it was every day in the power of the citizens, by a single vote, to distribute among themselves!"

Nor did Athens resort to swindle in its bleakest hour - no clipping of coins, no debasing the currency. Again, Tilden: "The most brilliant democrats that ever lived, the Athenians, made tragic mistakes of policy… But with all their blunders, the Athenians never, as free men, indulged in the final madness of debasing their currency: They never became swindlers… Athens rose in trade by means of establishing good credit and by safeguarding the honor of her coin. In the most terrible years of her history, when the treasury was empty… she was indeed obliged to strike emergency coins of gold and bronze, but never consented to debase her coinage."

Safeguarding the honor of its coin? Might the Federal Reserve take notice? Might we... the American people... take notice?

America’s Debased Coinage: We might remind you… The United States dollar has lost some 95% of its value since the Federal Reserve came on duty in 1913. Yet out of respect for the nation’s monetary authority and the high dignity of its office… we refrain.

But this question we will ask: Were the ancients hammered from nobler metal than us moderns? Had they greater virtue? Again, we refer you to Athens. Yes, it murdered a Socrates. But its people kept their hands in their pockets. So much for Greeks. But what of Rome?

Rome: The American founders feared democracy as the devil fears holy water. Republican Rome was their model. But was not Rome a bedlam of vice and debauchery? Did not Nero fiddle while Rome burned? Did not Caligula famously name his horse a consul? Was Rome not corrupted by its bread and its circuses? Yes, yes and yes. And yes. But America’s Founders looked to the early Roman Republic for its example - before Caesar went across the Rubicon River… before Nero fiddled. Virtue, honor, public service were the pole stars, the North stars of the early Roman Republic.

Consider the Battle of Cannae in 216 B.C. Hannibal was moving on Rome. He met the Roman army at Cannae, the other side of the Italian boot from Rome. The battle resulted in carnage literally unprecedented... Rome lost perhaps 50,000 men to Hannibal’s berserkers in one single day (Roman soldiers went actually mad, digging holes in the ground and lowering their heads into them, ostrich-like, to shut out the carnage surrounding them). Once again for emphasis… Rome withstood 50,000 dead in one single day.

America scarcely exceeded that one-day bloodletting in a decade of Vietnam. Was it merely the underclass, the rabble of Rome that died for its glory that day? It was not. The Roman Senate lost nearly one-third of its members in the Battle of Cannae. “This suggests,” notes historian Peter Turchin, “that the senatorial aristocracy was more likely to be killed in wars than the average citizen.”

If a nation gets the government it deserves…we must conclude the citizens of the early Roman Republic were a deserving lot.

Imagine - for one passing moment if you can - a United States senator on the front lines of battle. Then return to your sober senses.

Meantime, Turchin informs us that the wealth of Rome’s top 1% was perhaps 10–20 times a commoner’s at the height of the Roman Republic. By the time of Rome’s terminal imperial decline… that figure may have risen to 10,000 times. Have you seen the latest income discrepancies?

“If You Can Keep It”: America’s numbers are not quite so out of joint - yet. But this we must ask: Does America’s domestic condition today more resemble the Roman Republic… or the Roman Empire? Legend holds that a grand Philadelphia belle confronted the aforesaid Benjamin Franklin as he vacated the Constitutional Convention in September 1787. Legend further claims she asked old Ben what form of government the assembled had handed the American people. “A republic, Madam,” came his reply - “if you can keep it.” We - We the People - could not..."

-  dailyreckoning.com

Gregory Mannarino, "Watch For It! Trillions In More Debt Will Propel Stocks Much Higher"

Gregory Mannarino,

"Watch For It! Trillions In More Debt Will Propel Stocks Much Higher"

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

And you know very well how much help the rest of us will get...

Right, Good Citizen? 

Musical Interlude: Medwyn Goodall, “Eyes of Heaven”

Medwyn Goodall, “Eyes of Heaven”

Full screen mode recommended.

