Sunday, February 13, 2022

"If Only We Knew What We Know"

"If Only We Knew What We Know"
by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina
-  “Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” ~ The Queen in Lewis Carroll’s "Alice in Wonderland"

"Welcome to another Sunday Sesh, that time of the week when we pull up a barstool, take stock of the moment and, in today’s case, give thanks where it’s long overdue. (Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of time for grumbling, kvetching and curmudgeonly indulgences in future issues...)

Nary a day goes by that we are not invited to suspend disbelief, to take leave of our senses, and to accept on the one hand the utterly preposterous, and on the other the inexplicably divine. We rise every Sunday, a small miracle in itself. Like many Dear Readers, we take our coffee (flat white, extra shot) as if it were a matter of course, scarcely appreciating the many hands that went into its careful production. Our eggs, likewise, arrive on our plate, hearty and nutritious, as if delivered by angels in aprons. As for the bacon, it is as though Demeter herself husbanded the perfect breakfast drift, with our very taste buds in mind.

Our clothes, too, are delivered from exotic lands... Bangladesh, Vietnam, Sri Lanka... sewn by gentle hands, packed by calloused ones, then shipped and freighted across the wine dark seas to anonymous nobodies, hunched in front of laptop screens. These gadgets, in turn, are assembled, meticulously and expertly, by people we will never meet, in factories we will never visit. They are imagined by futurists, engineered by geniuses, and distributed to the far reaches of the known world on vessels and vehicles of unimaginable complexity.

And yet, what have we done to deserve such a bounty? What new land did we discover? What disease did we cure? What invention did we bestow upon mankind, that we are lavished with such luxury? Nada. Nil. Zilch. No Ode to a Grecian Urn flowed from our pen. No Eureka! moments sprang from our cranium. No complex machines, statues of David or unfinished symphonies emanated from our hallowed being.

And still, we can summon a private chauffeur with the click of a button, as easily as a king might command his cavalry. Expert chefs will prepare our meal, in any cuisine of our choosing, and deliver it to our door within the hour. And if we so wish, we can do as poor Dedalus only dreamed of: board a flying contraption and soar through the heavens to any destination on God's green earth.

We mention such wonders, if only in passing, to underscore the precarious nature by which the global economy hangs together... and how easily it can all be disrupted, especially by well-meaning world improvers, who would ignore the lessons of history only to impose their top-down, command economy style “solutions” to problems of their own making.

Earlier this week, we spoke to Harvard-trained geologist, geopolitical expert and all round man-of-letters, Byron King. What Byron doesn’t know about the energy markets may well not be worth knowing. And what he sees coming down the proverbial pike should alarm people who enjoy things like... oh, functioning light switches, buttons on their shirts, antibiotics, white in their paint, landing gear on their aircraft, steel in their bridges. You know, the kind of stuff we are routinely invited to take for granted, until it disappears.

Over the course of a freewheeling hour or so, Byron warned of the impending molecule crisis (“it’s not just energy, there’s a shortage of everything...”) the folly of the Great Energy Transition (“turns out you can’t power the world with Facebook ‘likes’ and invitations to your birthday”) and the geopolitical risk of offshoring critical industry, particularly in the “stuff economy.”

You’ll find our conversation with Byron in this week’s episode of the Fatal Conceits podcast, below. But first, in case you needed a gentle reminder of just how gullible man is when it comes to going along with cockamamie schemes and whackjob theories, we table the following essay for consideration in this week’s Sunday Sesh. Please enjoy and let us know your own thoughts in the comments section, below..."
"Homo Credulus"
by Joel Bowman

"Man: He’ll go along with just about anything. Given the right circumstances… a little programming… and enough time for it all to marinate in his soft, mammalian brain… there is almost nothing Homo Credulus will not learn to embrace. Don’t believe us?

Take a look at the historical record; you’ll soon wonder how we ever got this far. Sure, you’ll discover gizmos and flying contraptions… art and agriculture… music and mathematics. You’ll witness spectacular scientific breakthroughs, the number “0” and a man’s footprint on the moon. You’ll also find automobiles with so many cup holders, you won’t know where to holster your oversized 7/11 Big Gulp.

