“No, You Don’t Have To Care About Any Of This”

“No, You Don’t Have To Care About Any Of This”

by Joe Jarvis

“Lots of people are trying to force you to care about the things they care about. True, some of these issues are really important. But if you don’t care, you don’t care. You don’t have to pretend. And you don’t owe anyone an explanation. Henry David Thoreau summed it up almost 200 years ago when he said: “It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him.”

See, a lot of self-righteous people can’t imagine how anyone could make a different calculation about the most important causes in the world. The person who donates to hungry children finds it absurd that others donate to animal shelters while there are still needy kids out there. But this is just another variation of how specializing makes things more efficient. If everyone works on the causes they care about most, their passion and efforts will go the furthest.

But Thoreau continues that even if someone doesn’t want to help eradicate a wrong, it is “his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.” If you’re not contributing to wrong, that is enough. In fact that is MUCH BETTER than acting like you’re saving the world, when in reality you are contributing to evil.

It’s great to care about important causes, but “I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his own contemplations too.” For example, helping poor people is a noble cause. Forcing others to help poor people is pursuing a noble cause “sitting upon another man’s shoulders.” No, he isn’t automatically evil if he doesn’t help the poor, “he may still properly have other concerns to engage him.”

These days you’ll hear people say things like, “it’s not enough to simply not be racist, you have to be actively anti-racist.” Incorrect. It is absolutely enough to simply not perpetuate an evil. They don’t know you. They can’t see inside your head, or into your life. They don’t know what you’re engaged in. But if you are not hurting others, that is enough.

Like imagine if someone told you, it’s not enough to not murder, you have to become a criminologist, and go out there and solve murders. You know I am grateful there are people out there who go into homicide investigation. But it’s not for me.

It’s pretty ironic actually. Because the same people who try to bully you into taking the action that they want you to take would scoff at your demands for a more peaceful and prosperous society.

Because guess what one of my causes is? It’s not enough to simply not steal others money. You must actively oppose the systemic theft the government calls taxes. Oh wait, but they need to steal from me in order to pursue their causes, because they do so “sitting upon another man’s shoulders.” They tell me that a portion of my income, my labor, my time, will be taken without my consent to support the causes they care about, while whatever I had planned for my labor and time will be subordinated to their whims.

But guess what? No one really cares about my cause. So I moved to Puerto Rico to take advantage of tax incentives, and now perfectly legally pay a 4% tax rate. That did a lot more for me than trying to get people to vote – as if there was anyone who would advance my causes anyway. Now, more than ever, as the chaos of the world seems to be reaching a crescendo, it is perfectly reasonable to tune out, and say, you know what, I just don’t care.

All the ships have sailed. It’s much more important to make sure you and your loved ones are in a position of strength moving forward. Everyone is going to tell you that you have to care about this, that your silence on that is as bad as whatever, that you’re either with us or against us…

I care about a lot of things, and have plenty of passionate ideas about how this world should turn out. But now is the time to keep your powder dry, and wits about you. In the board game Risk, you win by building strength while remaining unnoticed. The strongest players fight it out, and weaken each other. It is then, when the smoke clears, that it is easiest to control the board.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Live your life. Be a good person. That’s enough. Ignore the noise.”

- https://www.thedailybell.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Burlington, Kentucky, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Be The Person..."

"We are fast moving into something, we are fast flung into something like asteroids cast into space by the death of a planet, we the people of earth are cast into space like burning asteroids and if we wish not to disintegrate into nothingness we must begin to now hold onto only the things that matter while letting go of all that doesn't. For when all of our dust and ice deteriorates into the cosmos we will be left only with ourselves and nothing else. So if you want to be there in the end, today is the day to start holding onto your children, holding onto your loved ones; onto those who share your soul. Harbor and anchor into your heart justice, truth, courage, bravery, belief, a firm vision, a steadfast and sound mind. Be the person of meaningful and valuable thoughts. Don't look to the left, don't look to the right; we simply don't have the time. Never be afraid of fear."

- C. JoyBell C.

"The American Dream is Finished - Inflation is Running Rampant"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly AM 11/16/21:

"The American Dream is Finished - 

Inflation is Running Rampant"

"The Economic Freight Train is about to crash. Nothing can stop it right now. There is nothing being done to help the supply chain or slow down inflation."

"End of the COVID Panic?"

"End of the COVID Panic?"

by Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "Change is coming. Here’s David Leonhardt writing in The New York Times: "In Seattle (which publishes detailed data), the daily Covid hospitalization rate for vaccinated people has been slightly above one in one million. By comparison, the flu hospitalization rate in a typical year in the U.S. is more than twice as high. For most vaccinated people in a place like Seattle or San Francisco, Covid already resembles just another virus.

The risks are also low for unvaccinated children because Covid tends to be mild for them. (Plus, any child 5 or older can now be vaccinated.) For young children, Covid looks like a normal flu, if not a mild one. As for long Covid, it is real but rare. It’s also not unique. The flu and other viruses also cause mysterious, lasting problems for a small share of people, studies show. The bottom line is that Covid now presents the sort of risk to most vaccinated people that we unthinkingly accept in other parts of life. And there is not going to be a day when we wake up to headlines proclaiming that Covid is defeated. In many ways, the future of the virus has arrived."

In other words… what’s the big deal?

Vanishing Virus: Last week, we noticed similar articles in those other shills for the elite – The Washington Post and The Atlantic. The gist of them all: Maybe we’re not going to defeat the COVID-19 virus after all. Better find some way to live with it. As near as we can tell, the “lock-up-and-vaccinate-everyone” approach has been a flop. The virus mutates and circulates anyway. And it still kills people who are vulnerable… and few others. The better approach would have been to urge those at risk to lay low while the virus went through the population like a normal virus. Instead, they made a federal case of it.

But now, do these articles mean that the elite has decided to downplay the disease? Maybe. Argentina always seems to be one step ahead of us. Friends report that after some of the most severe lockdowns in the world, suddenly, a few months ago, COVID practically “disappeared.” “What happened?” we asked. “An election. It took place on Sunday. The party in power decided that COVID was a downer. I guess people are still getting sick and dying, just like they always do. But we don’t hear anything more about it.”

