Greenfield, Massachusetts, USA. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, May 22, 2021
"A Sad Fact..."
"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."
- Richard Ford
"We Have No Idea How Good We Can Get"
"We Have No Idea How Good We Can Get"
by Paul Rosenberg
"I can still remember the first time someone told me that they believed in the Calvinist doctrine of “the depravity of man.” It shocked me. To complain about human behavior I very well understood; there’s plenty of bad behavior in the world. But to flatly call the human species depraved... hopelessly unredeemable... that was, and remains, obscene to me.
The sad truth, however, is that the modern West swims in a sea of Calvinism. The corporate bullhorns feed everyone they can a steady diet of the bad, ugly, and if possible the bloody. Under their influence, we would believe that all is darkness, that truth is illusion, that the human path is ever-downward, and that all professions of goodness are scams.
In other words, the minds of millions of people (billions, probably), are continually pushed to imagine that human depravity is a fact. That strategy is terribly effective – there’s no better tool for manipulating humans than fear – but it is no less than obscene and evil. And it’s false. Humans are amazing creatures, and very often kind, gracious and loving creatures.
The Real Revolutionaries: I’ve used this passage from G.K. Chesterton’s "The Defendant" before, but it’s so important that I could use it once a month and feel fine about it: "Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelly, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness."
The popular image of a revolutionary is of someone railing against the rulers of their place and leading a mob against them to bring in a new political regime. Notwithstanding the ridiculous notion of politics saving us from politics, this has always been a fantasy. It’s very dramatic of course, which is why it remains, but in real life it simply doesn’t happen [1].
The real revolution, certainly in our time, is not to bring anything down, but simply to realize that we’ve outgrown a dark and manipulative public order, and that it’s fit for no more than to be tossed aside, like the worn-out clothing of our youth.
Real revolutionaries don’t want to take over an outmoded and abusive status quo, but to transcend it... to leave it behind and build better things. Behind such a belief, as Chesterton noted, will stand a realization of the goodness of existence.
How Good Can We Get? Consider the millions of hours... billions of hours... wasted every year fighting the mostly-imaginary evils pumped through television, radio and social media. Then, please, consider that the problems so terrifyingly portrayed are seldom really solved. So, what if we spent that time (and energy and money) to improve ourselves instead?
How silly is it to spend our time and treasure fighting within a system that can never allow its problems to be solved – if the system solved them it would have no reason to exist – when we are quite able to improve ourselves instead?
Consider, please: We have no real idea of how good we can get, because we’ve never seriously focused on making ourselves better.
Or, said differently: Instead of endlessly imagining human evil, what if we started imagining human greatness? One is just as possible as the other. So why shouldn’t we take the bright path instead of the permanently dark path that’s proven not to work? And I will add that the progress we have seen in the world... science, medicine and the like... has mainly come from people who imagined better ways, better things, and better lives.
This, then, is the radical and revolutionary belief that stands before us: That mankind is far better than we’ve imagined... that human life can be satisfying and rewarding... that we are capable of being far more than we’ve imagined. All we have to do is to lift up our eyes and start trying."
[1] It’s probably worth adding that the American Revolution wasn’t a revolution per se. Rather, it was a new society, on a new continent, that grew in a condition of “salutary neglect,” after which the Crown attempted to drag it into submission. The Americans of 1776 fought to be left alone rather than to bring down the Crown.
The Poet: James Broughton,"Having Come This Far"
"Having Come This Far"
"I've been through what my through was to be,
I did what I could and couldn't.
I was never sure how I would get there.
I nourished an ardor for thresholds,
for stepping stones and for ladders,
I discovered detour and ditch.
I swam in the high tides of greed,
I built sandcastles to house my dreams.
I survived the sunburns of love.
No longer do I hunt for targets.
I've climbed all the summits I need to,
and I've eaten my share of lotus.
Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided,
and for every foolhardy choice.
I cherish my wounds and their cures,
and the sweet enervations of bliss.
My book is an open life.
I wave goodbye to the absolutes,
and send my regards to infinity.
I'd rather be blithe than correct.
Until something transcendent turns up,
I splash in my poetry puddle,
and try to keep God amused."
- James Broughton
Musical Interlude: Steppenwolf, "Monster"
Steppenwolf, "Monster"
More appropriately titled "Monster, Suicide, America."
Who knew this song, released in 1968, would
be prophetic into the 21st century?
"Delusions and Truth..."
How Americans love to view themselves...
How the rest of the world sees us...
Any questions?