But you’ll also scratch your head. Perhaps you’ll even weep. And if you think hard enough, you’ll put a few things to serious question… “Central banks?” “Modern democracy?” “The Ellen DeGeneres Show?” How has mankind survived such atrocities? Self inflicted, no less! And why, moreover, does he rush so earnestly to repeat and replay his worst mistakes? (Ellen has been on air since 2003!) Don’t be too hard on yourself, Dear Reader. After all, repetition is nothing new…

You’ll recall that it was the Greeks who first gave the world democracy – from the Greek, dēmokratía, literally “Rule by ‘People’”. (And yes, it was those very same Greeks who put their own beloved Socrates to death… by a majority vote of 361-140.) Today, democracy is a cherished tenet of “the West.” It is woven into the civic religion, sewn into the social fabric. Men march off eagerly to fight for it, to proselytize it … and to die in forgotten ditches defending it.

At least, that’s what they believe they’re doing. As usual, the poor saps have been duped. Herewith, a little historical context… The phrase “Making the world safe for democracy” was actually a marketing slogan, coined back in the 1910s, as a way to sell “The Great War” to America. Weary from their own disastrous Civil War just a few decades earlier, in which hundreds of thousands of (mostly) young men gave up the ghost, Americans were mostly inward looking at the time. That is to say, they wanted little to do with what they largely saw as a “European affair.”

Polls might have indicated no appetite for battle… but the nation’s politicians were nonetheless starved for military misadventure. They sensed big profits abroad, both in manufacturing armaments and making onerous bank loans to foreign lands. Sure, “the nation” would have to fill tank and trench with warm young bodies… but very few soldiers would carry senatorial surnames along with their rifles. And so, after a public relations campaign of truly epic proportions, America marched off to war… wrapped in the delusion they had freshly been sold.

Eddie Bernays, the man who coined the phrase and, thus, peddled the war to America, made a fortune for his efforts. He was even invited by Woodrow Wilson to attend the Paris Peace Conference, in 1919, as a show of gratitude for his services. There, Bernays learned the full impact of his “democracy” slogan. An obviously bright fellow, the surreal experience caused him to think… If people will line up to kill one another under the influence of a mere marketing campaign… they could surely be convinced to do, say and buy just about anything!

Bernays was right. In fact, he wrote a series of books, detailing his insights. They included "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923), "A Public Relations Counsel" (1927) and a neat little number titled "Propaganda" (1928), in which Bernays laid out the blueprint for mass social and psychological manipulation. The collected works went on to become a huge success… and the favorite of none other than Joseph Goebbles, Reich Minister for Propaganda in Nazi Germany between 1933-45.

Bernays himself, writing in his 1965 autobiography, recalls a dinner at home in 1933 where… "Karl von Wiegand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, an old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Wiegand his propaganda library, the best Wiegand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Wiegand, was using my book "Crystallizing Public Opinion" as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me. […] Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign."

It is indeed chilling to think of such a heinous undertaking as being engineered, blueprinted, premeditated and carried out according to some kind of script. And yet, there it is… in Bernays’ own words, the “Father of Propaganda.” Having acquired somewhat of a tainted reputation-by-association, propaganda, itself, underwent a “strategic rebranding” after WWII. But make no mistake, the very same métier thrives to this day, under the more socially palatable designation, “Public Relations.” Still, a ruse by any other name…

“Could we be so stupid again?” wonders the gentle reader. “Might the mob still be swayed by what Charles Mackay termed ‘extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds?’” Why, of course! That’s the nature of the mob! Whether in love, finance, politics or any other matter, man is wont to be convinced, assured, persuaded, often against his own best interests. Few are the absurdities in which he will not take refuge, invest his hard-earned capital or squander his morality. All he needs is a good story, something to arrest his imagination and cauterize his capacity for reason. A distraction from his lonely, quotidian existence. That, and a few crumbs to pass his lips.

