Monday, November 23, 2020

"Welcome To The Interregnum"

"Welcome To The Interregnum"
by Chris Martenson

"We’re between things. It’s an uncomfortable place. We are transitioning from an old story into a new one and that has folks feeling anxious. By “we” I mean everyone on the planet. If you find yourself with a deep sense of unease, yet unable to quite pin it down, you will find this article extremely helpful.

The old story of endless growth on a finite planet is winding down. Whatever replaces it won’t be a continuation of the past. Things are going to have to change, whether we like it or not. Put more bluntly: the easy times are over, and a period of disruption has begun. It may be many years or even decades before thing truly settle into a new equilibrium (of sorts – there really isn’t any such thing in this ever-changing universe). The old will fall away even before the new has arrived. That process has already begun, hence the nervousness, anger, and fear.

My day job is serving as an information scout, an ambassador of the unknown, and because of that I’m acutely aware of the degree to which people are already worn down, burnt out, and unable to process any more. Folks are so exhausted by the trials and tribulations dished up by the crazy-making machine fondly referred to as “2020,” that many are paralyzed. Unable to take new actions because they are overwhelmed.

Yet, as I wrote recently, no choice IS a choice. When so much is changing and so much is on the line, remaining frozen with anxiety is as much a determinant of your future prospects as taking swift action – each sets one down different paths promising different outcomes.

Truthfully, there is much that can be done that will contribute to a more resilient future for yourself and for the world. But first we have to know where we are. We have to sketch out the map as best we can, even if the edges remain blanks with little more than “there be monsters” scribed at the borders.
To orient properly, you must be aware of the idea that the Age of Growth is over. We are now entering a Post-Growth era. Our task now is to settle into a very different existence – one with fewer ‘things’ and less ‘stuff’, but also offering more meaning and worthy challenges. Like any good adventure, a little danger is involved. But nothing quite so dangerous to your soul’s journey as wasting your life on trivial pursuits.

The Interregnum: The gap between reigns when the old king has died but the new successor has yet to be decided is called an interregnum. It can also refer to the gap between first learning of something and then finally understanding its deeper significance:

in·ter·reg·num, noun: a period when normal government is suspended, especially between successive reigns or regimes. An interval or pause between two periods of office or other things. “the interregnum between the discovery of radioactivity and its detailed understanding”

I love this word because it perfectly matches our current state. One feature of an interregnum, where power hangs in the balance, is that it’s a very uncertain time. Anxiety rules the day because nobody knows how things might land. It could be good for them personally, or very bad. The old king was good. His successor son is an already hated petty tyrant. Perhaps a different, better successor will somehow manage to claim the throne instead…

This sort of uncertainty is a potent source of anxiety. Which is why an interregnum is the cradle of people’s most deep-seated fears. The old king is gone. Nobody knows who or what is in charge right now. Is it humanity’s deep technological prowess or is it Mother Nature herself?

Does our destiny lie in our own hands or have the die already been cast and we’re simply awaiting to see how unfortunate of a roll it’s going to be? Is there still time to sort out a decent solution to our many predicaments and problems, or have those moments already been wasted? Nobody knows at this moment. But the uncertainty is hanging thick. Corrosive. Emotional. Explosive. Welcome to the interregnum. May the odds ever be in your favor.

Demoralization: Now while the above may sound depressing, as I’ve written before the better term is demoralizing, and there’s a very important distinction between the two terms.

Depression is a reaction to current circumstances. It can be treated with talk therapy to resolve an inner conflict, or temporary chemical rebalancing.

Demoralization, on the other hand, is what you experience when your cognitive map no longer aligns with the actual circumstances of life: 

"Rather than a depressive disorder, demoralization is a type of existential disorder associated with the breakdown of a person’s ‘cognitive map’. It is an overarching psycho-spiritual crisis in which victims feel generally disoriented and unable to locate meaning, purpose or sources of need fulfillment.

The world loses its credibility, and former beliefs and convictions dissolve into doubt, uncertainty and loss of direction. Frustration, anger and bitterness are usual accompaniments, as well as an underlying sense of being part of a lost cause or losing battle. The label ‘existential depression’ is not appropriate since, unlike most forms of depression, demoralization is a realistic response to the circumstances impinging on the person’s life."

"Did you catch that? Demoralization is actually a realistic response under certain conditions. Those conditions are manifesting themselves now. Which means that the waves of dispiriting statistics we’re seeing are not ‘bad’; they are telling us something important.

People are right to be deeply disturbed by the ways in which the main narrative of their culture no longer maps to reality. Worse, the Endless Growth narrative is killing life on this planet and therefore harming each of us in ways both overt and subtle. More and more people are detecting that, and that’s a good thing. Because that’s the necessary first step in crafting a new narrative and adopting a different model that hopefully serves us better.

We often say here at Peak Prosperity that if you’re feeling anxiety (or demoralization), it means that there’s a gap between what you know and what you’re doing. Since you can’t unlearn something, your best course of action is to change your behavior. To take action to better align what you know with what you do.

I totally get the frustration, anger and bitterness on display in politics all across the West right now, but these are almost universally misdirected at the wrong targets. Whether by intent or accident, this is usually the case and heavily supported by a media system that actually promotes divisiveness over unity, and isolation over connection."