"The View from Abroad"
"The View from Abroad"
Notes on the World’s Motherlode of Moral Hypocrisy
by Fred Reed
"Among the more nauseating elements of what has become the American national character is the moral preening, the lecturing of others on the virtuousness of the Exceptional Nation, on America’s incontinent goodness and sense of superiority. The world isn’t buying it. The internet makes fraud impossible.
Start with the domestic. The whole world can see, in what calls itself the richest country in the world, squalid, diseased, often rat-infested encampments of tens of thousands the homeless on the sidewalks of city after city: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Austin, on and on. In New York they live in subway stations, often on the trains. Forgotten diseases return. This must cause astonishment in civilized countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, China.
Next, crime, levels of which constitute a measure of civilization. American lawlessness is a wonder of the world. Over seven hundred killed annually in Chicago, three hundred in Baltimore, with perhaps three times as many shot but not killed. Similar numbers per capita can be adduced for many other cities. Equally elevated figures exist for assault, rape, carjacking, mugging, shoplifting. To citizens of Taiwan or South Korea these numbers must look more appropriate to civil war in Sudan than a country that regards itself as an example to the world.
America talks of its commitment to human rights. Yet the world just watched agape as some four hundred cities exploded in looting, arson, and vandalism citing abuse of human rights by the police. Uighurs? As the world can easily see, and does, the black population lives generation after generation in crime-infested, drug-ridden semi literacy. Racial relations are terrible, probably worsening, and so bad that whites dare not walk in black regions. The frequent horrific racial attacks by blacks on whites are carefully kept out of the American mass media, but the world can see them in foreign publications such as the Daily Telegraph.
The fetid, necrotic, and hopeless ghettos are widespread. Consider Newark, Camden, Trenton, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, St Louis, Cincinnati, New Orleans, just to begin.
Human rights? America’s unending race riots appear in graphic detail all around the world. Cities burn, over and over, decade after decade, as American politicians speak of their values, which they seem to want the rest of the world to adopt.
Race relations in the most moral, preachy, and indispensable nation, two examples of many, many dozens that could be given:
Public disaffection is rampant in America. Washington is so afraid of its citizens that it called in over twenty thousand soldiers to assure calm when Biden was inaugurated. The whole earth watched, some in shock, others in amusement, as infuriated citizens stormed the Capitol. During a recent trial in Minneapolis troops were needed to protect the proceedings from an angry population, with stores boarding up in fear of looting. Can anyone imagine this in Tokyo?
And of course, few around the world can have failed to notice the disparity between China’s quick and effective response to the epidemic and the chaos, verging on anarchy of the American, in which no one appeared to be in charge and much of the population refuses to cooperate with the government.
Americans are not an historically aware people and so have little idea of how or why they are regarded as they are abroad. Consider Mexico, where I live. People here know of the Mexican-American War (of which, preposterously many Americans have never heard) as well as the bombardment of Veracruz and Pershing’s incursion. Peoples remember their defeats and humiliations as the victors do not. Mexicans know they are powerless against America, resent it intensely. Latin Americans in general know of the almost endless list of invasions, coups, dictators installed, economic exploitation that Americans have never heard of. Today they see the persecution of Cuba, the attempt to starve Venezuela into giving Washington control of its oil, the coups and murder attempts against Maduro, the coup in Bolivia, other attempts in Ukraine and Byelorussia, on and on.
Many countries have endured American manipulation exploitation, invasion. Americans seldom know of these things, but the countries involved do. For example, China remembers that American (and European) gunboats seized Chinese ports, forced the opium trade on the country, and that American troops have rampaged through Beijing, looting, raping, and killing for sport. There was the burning of the Summer Palace (look it up if you haven’t heard of it.) During the Cold War, Americans saw themselves as on a moral crusade against Communism. The Chinese saw it as a crusade against China. Which is how the “trade war” looks to them now.
How does America appear to much of the world today? As a brutal, utterly unprincipled, destructive, out of control monster wreaking havoc on any country that doesn’t submit. If this seems to you extreme, you are probably a normal American. But try for a second, if only as an exercise in mental gymnastics, to see how it looks from abroad.
America killed hundreds of thousands in Iraq and wrecked it for generations, has killed and killed and killed for almost twenty years in Afghanistan. Supervised the destruction of Libya, currently occupies much of Syria and kills there too, bombs Somalia, supports a grisly Saudi war against Yemen. In an earlier generation it killed millions in Southeast Asia.
At this writing America is the only country of note steadfastly supporting Israel’s search for lebensraum in the West Bank and its conversion of the Gaza Strip into the Warsaw Ghetto, with the IDF inflicting its usual devastation.
