Wednesday, September 22, 2021

"Conquered by a Fake Pandemic, We Can Kiss America Good-bye"

"Conquered by a Fake Pandemic,
 We Can Kiss America Good-bye"
by Paul Craig Roberts

"How obvious does it have to be before even insouciant Americans realize that there is something seriously wrong about the Covid vaccination program? One would think we are already past that point even for the mentally-challenged. Consider the many things we now know that make it clear that the vaccination program is a horrendous mistake.

We know that the vaccine does not protect. Dr. Fauci himself, a leading proponent of the vaccination program and Chief Shill for Big Pharma, admits this. This is why he says the double-vaccinated should wear masks and should have booster shots. If the vaccine protects a person from Covid, why do vaccinated people need to wear masks and have more vaccine shots? In Israel the Health Minister is already advocating a second booster shot which makes four jabs of the Pfizer “vaccine,” and the alleged “pandemic” is 3 months short of being 2 years old. Pfizer itself now admits that its vaccine looses its effectiveness over time. According to Fauci it is only good for 8 months, and you can expect to see that period grow smaller.

From the under-reported databases in the US, UK, and EU of adverse vaccine reactions to the mRNA “vaccines,” we know that there have been tens of thousands of deaths and millions of injuries associated with the vaccine. The databases are official data, and medical personnel are fully aware that hospitals and doctors seldom, if ever, report adverse reactions to the Covid Vaccine, instead attributing the deaths and illnesses from the “vaccine” to Covid itself. It is only some individuals who report the adverse reactions. This is why experts have concluded that only between 1% and 10% of adverse vaccine reactions are reported. For some age groups—especially children and the young— the mRNA “vaccine” has proven to be more dangerous than Covid.

We also know that distinguished scientists and medical practitioners have concluded that the mRNA “vaccine” interacts with the Covid virus in a way that enables it to escape the immune response. The consequence is new variants.

We also know from the official statistics of highly vaccinated places, such as Israel (84%), Iceland (95)%, and Gibraltar (99%), that the mRNA “vaccine” makes the vaccinated more likely to catch Covid and become seriously ill than the unvaccinated. The hospitals in these places are full of vaccinated patients. Yet we continue to hear the propaganda broadcast of the “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” And evidence is mounting that the vaccinated can infect the unvaccinated.

On this website I have reported more than once these conclusions and provided links to the evidence. This powerful evidence from top-ranking scientists is kept out of the presstitute media. The CDC, NIH, FDA, AMA, WHO, hospital administrators and executives of large health care organizations, university and public school administrators, Democrat politicians, and employers all pretend not to know about the evidence that indicts the vaccination program and would easily convict the program of intentional murder if the case could be brought to court.

Instead hospitals are losing large chunks of their medical staffs who resign or are fired for refusing the vaccine. These are the nurses who have seen what the vaccine does to patients. Being up-close-informed, they prefer unemployment to vaccination. That should tell the hospital administrators and the dumbshit public something, but it doesn’t. The media shoos away the protesting nurses as people who won’t do their duty to protect their patients and the public by getting vaccinated. Liberals especially get on their high horse about “refractory nurses” who refuse to protect their patients.

The scientists and medical practitioners who are raising alarms are so well-known that it is impossible that the CDC, FDA, NIH, AMA, and hospital and university administrators do not know of them. Not content to ignore the evidence, they intentionally lie to us. They lie that children are so in danger of Covid that they need to be forcefully vaccinated. They lie that unvaccinated people and people who have recovered from Covid and have natural immunity are dangerous to everyone else and must be excluded from school, work, restaurants, sports events, concerts, public transportation, travel to other countries, all to be enforced by Covid Passports. The passport itself is a lunatic idea considering the 8 months protection Dr. Fauci assigns to the “vaccine.” A passport that has to be renewed every 8 months is a bureaucratic nightmare.

They lie that children are so in danger that they must wear masks in school even though it is a known fact that the masks they wear are totally ineffectual in preventing transmission of the virus. The only mask that is effectual is the N95, and it is impossible for anyone, much less a school child, to wear a N95 mask all day. In some parts of the US laws have been passed that subject school teachers and administrators to prison sentences for not enforcing the mask mandate for school children. These draconian laws might also apply to parents who allow a child to go to school without a mask. 

In other words, total counterfactual insanity is the American Covid Policy. No one can respect public institutions that are so totally irresponsible that they ignore facts and base health policies on lies. In the United States “responsible public health agency” is an oxymoron.

From day one the Covid “pandemic” was totally orchestrated. China, faced with an outbreak of an unknown virus of unknown mortality and no known cure, resorted to draconian measures and locked down entire cities and areas. Scare stories proliferated and the presstitutes in the US ratcheted up the fear index. Dire predictions were made based on very few cases outside China. “Public health agencies” went to work to make the predictions come true. They achieved this with the PCR test which they intentionally ran at such high cycles that it produced 97% false positives. This is how the scary number of cases was orchestrated that struck fear into the population.

We were all going to die. This fear enabled the highly destructive lockdowns and mask requirements that accustomed people to the view that civil liberty was expendable in a time of “health crisis.” Most of the people who did die were people with co-morbidities. Some of them died from their co-morbidities; others died because they were not treated.

Even today 19 months later, hospitals still withhold effective treatment from Covid patients. There have been effective treatments available the entire time, but to acknowledge the fact would have foreclosed the mRNA “vaccine.” Normally it takes many years to get a vaccine approved. It has to go through many tests and steps. The mRNA “vaccines” were rushed into use under the provision for emergency use authorization. That authorization requires that there are no known cures.