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, meanwhile, a winter of discontent is coming. Food and energy prices are rising. Midterm elections are coming. Democrats may figure they don’t need the additional monkey on their backs of COVID fatigue. “Normalization” may be a better tactic than more fear mongering.

Pathetic Shill: Backing up… Between 2016 and 2020, we were relentless in our criticism of Donald Trump. And our dear readers were relentless in their criticism of us. But now that we don’t have Donald Trump to kick around anymore, we turn to Joe Biden. In our view, in things that matter, there is little difference between the two. While they represent different wings of the ruling elite, they both flap up and down to protect the fake-money system...That is, neither would seriously consider cutting back government spending, deficits, debt, and printing-press money… or raising interest rates.

You’ll recall that Donald Trump proudly proclaimed himself a “low interest” kind of guy… and that one of his first acts as president was to bully Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates. Joe Biden’s critical policies are no different. But few dear readers mind our attacks on Biden; all seem to agree that the man is a pathetic shill for a degenerate cause.

Angry Backlash: Today, our angry letters come with two complaints. First, many readers still think COVID-19 is such a threat that it justifies suspending the Constitution… and forcing people to submit to vaccinations. Second, many dear readers believe the planet is in mortal danger… and that they can save it. They think there must be something wrong with us for not taking “climate change” more seriously.

Here’s a smattering of opinions on the subject. Rosemary L.: "Why don’t all of you naysayers go check out real data done by scientists on global warming? Some people don’t want to know or care to know. They might learn something that would be helpful to our environment and have to change some of their ways of doing things. Sad and destructive.

Many scientists have given warnings over the years, but people prefer to do nothing. Don’t blame Greta for at least trying. She’s probably smarter and a lot more concerned than any of you (an understatement). Good luck on the next 100 years for you and your family. Maybe living on Mars or the moon isn’t a bad idea after all, at the rate our climate problems are going."

And John K. takes a similarly sarcastic tone: "As against St. Greta, we have Saint Bill, who doesn’t “claim to know,” but of course, the insinuation of his whole piece is that he does. Or at least compared to Greta, the Joan of Arc of climate change. Because Greta took a yacht across the Atlantic, she must obviously be wrong about climate change/warming! Could that be a red herring?

And because there has been warming and cooling over thousands/millions of years, when there was no CO2 emissions from fossil fuels etc., does it follow that the present has no need to worry or to try to do anything about something (fossil fuels) that wasn’t there before and the Earth still survived? No one ever did anything in the past and here we are, thriving because of fossil-fueled progress protecting us from “nature’s hissy fits” and being told that given a long enough perspective, things are no worse than usual, where “usual” is a few million years. And maybe “global warming is a good thing.” (Hello? Still waiting for the reasoning on that one.)"

Neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post has yet issued a “Well… maybe you were right all along” on the climate issue. Our guess is that – barring record low temperatures… or an economic catastrophe brought about by “supply chain disruptions” in the energy industry – the “crisis” will go on for many more years.

Known Unknown: But the big difference between St. Greta and St. Bill is that the former says she knows what is coming… and she knows what can be done about it. The latter is more modest. He doesn’t know what’s ahead… doesn’t know if it will be good or bad… doesn’t know if anything can be done about it… and doesn’t know if it would be worth trying anyway. Most important, the former is so sure she knows something, she’s willing to insist that billions of people change the way they live, pay more for energy, and risk severe shocks and dislocations to the carbon-fueled economy we all depend on. The latter – who has actually built two solar-heated houses – would let people decide for themselves.

What neither of us knows is what will happen when 7 billion people, who now rely on fossil fuels delivered to them by long, complex supply chains guided (mostly) by market-set prices…are forced to switch to “alternative” sources of energy controlled and directed by central planning bureaucrats, lobbyists, and politicians.

Collateral Damage: We remind readers that it was during the lifetimes of some of the oldest among us that as many as 60 million people – in the Ukraine and China – starved to death. Why? Because their central planners decided that The Great Cause of their era was worth a little collateral damage. They enforced The Plan… no matter what.

We have nothing at all against vaccinations. Nor against face masks, social distancing… solar panels… windmills… nor pre-1850 living standards. Those who want them are welcome to them. But we don’t like people telling us what to do. And the fellow who insists on making something compulsory is almost always a dangerous jackass."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"Are Gasoline Prices Being Pushed Higher On Purpose?"

"Are Gasoline Prices Being Pushed Higher On Purpose?"

by Michael Snyder

"Is it just a “coincidence” that gasoline prices have absolutely exploded since Joe Biden took office? The hatred that many on the left have for traditional forms of energy is well known. Many of them are entirely convinced that the changes that are happening to our climate can be reversed if we can just transition away from traditional forms of energy. So on the left there is a lot of interest in finding ways to create incentives for people to use “cleaner” forms of energy instead of “dirtier” forms of energy. For example, the left would love to see all of us driving around in electric vehicles, and one way to accelerate that transition would be to dramatically raise the price of gasoline. Interestingly, that is precisely what is happening right now. In fact, the average price of a gallon of gasoline just hit another all-time high in California…

"Gas prices in California reached an all-time high Monday as the average price of a regular gallon soared to $4.682, according to the American Automobile Assn. It was the state’s second record-breaking day in a row. Monday’s price for regular unleaded was six-tenths of a cent higher than the Sunday average reported by AAA, which broke the previous state record of $4.671 set in October 2012."

And things are even worse in the San Francisco area. For those living there, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has almost reached five dollars… "Drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area are paying more at the pump than anywhere else in the country – with a gallon of gas hitting a near record level of $4.84 as the nation remains in the grip of an inflation crisis."

On November 30th of last year, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was just $2.21. So what changed? I think that it is pretty obvious. Last year we had a Republican in the White House and now we have a Democrat. The Biden regime has been publicly expressing concern about gas prices, but at the same time the administration just keeps making moves that they know will make the energy crisis even worse.

