"This Is What it Feels Like When a Democracy Dies"

"This Is What it Feels Like When a Democracy Dies"

by Umair Haque

"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

- Justice William O. Kennedy

"What does it feel like to live in a time really succumbing to tyranny? Would you know it if you were in such a time? Is it like the "Hunger Games", or a "Mad Max" movie? Spectacular, violent, repellent, and unmistakeable? Or is it something subtler? Something that, for example, you might not even know was happening at the very moment it was happening to you? After all, invisible poisons are the most corrosive and dangerous things of all.

Imagine that you're lying down in a park, on the grass, on a perfect summer day, your eyes closed. And from nowhere, from everywhere, a fog begins rolling in. Gentle and white, oddly out place. It washes across the tips of your feet. You feel pinpricks. Your eyes snap open. Your toes go numb. How strange, you think to yourself, as you think about getting up and running away. What is this fog doing here? Why is giving you pins and needles?

But by the time you are thinking all that, processing what is happening to you, the fog is already up to your knees. 'I really should get up!' you think to yourself. You are a little alarmed now. But as you've paused to even think that far, to register it you realize that while your knees are prickling, your feet, calves, ankles, have gone numb. And it's not entirely unpleasant. It's soothing, even, in the way that letting go is. Confused, puzzled, bewildered, you stop to think again.

Yet by now the fog, still rolling, as quiet as winter, has reached the tips of your fingers, blanketed your torso. Ahhh, you murmur. The pinpricks, you realize, only sting you where the fog's cold, icy edge is. The rest of you? It's numb. Cool. Gone. And there is a strange, disquieting peace in that. Nothing makes sense. The world seems to be vanishing and so do you. But it's not entirely a bad thing.

The fog keeps rolling. As it covers all of you, something in you cries out 'Get up!'  But there is another part that is overwhelmed, which wishes to surrender to this pleasing, beautiful, gentle numbness. That longs for it. A few pins and needles, that's not much of a price for letting go, is it? After all, isn't that exactly why you were resting in the park on that perfect summer day, eyes closed? To let the whole world, including yourself, fall away?

Authoritarianism isn't what you think it is. A sudden, violent, visible rupture. That's what Americans, especially, have been led to believe by too many TV shows and movies, which are a kind of especially paranoid American annihilation fantasy (the Rapture, the commies, the immigrants.)

But tyranny isn't like that at all. It doesn't feel like that. These days, if we are a little bit educated about it, we call it creeping. but even that fails to convey the feeling, the sense, the experience. My little parable is a way to begin expressing the strange feeling of collapse, not just anxiety and panic, but also, conflicting with it, a kind of yearning for surrender and submission. We'd be foolish, by now, not to understand the dark roots of our own apathy and resignation, wouldn't we? So let me continue.

The thing we misunderstand most about tyranny is that we suppose life becomes one long exercise in rigid, total certainty. You receive your orders, salute, and snap to business. That is what violent rupture implies: one day democracy, the next, a tyrant is there, precisely ordering everyone's last thought and action. But the truth is precisely the opposite.

Tyranny kills with the grey haze, the white fog, of all-pervading uncertainty. An uncertainty so total, that after a time, people will give up all that they love, and everyone they love, to escape it. The fog kills everything it touches and yet, it can't be touched, held, known, captured. You can't fight fog with fists or words or speeches, can you? If you join hands with someone you love, the fog will laugh, and weave itself right between your fingers. So what can fight it? Who can resist it? First, let me explain it a little.

Who will be dehumanized today? Is the law still working? Did they raid that town? Why are those camps rising? Whose door will they knock at today? Am I in danger? Are they going to use my words against me? Should I not speak them? Where are the children? Do you see what I mean by all-pervading uncertainty? The grey haze. The white fog. That, my friends, is what tyranny really is. And you are already knee-deep in it. Only perhaps you don't quite know it yet.

After a time, the uncertainty erases everything. Cleanses everything. Kills everything. All. It covers everything it touches, and leaves nothing revealed. It is total and all-encompassing. Is that a person? Am I? Who is a citizen? What about my friends, family, cousins? Are these words mine? Did I speak them? Are those my friends? Can I trust them? Did they get rid of those people? The fog. The haze. That is how it kills everything it touches, by making all things exactly the same thing. An unanswerable question.

Do you have the sense, lately, that things are  unreal? Ah, you see. You are already being blanked by the grey haze, the white fog, of uncertainty. Uncertainty is what you are feeling, only you don't know it. It is that uncertainty that has turned everything unreal. Will they really put people in camps? Then why did they build them? Will women really have to go underground to get abortions? What about my kids? Will they really live without healthcare or education or retirement? You go numb, as any sane person would, having to think these terrible thoughts. Your vision goes blurry. Reality has come apart, because nothing is or isn't anymore. Everything is just the fog.

When all is fog, uncertainty, impossibility, unknowability, reality cannot be processed anymore. That is the point. To create a world where everything, being uncertain, becomes unreal. Nothing exists, or doesn't exist, only just maybe exists, but only if it is allowed to. So nothing can be held, contained, known, and therefore, held onto. Nothing. Not the people you love most. Not yourself. Not tomorrow. Not even today.

Have you ever read stories about how in tyrannies, brothers will betray brothers, husbands wives, and mothers sons? You have always thought that could never happen to me! But why do they do it? It isn't because the tyrant commands them to. He doesn't have to. They will do it for just a tiny morsel of certainty. Here, I am a good person. Let me prove it to you. Let me tell you who is a bad person. Will you reward me now, put me in the good books, give me some certainty, instead of keeping me at the edge? No human being can survive more than a few days in a totally uncertain world. So the fog takes everything, not just from us, but also in us. It takes away, at last, our capacity to feel. When that is gone, we are hollow, empty, numb. And when we are numb, what or whom won't we sell, betray, or abuse?