The Roman poet, Juvenal, recognized as much when he mocked the panem et circenses (bread and circuses) stratagem almost two millennia ago. In his Satire X, he referred to the Annona (a kind of grain dole) and the famous circus games, held in the Colosseum and elsewhere, as designed to keep the unthinking population fed and happy.

Look around you today, Dear Reader. What do you see, two millennia later, in the Year of Their Lord, 2022 AD? We’ve got reality television and stadium sports matches… food stamp programs and an Everest of transfer payments… we’ve got mask mandates at schools and the whole pretense of safety and security… there’s $30 trillion in national debt and government spending out the wazoo... plus a collapsing workforce, an opioid epidemic (out-killing COVID-19 in < 65s) and Whoopi Goldberg in the sin bin...

And behind it all, the greatest bread and circuses show ever: modern representative democracy. Now, as then, the show goes on!"

And now, it’s time for more "Fatal Conceits" - 
the podcast about money, markets, mobs and manias...

"Remember..."

“Remember, we all stumble, every one of us.
That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.”
- Emily Kimbrough

The Poet: Dylan Thomas, "Being But Men"

The Daily "Near You?"

McHenry, Illinois, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"All You Can Choose To Do..."

”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

"I Know Why You Did It..."

"Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. ”
- Alan Moore, "V for Vendetta"

"For This Is What We Do..."

"It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till."
- J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Lord of the Rings"

Sam: "It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing, this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."
- Samwise Gamgee, "The Lord of the Rings
"What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?'"
 - Barbara Kingsolver
“For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.”
- Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”
Two Steps From Hell, "Downstream"

Must Watch! "Financial Atrocities at Core of all Global Problems"

"Financial Atrocities at Core of all Global Problems"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Macroeconomic analyst Rob Kirby says all the problems of the world, whether it’s the truckers in Canada or the trouble in Ukraine, can be traced back to “obscene” secret money creation and the lies to cover it all up before it blows up. Kirby, who lives in Toronto, Canada, and has a front row seat to the Canadian Freedom Truckers says, “What’s occurring with the truckers in Canada, what’s occurring in Ukraine, what’s occurring in the South China Sea regarding Taiwan, what’s occurring in the Koreas, all the geopolitical tension everywhere in the world is all traceable back to the money. The amount of money that is being created is stunningly larger than what has been acknowledged and published for consumption.”

As just one example of out-of-control money printing and massive fraud, Kirby uses the recent work of Dr. Mark Skidmore and the $400 billion of investment assets at Social Security being churned more than 100 times the amount. Kirby explains, “Social Security has $400 billion in investable retirement assets. In the 2019 one-year time frame, Dr. Mark Skidmore showed that those $400 billion in investable retirement assets were turned over in excess of $44 TRILLION. That is a neon sign for a colossal fraud any way you look at it.”

Kirby says the Fed’s balance sheet is another huge fraud, and instead of nearly $9 trillion in debt, it’s probably more like “$100 trillion in unacknowledged money.” Kirby says, If you add $100 trillion to the Fed’s $8.8 trillion balance sheet, you have a different picture than what is being presented to humanity. What we have here is bigger than life, and it’s obscene. It’s the kind of material horror movies are made of. The problem is the money is at the core of everything. When you created that much money, you have to lie. If it becomes understood just how much money there really is, the dollar would lose its place as the world’s reserve currency immediately. They are living a lie. The problem with telling lies is you have to tell more lies, and you have compound lies.”

One thing that does not lie is spiking price inflation, which is signaling a dramatically depreciating dollar. Kirby says, “In the last year in America, the price of natural gas is up 81%. The price of crude oil is up 66%. Agricultural commodities are up 24%. Rent is up 13%. Used car prices are up 44%. Gasoline is up 36%. Cattle prices are up 20%. Lumber is up 15%. Coffee is up 92%. Hotel prices are up 37%, and the CPI (Consumer Price Index) is up 7.5%. I have some ocean front property in Arizona. Are you interested in buying some?”

