"Economic Market Snapshot AM 12/29/20"

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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Gregory Mannarino,

"Important Updates: "Stock Market, Ripple, 

Bitcoin, Gold, Silver, Dollar, Debt, More!"

-  https://traderschoice.net/

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"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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"Economic Market Snapshot AM 12/29/20"

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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

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

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

Daily Updates, Dec 28th to 29th

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Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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And now, the End Game...

$600 Stimulus Checks Won't Pull America Out Of This Mess"

$600 Stimulus Checks Won't Pull America Out Of This Mess"

by Michael Snyder 

"Well, it looks like we are going to get $600 stimulus payments from the federal government after all. Oh goody! For the millions of Americans that are on the brink of being evicted from their homes, that will be enough for about half a mortgage payment or about half a month of rent. Many are referring to this as America’s “let them eat cake moment”, and that probably is not too far off target. As our politicians spend hundreds of billions of dollars on other nonsense, we are supposed to be deeply grateful to them for tossing a few hundred bucks our way. But the truth is that $600 dollars does not go as far as it once did. 20 years ago, it would have bought more groceries than any of us could have possibly put into a single vehicle, but today it will buy about two carts of food and maybe a tank of gas.

If we are going to go “full Weimar” and destroy any hope of ever getting our national finances under control, we might as well make the checks big enough to smile about.

But while you get a measly $600, the federal government is spending $6,900,000 on a “smart toilet” which can actually recognize a user’s “analprint”: "In his latest report on federal government waste, a project he completes every year, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) highlights $54.7 billion in government spending that he deems wasteful. Among the items noted this year is the creation of a $6.9 million “smart toilet,” which operates with three cameras, one of which can identify a user’s “analprint.” As explained in The Festivus Report 2020, researchers at Stanford University used $6,973,057 in funds granted through the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create a so-called “smart toilet.”

Really? Just when I think that it can’t possibly get any worse, the federal government comes up with even more bizarre ways to waste our tax dollars. At least if we were only spending what we brought in I could live with that. But instead, we have been stealing more than $100,000,000 dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day ever since Barack Obama first entered the White House.

I am not just picking on the Democrats. At this point most Republicans have abandoned any pretense of fiscal responsibility, and that fact makes me sick to my stomach. Today, we are 27.5 trillion dollars in debt, and soon it will be 30 trillion dollars.

If we are going to liquidate the nation anyway, let’s give people checks that are so large that they will be dancing in the streets. Because giving people $600 checks in this economic environment is essentially the equivalent of spitting into Niagara Falls. Let me try to illustrate what I am talking about. Right now, there are 12 million U.S. renters that are more than $5,000 behind on their rent and utilities: "The newest data from Moody’s Analytics shows about 12 million renters are now at least $5,850 behind in rent and utilities payments - and eviction protections expire in weeks."

Okay, so let’s assume that all of those people get $600 payments on a timely basis. In the end, on average they will still be about $5000 behind on their payments, and the start of a new month is right around the corner. And there are millions of other Americans that are living so close to the edge financially that they have been putting their rent payments on a credit card:

"There’s been as much as a 70% percent increase from last year in people paying rent on a credit card, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. “If you’re putting your rent payments on to a credit card, that shows you’re really at risk of eviction,” says Shamus Roller, executive director of the nonprofit National Housing Law Project. “That means you’ve run out of savings; you’ve probably run out of calls to family members to get them to loan you money.”

Yes, $600 will help. But not much. For 32-year-old Jo Marie Hernandez, $600 might buy a little bit of time, but what she really needs is a new job: "Jo Marie Hernandez doesn’t know how she and her 4-year-old daughter will survive after her unemployment aid lapsed this weekend. Hernandez, who lives in Olean, New York, is on the brink of losing her home in days after she lost her job as a customer service associate at a gas station in the spring. Enduring prolonged unemployment, she’s struggled to make ends meet and has nothing left in savings to keep her afloat."

I can’t even imagine the emotional pain that she must be going through right now. When you have a young child and you are about to be thrown out into the streets, nothing else really matters: “I only have $100 left to my name. My whole world is shattered,” says Hernandez, 32, who was forced to put her car up for sale. “We can’t wait a few weeks for help. We’re starving and will be out on the street soon.”