The tyrant has never lifted a finger. He has only produced the fog, with a conjuring trick. By shifting the sands beneath us, and letting the mist pour out of the cracks. The fog rolls over us, little by little, inch by inch, languorous tendrils whispering. We fall and fall slowly, gently into a long, dreamless coma.

In the end, nothing is left. People are erased. Time stands still. History vanishes. The future looks exactly like the present. Nobody is here at all. There is only the fog, the haze, the white. Nothing can be discerned in it. Nothing can be seen through it. But that is alright. There is nobody left to see nothing, anyways. There is just the white fog. And beneath it, the sleepers. Each one the same, none of them there, or not there.

If just one woke up, looked around, shocked, and roused another, and that one another, and so on maybe they might, together, strain, struggle, and lift one another up above the fog. But none of them ever quite understood that. The fog took them too fast, too invisibly, without a bullet, without a word, without a sound, just like that. It took all the fight in them, and turned it to surrender.

That is what tyranny feels like, my friends. And you might not know it, or you might, but the fog is rolling silently across you now, gentle, languorous, with love, with absolution, with death."

- https://eand.co/

The Poet: John O'Donohue, "In These Times "

"In These Times"

 "In these times when anger

Is turned into anxiety,

And someone has stolen

The horizons and mountains,

Our small emperors on parade

Never expect our indifference

To disturb their nakedness.

They keep their heads down,

And their eyes gleam with reflection

From aluminum economic ground,

The media wraps everything

In a cellophane of sound,

And the ghost surface of the virtual

Overlays the breathing earth.

The industry of distraction

Makes us forget

That we live in a universe.

We have become converts

To the religion of stress

And its deity of progress;

That we may have courage

To turn aside from it all

And come to kneel down before the poor,

To discover what we must do,

How to turn anxiety

Back into anger,

How to find our way home."

~ John O'Donohue,

from "To Bless the Space Between Us"

"The Worst Investors of All Time"

"The Worst Investors of All Time"

by Bill Bonner

"Let’s drink to the hard-working people,

Let’s drink to the lowly of birth.

Raise your glass to the good and the evil,

Let’s drink to the salt of the earth."

– "Salt of the Earth," The Rolling Stones

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "Yes… we are hooting for the salt of the Earth. Saluting the faceless crowd, the lowly of birth… the masses… the hoi polloi… the proles. In a few words: They are getting treated like Afghans. Misled by the U.S. empire, corrupted by its fake money, and then left behind as the elite slip away.

Cost of Empire: Empires are always costly. And the costs are borne, mostly, by the working classes. The Roman Republic was built by the blood and energy of its small farmers. Then, imperial conquests brought booty and slaves back to Rome. These were divvied up among the elite, who established large latifundia – farms run by slave labor. The small farmers were driven out of business, forced to sell their farms to the big producers, and later, often forced to sell themselves and their children into slavery.

America never figured out how to make its empire pay. From the very beginning, it was its own “little guys” who paid. They paid the taxes. They put on the uniforms. They may not have understood what “we” were fighting for, but they were ready to follow the sound of the cannon from San Juan Hill to Mỹ Lai.

The Vietnam War was one of the U.S. empire’s most spectacular fiascos. Your editor spent part of that war onboard a U.S. Navy cruiser… comfortably off the coast of California or at our base in San Diego. Offered the glory of commanding a river boat on the Mekong Delta, he demurred. Even then, it was clear that the war was an expensive and dangerous boondoggle.

Feds Pull a Fast One: So expensive was the war – and another contemporaneous boondoggle, the War on Poverty – that the U.S. couldn’t afford them both. But rather than back up and admit its mistakes, the empire pulled a fast one; it began paying its debts in fake money, a new U.S. dollar that it could reproduce at will.

With that move, in 1971, the working class was now in danger both at home and abroad, in uniform as well as in civvies. For now, U.S. corporations could source their goods from low-cost providers overseas including, some years later, Vietnam. U.S. manufacturing – the backbone of working-class wages – went into a slump. China entered global export competition in 1979, with labor costs less than one-tenth of those in the U.S. American wages, in real terms, have been flat ever since. Measured properly, in terms of the time needed to buy food, transportation, and housing, the working stiff is much worse off than he was in the 1970s.

Costly Wars: Then, the U.S. government began using the fake money to make “investments” on his behalf.

• The War on Poverty, announced in 1964 as an “unconditional” war… escalated. Total cost to date: $25 trillion, est.

• The War on Drugs began in 1971...

• The Gulf War – 1990...

• The War on Afghanistan – 2001...

• The War on Iraq – 2003...

• The War on “Terror”...

• The bailout of Wall Street...

• The War on COVID-19...

• Stimulus to save the economy.

Altogether, these “investments,” grosso modo, have added about $27 trillion to the U.S. national debt since 1980.

Bad Investments: Had they been good investments, they wouldn’t have added to the nation’s debt; they would have paid dividends and added to its prosperity… Less poverty would have meant more people paying taxes. Instead, fewer are paying taxes, with only 39% of eligible taxpayers paying any federal income tax in 2020.

A successful drug war, too, would have meant more people with good jobs, less crime, and less police enforcement. Instead, nearly half a million (mostly young… mostly men) are in prison. Rather than helping support the nation with gainful employment, it costs $50,000 to $100,000 per year to keep them locked up… while drug use continues as before.

And where was the payoff from the $7 trillion “War on Terror”? There was none…

Wasted Stimulus: And the stimulus? How much stimulating did it do? How much in extra tax receipts did the feds collect as a result? Between March 2020 and August 2021, the Federal Reserve stimulated the economy with $4 trillion in new money. It was the greatest “stimulus” program of all time – by far.What did it get for all that money? What was the return on investment? GDP grew by $1.2 trillion – not even a third of the money invested. Tax receipts – the feds’ return on investment – went up, too… but only by an estimated $150 billion. In other words, the feds spent $4 trillion to get back $150 billion… a 96% loss.