When Breitbart News recently interviewed Senator Tom Cotton, he actually accused the administration of pumping up gasoline prices on purpose…"Cotton, who campaigned last week for Republicans in Iowa ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, told Breitbart News in a phone interview between events that he believes the high gas prices are on purpose.

“Most notably, more and more people tell me that they’re not even able to fill their pickup truck tank up for the entire week,” Cotton said. “They’ve got to fill up half a tank and hope that the price comes down by the end of the week. That, in particular, is the intended effect of Joe Biden’s energy policy. It’s not unintended or some accident. They want gas to cost $4 a gallon because they want all of us to get out of pickup trucks and SUVs and get into small electric compacts or bicycles or scooters or whatever else Pete Buttigieg takes to work.”

So is Senator Cotton correct about this? If he is, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Meanwhile, we just learned that over the past year home prices have been rising much, much faster than paychecks have been… "For Americans seeking to buy a home, this year has likely brought much frustration. A nexus of several natural and man-made factors culminated in the tightest residential real estate markets in recent memory.

While median wages increased by 4.3 percent October-to-October this year vs last, typical mortgage payment (30-year fixed rate with 10 percent down payment) increased nearly 17 percent, according to the National Association of Realtors (pdf). That means an average American worker earning about $4,300 a month would need to spend nearly $1,400 a month on a typical mortgage payment. And that’s before income taxes, social security taxes, Medicare taxes, property taxes, home insurance, and utility bills."

Our standard of living is being absolutely eviscerated, and the middle class is shrinking a little bit more with each passing day. But the Democrats keep coming up with new ways to gum up the economy. For example, they are now pushing the Biden regime to implement a new mandate which will make business travel by air a complete and utter nightmare…"Democratic lawmakers are urging President Joe Biden to require that all airline passengers either show proof of full vaccination against the coronavirus or a negative COVID-19 test before boarding a domestic flight. The request was made in a letter, signed by more than 30 Democrats that was sent to Biden November 11."

If such a mandate is put into place, it may be many years before it is finally removed. You would think that the Democrats would have figured out that the American people absolutely hate mandates by now. Their poll numbers just keep sinking, and if the midterm elections were held right now they would clearly lose control of Congress…"As things stand, if the midterm elections were today, 51% of registered voters say they’d support the Republican candidate in their congressional district, 41% say the Democrat. That’s the biggest lead for Republicans in the 110 ABC/Post polls that have asked this question since November 1981. Indeed, it’s only the second time the GOP has held a statistically significant advantage (the other was +7 points in January 2002) and the ninth time it’s held any numerical edge at all."

But I don’t expect the Democrats to back down. It’s not in their nature. I have said it before, and I will say it again. I think that the Democrats are creating the sort of political environment that could result in a new major third party rising before we get to the 2024 elections. But for now, the Democrats are in control in Washington, and they have put us on a path that leads to national ruin.

All over the western world, there is a major push to discourage traditional forms of energy, and this is creating an unprecedented supply squeeze. We desperately need to do a whole lot more drilling, but that isn’t going to happen. So this new energy crisis is going to continue to escalate, and gasoline prices will eventually reach levels that were once completely unimaginable."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Risk In This Market Is Rising - Important Updates"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/16/21:

"Risk In This Market Is Rising - Important Updates"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"Retailers Lining Store Shelves With Props To 'Hide Supply Shortage'"

"Retailers Lining Store Shelves With 

Props To 'Hide Supply Shortage'"

by Tyler Durden

"Americans are waking up to the fact that shortages of everyday products such as ice cream, frozen food, soda, chicken, spices, coffee, fish sticks, snacks, and toilet paper are popping up all over the country as supply chains remain heavily congested 19 months after the virus pandemic first began. Instead of leaving some store shelves bare, which might insight fear and buying panic among consumers, some stores are lining their empty shelves with meaningless items to appear as full as possible.

A little more than a week ago, hashtag #EmptyShelvesJoe was one of the hottest trends across Twitter but was quickly squashed by Twitter police. People from all over the country went to their local supermarkets and big-box outlets to point out how supply chain snarls have left some store shelves bare.

Retailers have since panicked, and social media users are now pointing out that some store shelves are lined with single items to "hide the supply shortage." Our Safeway appears to be trying to hide the supply shortage by using single lines of products to fill shelves. Leading to this: 

A user tweeted a picture of what appears to be single boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese lining multiple shelves.

One of the most stunning attempts to keep the appearance that everything was fine was when one retailer lined multiple aisles with dozens and dozens of foldable chairs. Some on Twitter explained this is just part of the retailers "fronting" merchandise which means they're bringing everything to the front to make the store look as packed as possible.

What's troubling is that retailers are running out of items, and it's becoming entirely obvious now as congested supply chains may suggest that certain products will not be available in time for the holidays. It's okay if stores run out of PlayStations and Nerf Blasters, but if shelves in food sections start to go bare - this could be very problematic.

Remember what happened in the Soviet Union right before the collapse?

For now, retailers are creating the appearance that everything is fine so empty store shelves don't spark buying panic that would strain supplies even more."

- https://www.zerohedge.com

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Full screen recommended.

"Empty Shelves At Walmart!"

"We are shopping at Walmart only to find lots of empty shelves, and very high prices!  From frozen goods, to meat and dairy.  Items are missing everywhere!  It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products." 

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● "Empty Shelves At Family Dollar!"

● "Empty Shelves At Target"

● 'Visiting Kroger Marketplace"

"How It Really Is"

 

"You Can Afford To Pay More; Housing Bubble Unsustainable; Stimulus Has Dried Up; Auto Repos Soar?"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 11/15/21:

"You Can Afford To Pay More; Housing Bubble Unsustainable; 

Stimulus Has Dried Up; Auto Repos Soar?"

"Hoarding Sweeps Across America, Sparks Food Shortages & Sharp Price Hikes As Supply Chains Collapse"

Full screen recommended.