Sadly, there are millions and millions of other Americans that are facing similar scenarios right now. This is what an economic depression looks like, and economic conditions are going to continue to deteriorate moving forward.

Many on the left are assuming that future stimulus checks will be bigger once Joe Biden gets into the White House. But every additional dollar that we borrow makes our long-term problems even worse. Our national debt continues to spiral wildly out of control, the money supply is shooting up at an exponential rate, and we are mired in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s despite unprecedented government intervention. This is the big meltdown that everyone has been waiting for, and we are still only in the very early chapters.

So no, $600 stimulus payments won’t actually fix anything. But hopefully they will ease the suffering slightly as the U.S. economy continues to relentlessly steamroll toward oblivion."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Today Is Mine..."

"Today is mine. It is unique.

Nobody in the world has one exactly like it.

It holds the sum of all my past experiences and all my future potential.

I can fill it with joyous moments or ruin it with fruitless worry.

If painful recollections of the past come into my mind, 

or frightening thoughts of the future, I can put them away.

They cannot spoil today for me." 

- The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

Free Download: Jack London, "The Iron Heel"

"I know nothing that I may say can influence you. You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy." 

- Jack London

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Freely download "The Iron Heel", by Jack London, here:

- https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/iron-heel-ebook.html

Read online The Project Gutenberg eBook 

of "The Iron Heel", by Jack London, here:

- https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1164/1164-h/1164-h.htm

"Get Up, Get Up..."

 

Michael Bolton, 

"When I'm Back On My Feet Again"

"You can never tell what people have inside them 

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

- Gregory David Roberts

“Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck; 2021 Economic Crisis Unavoidable; Credit Destruction”

Jeremiah Babe,

“Americans Living Paycheck to Paycheck; 

2021 Economic Crisis Unavoidable; Credit Destruction”

"Delusions of Grandeur… Or Cloak of Modesty?"

"Delusions of Grandeur… Or Cloak of Modesty?"

By Bill Bonner

"A dear reader objects to our use of the “royal we”:

“Hello Bill, for the most part, I enjoy reading your Diary. However, I do find your use of the ‘royal we’ in all your writings very off-putting. Even though I’m Canadian, I despise the monarchy, and I’m sure that many in your great republic to the south share my feelings on this. Am I missing something? Has it already been explained, perhaps? If not, what is the rationale for this?”

The Queen uses the “royal we” to signify that she is not speaking for herself, but for the Crown… an institution that was around for hundreds of years before she was born and will, presumably, outlast her by hundreds more.

Here at the Diary, we do not use the “royal” we. We use the “common” we… a plebian, down-market, gutter kind of we, with no pretension to grandeur, nor even mediocrity.

For here we are, writing from a house we didn’t build… in a country that is not ours… wearing clothes we didn’t design… looking out on rain we didn’t cause… and passing along ideas that are not original. Even when we think we have had a new idea, we discover later that someone had the same idea 2,000 years ago.

Not one molecule in our body, thought in our brain, or feeling in our heart is of our own making. It would be vanity to use first-person singular; there is nothing singular about who we are or what we do.

No, we have neither scepter nor orb; all we have is a laptop computer.

We wear no royal purple. We favor brown and grey. We dress in dull colors so we may think in vivid ones.

We have no throne, no influence, no privilege, no position, and no armed guards to protect us.

We speak not for the Crown, but for all those common people who try to put two and two together… And we use “we” to recognize all those real thinkers whose ideas we have dragooned into our service… all those tortured poets whose songs we have misunderstood and misused…  all those clever people whose insights we have purloined and presented as if they were our own… all those scientists, statisticians, and economists whose numbers we have hijacked and abused… and all those generations that have come before us and – by bad luck, bad manners, and bad judgment – learned painful lessons so we might be spared from learning them again…

“We” speak for them all – as best as we can.

Time and Love: As time passes, the conceits of youth… the illusion of timelessness… the passions and competitions – to have the biggest bank account, the biggest car, the biggest house, the biggest muscles, and the biggest you-know-what – all get dropped along the way, like discarded pianos on the Oregon Trail. All that is left is the shriveled up, naked reality… of time, love… and death.

And “I”? Does it matter what “I” do? What “I” want? “I” am too small… too nothing… too ephemeral. “I” am here, but “I” will be gone soon… in a flash, vanished, like a lost civilization or a forgotten language. Not even I care what “I” think.

