Monday, November 8, 2021

"Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Avenue, November 7, 2021

Full screen recommended,
"Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Avenue, During The Night"
Violent crime and drug abuse in Philadelphia as a whole is a major problem. The city’s violent crime rate is higher than the national average and other similarly sized metropolitan areas. Also alarming is Philadelphia’s drug overdose rate. The number of drug overdose deaths in the city increased by 50% from 2013 to 2015, with more than twice as many deaths from drug overdoses as deaths from homicides in 2015. A big part of Philadelphia’s problems stem from the crime rate and drug abuse in Kensington.

Because of the high number of drugs in Kensington, the neighborhood has a drug crime rate of 3.57, the third-highest rate by neighborhood in Philadelphia. Like a lot of the country, a big part of this issue is a result of the opioid epidemic. Opioid abuse has skyrocketed over the last two decades in the United States and Philadelphia is no exception. Along with having a high rate of drug overdose deaths, 80% percent of Philadelphia’s overdose deaths involved opioids and Kensington is a big contributor to this number. This Philly neighborhood is purportedly the largest open-air narcotics market for heroin on the East Coast with many neighboring residents flocking to the area for heroin and other opioids. With such a high number of drugs in Kensington, many state and local officials have zoned in on this area to try and tackle Philadelphia’s problem."

"How It Really Is"

 

Sunday, November 7, 2021

"Supply Shortages And Soaring Prices Sweep Across America As Supply Chains Face Catastrophic Damages"

Full screen recommended.
"Supply Shortages And Soaring Prices Sweep Across
 America As Supply Chains Face Catastrophic Damages"
by Epic Economist

"To say that conditions are chaotic in the US supply chains is quite an understatement. Americans are seeing shelves getting increasingly emptier at stores all over the country. Shortages and soaring prices have become the new normal. And a series of new issues keep aggravating the supply chain crisis ahead of the winter.

The way the U.S. government has mishandled the supply chain crisis is truly catastrophic. They have managed to create even more disruptions in every step of the way. With the memory of depleted supplies during last year's panic buying frenzy, consumers got spooked by the warnings of shortages and placed an extraordinary amount of orders this year, which may have broken US supply chains, according to industry experts. But the panic buying retailers have been doing has made the problem significantly worse.

Thanksgiving and Black Friday are just around the corner, and both dates mark the beginning of the biggest shopping days of the year. Retailers usually expect to make up for the lost revenue and kick off a buying frenzy that hopefully lasts for months. This year, however, those hopes will be crushed. The congestion at ports is so severe that millions of holiday items will not arrive in time at the stores. Just as consumers, retailers have been panic buying for the holidays as the supply chain crisis raises fears of empty shelves during their most profitable season of the year.

"When people expect there's going to be shortages for this holiday season, they increase their orders, which led to a dramatic increase in shipping to the US. That's why we see so many containers in our ports," Dr. Tinglong Dai, a professor of operations management and business analytics at Johns Hopkins University, told Business Insider. But instead of ensuring inventory for the coming shopping season, the panic ordering resulted in empty shelves, as deliveries are delayed, and many other bottlenecks at many steps along the way continue to keep products out of the reach of consumers.

Experts like Tim Uy of Moody’s Analytics argue that, unfortunately, supply chain problems “will get even worse before they get better”.“As the global economy continues to gather steam, what is increasingly apparent is how it will be stymied by supply-chain disruptions that are now showing up at every corner,” Uy said in a recent report.

It currently takes almost an entire month to ship a container from China to the U.S. West Coast. And when cargo ships arrive with thousands of containers, they are having to wait off the coast of Southern California for up to four weeks before getting unloaded. The cheapest freight rate to carry merchandise coming from China to the U.S. is now in the range of $25,000, a 200 percent increase from 2019 levels. But several big companies are paying premiums at the spot market that can go as high as $100,000. That is leading to a painful price spike once those products hit store shelves.

What a situation the U.S.has gotten into. Everywhere we look we have disruption on top of disruption. And our leaders effectively made our problems a whole lot worse. If you think things are bad now, just wait until the Fed raises rates to try to control rampant inflation. The central bank will take out the air of equity bubbles it inflated throughout the past 18 months, and during that process, it will collapse markets and push the economy back into recession.

At the beginning of the year, many of us were hoping that conditions would improve for the economy. But now we're stuck in one of history's biggest traffic jams. This crisis has become so serious that analysts at Bloomberg Economics are calling it "The Big Crunch of 2021". In a new indicator developed to evaluate the extremity of the problem, the analysts found that supply shortages are now at a 20-year high in the U.S.

With prices hitting new records with each passing week, it's only a matter of time until we face a re-run of 1970s-style hyperinflation. That's why saying the situation is chaotic at US supply chains is an understatement. This is a gigantic mess that will take years to solve. And Americans will be lucky if the markets, the economy, and supply chains don't break down simultaneously before the end of 2021. A lot more trouble is ahead as this perfect storm evolves into a full-blown disaster in the coming months."

