Monday, February 14, 2022

"What You Need To Be Warm "

"What You Need To Be Warm"
by Neil Gaiman

 "A baked potato of a winters night to wrap
your hands around or burn your mouth.
A blanket knitted by your mother's cunning fingers. 
Or your grandmother's.

A smile, a touch, trust, as you walk in from the snow
or return to it, the tips of your ears pricked pink and frozen.
The tink tink tink of iron radiators waking in an old house.

To surface from dreams in a bed, 
burrowed beneath blankets and comforters,
the change of state from cold to warm is all that matters, and you think
just one more minute snuggled here before you face the chill. Just one.

Places we slept as children: they warm us in the memory.
We travel to an inside from the outside. 
To the orange flames of the fireplace
or the wood burning in the stove. 

Breath-ice on the inside of windows,
to be scratched off with a fingernail, melted with a whole hand.
Frost on the ground that stays in the shadows, waiting for us.

Wear a scarf. Wear a coat. Wear a sweater. 
Wear socks. Wear thick gloves.

An infant as she sleeps between us. A tumble of dogs,
a kindle of cats and kittens. 
Come inside. You're safe now.
A kettle boiling at the stove. Your family or friends are there. 
They smile.
Cocoa or chocolate, tea or coffee, 
soup or toddy, what you know you need.
A heat exchange, they give it to you, you take the mug
and start to thaw.

While outside, for some of us, the journey began
as we walked away from our grandparentshouses
away from the places we knew as children: 
changes of state and state and state,
to stumble across a stony desert, or to brave the deep waters,
while food and friends, home, a bed, even a blanket become just memories.

Sometimes it only takes a stranger, in a dark place,
to hold out a badly-knitted scarf, 
to offer a kind word, to say we have the right to be here, 
to make us warm in the coldest season.
You have the right to be here. "

- Neil Gaiman

"Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Ave. 2/12/22"

Full screen recommended.
"Streets of Philadelphia, Kensington Ave. 2/12/22"
Problems with Drugs and Crime in Kensington Ave, Philadelphia

"In Philadelphia as a whole, violent crime and drug abuse are major issues. The city has a higher rate of violent crime than the national average and other similarly sized metropolitan areas.  The drug overdose rate in Philadelphia is also concerning. Between 2013 and 2015, the number of drug overdose deaths in the city increased by 50%, with more than twice as many deaths from overdoses as homicides. Kensington's high crime rate and drug abuse contribute significantly to Philadelphia's problems.

Because of the high number of drugs in the neighborhood, Kensington has the third-highest drug crime rate by neighborhood in Philadelphia. The opioid epidemic has played a significant role in this problem, as it has in much of the rest of the country. Opioid abuse has skyrocketed in the United States over the last two decades, and Philadelphia is no exception. In addition to having a high rate of drug overdose deaths, 80% of Philadelphia's overdose deaths involved opioids, and Kensington is a significant contributor to this figure. This Philadelphia neighborhood is said to have the largest open-air heroin market on the East Coast, with many neighbors migrating to the area for heroin and other opioids. With such a high concentration of drugs in Kensington, many state and local officials have focused on the neighborhood in an attempt to address Philadelphia's problem."

"Our Economy is Headed Down a Doomsday Sinkhole - It's About to Go Down"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 2/14/22:
"Our Economy is Headed Down a Doomsday Sinkhole - 
It's About to Go Down"
"This economy is headed down a doomsday sinkhole. Things are so precarious and it's about to collapse right from under us. You need to prepare yourself and your business."

The Daily "Near You?"

South Jordan, Utah, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Insight into the Supersensible Human Being and the Task of Our Time"

"Insight into the Supersensible Human 
Being and the Task of Our Time"
by Rudolf Steiner
“We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.

Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” D.H. Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”
- Albert Camus

"What the 432 Hz 'Miracle Tone' Sounds Like"

Full screen recommended.
"What the 432 Hz 'Miracle Tone' Sounds Like (Listen):
A Healing Frequency to Raise Your Vibration"
By Kalee Brown

“As sound healing becomes more popular, more and more people are starting to experiment with it. You have people learning how to chant, listening to specific frequencies, and using singing bowls. It’s not just those of us who are interested in spirituality and New Age concepts that are looking into this ancient Eastern knowledge, but scientists as well, studying these sounds and how they affect the body. Though sound healing is only now beginning to enter into the mainstream, it’s been used as an ancient healing modality for many centuries in different religions. Even scientists such as Nikola Tesla and Albert Einstein spoke of the importance of viewing everything in terms of vibration, energy, and frequency.