Thus CDC, NIH, FDA, and WHO, allied as they are with Big Pharma, refused to acknowledge two safe and long-used drugs that are so safe that they are available for over-the-counter purchase in most countries - HCQ and Ivermectin - which are both Covid cures and Covid prevention. The Tokyo Medical Association has authorized all Japanese doctors to use Ivermectin as a Covid cure. In India Ivermectin was used in most provinces to stop Covid in its tracks. In African countries impacted by malaria HCQ is taken weekly as a preventative, and Covid cases are few. In African countries where River Blindness is a problem, Ivermectin is taken weekly or bi-weekly, and there are few Covid cases. This information has been withheld from the American and Western publics by the presstitue media. Both cures have been demonized by the American medical establishment and the scum presstitutes. Even today hospitals refuse to treat dying patients with these sure-fire cures. Moreover, either taken weekly would provide a hundred times more protection from Covid than the dangerous and ineffective mRNA “vaccines” and cost a small fraction of the amount spent on the Pfizer and other “vaccines.”

Clearly without any doubt one agenda served by the orchestrated “pandemic” and controlled narrative is the profits of Big Pharma, especially Pfizer.

Clearly without any doubt another agenda served by the orchestrated “pandemic” is authoritarian control over populations in democratic countries. Today Western peoples have lost the right to hold government accountable and instead are held accountable by government for not being vaccinated and wearing masks. The civil liberties achieved over centuries of struggle have been lost to an orchestrated pandemic.

The profit agenda and the control agenda are completely obvious. The question before us is: Is there a darker agenda? Are the conspiracy theories real? When you consider the intentional orchestration of a fearful pandemic, the intentional withholding of cures, the intentional vaccination with a substance that does not protect but does produce serious side effects and release new variants, it is reasonable to suspect that something is afoot beyond profit and control.

Bill Gates whose extraordinary fortune allows him entry anywhere has been going on for years about population control. It is highly suspected by top-ranked scientists that the spike protein in the mRNA “vaccine” accumulates in the ovaries and results in infertility. We now have several thousand cases of pregnant women losing babies to the “vaccine.”

We have the Nazi Klaus Schwab, creator and director of the World Economic Forum and author of The Great Reset who has been organizing, cultivating, and indoctrinating Western elites for decades that the New World Order should consist of elite rule, not democracy and constitutions that protect individuals. I was once invited to a Davos meeting, but they saw that they could not recruit me, and I have never been invited back.

Think how easily civil liberty, one of mankind’s greatest achievements, can be erased by creating a prestigious forum to which only the elite and their obedient intellectual servants are invited where they are told that they are the natural rulers and all they need in order to take power is a world crisis, or at least a Western crisis.

As a person who for my readers’ sake watches all I can closely, I can say that the glory of the Western world, the idea that merit, not birth, or any other accidental quality such as skin color or gender, is the basis of success is a dead idea. Today in the US, and as far as I can see throughout the Western world, merit is considered a white racist concept that justifies “white supremacy.” In the US, and I suspect everywhere in the Western world, merit systems have and are being replaced by other criteria for success, such as non-white skin color, non-straight sexual preference, new invented genders.

The United States of America now has a presidency that was stolen. It has an administration chosen on the basis of anti-white racial, anti-heterosexual sexual, and anti-male/female gender preferences. The Biden Regime is a government that in my grandparents day would have caused Americans to march on Washington, burn the city down, and kill everyone in it.

In America today the only few leaders are at the state level, and the illegitimate Biden regime has them in its sights. Republican Governor DeSantis of Florida was the first to rebel at the hospitals’ murder of Covid patients. DeSantis established clinics all over Florida to give patients monoclonal antibodies. DeSantis’ sensible approach spread to Texas and Alabama.

The Republican governors’ reward for saving lives was to have their supply of monoclonal antibodies cut 50% by the illegitimate, criminal, murderous Biden Regime. The Democrat regime cut the allocation of the cure to Republican governors. The utterly corrupt Biden regime justified the cut to Florida on Florida’s lack of a vaccination mandate. The White House claims that Florida is using too much of “limited supplies” of monoclonal antibodies because it doesn’t have a vaccine mandate. 

Why is the cure limited but not the ineffectual and dangerous “vaccine?” Governor DeSantis has appealed to GlaxoSmithKline to sell the state the Covid cure so that Florida can prevent the dangerous vaccine from destroying the Florida population and terminating civil liberty in Florida, which seems to be the intent of the corrupt and illegitimate Biden regime. 

The monoclonal antibodies were used to treat President Trump and cannot be prohibited by hospital protocols. DeSantis can give the OK to Ivermectin and HCQ but apparently has yet to find a way to impose this successful, safe treatment on hospitals which operate according to Big Pharma’s protocol which is backed up by CDC, NIH, and FDA.

DeSantis is also under attack for not permitting in Florida the mask mandates that are mandatory in Democrat states that have gone totally totalitarian. For now a Federal Court has ruled in DeSantis’ favor. But the Democrats who brought the case against Florida’s ban against mask mandates are hoping Biden will overrule Florida’s laws with a Federal edict or contrived court case. In other words, the Biden regime is determined and will use every power it can find or invent in order to prevent governors from protecting their state populations from Covid, from the dangerous mRNA vaccine, and from the tyranny of authoritarianism.

How much more proof do you need to comprehend that the Biden regime intends to destroy our health and our freedom? Are Americans capable of understanding the situation they are in? At least in Australia, Europe, and England they are in the streets protesting. In America the dumbsh*t sheeple are lining up for the Death Shot."
Related, must read!


Musical Interlude: Genesis, "Land of Confusion"

Genesis, "Land of Confusion"

"How It Really Is"

 

Must Watch! “Banks Could Seize Your Money Today; Major Entities Holding Evergrande Debt; FED Must Keep Buying”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/21/21:
“Banks Could Seize Your Money Today; Major Entities 
Holding Evergrande Debt; FED Must Keep Buying”

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

"Chaos And Panic At Chinese Stocks As Markets Finally Freak Out About Evergrande Default Contagion"

Full screen recommended.
"Chaos And Panic At Chinese Stocks As Markets 
Finally Freak Out About Evergrande Default Contagion"
by Epic Economist

"It has begun: The greatest financial meltdown in history is now underway. The collapse of one of China's biggest property developers, Evergrande, has triggered a stock market crash in Hong Kong and it is still threatening to spark a major default crisis that can derail the Chinese economy and spill over global markets, creating a cascade of systemic failures that will result in nothing less than a financial disaster of epic proportions. Chinese traders are getting out of the market while they still can. A major sell-off has started as investors grew increasingly more worried that Evergrande would default its gigantic loan debt. Just yesterday, the Hong Kong stock market crashed by another 13 percent and it is now on track to close at its lowest market cap ever, given that a bankruptcy of this proportion can wipe out hundreds of billions in equity.