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Separated by about 14 degrees (28 Full Moons) in planet Earth's sky, spiral galaxies M31 at left, and M33 are both large members of the Local Group, along with our own Milky Way galaxy. This narrow- and wide-angle, multi-camera composite finds details of spiral structure in both, while the massive neighboring galaxies seem to be balanced in starry fields either side of bright Mirach, beta star in the constellation Andromeda. Mirach is just 200 light-years from the Sun. But M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is really 2.5 million light-years distant and M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is also about 3 million light years away. 

Click image for larger size.

Although they look far apart, M31 and M33 are engaged in a gravitational struggle. In fact, radio astronomers have found indications of a bridge of neutral hydrogen gas that could connect the two, evidence of a closer encounter in the past. Based on measurements, gravitational simulations currently predict that the Milky Way, M31, and M33 will all undergo mutual close encounters and potentially mergers, billions of years in the future.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150926.html

◆

"Everything passes away- suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes towards the stars? Why?"

- Mikhail Bulgakov, "The White Guard"

Chet Raymo, "On Saying 'I Don't Know'"

"On Saying 'I Don't Know'"

by Chet Raymo

“Johannes Kepler is best known for figuring out the laws of planetary motion. In 1610, he published a little book called “The Six-Cornered Snowflake” that asked an even more fundamental question: How do visible forms arise? He wrote: "There must be some definite reason why, whenever snow begins to fall, its initial formation is invariably in the shape of a six-pointed starlet. For if it happens by chance, why do they not fall just as well with five corners or with seven?"

All around him Kepler saw beautiful shapes in nature: six-pointed snowflakes, the elliptical orbits of the planets, the hexagonal honeycombs of bees, the twelve-sided shape of pomegranate seeds. Why? he asks. Why does the stuff of the universe arrange itself into five-petaled flowers, spiral galaxies, double-helix DNA, rhomboid crystals, the rainbow's arc? Why the five-fingered, five-toed, bilaterally symmetric beauty of the newborn child? Why?

Kepler struggles with the problem, and along the way he stumbles onto sphere-packing. Why do pomegranate seeds have twelve flat sides? Because in the growing pomegranate fruit the seeds are squeezed into the smallest possible space. Start with spherical seeds, pack them as efficiently as possible with each sphere touching twelve neighbors. Then squeeze. Voila! And so he goes, convincing us, for example, that the bee's honeycomb has six sides because that's the way to make honey cells with the least amount of wax. His book is a tour-de-force of playful mathematics.

In the end, Kepler admits defeat in understanding the snowflake's six points, but he thinks he knows what's behind all of the beautiful forms of nature: A universal spirit pervading and shaping everything that exists. He calls it nature's "formative capacity." We would be inclined to say that Kepler was just giving a fancy name to something he couldn't explain. To the modern mind, "formative capacity" sounds like empty words. 

We can do somewhat better. For example, we explain the shape of snowflakes by the shape of water molecules, and we explain the shape of water molecules with the mathematical laws of quantum physics. Since Kepler's time, we have made impressive progress towards understanding the visible forms of snowflakes, crystals, rainbows, and newborn babes by probing ever deeper into the heart of matter. But we are probably no closer than Kepler to answering the ultimate questions: What is the reason for the curious connection between nature and mathematics? Why are the mathematical laws of nature one thing rather than another? Why does the universe exist at all? Like Kepler, we can give it a name, but the most forthright answer is simply: I don't know.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"In the Inbox"

"In the Inbox"

"From: Coordinator of Volunteer Services

We have a young man, thirty-six, on hospice who has a very young child. They want someone to help him do a life review and perhaps put some pictures together for he and his wife so the child will know him. Call me if you are willing to do this."

"The next time, friend, your life seems too hard, check your Inbox."

- Jose Orez

The Poet: Fernando Pessoa, “I Don’t Know If The Stars Rule The World”

 “I Don’t Know If The Stars Rule The World”

“I don’t know if the stars rule the world,

Or if Tarot or playing cards

Can reveal anything.