So let us at least speak for a group… not of royals, but of commoners… and use “we” in sympathy with all those sinners, geniuses, half-wits, saints, and jackasses that came before and will come after us…

Those who will delight in Heaven for reasons we will never understand… or cry in Hell for all eternity because they forgot to fill out their census form. Yes, let us speak for all those who feel most intensely and horribly the vacant truth… They are as meaningless as we are."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"The Only Time..."

o

"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call

 you could make, who would you call and what would you say? 

And why are you waiting?"

- Stephen Levine

o

“This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

Every breath is a choice.

Every minute is a choice.

To be or not to be.

Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice.

Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume

and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?"

- Chuck Palahniuk

Musical Interlude: Dire Straits, "Private Investigations"

Dire Straits, "Private Investigations"

"It's a mystery to me,

The game commences,

For the usual fee

Plus expenses.

Confidential information,

It's in a diary.

This is my investigation.

It's not a public inquiry.

I go checking out the reports,

Digging up the dirt.

You get to meet all sorts

In this line of work.

Treachery and treason,

There's always an excuse for it.

And when I find the reason

I still can't get used to it.

And what have you got

At the end of the day?

What have you got

To take away?

A bottle of whisky,

And a new set of lies.

Blinds on a window,

And a pain behind the eyes.

Scarred for life,

No compensation.

Private investigations..."

Gregory Mannarino, “Stock Market Hits New All-Time Record Highs On Promise Of Epic Debt”

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

○

Gregory Mannarino,

“Stock Market Hits New All-Time Record Highs On Promise Of Epic Debt”

- https://traderschoice.net/

"$600 Checks To Go Out By End Of Week: Treasury Department"

Update DEC 28, 2020 - 16:16: "$600 Checks To Go Out By End Of Week: Treasury Department"; "According to the US Treasury Department, $600 COVID direct stimulus checks will begin to be delivered by the end of the week, after President Trump caved over the weekend and signed the $900 Billion pandemic relief package, according to NBC News."

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Meet Kevin,

 "House Passes $2,000 Stimulus Checks!! Next Steps"

- https://metkevin.com/

"A Look to the Heavens"

"From afar, the whole thing looks like an Eagle. A closer look at the Eagle Nebula, however, shows the bright region is actually a window into the center of a larger dark shell of dust. Through this window, a brightly-lit workshop appears where a whole open cluster of stars is being formed. In this cavity tall pillars and round globules of dark dust and cold molecular gas remain where stars are still forming. Already visible are several young bright blue stars whose light and winds are burning away and pushing back the remaining filaments and walls of gas and dust. 

The Eagle emission nebula, tagged M16, lies about 6500 light years away, spans about 20 light-years, and is visible with binoculars toward the constellation of the Serpent (Serpens). This picture involved over 12 hours of imaging and combines three specific emitted colors emitted by sulfur (colored as red), hydrogen (yellow), and oxygen (blue).”

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

"Life Is An Illusion: Playing Your Part "

"Life Is An Illusion: Playing Your Part "

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"Having the wisdom to know that life is but a dream does not mean that we ignore living. As children, most of us sang that mesmerizing, wistful lullaby that ends with the words, 'Life is but a dream.' This is a classic example of a deep, sophisticated truth hiding, like an underground stream, in an unlikely place. It winds its way through our minds like a riddle or a Zen koan, coming up when we least expect it and asking that we consider its meaning. Many gurus and philosophers agree with this mysterious observation, saying that this world we perceive as real is actually an illusion, not unlike a film being projected on a screen. Most of us are so involved in the projection that we don't understand it for what it is. We are completely caught up in the illusion, imagining that we are in a life and death struggle and taking it very seriously.

The enlightened few, on the other hand, live their lives in the light of the awareness that what most of us perceive as reality is a passing fancy. As a result, they behave with detachment, compassion, and wisdom, while the rest of us struggle and writhe upon the stage in the play of our life. Having the wisdom to know that life is but a dream does not mean that we ignore it or don't do our best with the twists and turns of our fate. Rather, like an actress who plays her role fully even as she knows it's only a role, we engage in the unfolding drama, but with a little more freedom because we know that this is not the totality of who we are.