Human rights? The world saw the godawful photos of torture in America’s prison at Abu Ghraib. They know of the continuation of “enhanced interrogation,” in Guantanamo. These things could be seen, and were, everywhere from Kathmandu to Finland and all over the Moslem world, where they served to spur enlistment. The American media carefully do not speak of the horrors of the torture camps, or of the death and mutilation caused by the wars. Web sites in other countries are not as reticent. No, the pols speak of American values.
Which leads to a question I often hear in Mexico: “Why don’t the gringos worry about their own problems instead of causing new ones for the rest of us?”
Amen."
Friday, May 21, 2021
"UNBELIEVABLE: The Alarming Truth About Money"
"UNBELIEVABLE: The Alarming Truth About Money"
by Brian Maher
"Today we stagger into the Minotaur’s maze of money… It may be familiar space to you. But a man must occasionally remind himself of his surroundings… fix his bearings… take stock of his position. And so we proceed...
You sink your hand into your wallet. It resurfaces grasping a $20 bill. This bill is an asset to you, its holder. It represents a claim upon goods and services. But this asset of yours is but one side of a glass mirror. Seen from your side it is a $20 asset. Seen from the opposite side it is a $20 debt.
Today All Money Is Debt: This you must realize: All money circulating — all bills, coins, checking and savings deposits, all of it — has been borrowed into existence. That is, all money in existence represents a debt… taken sometime… somewhere… by someone. That debt may not be your debt. But it is someone’s debt. This is the inner secret of the lovely $20 bill you presently hold in your hand. It leads a double existence — one in light — one in shadow.
We hazard that Andy Jackson is doing 10,000 revolutions each minute in his bleak Tennessee grave. For this is the man who shuttered the Second Bank of the United States in 1835 — the central bank — and retired the national debt for the first and only occasion in history. At no other time has Uncle Samuel poked his head above the water. And here is poor Old Hickory, posthumously dragooned into the very arrangement against which he raged ceaselessly. But let us step deeper into the Minotaur’s dizzying maze… and ponder the staggering implications of today’s money…
$82 Trillion Into Thin Air: Recall, all money constitutes an expression of debt. The asset merely represents the reverse side of the liability. We must therefore conclude: If all dollar-based debt was retired — all $82 trillion, public and private — every dollar would vanish into air that is thin… like data from a Hillary Clinton hard drive… or Donald Trump’s presence on Twitter.
Now lift your jaw from the floor. Now find your footing. Now regain your shaken wits. Do we speculate? Do we stretch the facts? Neither. We speak by the book…
The Fed’s Open Confession: Mr. Marriner Eccles bossed the Federal Reserve in May 1941. At that time, he sat down in front of the House Committee on Banking and Currency. A bewildered congressman — Patman, by name — asked Eccles how the Federal Reserve had acquired the funds to purchase two billion dollars of Treasury bonds in 1933.
Our minions have fished up this exchange from the Congressional Record:
ECCLES: We created it.
PATMAN: Out of what?
ECCLES: Out of the right to issue credit money.
PATMAN: And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our government's credit?
ECCLES: That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money.
Imagine it if you can — no debt, no money.
“The Tragic Absurdity of Our Hopeless Situation Is Almost Incredible”: Did Mr. Eccles botch the facts? He did not. Here is the Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve’s Atlanta outpost, Mr. Robert Hemphill: "If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash, or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless situation is almost incredible — but there it is."
Mr. G. Edward Griffin is the author of "The Creature from Jekyll Island." Here he seizes his hammer... and pounds home the nail Messieurs Eccles and Hemphill pegged up: "It is difficult for Americans to come to grips with the fact that their total money supply is backed by nothing but debt, and it is even more mind boggling to visualize that, if everyone paid back all that was borrowed, there would be no money left in existence. That's right, there would be not one penny in circulation — all coins and all paper currency would be returned to bank vaults — and there would be not one dollar in any one's checking account. In short, all money would disappear…"
Every dollar that exists today, either in the form of currency, checkbook money, or even credit card money — in other words, our entire money supply — exists only because it was borrowed by someone; perhaps not you, but someone. We are now fumbling in darkness, deep into the dizzying monetary maze we have entered. Yet we press on… deeper into the labyrinth…
Don’t Forget About the Interest: A bank loans a man $10,000. He must repay the $10,000 at a future date — with a bit of interest into the bargain. Assume the $10,000 comes tethered to a 5% rate of interest. Assume further the bankman knocks at his door five years hence, calling in his loan, palms extended. The debtor must hand the fellow $11,322.74 That is, the principal plus the $1,322.74 in accumulated interest.