"Where Did They Go? There Are Supposedly 107 Million Working Age Americans That Do Not Have A Job Right Now"

"Where Did They Go? There Are Supposedly 107 Million
 Working Age Americans That Do Not Have A Job Right Now"
by Michael Snyder

We are being told that we are in the midst of the worst worker shortage in the history of the United States, but the numbers that we are being given by the federal government suggest that there should be no shortage of workers. As I will detail in this article, we are being told that there are 107 million working age Americans that are not employed right now. That is an astoundingly high figure. In fact, it is much, much higher than the peak that we hit during the “Great Recession” of 2008 and 2009. Of course back then we had millions upon millions of unemployed Americans that were absolutely desperate for a job. Today, the opposite is true. There are millions upon millions of open jobs, and employers are doing everything that they can to entice people to come to work. They are dramatically raising wages, they are handing out huge signing bonuses, they are offering to pay for college, and in some cases they are even completely waiving drug testing requirements. But even though all of this is happening, we still have 107 million working age Americans on the sidelines.

On Friday, we got some brand new employment numbers from the Labor Department. According to those numbers, there are more than 100 million Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force” right now…"The Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on Friday that 100,450,000 people in this country were not in the labor force in October, up 38,000 from the 100,412,000 in September."

This is the 14th straight month that this “not in the labor force” number has remained above 100,000,000. But that figure doesn’t give us the full number of potential workers that are on the sidelines, because it doesn’t include anyone that is officially unemployed…"Persons who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force. This category includes retired persons, students, those taking care of children or other family members, and others who are neither working nor seeking work."

So to get the full number of working age Americans that are “potential workers”, we need to add in those that are officially considered to be “unemployed”, and according to the Federal Reserve that number currently stands at 7.4 million. Once we add 100 million to 7 million, that gives us a grand total of 107 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.

Why can’t we get more of them to go back to work? Of course there are many that were not working before the pandemic came along and that still have no intention of working now. We aren’t really concerned about them. But what should alarm all of us is that the number of Americans that were working just before the pandemic was much higher than the number of Americans that are working now.

So where did all of those workers go? Are they just lazy? Are some of them sitting at home collecting government checks? Have some of them become incapacitated? Have some of them died?

Needless to say, an increasing number of Americans are not working in their chosen fields right now because they have been forced out of their jobs by various local mandates. The good news is that the big OSHA mandate which was scheduled to go into effect on January 4th has been temporarily put on hold by the Fifth Circuit court of appeals…"President Joe Biden‘s rule forcing businesses of over 100 employees to mandate the Covid vaccine has been temporarily halted by the Fifth Circuit court of appeals. Attorneys general for several states, including Texas, Louisiana, and Utah, joined advocacy and business groups in the petition, which is not the only legal challenge faced by the administration over the rule."

Many conservatives seem to think that this is some sort of massive court victory. It is not. It is just a temporary order issued by one court to halt enforcement of the mandate while litigation proceeds. Ultimately, many courts will be looking at this mandate, and I am entirely convinced that eventually this will get to the U.S. Supreme Court. And at this point I have very, very little faith in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is already talking about creating an additional mandate for companies that have less than 100 employees…"The Biden-Harris administration on Thursday is weighing if they should expand the vaccine mandate for companies employing fewer than 100 employees. According to Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) federal rules released Thursday, the agency is “seeking comment to help the agency” determine if smaller employers with fewer than 100 employees can implement a coronavirus vaccine mandate “without undue disruption.”

They want to make it so that there is no escape. If you do not comply with their orders, they want to make it so that you will not be able to work anywhere. There are also rumors that the Biden administration is actually considering a national mandate for children that attend schools. When CDC Director Rochelle Walensky was asked about this, her response was more than a little bit alarming…“I will always encourage that parent to get their child vaccinated, and speak to them about the information and communication, and education that they need in order to get their children vaccinated,” Walensky said. “Right now, at this moment, those decisions are made at the jurisdictional level as they are for vaccination of other all - other vaccine preventable diseases among children.”

The Democrats don’t seem to understand that the mandates are the number one reason why they just did so poorly in Virginia and elsewhere. And if they keep pushing these mandates, they will get soundly defeated in 2022 and 2024. But they are going ahead with them anyway. It is almost as if they don’t care about the political consequences.

In the short-term, the various mandates that are being implemented around the nation will force millions of highly qualified Americans out of their jobs. Doing this in the midst of the worst worker shortage in our history is absolutely insane. In the long-term, the consequences of these mandates will set the stage for a societal meltdown of epic proportions. We were such a divided nation before Biden announced these mandates, but now we are rapidly approaching a point where national unity may no longer be possible. A house divided will surely fall, and thanks to Biden we are now facing divisions that may never be repaired."
Related:

“Are We In A Bubble? FED Ignores Inflation Risk”

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 11/7/21:
“Are We In A Bubble? FED Ignores Inflation Risk”

"FDA Documents Show CV19 Vax Produces a Bioweapon"

"FDA Documents Show CV19 Vax Produces a Bioweapon"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Karen Kingston is a former Pfizer employee and top biotech analyst who has researched and written about many cutting edge pharmaceutical issues. Kingston contends the so-called vaccines are in fact bioweapons and she can prove it with the FDA’s own data Kingston also says the FDA’s own research shows they have known it is the vax bioweapons that have caused all the deaths and injuries. Kingston explains, “More people got Covid 19 (from the vax) than they got from placebos, but they pulled 409 people out of the vaccine group because now they are saying that was a side effect. The side effect is the disease. 