Bottom line: If you are demoralized there’s nothing wrong with you. But there is definitely something wrong with the larger situation. If you know someone who is demoralized, don’t try to ‘fix’ them by helping them fit back into their old lives better. The problem isn’t with their ability to adapt. The problem is they are already adapting to what is coming. They’re ahead of the curve, not behind it. They just see the new curve before you do.

With that critical framing for the word demoralization, we can now go a bit deeper. But first, I want to introduce an important term relating to demoralization: Zozobra. It describes a potent sensation one might experience during an interregnum, especially if demoralization is in play.

Zozobra: I came across this article very recently and have now read it a few times. It’s pitch perfect. It neatly captures the context of demoralization. By naming it we can begin to understand it, know its presence, and reduce its unconscious hold on us: 

"There’s a word for your overwhelming anxiety, and it’s “zozobra”

Nov 3rd, 2020: 

Ever had the feeling that you can’t make sense of what’s happening? One moment everything seems normal, then suddenly the frame shifts to reveal a world on fire, struggling with pandemic, recession, climate change, and political upheaval. That’s “zozobra,” the peculiar form of anxiety that comes from being unable to settle into a single point of view, leaving you with questions like: Is it a lovely autumn day, or an alarming moment of converging historical catastrophes?

The word “zozobra” is an ordinary Spanish term for “anxiety” but with connotations that call to mind the wobbling of a ship about to capsize. The term emerged as a key concept among Mexican intellectuals in the early 20th century to describe the sense of having no stable ground and feeling out of place in the world. This feeling of zozobra is commonly experienced by people who visit or immigrate to a foreign country: the rhythms of life, the way people interact, everything just seems “off” – unfamiliar, disorienting and vaguely alienating.

According to the philosopher Emilio Uranga (1921-1988), the telltale sign of zozobra is wobbling and toggling between perspectives, being unable to relax into a single framework to make sense of things. As Uranga describes it in his 1952 book “Analysis of Mexican Being”: “Zozobra refers to a mode of being that incessantly oscillates between two possibilities, between two affects, without knowing which one of those to depend on… indiscriminately dismissing one extreme in favor of the other. In this to and fro the soul suffers, it feels torn and wounded.”

What makes zozobra so difficult to address is that its source is intangible. It is a soul-sickness not caused by any personal failing, nor by any of the particular events that we can point to. Instead, it comes from cracks in the frameworks of meaning that we rely on to make sense of our world - the shared understanding of what is real and who is trustworthy, what risks we face and how to meet them, what basic decency requires of us and what ideals our nation aspires to. (Source)

What ‘cracks in the framework of meaning’ could be more profound than facing the collapse of – well – everything? Our many predicaments exist at all levels from top to bottom. There’s no safe level on which to ride out the coming storm. There’s nowhere to run. There’s only right where you are.

When everything seems “off” – unfamiliar, disorienting and vaguely alienating, then you’re in some sort of foreign land. You are out of bounds, off all of your known maps. There’s no sense of place, nowhere to settle down. Zozobra. When everything is wobbling and up for grabs, you wouldn’t be entirely human if you weren’t experiencing some sort of emotional unease. AS with the adjustment reaction, an emotional arc is simply a part of the process. Both unavoidable and necessary. Those who navigate uncertainty best are those who process the quickest. As always, having a good mental map, and the right terms, is helpful to that process.

Conclusion: If you are feeling nervous, angry or fearful – congratulations! – there’s nothing at all wrong with you. In fact, your senses are operating normally, and your cognition is on the mark. You are having an adjustment reaction, your cognitive map has a better grasp on reality than your culture, and zozobra is par for the course. The most valuable part of naming and understanding these things is that they lose their ability to paralyze you with dread.

Our emotions are not “the truth”, but rather uncomfortable sensations that serve as an early warning system. They are like a quantum processor able to parse through massively complex systems and situations way before our cortex can offer any guidance. There’s also a comfort – a relief – that comes from understanding that our reactions are both perfectly normal and perfectly healthy. There’s nothing that requires treatment. Nothing that requires medication. Nothing at all to be done about any of it. Except knowing what it is, getting past whatever paralysis might exist as rapidly as possible, and then taking action.

Because you alone can’t alter the larger trends of ecological destruction, monetary printing, insane political responses, etc. and so forth, all that truly remains is for you to align your actions with what you know to be true. And there’s so much to be done. Soils need to be rebuilt. Waste streams reformed into nutrient loops. Energy efficiency to be built into the next generation of – everything. The lists are as endless as they are exciting. And you can play a role, both at the individual level as well as contributing positively at the collective one.

Yes, there’s a “great reset” coming. Whether it will be controlled and precise or a nature-driven chaotic mess remains to be seen. But right now, you need to make a choice: You can either actively shape your future or wait to be shaped by it.

I’m all about controlling what I can and leaving the rest behind. Maybe you are, too. If so, then you’re part of our tribe here at Peak Prosperity. We’re busying preparing for what is increasingly likely to consist of more macro chaos than control. You know, to avoid being demoralized with an overwhelming sense of zozobra during this interregnum.

In "Part 2: Moving Ahead With Purpose, Optimism & Grace" we provide further essential grounding for persevering through the coming change, and I share the latest steps that I’m taking in my own personal life to dive head-first into the interregnum with positive and enthusiastic intent.

I plan to meet the future on my terms. Will you?

Click here to read Part 2 of this report (free executive summary, enrollment required for full access)."

