Sunday, April 3, 2022

"The Age of Experts"

"The Age of Experts"
by Joel Bowman

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
~ Ernest Hemingway, from "The Sun Also Rises"

"Joel Bowman, Seshing it up this Sunday from Buenos Aires, Argentina - Welcome back to another Sunday Sesh, that time of the week where we gather at the local watering hole to lick our wounds, celebrate our wins, vent our spleen and generally solve the world’s problems, one round at a time. We jest, of course. Only a humble public servant has it within his job description to chart the collective destiny for all of mankind. The rest of us are happy if we can break bread with friends, see a bit of this vast planet before we die and maybe find someone with whom to wander life’s winding path.

And yet... wherever we turn, there are our betters, ever at the ready to direct us hither and thither, to instruct us as to the ways of the wise, to issue decrees and edicts from on high, and curtail our wayward tendencies when we do invariably stray from the herd.

They walk among us, these self-proclaimed thought leaders and social influencers, occasionally stooping to lend some unsolicited advice, to help us “check our privilege” and to remind us that we didn’t build this or that, blood, sweat and tears be damned. They may put their trousers on one leg at a time, just like the rest of us, but these beneficent bipedal benefactors are only too glad to draw lines around your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness and, if it truly comes down to it, to lay your life down for their cause and country.

So kind.

Over the past couple of years, decent, private individuals across “the west” have witnessed these public overlords engage in the kind of high-minded mission creep that rarely ends well. What began as a gradual assumption of power (always temporary and always under “emergency” circumstances) turned, rather suddenly, into a kind of broad, permission-based living... one where your rights devolved into favors, your personal freedoms wilted into shared sacrifice and your liberties became bargaining chips of ever-diminishing value. And invigilating the whole parade, a caste of unquestionable experts and elites preside. All of which brings us to today’s musing...
"The Age of Experts"
by Joel Bowman

"In Holland, everyone is an expert in painting and in tulips."
 ~ Albert Camus

"Once upon a time – and a very good time it was – a man could brandish his doubt in public with a certain degree of dignity and honor. To be unsure was the mark of an inquiring mind, one open to further study, fresh evidence and new horizons. The thinking fellow, therefore, was one who weighed competing theories, who wrestled with the “facts,” such as they were, and who was ever ready to change his position.

Alas, in this modern era of superabundance, stuffed with overfed problems and Great Causes galore, there is little room for good ol’ fashioned doubt. One must be certain of one’s position, especially if one knows nothing about it. Whatever the matter, man’s mind must be made up. He must be a virologist on Monday... a climatologist on Tuesday... an expert in Eastern European geopolitics on Wednesday... an economist on Thursday... a Critical Race Theorist on Friday... and still have enough energy left over to disappoint his wife and children on the weekend.

Even as our globalized world economy becomes increasingly specialized, modern man must present a polymath’s comprehension of any and all questions posed to him. And woe to he who dares sidestep the debate du jour, who forgets to black out his Instagram profile or don a colored ribbon on his lapel or fly the flag of the week or remember what the “2S” stands for in the ever-expanding alphabet soup of sexual orientation. In this Age of Certainty, of 140-character zingers and bumper-sticker morality, silence is not merely a sign of humility or respect... or even an admission of ignorance. Silence is violence. Because... rhyming.

With such a high value assigned to infallible certitude, to the point where flagrant overconfidence risks getting you elected to public office, one might be forgiven for thinking we were closer to objective truth than at any time in history... that mistakes were but a quaint anachronism... and that, as Francis Fukuyama opined back in the early ‘90s, we had finally reached the “end of history.”

In his earnest attempt to keep pace with the maelstrom of subject matter with which he must be au courant, modern man turns to the “Expert Class” for blind guidance. And blind guidance is what he gets.

Indeed, on the Grand Subjects and Great Causes of our time, these lodestars of knowledge are rarely in doubt. When it comes to what the global temperature ought to be half a century from now, and what sacrifices people without private jets need to make to get us there...
Regarding when and where you must mask your children - “yes” in school... “no” in restaurants, provided they’re seated... and not on the way to go pee-pee... (for covid lurketh there?)

When setting the exact price of credit, determining what precisely constitutes “full” employment, and deciding the hourly wage beneath which no human being should labor, even if the alternative is no work at all... Our oracles of omniscience are as confident as they are myopic. But what about “slippage”... retroactive edits... revisions... redacted emails... and fat finger fudges? Benevolent angels though they may be, even our betters in public service are entitled to the occasional blunder, right?