The FDA document is incriminating evidence. If Janet Woodcock (Janet Woodcock is the director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the FDA) would read this in front of the Senate, she should be put in handcuffs for conspiring to commit aggravated assault and murder of American children and adults through poison. They are calling them side effects. When you have a meeting two months before you approve and you list a bunch of severe chronic diseases that induce morbidity and mortality in children and adults, and you say you know this is going to happen, that is not a side effect. 

 That is an intended consequence. That is the effect of the vaccines. The effect of the vaccines is to cause havoc within your immune system. That immune imbalance results in heart attacks, heart inflammation; it results in neurological disorders ranging from fatigue to paralysis to brain fog to rapid onset to disorders, to narcolepsy, to death, to pregnancy stillborns, birth defects and miscarriages. They knew this was going to happen. In the FDA data for Pfizer, they say, look, more people got Covid 19 that got vaccinated. They said that was a side effect. It is not a side effect – it is the effect. The majority of people are in agreement that the Wuhan lab spike protein that was put up on the genome web January 10th of last year is a bioweapon. 

If you read the FDA approval letter, what is the vaccines’ ingredients? It is the synthetic mRNA code, the computer generated artificial intelligence generated code, which was injected in your body that produces, and I am telling you this verbatim, it says it produces the ‘Wuhan-Hu-1 full sequence spike protein from genome web.’ It says in the (FDA) approval letter the vaccine produces the bioweapon. It says in the data that more people are getting Covid19 from the vaccine than from not being treated. People say I should be an expert witness. I don’t need to be an expert witness. We just need the FDA to read their own documents.”

In closing, Kingston says, “I think we can work with science at the molecular level to heal this, but if people don’t know they are sick, then millions of Americans are going to die and our children are going to be part of this sacrifice. I am filled with deep, deep sorrow.”

"Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with biotech analyst Karen Kingston as she blows the lid off the FDA authorized CV19 bioweapon."

"Beautiful Relaxing Music with Amazing Nature Videos"

Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation,
"Beautiful Relaxing Music with Amazing Nature Videos"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"To some it looks like a cat's eye. To others, perhaps like a giant cosmic conch shell. It is actually one of brightest and most highly detailed planetary nebula known, composed of gas expelled in the brief yet glorious phase near the end of life of a Sun-like star. This nebula's dying central star may have produced the outer circular concentric shells by shrugging off outer layers in a series of regular convulsions. The formation of the beautiful, complex-yet-symmetric inner structures, however, is not well understood. 
The featured image is a composite of a digitally sharpened Hubble Space Telescope image with X-ray light captured by the orbiting Chandra Observatory. The exquisite floating space statue spans over half a light-year across. Of course, gazing into this Cat's Eye, humanity may well be seeing the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution... in about 5 billion years."

Kahlil Gibran, “On Talking”

“On Talking”

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in
 the solitude of your heart you live in your lips,
and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space,
that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their
eyes their naked selves and they would escape.
And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought
reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
And there are those who have the truth within them,
but they tell it not in words.
In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.

When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place,
let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.
Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear;
For his soul will keep the truth of your heart 
as the taste of the wine is remembered
When the color is forgotten and the vessel is no more.”

- Kahlil Gibran,
Freely download “The Prophet”, by Kahlil Gibran, here:

“Requiem for a Ladybug”

“Requiem for a Ladybug”
by Frankly Francis

“You lie still less than a foot away on top of the soft mouse pad that protects me from carpal tunnel syndrome. I noticed this morning, through eyes not yet clarified by my first coffee of the day, your presence in my study. Odd, I thought, that you would even be present now. It is certainly past your time of the year in these parts.

I had the presence of mind to reckon that your life must be short. Rather than remove you from my space, both physical and mental, I decided that if these were your final moments then my study could be your Hospice and I your companion.

Your flight and movement were a little chaotic, seemingly random. You nestled in the heat of the light in the globe of my desk lamp, you circled my cranium, you landed in various spots, and in and on various objects on my desk while I got about the business of the day.

Sometimes I could see you, other times I did not know where you were. Then you would rise again to a new location. I wondered if you had any purpose in this, if there was more going on than my conscious programming allowed me to realize.

Perhaps it was, in your reality, some last business to be done? Or perhaps a ritual of your species’ existence? I hoped that if there is any pleasure in being a Ladybug that it was satisfying in some way, even so far from your natural habitat. Then you landed on your final resting spot and moved no more.

For me, my study is a place of many good things. I hope in your last moments it was to you as well. Rest in Peace my little Ladybug. And thanks for reminding me of the preciousness and fragility of life.”

"Life's Funny..."

“Life’s funny, chucklehead. You only get one and you don’t want to throw it away. But you can’t really live it at all unless you’re willing to give it up for the things you love. If you’re not at least willing to die for something – something that really matters – in the end you die for nothing.”
- Andrew Klavan

The Poet: Stephen Levine, “Half Life”

“Half Life”

“We walk through half our life
as if it were a fever dream,
barely touching the ground,
our eyes half open,
our heart half closed.
Not half knowing who we are,

we watch the ghost of us drift

from room to room,

through friends and lovers

never quite as real as advertised.