"Hoarding Sweeps Across America, Sparks Food 

Shortages & Sharp Price Hikes As Supply Chains Collapse"

by Epic Economist

"The United States is facing a series of social problems that are commonly seen in developing countries. Shortages of food, empty shelves in grocery stores, and painful inflation are some of these issues. Over the past months, consumers have started to document through photos and videos the shortages they've been witnessing. On social media, it's possible to find hundreds of clips showing empty shelves all across the nation, as shortages of food and daily necessities, such as toilet papers, intensify. On Twitter, one shopper revealed: "I've never seen empty shelves like this in my lifetime," he posted with a picture of rows of cleared-out shelves.

Recently, the hashtag #EmptyShelvesJoe shot to the top of the trending topics on Twitter as consumers complained about the President's inability to tackle the supply chain crisis and meteoric price hikes. The media has been shifting the blame to a myriad of disruptions related to the health crisis. And although supply chain bottlenecks can be partially attributed to those disruptions, there is rarely any mention that behind this devastating crisis is the inability of the US to deal with it. Actually, it is the very inability to solve these snags that makes America look like a developing country.

The situation is getting so much attention lately that many people from all over the world are wondering why the world's sole superpower can't even keep its stores stocked. And shoppers are afraid that conditions may worsen in the coming weeks, that's why millions of them have started panic-buying again. Worried Americans are now emptying supermarket shelves at record speed as the supply chain crisis threatens to ruin the all-important holiday shopping season. People have been hoarding everything you can imagine, from canned goods to boxed items, fresh produce, and even making a run on milk when it’s available in grocery stores, according to Bloomberg.

However, this fast surge in demand fueled by fear is occurring amid the worst moment of the California port crisis, and it's only aggravating the problem. Two of the biggest container ports in the country are facing a gigantic cargo backlog. Right now, the logjam in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is leading ships to wait as long as 17 days - a new scary record as we move closer to Black Friday. The almost 17-day wait is double the wait time from just two months ago. In fact, since the new administration vowed to fix the problem, the supply chain crisis has only gotten worse, according to experts from the industry. And consumers are realizing the same, that's precisely the reason why they've started to hoard supplies one more time, the experts say.

One of them, who preferred to remain in anonymity, has said that in his store, he is seeing people 'massively hoarding' over the past few weeks, consumers are particularly going for frozen food and other shelf-stable items. He also exposed that because the panic buying has been depleting his store's inventory, he's been forced to push prices up. The store owner added that he's also panic buying and hoarding supplies whenever he can. His goal is to keep about four to six months of inventory on hand to fight higher prices and meet the growing demand.

According to Dill Pickle Food general manager I’Talia McCarthy, "panic buying is the cause of many of the out-of-stock situations that grocers are experiencing,” she wrote in an email to store owners earlier this month. Other industry challenges include a persistent poultry shortage that’s hitting both supermarkets and fast-food chains. That shortage has been exacerbated by labor shortages at processing plants and a recent crop of underperforming roosters. Just this month, prices at the grocery went up by 4.5 percent compared to the same period a year ago, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index, released last week, and there’s no sign of slowing for this upward trend.

The relentless rise in food prices is already impacting millions of families across the country. Grocery bills have been rising much faster than people's wages, and millions of families are experiencing severe food insecurity. It seems that this is going to be an exceedingly painful Christmas for millions upon millions of US families. Even though our nation is abundant in wealth and resources, those in positions of power don't seem to know what they're doing. And we're the ones paying the price for the mess they've caused. Unfortunately, things aren't going to get any easier in the months ahead. That's why we always stress that you should get ready while you can. The truth is that this is just the beginning of a much deeper crisis that will persist for decades."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

Gregory Mannarino, "Situation Hyper-Critical: A Shocking Admission And A Warning From The Federal Reserve"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/15/21:

"Situation Hyper-Critical: A Shocking Admission 

And A Warning From The Federal Reserve"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"The Old Tablecloth Trick"

"The Old Tablecloth Trick"

by Jeff Thomas

"Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Therefore, if a tablecloth is spread out on a table and an object, such as the fishbowl above, is placed on that tablecloth, the fishbowl will tend to "want" to remain right where it is. If the tablecloth were to be yanked away quickly, the fishbowl would move very little. Inertia, having been overcome by the tablecloth, would then be overcome, but the fishbowl, already at rest, would tend to remain right where it had been before – on the table.

And the same is true of human nature. If a government or an economic system collapses, the populace will experience an immediate shock of change, but their tendency will be to adapt as quickly as possible to maintain their previous situation as much as can be accomplished.

Has the government collapsed? Create a new one, possibly on similar principles as the previous one (hopefully with revisions made, to prevent the next government from making the same self-destructive mistakes a second time.)

Has the economy collapsed? Throw together whatever new form of economy works best until a more solid one can be created. This could mean relying temporarily on barter, but might mean the establishment of a safer form of currency, such as precious metals. And, again, when a new currency is introduced, revisions might be made as to who controls it, in order to assure that the same mistake is not repeated.

But, these are natural calamities that happen from time to time in civilization and, as long as the people dealing with the re-establishment of the government or economy are motivated in the direction of the benefit of the populace, there’s every chance that a solution will be created that would be implemented quickly, might minimize damage and, hopefully, be better than the last version. After all, if left to their own devices, people will come up with whatever system serves them well.

But, of course, we rarely witness the above scenario with regard to governments and economies. What we do see playing out, time after time, in one era or another, in one geographical location or another, is something quite different. Historically, what we’ve seen is that government performs the political and/or economic equivalent of pulling the tablecloth away slowly. And, of course, anyone who’s familiar with the old tablecloth trick understands what will happen. The fishbowl ends up smashed on the floor and the fish are left gasping for their last breaths.

This latter fact illustrates vividly why no one should ever pull away the tablecloth slowly. And yet, in generation after generation, humankind is repeatedly suckered into a situation in which their government does exactly that.

The way it works is that the government first says, "It’s too troublesome for you to run your own lives; leave it to us and we’ll look after you. We’ll take care of all those pesky details of life that are nuisances for you now."