After all, didn’t the President of the United States of America assure us covid-19 was a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” that “you’re ok, you’re not going to get covid if you’ve had these vaccinations,” that the vaccinated “do not spread the disease to anybody else” and that, to shut-up and get the jab was somehow part of your duty as an American... because, patriotism? 
“Freedom? What’s the big deal, man?”

Oh yeah, and didn’t Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell, tell us not one year ago that inflation could be “quite low”... then “transitory”... before, just this past week, with “official” inflation at a 40-year high, suggesting the term transitory “has different meanings to different people” and may, after all, need to be retired?
And here’s White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, explaining that when it comes to ordinary folks feeling the pinch at the pump, “temporary” high prices means anywhere from Spring 2021 to the end of 2022... and longer, if necessary.
Of course, we hear from experts all the time, riffing on subjects we mental field mice could not possibly comprehend. Most folks don’t expect their unelected wonks to get things right all of the time... or even some of the time... but there is a basic expectation that they will at least give the public a straight-forward, honest answer, at least to the best of their ability to do so. And yet...

Remember when Netflix’s favorite medical advisor, Anthony Fauci, quashed all chatter of The Covid potentially originating in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the very same lab his government institute just happened (purely by coincidence, mind you) to be funding? Until relatively recently, to so much as flirt with the much-maligned “lab leak” theory was tantamount to suggesting that the moon was made of gorgonzola or that only a woman could give birth. An imminently cancelable offense, in other words. But lo! Since-published emails (brought to light by various Freedom of Information requests) show that Fauci himself was not only made aware of the likelihood that the virus emerged from the Wuhan lab, but actively colluded with then-director of the NIH, Francis Collins, to discredit the theory before the public ever got wind of it.

To be clear, and as unfashionable as this may seem, we do not claim to know that which we do not know... in this case, the origins of the coronavirus. That said, it does appear that open scientific inquiry was here actively kneecapped in favor of “narrative-shaping.” Call it Plato’s “noble lie” if you must. Just don’t call it “truth.” But never mind all that, say the experts. Regular citizens need not concern themselves with such lofty matters anyway. Higher minds are on the case.

Speaking of St. Francis Collins... it was around this same time that he wrote to his mate, Tony “The Science” Fauci, to stifle another critical debate, this one regarding the questionable empirical basis for lockdowns, after three “fringe” epidemiologists (from those well-known, alt-right conspiracy cauldrons; Harvard, Stanford and Oxford universities) dared voice an alternative viewpoint (in what became known as the Great Barrington Declaration.)
Click image for larger size.
Huh? What happened to open discussion, you ask? To free inquiry? To peer reviews and unbiased findings and transparency and objective truth-seeking? What happened to good ol’ fashioned doubt and skepticism?

Oh, you silly duffer! Why go to all that trouble when you could simply resort to “devastating take downs” (known in medical academic circles as “devestatus takus downus.” Latin, yo.)

Pay no attention to the hundreds of billions of dollars of lost economic activity caused by the panicked lockdowns and lockouts... the disrupted education of tens of millions of schoolchildren... the hundreds of thousands of closed restaurants, bankrupt businesses, waylaid earnings... the missed weddings and funerals... the trillions of dollars in government handouts... the isolation and fear and loneliness and anxiety... the suicide, domestic violence, alcoholism and drug addictions... the army of finger-wagging tut-tutters with their endless fonts of do-nothing hand gel, prowling behind every store counter... the separated families... the surrendered civil liberties...

The experts are nothing if not certain about what (if anything) you should know and when (if ever) you should know it. And by all indications, that’s not likely to change anytime soon. In the profound words of the multi-talentless Kamala Harris, “It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day.”

When it comes to the matters that have the rest of us scratching our heads – transitory myocarditis... patriotic inflation... two weeks to flatten Lia Thomas’s curve – you can rest assured, the experts have the situation well in hand. Just don’t ask them to define a woman...

Sen. Marsha Blackburn: "Can you provide a definition for the word woman?"
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson: "I can't. Not in this context. I'm not a biologist."