Sunday, November 22, 2020

Must Watch! “Warning! Businesses Vaporized; Tent Cities Everywhere; Stock Market All Time Highs; So Cal Troubles”

Jeremiah Babe,
“Warning! Businesses Vaporized; Tent Cities Everywhere; 
Stock Market All Time Highs; So Cal Troubles”
Full screen recommended.

"Is Another 'Crisis' Imminent: The Fed Must Double QE In 2021 But It Needs A Catalyst"

"Is Another 'Crisis' Imminent: 
The Fed Must Double QE In 2021 But It Needs A Catalyst"
by Epic Economist

"Strategists are alerting that another economic crisis is in the making just to enable the Federal Reserve to double its Quantitative Easing policies and keep the financial markets properly heated while compromising real economic growth. The central bank has fallen into a very damaging market trap and now it appears to be condemned to issue endless easy money into the markets, otherwise the whole U.S. economy would irreversibly collapse in a finger snap. 

In short, it appears that the looming lockdowns, which will prompt a tsunami of bankruptcies and lay-offs, might be the leverage needed to unleash more financial rescues, bailouts, and stimulus relief, and it is just a matter of time for the U.S. economy to fall into rock bottom once again. That's what we'll be discussing in this video. 

To support the markets during the current recession, the Federal Reserve has expanded its balance sheet by over $3 trillion, injecting $120 billion in liquidity every month, and also buying corporate bonds and junk bond ETFs. 

Although some may question why the Fed continues to "confuse" markets with the economy, considering how the system has been structured, it seems the bank has no other option. In short, since the value of financial assets in the US economy are marking a record of over 620% of GDP, a dramatic market crash would completely smash the highly financialized US economy, for that reason, it could never be allowed to happen

Another aggravator is the ever-growing budget deficit. After hitting a record of $3.1 trillion this year and knowing the U.S. will still face a tsunami of debt issuance in 2021, it is expected that another full-year deficit can largely exceed $3 trillion, especially considering the coming lockdowns are about to shut down the entire economy one more time and, of course, business will be in desperate need of further fiscal aid. In this sense, the Fed's current rate of debt monetization, which is through Quantitative Easing simply won't be enough. 

While the U.S. Treasury faces net issuances of nearly $2.4 trillion, the Fed is expected to monetize at least half of this total, or $960 billion. So, remembering that under the present extraordinary monetary policies the Fed has virtually monetized every dollar of net issuance, the central bank is essentially in a huge cliff that could send Treasury prices to a major downfall if markets lower expectations for future Fed monetizations. In other words, the Fed has to double its scheduled monthly QE in 2021 just to catch up to where it was in 2020.

Therefore, strategists are warning that this situation puts the Fed in an eternal loop of stimulus issuance, which may even help at first, but it ultimately leads to weaker economic growth and a rising wealth gap in the long-run.  

Up until this point, the Fed has already injected more than $36 Trillion into the economy. But the amount of economic growth achieved has been derisive. In a nutshell, the financial trap the Fed has fallen into requires constant interventions to sustain lower rates of economic growth, and whenever the Fed retracts the pace of intervention, economic growth sharply collapses.

That's why the agency has lowered interest rates to stimulate growth, but even after attaining the “zero bound,” the Fed has continued to fuel its expansionary monetary policy. In the absence of more debt issuance, the agency's power to “monetize” bonds to provide “monetary stimulus” to the markets is compromised. According to its "logic", keeping asset markets heated would enhance consumer confidence and generate a “trickle-down” effect on the economy.

However, from 2009 up until this point, the Fed’s balance sheet grew 438%, making the S&P 500 went up by 199.94%, while GDP only increased 21.24%, clearly showing how these enormous liquidity injections barely find a way to make any significant improvements in consumer spending. 

Now, the Treasury market is so large that it has lost its ability to operate seamlessly on its own during stressful times. And the continuity of the present policies is now the most significant risk because the agency will need another crisis to use as a scapegoat for the next gigantic QE expansion.

For that reason, economists alert that the next round of lockdowns is exactly what is going to provide the needed leverage for the Fed to come in and issue its helicopter money. So while our economy falls to rock bottom once again to fund the market's money hunger, the national debt will continue to grow. And, eventually, the bank will lose its ability to continue providing stimulus to the market, and all hell will break loose just to buy a couple more months of fake stability, and even before we have the chance to recover from this fall, we will fall again." 

Gregory Mannarino, “Markets, A Look Ahead: Pump Or Dump?”

Gregory Mannarino,
“Markets, A Look Ahead: Pump Or Dump?”

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Summer of 300 Years"

2002, "Summer of 300 Years"

"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).”

"Some Oddities..."

"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
- Douglas Adams

"Doug Casey on the Inevitable Breakup of the U.S."

"Doug Casey on the Inevitable Breakup of the U.S."
by Casey Research

"Rachel’s note: Last week, I caught up with Casey Research founder Doug Casey on his new page-turner, "Assassin." It’s the third installment of his High Ground series. It’s got a few parallels to today’s wild political events. So for our next Conversations With Casey, I asked Doug about his predictions for the future of the U.S… the impending civil war he sees coming… and what a Joe Biden/Kamala Harris presidency means. As usual, Doug holds nothing back. If you’re easily offended, you may want to read something else…

Rachel Bodden, managing editor, Casey Research: In our last conversation, we talked about changes stemming from this election, like the continued legalization of cannabis and the new legalization of those so-called harder drugs. But what are your thoughts on this general election? We’ve heard some of your thoughts about President Trump, but we haven’t heard any musings from you about Joe Biden.