First, they take control of "protection" in the form of a military, to protect the populace from threats from without and, later, create a police force to protect the populace from threats from within. Then, clearly, the people need a central fire service. They also need roads and community buildings. And, of course, these all cost money, so taxes are implemented. Then they are raised, as the costs of such services inevitably increase over time.

Then, an increasingly expansive list of other services is put forward – assistance for the poor, retirement funds, universal health benefits, etc. Soon, it becomes "necessary" to increase taxes to pay for the ever-expanding list of services the government controls. Throughout this process, the populace nods as each new "benefit" is introduced. And, since the process is gradual, they almost invariably fail to worry that the tablecloth is in motion and that their fishbowl is closer to the edge of the table than it was before.

But, in the meantime, the political leaders are continuing to pull the tablecloth and are aware that the fishbowl is nearing the edge. At this point, if they were responsible people, they’d say, "Oh-oh, we’ve been a bit too greedy and we’ve put you folks in danger. But, at this point, it won’t do any good for us to tax you less and cut out the services that have been promised to you. At this point, we need to stop pulling entirely."

And, of course, were they to do that, two things would occur. First, the populace would be up in arms at their entitlements being cut off. Second, the political leaders would be out of a job. With no more services to provide, taxation would cease to have validation. The political leaders would be in far greater danger from a cessation of movement than the people themselves.

What to do? Well, most of us, as we become adults, recognize that, in order to live, we must become productive. That’s what turns us into responsible people. But, remember, political leaders never learn this lesson. They go straight from being parasitical as children to being parasitical as adults. When the jig is up and the fishbowl is nearing the edge, they act the way they’ve always acted – as parasites. Only now, they realise that it’s all about to end very soon. Therefore, it’s time to get a last squeeze of the lemon before it goes dry.

At that point, they ramp up the economy through the creation of debt. They also increase taxation dramatically, with the claim that benefits must be increased. They then do their best to get themselves out of the way as the last pull of the tablecloth sends the fishbowl over the edge.

This, of course, is why it’s so overwhelmingly common for political leaders to take a hike just as their economies and/or governments are collapsing. Regardless of the era, regardless of the geographical locale, whether the leader be Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Shah of Iran, Fulgencio Batista or Idi Amin, those who caused the problem tend to have a well-funded exit plan in place and are rarely themselves trapped in the fishbowl.

Since this has been the nature of governments throughout history, we’d be wise to observe the situation objectively when assessing the country in which we live, and, we’d be wise to concurrently assess how things are going in other countries. If our home country is literally getting close to the edge, we might wish to make a move before the inevitable occurs.

 

Historically, in any era, there are always some countries that are getting near the edge and others that are not. Unfortunately, there's little any individual can practically do to change the course of these trends in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible. The choice for anyone whose situation is reaching its expiry date might wish to vote with his feet, rather than to await the final pull of the tablecloth."

- internationalman.com

Musical Interlude: Two Steps From Hell, "Downstream"

Two Steps From Hell, "Downstream"

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The Struggle of Life...

“So, how do you beat the odds when it’s one against a billion? You’re just outnumbered. You stand strong, keep pushing yourself against all rational limits, and never give up. But the truth of the matter is, despite how hard you try and fight to stay in control, when it’s all said and done, sometimes you’re just outnumbered.”

- “Meredith”, “Gray’s Anatomy”

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“In the movie “The Lion in Winter”, when the sons, in the dungeon, think they hear Henry coming down the stairs to kill them:

Richard: ”He’s here! He’ll get no satisfaction out of us! Don’t let him see you beg! Take it like a man!”

Geoffrey: “You fool! As if the way one falls down matters!”

Richard: ”Well, when the fall is all that’s left, it matters a great deal.”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What strange world is this? Earth. In the foreground of the featured image are the Pinnacles, unusual rock spires in Nambung National Park in Western Australia. Made of ancient sea shells (limestone), how these human-sized picturesque spires formed remains unknown. In the background, just past the end of the central Pinnacle, is a bright crescent Moon. The eerie glow around the Moon is mostly zodiacal light, sunlight reflected by dust grains orbiting between the planets in the Solar System. 

Click image for larger size.

Arching across the top is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. Many famous stars and nebulas are also visible in the background night sky. The featured 29-panel panorama was taken and composed in 2015 September after detailed planning that involved the Moon, the rock spires, and their corresponding shadows. Even so, the strong zodiacal light was a pleasant surprise.”

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201011.html

Chet Raymo, “As Time Goes By”

“As Time Goes By”

by Chet Raymo

“Is time something that is defined by the ticking of a cosmic clock, God’s wristwatch say? Time doesn’t exist except for the current tick. The past is irretrievably gone. The future does not yet exist. Consciousness is awareness of a moment. Or is time a dimension like space? We move through time as we move through space. The past is still there; we’re just not there anymore. The future exists; we’ll get there. We experience time as we experience space, say, by looking out the window of a moving train. Or is time…

Physicists and philosophers have been debating these questions since the pre-Socratics. Plato. Newton. Einstein. Most recently, Lee Smolin. Without resolution. What makes the question so difficult, it seems to me, is that time is inextricably tied up with consciousness. We won’t understand time until we understand consciousness, and vice versa. So far, consciousness is a mystery, in spite of books with titles like “Consciousness Explained”. Will consciousness be explained? Can consciousness be explained? If so, will it require a conceptual breakthrough of revolutionary proportions? Or is the Darwinian/material paradigm enough? Are we in for an insight, or for a surprise?

As I sit here at my desk under the hill, looking out at a vast panorama of earth, sea and sky, filled, it would seem, infinitely full of detail, so full that my awareness can only skim the surface, I have that uneasy sense that it’s going to be damnably difficult to extract consciousness, as a thing, from the universe in its totality. I think of that word “entanglement,” from quantum theory, and I wonder to what extent consciousness is entangled, perhaps even with past and future.