Not saying half we mean

or meaning half we say,

we dream ourselves

from birth to birth

seeking some true self.
Until the fever breaks

and the heart can not abide

a moment longer

as the rest of us awakens,

summoned from the dream,

not half caring for anything but love.”

~ Stephen Levine

The Daily "Near You?"

Bowie, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Our True Friends..."

"Our true friends are those who are with us when the good things happen. They cheer us on and are pleased by our triumphs. False friends only appear at difficult times, with their sad, supportive faces, when, in fact, our suffering is serving to console them for their own miserable lives." 
- Paulo Coelho

"Spartan Rules For Life - The Philosophy of Sparta"

Full screen recommended.
Orion Philosophy,
"Spartan Rules For Life - The Philosophy of Sparta"
"The Spartans have been referenced time and time again as a nation of hardened, resilient and Stoic warriors, with a simple philosophy of life. As a nation Sparta was feared for its soldiers, and respected for its way of life. In modern day, the Spartans are still held in high regard, and the Spartan helmet and shield still used as a symbol to reflect their values almost 2000 years later. These quotes help to explain the Spartan philosophy and the mindset of Sparta, a mindset that helps us remain calm, collected and resilient in the face of hardship, adversity, and events that threaten to invade our peace of mind."

"How It Really Is"

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: Stock Market Melt-Up, Currency Melt-Down"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/7/21:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: 
Stock Market Melt-Up, Currency Melt-Down"

"Mass Psychosis & You"

Full screen recommended.
Chris Martenson, Peak Prosperity,
"Mass Psychosis & You"
"This video explains why people you know seem to have lost their ability to reason or even be reasonable. Mass Hysteria, or psychosis is a very routine and well-documented part of human history. It also describes well our current circumstances. The key questions are (1) is it deliberate or accidental and (2) either way, what can you do to avoid the worst effects of it all?"

Saturday, November 6, 2021

"Warning: Infrastructure Bill Guarantees More Inflation; Minimum Wage Jobs And Inflation A Bad Combo"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 11/6/21:
"Warning: Infrastructure Bill Guarantees More Inflation; 
Minimum Wage Jobs And Inflation A Bad Combo"

"You Can’t Make This Stuff Up - Crazy Economic News"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 11/6/21:
"You Can’t Make This Stuff Up - Crazy Economic News"

Musical Interlude: Yanni, "The Storm"

Full screen recommended.
Yanni, "The Storm"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this sharp telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellites of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. Their separation on the sky, less than one degree across a pretty field of view, translates to only about 35 thousand light-years at Andromeda's distance, but Andromeda itself is found well outside this frame. 
Brighter and more famous satellite galaxies of Andromeda, M32 and M110, are seen closer to the great spiral. NGC 147 and NGC 185 have been identified as binary galaxies, forming a gravitationally stable binary system. But recently discovered faint dwarf galaxy Cassiopeia II also seems to be part of their system, forming a gravitationally bound group within Andromeda's intriguing population of small satellite galaxies."

"When We Have Time..."

“How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy. In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.”
- Charles Caleb Colton, “Lacon”
“The problem is, you believe you have time.”
- Buddha

"A Brewing Revolution?"

"A Brewing Revolution?"
by Jeffrey Tucker

"I’ve been waiting many months for some good news to report. This past week brought it. Let’s hope it’s just the beginning. Before continuing, let me add this one proviso: The changes needed to get the country and world back on track to prosperity and flourishing are not fully realized in politics. We need a dramatic cultural, social and legal transformation, one that is far-reaching and permanent. And yet it also has a political expression. For now. On that front, there is nothing but good to report.

What’s significant about Tuesday’s election results is not the remarkable upset in the Virginia gubernatorial race. What’s remarkable is the depth and breadth of the blow to the regime sweeping through the whole state. Seats that Democrats had held very comfortably were taken away. And the reasons were the same in each case: the economy, education and virus restrictions.

“Bloodbath”: As attorney Jeff Childers wrote: "In what lefty pollster Larry Sabato called a “bloodbath,” Republicans swept Virginia’s elections last night. The GOP handily won the governorship (Glenn Youngkin), the lieutenant governorship (Winsome Sears) and the attorney general’s office (Jason Miyares)... In the House of Delegates, Republicans now have a majority.

There are historic elements to the win. Republican Winsome Sears, a former Marine, became the first Black female lieutenant governor in Virginia’s history. Jason Miyares is the state’s first Cuban-American attorney general.

This development shows some pretty deep problems for pro-lockdown, anti-parent Democrats all over the country. Virginia is a deep-blue state. Current governor and cozy Clinton confidante Terry McAuliffe had been described as “unbeatable.” Just yesterday, Biden confidently predicted McAuliffe’s win, in a state he won easily one year ago. But according to White House officials, Biden declined to take McAuliffe’s call last night after the election."

We Will Not Live in Cages: All of these wins trace to a hard repudiation of lockdowns, of course. In the case of education, the schools were locked shut last year and parents were forced to keep the kids at home. They involved themselves in their education and helping them with their textbooks and lessons. They sat in on their Zoom classes.