Doug Casey, founder, Casey Research: There’s very little, if anything, to be said in favor of Joe Biden. He’s a reflexive leftist, statist, and crony. A lifelong government employee, he and his family have become amazingly wealthy on civil service salaries. From a pro-personal liberty point of view, he’s almost always been in the camp of the adversary, even the enemy. He’s a glad-handing nobody, devoid of talent or virtue. But in the context of the D.C. Beltway, mostly inoffensive, like a beige kitchen appliance.

Kamala Harris, his vice presidential running mate, however, is actively dangerous. I don’t believe she has any redeeming values, beyond ambition. A prosecutor her entire life, until she was elected as a U.S. senator in 2016, she impresses me as someone who tried to put people in jail primarily to add scalps to her belt in order to move up the ladder – not promote justice. She’s a thoroughgoing progressive and SJW, all-in for higher taxes, guaranteed annual income, free college, free medical for all, open immigration, special privileges for LGBTQ types, and the rest of it.

She’s a wannabe Evita Perón, without the charisma. What I don’t understand is how she got the nod for VP, since she had no support when she ran for president in 2019. She was quite unlikable – at best she was smarmy. What kind of backroom deals were cut to put people like these forward to rule the world?

When Biden steps down – assuming he’s elected after the lawsuits and recounts end – we could have Kamala for our new president. If so, I promise we’ll wish for a return of Sleepy and Corrupt Joe. The Democratic Party has been captured by people who want to completely remake the U.S., to conform with the notions put forward by Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and similar groups.

I did an article two months ago explaining the six reasons why I thought Biden was going to win and why this was going to be the most important election in U.S. history – certainly since that of 1860 – which put Abraham Lincoln in office.

The 2020 election wasn’t just a political election with economic consequences. It’s much more serious. We’re at a major cultural turning point in the U.S. In fact, we’re on the edge of a cultural war. It could devolve into an actual civil war, as unlikely as that may sound to some. But the fact is that people in the blue counties and red counties can’t even talk to each other anymore. They no longer share values, or have the same views on what’s right and wrong, good or evil. Many actually hate each other.

I hasten to add that the unpleasantness of 1861 to 1865 was not a civil war; it was a failed war of secession – a very different thing. A civil war is one where two or more groups are fighting for the control of the same territory, and the same central government. A civil war, if it happens, won’t just be about political and fiscal differences, but cultural differences. That’s much more serious.

Rachel: Do you think that there would be a higher likelihood of this civil war if Trump won, or if Biden won? Or do you think we’re just at a bubbling-over point and it’s inevitable?

Doug: You can’t solve moral and cultural differences by passing more laws. If you put antagonistic tribes in the same political entity you’re always asking for trouble. As little as 50 or 60 years ago there were some regional differences in the U.S., sure, but we generally shared the same values, traditions, beliefs, history, language, and religion. Race was a problem, but – at least before Washington started herding blacks into vertical ghettoes, putting them on welfare, and destroying their families – things were getting better. Now the U.S. has turned into a multicultural domestic empire. Empires never end well.

The best possible outcome that we can have today is for the people in the left-leaning, so-called blue counties, and the right-leaning, so-called red counties, to separate in the manner of cantons in Switzerland. Swiss cantons, you’ll recall, pay a relatively small national defense tax. But all other government functions and taxes are local. In fact, that’s pretty much the way the U.S. states once were. A return to that, however, is a longshot bet, because the Federal government has intruded into absolutely every area of American life.

Regarding the colors, red and blue, I said “so-called” because that differentiation was only made about 20 years ago. Historically, leftists have always been associated with red, not blue. But somebody in the media turned it on its head, and associated them with the color blue – the traditional conservative color. Nobody said “Wait… that’s ridiculous. Red has been the color of the left since at least the days of Karl Marx…” Like so many things in today’s Bizarro World, even traditional color associations have been reversed, further confusing the public. That’s only a tangential observation, I know, but worthwhile noting.

In any event, the red and blue people are viscerally at odds. Trump wasn’t the cause; he was only the catalyst. But it’s broken up families; they can no longer voice even polite political opinions among each other. Really deep philosophical differences divide Americans about moral issues, and the way the world should work. We’re now looking at irreconcilable differences. The best way to solve them is for people to go their separate ways, as opposed to fight for control of the central government, and then impose their views on the losers.

I expect the U.S. itself is going to change form radically over the next few generations – much more even than the last 50 years. Allow me to make another seemingly outrageous prediction: the U.S. will probably break up into different regions – to start with. But the U.S. is already no longer America. America was more than just a piece of geography; it was actually a unique and excellent idea, one that its citizens shared. But now many want to disavow everything from Columbus Day to Thanksgiving, its principles, its founders, and their ideas.

Many young people have been completely indoctrinated by four years of college, where they’ve been bankrupted financially and mentally; almost all the professors are hard-core leftists. The same is true of the high schools and grade schools, where kids absorb concepts by osmosis. Surveys show most Millennials think socialism is better than capitalism.

Rachel: Yes, that’s very interesting. Do you think right now, the U.S. is like the “Stans” that are just arbitrarily drawn lines in a country, with no culture or shared beliefs holding us together?