Who knows? Perhaps consciousness, or what I think of as my consciousness, is just a slice of cosmic consciousness, in the same way that the present is a slice of cosmic time. As a good Ockhamist, I am loathe to needlessly multiply hypotheses. But time will tell. Or consciousness will tell. Or something.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “Can You Imagine?”

“Can You Imagine?”

“For example, what the trees do

not only in lightning storms

or the watery dark of a summer’s night

or under the white nets of winter

but now, and now, and now – whenever

we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine

they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing

to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting

a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly

more shade – surely you can’t imagine they just

stand there loving every

minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings

of the years slowly and without a sound

thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,

and then only in its own mood, comes

to visit, surely you can’t imagine

patience, and happiness, like that.”

- Mary Oliver, “Long Life”

"Who Will Answer?"

"Who Will Answer?"

by Jim Kunstler

"Why on earth would any American with a functioning brain believe what he /she /they is being told by the public health officialdom, the politicians, or the news media? For two years, they have lied to you about everything relating to the Covid-19 virus, including where it came from, how it was developed, who sponsored its development, how the vaccines happened to come onstage thirty seconds after the disease entered the scene, how well the vaccines worked, how safe the vaccines were, and whether there were other cheap and effective treatments for the disease.

So, here we are with nearly 200-million Americans fully vaccinated (and 230-million with at least one dose), plus 47-million overall officially registered cases of Covid illness (conferring immunity among the survivors), plus X-number people infected with no symptoms, or people who didn’t get tested when sick, or didn’t bother going to see a doctor or report to a hospital, plus X-number of people with natural immunity to Covid for one reason or another (maybe a high number, based on the Diamond Princess cruise ship ratio of a Pareto-type 80/20 distribution) - and now, in the fall of 2021, here comes another surge of Covid-19 among both the vaxxed and un-vaxxed.

Did all that vaxxing help? It apparently did nothing to prevent transmission of the disease. The vaxxed were spreading it as effectively as the unvaxxed, and the vaxxed were catching the disease as easily, too, though supposedly suffering not as badly as the unvaxxed (if you choose to believe the official press releases, and why would you believe them?). Then, along came the reports of “adverse reactions” to the vaccines, many of them quite grave - clots, strokes, infarctions, neurological havoc, organ failure. In mid-October this year, the VAERS registry had it at 17,000 deaths and 26,000 permanent disabilities, and the rule-of-thumb was that these represented only 10 percent of the actual number of adverse events because the VAERS website was so badly designed that it crashed half the time any doctor tried to use it… plus the doctors were being silenced and punished for voicing any distrust of the vaccines.

Then why the mad rush to vaccinate all the children in America? There have been next-to-zero covid deaths among children besides a few hundred with grave co-morbidities like cancer or cystic fibrosis - and the hospitals had a cash subsidy incentive from the federal government to list them as dying “with Covid.” Children are far more likely to suffer harm from the vaccines than from the Covid-19 disease. The child vax experiment is only just underway, and there are already enough cases of myocarditis and other disorders to be very concerned. The medical establishment has no idea what the long-term effects on children might be, in particular on their reproductive systems, since the chief active ingredient in the vaccines, the spike protein, has a proclivity for the sexual organs. It happens, too, by the way, that mothers who got vaxxed in early 2021 are just now giving birth to babies with myocarditis and other signature disorders of adverse mRNA vaccine reactions. Keep your eye on that sub-plot of the story.

One wonders: is this child vax campaign an attempt to eliminate the last major control group in the population? (Or just to eliminate a big demographic chunk altogether?) Is it tied in some way to beating the release date for Pfizer’s “Comirnaty” vaccine - which would vacate the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) that protects the pharma companies from liability? Despite delirious propaganda from the likes of National Public Radio, the bad news is out, and the bad news is that the Covid vaccines for children are bad news. Parents ought to object to any official attempts to coerce them into vaxxing their kids, but will they? I’d guess that the reaction will be ferocious. Stand by on that.

Meanwhile, what would be an intelligent response to Covid-19 at this point? Well, how about letting it burn through the population as expeditiously as possible, along with an aggressive nationwide early treatment program using existing effective drugs such as ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, fluvoxamine, budesonide, monoclonal antibodies, for starters, along with vitamin D3, quercetin, zinc, selenium, N-acetyl L-cysteine (NAC)? That would minimize fatalities and confer superior natural immunity throughout the whole population.

Of course, one of the whopper lies you’re being told is that this early treatment protocol doesn’t work. Dozens of clinical studies in other countries and direct clinical experience in this country tell the opposite story: the early treatment protocols work remarkably well. The big question, eventually, will be: who might be held responsible in the public health and medical bureaucracies for militating against early treatment? Was it sheer epic incompetence, or something more malevolent?"

- https://kunstler.com/

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Related:

"VAERS: At Least 160,000 Americans Have 

Likely Died From Covid Vaccines"

○

The title of this article reminded me of this totally unrelated song from 1968...

Ed Ames, "Who Will Answer?"

"That Was the Week That Was"

"That Was the Week That Was"

by Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "Our Doom Index gauge is now at 8… which is “Crash Alert” territory. On Friday, we all dutifully assembled for the ceremony…We pulled the old, tattered, black-and-blue crash flag out of storage, ran it up the pole, and saluted solemnly. Now, we’ll see what happens…

Crash Alert (Again): Here are the details on the latest Doom Index reading from our research department: We created the Doom Index to sound the alarm ahead of the next crisis. It tracks 12 key indicators to detect when there’s stress in the economy and markets are overheating. [For more information on how we calculate the Doom Index reading each quarter, have a look at our "Introducing the Doom Index" report.] The chart below shows our Doom Index levels by quarter. The red bars indicate a reading of 8 or higher. That’s when we raise our “crash alert” flag and tell investors it’s time to prepare for a market crash.