In short, Kirby points out the U.S. government is lying its tail off about the true inflation number. This is why in his last interview Kirby said, “The dollar has stage four cancer.” In closing, Kirby predicts, “This will end in absolute disaster for humanity. It already has been a disaster for humanity, and it’s going to get worse.” Kirby predicts the PM of Canada, Justin Trudeau, will call in the UN troops “the Blue Helmets” to quell the protests against the vaccine mandates.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with analyst Rob Kirby, founder of KirbyAnalytics.com. (There is much more in the 36 min. interview.)

"Stocking Up At Dollar Tree! Prices Have Increased!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 2/13/22:
"Stocking Up At Dollar Tree! Prices Have Increased!"
"In today's video we are buying up a lot of products from Dollar Tree before they raise their prices. Times are changing as prices are going up all over the country. We are looking for the best deals anywhere we can, and showing everything we buy at a bargain!"

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Object Of Life..."

 

"A Rising Death Toll"

Full screen recommended.
"Streets of Philadelphia, February 11, 2022"

Full screen recommended.
Bruce Springsteen, "Streets of Philadelphia"
"A Rising Death Toll"
by German Lopez

"Drug overdoses now kill more than 100,000 Americans a year - more than vehicle crash and gun deaths combined. Sean Blake was among those who died. He overdosed at age 27 in Vermont, from a mix of alcohol and fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. He had struggled to find effective treatment for his addiction and other potential mental health problems, repeatedly relapsing. “I do love being sober,” Blake wrote in 2014, three years before his death. “It’s life that gets in the way.”

Blake’s struggles reflect the combination of problems that have allowed the overdose crisis to fester. First, the supply of opioids surged. Second, Americans have insufficient access to treatment and other programs that can ease the worst damage of drugs. Experts have a concise, if crude, way to summarize this: If it’s easier to get high than to get treatment, people who are addicted will get high. The U.S. has effectively made it easy to get high and hard to get help.

No other advanced nation is dealing with a comparable drug crisis. And over the past two years, it has worsened: Annual overdose deaths spiked 50 percent as fentanyl spread in illegal markets, more people turned to drugs during the pandemic, and treatment facilities and other services shut down.

The path to crisis: In the 1990s, drug companies promoted opioid painkillers as a solution to a problem that remains today: a need for better pain treatment. Purdue Pharma led the charge with OxyContin, claiming it was more effective and less addictive than it was. Doctors bought into the hype, and they started to more loosely prescribe opioids. Some even operated “pill mills,” trading prescriptions for cash. A growing number of people started to misuse the drugs, crushing or dissolving the pills to inhale or inject them. Many shared, stole and sold opioids more widely.

Policymakers and drug companies were slow to react. It wasn’t until 2010 that Purdue introduced a new formulation that made its pills harder to misuse. The C.D.C. didn’t publish guidelines calling for tighter prescribing practices until two decades after OxyContin hit the market.

In the meantime, the crisis deepened: Opioid users moved on to more potent drugs, namely heroin. Some were seeking a stronger high, while others were cut off from painkillers and looking for a replacement. Traffickers met that demand by flooding the U.S. with heroin. Then, in the 2010s, they started to transition to fentanyl, mixing it into heroin and other drugs or selling it on its own. Drug cartels can more discreetly produce fentanyl in a lab than heroin derived from large, open poppy fields. Fentanyl is also more potent than heroin, so traffickers can smuggle less to sell the same high. Because of its potency, fentanyl is also more likely to cause an overdose. Since it began to proliferate in the U.S., yearly overdose deaths have more than doubled.

No one has a good answer for how to halt the spread of fentanyl. Synthetic drugs in general remain a major, unsolved question not just in the current opioid epidemic but in dealing with future drug crises as well, Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University drug policy expert, told me.

Other drug crises are looming. In recent years, cocaine and meth deaths have also increased. Humphreys said that historically, stimulant epidemics follow opioid crises.

Neglecting solutions: A robust treatment system could have mitigated the damage from increasing supplies of painkillers, heroin and fentanyl. But the U.S. has never had such a system. Treatment remains inaccessible for many. Sean Blake’s parents, Kim and Tim, drained savings and retirement accounts and college funds to pay for treatment. Like the Blakes, many families spend thousands of dollars to try to get loved ones into care. Health insurers often refuse to pay for treatment; legal requirements for insurance coverage are poorly enforced.