Doug: Increasingly. The main things holding the country together now aren’t values and traditions, but artifacts like fast food franchises, hotel chains, big box stores, the Interstate Highway System, and government-issued ID. And what you said is interesting, because the fact is that most of the countries in the world today are artificial constructs. Most countries in the world are… on the edge. It’s not just the U.S.

Every country in Africa was assembled from completely arbitrary lines drawn in 19th-century boardrooms in Europe. As were every country in the Middle East and Central Asia. Frankly, even countries like China are likely to break up into five or six different entities corresponding numerous local languages, cultures, and traditions. The Communist Party is widely – but quietly – viewed as a scam to benefit mainly its members. Of course, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang are all actually different countries that have antagonistic relations with the Han Chinese and Beijing. We’ll see not only the breakup of the ill-advised European Union, but the breakup of countries in Europe itself.

The colors on the map on the wall are always running. And this is one of those times. It’s like the paleontological concept of punctuated equilibrium, where things go along for a long time without changing, and then all of a sudden they change radically. I think we’re at a point like that right now, both within the U.S. and around the world. It’s going to be a turbulent time, lasting at least through this decade, probably longer. It will resemble the 1930s and ’40s a lot more than the ’50s and ’60s.

Rachel: That’s a stressful outlook, but it could be a very interesting time to live through. And especially right now.

Doug: You know the old Chinese saying about interesting, don’t you?

Rachel: No… But I know about the Chinese symbol for crisis and opportunity being the same, as in the Crisis Investing letter.

Doug: Good point. But it’s a Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times.” In history, “interesting” can be a euphemism for “buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Rachel: In some ways, it might be better to have things boil over rather than sit here, worrying about it, just simmering forever. So, you think that there’s going to be a lot of countries breaking up around the world. What’s your best guess for the U.S.? I mean a lot of people think, “Okay, the war of secession.” That was just the North and the South. But do you think that there’s actually more like five or six different countries that the U.S. should be broken up into politically, culturally?

Doug: Yes, I do. And there have been a few papers and books written on the subject. For instance, young Chicano males in Southern California and Texas have absolutely nothing in common with elderly female Medicare recipients in Massachusetts. And as various government welfare systems go bankrupt, they’re not going to want to pay for old white women with whom they have absolutely nothing in common. Nor should they, quite frankly.

The Hispanic areas of the Southwest are going to move towards independence, viewing it as the Reconquista. Ecotopia in Northern California, Oregon, Washington – and for that matter, British Columbia – have nothing in common with the Rust Belt, or the Deep South. The farming regions in the middle of the country have nothing in common with the BosWash corridor. This type of thing is a natural evolution throughout 5,000 years of recorded history. It’s nothing new. It’s normal and natural. The political lines on the map aren’t part of the cosmic firmament.

Rachel: Yes. I mean, empires typically have a shelf life, correct? And we’ve exceeded that, don’t you think?

Doug: Like I said, the U.S. has devolved into a multicultural domestic empire, and hopefully it will come apart peacefully. The way Yugoslavia did into six countries, the Soviet Union did into 15, and Czechoslovakia into two. The outcome can be salubrious and peaceful – unless somebody, a modern Lincoln equivalent, tries to hold the country together by force.

Rachel: I guess we can only hope for as peaceable a solution as possible. Thank you for your insights today, Doug.

Doug: Thanks, Rachel."

Musical Interlude: Tom Clay, "What The World Needs Now"; 11/22/63 Etc.

Tom Clay, "What The World Needs Now"; 11/22/63 Etc.
"Tom Clay, a Detroit DJ, brought this out in the early 1970's,
 and it was seen as a celebration of the message behind that
 spread by John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy."

"Where, Oh Where..."

"We are all of us born, live and die in the shadow
of a giant question mark that refers to three questions:
Where do we come from?
Why?
And where, oh where, are we going?"

- Tennessee Williams

"If You Look..."

"We have got some very big problems confronting us and let us not make any mistake about it, human history in the future is fraught with tragedy. It's only through people making a stand against that tragedy and being doggedly optimistic that we are going to win through. If you look at the plight of the human race it could well tip you into despair, so you have to be very strong."
- Robert James Brown

The Poet: Charles Bukowski, "Mind and Heart"

"Mind and Heart"

"Unaccountably we are alone, forever alone,
and it was meant to be that way,
it was never meant to be any other way  
and when the death struggle begins
the last thing I wish to see
is a ring of human faces
hovering over me  
better just my old friends,
the walls of my self,
let only them be there.

I have been alone but seldom lonely.
I have satisfied my thirst
at the well of my self,
and that wine was good,
the best I ever had,
and tonight, sitting, staring into the dark,
I now finally understand the dark and the
light and everything in between.

Peace of mind and heart arrives
when we accept what is:
having been born into this strange life,
we must accept the wasted gamble of our days,
and take some satisfaction in
the pleasure of leaving it all behind.

Cry not for me.
Grieve not for me.
Read what I've written then forget it all.
Drink from the well of your self, and begin again."

- Charles Bukowski

The Daily "Near You?"

 
Janesville, Wisconsin, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Greatest Electoral Heist in American History"

"The Greatest Electoral Heist in American History"
by Ken Blackwell

"The pieces are finally coming together, and they reveal a masterpiece of electoral larceny involving Big Tech oligarchs, activists, and government officials who prioritize partisanship over patriotism.