Even worse, it can spark a default contagion that would put millions of Chinese companies at risk of bankruptcy just as well. And as more and more traders panic about the rapidly spreading contagion, other sectors that were normally immune to China's property woes are also facing significant drops. Financial analysts are alarmed that its default crisis will soon spread to the rest of the world. Last week, Chinese officials announced that major lenders should not expect repayment. That was already a sign that the company would start its default process. And today's silence has given further proof.

In a recent note, Goldman estimated that the potential impact of the residential and commercial real estate collapse in China's growth could be devastating not only for China but for the entire world. It could result in the sharpest GDP drop in decades. Goldman warned that if a default "occurred without clear ring-fencing of the spillovers to other parts of the economy", then the outcome would be much more threatening, with the Chinese GDP collapsing as much as 4.1 percent while housing activity plunges and financial conditions tighten.

Right now, the worsening of the crisis is depending on the acceleration of the current selloff while investors expect the government to unleash a trillion-dollar liquidity injection to ease the downfall. Moreover, while investors get more and more nervous about the financial strains of the Chinese real estate market, they also set off a crash on the cryptocurrency market, with bitcoin tumbling by more than 7 percent on Monday. As a huge wave of fear over a weaker Chinese economic growth sweeps through global markets, with investors just realizing how big are the consequences for its domestic peers and international commodity prices, contagion has begun to move beyond stocks and sent US equity futures below 4380.

Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 614 points, or 1.8%, recording its worst day of trading since July. Furthermore, Caterpillar and Goldman Sachs were the benchmark's biggest losers of the day, as investors closely watched the outlook for the Federal Reserve to start tapering on its bond purchasing program. At its lowest point of the day, the Dow fell 972 points. The Nasdaq also faced a decline and closed down 2.2%. Amongst the top three biggest losers were the Chinese companies Pinduoduo, Baidu, and JD.com. The S&P 500 plunged by 1.7%. It was one of the worst days of trading since May.

The entire financial system is being shaken to the core because what is happening in China right now will ultimately have profound repercussions across all of the world's major economies, including America. Given that global economic growth is directly linked with China's economic strength, and the country was the only major economy to expand last year, the prospect for a global economic rebound from last year's health-crisis-induced recession has been remarkably shrunk. According to the International Monetary Fund, China alone would contribute with over a fifth of the increase in the world's gross domestic product in the five years to 2026.

This means that we're effectively on the verge of the most devastating financial crisis in world history. The one experts have been warning about for months. All events are converging to what may be the simultaneous collapse of the Chinese and the U.S. economy. Needless to say, this will not end well. We're about to witness the biggest collective wealth loss ever recorded. As the Chinese stock market crash has just begun, it's only a matter of time before the monstrous U.S. stock market bubble finally bursts. Beware the risks. The point of no return is just at the corner."

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal: We're Losing Our Patience"

Full screen recommended.
STRONG Language Alert!
Gerald Celente,
"Trends Journal: We're Losing Our Patience"
"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."

Musical Interlude: Alan Parsons Project, "Eye In The Sky"

Full screen recommended.
Alan Parsons Project, "Eye In The Sky"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Is this giant orange ball about to roll down that tree-lined hill? No, because the giant orange ball is actually the Sun. Our Solar System's central star was captured rising beyond a hill on Earth twelve days ago complete with a delightfully detailed foreground. The Sun's disk showed five sunspots, quite a lot considering that during the solar minimum in solar activity of the past few years, most days showed no spots. A close look at the hill - Sierra del Cid in Perter, Spain - reveals not only silhouetted pine trees, but silhouetted people - by coincidence three brothers of the photographer. 
Click image for larger size.
The trees and brothers were about 3.5-kilometers away during the morning of the well-planned, single-exposure image. A dark filter muted the usually brilliant Sun and brought up great detail on the lower sunspots. Within a few minutes, the Sun rose far above the hill, while within a week, the sunspots rotated around the Sun, out of view. The captured scene, however, is now frozen in time for all to enjoy."

"And Sometimes..."

 

"The Truth Virus: The Most Dangerous Virus in the World"

"The Truth Virus:
The Most Dangerous Virus in the World"
by Dog Poet

"I’ve got a virus. It doesn’t have a common name because it isn’t a common virus. It’s difficult to catch this virus because there are only so many ways for it to enter your system. You can catch it as a result of extreme trauma which results in all of your defenses being shut down. This includes all subconscious resistance and all systemic defenses. You can catch it as a result of long term abuse. This includes abuse visited upon you or abuse you visit on yourself. Often this abuse comes about because the virus is already looking for a foothold and it will attract one of these two kinds of abuse. You can catch it through diligent and repeated efforts to catch it, in an environment of quietude, created by a relentless persistence of the mind to cease from the production of thought. There are a few other ways.

Once you’ve got this virus there’s no cure for it. Every cell in your body is going to be replaced and the world will gradually - and sometimes not so gradually - take on the appearance of an insane asylum, while also becoming remarkably predictable. People think insanity is unpredictable but that’s just one of the illusions that are part of the ordinary mindset of the collectively insane.

People who have this virus can understand one another without having to say anything at all and if they should speak they are also understood by people who are vulnerable to this virus. This is one of the ways that the virus spreads. The impact of the virus speaking induces trauma that naturally moves toward the extreme. People who do not have the virus - and who are not susceptible to catching it - will not understand a single word being said. It will make them uncomfortable and sometimes it will make them angry but at no time will it be understood.