They were astonished at what they discovered. Their kids were being divided by race and told that one race is inherently exploitative and another permanently victimized. This wildly divisive message was considered mainstream by the teachers who were presenting material pushed by the school boards.

The seething began slowly, but as teachers refused to go back to work, intensifying pain on families, the moms got angry. When the schools finally reopened, the kids had masks forced on them. They were also subjected to lockdowns every time there was a positive case. It led to a year and a half of chaos.

School board meetings grew chaotic. The cops were called. Many parents were thrown out and some arrested. It became a badge of honor. Then the Democratic candidate for governor put a fine point on it. He catastrophically said that parents should not be in charge of what their students are taught. That seems to have done it. It prompted the electoral rout based in a wild anger at what the lockdowns, leftists and their henchmen have done at all levels of society.

The Price of Arrogance: As for the economy, Virginia is emblematic of the whole country right now. There are high prices for everything, especially gas. The stores have randomly empty shelves. Labor shortages have hit small businesses. Everyone is struggling and scared. Meanwhile, the monopoly party that controls the federal government seems clueless about the crisis developing at all levels of society. The arrogance of the Democrats at the state level seemed to mirror that.

This is the first real test of the party that now owns all these lockdowns, mandates and impositions on liberty. The result is a complete and total disaster for the Democrats. The rethinking of everything began at 12:30 a.m. on Nov. 3, 2021. They might see for the first time in a long time that there is no mandate in the United States for socialism, critical race theory, inflation and shortages. They are facing calamity now.

The Truck Driver vs. the Big Shot: The incumbent Democratic governor won reelection in New Jersey, but it came down to the wire. Just saying that is stunning. The betting odds for the Democrat incumbent favored him at 90%. Even though the Democrat won, the results have already caused shock waves.

The most exciting race in New Jersey happened at a lower level, in the 3rd Senate District. The seat of state Senate President Steve Sweeney, the longest-serving legislative leader in New Jersey history, was never in question. But he lost to Edward Durr, a conservative truck driver who reported spending only a few thousand dollars on his entire campaign. Durr did not give speeches and had no website or employees. All he had was a Facebook page. Boom: He got the job done.

This is a sign of something approaching revolution. Durr is a blue-collar worker, a paradigmatic case of a person horribly victimized by all these COVID policies that have wrecked life in the U.S. and the economy.

Democracy Saves the Day: Tuesday’s results give us every indication that an anachronistic political establishment is being swept away in favor of a new class of people dedicated to traditional American ideals. Such as freedom. Such as independence. Such as the rights of self-government.

Remember the reason the 19th-century liberals favored democracy. It was never intended as a perfect system that would end all corruption. The point was to have a system that enabled the peaceful transition of power without the ghastly social and economic cost of bloody coups and revolutions. It allows the people some hope of prevailing against a corrupt political establishment.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Republicans are the party of freedom and liberty. I’m a libertarian and I disagree with them on many issues. They also tend to spend like Democrats when they’re in power. So I’m not being partisan here. But on issues like lockdowns, vaccine mandates and children’s education, Republicans are simply offering saner policies. Democrats are acting like authoritarians.

We Will Break Free: A recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll reveals that 41% of independents consider Democrats the bigger threat to democracy and 37% say Republicans are. Of all respondents, 42% say the Democrats are the greatest threat to democracy. At this point, democracy is our biggest hope for getting the U.S. back on the track for prosperity and peace. It will take 10, 20 or even 30 years to recover from the horrors of 2020 and following. But perhaps Nov. 2, 2021, will be remembered as the day that the country began fixing the damage inflicted by the old political establishment.

The new dawn will be a long time coming, but at least we see now the path the revolution will take and the hope it will bring to this long-suffering nation. They tried to put us in cages. We will break free."

"A Point Of No Return..."

”There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives.”
- Graham Greene
“When swimming into a dark tunnel, there arrives a point of no return when you no longer have enough breath to double back. Your only choice is to swim forward into the unknown… and pray for an exit.”
 - Dan Brown
“And it was pointless… to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell… for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn’t changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You’re left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is to go on or not. But if you go on, it’s knowing you carry your scars with you.” 
- Charles Frazier
“Never be ashamed of a scar. 
It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.” 
- Unknown

The Daily "Near You?"

Woodstock, Ontario, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

“The Meaning Of Good And Evil In Perilous Times”

“The Meaning Of Good And Evil In Perilous Times”
by Brandon Smith

Perhaps the most destructive idea ever planted in the minds of the general public is the notion that nothing in this world is permanent – that all things can and must be constantly changed to suit our whims. The concept of impermanence fuels what I call “blank slate propaganda.” The usefulness of the blank slate as a weapon for social control should be explained before we examine the nature of good and evil, because these days it infects everything.