When treatment is available, it’s often of low quality. The Blakes frequently found that providers were ill-equipped and overwhelmed. Some seemed to offer no evidence-based care at all. Across the country, most facilities don’t offer effective medications; instead, they often focus on unproven approaches, like wilderness or equine therapy. Some are just scams. One, called the “Florida shuffle,” has in recent years sent patients from facility to facility without offering real treatment - taking advantage of people desperate for help.

Beyond treatment, the U.S. lags behind other countries in approaches like needle exchanges that focus on keeping people alive, ideally until they’re ready to stop using drugs. The country also could do more to prevent drug use and address root causes of addiction, a recent report from Stanford University and "The Lancet "found.

The solutions are costly. A plan that President Biden released on the campaign trail, which experts praised, would total $125 billion over 10 years. That’s far more than Congress has committed to the crisis. Lawmakers haven’t taken up Biden’s plan, and the White House hasn’t pushed for it, so far embracing smaller steps. But inaction carries a price, too. Overdose deaths cost the economy $1 trillion a year in health expenses, reduced productivity and other losses, a new government report concluded - equivalent to nearly half of America’s economic growth last year."

For more:
Purdue Pharma knew OxyContin was widely misused, but continued to market it as less addictive.
○ Under pressure to rethink drug policy, some cities are considering supervised injection sites.
○ As health insurers refuse to pay for treatment, families of those who overdosed and died are suing.

Saturday, February 12, 2022

"Something Big is About to Happen - Economy on Life Support"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, PM 2/12/22:
"Something Big is About to Happen - Economy on Life Support"
"Something Big is about to happen. It’s all about perception. Whether it is clean it up a city or telling you how great the economy is. They want us to believe that everything is perfect and we know that the economy is so precarious right now."

"Fleeing The California Nightmare; Market Cheerleaders Are Wrong; Greed Will Cost You; FED Panic"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 2/12/22:
"Fleeing The California Nightmare; Market Cheerleaders 
Are Wrong; Greed Will Cost You; FED Panic"

"The Madman"

"The Madman"
by Kahlil Gibran

"It was in the garden of a madhouse that I met a youth with a face pale and lovely and full of wonder. And I sat beside him upon the bench, and I said, “Why are you here?” And he looked at me in astonishment, and he said, “It is an unseemly question, yet I will answer you. My father would make of me a reproduction of himself; so also would my uncle. My mother would have me the image of her seafaring husband as the perfect example for me to follow. My brother thinks I should be like him, a fine athlete. And my teachers also, the doctor of philosophy, and the music-master, and the logician, they too were determined, and each would have me but a reflection of his own face in a mirror. Therefore I came to this place. I find it more sane here. At least, I can be myself.” Then of a sudden he turned to me and he said, “But tell me, were you also driven to this place by education and good counsel?”

And I answered, “No, I am a visitor.”

And he answered, “Oh, you are one of those who live in the madhouse on the other side of the wall...”

"The Only Cure..."

"We're all susceptible to it, the dread and anxiety of not knowing what's coming. It's pointless in the end, because all the worrying and the making of plans for things that could or could not happen, it only makes things worse. So walk your dog or take a nap. Just whatever you do, stop worrying. Because the only cure for paranoia is to be here, just as you are."
- Dr. Meredith Grey, "Grey's Anatomy"

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 2/12/22"

  
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 2/12/22"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"The numbers for the Biden Administration keep coming in, and every month the numbers more rotten than before. CNN just reported in a new poll that 57% think Biden’s first year is a failure. I say this is the best they can make it look, and no way 43% think Biden is making America anything but a third world hell hole.

The rotten numbers are why you are seeing increasing desperate acts by Deep State Democrats. Nearly 30 Dems are throwing in the towel and not running for re-election in the House. You are also seeing increasing desperate acts by the Biden Administration such as its DHS calling criticism and facts a “heightened terrorism threat.” Yes, Biden and crew are so desperate they are outright attacking the First Amendment. I smell a huge backfire coming.