None of these bumbling “investments” paid off. They won no war. They bought no useful assets. They built no factories nor rent-paying infrastructure. As far as we know, no investment was made in any productive industry or any fruitful enterprise. It was all wasted.

Extravagant Delusions: And there’s more… As we saw yesterday, the feds are aiming for even bigger deficits… backed by even more extravagant delusions. After earning so many gold medals in the Middle East, the warmongers are “pivoting” to confront China. And after so much success with Amtrak, there’s $1.2 trillion of “infrastructure” investment coming down the tracks, with a $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” budget trailing behind it. Also coming is global weather control… not to mention turning us all into better people, with better race relations and a more “equitable” allocation of wealth!

But wait… How do the tillers of the soil, the factory girls, and the baristas pay for all this? What will these marvelous investments mean to the salt of the Earth? Oh, Dear Reader… you already know, don’t you? Stay tuned."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"This Is What Is Going To Happen Nationwide In The Not Too Distant Future"

"This Is What Is Going To Happen Nationwide

 In The Not Too Distant Future"

by Michael Snyder

"When order really starts breaking down in this country, we know exactly what is going to happen. And the reason why we know exactly what is going to happen is because the exact same pattern keeps playing out every time there is a major disaster or crisis in one of our large cities. Just think about it. Over the past couple of years, violent social justice protests in our major cities have often been accompanied by widespread looting. When the Texas power grid went down last winter, there was looting. When wildfires force people from their expensive homes in California, the looters are often the first people that show up. And just about every time there is some sort of a major storm, the looters come out of the woodwork.

And so it should not surprise anyone that New Orleans is being plagued by looters in the wake of Hurricane Ida. One pair of enterprising looters decided to try to break into an ATM machine, but thanks to a drone they now have become famous all over the country… "It is not clear if the pair from the drone video were apprehended or got away with any cash from the ATM machine they are seen in the footage trying to pry open. One of the men in the video is seen toying with the machine. Another stands beside him and sees the drone before turning his back and leaving the destroyed business."

The video, which was posted to Twitter by WXChasing (Brandon Clement), has yielded 19,100 views and is captioned, ‘The moment looters realize a drone is watching them try to break into an ATM [machine] in burned down St. Claude market in the lower 9th ward.’

In other cases, looters were taking a more conventional approach… "In another incident, witnesses used their cell phone to record several people looting a store in New Orleans East."

Looters often take advantage of disasters like Ida and New Orleans is all too familiar with this as it became a hotbed of criminal activity in the wake of Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago. How many times have we seen this sort of chaos break out over the past few years? It is more than I can count, that is for sure.

On Tuesday afternoon, authorities in New Orleans pledged to do their best to try “to deter mass looting”… "New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell and Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson held a press conference Tuesday afternoon at City Hall regarding a citywide curfew to deter mass looting and an update on the power situation. Cantrell told reporters, effective immediately (8 pm local time), a citywide curfew will be enforced until 6 am Wednesday. New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) has deployed an anti-looting task force with National Guard members to protect business districts."

Sadly, virtually every major city in America is just one major crisis away from a total breakdown of law and order. And when a truly nightmarish national emergency strikes, law and order will break down all over the country. Our blood-soaked culture has become increasingly violent as moral standards have deteriorated across our land, and in many of our core urban areas brutal cold-blooded attacks by groups of heartless criminals have become way too common.

A particularly vile attack that happened in Chicago the other day is a perfect example of what I am talking about… "The video, first posted by the crime website CWB Chicago, initially shows three men beating up another man as traffic crawls past. Another man walks by and is sucker-punched and falls to the pavement. The group keeps attacking the other man until both are down on the pavement. The attackers then rummage through their pockets, walking with a bag, shoes and other items, the video shows. Women dance in the street while people appear to record the fight. More specifically, the women were “twerking” as they celebrated the robbing of the innocent victims."

If hearts are this cold already, what will things be like when economic conditions get really bad in this country? Yes, there are still millions of Americans out there that try to respect the law, but there are also lots and lots of really twisted people out there.

Just today, I came across a news story about how “hundreds of decapitated goats” have been getting dumped into the Chattahoochee River… "Channel 2 Action News is investigating headless goats found floating in the Chattahoochee River. Someone has dumped hundreds of decapitated goats over the past few years. Channel 2′s Dave Huddleston cruised up the Chattahoochee River with Jason Ulseth, who works for the environmental group the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper."

More than one person has got to be involved in this terrible crime, because on one recent Friday a total of 30 decapitated goats were found in the river… "As they approached the Interstate 20 bridge near the Fulton County and Cobb County border, “There’s a goat,” Ulselth said. Channel 2 found a headless goat in the river, then another and another. “Lately it’s become a lot more frequent, and on Friday we were out here and saw 30 of them floating down the river,” Ulseth said."

Why aren’t CNN and the other big networks covering this story? You would think that something like this would be good for ratings. Of course the truth is that it doesn’t fit any of the agendas that they are currently trying to push.

But without a doubt we will hear more about the Delta variant from the major news networks tomorrow, and apparently all of that fear is starting to cause another major run on toilet paper… Please don’t run straight to the supermarket, but some shoppers are buying up all the toilet paper – again. Why is toilet paper always such a high priority when Americans decide that it is time to do some more panic shopping? I will never understand that.

In any event, it is being reported that the fear of new lockdowns is causing many to start hoarding toilet paper “in bulk”… "This latest rebound in toilet paper demand comes as the delta variant drives COVID-19 cases and deaths up across the U.S., with some folks foreseeing another lockdown. Many Americans have used up their stockpiles and some have begun buying again in bulk, The Wall Street Journal reports."