I don’t know if the rolling of dice

Can lead to any conclusion.

But I also don’t know

If anything is attained

By living the way most people do.

Yes, I don’t know

If I should believe in this daily rising sun

Whose authenticity no one can guarantee me,

Or if it would be better (because better or more convenient)

To believe in some other sun,

One that shines even at night,

Some profound incandescence of things,

Surpassing my understanding.

For now...

(Let’s take it slow)

For now

I have an absolutely secure grip on the stair-rail,

I secure it with my hand –

This rail that doesn’t belong to me

And that I lean on as I ascend...

Yes... I ascend...

I ascend to this:

I don’t know if the stars rule the world.”

- Fernando Pessoa

The Daily "Near You?"

 
El Tejo, Cantabria, Spain. Thanks for stopping by!

"A Very Close Resemblance..."

 

"Mother Nature Has Found Her Man – Joe Biden"

"Mother Nature Has Found Her Man – Joe Biden"

by Bill Bonner

"Where has the horse gone? Where is the man? 

Where is the giver of treasure?

Where are the seats at the feast? 

Where are the joys of the hall?

Alas the bright goblet! Alas the mailed warrior! 

Alas the pride of princes!

How the space of years has passed – 

it grows dark beneath the night-helm, as if it never was!"

– “The Wanderer,” author unknown

SAN MARTIN, ARGENTINA – "We recently learned a new word. Actually, it’s a very old word: Enantiodromia. Naturally, the Greeks thought of it. As our colleague, Joel Bowman, tells it, it describes the “tension of opposites”… the rise and fall… the yin and yang… the first shall be last… Want to see it in action… in the flesh? Just look in the mirror. What was once young becomes old. People, companies, nations… all rise and fall.

But great nations do not fall on their own. They are knocked down by people – leaders who are up to the task… right for the time… who are capable of kicking Humpty off the wall.

Feckless Catastrophe: There are two sure ways to bring a nation down – war and inflation. By our reckoning, the decline of the U.S. began at the end of the last century – in 1999. That is when the stock market – in terms of gold – hit its all-time high.

It was also when America faced no significant enemies… when the U.S. federal budget was in surplus (allowing for a little funny accounting)… and when it was widely expected that the new technology – centered in the internet – would make us all smarter, richer, healthier, longer-lived… and happier.

Alas, beginning in 2000, Mother Nature, with her glorious sense of mischief, wanted to take America down a peg. And she found the man to do it – George W. Bush. His “war against terror” was a fateful, feckless catastrophe. It will cost $7 trillion, say the professors at Brown University who bother to add it up. And it produced nothing but misery.

National Disaster: Then came the Obama team, whose contribution to national disaster was the Obamacare plan… which added unfunded liabilities estimated between $43 trillion and $87 trillion, depending on whom you believe.

And finally, the Great Man himself, Donald Trump, arrived, wearing his steel-toed boots. In four years, he has added more to the nation’s debt than any previous president. He brought deficit spending to a peak never before seen in the USA. He made “helicopter money” – heretofore a joke – a reality. And he crushed conservativism out of the Republican Party. Now, Republicans are ready to spend, spend, spend, too. In the next go-round of giveaway money, for example, Donald Trump says he wants to “go bigger” even than the Democrats.

How do you pay for all these extra boondoggles when you’re already spending $2 for every $1 you collect in taxes? You print the money. This formula – aka “inflation” – has ruined countless countries. The U.S. will not be the first or the last.

Decision Point: And so… here we are, Dear Reader… at a decision point.

On Monday, we set the stage: an election is coming up.

On Tuesday, we brought forth our flawed hero, Donald J. Trump.

And on Wednesday, we looked at how he had made an already dangerous, and probably fatal, situation worse.