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe,
think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
– Nikola Tesla

Science has proven that everything is made up of energy and that everything holds its own vibration and frequency, which can then be increased or decreased. One person’s vibration that they’re emitting can then affect another person’s energy, and science has proven this interrelation through studying quantum mechanics and our electromagnetic fields or auras. You can read more about the research The HeartMath Institute is conducting on the heart’s aura and how we affect other people here. With that logic, since sounds also hold their own frequency, wouldn’t it make sense that a specific sound’s frequency would affect that of our own?

The Science Behind Sound Healing: Dr. Herbert Benson, professor, author, cardiologist, and founder of Harvard’s Mind/Body Medical Institute, studied how sound healing, specifically mantric chanting, can help induce the Relaxation Response. The Relaxation Response is defined as an individual’s ability to prompt their body to release chemicals and brain signals that cause muscles to relax, respiration to slow, and blood pressure to drop.

The Relaxation Response can reduce symptoms of IBS and counteract the physiological changes of stress and the fight or flight response, including muscle tension, headache, upset stomach, racing heartbeat, and shallow breathing.

Dr. Ranjie Singh, a neuroscientist, writer, businessman, and global educator, found that chanting specific mantras releases the hormone melatonin, and this in turn offers many benefits, including tumor shrinkage and enhanced sleep. Chanting has been found to oxygenate the brain, reduce heart rate, improve blood pressure, and calm brainwave activity. It can even cause the left and right hemispheres of the brain to synchronize.

Jonathan Goldman, American author, musician, and teacher in the fields of harmonics and sound healing, says: “Dr. Alfred Tomatis has utilized the sounds of Gregorian Monks to stimulate the ears, brain and nervous systems of clients. His work is very important with regard to the scientific and medical uses of sound and chant. He found that certain sounds that are particularly high in vocal harmonics will stimulate and charge the cortex of the brain and the nervous system. Some years ago, there was a very popular recording of Gregorian chanting that occurred just when this research was being made public. I know that many other types of chanting from different traditions have very similar effects. These are just a few of the hard physical phenomenon of mantric chanting that have been observed. There certainly are others, as well.”

Another study performed in 2006 looked at the effects of transcendental meditation (TM), a form of meditation whereby the practitioner continuously repeats a mantra or chants, and concluded that TM can improve blood pressure and cardiac autonomic nervous system tone and decrease risk of coronary heart disease.

A series of experiments conducted by neuro-electric therapy engineer Dr. Margaret Patterson and Dr. Ifor Capel revealed how alpha brainwaves boosted the production of serotonin. Dr. Capel explained: ”As far as we can tell, each brain center generates impulses at a specific frequency based on the predominant neurotransmitter it secretes. In other words, the brain’s internal communication system - its language, if you like - is based on frequency. Presumably, when we send in waves of electrical energy at, say, 10 Hz, certain cells in the lower brain stem will respond because they normally fire within that frequency range.” Additional research upholds the beliefs of mind-body medicine in this sense, stating that brainwaves being in the Alpha state, 8 to 14 Hz, permits a vibration allowing for more serotonin to be created.

Why You Should Consider Listening to A=432 HZ Music: Most music worldwide has been tuned to A=440 Hz since the International Standards Organization (ISO) promoted it in 1953. However, when looking at the vibratory nature of the universe, it’s possible that this pitch isn’t actually harmonious with the natural resonance of nature and may generate negative effects on human behavior and consciousness. It’s said that A=440 HZ frequency music actually stimulates the ego and left-brain function, which can suppress our intuition. There are tons of conspiracies surrounding this frequency, and many seem plausible given the fact that the mainstream music industry incorporates propaganda and mind control.

432 HZ is said to be mathematically consistent with the patterns of the universe. It is said that 432 HZ vibrates with the universe’s golden mean, Phi, and unifies the properties of light, time, space, matter, gravity, and magnetism with biology, the DNA code, and consciousness. When our atoms and DNA start to resonate in harmony with the spiralling pattern of nature, our sense of connection to nature is said to be magnified. The number 432 is also reflected in ratios of the sun, Earth, and moon, as well as the procession of the equinoxes, the Great Pyramid of Egypt, Stonehenge, and the Sri Yantra, among many other sacred sites.

Listening to the 432Hz frequency resonates inside our body, releases emotional blockages and expands our consciousness. This video uses a 432Hz frequency tone mixed with the music (the music itself is in standard tuning).