It doesn’t really matter whether you can see a doctor of your choice or not and have some amount of it paid for. It isn’t going to have any positive effect on your health. Health is the result of a few basic things and one of them is youth. The other things are diet and ones mental and emotional state. An awareness of ones relationship to all of these leads to making the right decisions about how one lives their life. A conscious awareness of diet has a profound effect on one’s well being. One’s mental and emotional states also play significant roles. One needs only to study how many stress-related diseases there are to understand this. If you factor bad diet into unbalanced mental and emotional states you’ve got a problem no doctor can deal with, especially if your medical system is of the allopathic variety.

The people who decide what doctors can and cannot do and what doctors can and cannot tell you are permanent bed-partners with various corporations for whom good health is a bad thing. These are the pharmaceutical concerns; the AMA, the hospital equipment industry and related suppliers of related products. These corporations have another relationship with the various food industries in the sense that they will not write or permit policy that impinges on major enterprises that bring you processed foods, fast foods, mystery meats, candy and soft drinks and whatever else hides under that umbrella. What this means is that, according to the capitalist mentality that rules this society, it is possible; it has to be possible and it damn well will be possible to eat anything you want, avoid exercise and generally break any and every rule of intelligent behavior and if there’s a problem they will either cut it out of you or suppress the symptoms until they have to cut it out of you.

Because the will of corporations is the rule of the land, there will be no change in the profit line for participating corporations. What will change will be the language that the non-change is presented in. To see into the black heart of the system in charge of American life you have only to look into the prison industry where 5% of the American public and 25% of the world’s prison population are incarcerated in American prisons. Why is this? It’s a business. Is it coincidence that America uses 60% of the world’s resources as well?

The unstated objective of American society is that a small percentage of its members shall possess the greatest amount of wealth at the expense of everyone else and will then be lauded for their efforts to assist the less fortunate where no such efforts exist. Such a system cannot survive and will not survive and is presently at the state where a number of shell games are being used to give the impression that the system is doing fine (nicely recovering from a bad scare) and going to get better as it approaches the lip of a high cliff. As things begin to fall from the cliff, you will see charts and graphs appear that indicate the true state and direction of the culture and economy but they will probably be holding these charts and graphs upside down.

I see these things and many other things because I have this virus. Others have this virus too and many more are on the verge of infection. The biggest concern of the TPTB is the proliferation of this virus. Their concern about all other viruses, which they manufactured to begin with, is just Slim Shady dining at the Red Herring Restaurant.

With this virus I can see that the appetites and desires being milked by corporations in order to promote and sell their products leads directly to aberrant behavior which leads to the prison industry for those who are not making the laws that route the unfortunate toward the prison or the grave with that long interlude of enslavement at the looping track of life where they chase the uncatchable dream rabbit that is already steaming in the pot of their betters.

With this virus I can look directly at the lies of politicians and religious leaders and hear the truth that spotlights the pies around the corner and their relationship to the pies in the sky which are moving on conveyor belts behind unbreakable Plexiglas. I can see that there are no pies because the pies are only video projections of pies bounced off of a series of mirrors. I can see the people who do no have the virus and I can see the world they are looking at and it turns out that this world is also just a projection bouncing off of mirrors and one of those mirrors is their minds. These projections then activate the furnace in the visceral brain which causes those without the virus to dance like millions of chickens on a hot griddle that somehow got the impression that they are auditioning for American Idol.

It is not possible to create a society, based on the principles that some of us have read and most of us have heard about, when corporations are the ruling authority of the land, because the intent of a corporation is diametrically opposed to the principles that some of us have read and most of us have heard about. You can’t make Beef Stroganoff out of pork rinds and Velveeta but you can convince people that that is what they are eating and that is the point.

There’s a debate that has been going around since Cain brained Abel and that debate centers on whether it is better to have this virus or some form of all the other viruses. The awareness that comes with having this virus can lead to the rack, the auto da fe and other less pleasant locations. Having the other viruses can lead to being a hamster or some part of a compost pile and a fire burns there as well. They can lead to being cannon fodder and the merciless hands of those who practice a form of medicine that has little to do with the stated intentions of the art. The hands of these practitioners are often more dangerous than the problem that brought you there.

Most people spend more than ninety percent of everything they have saved in their lives in the last year of their life on an industry whose purpose is exactly for that reason.

This virus of mine - and perhaps you have it too - is not an easy burden to bear. You can never pull the covers over your head again. You know there’s no monster in the closet but you also know where the real monsters dwell. You are doomed to an unending quarantine even as you move among your fellows. One thing you do acquire as a result of this virus is compassion and, as Lao Tzu said long ago, “Compassion is a weapon from the sky against being dead.” Realization may not be all the things we imagine it to be, but it is preferable to the restless sleep of nightmares wielded by the whip hand of psychopaths."
Full screen recommended.
"They Live", Seeing The Truth

"For Nothing Is Fixed..."

"For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
- James Baldwin

"Inflation is a Tax - Get Less While You Pay More"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 9/21/21:
"Inflation is a Tax - Get Less While You Pay More"
"None of us can avoid inflation right now. No matter how you look at it inflation is attacks. It affects the poor the most. We are getting less while we are paying more. Today I am at the Great Park in Irvine."

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/21/21: "What Is Going On Now Is Madness! Very Important Updates"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Your guide, Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/21/21:
"What Is Going On Now Is Madness! Very Important Updates"

The Daily "Near You?"

Quinlan, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"There Is Always The Hope..."

“What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one’s ribs get re-broken again.”
- Inga Muscio

"No So Evergrande After All"

"No So Evergrande After All"
By Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "We’re following a couple of different stories this morning. We tried to find a common storyline… but gave up. So we’ll report them separately. First, yesterday, we were reminded that there is no such thing as “Evergrande.” There is sometimes grande… occasionally not bad… and once-in-a-while fat and sassy. But Evergrande, it ain’t.