The push for never ending social “evolution” has been called many things over the decades. In the early 1900s in Europe it was called “futurism;” an art and philosophical movement that helped spawn the rise of communism and fascism in politics.The argument that all old ideas and longstanding traditions should be abandoned to make way for new ideas, new technologies, news systems etc., assumes that the supposedly new ways of doing things are superior to the old ways of doing things. Things are rarely this simple, and in most cases the new methods so proudly championed by movements for social change are usually recycled and repackaged old ideas that are notorious for failure.
The blank slate theory is designed to confuse people with self-doubt and to misrepresent the constructs of nature as constructs of society. It most effectively disrupts people’s relationship to their own moral compass by suggesting that moral compass should be completely ignored as artificial. The argument by blank slate proponents is that all boundaries are created by society instead of by inborn conscience, and that these boundaries often hold us back from achieving our goals, bettering ourselves as a species and generally getting what we want out of life.
But the things we want are not always the things we need, and this is something that movement’s for social change often refuse to grasp. If we are all blank slates and if morality and the human soul are myths, why not do whatever the hell we want, whenever we want and live life as if it is one big Roman orgy of feasting, self-medicating and overall addiction to sensation?
The problem with the blank slate concept is that while it purports that all restrictions in the human psyche are taught to us rather than being inborn and that they can be abandoned any time we want, we still can’t seem to avoid the consequences of breaking those restrictions.  People lose their sanity, societies crumble and nations fall to ruin over time the more we cast aside our principles in the name of social evolution or short term gain. It is unavoidable.
The only people who seem to benefit from the spread of the blank slate are the people already in political and economic power. For if they can convince the masses to ignore their conscience, they can then convince us to accept almost any other conditions.
To act in a manner consistent with inherent conscience, or to ignore conscience and act destructively, is a choice. It is the core pillar of free will. The choice to act destructively does not erase the reality of inherent conscience; in fact, people often have to be fooled into believing that a destructive and immoral action is a “good thing” before they are convinced to carry it out. Inherent conscience must be bypassed through trickery.
The problem with choosing to stick by one’s principles is that it is easy during times of relative stability, but increasingly difficult during times of struggle. In perilous days, the temptation to use destructive tactics to maintain an expectation of comfort or to merely survive can be high. It is no coincidence that power elites, the same people that tend to promote blank slate propaganda, also tend to deliberately engineer social crisis and chaos. But perhaps this needs a deeper explanation. We must define something most of us already understand intuitively. We must define “evil.”
Like inherent conscience and moral boundaries, blank slate theorists and social change advocates attempt to muddy the waters of what constitutes evil. Some will say there is no such thing — that evil is whatever we deem it to be in any given era depending on our biases.  Others will claim that tradition, permanence and anything in society that remains static is evil. The only “good” for them is constant change.
But evil is not as illusory and changing as these people suggest. In fact, most men and women recoil automatically from certain specific behaviors regardless of how they were raised, what environment they come from, what culture they were born into or what era they lived.  The people who don’t recoil at these behaviors are the people we have to watch out for because they are missing something integral to the heart and mind that makes the rest of us human.
In psychological terms, the characteristics of high level narcissists and sociopaths match most closely with our historic concept of evil.  And, in my view, most great evils done in history are in fact done by people with multiple narcissistic traits.  As far as global elitists are concerned, they represent a rather insidious threat, because they are narcissistic sociopaths that have organized into a predatory gang, so all the traits consistent with the behavior of your average serial killer are now magnified a thousandfold by their access to unlimited resources.
How do we identify these people? Well, this is a difficult prospect at times because narcissistic sociopaths commonly hide in plain sight.  Some people live with them for years before realizing exactly what they are. They also like to insert themselves into nonprofit organizations that claim to do good for the community as a cover for their more insidious motives.
Some traits and behaviors that are common are a lack of normal emotional response to traumatic events or joyous events, or they will mimic the responses of others to blend in but they come off as “forced” or “fake.” They have no concept of empathy; it does not exist for them.
They seek out centers of power and are drawn to positions of authority. They always seem to be demanding the efforts of others while rarely offering their own help. They make terrible leaders, always attempting to lead from a place of safety while letting their conscripts take the risks. Leading by example is a foreign concept to them.
They will lie repetitively about their accomplishments and their accolades. They will misrepresent their professional achievements in order to gain people’s trust. Ask them to prove through actions that they can do all the things they claim they can do, and they will try to avoid the test or respond indignantly and angrily.
They will gaslight their ideological enemies or people they are trying to control. They will accuse others of being “narcissists” or “sociopaths” or fascists or any moniker that will push the buttons of their target. Whatever evils they are guilty of, they will try to flip and lay at the feet of their enemies.
They always seem to have “minions” to do their dirty work for them and attack those that oppose them. People that have dealt with narcissistic sociopaths in their personal lives sometimes refer to these minions as “flying monkeys,” referencing the flying monkeys enslaved by the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz. Flying monkeys are essentially useful idiots that the narcissist employs through fraud and sometimes through pay. Whenever the narcissist is under threat of being exposed, they unleash their flying monkeys onto the streets or onto the internet to undermine truth tellers.
They do not believe in moral or personal boundaries which is why they are always trying convince people that such boundaries are a myth.  They will cross moral lines, always testing the fences for weaknesses; trying to wear others down until they give up and stop fighting back.
They desperately want to come out of the shadows and into the light of day. They want to be adored as the monsters they are, rather than the fake philanthropists they portray themselves as. In order to do this, every narcissistic sociopath makes it their duty to erase the idea of conscience, whether they are part of the globalist cabal or just another ghoul down the street. Their natural inclination is to corrupt whatever they touch, and if they cannot corrupt a thing, they will attempt to destroy that thing.
Most of all, narcissistic sociopaths want everyone around them to believe that we are just like them. That “deep down” all of us are unprincipled and morally bankrupt and all it takes is a crisis or calamity, just a little chaos to bring out the devil in everyone.
But if this were really the case, then humanity would have died out long ago through endless self-destruction; something keeps bringing us back from the brink in our personal lives and in society as a whole. Conscience keeps defeating evil by refusing to grant evil people the utopia of blank slate chaos they want so badly. And this is what give me confidence that no matter how terrible our days might become there is something on our side that goes beyond the physical world.
Every crisis is a test, a test of each person and a test of our culture. Can we act with reason and courage and principle even in the worst of times, or will we be lured to make our struggle easier through malicious means? Will we do right by those around us, or will we happily trample over them in the name of “survival?”
In the end, the worst men bring the best men to the surface. This is the only “good” they will ever do.”