“From my own observations, some of the harmonic overtone partials of A=432hz 12T5 appear to line up to natural patterns and also the resonance of solitons. Solitons need a specific range to form into the realm of density and span from the micro to the macro cosmos. Solitons are not only found in water mechanics, but also in the ion-acoustic breath between electrons and protons.” – Brian T. Collins

“Mary Oliver On How to Live ‘Your One Wild and Precious Life’”

“Mary Oliver On How to Live ‘Your One Wild and Precious Life’”
by Sanjiv Chopra, M.D.

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
- Mary Oliver

“The quiet, plain-spoken poet Mary Oliver died on January 17, 2019. An outpouring of emotion and tributes spanned the globe. She was both mourned and wildly revered by those for whom her words were a totem. With stark simplicity, she offered us both spiritual guidance and common sense, all of which was garnered from lessons she learned while simply meandering in the woods.

Mary Oliver’s gift was her ability to marvel at the world with an unsentimental acceptance that it (and we) are temporary. She looked clear-eyed and with unflinching certainty at the impermanence of our existence. In it she found not despair but rather joy. She chose to live in the moment and to be dazzled by it.

Mary Oliver’s roots were thoroughly midwestern. She hailed from Maple Heights, Ohio, a leafy suburb of Cleveland. From all accounts, hers was a difficult childhood. She wrote in “Blue Pastures” (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award): “Adults can change their circumstances; children cannot. Children are powerless, and in difficult situations they are the victims of every sorrow and mischance and rage around them, for children feel all of these things but without any of the ability that adults have to change them.”

This darkness of her youth led her to escape into nature and into books. Words and woods offered her solace. She fiercely embraced them, noting that “the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books – can re-dignify the worst stung heart.”

We know, and she acknowledged, that overcoming adversity isn’t easy: “There are stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet.” But she persisted. She said she read, “the way a person might swim, to save his or her life,” and that nature offered her “an antidote to confusion.”

She advised, “you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.” And in saving her life, she rekindled so many of ours, using words that were deceptively simple but that had the power to shine a bright light into the dark crevices of our pain and misfortune and to set us free from the past. She gave us clear instructions for living a life:

“Pay attention.

Be astonished. 

Tell about it.”

And for her- and for so many of us who have long sat at the knee of her prose – it worked. Mary Oliver wrote, “Having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life. And can do what I want to with it. Live it. Give it back, someday, without bitterness, to the wild and weedy dunes.” And when she died, she gave it back.

Mary Oliver’s religion was simple. It could best be described as “gratitude.” And so, as she departed this world leaving for us so many gifts, we offer this prayer for her – thank you. To honor her, we share here one of Mary Oliver’s most powerful poems, one that offers sage advice about accepting imperfection.”

- Mary Oliver

"Our Task As Humans..."

“We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.

Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” D.H. Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”
- Albert Camus

Jim Kunstler, "Speed Wobble"

"Speed Wobble"
by Jim Kunstler

"If the ads on the Superbowl each year are like a Rorschach test for the nation’s mental condition, then this year’s ad-roll was a cavalcade of frantic hallucinations suggesting a near-complete detachment from reality for an audience of ADD-disabled cell phone slaves locked into a Big Tech induced consensus trance. You could barely tell what these advertisers were trying to sell in their commercials, the psychotic dazzle of half-second jump-cuts was so ferocious. One interesting note, though: people of non-color (PONCs) seem to have been magically sucked out of the universe. There, that fixed things for everybody else.

Snoop Dog’s half-time house party - Hollywood’s G-rated version of a BLM riot - heralded a real riot later on in downtown LA after the Rams’ victory. Fans lit-up a metro bus and tagged it with spray-paint. The police moved in… objects were thrown at them. I’m just sorry that Snoop didn’t bring out his friend and sometime co-star Martha Stewart to twerk for the multitudes - while, say whipping up a pumpkin mousse. That might have brought the country together after all these months of rancor. But, like I said, sorry, PONCs need not apply. Nor did Da Dawg invite onstage my favorite new pop star, Ski Mask the Slump God, composer of the hits “Faucet Failure” and “Foot Fungus.” Maybe next year… if there is a next year….

All this hearty good fellowship marks the journey of our country from a convocation of be-wigged founding fathers wielding quill pens in defense of liberty to a security-and-surveillance state of hebephrenic zombies lurching to a kind of failure that will make the fall of the Roman Empire look like a lawn sale of someone’s dead uncle’s chattels and effects. The drain-pipe beckons… but will America answer that call… or take a different turn?