Today, we will look at the alternative – Joe Biden. Would a Biden presidency be “better?” And if so, how? Not wanting to keep you in suspense, our conclusion is this: If the goal of Mother Nature is enantiodromia – that is, cutting a great empire down to size – Biden is probably her man. His policy notions are even worse than those of Donald Trump. And his advisors and probable apparatchiks are more competent than those of the Big Man (for whom loyalty was more important than competence)… and therefore, perhaps, more likely to succeed in implementing his policies. (Competence is not always a benefit. If your 10-year-old tries to build a bomb in the basement, for example, you should be happy that he lacks the necessary skills.)

No Choice: Now on the downswing… In theory, the nation faces a choice. It could turn away from crackpot economics and divisive politics… balance its budget… recall its troops… and reenter the community of stable, civilized nations in a dignified and graceful way.

Or… it could continue on the path set by Bush, Obama, and Trump. But in practice, there is no choice at all. Because the people who actually run the U.S. government – the Deep Staters – are not about to renounce the source of their pride, their prejudices, their reputations, their power… and their wealth. And in Joe Biden they have found their champion. He is no visionary… no intellectual… no ideologue. Instead, he is a go-along, get-along political hack.

He went along with the war mongering of George Bush and Hillary Clinton. He went along with the Forever War… as it continued under Obama. He went along with Obama’s medical care extravaganza. A senator for 36 years… and vice president for eight, Joe Biden has gone along with practically every jackass program that saw the light of day. And he’s ready to go along with a whole new set of trillion-dollar bamboozles and boondoggles.

What was refreshing about Donald Trump was that he was willing to say what others only thought, and resist popular fads. (He had his own crackpot ideas.) Biden, on the other hand, will get behind every politically correct, claptrap idea that comes down the pike.

A Green New Deal? Sounds good!

A universal basic income? Check.

Higher taxes on the rich? Sure…

Free college? Yep, it’s on the list.

Reparations? Maybe.

These things tend to have open-ended price tags. But the most recent estimate for the package Biden is campaigning on is about $6 trillion, guaranteeing deficits of trillions of dollars per year…

Enantiodromia, Here We Come! And check this out. Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard has been mentioned as a possible Treasury Secretary in the new Democrat-led government. What does she think? She spoke out on Wednesday… possibly to raise her visibility: "Further targeted fiscal support will be needed alongside accommodative monetary policy to turn this K-shaped recovery into a broad-based and inclusive recovery…"

Biden in the White House? Brainard at the Treasury? More fake money! More inflation! Whoopee! Enantiodromia, here we come!

Election Preview: But wait… Will Biden really win? And what will happen if he does? Will he actually be worse than Trump? Tune in tomorrow for the exciting – and surprising – conclusion to our Election Preview."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"Market Fantasy Updates 10/22/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 10/22/20"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

○

"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

"Coming Famine?"

○

Gregory Mannarino,

AM Oct 22, 2020

"Economic Collapse, More"

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

Updated live.

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

‘It’s Daunting to Think About What the Consequences Will Be.’ 

With No Stimulus Deal, Much of America’s 

Temporary Financial Safety Net Will Expire Dec. 31"

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

Daily Update (October 22nd to 26th)

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

○

Insanity... 

○

And now. The End game...

"How It Really Is"

 

"You Want A Friend?"

Yeah, yeah...

"You want a friend in Washington? Get a dog."

- Harry S. Truman

"Simply Find Out..."

 

"Everything Is Staged"

"Everything Is Staged"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"You know how realtors stage a house to increase its marketability: first, they remove all evidence that people actually live there. (Of course a vacant house is ideal for staging because there's none of the messy real-life stuff to deal with.) All the clutter of everyday life must be moved elsewhere so the house can look like a bloodless furniture showroom. In other words, fake. Then various tricks /cues are employed to activate the sense of "home": induce the "smell of fresh bread" in the kitchen, adorn rooms with vases of fresh flowers, and have a few fake "family" photos set on bookshelves.

We all understand homes for sale are staged for marketing, as are showrooms and any other space devoted to selling. The raison d'etre of the space is to close the sale, so exacting care is given to every signal, cue and nuance. (It doesn't always work as intended. Apple Stores make me want to run screaming from the sci-fi white prison workshop to blessed freedom.)