At one point yesterday afternoon, the Dow was down about 950 points. The Wall Street Journal somehow managed to channel the anxiety of traders with this intriguing headline: "Stock Market Falls on Chinese Property Fears." How sweet. U.S. investors are so sympathetic! They ended the day down 614 points (1.8%) – out of sympathy for the poor Chinese. Of course, the problem the Chinese have is the same problem Americans have – too much debt. And the federales (at least in the U.S.; as for China, we don’t know) have only one remedy: more debt.

A Debt End Run: The gist of the Evergrande story is that property development has been one of the places the Chinese have “invested” a lot of money over the last two decades. They built entire “ghost cities” in China – with thousands of apartments ready for renters who never came. The biggest single owner/investor was a company called Evergrande, which now carries $300 billion in debt. Trouble is, it’s hard for a landlord to pay down debt when his units don’t sell or rent. And now, word on the street is that Evergrande is broke. Naturally, investors are nervous. Sometimes, all it takes is one high-profile collapse to undermine the whole “Evergrande” fantasy.

You Get What You Pay For: Our second item is a reprise of yesterday’s Diary theme. As we reported, 1 out of every 500 Americans has supposedly succumbed to COVID-19. We say “supposedly” because there are no “facts” in the COVID story. There are only guesses and arguments – even about the cause of death.

Here’s one “fact”: It is more profitable for a hospital to serve a COVID-19 patient than a pneumonia patient. The Kaiser Family Foundation studied hospital admissions and reported: "…the “average Medicare payment for respiratory infections and inflammations with major comorbidities or complications in 2017 … was $13,297. For more severe hospitalizations, we use the average Medicare payment for a respiratory system diagnosis with ventilator support for greater than 96 hours, which was $40,218.”

We assume that in 2020 and 2021, “severe hospitalizations” – and dollars to the medical industry – increased. “You get what you pay for,” are the immortal words of economist Milton Friedman. And since March 2020, the feds have been paying for COVID-19 by reimbursing hospitals for treating uninsured patients… and paying a 20% topper for COVID-19 patients.

Glock 19 vs. COVID-19: But even if the death count really were 1 in 500, is that a big deal? Our guess is that the disease is a big deal to the one guy who dies from it (and his family). As to the others, not so much Everybody’s got to die of something; why not COVID-19?

Here in Baltimore, a young, Black man might have more to fear from the Glock 19 than from COVID-19. The COVID germ may be dangerous, but it lacks the penetration power of 9 mm ammunition. In 2019, it was reported that Baltimore suffered 58 homicides per 100,000 population. But the Glock 19 is even more “racist” than COVID-19. Most of its victims are young, Black males. For them, COVID-19 poses almost no risk. On the other hand, the odds of getting gunned down are probably a lot higher than 1 in 500. Why no bullet-proof vest mandate?

One Plan: What we see in this COVID-19 story is a dangerous shortage of hands. All of the known information tells us there are many different ways to look at it. On the one hand… and on the other hand… But for the problem of too much COVID, as for the problem of too much debt, the federales seem to have only one message… one thought… and one plan, which they are determined to force onto everyone, whether they need it or not.

More tomorrow… on what’s ahead for the U.S. economy… Inflation… deflation… or bust!"
Related:

"Freedom from Fear: Stop Playing the Government’s Mind Games"

"Freedom from Fear: 
Stop Playing the Government’s Mind Games"
By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”
- Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist

"America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions. The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other. Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.

This plague on our nation - one that has been spreading like wildfire - is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live and the constantly shifting crises that keep the populace in a state of high alert. Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can’t escape it.

We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of a virus, fear of the unmasked, fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government. The list goes on and on.

The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.

Fear makes people stupid.

Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie them up in knots over matters lacking in national significance. Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.

This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail. This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology, endless wars, COVID-19 mandates, etc., hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.

All the while, those in power - bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations - move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance. Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police, marauding SWAT teams, and egregious assaults on the rights of the citizenry.

America has already entered a new phase, one in which communities are locked down, employees are forced to choose between keeping their jobs or exercising their freedoms, children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents, and law-abiding Americans are finding their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented and their communications monitored. These threats are not to be underestimated.

Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language in which they are couched: the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure. Fear, as history shows, is the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government.

So far, these tactics are working. An atmosphere of fear permeates modern America. Each successive crisis in recent years (a COVID-19 pandemic, terrorism, etc.) - manufactured or legitimate - has succeeded in reducing the American people to what commentator Dan Sanchez refers to as “herd-minded hundreds of millions [who] will stampede to the State for security, bleating to please, please be shorn of their remaining liberties.”

Sanchez continues: “I am not terrified of the terrorists; i.e., I am not, myself, terrorized. Rather, I am terrified of the terrorized; terrified of the bovine masses who are so easily manipulated by terrorists, governments, and the terror-amplifying media into allowing our country to slip toward totalitarianism and total war…

I do not irrationally and disproportionately fear Muslim bomb-wielding jihadists or white, gun-toting nutcases. But I rationally and proportionately fear those who do, and the regimes such terror empowers. History demonstrates that governments are capable of mass murder and enslavement far beyond what rogue militants can muster. Industrial-scale terrorists are the ones who wear ties, chevrons, and badges. But such terrorists are a powerless few without the supine acquiescence of the terrorized many. There is nothing to fear but the fearful themselves…

Stop swallowing the overblown scaremongering of the government and its corporate media cronies. Stop letting them use hysteria over small menaces to drive you into the arms of tyranny, which is the greatest menace of all.”

As history makes clear, fear leads to fascistic, totalitarian regimes. It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, global pandemics, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. Fear prevents us from thinking. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.

A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled. The following are a few of the necessary ingredients for a fascist state:

• The government is managed by a powerful leader (even if he or she assumes office by way of the electoral process). This is the fascistic leadership principle (or father figure).

• The government assumes it is not restrained in its power. This is authoritarianism, which eventually evolves into totalitarianism.