Things are turning, indeed, out there… out in the truck stops and the households fending off repossession and the small businesses struggling desperately for survivial - even in the degenerate halls of government, state-by-state. The armature of Covid-19 tyranny is getting rapidly dismantled by politicians close to running for their very lives. The home-folks have had enough of their insolence and they’re sharpening the tines of their pitchforks. Events also conspire to put the schnitz on the alleged Globalists dream of digital tyranny - if there even is such a cabal of Globalists, which I’m not sure about, or just a coterie of feckless hacks swept along by a malefic zeitgeist, Canada’s Justin Trudeau being the poster-boy for that breed.

The timing has gone all awry on them. The Covid-19 hysteria draws to a close against their wishes to drag it on forever. Even the triple-vaccinated are sick of it - and not a few of them are sick because of it. Governments and the corrupt medical establishment won’t touch this info with a stick, but the morticians and insurance execs are hopping up and down about what looks like a supernatural die-off of folks between 18 and 60 generally not susceptible to early death. Kind of worrisome, a little bit. Anybody with half-a-brain left is declining the offer of yet another booster - though Dr. Fauci was still tirelessly selling them last week.

Mainly, though, the window-of-opportunity has closed, in the USA, anyway, for anymore vaccine passport nonsense, and with that goes the dream of roping every last citizen into a corral of total social control, including central bank digital currencies that would turn everyone into a yo-yo to be jerked-around by government.

“Joe Biden” has so far failed to deliver that war with Russia over Ukraine he promised us - which would be like two Craig’s List customers fighting over a twenty-year-old Jeep Wrangler up on blocks with the engine missing. Ukraine president Zelensky is a professional comedian, of course, so one must admire his gag of inviting “Joe Biden” to visit his country, the Gem of Eurasia, “in the coming days,” Mr. Zelenski said, “which will be a powerful signal and contribute to de-escalation.” Plus, all the pierogi and cabbage the US president can eat. All this made National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan gnash his teeth for the trouble he has gone to in prepping the sore-beset American people for World War Three.

But Mr. Sullivan has, perhaps, other things to think about. Like… what are all these offstage noises Special Counsel John Durham is making in the grand jury chambers? Something about Hillary Clinton, and the helpmeets surrounding her in the 2016 election (including especially Jake Sullivan), alleged to have fabricated the Russian collusion whopper that deranged the nation for four years and disabled a sitting president. They even managed to enlist the FBI and the CIA in that task. How’d that happen? Could Hillary have been that peevish? Anyway, it looks kind of bad for the National Security Advisor to “Joe Biden” having such an epic political fraud tacked onto his resume, with perhaps an indictment to follow. Standing by on his resignation….

Our NATO allies must be enjoying the rise of natgas prices beyond the level that many middle-class households in Euroland can afford to keep the heat on in the dead middle of winter, since they have to get so much of the stuff from Russia. Maybe jamming Ukraine into NATO, as America’s Deep State has been wishing and hoping to do, wasn’t such a great idea after all. Maybe NATO itself isn’t such a great idea anymore.

If World War Three doesn’t pan out for “JB,” there’s always a global meltdown of financial markets, banks, and currencies waiting in the wings to amuse and distract everybody from the post-Covid call for a long, hard look at what the pandemic was actually about. The story, in all its multiple, gruesome levels, has gotten away from them. So many public officials are standing naked that Washington looks like a nudist colony."

"How It Really Is"

 

"It's The Mandates, Stupid"

"It's The Mandates, Stupid"
by Michael Reagan

"It’s not masks that those rebel Canadian truckers are against. It’s not the COVID vaccines or boosters one, two and three, either. The truckers (who reportedly are 90 percent vaxxed) and millions of like-minded citizens in the democracies of North America and Europe who are blocking highways and marching in the streets are protesting mandates. They’ve finally risen up in anger after two years of being forced by their governments and flip-flopping public health bureaucrats to wear masks indoors and outdoors, even when it made no scientific, medical or common sense.

Blue State politicians and their liberal media glee club can’t – or won’t – get it through their thick, authoritarian, partisan skulls that being against mandates is different from being against masks or vaccines. The Democrats have spent the last year bashing and shaming anyone opposed to mask or vaccine mandates, vilifying them as insurrectionists, terrorists and anti-vaxxers. Even worse, they’ve accused them of all being Trump voters.