The problem is everything in America is now staged with an eye on selling you something. Maybe it's just selling your attention to an advertiser or data-mining outfit. Maybe it's selling an ersatz slogan like "we're all in this together" to placate the herd being led to slaughter. Maybe it's phony membership in a movement that masks the few taking advantage of the many with a bogus ideological rallying cry. Maybe it's a so-called "panel of experts" offering up soothing assurances that this highly addictive opioid is incredibly profitable - oops, did I say that? I meant "safe." It's incredibly safe.

And so on. Since everything is staged, nothing is remotely credible. The 70-year old performer's deep-red hair (with a small splash of gray to make the charade "believable"): fake. The Stepford automatons lining the stage? Replicas of a carefully coiffed "reality." The entire financial system - nothing but an elaborate simulacrum of a real-world financial system.

"Democracy": - nothing but an elaborate simulacrum of a real-world republic.

"Fake" is now itself fake as the meta-marketers seek to undermine the concept of fake to sell the idea that what we recognize as fake is actually real: we're told that it's the real thing that's been hidden from view that's fake. The photo on the shelf of the fake family is real, we're told; what's fake is the actual real photo of the messy real-world family who actually lives here.

Given that everything is staged, trust has been completely destroyed. To trust anything being presented as a means to an end - i.e. a con, a scam, a sales pitch, a fake scent of fresh bread, etc. - is to be a chump.

The legitimacy of everything that's being staged has been irrevocably lost. Nobody tells the plain truth any more because telling the truth is straying off-message. Staying on-message is the Prime Directive in America. Stray from the message and the truth might leak out, and then we're all doomed because we can't close the sale.

There's no escape from this dependency on staging and staying on-message. The only hope of a return to the real world is the collapse of the entire fake, staged status quo, the collapse of every institution, every media outlet, every social-media platform, every single manifestation of marketing, cons, scams, pitches, gamed statistics, and all the frantic assurances that fake is real and real is fake because your belief in the fraud is the key to closing the sale.

All the staging is a means to an end, and everyone in America is nothing more than a means to an end: close the sale so the few can continue exploiting the many. If you can't stay on-message, you're gone - no wealth or security for you, bucko.

Staging is no substitute for reality. The frauds, cons and scams are failing to keep the simulacrum world glued together because no matter how expert the marketing and how great the desire to close the sale so the few can continue exploiting the many, reality intrudes right when the deal's about to close and the whole absurd contraption collapses in a heap."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 10/22/20"

by David Leonhardt

10/22/20

"• Boston halted in-person schooling for those students who had returned, after the city’s test positivity rate climbed above 5 percent.

• The death toll in the U.S. yesterday - 1,170 - was the highest in more than a month.

• A court ordered California’s most notorious prison, San Quentin, to reduce its number of inmates by half. More than 2,200 people there have been infected, and 28 have died.

• No, mouthwash will not protect you from the virus. The Times’s Katherine Wu debunks a misleading story that has gained popularity online this week."

Oct 22, 2020, 12:21 AM ET:

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 41,233,100 

people, according to official counts, including 8,378,512 Americans.

      Oct 22, 2020 12:21 AM ET: 

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

◆

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

OCT 22, 2020 3:16 PM: "COVID-19 Records Shattered Across Europe As France Tops 40k New Cases: Live Updates"

OCT 22, 2020 9:24 AM: "Central Europe Reports Record Jump In COVID-19 Cases; US Hospitalizations Hit 2-Month High: Live Updates"

◆

Updated 10/22/20, 5:24 AM ET

Click image for larger size.

- https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

◆

A highly recommended "must read":

"We Destroyed the World’s Greatest Economy for No Reason"

Must Watch! “Survive The Greatest Depression; Economic Twilight Zone; Jobless Crisis Explodes; Stimulus Talks”

Jeremiah Babe,

“Survive The Greatest Depression; Economic Twilight Zone; 

Jobless Crisis Explodes; Stimulus Talks”