And life is more of an improvisation than it is like a play whose lines have already been written, whose end is already known. Like an improviser, we have choices to make and the more we embrace the illusionary quality of the performance, the lighter we can be on the planet, on others, and on ourselves. We can truly play with the shadows cast by the light of the projector, fully engaging without getting bogged down." 

- http://www.dailyom.com/

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"We are game-playing, fun-having creatures, we are the otters of the universe. We cannot die, we cannot hurt ourselves any more than illusions on the screen can be hurt. But we can believe we're hurt, in whatever agonizing detail we want. We can believe we're victims, killed and killing, shuddered around by good luck and bad luck." 

"Many lifetimes?",  I asked.

"How many movies have you seen?" 

"Oh." 

"Films about living on this planet, about living on other planets; anything that's got space and time is all movie and all illusion,"  he said. "But for a while we can learn a huge amount and have a lot of fun with our illusions, can we not?" 

- Richard Bach,

 Freely download "Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah" 

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Moody Blues, "Land of Make-Believe"

Full screen recommended.

"Now..."

“You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can’t remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind. And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence. But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remember now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive.”

~ Wendell Berry

"Are We Really Going To Build Back Better After A Dark Winter?" (Excerpt)

"Are We Really Going To Build Back 

Better After A Dark Winter?" (Excerpt)

by Jim Quinn 

Samwise Gamgee: “It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”

 -  J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Lord Of The Rings"

"With all the talk about dark winters from Biden, Harris, Fauci, tyrannical Democrat governors, pandemic hysteria medical “experts”, and the corporate media paid to propagate the vital narrative, my mind was naturally drawn to the words of J.R.R. Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is a story of good versus evil, with a foreboding mood of darkness and doom.

To those of us of a conspiratorial nature, according to those who conspired to overthrow a duly elected president for four years and are currently conspiring to steal the presidency through blatant election rigging and mail-in ballot fraud, we believe the darkness engulfing our nation has been initiated by the billionaire globalist evildoers marshaling dark forces in their Mordor on the Potomac.

The globalist elites, along with the Deep State and social media tyrants of Silicon Valley are rich, influential, and arrogant. They have stepped out from the shadows and are now blatantly flaunting their capture of our government, electoral systems, financial systems, mainstream media, social media, and medical complex.

They have gauged the intellectual, ethical, and mathematical aptitude of the masses and found them wanting. They have no fear of significant pushback as they commit treason by stealing a presidential election, trashing the Constitution, destroying small business owners, impoverishing what remains of the middle class, and imposing totalitarian restrictions upon a compliant obedient populace.

A nation once populated by independent minded, self-reliant, frontiersmen has rotted from within, as the country is now populated by millions of weak minded, submissive, docile sheep, allowing themselves to be bullied and propagandized into paralysis, while texting, tweeting and facebooking their every mindless thought to their followers.

Unless the Trump forces can prove fraud on a multi-state basis or are willing to take the drastic step of utilizing the September 12, 2018 Executive Order regarding foreign interference in elections as justification for using the Insurrection Act in overturning the fraudulent outcome of the election, the end of the nation as we know it will have arrived. Losing the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia would greatly accelerate the decline."

Part 1:

Please view this complete, most highly recommended, article here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

Part 2:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Johns Island, South Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"In Darkness Visible"

"In Darkness Visible"

by Jim Kunstler

"The signals from the political establishment to Donald Trump ring pretty clear now: get thee hence, thou big-bottomed orange menace to order and sanctity! Has ever a president been lonelier at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave? Lincoln’s “team of rivals” in the drear winter months of 1864 seem downright chummy in retrospect and, of course, poor Richard Nixon stayed swozzled on scotch whiskey during the darkest nights of Watergate, when he reputedly wandered the West Wing halls conversing with portraits of his predecessors.

The other power centers of America, especially the news media, insist that there is no evidence of fraud in the recent election and it’s time to get on with the hallowed ceremonies of transition. The post-Christmas suspense is killing them. Mr. Trump will not be moved to declare that he lost the election - probably for the excellent reason that he really didn’t, if there had been anything like an honest tally of the ballots. They hear murmurings of martial law and the Insurrection Act, and it all sounds to them like an imperial Nightmare on Elm Street. They can hear the tinkle of their lucrative perquisites shattering in the creases of their temporal lobes.