If Americans are going to get this crazy over a relatively minor threat like the Delta variant, what in the world are they going to do when truly apocalyptic events begin to take place? COVID is not the worst thing that can happen to us. Not even close.

If our society can’t even handle COVID, what kind of meltdown would transpire if a much bigger crisis suddenly erupted? You might want to think about that, because many believe that it won’t be too long before we actually find out."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"How It Really Is"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/1/21: "MORE PROOF: The US Economy Is Collapsing FASTER"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/1/21:

"MORE PROOF: The US Economy Is Collapsing FASTER"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Greg Hunter, "Drought, Famine & Vax = Depopulation – Steve Quayle"

"Drought, Famine & Vax = Depopulation – Steve Quayle"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Renowned radio host, filmmaker and book author Steve Quayle says America is under attack from many sides. One is in our face, and many do not realize how dire the situation is in the western U.S. Quayle says the so-called 1,200 year Megadrought is being manufactured with geoengineering. The globalists are cutting off the water, and that means cutting food supplies. Quayle explains, “We have got record low water levels that are being broken. We have absolute power issues coming up. I am trying to tell people this: the days of taking water for granted are over.”

Quayle has a new film coming out at the end of September called “Megadrought: Vanishing Water.” The water shortage and extreme drought is all fitting into the Great Reset. Quayle explains, “He who controls the head waters controls life. This is why you are going to begin to see water wars. In this film, we are dealing with global shortages of water and not just the U.S. The U.S. is the most pronounced drought. This issue is seen globally and I believe part of the Great Reset. It’s about trying to get people controlled down to 1,500 calories a day. Isn’t it interesting, the UN eats filet mignon, and they are telling you and me to get used to eating insect protein. The idea is controlling the food, and if you control food, you control life. 

I am being told that when the water crisis gets acute enough on the West Coast, California, Washington, and Nevada will have border lockdowns. What is a border lockdown? Any state that has water does not want to be rushed with 20 or 40 million people, and that’s what they are talking about.” Quayle says, “The big reservoirs in the western U.S. are down more than 60%, and there is no way to fill them back up quickly.”

It’s not just the USA conducting weather warfare. Quayle says, “It’s not just the U.S. Air Force. The Russians are doing it. The Chinese are doing it. These are weather wars. Everybody is manipulating weather against everybody. Look at the rains in China.”

Quayle says the Megadrought will all end up as a food shortage or worse. Quayle says, “Drought them out or starve them out. Drought equals famine.” Quayle predicts, “We are going to have the biggest mass migration out of the western U.S. that we have ever seen.”

When will the public wake up to how bad the Megadrought situation really is? Quayle says, “My sources are telling me the drought problems are going to get so acute by November of 2021, there will be no denial. This is warfare against the American people... drought, famine, ‘vax-sassination’ all add up to depopulation. John Deagel predicted there would be only 100 million people in the USA by 2025. We are undergoing an attempted communist takeover and take down. When Stalin came to power, he starved the Ukrainians and five million people died. So, starvation is a weapon of the globalists and elitists of the New World Order.”

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks to radio host, filmmaker and top selling author Steve Quayle as he talks about his upcoming film “Megadrought: Vanishing Water.” 9/1/21 (There is much more in the 58 minute interview.)

- https://rumble.com/

“Banks Will Seize Your Money During Crisis; Families About To Be Homeless”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 8/31/21:

“Banks Will Seize Your Money During Crisis; 

Families About To Be Homeless”

Dan, iAllegedly, PM 8/31/21: "Huge Changes are Coming to the Economy in September - I’m Back!"

"Huge Changes are Coming to the Economy in September - I’m Back!"

"There are huge changes are coming to the Economy. The rent moratorium is finally over. There is no more pandemic unemployment. Inflation is that a 30 year high and there are a tremendous amount of people still in forbearance."

"Home Price Bubble Climbing Faster Than The Mortgage Bubble: Prepare Yourself For Housing Crash"

Full screen recommended.

"Home Price Bubble Climbing Faster Than The Mortgage Bubble: 

Prepare Yourself For Housing Crash"

by Epic Economist

"The housing market euphoria seems to have gone too far and now it is flashing a danger signal, indicating that inflated home prices are at risk of facing a sharp crash. The unprecedented housing market frenzy of 2021 set one record after the other, with, of course, the help of artificially suppressed interest rates, historically low inventory levels, and the mass exodus trend in which millions of people fled away from urban centers looking for suburban and rural areas. In one year, home prices skyrocketed by nearly 17 percent, according to the national Case-Shiller index, and are now 38.1% above their 2006 peak.

The relentless price growth turned homes 25% more overvalued than residential rents, approximately 50% above normalized levels when factoring in inflation, and over 25% more overvalued than income measures like the employment cost index, according to data compiled by David Rosenberg, the chief economist and strategist at Rosenberg Research. The strategist said that a "Black Swan" event will likely lead us to a housing bubble burst. "The ‘Black Swan’ is the inevitable collapse in U.S. home prices -- they are in the stratosphere benchmarked against all the fundamental factors that drive valuations," wrote Rosenberg. This means that a real estate bubble burst is looming.

A fresh study released by Equipment Radar exposed that US home prices have surpassed the 2005-2006 housing bubble, which was followed by the catastrophic 2007-2010 subprime mortgage crisis. Although fundamentals are different today than during the previous housing bubble, the risk of a sharp drop in prices is once again here. “U.S. home prices have risen rapidly over the past 12 months due to a variety of factors including low-interest rates, shortage of available housing, and a robust economy following government fiscal stimulus,” explains the Equipment Radar report.