But the rebellious truckers in Ottawa and the angry parents who disrupted the traditional morgue-like atmosphere of school board meetings in Virginia are not insurrectionists. They’re freedom fighters. Many of them are the same “essential workers” who stayed on their jobs through the first year of the pandemic and kept our government-crippled economy from completely going down the drain.

The truckers, cops, health workers and a lot of other sensible vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans from flyover country who are protesting don’t belong to the laptop class. They haven’t been able to work from home in their PJs for two years. In millions of cases, they weren't able to work at all. It’s no wonder that the frustration and anger of workers over forced vaccinations has boiled over into the streets.

Everything our politicians and their public health experts did or told us to do to “flatten the curve” or defeat the virus didn’t work. Not the masking, not the social distancing, not the hand-washing. Not the lockdowns. Not the school closings. Not the mass testing.

The new and advanced vaccine we were promised would save humankind from extinction and return our lives to normal by last fall turned out to be a bust – and a danger. The vaccines not only don’t protect you from getting the virus or transmitting it, the data shows that a small percentage of people who get vaxxed have had serious adverse reactions.

None of these limitations of the vaccines is new. We’ve known for a long time that masks are virtually useless against COVID and the vaccines are not the miracle jab Dr. Fauci and the Biden gang built them up to be. Even the Democrats and their parrots in the media now realize it’s time to surrender in the botched war on covid, but it’s not because the science or the data has changed. It’s because the politics of COVID has changed – in the last week.

Democrats in Blue States now are falling all over each other calling for the end of mask mandates because they realize a majority of Americans have had enough of the failed Fauci-Biden campaign. It’s time to conduct the sensible COVID policy we should have conducted in the first place: focusing on helping the vulnerable and letting the rest of us get on with our lives. That means kids under 15 should not be forced to be vaccinated, masked, used as medical guinea pigs or allowed to be political props in photo ops for phonies like Stacy Abrams.

In other words, we Americans have suffered enough. No more mandates of any kind. Better yet, “Let’s go mandates.”

Gregory Mannarino, "Critical Updates: This Is All A Game - You Are Being Distracted, Played, And Lied To Again"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 2/14/22:
"Critical Updates: This Is All A Game - 
You Are Being Distracted, Played, And Lied To Again"

Economic Market Snapshot 2/14/22"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"Economic Market Snapshot 2/14/22"
Updated as available.
MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates
CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:
Latest Market Analysis, Updated 2/14/22
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Feb. 11th to 15th, 2022
Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Daily Job Cuts


Commentary, highly recommended:
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Oh yeah...
And now... The End Game...

"White House Incompetents Plotting Russia War!"

"White House Incompetents Plotting Russia War!"
by Daniel McAdams

"The Biden Administration geniuses who botched the US departure from Afghanistan, who assured us there was no way the Taliban would take over, and that no American would be left behind, are the very same people assuring us that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is “imminent.Then it’s not. Now it is again! As soon as Tuesday!

It’s clear that we are not dealing with competent people. No wonder Biden’s approval ratings are at historic lows – below 40 percent! Ironically – and dangerously – that gives a great deal of leverage to the incompetent Obama-holdover hawks like Blinken, Nuland, and Sullivan, who are no doubt whispering in the president’s ear what wonders a delightful little war might bring.

According to some reports, the White House has shared “secret” intelligence with previously hesitant allies, and today Japan, Netherlands, and South Korea have joined the US in frantically demanding their citizens leave Ukraine immediately because, as Biden himself saidalong with his incompetent National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan – the invasion is imminent (again) and, “things could go crazy quickly.”

The leaking of “secret intelligence” is the best way to get the lapdog mainstream media to stand up and beg for more. It is also reminiscent of all the bogus “intelligence” that lied us into the catastrophic Iraq war, where we flushed trillions down the toilet in the pursuit of killing a million innocent people. All lies. God have mercy.

It was only a week or so ago that the State Department spokesman was ruthlessly hammered by AP’s Matt Lee over the fact-free claims that Putin was about to make a film faking a Ukrainian attack on Donbas to justify Russia’s own invasion of Ukraine. Lee did what journalists used to do: he asked for proof. The State Department flack – surprise surprise a former CIA officer – found himself pumping mud under what should have been normal scrutiny from the so-called fourth estate.