The Fed keeps threatening a rate hike. Gold is not buying it at $1,824 per ounce, and you should not either, according to economist John Williams, founder of Shadowstats.com. If the Fed is stupid enough to raise rates in this very weak economy, you can expect a hyperinflationary Great Depression. Who knows what the Fed will do because it, too, is desperate, and gold smells fear."

"Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about 
these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up."

"What You Know..."

"Reputation is what other people know about you.
Honor is what you know about yourself."
- Lois McMaster

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Deep Still Blue"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Deep Still Blue"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant.
The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid.”
"When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged
in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams,
to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where
he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars."
- Walt Whitman

"For Nothing Is Fixed..."

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

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "Book of Hours II, 16"

"Book of Hours II, 16"

"How surely gravity's law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing-
each stone, blossom, child-
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God's heart;
they have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The Daily "Near You?"

Weatherford, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"There Are Some Oddities.."

"There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
- Douglas Adams

Tucker Carlson, “Reports: Russia Will Invade Ukraine Next Week”

Tucker Carlson, “Reports: Russia Will Invade Ukraine Next Week”
“Fighting Russia is not the same as droning Muammar Gaddafi. It could quickly become a war we couldn’t control. Our side of that war would be overseen by the same generals who failed to beat the Taliban, guerrilla fighters in sandals who don’t use toilet paper.”
View video here:

"How It Really Will Be"

 

Friday, February 11, 2022

"Stress Test For A Fading Superpower"

"Stress Test For A Fading Superpower"
by Pat Buchanan

"Because America entered both world wars of the 20th century last, while all the other great powers bled one another, and because we outlasted the Soviet Empire in the Cold War, America emerged, in the term of President George H.W. Bush, as “the last superpower.”


We had it all. We were the “indispensable nation.” We saw further into the future. We could impose our “benevolent global hegemony” on all mankind. And so it was that we set out to create a “new world order,” plunging into successive wars in Iraq, the Balkans, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Syria, Libya, Yemen. In so doing, we bled ourselves, distracted ourselves, exhausted ourselves and sundered ourselves, until half the country was echoing George McGovern’s 1972 campaign slogan: “Come home, America.”

And as we went crusading for a new world order, Vladimir Putin’s Russia gradually recovered from its crushing Cold War defeat, and China began to move out of America’s shadow to become the most powerful rival modern America had ever faced.

Now, U.S. hegemony is being everywhere challenged - in Eastern Europe, the Near East, Southeast Asia, East Asia. And the challenges arise from autocrats united in their resolve to reduce the power and the presence of the United States in their part of the world. All of America’s adversaries have something in common: They want us out of their neighborhood.

After President Joe Biden’s humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan, Ukraine is the site of the latest challenge, triggered by Russia’s deployment of some 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders. Given that he caused this crisis, Putin is unlikely to withdraw all his forces without visible assurances that Ukraine never becomes a member of NATO. And, given that no NATO ally or neighbor of Ukraine has shown a disposition to fight Russia for Ukraine, Putin is likely ultimately to prevail.

Neither Georgia nor Ukraine will soon be invited to join NATO, no matter the “open door” policy of the alliance. And as Putin is committed to creating a sphere of influence where no next-door neighbor is a NATO ally, we are probably only at the beginning of a series of crises over the exclusion of nations from the alliance.

A second member of the global anti-American front is Iran. The U.S. and Iran are said to be close to renewing the nuclear deal from which former President Donald Trump walked away. Yet, the persistent threat from Iran and its radical allies like the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Shia militia in Syria and Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon is likely to complicate any U.S. effort to extricate ourselves from a Middle East that has consumed so much of our attention and resources since 9/11.

In East Asia, China has begun anew sending military aircraft into the Air Defense Identification Zone of Taiwan, and it has never relinquished its claim to that island of 24 million and former U.S. ally. After the Ukraine crisis is resolved, Taiwan is likely to soon be back on the front burner. If we would not fight Russia on behalf of Ukraine, why would we go to war with China to defend the independence of Taiwan, when, 50 years ago this month, President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger declared Taiwan to be “a part of China”?