It’s said in the alt.media that the president wishes to exhaust all the formal alternatives before possibly moving onto the novelty steps of contesting this final act of the four-year coup against him, which brings us all the way to January 6, when the electoral college slates are toted up in the House chamber, Vice President Pence presiding. One popular fantasy has the Veep tossing out “certified” votes from states where irregularities were starkest in favor of alt.slates submitted by Republican-majority state legislatures - with Hieronymus Bosch-style Antifa chaos to follow all over the land. Sounds like a low percentage deal to me, but then… what’s actually at stake here?

Not to be too melodramatic, but something kind of like a Manchurian Candidate situation. How okay is it, actually, for Joe Biden, with a record of accepting large sums of money from China’s intel apparatus, to move into the Oval Office, especially after they laid the Covid-19 trip on the world? No problemo, the DNC and its vast network of apparatchiks answer. There’s no evidence of Ol’ Joe colluding for pay!

Oh, but there’s plenty of evidence, and quite a bit of it is in the public annals already, what with Hunter B’s laptop having been partially dissected since, at least, October, and a great tangle of slime-trails clearly revealed in the email logs and his corporate memoranda. And one must wonder if there is additional evidence in John Ratcliffe’s DNI files - you know, the place where every electron of recorded information ever transmitted on the Internet sleeps. You might have forgotten that something a little screwy is going on there, since the ODNI was supposed to issue a public report on the election (and its adumbrations) by December 18 and the fateful report was indefinitely postponed for reasons so far unknown.

Maybe the president’s antagonists are acting super-anxious to get rid of him - and constructing yet another media campaign to agitate public opinion - because there is evidence that other persons in government, persons of both parties, have been importuned by CCP largesse to perform services in recent years, not to mention other incriminating highjinks they’d hoped would fade harmlessly into history with tags such as the Clinton Foundation, the Open Societies Foundations, Skolkovo, Uranium One, the Maidan Uprising, the Steele Dossier, the Mueller investigation… you get the picture… a vast sepulcher of unholy rot where the Deep State has tried to entomb its most shameful secrets, including now the dark deeds of Election 2020.

Problematical, also, is the likelihood - in the event that he actually does concede and agree to exit the scene - that Mr. Trump will transition into post-presidential life with a bale of secret knowledge so huge, reeking, and damaging to his enemies, gathered over four years of access to the nation’s intel files, that not a congressman, senator, or high-up bureaucratic lifer will be left standing as the information dribbles out strategically in the months-to-come of the as-yet hypothetical Biden-Harris (or Harris-Biden) Administration. Imagine what Ol’ Joe, Kamala, Nancy, Chuck, perhaps even “Cocaine” Mitch and the rest of the Beltway gang are fretting about as they chug down their midnight Zolpedims. The Golden Golem of Greatness is not fading away from the Swamp crime scene no matter which way this thing turns out. And don’t forget, he is not exactly alone. Tens of millions of extremely pissed-off Americans are standing-by pretty quietly, for now, from sea to shining sea, behind him."

- https://kunstler.com/

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Freely download "Paradise Lost", by John Milton, here:

-http://triggs.djvu.org/djvu-editions.com/MILTON/LOST/Download.pdf

"Grief..."

“The dictionary defines grief as: “Keen mental suffering or distress over affliction of loss; sharp sorrow, painful regret.” We’re taught to learn from and rely on books, on definitions, on definitives but in life, strict definitions rarely apply. In life, grief can look like a lot of things that bear little resemblance to sharp sorrow.

Grief may be a thing we all have in common but it looks different on everyone. It isn’t just death we have to grieve. It’s life, it’s loss, it’s change. And when we wonder why it has to suck so much sometimes, it has to hurt so bad. The thing we gotta try to remember is that it can turn on a dime. That’s how you stay alive when it hurts so much you can’t breathe. That’s how you survive. By remembering that one day, somehow, impossibly, it won’t feel this way. It wont hurt this much. Grief comes in it’s own time for everyone in it’s own way. So the best we can do, the best anyone can do, is try for honesty. The really crappy thing, the very worst part of grief is that you can’t control it. The best we can do is try to let ourselves feel it when it comes and let it go when we can. The very worst part is that the minute you think you’re past it, it starts all over again and always, every time, it takes your breath away.