Where will this sap secure the $1,322.74 to service the interest? The larger question: Must the Federal Reserve issue increasing quantities of money to service all outstanding debt — $82 trillion in the case of the United States? Mr. Griffin: "One of the most perplexing questions associated with this process is “Where does the money come from to pay the interest?" If you borrow $10,000 from a bank at 9%, you owe $10,900. But the bank only manufactures $10,000 for the loan. It would seem, therefore, that there is no way that you — and all others with similar loans — can possibly pay off your indebtedness. The amount of money put into circulation just isn't enough to cover the total debt, including interest. This has led some to the conclusion that it is necessary for you to borrow the $900 for the interest, and that, in turn, leads to still more interest. The assumption is that, the more we borrow, the more we have to borrow, and that debt based on fiat money is a never- ending spiral leading inexorably to more and more debt."
This is a partial truth. It is true that there is not enough money created to include the interest, but it is a fallacy that the only way to pay it back is to borrow still more. A partial truth? Why partial? And what is the entire truth, sir?
The Exchange Value of Labor: “The assumption fails to take into account the exchange value of labor.” Please elaborate: Let us assume that you pay back your $10,000 loan at the rate of approximately $900 per month and that about $80 of that represents interest. You realize you are hard pressed to make your payments so you decide to take on a part-time job…
The decision then is made to have the bank's floors waxed once a week. You respond to the ad in the paper and are hired at $80 per month to do the job. The result is that you earn the money to pay the interest on your loan, and — this is the point — the money you receive is the same money which you previously had paid. As long as you perform labor for the bank each month, the same dollars go into the bank as interest, then out the revolving door as your wages, and then back into the bank as loan repayment.
Just so. You serve the interest by serving your master. But what if you decline to wax the bank’s floors? If you do not serve your master? It is not necessary that you work directly for the bank. No matter where you earn the money, its origin was a bank and its ultimate destination is a bank. The loop through which it travels can be large or small, but the fact remains all interest is paid eventually by human effort.
Modern Serfdom: What — then — are we to conclude from the foregoing? The significance of that fact is even more startling than the assumption that not enough money is created to pay back the interest. It is that the total of this human effort ultimately is for the benefit of those who create fiat money. It is a form of modern serfdom in which the great mass of society works as indentured servants to a ruling class of financial nobility. This conclusion appalls us.
We hazard pieces are missing from this jigsaw puzzle. The deepest mysteries of the monetary arts elude us. But we also hazard Mr. Griffin presents a fair overall outline. Shall we strike the chains of bondage from our wrists? That is, should we all repay each dollar we owe — all $82 trillion? That is, should we call in all money from circulation? The questions are theoretical, of course. We can no more afford to break the chains than we can afford to break our necks. They will only snap under the relentless strain… not because we choose to snap them. When that day arrives we shall be finally free. Free — without one penny to our name."
"Goldman Warns Of 'Substantial' Surge In Home Prices, Expects Bigger Housing Bubble Than 2007"
Full screen recommended.
"Goldman Warns Of 'Substantial' Surge In Home Prices,
Expects Bigger Housing Bubble Than 2007"
by Epic Economist
"Home prices are soaring at the fastest pace in over 15 years, and a panic buying wave for homes has been inflating the real estate price bubble to levels never before seen. Entire swaths of the population are getting priced out of the market as affordable homes are now impossible to find. As a result, several experts and economists, and most notably, Goldman Sachs, have been warning that housing prices must soon face a correction, otherwise, the market will be doomed to face a decades-long hyperinflationary crisis. The rapid worsening of the affordability crisis is worrying industry analysts, who are arguing the current pace of home price appreciation is becoming increasingly unsustainable. "Every time prices rise another month there's another sort of swath of the economy, a swath of Americans at that point who can no longer afford to buy homes," explained Zillow senior economist Jeff Tucker. "So as prices rise, it does make homeownership a more exclusive club."
Record low mortgage rates and remote work have contributed to an overwhelming demand from homebuyers over the past 17 months. According to the real estate brokerage Redfin, in March, we had the "hottest month in housing market history, with a record 43% of homes selling for more than their listing price". Almost half of the homes that went under contract had an accepted offer within one week after being listed. All across the country, homes are being immediately snatched up after hitting the market.