"WARNING: All Hell is About to Break Loose As SHTF; Recession? Economic Collapse"

Full screen recommended.
Ron Yates, 4/3/22:
"WARNING: All Hell is About to Break Loose As SHTF; 
Recession? Economic Collapse"

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: US Farmers Warn- Expect Much Higher Food Prices"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/3/22:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: 
US Farmers Warn- Expect Much Higher Food Prices"

"If You Feel Like Something Bad Is Coming, You Are Right On Target"

"If You Feel Like Something Bad Is Coming, 
You Are Right On Target"
by Michael Snyder

"Do you ever feel like you are banging your head into a wall? I certainly do. For years, I have been trying to warn people about very specific things that were coming, and now many of those things are literally making headlines on a daily basis. You would think that should be enough to wake most people up, but unfortunately most of the population is still in a deep state of sleep. Thankfully, there is a sizable minority that is awake, and I have been hearing from so many of you. In recent weeks so many readers have told me that they feel like really bad times are ahead of us, and if you feel that way too I want you to know that you aren’t alone.

On January 2nd, I penned these words: “I have such a bad feeling about 2022”. Of course that wasn’t the only time that I made such a statement. In fact, I issued many similar warnings in the months leading up to the beginning of the year.

Since that time, war in Ukraine has erupted, global energy prices have gone completely nuts, the inflation rate in the United States has hit the highest level in 40 years, the global supply chain crisis has gotten even worse, and a new bird flu pandemic has begun that has already killed nearly 17 million chickens and turkeys in the United States alone. And that is hardly an exhaustive list of all the things that have gone wrong over the past 3 months.

So many of the things that I specifically warned about in "Lost Prophecies" and "7 Year Apocalypse" are either happening or the stage is being set for them to happen. But I suppose that is just a giant “coincidence”, right?

I believe that we are at such a critical turning point in history at this moment. The war in Ukraine threatens to spark a much broader global war, and the United States and Russia are already engaged in a very vicious economic war. The COVID pandemic and the bird flu pandemic are just two of the pestilences that are currently afflicting our planet, and I believe that even more pestilences are on the way.

In addition, the worst global energy crisis in decades is combining with the worst global inflation crisis in decades to create a global food crisis that one UN official has called the worst since World War II. And what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

At this point, even the global elite are publicly admitting that we are potentially facing a global nightmare in the months ahead. For example, World Economic Forum Chairman Klaus Scwhab just stated that “we do know the global energy systems, food systems, and supply chains will be deeply affected” during an address at the World Government Summit 2022.

NEW – Klaus Schwab says "we do know the global energy systems, food systems, and supply chains will be deeply affected" at the World Government Summit 2022.
- Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) March 30, 2022

And Joe Biden is openly warning that the coming global food shortages are “going to be real”…"President Biden warned Thursday that there could be global food shortages resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and announced steps to prevent a potential crisis. “We did talk about food shortages. And it’s going to be real. The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia, it’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well,” Biden said at a press conference from Brussels, where he is meeting with NATO leaders."

They are literally telling you what is going to happen. But so many people out there have such a deeply ingrained “normalcy bias” that they can’t wrap their heads around the fact that conditions are rapidly changing for the worse. If you are not familiar with “normalcy bias”, the following is how Wikipedia defines it…

"Normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a cognitive bias which leads people to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings. Consequently, individuals underestimate the likelihood of a disaster, when it might affect them, and its potential adverse effects. The normalcy bias causes many people to not adequately prepare for natural disasters, market crashes, and calamities caused by human error. About 70% of people reportedly display normalcy bias during a disaster."

Most people out there simply assume that life will eventually return to “normal” somehow. But that isn’t going to happen. Global events are reaching a great crescendo, and the consequences of decades of very foolish decisions are starting to crash down upon us all at once. A few years ago I started warning that we were about to enter a “perfect storm”, then I started warning that we had entered a “perfect storm”, and now I am warning that this “perfect storm” is going to get a whole lot worse. If you plan to make it through what is ahead, you need to take action.

After reading the article that I posted last week about what a nuclear war between the United States and Russia would look like, one of my regular readers asked me to write an article about getting prepared. So in this article I will give you some of the most important basics, and if you want to learn more you can read the entire book that Barbara Fix and I co-authored a number of years ago.