Another factor impacting home prices highlighted in the study is the cost of building supplies and lumber. “Input costs are rising and inflation is back – this is no secret if you visit a grocery or hardware store on a regular basis. Companies are seeing their input prices increase too, and for many, it is a much greater degree,” it says. The report concludes that the recent home price surges could be “stickier than the 2005/2006 cycle due to higher building costs and low inventory of homes available for sale".

Meanwhile, the fierce competition means that many properties are selling at prices significantly higher than their original listing price, which of course gives the upper hand to wealthy investors and firms as opposed to first-time buyers and lower-income families. For instance, about ten years ago, an average house in Columbus, Ohio would sit on the market for about 100 days before being sold. Now, a similar property sells in less than 10 days. In Austin, Texas, median home prices surged 40 percent year on year, according to online real estate brokerage Redfin. In Phoenix, Arizona, prices jumped by 30 percent, while in Detroit, Michigan, they skyrocketed by 56 percent. At this point, the house price spiral is feeding into the rental market and pushing rent prices to historic highs.

All of this illustrates how the housing boom is rapidly evolving into a housing crisis. That's why the investor Peter Boockvar is sounding the alarm on a housing price bubble brought on by the Federal Reserve’s monetary policies over the past year. Boockvar alerts that first-time homebuyers are the most vulnerable to facing dramatic losses. “I feel bad for the people who bought homes over the past year because they’re the ones that paid the very elevated prices,” said the chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group during an interview with CNBC. He argues that those who put down 5% amid historically low mortgage rates will suffer tremendous losses if home prices crash even as slightly as 10 percent. He believes that all of these imbalances are clear evidence the air has started leaking out of the housing bubble.

At this stage, the affordability crisis is getting so serious that mortgage applications to purchase a home have dropped for several weeks and declined by 19% year over year in the week ending August 13. Most Americans simply cannot afford to purchase a home anymore. And as the housing price bubble expands, the threat of a massive burst comes closer. History repeats itself and everything that goes up must come down at some point. The trick is this time around, housing is just one of the many asset bubbles inflated by the Fed's policies, and when a reckoning arrives - which can be any time now - the entire financial sector will face a meltdown never before seen in world history."

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Mecano, "Hijo de la Luna"

Mecano, "Hijo de la Luna"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The constellation of Orion holds much more than three stars in a row. A deep exposure shows everything from dark nebula to star clusters, all embedded in an extended patch of gaseous wisps in the greater Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The brightest three stars on the far left are indeed the famous three stars that make up the belt of Orion. Just below Alnitak, the lowest of the three belt stars, is the Flame Nebula, glowing with excited hydrogen gas and immersed in filaments of dark brown dust.

Below the frame center and just to the right of Alnitak lies the Horsehead Nebula, a dark indentation of dense dust that has perhaps the most recognized nebular shapes on the sky. On the upper right lies M42, the Orion Nebula, an energetic caldron of tumultuous gas, visible to the unaided eye, that is giving birth to a new open cluster of stars. Immediately to the left of M42 is a prominent bluish reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man that houses many bright blue stars. The above image, a digitally stitched composite taken over several nights, covers an area with objects that are roughly 1,500 light years away and spans about 75 light years.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120212.html

The Poet: Edward Hirsch, "I Was Never Able To Pray"

"I Was Never Able To Pray"

"Wheel me down to the shore

where the lighthouse was abandoned

and the moon tolls in the rafters.

Let me hear the wind paging through the trees,

and see the stars flaring out, one by one,

like the forgotten faces of the dead.

I was never able to pray,

but let me inscribe my name

in the book of waves,

and then stare into the dome

of a sky that never ends,

and see my voice sail into the night."

- Edward Hirsch

"Vaccine Voodoo"

"Vaccine Voodoo"

by Jim Rickards

"Many everyday Americans probably believe that the COVID vaccines will keep them from getting COVID. That’s not true and never has been true. The vaccines do not prevent you from being infected with the COVID virus. They do not keep you from spreading the COVID virus. There have been many cases of so-called “breakthrough” infections where double-vaxxed citizens get COVID anyway. That’s not uncommon. There’s even new evidence that double-vaxxed individuals who get COVID will build up huge viral loads in their noses and sinuses, causing them to become super-spreaders and infect others.

Do the vaccines do anything? Yes, they are effective at reducing severe symptoms of COVID. They also reduce the death rate among those who get infected. That’s advantageous for the most vulnerable, including those over 70 years old and those suffering from obesity, emphysema, diabetes and other conditions closely associated with fatalities due to COVID. That said, there’s almost no reason for children, teenagers and otherwise healthy individuals in their 20s or even 30s to take the vaccine. Among all individuals, vaccinated and unvaccinated, the global survival rate is 99.2%. Among those under 70, the survival rate is 99.97%. The survival rate for children is 99.995%.

The Israel Conundrum: The data indicate that the most vaccinated countries have the most cases and deaths per million people, while the least vaccinated countries have the fewest cases and deaths per million people.

Israel is providing a useful case study in the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of vaccines. Israel is one of the most heavily vaxxed countries in the world, with over 60% of the population fully vaccinated and almost 100% of the elderly. But now Israel is experiencing a massive increase in infections, including cases among the fully vaxxed. The government has also determined that the vaccines wear off after six months or less and is recommending a third shot for everyone. The problem, of course, is that the third dose will wear off too, so a fourth, fifth or sixth dose will be needed.

And with every new dose comes a new risk of dangerous side effects, including the small but real possibility of death. The vaccinated will be getting boosters for the rest of their lives, and the virus still won’t go away.

How Many Lives Could Have Been Saved? Meanwhile, effective treatments, including ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamin D, zinc and other inexpensive measures, are being suppressed by the medical establishment. How many people died because they were denied access to these therapies, especially early on in the disease cycle when treatment is more effective? It’s impossible to say, but they could potentially run into the hundreds of thousands.