Supply chain disruptions also helped the meteoric rise in building costs for new homes, with lumber prices surging more than 200% in a year. "Builders are now building as fast as they can. But the U.S. housing market, one year's worth of construction, even with everybody firing on all cylinders, just can't really make up for 10 or 12 years of under-building," Tucker pointed out. In Massachusetts, with each passing month buyers are getting more shocked in face of the soaring prices on the few homes that are still available. One recent research released by the firm shows that during April, a home in Haverhill sold in 17 days after being listed and for 105.3% above the asking price.
Those who cannot even consider the possibility of buying a home but have been looking for more space during the health crisis, have started chasing rents as a more "affordable" alternative. But data released by CoreLogic indicates that rents for single-family homes in the US surged to the highest level since September 2006, jumping 4.3% in March compared with a year earlier, led by double-digit increases in several states.
The combination of all of the mentioned factors is aggravating the affordability crisis to the point of pushing the housing market closer to a sharp price correction. “Affordable housing” is typically defined as housing that costs 30% or less of a person’s income. But for lower-income earners, with such elevated prices, that can be incredibly hard to achieve. It's against that backdrop that Goldman Sachs has divulged its latest forecast indicating that if the Fed doesn't hike interest rates to prevent the market from overheating, the bank would expect that "a national housing shortage will fuel substantial home price appreciation for at least a couple more years".
This means that if the Fed continues to artificially boost the housing market by suppressing rates while injects trillions into the economy and financial markets, hyperinflation will definitely make rents and housing prices hit one record high after the other until the bubble becomes so unsustainable that it would pop on its own. In simple terms, Goldman is predicting that home prices will be rising at a pace far faster than the epic 2006-2007 housing bubble - and that the effects of this surge in prices will make the coming hyperinflation anything but transitory. In essence, the bank's forecast suggests that the Fed is left with two choices and neither of them looks good.
Either they raise interest rates to fight inflation and trigger a housing market crash in that process so that prices finally readjust, or they keep maintaining the market artificially heated and let the price bubble expands as much as it can possibly go before imploding itself and end up on a catastrophic bust - and throughout that process not only real estate and rental markets would be facing exceedingly high prices, but the entire economy - as if it isn't already. So whether they decide to mitigate the housing bubble explosion now or later, the frantic rally is bound to culminate in a crash. The only thing is - the more the bubble grows the sharper will be its collapse."
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/21/21: "Economic Crash Worsens, Food Supply Disruptions, Surging Prices, Epic Debt"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/21/21:
"Economic Crash Worsens,
Food Supply Disruptions, Surging Prices, Epic Debt"
Musical Interlude: Soothing Relaxation, "Relaxing Piano Music & Rain Sounds"
Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation,
"Relaxing Piano Music & Rain Sounds"
"Life..."
"Life... is not about how fast you run or even with what
degree of grace. It's about perseverance,
about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what."
- Dean Koontz
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of these fuzzy blobs is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. The cluster is seen through a foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Near the cluster center, roughly 250 million light-years away, is the cluster's dominant galaxy NGC 1275, seen above as a large galaxy on the image left. A prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission, NGC 1275 accretes matter as gas and galaxies fall into it. The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies, also cataloged as Abell 426, is part of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster spanning over 15 degrees and containing over 1,000 galaxies. At the distance of NGC 1275, this view covers about 15 million light-years.”
"Consider The Following...:
"Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others.
Nor is it so remarkable that our greatest joy should come when we are motivated by concern for others. But that is not all. We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness but they also lessen our experience of suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others' happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace- anxiety, doubt, disappointment- these things are definitely less. In our concern for others, we worry less about ourselves. When we worry less about ourselves an experience of our own suffering is less intense.
What does this tell us? Firstly, because our every action has a universal dimension, a potential impact on others' happiness, ethics are necessary as a means to ensure that we do not harm others. Secondly, it tells us that genuine happiness consists in those spiritual qualities of love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness and so on. For it is these which provide both for our happiness and others' happiness. A good motivation is what is needed: compassion without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their human rights and dignities. That we humans can help each other is one of our unique human capacities"
- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
“10 Painfully Obvious Truths Everyone Forgets Too Soon”
“10 Painfully Obvious Truths Everyone Forgets Too Soon”
The truth does not cease to exist when it is ignored.
by Marc Chernoff
“You know how you can hear something a hundred times in a hundred different ways before it finally gets through to you? The ten truths listed below fall firmly into that category – life lessons that many of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of ever since, but for whatever reason, haven’t fully grasped. This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all…
1. The average human life is relatively short. We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step. You expected there to be one more stair than there is, and so you find yourself off balance for a moment, before your mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is.
LIVE your life TODAY! Don’t ignore death, but don’t be afraid of it either. Be afraid of a life you never lived because you were too afraid to take action. Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside you while you’re still alive. Be bold. Be courageous. Be scared to death, and then take the next step anyway.