• The government ostensibly operates under a capitalist system while being undergirded by an immense bureaucracy.

• The government through its politicians emits powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

• The government has an obsession with national security while constantly invoking terrifying internal and external enemies.

• The government establishes a domestic and invasive surveillance system and develops a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the citizenry.

• The government and its various agencies (federal, state, and local) develop an obsession with crime and punishment. This is overcriminalization.

• The government becomes increasingly centralized while aligning closely with corporate powers to control all aspects of the country’s social, economic, military, and governmental structures.

• The government uses militarism as a center point of its economic and taxing structure.

The government is increasingly imperialistic in order to maintain the military-industrial corporate forces.

The parallels to modern America are impossible to ignore. “Every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized,” writes Jeffrey Tucker. “Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is preserved. Immense doesn’t begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect.”

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. In times of “crisis,” expediency is upheld as the central principle - that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights and criminalize virtually every form of behavior.

Not only does fear grease the wheels of the transition to fascism by cultivating fearful, controlled, pacified, cowed citizens, but it also embeds itself in our very DNA so that we pass on our fear and compliance to our offspring. It’s called epigenetic inheritance, the transmission through DNA of traumatic experiences.

For example, neuroscientists have observed how quickly fear can travel through generations of mice DNA. As The Washington Post reports: "In the experiment, researchers taught male mice to fear the smell of cherry blossoms by associating the scent with mild foot shocks. Two weeks later, they bred with females. The resulting pups were raised to adulthood having never been exposed to the smell. Yet when the critters caught a whiff of it for the first time, they suddenly became anxious and fearful. They were even born with more cherry-blossom-detecting neurons in their noses and more brain space devoted to cherry-blossom-smelling."

The conclusion? “A newborn mouse pup, seemingly innocent to the workings of the world, may actually harbor generations’ worth of information passed down by its ancestors.”

Now consider the ramifications of inherited generations of fears and experiences on human beings. As the Post reports, “Studies on humans suggest that children and grandchildren may have felt the epigenetic impact of such traumatic events such as famine, the Holocaust and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

As I make clear in my book "Battlefield America: The War on the American People" and in its fictional counterpart "The Erik Blair Diaries" fear, trauma and compliance can be passed down through the generations.

Fear has been a critical tool in past fascistic regimes, and it now operates in our contemporary world—all of which raises fundamental questions about us as human beings and what we will give up in order to perpetuate the illusions of safety and security.

In the words of psychologist Erich Fromm: "Can human nature be changed in such a way that man will forget his longing for freedom, for dignity, for integrity, for love - that is to say, can man forget he is human? Or does human nature have a dynamism which will react to the violation of these basic human needs by attempting to change an inhuman society into a human one?"

"How It Really Is"

 

“Let Them Eat Kix”

“Let Them Eat Kix”
by Tom Purcell

"I never parted with a $20 bill faster It happened at one of my favorite diners. The Western omelet and Diet Coke I often get wasn’t the $11 it had been for as long as I remember. It was $16. That expense, with my tip for the excellent waiter, consumed my entire $20 bill.

I feel bad for the diner’s owner. He told me that soaring food costs have been killing his profits for months. He’s been forced to raise his prices, yet he’s making half of what he used to. Why? First, his labor costs are up because there is a shortage of workers and he has to pay them a higher hourly wage or they won’t take the job. And second, because he has to charge higher prices, his customer base is dwindling. As wonderful as a diner breakfast is, more people, getting hit by inflation across the board, are choosing to stay home and eat a bowl of Wheaties or Kix instead.

I’m certainly no economist. But I know this: inflation stinks. According to one financial advisor quoted in Forbes, there are a few driving factors behind our current spike in prices – high demand and low supply. COVID-19 lockdowns caused Americans to sit on their money for months but lately they’ve been injecting those dollars back into the economy with abandon.

The nearly zero-percent mortgage interest rates we’ve been enjoying since March 2020 are driving up the demand for houses – and therefore their sales prices. And global supply chains for many products are all goofed up because of the pandemic’s disruptions.

For instance, due to a shortage of vehicles for sale - new vehicles are being held back by car makers because of a shortage of computer chips - new and used car prices are ridiculously high. I bought a new Toyota Tacoma Off Road truck in December of 2019 and it’s done something no other vehicle I’ve bought has ever done in my life: gone up in value. Kelly Blue Book tells me that my truck with 11,100 miles on it is worth $3,000 more than I paid for it brand new.

That is one of the few upsides to inflation. Owning property is another. If you have a fixed-rate mortgage, but the dollar “value” of your home keeps rising, you at least keep pace with inflation. But if you are retired, as my parents are, and living on a fixed income, inflation is an invisible tax that nibbles at the buying power of your money.

Your limited dollars buy fewer groceries and other increasingly expensive basic items you need to sustain yourself. I trust in the efficiency of the many very talented business people in our mostly free economy to adjust to inflation and get our markets running smoothly again. But I don’t trust our government leaders who have been spending recklessly for years and are currently attempting to ram a massive, ridiculous spending bill down our throats that could make high inflation a lasting problem.

I fondly remember the Clinton presidency when, for a blip in time, our government actually took in more money than it spent. But since 2001 Presidents Bush ($6 trillion), Obama ($9 trillion) and Trump ($6 trillion) have reversed that trend and added trillions to our total debt. Way too few people in Washington seem to care about our $28 trillion national debt or the inflation they’ve caused. They don’t care a whit about struggling diner owners or cash-strapped patrons who now eat cereal for breakfast.”