A new study by the U.K.’s National Health Service and a Canadian biotech company revealed that a nitric oxide nasal spray slashed SARS-CoV-2 viral load by 95% within 24 hours and 99% within 72 hours. If further trials pan out, early treatment with a similar cheap therapeutic could cut serious cases down to almost nothing. But it doesn’t matter. The medical establishment will continue pushing the narrative that only universal vaccination will stop the virus.

Media Spreading Panic: The media continue to hyperventilate about “cases” but ignore the fact that death rates have declined since January. When one accounts for the 38 million Americans who have survived COVID and already have antibodies, then herd immunity is already here. Data indicate that people who had COVID between January and February of 2021 and recovered have 13 times more immunity to the Delta variant than vaccines provide.

We’re at the stage where we can learn to live with COVID as we do with many other endemic diseases such as the seasonal flu. There’s no reason for fear. But the public health authorities insist that these people with natural immunity must also be vaccinated. It’s not “science.”

The zero-COVID policies many governments have pursued are completely unrealistic. The virus goes where it wants. The only real solutions are patience, herd immunity and effective therapies. The time has come to stop living in fear and start treating COVID as an endemic disease that will be with us for a long time, like the seasonal flu or diabetes. Unfortunately, government authorities continue to insist they can control the situation with orders and mandates.

Lockdowns Didn’t Work Before. Why Would They Work Now? But the evidence is clear that masks don’t work and lockdowns don’t work (but they do destroy economies - most lost sales were permanent losses, not temporary losses). Lockdowns don’t work to stop the spread of the virus because they keep people indoors where the virus can spread more easily.

Outdoor activity is essential for fresh air, mental and physical health and exercise. People will find a way to gather and interact even with lockdown rules. This means that lockdowns impose all of the economic costs with few of the supposed public health benefits. This was recognized in a paper in 2006 by D.A. Henderson, the greatest virologist and epidemiologist of the 20th century who led the successful effort to eradicate smallpox and won the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. He said lockdowns don’t work and provided detailed reasons why. Unfortunately, his award-winning work was ignored by politicians eager to appear to be doing something.

Biden Repeats Trump’s Mistake: Health officials should never have been put in charge of the economy. That was a huge mistake by Trump, and it’s been made worse by Biden. Immunologists saw some benefits from lockdowns, but these would have happened anyway because each viral outbreak runs a predictable eight–10-week course. What the experts ignored were the costs in terms of deaths from suicide, excessive alcohol consumption, drug abuse, domestic violence, depression, anxiety and other dysfunctional behaviors.

The benefits of public health policy were minimal, but the economic, social and psychological costs were great and are still being paid. Meanwhile, the push for universal vaccination continues, despite the evidence that it’s not nearly as effective and necessary as the government claimed.

Society is rapidly turning into a two-tier culture of the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. On Wall Street, where vaccination rates are as high as 90% in some firms, the unvaccinated are being treated like lepers. One investment banker said, “If you’re someone who is not vaccinated on Wall Street, you’re considered a loser.” Even firms that do not require full vaccination to return to work are forcing the unvaccinated to undergo weekly testing, sit apart from colleagues and wear masks while others are maskless.

Vaccine Voodoo: These rules are stupid, what might be called Vaccine Voodoo. Again, vaccination doesn’t stop infection. It doesn't stop the spread. A fully vaccinated person can catch COVID and spread it to others. The unvaccinated have as much to fear in terms of catching the disease from the vaccinated as the other way around.

There are ample reasons not to receive the vaccination, including being among the 38 million Americans who have recovered from COVID and have stronger antibody protection than the vaccinated. But they’re being treated like lepers too. This vaccination discrimination will do nothing to slow the spread of the disease, but it will do a lot to tear society apart. Investors can properly understand vaccination discrimination as one more drag on productivity and economic growth. But governments will keep imposing worthless mandates, and economies will continue on a trajectory of slow growth."

- dailyreckoning.com

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Related:

"Unthinkable Thoughts"

The Daily "Near You?"

Torrance, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Long Dark"

"The Long Dark"

by Chris Floyd

"We are in the Long Dark now. Both hope and despair are the enemies of our survival. We must live in the awareness that we might not see the light come back, without ceasing to work - with empathy, anger and knowledge - for its return.

We must be here, in the moment, experiencing its fullness (whatever its horrors or joys), yet be elsewhere, removed from the madness pouring in from every side, the avalanche of degradation. We must be here, now, but also in a future we can’t see or even imagine.

We must see that we are lost, with no clear way forward, no sureties or verities to cling to, no roots to anchor us, no structures within or without that will always keep their coalescence in the chaotic, surging flow.

We must live in discrete moments of illumination and connection, pearls hung on an almost invisible string winding through the darkness. Striving, always striving, but not expecting; striving without hope, without despair, without any certainty at all as to the outcome, good or bad.

These are the conditions of the Long Dark, this is what we have to work with, this is where we find ourselves in the brief time we have in this vast, indifferent, astounding universe. As I once wrote long ago, quoting the old hymn: “Work, for the night is coming.”

So do we counsel fatalism, a dark, defeated surrender, a retreat into bitter, curdled quietude? Not a whit. We advocate action, positive action, unstinting action, doing the only thing that human beings can do, ever: Try this, try that, try something else again; discard those approaches that don't work, that wreak havoc, that breed death and cruelty; fight against everything that would draw us down again into our own mud; expect no quarter, no lasting comfort, no true security; offer no last word, no eternal truth, but just keep stumbling, falling, careening, backsliding, crawling toward the broken light.

And what is this "broken light"? Nothing more than a metaphor for the patches of understanding – awareness, attention, knowledge, connection – that break through our darkness and stupidity for a moment now and then. A light always fractured, under threat, shifting, found then lost again, always lost. For we are creatures steeped in imperfection, in breakage and mutation, tossed up – very briefly – from the boiling, chaotic crucible of Being, itself a ragged work in progress toward unknown ends, or rather, toward no particular end at all. Why should there be an "answer" in such a reality?