According to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, when we are dying or have suffered a catastrophic loss, we all move through five distinctive stages of grief. We go into denial because the loss is so unthinkable, we can’t imagine it’s true. We become angry with everyone. We become angry with survivors, angry with ourselves. Then we bargain, we beg, we plead. We offer everything we have. We offer up our souls in exchange for just one more day. When the bargaining has failed and the anger is too hard to maintain, we fall into depression, despair. Until finally we have to accept that we have done everything we can. We let go. We let go and move into acceptance.” 

- “Grey’s Anatomy”

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"'Tis The Season For Bankruptcies, Store Closings, & Tent Cities..."

"'Tis The Season For Bankruptcies, Store Closings, & Tent Cities..."

by Michael Snyder

"We need to make 2021 a year of hope, because right now there is more economic suffering in America than we have seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. More than 100,000 businesses have permanently closed down since the pandemic began, many of our most iconic chains have filed for bankruptcy over the past 12 months, and tent cities are popping up in major cities all across the country. Coming into this year, the suicide rate in the U.S. was already at an all-time record high, and a Gallup survey recently discovered that the mental health of Americans is at an all-time low. If we can’t find a way to give people hope, multitudes of Americans will decide that life is no longer worth living just like Anthony Quinn Warner did. The explosion in Nashville should be a wake up call for all of us, because there are countless others out there that are feeling the hopelessness that Warner did.

In 2020, we saw retail stores close their doors at a pace that we have never seen before. According to the New York Post, NYC lost more than 1,000 chain stores all by itself: "The Big Apple saw almost one in seven nationally recognized chain-store branches close their doors as the pandemic sent consumers scurrying for cover, according to a new report. A record high 1,057 chain stores - including 70 Duane Reades, 49 Starbucks and 22 Papyruses - have waved the white flag over the past 12 months, according to the Center for an Urban Future’s annual “State of the Chains” report, set to be ­released Wednesday."

If you go back to 2018, 0.3 percent of all chain stores in the city shut down permanently. This year, that figure has skyrocketed to 13.3 percent: "The 13.3 percent decline shatters all previous records reported by the nonprofit agency since it began tracking the data 13 years ago. Last year, just 3.7 percent of all chain outlets closed, up from 0.3 percent in 2018." Of course the same thing is happening all over the nation. Empty retail buildings now litter the landscape, and it is only going to get worse.

But it is hard to imagine that the next 12 months could actually be worse than the past 12 months. In an article published earlier this month, CNN listed 30 major chains that have filed for bankruptcy in 2020:

• Papyrus

• Bar Louie

• Krystal

• Pier 1 Imports

• Modell’s Sporting Goods

• True Religion

• J.Crew Group

• Neiman Marcus

• JCPenney

• Souplantation and Sweet Tomatoes

• Tuesday Morning

• GNC

• CEC Entertainment

• NPC International

• Brooks Brothers

• Sur La Table

• Muji USA

• Lucky Brand

• RTW Retailwinds

• Ascena Retail Group

• California Pizza Kitchen

• Lord & Taylor

• Tailored Brands

• Stein Mart

• Century 21 (department store chain)

• Sizzler USA

• Ruby Tuesday

• Friendly’s

• Guitar Center

• Francesca’s

Sadly, now that the holiday season is done there will inevitably be another huge wave of store closings and bankruptcies. Of course the new lockdowns are certainly not helping matters at all. Millions upon millions of people are staying home and not spending money, and this is hitting the restaurant business particularly hard.

In fact, the National Restaurant Association is warning “that 40% to 50% of restaurants may go bankrupt in the months ahead” if something is not done: "The National Restaurant Association said that 40% to 50% of restaurants may go bankrupt in the months ahead if they don’t reopen immediately. Two of the U.S.’s most iconic restaurants, the 21 Club in Manhattan and the Cliff House in San Francisco, announced they had closed their doors permanently after nearly 100 years of business. As they die, so do hundreds of jobs in these cities. The workers out of work aren’t rich. Overall, 15 million middle-income people work for bars and restaurants."

I can definitely understand why so many restaurant owners are absolutely furious right now. You can watch one restaurant owner give an impassioned speech in which he boldly declares that “I’m not ready to give my country up to these people” right here. I have to admit, I got pretty fired up watching that one.

Unfortunately, the control freak politicians have shown that they are willing to take draconian measures in order to implement their ridiculous lockdowns. For example, just recently heavily armed police heartlessly raided a hair salon that refused to comply with the COVID lockdown in California. If I was that salon owner, I would move out of California and never look back.