North Korea has resumed testing its cruise and ballistic missiles. And Pyongyang is not going to hold off forever the testing of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles. The question here is how far off is the next confrontation. And, as there is no U.S. national disposition to fight for Ukraine, it is hard to believe that, 70 years after sending 350,000 troops to South Korea, we would send an army of that size to again fight the North.

Bottom line: The balance of power is constantly shifting. And in this new century, it has been shifting in favor of America’s adversaries, all of whom wish to see us diminished. Where former President George W. Bush warned of an “axis of evil” that included Iraq, Iran and North Korea, its successor today includes Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, a far more formidable axis. Moreover, America’s relative power and willingness to use it is far diminished from what it was in George Bush’s day.

The new correlation of forces:

● North Korea has become a full-fledged nuclear power with intercontinental ballistic missiles that can hit the USA.
● Russia’s armed forces are more imposing than they were two decades ago.
● China has swept past every rival power to the United States, while America’s allies are less powerful and less united behind it.

Meanwhile, America has run up a national debt larger than the entire U.S. economy. Its trade deficits are at record levels. Its borders are being overrun by migrants from all over the world. And its disposition to intervene, engage and fight for democracy has rarely been lower. The global stress test of the last superpower is on, and it is not likely we will pass it with a grade as high as the one we had earned by the Cold War’s end."

"Brace For Impact - Markets Out Of Control; FED Emergency; Housing On Borrowed Time"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 2/11/22:
"Brace For Impact - Markets Out Of Control; 
FED Emergency; Housing On Borrowed Time"

"Stock Market Crash Accelerated: Brace For A Catastrophic Bubble Burst In 2022!"

Full screen recommended.
"Stock Market Crash Accelerated: 
Brace For A Catastrophic Bubble Burst In 2022!"
by Epic Economist

"The carnage continues! Wall Street is facing extreme volatility as big-name stocks face dramatic losses and declining economic trends suggest that a whole lot of turbulence is still on the horizon. Today, we brought several indicators and insights on the imminent stock market crash, so don’t forget to leave a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss future videos. Wall Street has experienced a stunning rise in passive trading, a generalized fear of missing out, and a dot-com-like investor mania that has ultimately contributed to the uncontrolled growth of the stock market bubble over the past few years. Now, that superbubble has started to implode, with some big tech names going down first.

That’s what Harvard lecturer and renowned writer Vikram Mansharamani highlighted in a recent interview. The author, who became famous for spotting previous market bubbles in his book "Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst," is warning that the current one is about to explode. “I believe a passive investing bubble has been brewing and, in fact, have started showing signs of cracking and bursting,” Mansharamani said. “We've had flows driving prices, more than fundamentals in many sectors. And part of that's being driven by just the massive amounts of money flowing into some of these indexes,” he explains.

The analyst notes that valuations have been manipulated by a fear of missing out and the “power of storytelling" by celebrity CEOs, singling out Tesla as the main example. CEO Elon Musk has a huge influence on the public and the ability to sell the idea of a "fantastic new world" and monumental future gains. Those sorts of narratives have fueled stock prices higher and higher, resulting in an unsustainable disconnect between tangible economic returns and the price with which investors value the company, he said.

Social media has only accelerated that trend. However, different from what most investors want to believe nowadays, fundamentals do matter. And as companies started to report weaker-than-expected profits in the most recent quarter, sentiment in the market has clearly started to shift, and some brutal losses have been happening each day. Tesla stocks, for instance, have crashed by 25% in a matter of days. Earlier this week, the shares of Facebook owner Meta plunged almost 30% in a single day, marking the biggest single-day drop in market value for a U.S. company ever recorded. The collapse came after the social media giant reported a dismal growth forecast.