What matters is what works – what pulls us from our own darkness as far as possible, for as long as possible. Yet the truth remains that "what works" is always and forever only provisional – what works now, here, might not work there, then. What saves our soul today might make us sick tomorrow.

Thus all we can do is to keep looking, working, trying to clear a little more space for the light, to let it shine on our passions and our confusions, our anger and our hopes, informing and refining them, so that we can see each other better, for a moment – until death shutters all seeing forever."

- http://www.chris-floyd.com/home/

"No Room For Cowards..."

“Life has no victims. There are no victims in this life. No one has the right to point fingers at his/her past and blame it for what he/she is today. We do not have the right to point our finger at someone else and blame that person for how we treat others, today. Don’t hide in the corner, pointing fingers at your past. Don’t sit under the table, talking about someone who has hurt you. Instead, stand up and face your past! Face your fears! Face your pain! And stomach it all! You may have to do so kicking and screaming and throwing fits and crying – but by all means – face it! This life makes no room for cowards.”

- C. Joybell C.

Gerald Celente, "BE READY: Market Distortions are About to Get Much Worse"

Full screen recommended.

STRONG LANGUAGE ALERT

Gerald Celente, PM 8/31/21:

"BE READY: Market Distortions are About to Get Much Worse"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsresearch.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Let’s Drink to the Hard-Working People"

Full screen recommended.

"Let’s Drink to the Hard-Working People"

By Bill Bonner

"Raise your glass to the hard-working people,

Let’s drink to the uncounted heads.

Let’s think of the wavering millions

Who need leading but get gamblers instead.

Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter,

His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows,

And a parade of the gray-suited grafters

A choice of cancer or polio..."

– "Salt of the Earth", The Rolling Stones

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "So many jackasses. So little time. We don’t know which one to laugh at first. Labor Day is coming up. So let us continue honoring the laboring man… the salt of the Earth… the rag-taggy people, who make the lattes and drive the trucks. Upon his sweaty brow, the gray-suited grifters press down their thorny claptrap. And upon his back, they place the whole burden of their goofy plans.

Federal Reserve top dog Jerome Powell is howling for something he calls “maximum employment:” "We have much ground to cover to reach maximum employment, and time will tell whether we have reached 2% inflation on a sustainable basis." He thinks everybody should be schlepping or toting, bussing… or hod-carrying, helping us dig our way out of the hole he has dug for us. He believes his policies are the key to getting us all on the job.

Wrong Reasons: And then, there’s AOC, who thinks Powell should be replaced… for all the wrong reasons, of course. She thinks she knows what laboring people should be laboring at. MarketWatch reports: "A group of progressive House Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, on Monday called for President Joe Biden to replace Fed Chairman Jerome Powell when his term expires in February. In a joint statement first reported by Politico, the lawmakers urged Biden “to re-imagine a Federal Reserve focused on eliminating climate risk and advancing racial and economic justice.”

We have no trouble imagining a Federal Reserve focused on “eliminating climate risk” (whatever that means) and “advancing racial and economic justice” (whatever that is). But it gives us a shiver. These old guys and gals had one main duty – protecting the integrity of the U.S. dollar and its financial system. They made a total mess of it – with the country now up to its neck in debt… and headed into deeper water. Imagine the damage they could do if they were turned loose to improve the world’s weather… its race relations… or its “economic justice.”

Vicious Cycle: And continuing in this delusional direction, perhaps the wackiest of all comes from economists themselves. Business Insider reports: "It’s inequality that dragged interest rates lower, not the other way around, NBER researchers said Friday. […]" The Fed has taken flak for the [low interest rate] trend, with economists warning that near-zero rates worsen inequality. But what if that narrative is wrong, and the wealthy are behind rates’ steady decline instead of the Fed?

The conventional argument should be flipped on its head, according to a study published Friday by the National Bureau for Economic Research. Wealthy Americans’ booming income powered the decades-long decline in interest rates, economists Atif Mian, Ludwig Straub, and Amir Sufi wrote. That downtrend then lifted stocks and most recently powered the market’s rebound from 2020 lows. “It is a vicious cycle, and we are stuck in it,” Mian wrote in a Tuesday tweet. In other words, it may not be the Fed’s fault, which means it will be much harder to solve. Huh? Who paid for that “research?”

Problem Solved? The Fed has spent $7.5 billion every day for the last 18 months – $4 trillion in total – intentionally pushing down interest rates by buying bonds. That is, for every dollar the working stiffs created in the real economy (GDP growth), the Fed printed more than three dollars and fed it into the financial industry. The wavering millions saved their pennies. But they got nothing for their efforts. After inflation, they lost money on their savings accounts.

And how long does this trio – Mian, Straub, and Sufi – think real interest rates would stay below zero if the Fed announced an end to its price-fixing, money-printing, market-meddling policies? Ten seconds? Two minutes? In a flash, stocks would crash and about $30 trillion of fantasy stock market wealth would disappear. The “inequality” problem – solved. The rich would be a lot less rich; the salt of the Earth would be, relatively, richer.

And with no open spigot at the Fed, all of a sudden, millions of people would be desperate for money. They would have to line up at the only tap left to them – the real savings of real people, not the fake money of the Fed. Interest rates would go “to the moon.” It would be like a scene at Kabul airport. Chaos. Confusion. With investors desperately trying to exit their risky speculations… and no buyers on the other side to take them out.

Lazy Youth: Returning to Mr. Powell… As we saw yesterday, labor force participation has been going down for 20 years. Apparently, there are a lot of people who aren’t much interested in participating in the workaday world. But why is that any of Powell’s concern?