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/21/21: "Critical Updates: Evergrande, Markets, Stocks"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 9/21/21:
"Critical Updates: Evergrande, Markets, Stocks"
Related:

Monday, September 20, 2021

"Global Markets Shaken; Investors Vaporized; Global Banks Risk Of Collapse"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/20/21:
"Global Markets Shaken; Investors Vaporized; 
Global Banks Risk Of Collapse"

"An Unprecedented Shortage Of Workers Is Unleashing Mass Business Bankruptcies & Soaring Food Prices"

 

Full screen recommended.
"An Unprecedented Shortage Of Workers Is Unleashing
 Mass Business Bankruptcies & Soaring Food Prices"
by Epic Economist

"The world is facing an unprecedented labor shortage that is threatening to derail the global economic rebound as it is sparks widespread business bankruptcies and pushes the price of several supplies, including food, to sky-highs. It's the first time in modern history that the entire planet is facing a severe shortage of workers. At this point, it is estimated that about 10 to 15 million people are still out of their jobs and facing long-term unemployment. Even though government benefits have expired at the beginning of this month, people are still not coming back to the labor force. At least not at the pace most economists were expecting. 

One ominous aspect of this crisis is the impact it is having on global food supply chains. Recent reports describe that, in some countries, the shortage of workers is getting so serious that government officials are having to harvest crops themselves before they spoil and result in local food shortages and steep economic losses. In the U.S., meatpackers are trying to attract new employees by offering Apple Watches, and fast-food chains are offering sizable bonuses. But despite their efforts, staff levels are still incredibly low, and food prices are on the rise. Many can still clearly remember how chaotic it was last year's unemployment crisis. At this stage, employers were expecting to see hordes of people desperate to find a new job. But even now that employees have options to choose from, it seems like they have simply disappeared from the workforce. 

Today, food industry executives say that there aren't enough people to grow, process, and transport our food, and this is threatening to push several small farmers and producers to the brink of financial ruin, while smaller food processing companies are on the verge of bankruptcy. In August, prices went up by 33 percent compared to the same time a year ago, according to an index compiled by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. And they're about to surge even more given that that agriculture is one of the world’s least-automated industries.

For many businesses, passing along those costs is a matter of survival - especially considering that they didn't have a proper opportunity to financially recover from last year's recession. This should be a matter of concern for everyone. This disruption affects every person, business, and industry, and it is only aggravating with each passing month. 

To make things even worse, at a time millions of businesses are hanging by a thread, our health care system is completely overwhelmed and social tensions are rising in every corner of the country, the federal government decided to impose strict work restrictions on millions of workers who decided not to take the vaccine. 

For several reasons, whether it's a medical concern, a lack of trust in government measures, or a lack of confidence in the effectiveness of the vaccine, millions of Americans have chosen not to be vaccinated. And now the new administration may exacerbate the labor shortage as they enforce vaccine mandates to several workers. When these mandates are in full effect, we could see a national crisis of unimaginable proportions. One example of how dangerous these vaccination orders can be lies in the fact that law-enforcement officials reportedly rather be fired than comply with the mandates. 

A local report outlines that, in San Diego, 65 percent of the city's officers said they would consider quitting the force if the city were to impose a requirement. Moreover, an alarming 45 percent said they would rather be fired than comply with the mandate. The force currently has 1,971 members. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, fifty percent of those officers are not vaccinated. If that half of the department were to be fired for non-compliance with the vaccine mandate, the city would inevitably collapse into chaos. The same is happening in the health care sector, where thousands of workers are quitting the workforce because they disagree with the government's mandate. 

And the timing couldn't be worse, since the delta variant is fast spreading all across the nation. That's why the new administration's measures are not only ineffective but also harmful for our people and our economy. But still, no one seems to be concerned about the consequences this can have on our future. And what is happening in the U.S. is just a hint of what is going on all over the globe. We should all be prepared for even darker times because the near-term outlook is only getting grimmer and risker."

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/20/21: "STOCKS NOSEDIVE! Does The Market Sleep With The Fishes?"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/20/21:
"STOCKS NOSEDIVE! Does The Market Sleep With The Fishes?"

Musical Interlude:Ludovico Einaudi, "Life"

Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, "Life"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Stars are forming in Lynds Dark Nebula (LDN) 1251. About 1,000 light-years away and drifting above the plane of our Milky Way galaxy, the dusty molecular cloud is part of a complex of dark nebulae mapped toward the Cepheus flare region. Across the spectrum, astronomical explorations of the obscuring interstellar clouds reveal energetic shocks and outflows associated with newborn stars, including the telltale reddish glow from scattered Herbig-Haro objects hiding in the image. 
Distant background galaxies also lurk on the scene, almost buried behind the dusty expanse. This alluring view spans over two full moons on the sky, or 17 light-years at the estimated distance of LDN 1251.”

Chet Raymo, "Lessons"

"Lessons"
by Chet Raymo

"There is a four-line poem by Yeats, called "Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors":
"What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass."

Like so many of the short poems of Yeats, it is hard to know what the poet had in mind, who exactly were the unknown instructors, and if unknown how could they instruct. But as I opened my volume of The Poems this morning, at random, as in the old days people opened the Bible and pointed a finger at a random passage seeking advice or instruction, this is the poem that presented itself. Unsuperstitious person that I am, it seemed somehow apropos, since outside the window, in a thick Irish mist, every blade of grass has its hanging drop.

Those pendant drops, the bejeweled porches of the spider webs, the rose petals cupping their glistening dew - all of that seems terribly important here, now, in the silent mist. There is not much good to say about getting old, but certainly one advantage of the gathering years is the falling away of ego and ambition, the felt need to be always busy, the exhausting practice of accumulation. Who were the instructors who tried to teach me the practice of simplicity when I was young - the poets and the saints, the buddhas who were content to sit beneath the bo tree while the rest of us scurried here and there? I scurried, and I'm not sorry I did, but I must have tucked their lessons into the back of my mind, a cache of wisdom to be opened at my leisure.

Whatever it was they sought to teach has come to pass. All things hang like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass."
Freely download "Poems" by WB Yeats here:

Free Download: T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets"

“Little Gidding”, Excerpt

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring 
Will be to arrive where we started 
And know the place for the first time. 
When the last of earth left to discover 
Is that which was the beginning; 
At the source of the longest river 
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree.