What is ironic is that many of the politicians that are supposed to be the most “liberal” are the ones that are actually hurting those at the bottom of the economic food chain the most: "Democrats and their liberal economic advisers obsess about income inequality. Will someone please tell them that no act in modern times has widened the gap between the rich and the poor more than the lockdowns going on right now? Diane Yentel, the president and CEO of the leftist National Low Income Housing Coalition, said, “The majority of the up to 17 million households at risk of losing their homes this winter are people of color.”

As economic conditions continues to unravel, more Americans are falling out of the middle class and into poverty with each passing day, and we continue to see more evidence of this all around the nation. In Chicago, it was being reported that people were lined up for 15 blocks to receive food and toys at a holiday giveaway: "A Chicago actress and her foundation brought 3,000 toys, food, and countless smiles to the West Garfield Park neighborhood for the holidays Wednesday. As CBS 2’s Marissa Parra reported, people waited for more than two hours in their cars for the giveaway, and there were lines that stretched over 15 blocks – dramatically underscoring the need."

Can you imagine waiting in a line that is 15 blocks long? The bread lines during the Great Depression were long, but I don’t think they were that long.

Homelessness is also growing at a very frightening rate, and this is fueling the rise of tent cities from coast to coast: "Tent cities are expanding across the United States as experts warn that the ongoing pandemic could lead to a ‘catastrophic’ homeless crisis where hundreds of thousands more Americans are living on the streets.

In Phoenix, authorities have converted two enormous parking lots into tent cities for the homeless, but even the homeless are being required to follow social distancing protocols: "To deal with an exploding homeless population and encourage social distancing during the pandemic, Maricopa County officials turned this pair of asphalt-topped parking lots into the area’s newest homeless shelter. The county has more than 7,500 people on the streets, and nearly 5,000 dead from COVID-19. Inside the crowded encampment, ringed by security fencing and barbed wire, each family has been allotted a 12-by-12-foot lot, marked by paint, to separate people as much as possible."

This is the cold, hard reality that multitudes of people are living at this point. Dependence on the government and unquestioning submission to authorities have become a way of life for countless numbers of Americans, and economic conditions are not going to be getting better for the foreseeable future.

This is why we must give people hope in 2021 and beyond, because the amount of economic pain that we are witnessing around the country is already off the charts. The government may be able to send checks to people, but it cannot give them hope. And when people have lost all hope and have become extremely desperate, they can end up doing very foolish things just like Anthony Quinn Warner did."

- http://themostimportantnews.com/

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Stipendium peccati mors est...

"Hell is empty, and all the devils are here."

- William Shakespeare, "The Tempest"

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert: Updates Plus! President Trump Signs Covid Bill, Expect NEW Record Highs For Stocks"

Gregory Mannarino,

"Alert: Updates Plus! President Trump Signs Covid Bill, 

Expect NEW Record Highs For Stocks"

- https://traderschoice.net/

The Poet: May Sarton, “Now I Become Myself”

“Now I Become Myself”

“Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places,
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before —”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
or the end of the poem, is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move,
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the Sun!”

~ May Sarton,
 Collected Poems, 1930-1993

"The Object Of Life..."

"We May Know..."

“We may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work that’s finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbor who’s crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes it’s even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. That’s enough for me, or it isn’t enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life.”

- Fernando Pessoa

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/28/20"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/28/20"

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

DEC 28, 2020 AT 1:40 PM: "California Gov Warns LA Lockdown Likely To Be Extended; Spanish COVID Deaths Top 50K: Live Updates"

DECEMBER 28, 2020 AT 3:00 AM: "It's Long Past Time For CDC To Clean-Up The COVID-19 Death Counts" "Washington’s data was riddled with cases - as much as 13 percent of the total - in which the death certificate made no reference to COVID-19 as a cause of death. In several cases, even gunshot deaths were chalked up to the virus..."

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 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 Dec. 28, 2020 12:07 AM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 80,784,400 

people, according to official counts, including 19,175,748 Americans.

At least 1,764,300 have died.

  Dec. 28, 2020 12:07 AM ET: 

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

- www.nytimes.com

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"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, 
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
- https://covidtracking.com/
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- https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/112420_covidupdate.html