Here’s how it’s going down, folks, if it does go down. And I mentioned this in an interview tonight: "The US has turned its propaganda amplifiers up to 11 hyping the threat that Russia would somehow want to take Kiev in the next day or two. It has been able to establish this panic with the assistance of the Pravda-esque US mainstream media. Next step – already happening – is that the US is pulling its OSCE monitors from Donbas in eastern Ukraine due to the MSM/Biden hyped “imminent” threat. US allies may well follow and pull their OSCE monitors from Donbas, leaving no one to actually tell us who started shelling first."

How convenient.

And this while the OSCE monitors in Donbass have recorded a 400% increase in Kiev shelling the area today over the previous seven day average. Goaded by sugar daddy US, an otherwise seemingly-reluctant Zelensky – a comedian who fell into the role of Ukraine president – is the wild card. There is no doubt that US pressure is on him like a pack of Texas fire ants. He has been desperately walking back unhinged (and objectively false) US assertions over the past several weeks that a Russian invasion was just a day away, but how long can he continue to poke his benefactor in the eye before he recalls what happens to former US allies?

Surely at 3AM Zelensky is visited by the ghosts of Gaddafi, Saddam, Noriega, and endless former US clients who “went rogue” and found themselves on the wrong end of US “democracy promotion.” The price of crossing your US overlords is anal rape and death. As RPI Academic Advisor John Laughland famously wrote in 2005, “it is better to be an enemy of the Americans than their friend. If you are their enemy, they might try to buy you; but if you are their friend they will definitely sell you.” Take note, Zelensky!

I’ve been writing for the better part of two decades on the corruption of the OSCE and its infiltration by western intelligence services. So while they are not for the most part reliable in the first place, the removal of all monitors under the false assertion that an invasion is imminent will remove any honest monitor who might lurk.

With no one from “the West” to monitor who fires first, all those wonderful weapons of war provided to Ukraine by the US and UK can be unleashed against the citizens of eastern Ukraine and no one will be there (except those unreliable Russians and their allies) to report that the attack came from Kiev rather than from Moscow.

This is how World War III starts. It’s all laid out before us. An incompetent yet hubristic Biden Administration believes that it can bring Ukraine into NATO and then use Article 5 to regain Crimea from Russia. It’s like totally insane former US Ambassador Michael McFaul is recalled into a senior policymaking position after three years of sniffing glue!

Dear friends: This is no longer DC think tank speculation. Russia has a legitimate reason to oppose NATO on its doorstep. And that is not an endorsement of the concept of “regions of influence,” which is dumb. It is simply the Russians understanding that the next regime change will be theirs. There is nothing in such a stupid policy for the rest of us Americans. Who cares who runs Russia? Who cares who runs Ukraine?

Here is the forbidden but true conclusion: it is not “pro-Russia” but in fact pro-America to oppose nuclear war over insignificant Ukraine. Let Europe deal with its own border problems and how about we deal with our own as well?

BTW: how do you like that 1970s-era stagflation? Pre-order your bell-bottoms and disco records! It’s coming. We used to rule the world…"

Sunday, February 13, 2022

"And, Of Course..."

“The acceptance of ambiguity implies more than the commonplace understanding that some good things and some bad things happen to us. It means that we know that good and evil are inextricably intermixed in human affairs; that they contain, and sometimes embrace, their opposites; that success may involve failure of a different kind, and failure may be a kind of triumph.”
- Sydney J. Harris

And, of course, the universal and inevitable excuse…
“A person who is going to commit an inhuman act invariably
excuses himself to himself by saying, “I’m only human, after all.”
- Sydney J. Harris

I've always wondered...
Everyone says “Only human…” compared to what?

 
Rag'n'Bone Man, "Human"

"The United States Of Chaos – Crime Rates Spiral Higher And Our Politicians Are Powerless To Stop It"

"The United States Of Chaos – Crime Rates Spiral 
Higher And Our Politicians Are Powerless To Stop It"
by Michael Snyder

"What in the world is happening to our country? Once upon a time, the streets of our major cities were so civilized, but today our politicians seem to have no answers as crime rates spiral out of control. The number of drug overdose deaths in the United States keeps hitting new all-time highs, and of course the drug crisis is fueling an unbelievably bad homelessness crisis. Meanwhile, teams of professional looters all over the nation are driving countless retailers out of business as shoplifting numbers go to heights that we have never seen before. On top of everything else, murder rates just continue to soar. In fact, it is being reported that murder rates in major U.S. cities were even higher in 2021 than they were in 2020

"Homicides in major American cities ticked up in 2021, with a 5% increase from 2020 and a 44% increase over 2019, according to a new analysis of crime trends released Tuesday by the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ).