Not known, because not looked for 
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always - 
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded 
Into the crowned knot of fire 
And the fire and the rose are one.”

- T.S. Eliot

The "Little Gidding" is the last of T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets," 
which you may freely download here:

"The Global Economy has Started to Slow Down"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 9/20/21:
"The Global Economy has Started to Slow Down"
"The signs are everywhere. We are experiencing a worldwide economic slowdown. As we see international inflation, we are also seeing supply chain problems globally. Today I’m at Laguna Regional Park in southern CA."

The Daily "Near You?"

Kannapolis, North Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"When Numbers Fib"

"When Numbers Fib"
by Bill Bonner

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
– Tenth Amendment, U.S. Constitution

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "Today, we allow ourselves to get sidetracked… shunted off on a rail that goes nowhere. We were at a cocktail party on Saturday. Naturally, the conversation turned to COVID, masks, lockdowns, and shots. And while we were thus engaged, a little girl nearly drowned in the pool.

Overheard Poolside: “I’m just fed up,” said an older man. “I had the COVID. They put me in the hospital. And now, statistically, I’m 27 times less likely to get the disease again or pass it along than the person with the vaccine. Or, to put it another way… if I hadn’t already gotten the disease, a fully vaccinated person would be 27 times more dangerous to me than a person who had recovered from it. If they want to protect other people,” they should give people the disease, not the vaccination. Let them build up a natural resistance. A few old geezers like me will die, but the rest of the population will be really protected.”

An important note to dear readers: This was the comment of someone at a cocktail party. It is the kind of message that might be blocked or censured by the mainstream media in order to avoid any “misinformation” circulating. Is it true that he is 27 times less of a threat than a vaccinated person? We have no way of knowing. Like all the many studies, findings, tests, arguments, “facts,” and figures used in the COVID discussion, it is probably partly true, partly false, and widely misinterpreted. But here at the Diary, we mistrust all statistics, even those we make up ourselves.

Three little children had stripped down to their underwear and were playing in the pool. They were all under six, with the eldest of them able to dog-paddle around… and the two little ones sticking to the shallow area. We were listening to the COVID complaints when we glanced down and noticed that one of the little ones was under water. A young man stood between us and the pool, so we simply pointed to the water... “I think she needs help…” we said. The young man, a professional fisherman, deftly reached into the water and pulled her out, as if he were bringing in an Atlantic salmon. He gave her a slap on the back. As she began to gurgle and cry… her father came running over with a towel… and she was soon as good as new.

Curious Facts: Last week came news that 1 in 500 Americans have died of COVID-19. That, too, may sound like a “fact.” But there are few real facts in life… and fewer still in the COVID-19 story. It may seem indisputable that someone “died.” The corpse may be in the coffin… the smell of lilies in the air… and the check in the mail.

But unless they get shot down in West Baltimore, we don’t always know what they died “of.” The medical industry has its own fads and fashions. And its own motivations. All we know for sure about these corpses is that they were reported to have had a COVID-19 infection when the spark of life went out of them. Curiously, the average age of someone dying from COVID-19 in the U.S. is about the same as someone dying from something else – around 78.

Of course, we’re all going to die. The real question is when. But if there were little difference between the age you die from COVID-19 and the age you die from other causes… How does this rank as a major Plague-like emergency? Also, if the average person dies at 78, you’d expect that out of a group of 500 (assuming an even age spread), 6.4 (500 divided by 78) should be ready to pop off in any given year. If only one of them is taken out by COVID-19, what’s the big deal?

Also, exceedingly odd for a Plague Year, the U.S. population actually rose by nearly one million people. There were 331 million people living in America in January 2020. By the end of the year, there were 332 million.

Freedom Works: Let’s ask a simple question: Would the world be better off… or worse off… if governments completely ignored COVID-19? Of course, no one knows the answer. The question itself could only be posed, sensibly, to God Himself. Who else would know what “better” means? So, instead of worrying about it, the busybodies resort to numbers. The press is full of them – the number of new “cases,” the number of “exhausted” nurses, the number of those who resist vaxxing.

(Another favorite of the mainstream press is the self-satisfied morality tale: “Anti-Vaxxer Dies of COVID,” along with a story that tells us how the person had been misled by “false information” and misguided by an irresponsible attachment to “freedom.”)

The “numbers” substitute quantity for quality. We don’t know what is “better”… but we can count! The higher the number, the bigger the emergency… and the more the powers-that-be need to “do something.” And yet, there are plenty of other numbers. How many lives have been distorted or stunted by COVID-19 restrictions? How many people living on $2 a day will now die early, after being forced (by a locked-down world economy) to live on $1.90 a day? How much human happiness will be sacrificed?

Nobody knows those numbers either. Which is why you can’t really depend on numbers. And why we have principles to guide us. We can’t predict the future… control the future… or even prepare for it. And we can’t count the bodies that haven’t died yet. So we each do the best we can.

Elite Overreach: In America, this freedom to do what you want is supposed to be protected by the U.S. Constitution. The Tenth Amendment clearly limits the power of the government to things it is expressly allowed to do in the Constitution itself. This weekend, we found three major articles explaining why President Biden’s vaccine mandate is perfectly constitutional.

Out of curiosity, we searched the founding document. We found no “COVID clause” giving the president such extraordinary power. Then again, the Supreme Court – along with the press, the military, Big Business, universities, and government itself – is part of the elite. Rarely has it shown much inclination to limit the power of the governing group. Today, the president goes to war without an act of Congress – expressly forbidden by the Constitution. The feds print paper money, though the Constitution insists on only gold and silver.

And the government has proclaimed so many laws and regulations that it can send forth a swarm of agents, harass you, fine you, or put you in prison at almost any time… regardless of the many “constitutional” protections you are meant to enjoy. How do they get away with it, you might ask? What happened to the Tenth Amendment? How can they now insist on vaccinations? Oh, you silly goose… Back to business, tomorrow…"

"The Monstrous Thing..."

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