Crash Alert: We raised our “crash alert” flag at the end of Q2 2019, when the Doom Index hit 8. We stayed in the “Danger Zone” for the next four quarters. Economic conditions improved slightly in the second half of 2020, as evidenced by our Doom Index reading dropping to 7 for Q3 2020 and Q4 2020… before shooting back up to 8 – crash alert territory – in Q1 2021… and then dropping back to 7 in Q2 2021. Our recent Doom Index reading – based on the Q3 2021 data – is 8…So we’re raising our tattered “crash alert” flag once more…You’ve been warned, Dear Reader…

[For a full breakdown of the indicators we track for the Doom Index and their Q3 2021 readings, click here.]

Good News: And before plunging ahead into this week’s kookiness, let’s look back at what a marvelous time we had last week. When it comes to fraud and fantasy, we can’t remember a stretch of seven days so densely packed.

First, stocks hit another new all-time high… with the Dow trading above 36,400 and the Wilshire 5000 over 48,900… And a new record for the stocks-to-GDP ratio, too – over 200%.

Elon Musk ran a Twitter poll and determined to sell $7 billion of his own stock… which caused the company’s value to go down by as much as $235 billion… It was as if the entire annual GDP of Portugal had been erased.

Meanwhile, a potential Tesla competitor, Rivian (RIVN), went public. The company has hardly any sales. And it has no profits – in the very-competitive market for pickups, it probably never will. Still, that didn’t stop the gamblers. They acted as if the profits were already in the bag… and drove the share price up to about $130… giving the company a projected market value above $110 billion. That’s billion, with a b… which is a lot of money for a company that lost $2 billion from the beginning of 2020 through June 2021… and that produced fewer than 350 vehicles in September-October. (GM’s market cap is $92 billion… with more than 1.7 million vehicles sold so far in 2021.)

Crypto Record: Monday was a very busy day in FantasyLand, with the total value of the crypto market punching through the $3 trillion ceiling. But unlike Rivian, which might someday make a profit and pay a dividend, crypto is a whole new asset class. It is no industry. There is no product. No sales. No profits. No company picnics or swag. Like chips in a casino, cryptos provide a service, however. You can gamble with them… cash them in… spend them… share them with your friends. And who knows… They might become even more valuable.

Bad News: Not all the news was celebratory, however. Last week also brought us two big break-ups – GE and J&J. These are real companies, in the real world, selling real products to real buyers. We don’t know much about Johnson & Johnson… but we recall when GE was riding high. Its CEO then was Jack Welch, feted as perhaps the greatest businessman in America. Welch took the company from $74 billion in sales in 1980 to $224 billion in sales by the end of the century, and was named “Manager of the Century” in 1999.

Even then, we were suspicious. We’ve run a business, too. And in the late 1990s, when we learned that GE was buying new businesses at the rate of, on average, one a week, we knew it would not be long before the company started sliding down the slippery slope. It takes a lifetime to master even a single business. No matter how smart GE’s team was… there was no way it could make that work. And in the event, it didn’t. The many acquisitions increased GE’s debt and distracted its management. Sales fell. By last year, it was back (inflation adjusted) below where it had been 40 years before. And on Tuesday, GE announced that it was de-conglomerating itself into three different businesses. Sic transit gloria edisonia.

Really BIG News: But the week’s really big news was the inflation rate. The Federal Reserve had said inflation was transitory. But now… there it is… getting worse, month after month. And so, the Fed admitted that inflation might be with us for a while, but still insisted that the “factors” behind it are transitory: Inflation is elevated, largely reflecting factors that are expected to be transitory.

As for the rest of the White House, and The Washington Post… they decided to try to divert attention from the real cause (too much government spending… too much money-printing) onto “supply chain disruptions,” “price gouging,” and market “manipulations.” The White House, and several economists, even suggested that more infrastructure spending would boost output and thereby lower inflation rates.

Remarkable Pledge" And finally, there was the United Nations COP26 Climate Change Conference in Scotland… wherein executives, politicians, apparatchiks, busy bodies, and “green” lobbyists and hustlers – 503 of whom were linked to the oil industry – came together.

Yes, Dear Reader, the greenwash flowed like the Niagara. Old, withered businesses sent out glossy new leaves. Politicians turned the color of unripe bananas. And greasy roughnecks looked as though they had just gotten off the ferry after a rough ride! Everyone was the planet’s best friend… and all pledged to do their utmost to save it from the dreaded CO2.

And yes, they made the most remarkable pledge since Adolf Hitler promised to keep the Reich going for 1,000 years. They said they were going to change the world’s weather. Not “a wee bit,” as they might say in Glasgow, where COP26 was held. But precisely… to the fraction of a degree. The U.N. said it was looking for an upper limit on average temperature increase of 2.2 degrees Celsius. The International Energy Agency said it thought warming could be limited to 1.8 degrees. And they agreed to keep the upper limit of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels “alive.”

New Week: And so now… with our Crash Alert flag proudly flying above the headquarters… and so much folderol behind us…we put our head down… venture into the new week… and prepare to laugh. Stay tuned."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Ellijay, Georgia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"It’s Time to Make Big Changes - The US Dollar is Plummeting"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, AM 11/15/21:

"It’s Time to Make Big Changes - The US Dollar is Plummeting"

"Now is the best time in history to make big changes. 

We are seeing the job market in complete chaos. 

The US dollar is plummeting in value before our eyes."

"This Is How They Intend To Get Us To 'You Will Own Nothing And Be Happy'”

"This Is How They Intend To Get Us To

 'You Will Own Nothing And Be Happy'”

by Michael Snyder

"The pieces of the puzzle may fit together in ways that you do not expect. For years, the global elite have been openly telling us that one day we will all own nothing, we will have no privacy, and we will be extremely happy with our new socialist utopia. But exactly how do they intend to transition to such a society? Are they going to come and take all of your stuff? Needless to say, there are millions upon millions of very angry people out there that aren’t just going to hand over their stuff to a bunch of socialists. So how are they going to overcome that obstacle?

Well, the truth is that they don’t need to take your stuff to implement their goals. All they need to do is to destroy the value of your money. If your money becomes worthless, you will start descending into poverty and it won’t be too long before you become totally dependent on the government. And as the stuff that you have right now wears out, you won’t be able to replace it with the worthless money that you are now holding. Eventually, you will own virtually nothing, but you probably won’t be very happy about it.