The 2020 election was stolen because leftists were able to exploit the coronavirus pandemic to weaken, alter, and eliminate laws that were put in place over the course of decades to preserve the integrity of the ballot box. But just as importantly, it was stolen because those same leftists had a thoroughly-crafted plan, and because they were rigorous in its implementation and ruthless in its execution.

Let’s not forget that liberals have been consumed by a fixation with removing Donald Trump from office for longer than he’s actually been in office. The sordid story of the 2020 election heist begins all the way back in January 2017, when Barack Obama’s former campaign manager and senior advisor, David Plouffe, took a job leading the policy and advocacy efforts of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a “charitable” organization established by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan.

Earlier this year, just as it was becoming clear that Joe Biden would be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, Plouffe published a book outlining his vision for the Democrats’ roadmap to victory in 2020, which involved a “block by block” effort to turn out voters in key Democratic strongholds in the swing states that would ultimately decide the election, such as Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Minneapolis.

The book was titled, "A Citizen’s Guide to Defeating Donald Trum"p, and it turned out that the citizen Plouffe had in mind was none other than his former boss, Mark Zuckerberg. Although Plouffe no longer officially managed Zuckerberg’s policy and advocacy efforts at that point, the political operative’s influence evidently remained a powerful force.

Thanks to the extensive efforts of investigators and attorneys for the Amistad Project of the nonpartisan Thomas More Society, who have been following Zuckerberg’s money for the past 18 months, it is still possible to expose the inner workings of this heist in time to stop it. Perhaps even more importantly, these unsung heroes of American democracy are dedicated to making sure that such a travesty will not become a permanent feature of our elections.

Under the pretext of assisting election officials conduct “safe and secure” elections in the age of COVID, Zuckerberg donated $400 million - as much money as Congress appropriated for the same general purpose - to nonprofit organizations founded and run by left-wing activists. The primary recipient was the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which received the staggering sum of $350 million. Prior to Zuckerberg’s donations, CTCL’s annual operating expenses averaged less than $1 million per year. How was Zuckerberg even aware of such a small-potatoes operation, and why did he entrust it with ⅞ of the money he was pouring into this election cycle, despite the fact that it had no prior experience handling such a massive amount of money?

Predictably, given the partisan background of its leading officers, CTCL proceeded to distribute Zuckerberg’s funds to left-leaning counties in battleground states. The vast majority of the money handed out by CTCL - especially in the early days of its largesse - went to counties that voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Some of the biggest recipients, in fact, were the very locales Plouffe had identified as the linchpins of the Democrat strategy in 2020.

Zuckerberg and CTCL left nothing to chance, however, writing detailed conditions into their grants that dictated exactly how elections were to be conducted, down to the number of ballot drop boxes and polling places. The Constitution gives state lawmakers sole authority for managing elections, but these grants put private interests firmly in control.

Amistad Project lawyers tried to prevent this unlawful collusion by filing a flurry of lawsuits in eight states prior to Election Day. Unfortunately, judges were forced to put those lawsuits aside without consideration of their merits because the plaintiffs had not yet suffered “concrete harm” in the form of fraudulent election results. The law had no remedy to offer because the left’s lawless schemes had not yet reached fruition.

In the meantime, CTCL continued splashing Zuckerberg’s cash - only now, the organization was intent on finding Republican-leaning jurisdictions to give its donations a veneer of bipartisanship. Of course, the number of votes in play in those counties paled in comparison to those in the liberal counties. Philadelphia County alone, for instance, projected that the $10 million grant it received from CTCL would enable it to increase turnout by 25-30 percent - translating to well over 200,000 votes.

The left didn’t put all of its eggs into the CTCL basket, though. High-ranking state officials simultaneously took significant steps to weaken ballot security protocols, acting on their own authority without permission or concurrence from the state legislatures that enshrined those protections in the law.

In Wisconsin, Democrat Secretary of State Doug La Follette allowed voters to claim “indefinite confinement” in order to avoid having to provide a photocopy of their ID when requesting an absentee ballot. The exemption was intended for legitimate invalids, but COVID offered a convenient excuse for circumventing the law, despite the fact that Wisconsin had no pandemic-related lockdown rules that would have rendered anyone “indefinitely confined.” The impact was far-reaching. About 240,000 voters claimed the exemption in 2020, compared to just 70,000 in 2016.

In Michigan, Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson unilaterally voided the legal requirement that voters provide a signature when requesting an absentee ballot, establishing an online request form. She then took things a step further by announcing that she would “allow civic groups and other organizations running voter registration drives to register voters through the state’s online registration website,” granting partisan groups such as Rock The Vote direct access to Michigan’s voter rolls.

In Pennsylvania, election officials in heavily-Democratic counties that received CTCL funding allowed flawed mail-in ballots to be “cured” - that is, altered or replaced - prior to Election Day. In other counties, officials rightly interpreted this as a flagrant violation of state law. On the night before Election Day, less than 24 hours before polls were due to close, Democrat Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar sought to imbue this illegal practice with the appearance of validity by issuing a statement authorizing counties to contact voters who had cast improper ballots. Even if Boockvar had the statutory authority to do this, which she did not, the timing of her memo made it impossible for rural counties to take advantage of it to nearly the same extent as urban counties.