When it comes to preparation for what is ahead, there are four major categories that you need to focus on. Those four categories are food, water, energy and shelter. If some sort of major emergency causes the grid to go down and the stores get completely emptied out, how would you survive? You need to be able to supply what you and your family will need to survive for multiple years without being able to depend on the system at all. If that sounds really difficult, that is because it will be really difficult. That is why you must get prepared ahead of time.

And it isn’t just about storing up buckets of food. Yes, I am a big advocate of storing away emergency food that can last for many years, but there is so much more to preparation than that. In a previous article, I shared a list of 50 things that Americans should be stockpiling for the difficult times that are coming…

#1 A Conventional Generator And A Solar Generator
#2 A Berkey Water Filter
#3 A Rainwater Collection System If You Do Not Have A Natural Supply Of Water Near Your Home
#4 A Large Emergency Medical Kit
#5 Rice
#6 Pasta
#7 Canned Soup
#8 Canned Vegetables
#9 Canned Fruit
#10 Canned Chicken
#11 Jars Of Peanut Butter
#12 Salt
#13 Sugar
#14 Powdered Milk
#15 Bags Of Flour
#16 Yeast
#17 Lots Of Extra Coffee (If You Drink It)
#18 Buckets Of Long-Term Storable Food
#19 Lots Of Extra Vitamins
#20 Lighters Or Matches
#21 Candles
#22 Flashlights Or Lanterns
#23 Plenty Of Wood To Burn
#24 Extra Blankets
#25 Extra Sleeping Bags
#26 Ammunition
#27 Extra Fans If You Live In A Hot Climate
#28 Hand Sanitizer
#29 Toilet Paper
#30 Extra Soap And Shampoo
#31 Extra Toothpaste
#32 Extra Razors
#33 Bottles Of Bleach
#34 A Battery-Powered Radio
#35 Extra Batteries
#36 Solar Chargers
#37 Trash Bags
#38 Tarps
#39 A Pocket Knife
#40 A Hammer
#41 An Axe
#42 A Shovel
#43 Work Gloves
#44 Lots Of Warm Socks
#45 Seeds For A Garden
#46 Canning Jars
#47 Extra Supplies For Your Pets
#48 A Substantial Emergency Supply Of Cash
#49 Bibles For Every Member Of Your Family
#50 A “Bug Out Bag” For Every Member Of Your Family

You should also be thinking about where you plan to ride out the extremely painful years that are ahead of us. If you are currently living in a major city, your chances of survival will be much lower than someone living in a very rural area when things finally hit the fan. And even if you are living in a rural area, you need to have an alternate place where you can go if conditions in your current area become untenable for some reason.

This is not a drill, and this is not a game. A day of reckoning is now at hand, and so many of the things that the watchmen have been relentlessly warning about are starting to come to fruition.

For years, many in the general population made fun of “preppers” and entire television shows were created to mock us. And even though global events have begun to spiral out of control, most of the population still refuses to get prepared. That deeply frustrates me, but I am going to continue to do my best to sound the alarm."

"How It Really Is"

Greg Hunter, "Deep State Controlled Demolition of America"

"Deep State Controlled Demolition of America"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Award winning journalist Alex Newman says the big problems in America are all caused by the Deep State. Newman wrote a popular book called “Deep State.” In it, Newman identified the players, tactics and plans that they are executing today in the United States and the rest of the world. Neman explains, “I think this is what we are witnessing right now. We are seeing the controlled demolition of American power, of American prestige, economic might, military might and credibility. We are also seeing the implosion of cohesion in the United States. You can see division, riots, hatred, and it’s all for the purpose of ushering in this new system. Part of the reason they are working on this so quickly is they are deathly afraid of the United States at this point because of what happened in 2016. They thought they had plenty of election fraud to get their minion Hillary Clinton elected. Boom – it blew up in their face. They said, oh my goodness, if the American people retake control of their government, we are all going to jail. They had to accelerate this process, and I think that is what we are looking at, and there is massive amounts of evidence that support this.”

Newman says there is still time to stop, or at least put off, what is happening to the United States. Newman thinks, “If Americans can regain control of our government through the electoral process, a lot of things can change. Some things are already baked into the cake. They have absolutely undermined the U.S. dollar. They are trying to blame it on Russia and Ukraine. Gas prices are so high because of Russia and Ukraine - baloney. They have been printing trillions of dollars and blowing up the money supply. They have been destroying the supply chains deliberately. So, it’s inevitable we are going to be dealing with very serious economic pain.”