2. You will only ever live the life you create for yourself. Your life is yours alone. Others can try to persuade you, but they can’t decide for you. They can walk with you, but not in your shoes. So make sure the path you decide to walk aligns with your own intuition and desires, and don’t be scared to switch paths or pave a new one when it makes sense.
Remember, it’s always better to be at the bottom of the ladder you want to climb than the top of the one you don’t. Be productive and patient. And realize that patience is not about waiting, but the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard for what you believe in. This is your life, and it is made up entirely of your choices. May your actions speak louder than your words. May your life preach louder than your lips. May your success be your noise in the end. And if life only teaches you one thing, let it be that taking a passionate leap is always worth it. Even if you have no idea where you’re going to land, be brave enough to step up to the edge of the unknown, and listen to your heart.
3. Being busy does NOT mean being productive. Busyness isn’t a virtue, nor is it something to respect. Though we all have seasons of crazy schedules, very few of us have a legitimate need to be busy ALL the time. We simply don’t know how to live within our means, prioritize properly, and say no when we should.
Being busy rarely equates to productivity these days. Just take a quick look around. Busy people outnumber productive people by a wide margin. Busy people are rushing all over the place, and running late half of the time. They’re heading to work, conferences, meetings, social engagements, etc. They barely have enough free time for family get-togethers and they rarely get enough sleep. Yet, emails are shooting out of their smart phones like machine gun bullets, and their day planners are jammed to the brim with obligations. Their busy schedule gives them an elevated sense of importance. But it’s all an illusion. They’re like hamsters running on a wheel.
Though being busy can make us feel more alive than anything else for a moment, the sensation is not sustainable long term. We will inevitably, whether tomorrow or on our deathbed, come to wish that we spent less time in the buzz of busyness and more time actually living a purposeful life.
4. Some kind of failure always occurs before success. Most mistakes are unavoidable. Learn to forgive yourself. It’s not a problem to make them. It’s only a problem if you never learn from them. If you’re too afraid of failure, you can’t possibly do what needs to be done to be successful. The solution to this problem is making friends with failure. You want to know the difference between a master and a beginner? The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. Behind every great piece of art is a thousand failed attempts to make it, but these attempts are simply never shown to us.
Bottom line: Just because it’s not happening now, doesn’t mean it never will. Sometimes things have to go very wrong before they can be right.
5. Thinking and doing are two very different things. Success never comes to look for you while you wait around thinking about it. You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do. Knowledge is basically useless without action. Good things don’t come to those who wait; they come to those who work on meaningful goals. Ask yourself what’s really important and then have the courage to build your life around your answer. And remember, if you wait until you feel 100% ready to begin, you’ll likely be waiting the rest of your life.
6. You don’t have to wait for an apology to forgive. Life gets much easier when you learn to accept all the apologies you never got. The key is to be thankful for every experience – positive or negative. It’s taking a step back and saying, “Thank you for the lesson.” It’s realizing that grudges from the past are a perfect waste of today’s happiness, and that holding one is like letting unwanted company live rent free in your head.
Forgiveness is a promise – one you want to keep. When you forgive someone you are making a promise not to hold the unchangeable past against your present self. It has nothing to do with freeing a criminal of his or her crime, and everything to do with freeing yourself of the burden of being an eternal victim.
7. Some people are simply the wrong match for you. You will only ever be as great as the people you surround yourself with, so be brave enough to let go of those who keep bringing you down. You shouldn’t force connections with people who constantly make you feel less than amazing. If someone makes you feel uncomfortable and insecure every time you’re with them, for whatever reason, they’re probably not close friend material. If they make you feel like you can’t be yourself, or if they make you “less than” in any way, don’t pursue a connection with them. If you feel emotionally drained after hanging out with them or get a small hit of anxiety when you are reminded of them, listen to your intuition. There are so many “right people” for you, who energize you and inspire you to be your best self. It makes no sense to force it with people who are the wrong match for you.
8. It’s not other people’s job to love you; it’s yours. It’s important to be nice to others, but it’s even more important to be nice to yourself. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world. So make sure you don’t start seeing yourself through the eyes of those who don’t value you. Know your worth, even if they don’t. Today, let someone love you just the way you are – as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as incomplete as you think you are. Yes, let someone love you despite all of this, and let that someone be YOU.
9. What you own is not who YOU are. Stuff really is just stuff, and it has absolutely no bearing on who you are as a person. Most of us can make do with much less than we think we need. That’s a valuable reminder, especially in a hugely consumer-driven culture that focuses more on material things than meaningful connections and experiences.