(We recall, mischievously, that the “maximum employment” record for modern times is probably held by Nazi Germany. There were no idle hands in that devil’s workshop! Almost everybody was required to contribute to the war effort… including millions of Poles, French, and Jews held in slave-like conditions.) In today’s world, people seem to be schlepping less than ever before. And the youngest members of the proletariat seem to like labor the least. More to come…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 8/31/21"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/31/21:

"Watch For An Inflation Surge And A Big Spike With Crude Oil"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/31/21:

"THE MELTDOWN CONTINUES: Business Activity Drops, 

Consumer Confidence Craters, Home Prices SURGE"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Hurricane Ida Leaves Nearly 750,000 In The Dark In New Orleans As Power Transmission Tower Collapses"

Full screen recommended.

"Hurricane Ida Leaves Nearly 750,000 In The Dark 

In New Orleans As Power Transmission Tower Collapses"

by Epic Economist

"The slow-moving Hurricane Ida has left hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents without power due to "catastrophic transmission damage," according to Entergy New Orleans. All of New Orleans is currently dark and it could take weeks for power services to be resumed. The ravaging storm took down all eight transmission lines of the area, according to spokesman Brandon Scardigli in an emailed statement. As a result, that created a massive load imbalance that "knocked all power generation in the region offline," Scardigli said. Entergy announced that it is working to "assess a path forward to restore power to those who can take it" - apparently meaning those who hadn't lost electricity for other reasons during the storm - but those repairs won't likely be completed any time soon due to the huge power demand and the unprecedented damages faced by power lines. At this point, the only power in the city is coming from generators, Homeland Security said.

In a repeat of the scenes seen in the 2008 Hurricane Gustav - when 13 of the 14 Entergy's transmission lines into the city failed, leaving hundreds of thousands of homes in the dark - the disaster provoked by Hurricane Ida has left more than 614,000 Entergy customers in Louisiana without power as of Sunday evening at 7 p.m., and by 7:26 p.m, almost 750,000 homes and businesses were without power across the state, reported Poweroutage.us, a company which tracks utility outages. The blackouts were mainly concentrated in the southeastern corner of the state where Ida made its devastating U.S. landfall. Entergy revealed in a statement that it was forced to shut down its 1,152-megawatt Waterford nuclear plant about 25 miles west of New Orleans and it will have to keep it offline until local grid damages are assessed later this week. “Customers in the hardest-hit areas should plan for the possibility of experiencing extended power outages,” the company warned yesterday on Twitter.

Yesterday, Hurricane Ida made landfall twice. First at around noon at Port Fourchon, and then at 2 p.m. near Galliano, where it turned into a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 150 miles per hour. Even though the storm weakened slightly from that point on, moving ashore with winds of 120 miles per hour, it developed a double eyewall, increasing the threat of severe flooding, as explained by Dr. Levi Cowan, Ph.D. in meteorology and Senior Scientist at the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. "Development of a double eyewall means that the core wind field of Ida is broader - not a great development to see just before landfall. The storm has also begun to slow down, which was expected, but begins to reveal just how big a flooding threat Ida is," he tweeted. The National Hurricane Center reported that the eye of the storm was about 25 miles southwest of New Orleans and 55 miles southeast of Baton Rouge, and started to moving northwest last night.

In addition to ripping through the city, the storm is expected to have a major impact on oil refineries, chemical plants, and ports. Consequently, as Sitka Pacific advisor Mike Shedlock noted, that will result in serious disruptions for oil production. "Ida's projected path has made it a threat to the vast oil refining and petrochemical complex situated along the U.S. Gulf Coast, though the storm's more easterly track Friday suggested it would miss the heart of those operations in Texas and along the Texas-Louisiana border," he wrote on his blog Mish Talk.

With winds strong enough to rip roofs from houses, snapping trees and power poles, and blackouts that can be extended for up to 4 weeks, Hurricane Ida caused an estimated loss of more than $40 billion in a single day and more losses based on its projected path are going to be assessed this week. When it made landfall, Ida registered stronger winds than Hurricane Katrina. Only two other storms in history have hit Louisiana with winds this powerful, Last Island Hurricane in 1856 and Hurricane Laura in 2020.

With roughly 750,000 residents now bracing for widespread power outages that could last for almost a month, consumer demand for electricity is projected to shift to gas, which could push gas prices up just as seen during the Texas storms in February - when millions of Texans were left without power amid one of the coldest winters on record. Back then, people turned to gas so that they could turn on their heating devices, and prices skyrocketed by nearly 46 percent. Our country has been facing one painful disaster after the other, and as the climate crisis has started to dramatically worsen, unfortunately, this seems to be just the beginning."

- https://www.youtube.com/

“Power Outages - Are You Prepared? Homebuyer Remorse; Leaving California”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 8/30/21:

“Power Outages - Are You Prepared? 

Homebuyer Remorse; Leaving California”

Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/30/21: "Former Fed. President Warns Of IMMINENT Financial Crisis"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/30/21:

"Former Fed. President Warns Of IMMINENT Financial Crisis"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Balance (Galaxies)"

Full screen recommended.

Liquid Mind, "Balance (Galaxies)"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Galaxies don't normally look like this. NGC 6745 actually shows the results of two galaxies that have been colliding for only hundreds of millions of years. Just off the above digitally sharpened photograph to the lower right is the smaller galaxy, moving away. The larger galaxy, pictured above, used to be a spiral galaxy but now is damaged and appears peculiar. Gravity has distorted the shapes of the galaxies.

Although it is likely that no stars in the two galaxies directly collided, the gas, dust, and ambient magnetic fields do interact directly. In fact, a knot of gas pulled off the larger galaxy on the lower right has now begun to form stars. NGC 6745 spans about 80 thousand light-years across and is located about 200 million light-years away."

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120930.html

The Poet: James Broughton, "Easter Exultet"