On the other hand, Newman says, “It is not inevitable that the United States collapses as the world’s sole superpower. If we could regain control of our government, prosecute the criminals and send a serious message that anybody that tries that again is going to be dealt with. We need to get rid of the tyranny. Get rid of the bureaucracy. Get rid of the unconstitutional laws. We saw how quickly Donald Trump turned this around after 8 years of the Obama Administration. After 8 years of Obama, this country was in disastrous shape, yet in a period of two to three years, things turned around. The markets were rallying, the dollar was strong and the energy was flowing. In fact, we became a net exporter of energy since the first time since the 1950’s. It can be turned around again.”

Newman also talks about how the Democrat Party may disappear. Newman says, “Democrats are traitors and so are the RINO’s helping them.” Newman also talks about the implications on the 2022 and 2024 elections from the CV19 injections. Democrats took the jabs at a much higher rate than Republican and Independent voters.

Newman wrote his book “Deep State” so you know who the enemy is and anticipate what he will do to destroy your life and your country."

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with award winning journalist Alex Newman, founder of LibertySentinel.org and author of the recent popular book “Deep State.” (There is much more in the 46 min. video interview.)

Saturday, April 2, 2022

"A Rubicon of Methane"

"A Rubicon of Methane"
by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina -  "A not-so funny thing happened on the way to... global petrodollar hegemony. (Didn’t see that coming, did ya?) As the rest of the world debated what must (“MUST!”) be done to address the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin quietly declared that the Rubicon shall henceforth flow (or not) with methane. The newswires were on the story..."March 31 (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he had signed a decree saying foreign buyers must pay in roubles for Russian gas from April 1, and contracts would be halted if these payments were not made.

"In order to purchase Russian natural gas, they must open rouble accounts in Russian banks. It is from these accounts that payments will be made for gas delivered starting from tomorrow," Putin said in televised remarks. If such payments are not made, we will consider this a default on the part of buyers, with all the ensuing consequences. Nobody sells us anything for free, and we are not going to do charity either - that is, existing contracts will be stopped."

As of this writing, Russian gas heats and lights up one in every three homes across Europe, a not-insignificant contribution to the power supply for the entire continent. And, as our friend Byron King mentioned in this space before, Europe has been steadfastly hampering its own ability to produce energy, from shuttering nuclear plants in Germany to “going green” elsewhere.

As such, more than a few nations are fast approaching a crucial decision point: abide by western sanctions and freeze in the dark... or renegotiate in Vlad’s rubles? For quick reference, Russia accounted for about 45% of Europe’s total gas imports in 2021, with Germany, Turkey, Italy, Belarus, and France receiving most of the feed.

Plenty are those happy to stand with their Ukrainian brothers... as long as they can do so from a safe, warm, well-lit distance. The world will see who is left standing after this latest development. As for importers of Russian oil, China leads the pack... followed by Germany, the Netherlands, the U.S., Poland and South Korea.

Meanwhile... At the behest of democratic lawmakers, President Biden this week announced an unprecedented release from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves – 1 million barrels per day for the next 180 days. For those doing the sums at home, 1 million barrels equals roughly 1/20th of the US daily consumption... or about the same amount as the Keystone XL pipeline is NOT delivering from your friendly, NATO card-carrying neighbors north of the 49th parallel. (That project was friendly-fired on Mr. Biden’s first day in office.)

Bonus Irony: Readers will recall that it was Senator Chuck Schumer who, last November, began urging Biden to tap the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve. “We’re here today because we need immediate relief at the gas pump and the place to look is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,” Schumer pleaded at a press conference in New York at the time.

If you feel like you’ve heard Chucky’s name in conjunction with the SPR before, that’s because you have. It was the very same Senator Schumer who was seen crowing from the rafters not two short years ago, after having proudly blocked the previous administration’s initiative to refill the reserve tanks “to the brim” back in March, 2020. Crude oil was $24.49 per barrel at the time, or about a quarter of today’s price. Boy, that extra capacity sure would have been nice to have on tap now, eh? Oh well..."

Musical Interlude: "Dance of Life, Relaxing Fantasy Music for Relaxation & Meditation"

Full screen recommended.
Peder B. Helland,
"Dance of Life,
Relaxing Fantasy Music for Relaxation & Meditation"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue vdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are interstellar dust clouds, blocking the light from background stars in the case of Barnard's dark nebulae. For vdB 31, the dust preferentially reflects the bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae.
Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about four light-years.”