You have to create your own culture. Don’t watch TV, don’t read every fashion magazine, and don’t consume too much of the evening news. Find the strength to fill your time with meaningful experiences. The space and time you are occupying at this very moment is LIFE, and if you’re worrying about Kim Kardashian or Lebron James or some other famous face, then you are disempowered. You’re giving your life away to marketing and media trickery, which is created by big companies to ultimately motivate you to want to dress a certain way, look a certain way, and be a certain way. This is tragic, this kind of thinking. It’s all just Hollywood brainwashing. What is real is YOU and your friends and your family, your loves, your highs, your hopes, your plans, your fears, etc.
Too often we’re told that we’re not important, we’re just peripheral to what is. “Get a degree, get a job, get a car, get a house, and keep on getting.” And it’s sad, because someday you’ll wake up and realize you’ve been tricked. And all you’ll want then is to reclaim your mind by getting it out of the hands of the brainwashers who want to turn you into a drone that buys everything that isn’t needed to impress everyone that isn’t important.
10. Everything changes, every second. Embrace change and realize it happens for a reason. It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end it will be worth it. What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow. You never know. Things change, often spontaneously. People and circumstances come and go. Life doesn’t stop for anybody. It moves rapidly and rushes from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds, and happens like this to people every day. It’s likely happening to someone nearby right now.
Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction of our lives. A seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a meteorite striking Earth. Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event. And these events are always happening.
However good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the one thing you can count on. So when life is good, enjoy it. Don’t go looking for something better every second. Happiness never comes to those who don’t appreciate what they have while they have it.”
Greg Hunter, “Weekly News Wrap-Up 5/21/21”
“Weekly News Wrap-Up 5/21/21”
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Looks like there is a truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. I say “looks like” because truces between the two usually take a while to solidify. That’s been the case in the four Hamas/Israel wars since 2008. More than 1,300 houses have been destroyed, and heavy losses have been inflicted on Hamas in Gaza.
Is your employer requiring you to get an experimental gene therapy CV19 jab that is being called a “vaccine”? You might want to know it’s illegal to require someone to get an experimental vaccine. The U.S. government is not requiring this so-called vaccine, and about half of the CDC and FDA employees have NOT gotten the jab. There is a new form you can hand to your employer from Solari.com that might get their attention. It puts the liability for adverse effects of the jab squarely on the company’s back. It also requires the responsible company official to sign this form with a witness. The vaccine makers have zero liability, but companies forcing the CV19 jab do have liability. This is a cold bucket of water in the face of any company who wants to force or coerce employees to get this experimental “vaccine.”
If you think the economy is going to get back to normal now that the CV19 crisis is subsiding, you have got another thing coming. There are shortages in everything and inflation coming bigtime. It appears the Federal Reserve is printing mad amounts of money, and the inflation genie is already out of the bottle and getting stronger by the day. Hunter will explain.”
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 5.21.21.
“Ultimate Advice For Financial Survival; Debt Is A Deathtrap; Raise Your Standards; Get A Skillset”
Jeremiah Babe, Dan “I Allegedly,”
“Ultimate Advice For Financial Survival;
Debt Is A Deathtrap; Raise Your Standards; Get A Skillset”
"Thoughts On The “New Normal” And The Things That We Are Losing As A Society…"
"Thoughts On The “New Normal” And
The Things That We Are Losing As A Society…"
by Michael Snyder
"The last two years have greatly shaken America, and our country will never be the same as a result. If you would have told someone two years ago that in 2021 millions of people would run around wearing masks all day and that the federal government would be relentlessly pushing a large scale mass injection campaign, that person probably would have thought that you were nuts. But now this is the “new normal”. Our freedoms and liberties have been permanently eroded, and now that they have gotten away with pushing the envelope so dramatically, government entities on all levels will be ready to flex their muscles again once the next major crisis comes along.
You could argue that we should just vote out the politicians that are running things on the state and federal levels, but exactly how are we supposed to do that? After what we witnessed last November, tens of millions of Americans won’t believe that our system of choosing leaders is legitimate ever again. Of course those that are currently running things could attempt to restore faith in the system by getting rid of all the voting machines and by instituting real reforms that would make the process as transparent as possible, but we all know that they will never do that.