The Poet: Langston Hughes, “Life Is Fine”

“Life Is Fine”

“I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn’t,
So I jumped in and sank.
I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn’t a-been so cold
I might’ve sunk and died.
But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.
I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn’t a-been so high
I might’ve jumped and died.
But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I’m still here livin’,
I guess I will live on.
I could’ve died for love -
But for livin’ I was born.
Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry -
I’ll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!”

- Langston Hughes

"You Cannot Shirk This..."

“Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country – hold up your head! You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
- Mark Twain

"There comes a time in every man's life when he has to choose sides. I have chosen my side. I am comfortable with my decision. I do not think everyone on my side is a saint, but I know that those on the other side are much, much worse. Sometimes a man with too broad a perspective reveals himself as having no real perspective at all. A man who tries too hard to see every side may be a man who is trying to avoid choosing any side. A man who tries too hard to seek a deeper truth may be trying to hide from the truth he already knows. That is not a sign of intellectual sophistication and 'great thinking'. It is a demonstration of moral degeneracy and cowardice."
- Steven Den Beste

“Screw The Way Things Are, I Want Out!”

“Screw The Way Things Are, I Want Out!”
by Paul Rosenberg

“This is a beautiful planet, filled, in the main, with decent, cooperative humans. And yet, I want out. Give me any kind of functional spaceship and any reasonable chance, and I’ll take it. This place is anti-human. It chokes the best that’s in us, aggressively and self-righteously. I was struck not long ago by a comment of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s, in which he expressed the same kind of feeling: “I ought to have become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth…”

All of us who’ve had a moment of transcendence - who made some type of contact with what is truly the best inside ourselves - have also sensed that life in the current world is incompatible with it. I think we should stop burying that understanding beneath piles of “that’s the way things are,” “we should be realistic,” and “you can’t fight City Hall.”

Screw the way things are, screw “realistic,” and screw City Hall too. I was made for better things than this, and you were too.

Everywhere I turn, some kind of ruler, sub-ruler, enforcer, regulator, or “right-thinking” quasi-enforcer demands not only my money but also for me to make myself easy to punish, thus showing myself to be a good subservient. That’s not just wrong; it’s a disease. I don’t care whether such people are “following orders,” “just doing their job,” or whatever else they tell themselves to soothe their rightly troubled souls. That mode of living is perverse, and these people are enforcing a disease.

Let me make this part very clear: The desire to control others is disease; it is corruption. Willing controllers are a morally inferior class. And the truly deranged thing is that these people rule the world! Forget about why this is so - we can debate that later - focus rather on the utter insanity of this: A minority of moral defectives, who think extortion is a virtue, rule people who are happy to live and let live, by force.

That’s outright lunacy. And to support the lunacy, we have lies, intimidation, and slogans: “In a democracy, you’re really ruling yourself,” “Only crazy people disagree,” “It’s always been this way,” and so on. To all of which I reply, How stupid do you think we are? You drilled that crap into us when we were children, but we’re not children anymore. And if “our way” isn’t as bad as North Korea, that makes it right? Only to a fool.

And the results of “the way it’s always been”… my God, the results… A study from the 1980s found that since 3600 BC, the world has known only 292 years of peace. During this period there have been 14,531 wars, large and small, in which 3.6 billion people have been killed.

This is what I’m supposed to serve with all my heart and soul? A Bronze Age system that can’t keep itself from slaughter? We’re talking about a 5,600-year track record of mass death, and yet fundamental change is considered unthinkable? Well, screw that too, because I think deep, fundamental change is called for, and was called for a long time ago.

Again, this is a wonderful planet and most of the people on it are decent, but it is ruled by insanity, and I want out. Yes, I know, there’s really nowhere to go. Every place I might go is dominated by the same diseased model, and dissent is punished the same, and in some places worse. That’s one of the reasons space appeals to me; it gives me a chance to escape this madness.

I’ll draw this to a close with a passage from C. Delisle Burns’s wonderful "The First Europe," describing why the Roman Empire collapsed: “Great numbers of men and women were unwilling to make the effort required for the maintenance of the old order, not because they were not good enough to fulfill their civic duties, but because they were too good to be satisfied with a system from which so few derived benefit.”