The study drew on crime data from 22 cities nationwide - including Atlanta, Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Memphis, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia - and found an additional 218 murders last year, compared to 2020. And while the overall increase in the homicide rate slowed, murder rates in St. Petersburg, Florida, (108%) and Austin (86%) skyrocketed, while Washington, D.C., (16%) also recorded a notable increase.

In 2020, we witnessed the largest spike in murder rates in our entire history by a very wide margin. 2021 was supposed to be the year when murder rates started going back down, but instead they actually increased. Sadly, murder rates continue to escalate during the early stages of 2022. For example, Baltimore just experienced “its deadliest January in almost 50 years”… "Baltimore, Maryland, suffered its deadliest January in almost 50 years, with 36 homicides – most of which were shooting deaths in robberies and brazen attacks."

And the murder rate in Philadelphia in 2022 has risen “to a rate unseen for at least six decades”… "Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner wants his office laser-focused on fighting the city’s gun violence epidemic as homicides spike to a rate unseen for at least six decades. “We should focus on shootings when the crisis is shootings,” Krasner said at a weekly violence briefing held Monday. “I don’t think that’s complicated.”

In Denver, the violence has gotten so bad that they have decided to start paying businesses to move into the downtown areas… "The Downtown Denver Partnership and the city’s Department of Economic Development and Opportunity announced the launch of the Pop-up Denver Program last week. Selected businesses could enjoy up to three months of free rent and a $20,000 award to use for interior design and setup expenses and merchandising support."

Isn’t that crazy? In normal times, you wouldn’t have to do something like this. But so far this year, robberies in Denver are up 75 percent. Many years ago, I actually considered moving to Denver. I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing today.

In a civilized society, police are able to keep order in the streets, but at this point our police are increasingly becoming the victims of violent crime themselves. For example, I was astounded to learn that a total of nine police officers were wounded during a horrifying shootout in Phoenix on Friday… "A man ambushed a police officer who responded to a call at a Phoenix home early Friday, shooting him several times, then rained more gunfire on other officers who tried to rescue a baby that was placed outside the door.

In all, five officers were shot, including four who were wounded while trying to take the baby to safety. Four more officers were injured by shrapnel or ricocheting bullets, Phoenix Police Sgt. Andy Williams said. “I hate to speculate, but it sounds like I’d be pretty safe to say nine is going to be the highest number we’ve ever had injured in one day, in one incident,” Williams said."

I am sure that the politicians in Phoenix will give lots of speeches about this incident. Just like politicians all over the nation have been giving speeches about violent crime for years. But they can’t seem to stop it.

Another type of crime that is rapidly growing is shoplifting. I like to call it “professional looting”, because it is often being done by highly organized teams of professional looters. At this point, things have gotten so bad that some retailers are even putting deodorant and toothpaste behind locked doors so that looters do not have easy access to them… "Shoplifting has gotten so bad nationally that chains like Rite Aid are closing hard-hit stores, sending terrified employees home in Ubers and locking up aisles of seemingly mundane items like deodorant and toothpaste."

I certainly can’t blame pharmacies such as Walgreens, Rite Aid and CVS for closing so many stores. According to a spokesperson for CVS, their chain has seen “a 300% increase in retail theft” over the past couple of years… “We have experienced a 300% increase in retail theft from our stores since the pandemic began.” CVS spokesman Michael DeAngelis tells Axios."

Even though I write about this stuff all the time, it is still difficult for me to believe that things have really gotten this bad in the United States of America. At one time a trip to a local shopping mall was such a relaxing way to spend the weekend, but if you go to a shopping mall in California today there is a good chance that you will see a team of professional looters at work.

Meanwhile in California: pic.twitter.com/wvVEvpLko4
— Suburban Black Man 🇺🇸 (@goodblackdude) February 10, 2022

This is what happens when you raise an entire generation of young people without values and principles. Our country is literally starting to come apart at the seams, and the chaos on our streets is only going to get worse. As a society, we are the product of our collective decisions. And we have been making really, really bad decisions for decades. Now we are reaping what we have sown, and our politicians don’t seem to understand what it would take to turn things around."

"Is The Real Rate Of Inflation More Than Twice As High As The Number We Were Just Given?"