The last couple of years have been extremely painful for our economy as well. More than 70 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last year, homeless encampments started popping up like mushrooms all over the country, and countless numbers of small businesses shut down permanently. In fact, most Americans say that they have lost a favorite local business as a result of the pandemic…
Few people have escaped the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic and that’s especially true for local ‘mom and pop’ shops. A new study finds half of Americans have witnessed their favorite local businesses close down because of COVID-1. A survey of 2,000 people reveals 68 percent personally know a local business owner impacted by the pandemic. According to respondents, the most commonly impacted businesses include cafes (62%), retail shops (58%), gaming shops (55%), and book stores (54%).
On Thursday, we learned that another 444,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week. In 2019, such a number would have been considered catastrophic. But in the “new normal”, that number is actually considered to be “good news”.
Our politicians have tried to make everyone feel better by sending out waves of huge government checks, but that has just created rampant inflation and widespread shortages.
We are also losing the peace on our streets. Murder rates were way up in major cities all over America in 2020, and in most of those cities they are even higher this year. And it isn’t just men that are shooting men. Today, I came across an article about an “eight-woman brawl” that resulted in a pregnant mother being gunned down… "A pregnant mother was shot and killed while she sat in her car close to an eight-woman brawl that erupted in gunfire. The deadly confrontation took place just before 6pm Tuesday in the 1200 block of Valencia Avenue in Hemet, which is located 75 miles southeast of Los Angeles. Family members identified the 27-year-old who had been shot in the head and died after being flown to a county trauma center as Tamika Haynes."
What in the world is happening to us? You would have never read about such a thing happening on the streets of America in 1950. These days, we seem to be losing control of just about everything, and that even includes the technology that we have become so dependent upon. Hackers are causing nightmares for large entities all over the U.S., and in many cases absolutely enormous ransoms are being paid out…
"CNA Financial Corp., among the largest insurance companies in the U.S., paid $40 million in late March to regain control of its network after a ransomware attack, according to people with knowledge of the attack. The Chicago-based company paid the hackers about two weeks after a trove of company data was stolen, and CNA officials were locked out of their network, according to two people familiar with the attack who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly."
Criminals seem to have the upper hand on the Internet, in our streets and in the halls of power in Washington and on Wall Street. In previous times, we could rely on law enforcement to restore order, but now law enforcement authorities are being relentlessly demonized in our society. In fact, it has gotten so bad that large numbers of law enforcement officers are permanently walking away from their careers. For example, it is being reported that nearly 20 percent of all police officers in Seattle have quit over the past year.
Police departments all over the nation are having an exceedingly difficult time recruiting replacements for those that are leaving, and that is going to continue to be the case as long as we are treating police officers like human garbage.
Speaking of human garbage, just check out the bill that was just passed in the Wisconsin Senate… "Wisconsin senators approved a bill earlier this week allowing dead bodies to be dissolved in a chemical bath and disposed like sewage. The bill, Senate Bill 228, authorizes a practice called alkaline hydrolysis, or “water cremation,” which liquifies the human body using a mixture of water, heat, and chemical agents, leaving only bones behind. The liquid is then dumped into the sewage system or boiled off, and bones can be crushed and deposited in an urn."
You have got to be pretty sick to want to liquify Grandma and Grandpa before dumping their remains into the sewer. But that is who we are. On all levels, we no longer respect life, and that is because as a society we are abandoning our faith. Just check out these numbers… "The American Worldview Inventory (AWVI) 2021, an annual survey that examines the perspectives of adults aged 18 and over in the United States, found that while 57 percent of Millennials (born 1984-2002) consider themselves to be Christian, 43 percent “don’t know, care, or believe that God exists.”
Comparatively, 70 percent of Generation X (Gen X) Americans (born 1965-1983), 79 percent of Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964), and 83 percent of the Builder Generation (born 1927-1945) consider themselves to be Christian, while 31, 28, and 27 percent, respectively, “don’t know, care, or believe that God exists.”
America no longer resembles the nation that our founders sacrificed so much to establish, and if we stay on the path that we are currently on there is no future ahead for us. But even though voices such as mine have been crying out for change for years, most of the population continues to sprint in the other direction. We have already lost so much, and the “new normal” truly is horrible, but if America does not wake up things are only going to get worse."
"Economic Market Snapshot 5/21/21"
"Economic Market Snapshot 5/21/21"
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"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
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"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, AM 5/21/21:
"UPDATES: Market, Stocks, Crypto,
Gold, Silver, Crude, MORE"
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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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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates
CNN Market Data:
CNN Fear And Greed Index:
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A comprehensive, essential daily read.
May 21st to May 24th, Updated Daily
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Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
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Daily Job Cuts
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Commentary, highly recommended:
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And now, the End Game...
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Oh yeah...
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