So high inflation is actually a tool that the global elite can use to further their goals. The good news is that I do not believe that the global elite will ever be able to achieve their utopia. The bad news is that they won’t be able to achieve their utopia because western society is going to completely and utterly collapse during the times that are ahead.

But for now, inflation is going to be one of the hottest political issues as we head into 2022. On Friday, Vice-President Kamala Harris acknowledged that higher prices are having a huge impact on American families… “Prices have gone up and families and individuals are dealing with the realities of the bread costs more, the gas costs more, and have to understand what that means,” she said. “That’s about the cost of living going up. That’s about having to stress and stretch limited resources.” Harris said that is a “source of stress for families” that is “not only economic, but is, on a daily level, something that is a heavy weight to carry.” Of course her “solution” is to get Joe Biden’s agenda through Congress, and she knows that all of that spending will inevitably create even more inflation.

The socialists over at NBC News are trying to help the Biden administration by putting a positive spin on the inflation crisis. In fact, NBC’s Stephanie Ruhle is trying really hard to convince everyone that inflation is not a problem because we all have more money to spend these days. But as I demonstrated last week, the truth is that inflation is rising much faster than our paychecks are, and that means that our standard of living is going down.

And inflation is one of the big reasons why the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index just hit the lowest level since 2011…"At the same time, the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index tumbled to 66.8 for November, according to a preliminary reading Friday. That was the lowest since November 2011 and well below the Dow Jones estimate of 72.5. October’s reading was 71.7, meaning that the November level represented a 6.8% drop."

If you are among those that think that things are bad now, just wait, because they will soon get even worse. At this point, even Neel Kashkari is publicly admitting that inflation is going to continue to rise in the months ahead…"Minneapolis Fed Chair Neel Kashkari on Sunday said inflation in the U.S. will likely see “higher readings” before numbers taper off, as Americans grapple with rising prices nationwide. “The math suggests we’re probably going to see somewhat higher readings over the next few months before they likely start to taper off,” Kashkari said during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The Federal Reserve has lost control, and 2022 is going to be a very “interesting” year from an economic standpoint. On Sunday, we learned that the average price of a gallon of gasoline in California has almost reached five dollars…"California gas prices hit an average of $4.676 Sunday, beating its previous record average price of $4.671 for regular gasoline set in October 2012, according to AAA." Gasoline prices are going to continue to move higher, and that is really bad news. Just about everything that we buy has to be transported, and so higher gasoline prices are going to fuel even more inflation.

Sadly, those that are on the bottom of the economic food chain are the ones that are being hurt the most. At this point, many food banks are really struggling to purchase enough food because price hikes have become so severe…"America’s largest food bank struggles to feed people amid a perfect storm of surging food prices and supply chain woes.

Katie Fitzgerald, COO of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization that operates more than 200 food banks across the country, told AP News that her network of food banks is already stretched thin due to the unprecedented demand spurred by the virus pandemic downturn in the economy last year. She warned that it has become more difficult for her organization to absorb food inflation, resulting in fewer families being fed this holiday season."

Used farm equipment is another area where inflation is hitting really hard. According to one index, the price of used farm equipment was up 22 percent during the first nine months of 2021…"The index is up 22% in the first nine months of the year and poised to make its biggest gains yet in the fourth quarter, a boom that’s turning a normally quiet corner of the farming market into Exhibit A of the inflation surge coursing through the U.S. economy. The market has all the ingredients fueling inflation in industries like cars and TVs - soaring demand from cash-flush buyers, the semiconductor shortage, congested ports and rails - with the added irritant of the labor stoppage at the world’s largest farm-machine maker. The match “is now lit,” Peterson says, “and it’s lit while there’s a John Deere strike.”

So many problems have converged all at once. Some have used the term “a perfect storm” to describe what we are facing, and I think that is definitely quite appropriate.

If you are waiting for life to “get back to normal”, you are going to be waiting for a very long time. As MN Gordon has noted, pre-2020 prices are now gone forever… "Pre-2020 prices, much like pre-1965 prices, are gone forever. Deficits of $5.9 trillion over the 24 months ending September 30, 2021, and a Fed balance sheet expansion of nearly $5 trillion over the same period, have irrevocably damaged the entire pricing structure of the financial system and the economy." Price inflation is on the move. Reality can no longer be covered up with Washington’s lies. We expect this episode of inflation will be one for the history books.

I wish that I had better news for you. I really do. But sooner or later, this is what socialist regimes always do. They tell us to study hard, get a good job and work as hard as we can. And then they give our money to people that haven’t done any of those things. Eventually they run out of other people’s money, and so then they just start wildly creating more. Unfortunately, every time that this has been tried throughout history it has always ended in disaster, and now it is our turn."

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Expect The Unexpected: Morgan Stanley Warns Again! Are Price Controls Coming? Bet On It!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/15/21:

"Expect The Unexpected: Morgan Stanley Warns Again! 

Are Price Controls Coming? Bet On It!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Clear Focus Ambient Space Music for Concentration - Isochronic Tones"

"Clear Focus Ambient Space Music for Concentration - 

Isochronic Tones"

Full screen recommended. 

Headphones are NOT required for this video.

by Jason Lewis, Mind Amend

"Ambient electronic space music with low-intensity beta and alpha wave tones for clear focus. This is a brainwave entrainment music track using isochronic tones combined with music. The music has also been embedded with amplitude entrainment effects, where the music is subtly distorted and vibrates in unison with the same frequency of the isochronic tones. This helps to add further strength to the entrainment effect. If brainwave entrainment is a new concept for you, there is some information about it here: https://www.mindamend.com/

This brainwave entrainment session cycles through a frequency range of between 10Hz in Alpha, (which can help with memorization and learning), and up to 14Hz in the Beta range, (which will help with increasing focus and concentration). You can listen to this track with your eyes open while studying, reading or doing other activities which require a good level of concentration."

- https://www.mindamend.com/