The sizable downturn wiped out more than $200 billion from Meta’s market capitalization, and roughly $30 billion from CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth, and sent shockwaves across the broader market, with the technology sector plummeting even further and the Nasdaq Composite Index deep in correction territory. Big U.S. tech companies have been under fire in 2022 as an imminent monetary policy shift spooks bullish investors since higher interest rates would erode the industry's rich valuations and inevitably set off a widespread stock price correction, threatening to crater shares with lofty valuations. The Nasdaq, which is dominated by tech and growth stocks, has been hit the hardest, losing over 10% and expecting more losses to come. That's why, many other names faced sell-offs and massive declines this week, including Netflix, Twitter, Pinterest, and Spotify.

After a week-long sell-off, all major indexes are now on the brink of bear-market territory, and if corporate earnings continue to disappoint as the Federal Reserve starts raising interest rates, they will be rapidly pushed over the edge. “It’s too early to be bullish,” Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson cautioned, warning the S&P could face another round of double-digit losses while pointing out the “most speculative parts” of the market have been hit the hardest, with names like Peloton crashing 75%.“Winter is here, and the damage under the surface has been enormous and even catastrophic for many individual stocks,” Wilson continued

The rapid gains and rapid losses of certain shares indicate that the bubble is struggling to hold up, and with leading stocks crashing down, a ripple effect is rapidly spreading all across the market. This financial asset bubble is global, and it includes stocks, bonds, housing, and many other assets. Given its unsustainability, and when you count everything that’s involved, a crash of catastrophic proportions is the only possible outcome to this frenetic rally. In other words, brace for a lot of pain and start strategizing before it’s too late."

"Robert Kiyosaki Predicts The 2022 Housing Crash: “Don’t Listen To Your Stupid Real Estate Agent”

Full screen recommended.
"Robert Kiyosaki Predicts The 2022 Housing Crash: 
“Don’t Listen To Your Stupid Real Estate Agent”
by The Atlantis Report

"Robert Kiyosaki Warns Investors Of 
An Upcoming Housing Market Crash"

"Don't listen to your stupid real estate agent who tells you that, oh, the price of real estate always goes up because it doesn't. So rather than listening to Jim Kramer on CNBC, I listen to Richard Duncan and understand what's going on in the global money supply because this next crash is gonna be even bigger."

Robert T. Kiyosaki is an American businessman and author. Kiyosaki is the founder of Rich Global LLC and the Rich Dad Company, author of the "Rich Dad Poor Dad" famous book that offers personal finance education to help you learn about cash flow, real estate, investing, and business building."

Gregory Mannarino, "Emergency FED Meeting; Potential War; Global Energy Crisis; It's A Twisted Game"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 2/11/22:
"Emergency FED Meeting; Potential War; 
Global Energy Crisis; It's A Twisted Game"

"The Calm Before the Storm - You Need To Be Ready"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly PM 2/11/22:
"The Calm Before the Storm - You Need To Be Ready"
"This is the calm before the storm. Inflation is out of control. The Fed has said that they are going to raise interest rates and have toyed with different numbers like 1/2 of a percent and 3/4 of a percent. That will do nothing but aggravate the market."

Musical Interlude: Gnomusy (David Caballero), “Footprints On The Sea”

Gnomusy (David Caballero), “Footprints On The Sea”

"A Look to the Heavens"

 “This pretty, open cluster of stars, M34, is about the size of the Full Moon on the sky. Easy to appreciate in small telescopes, it lies some 1,800 light-years away in the constellation Perseus. At that distance, M34 physically spans about 15 light-years. Formed at the same time from the same cloud of dust and gas, all the stars of M34 are about 200 million years young. 

 
But like any open star cluster orbiting in the plane of our galaxy, M34 will eventually disperse as it experiences gravitational tides and encounters with the Milky Way's interstellar clouds and other stars. Over four billion years ago, our own Sun was likely formed in a similar open star cluster.”

"Maybe..."

"Maybe we're not supposed to be happy. Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognizing what you have for what it is. Appreciating small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes to simply be a human. Maybe, we're thankful for the familiar things we know. And maybe, we're thankful for the things we'll never know. At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate."
- "Grey's Anatomy"