In numerous states, officials also absurdly consolidated the vote-counting and ballot-curing process in sporting arenas and other large venues, rather than the ward and precinct-level offices that normally handle the job. This made absolutely no sense as a pandemic-related safety measure, but that didn’t stop the officials from citing COVID as their rationale.

Consolidating the vote-counting tied the other efforts together. Instead of a manageable number of ballots being transported to small offices and counted in the immediate presence of observers from both parties, truckloads of ballots were brought to a single location, inevitably resulting in confusion and commingling of ballots from various sources. Securing those ballots from the time they left voters’ hands to the time they were officially counted should have been the top priority of election workers, but it’s not even clear whether there were logs kept identifying which ballots were delivered by which trucks and when. If such logs even exist, they have not been disclosed.

At the same time, election officials could claim that they were adhering to legal requirements that observers be “in the room” during the counting process while using COVID as an excuse for relegating those observers to the “penalty box,” far from the actual counting and curing.

This was particularly egregious when it came to ballot “curing,” a process that actually involves election workers filling out brand new ballots on behalf of voters whose ballots purportedly could not be read by machine. This could have been due to something the voter themselves did, such as spilling coffee on the ballot. It also could have been due to something that election workers themselves did, such as crumpling ballots to prevent the machines from receiving them, just as a vending machine rejects crumpled bills.

It’s impossible to know exactly what happened, because Republican observers were denied meaningful access to the process - and in some cases literally locked out of the counting rooms while election workers obscured the windows with cardboard.

These election workers, it should be noted, were paid directly by CTCL’s grants. These supposedly impartial arbiters of our electoral process are supposed to work for the people, but they were on Zuckerberg’s payroll.

All of this sounds like the stuff of fiction - the sort of thing one would expect from a cinematic thriller or a spy novel. Sadly, it’s the reality that our country is faced with after years of placidity in the face of increasingly aggressive intervention into our electoral process on the part of Big Tech oligarchs and activists with deep pockets and shallow motivations."

"Life Has Not Forgotten You..."

"How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that needs our help. So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall."
- Rainer Maria Rilke

"Your Windows On The World..."

 

"There Are A Great Many People..."

"There are a great many people who have a vested interest 
in maintaining the stupidity of the American public."
- Gore Vidal

"What Americans Fear Most In The JFK Assassination"

"What Americans Fear Most In The JFK Assassination", Part 1
by Jacob Hornberger 

"One of the fascinating phenomena in the JFK assassination is the fear of some Americans to consider the possibility that the assassination was actually a regime-change operation carried out by the U.S. national-security establishment rather than simply a murder carried out by a supposed lone-nut assassin. The mountain of evidence that has surfaced, especially since the 1990s, when the JFK Records Act mandated the release of top-secret assassination-related records within the national-security establishment, has been in the nature of circumstantial evidence, as compared to direct evidence. Thus, I can understand that someone who places little faith in the power of circumstantial evidence might study and review that evidence and decide to embrace the “lone-nut theory” of the case."
Please view this complete article here:

"Coup d'État"

What Americans fear most? The Truth...

"How It Really Is"


"The Monstrous Thing..."

"The Monstrous Thing"

"The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured - disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui - in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off.

All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open.

Somehow the realization that nothing was to be hoped for had a salutary effect upon me. For weeks and months, for years, in fact, all my life I had been looking forward to something happening, some intrinsic event that would alter my life, and now suddenly, inspired by the absolute hopelessness of everything, I felt relieved, felt as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. At dawn I parted company with the young Hindu, after touching him for a few francs, enough for a room. Walking toward Montparnasse I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself. 

Nothing that had happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed except my illusions. I myself was intact. The world was intact. Tomorrow there might be a revolution, a plague, an earthquake; tomorrow there might not be left a single soul to whom one could turn for sympathy, for aid, for faith. It seemed to me that the great calamity had already manifested itself, that I could be no more truly alone than at this very moment. I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer. Even if war were declared, and it were my lot to go, I would grab the bayonet and plunge it, plunge it up to the hilt. And if rape were the order of the day then rape I would, and with a vengeance.

At this very moment, in the quiet dawn of a new day, was not the earth giddy with crime and distress? Had one single element of man's nature been altered, vitally, fundamentally altered, by the incessant march of history? By what he calls the better part of his nature, man has been betrayed, that is all. At the extreme limits of his spiritual being man finds himself again naked as a savage. When he finds God, as it were, he has been picked clean: he is a skeleton. One must burrow into life again in order to put on flesh. The word must become flesh; the soul thirsts. On whatever crumb my eye fastens, I will pounce and devour. If to live is the paramount thing, then I will live, even if I must become a cannibal. Heretofore I have been trying to save my precious hide, trying to preserve the few pieces of meat that hid my bones. I am done with that. I have reached the limits of endurance. My back is to the wall; I can retreat no further. As far as history goes I am dead. If there is something beyond I shall have to bounce back. I have found God, but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am free. The world which I have departed is a menagerie. The dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which the lean spirits roam with sharp claws. If I am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself."
- Henry Miller, "Tropic of Cancer"

"Yes, There Is A Meaning..."

"Yes, there is a meaning; at least for me, there is one thing that matters -
to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people."
- Logan Pearsall Smith

"The Real Damage..."

"The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves - or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn."
- Sophie Scholl

Saturday, November 21, 2020

“Economy Is Being Strangled; Rental Apocalypse; Homeless Epidemic; Leisure and Hospitality Decimated”

Jeremiah Babe,
“Economy Is Being Strangled; Rental Apocalypse; 
Homeless Epidemic; Leisure and Hospitality Decimated”
Related:
Remind you of anything?