I, for one, am unwilling to expend any effort to maintain the present order. It is by its nature incompatible with the best that is in us, and always will be. Those of us who want to be more and better cannot support the current order without opposing what’s best in ourselves. Screw that.”

"Woke Gets Whacked - But Hold the Victory Lap"

"Woke Gets Whacked - But Hold the Victory Lap"
by Jim Kunstler

"It begins to look like the 2021 elections put a decisive end to the Woke-Jacobin-Progressive reign-of-terror, and its demonic efforts to cancel the authority of truth in human affairs - truth being derived from reality. For years, in an ever-escalating campaign of coercion, persecution, and punishment, the WJPs made their own reality-optional “truth” and foolishly expected the nation to roll over for it. On Tuesday, voters all over the land, in effect, whapped the Party of Chaos upside its head with thirty inches of No. 6 rebar and said “no more.” Days later, the Wokesters are still seeing stars and planets blink in their temporal lobes.

The Virginia governor’s race illustrated plainly and clearly what was at issue, all crystalized in the Loudoun County School Board’s idiotic behavior this past year. First was the sex module of the mess: A fifteen-year-old boy pretending to be a girl in a dress raped an actual teenage girl in a “Girls’” bathroom. The Loudoun County School Board covered it up so as not to interfere with its innovative gender confusion pedagogy. The boy rapist was transferred to another school where he committed the same crime all over again. Very bad optics. And WJP candidate Terry McAulliffe told parents to stay out of it, stupidly driving a stake through his own heart in the process.

Second was the Woke race module, namely Critical Race Theory, the principle that American society is hopelessly and systemically racist and that white people need to be punished for it. The School Board and its political allies denied that this doctrine of Marxist identity politics was being worked into the curriculum. They were lying, of course, and stupidly, because it was very easy to prove.

Now, I’m going to tell you succinctly what is behind Critical Race Theory, and it’s going to hurt: After sixty-odd years of civil rights policy and legislation, a sizable cohort of African-Americans are not making it in this society and white WJPs (aka “liberals”) are stricken with guilt and shame at the failure of their efforts to uplift this group and heal the world. So, they’ve teamed up with the nation’s race hustlers to construct a scaffold of excuses for why this is so. The actual reasons for why this is so are taboo, namely, liberal deconstruction of American family life, unwillingness to prescribe behavioral norms, and self-sabotaging cultural choices such as the failure to promote the teaching of language skills as a primary task of public education - because ghetto English is more stigmatizing and economically disabling than skin color or any other feature of self-presentation, unless you are a professional comedian. That’s the cold, hard reality and that is what needs to change - but it won’t change as long as race-hustling (making money off the excuses) is considered “okay.”

Too many Americans see through the WJP sex-and-race nonsense and are now voting to evict it from the public square and run it out of the halls of power, at least at the state and local level. For now, though, it remains entrenched at the national level, in Washington, where it receives huge support from the very well-paid permanent bureaucracy that administers bad social policy. The 2021 election results suggest that the Woke Democrats will be run out of Congress and the White House in 2022 - if the USA can make it there without cracking up, which remains painfully uncertain under the toils of Covid-19.

The pandemic, so-called, invokes a dark suspicion of official misbehavior at a higher and more sinister level than the mere political inanities of Wokery. The public health officialdom has lied to the nation at every turn in this melodrama, and to the extent that many rational citizens think that the authorities are out to kill them. For instance, you have Dr. Fauci of the NIAID continuing to deny that he played any part in promoting gain-of-function research on viruses here and in the Wuhan lab. His latest dodge was to change the official definition of gain-of-function to an alphabet-salad of obfuscatory bullshit before a Senate committee - for which Senator Rand Paul once again accused him of lying and beseeched him to resign.

The CDC and the FDA have unleashed a set of untested vaccines on the public that have shown to produce alarmingly high rates of adverse reactions, both disabling and leading to death. The CDC’s VAERS system for reporting all that is so janky that doctors can barely use it and the CDC refuses to fix it; meanwhile doctors are being punished for even attempting to report adverse reactions. The whole of medical officialdom has militated aggressively against early treatments of Covid-19 with cheap and easily available drugs, even firing doctors who attempt to use the protocols.

The entire approval process of the various vaccines has been rife with fraud, gamed statistics, sabotaged trials, bait-and-switch scams, and unaccountable manufacturing screw-ups - all immersed in a stench of moneygrubbing. The drug companies have refused to fully reveal the contents of the vaccines. Now they are ramping up an urgent campaign to vaccinate children following rushed and falsified clinical trials, with the statistical certainty that many more kids will be injured or will die from the vax than they would from Covid-19 itself.

Citizens have a right to object to this, and to the illegal vaccine “mandate” invoked by the pugnaciously stupid “Joe Biden” regime. There is an awful creeping suspicion in the USA and in other countries that people who have received vaccinations are beginning to present fatal cardiovascular and neurological illness in large numbers, and that an attempt is underway to cover all this up. There is likewise a growing body of evidence that the vaccines and “boosters” incrementally disable the human immune system so that later in the winter of 2021-2022 millions of people will be at risk of dying from Covid variants and virtually any other disease that comes along, including cancers. How many of us are prepared for that?"

"How It Really Is"