Full screen recommended.
"Is The Real Rate Of Inflation More Than 
Twice As High As The Number We Were Just Given?"
by Epic Economist

"We were warned that inflation would keep getting worse. Just a few days ago, the latest inflation numbers were released and showed that the consumer price index rose 7.5 percent over the past year. Experts say that this was the highest reading since February 1982, a historic period when the U.S. economy was falling into the abyss. The 0.06 percent monthly increase alarmed many economists and put policymakers on the edge because it essentially meant that inflation isn’t going to cool off and fade away by itself.

But this crisis is way worse than it seems. Official numbers don’t tell us the whole truth. Government data isn’t exactly honest given that the rate of inflation changed more than two dozen times since 1980. So if we want to compare the current rate of inflation to historical numbers, we should look beyond what they’re telling us. For instance, in a recent analysis, Michael Pento reported that in 2009, the inflation rate was at -0.3%, and by 2019, that number surged to 1.8%, with a brief 3.2% spike in 2011, which means that inflation right now is twice as high as the ten-year norm.

However, when we calculate the rate of inflation the way it was just ten years ago, then the real rate would be nearing a staggering 15 percent, according to John Williams of ShadowStats.com. And if we calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the official rate of inflation would be even higher. Simply put, by using the same methodology that the government used not so long ago, we would have an official rate that is more than double the official number they just released, and almost five times higher than the 10-year average.

And we’re being told that this persistent surge isn’t over yet. "U.S. annual CPI is the highest in four decades, and what’s worse is that this likely isn’t the peak," explained Seema Shah, chief strategist at Principal Global Investors. "Higher-than-expected monthly gains in core CPI indicate continued underlying heat and will do nothing to relieve pressure on the Fed to tighten sharply and urgently." That’s just another way to say that things are spinning out of control fairly quickly. While many are comparing the ongoing crisis to what happened during the Jimmy Carter era, in real terms, what we’re facing right now has surpassed anything that we witnessed back then.

With inflation raging and prices soaring, the fact that U.S. consumers have already burned through their stimulus checks and are now furiously maxing out their credit cards to afford all those suddenly-way-more-expensive necessities mean that not only household debt is going through the roof, but consumer spending is rapidly decelerating as people’s purchasing power collapse. Quite a recipe for disaster.

Recently, Washington Post columnist Heather Long shared some specific numbers that point out exactly where American consumers are being hit the hardest. Over the past 12 months, the price of used cars jumped 40.5%, while gas soared 40% nationally. Rental car prices increased 29%, utility gas went up 24%. Meanwhile, hotel prices rose 21%, furniture 20%, and daily essentials such as bacon faced an 18% increase, steak 17%, peanut butter 15.5%, pork 14.5%, fish 13%, eggs 13%, new cars 12%, chicken 10%, and the list goes on and on... You got the idea. When we analyze these massive price hikes, it becomes clear that there’s no way our current inflation rate is at only 7.5%.

Another particularly concerning aspect of this upward trend is the rise in energy prices. The latest data show that the cost of energy soared almost 30% nationwide. On Thursday, The Labor Department reported that natural gas rose 22.6% and electricity is up 10.7%. And don’t keep your hopes up about a reversal in this trend. The global energy crisis has just begun, and different from the energy crunch of the 1970s, this time it will likely stay with us for decades.

So where do we go from here? Well, the Federal Reserve will be forced to significantly hike interest rates to fight such absurd levels of inflation. By doing so, it avoids an economic recession but triggers a financial meltdown, which will ultimately result in a recession anyway, so the near and long-term prospects aren’t looking good at all. Low interest rates have helped to fuel the everything bubble that we are witnessing right now, and when policy changes that will mean for investors that the party is finally over. A lot more turbulence is ahead. We can only hope for the best and prepare for the worst."

Musical Interlude: Deuter, “Black Velvet Flirt”

Full screen mode recommended.
Deuter, “Black Velvet Flirt”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“M13 is one of the most prominent and best known globular clusters. Visible with binoculars in the constellation of Hercules, M13 is frequently one of the first objects found by curious sky gazers seeking celestials wonders beyond normal human vision.
M13 is a colossal home to over 100,000 stars, spans over 150 light years across, lies over 20,000 light years distant, and is over 12 billion years old. At the 1974 dedication of Arecibo Observatory, a radio message about Earth was sent in the direction of M13. The featured image in HDR, taken through a small telescope, spans an angular size just larger than a full Moon, whereas the inset image, taken by Hubble Space Telescope, zooms in on the central 0.04 degrees.”

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: Hedging Against A Shock To The Stock Market And An Energy Superspike"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 2/13/22:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: Hedging Against A 
Shock To The Stock Market And An Energy Superspike"