"The Housing Bubble Is Even Bigger Than The Stock Market Bubble: Be Ready For Housing Apocalypse!"

"The Housing Bubble Is Even Bigger Than The Stock Market Bubble:
 Be Ready For Housing Apocalypse!"
by Epic Economist

"The housing market is about to explode into a full-blown disaster. Millions of tenants have been piling up their debt during the current recession and economists alert for a gigantic wave of evictions, foreclosures, and bankruptcies which could trigger a chain reaction leading the real state market to a crisis just as disastrous as the 2008 crash. 

Nobel Prize Winner Robert Shiller affirms that the housing price bubble largely exceeds the stock market bubble, and things are about to get unsustainable pretty soon. In this video, we examine the chaotic situation of the housing market according to experts' perspectives and expose the many determinants that have been inflating this massive bubble.

As soon as the year turns, several cities will face a storm of evictions, foreclosures, and bankruptcies as the housing bubble that has been massively inflating throughout the year will explode into a full-blown disaster. With tens of millions of Americans out of their jobs and unable to pay rent for the past several months, leaving building owners struggling to meet their mortgages payments, a new study by the nonprofit CSS alerted that this situation will probably set off a chain reaction that could ultimately lead to a housing crisis comparable in scale to the 2008 crash.

CSS President David Jones explain that although the economic downturn has been the trigger for this current situation, the bubble has been in the making for over a decade. They have been pleading to political leaders to address the approaching crisis without delay, stressing that it's urgent to take immediate measures to "stop the bleeding". 

Some cities, such as New York, are now in a critical position since a staggering rate of rental delinquency was registered and landlords have been eagerly waiting for the end of the forbearance period to solicit the issuance of eviction orders. Since rental payments cannot be nullified, all the unpaid rent has continued to be accumulated throughout the crisis, generating an enormous economic burden that will wreck many households when the bill comes due.

On many occasions, real estate firms entered 2020 leveraged to the maximum, demanding for ever-higher rents and then borrowing against the value of those income streams. “As real estate markets soared in several cities across the state, landlords raised rents, re-sold their buildings at higher prices, and used their properties’ rising values to take out ever-larger mortgages,” the report describes. 

If this description sounds like something you've heard before, it's because you did. The report also recalls that from the mid-1990s up to the 2008 mortgage crisis, real estate firms started an irrational rush of buying and selling buildings and consistently raising rental prices. Considering rental properties are usually structured as limited liability corporations, the bankruptcy of one building alone doesn't pose a harsh impact on the finances of the real estate parent company.

In short, for the firms involved the market boom and bust can be like a game of Monopoly, but for renters, it can be the difference between having a safe home and being homeless. For the past decade such firms have been repeating the same misconduct, all of this could happen again next year. 

That doesn't mean that capitalizing in the real state market is a despicable investor attitude, but allowing the formation of a colossal wave of foreclosures at the expense of entire cities' economies just to ensure predatory investments could come at a high cost to the whole nation, warns CSS President David Jones.

Additionally, for homeowners, the outlook doesn't look any rosier. Today, there are fewer homes for sale in the U.S. than ever documented in roughly 40 years, when data started to be recorded. For this reason, it's understandable why home prices are going up much faster than incomes, making homeownership less affordable for more and more Americans. "We are simply facing a housing shortage, a major housing shortage," expressed Lawrence Yun, the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors which tracks home sales. "We need to build more homes. Supply is critical in the current environment."

On a similar note, in a recent article, investment advisor for SitkaPacific Capital Management, Mike "Mish" Shedlock illustrated how home prices are in a bubble that is even bigger than the stock market bubble. On the basis of Yale University professor and Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller's evaluation, Mish explains why although stocks are overvalued considering historical measures, "it’s nothing compared to skyrocketing home values."

"Robert Shiller calls it a bubble, and so do I," Mish concludes. Basically, everywhere one can look inside the housing markets ravaging signs indicate the coming of a catastrophic burst. It's literally just a matter of time."
Related:

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”
Full screen mode recommended.

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Colorful NGC 1579 resembles the better known Trifid Nebula, but lies much farther north in planet Earth's sky, in the heroic constellation Perseus. About 2,100 light-years away and 3 light-years across, NGC 1579 is, like the Trifid, a study in contrasting blue and red colors, with dark dust lanes prominent in the nebula's central regions.
In both, dust reflects starlight to produce beautiful blue reflection nebulae. But unlike the Trifid, in NGC 1579 the reddish glow is not emission from clouds of glowing hydrogen gas excited by ultraviolet light from a nearby hot star. Instead, the dust in NGC 1579 drastically diminishes, reddens, and scatters the light from an embedded, extremely young, massive star, itself a strong emitter of the characteristic red hydrogen alpha light."

"I Am Convinced..."

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than success, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, gift, or skill. It will make or break a company, a church, a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past, we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our attitudes. "
- Charles Swindoll

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 11/21/20"


                                                                                                                
Nov. 21, 2020 1:57 PM ET:
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 57,923,100 
people, according to official counts, including 12,078,010 Americans.

      Nov. 21, 2020 1:57 PM ET: 
Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count
Updated 11/21/20, 4:25 PM ET
Click image for larger size.