"Time: It’s The Only Thing You Have"

"Time: It’s The Only Thing You Have"
by John Wilder

"Time. Of things that have long fascinated me, time is at the top of the list. Even when I was a little kid, time fascinated me. The idea that time, of all of the physical parameters of the world there was the one that we couldn’t control. Humanity has mastered the power of the atom, at least partially. We haven’t tamed fusion, but we can create it, and have several fewer islands in the Pacific because of it.

Humanity has dammed the largest of rivers, giving us power. We have used technology to shrink the world. The first recorded circumnavigation of the world took 1082 days. Magellan didn’t quite make the whole trip, but he still gets the credit on a technicality. Now? The International Space Station does an orbit in 90 minutes or so at 17,150 miles per hour, which is nearly as fast as Haitians are entering Texas.

Humanity has conquered the riddle of steel – we’ve made steel buildings that reach upwards into the sky to please Crom. We have conquered climate – people live at the South Pole in perfect comfort, as well as managing to live in Houston without melting into puddles of sweat.

We can see at night. We can talk, nearly instantly, with people a continent away. My phone buzzes every time there is motion outside my front door – it’s like having a superpower of sensing where and when there is activity at a distance. Another superpower is being able to access obscure facts anywhere on the planet that can reach a cell signal.

But time remains fixed. It flows only one way. And it is the most subjective of our senses. Even Pugsley notices it: “This summer was so short!” He’s in high school. That’s when the transition from the endless summers of childhood begin to transform into the fleeting, never-ending carousel of years that is adulthood. I’ve long felt that I understood why this was. Let me give it a shot.

For a newborn, the second day it’s outside and breathing is 50% of its entire life. For a six-year-old, half of their life is three years – much more. It’s not a big percentage, but it’s much smaller than 50%. For a sixteen-year-old, half their life is eight years. If you’re forty – half your life is twenty years. 1/8 versus 1/20? It’s amazingly different. We don’t perceive life as a line. We’re living inside of it – we compare our lives to the only thing we have . . . our lives. Each day you live is smaller than the last.

But that’s not everything. As we age, novelty decreases. When we’re young, experiences and knowledge are coming at us so quickly that we are presented with novel (new and unique) information daily. New words. New thoughts. New ideas. That’s why babies keep falling for that stupid “got your nose” thing. They don’t realize that I can reattach it. Over time, though, novelty decreases, as does the percentage of your life that each day represents. Ever drive a new route somewhere? When I do it, I have to focus my attention. It seems like it takes longer because I’m having to deal with novelty.

I’ve had my “new” laptop nearly seven years. I had my old laptop for longer than that, yet my “new” laptop still seems like it’s temporary.

There are only so many routes I can drive to work, so much novelty that I can find in a daily drive. Even a commute of an hour begins to fade into a brief moment in time if it’s the same commute, day after day.

Work is similar. Over time, we gain experience. Experience shows us how to fix problems (and sometimes how not to fix them). But that experience of taking a solution and modifying it to fix the next problem isn’t as hard as fixing the first problem.

The fact that each day is a smaller portion of my life, combined with the fact that as I get older, the possibility that I see something new dims. I’ve solved a bunch of problems in my life. Finding a new one is... difficult. Life goes faster, day by day for me. Every endless summer day of youth is in my rearview mirror.

And yet... Each day is still 24 hours. I can still use each day and live it with all of the gusto of a 10-year-old fishing for trout after building a tree fort, playing with his dog, and building a model of a Phantom F-4 to dogfight with the MiG 21-PF already hanging from the ceiling. Even though those 24 hours seem shorter now than at any time in my life, they are relentless in their exact sameness. I get to choose how I spend those moments in my life. I get to choose what I want to produce, and how hard I work to make it happen.

Humanity may never have the ability to crack time – it appears that even today, outside of sands falling from an hourglass, we can only describe time as a fundamental entity, something we measure against. Does the flow of time vary? Certainly. But only if we’re moving at large fractions of the speed of light or are caught in a huge gravity well, but let’s leave your mother out of this.

I have come to the conclusion that I will likely never understand what, exactly, time is, outside of this: Time is all we have – it is what makes up life. We measure our lives in it, because no man can buy an extra hour of life. We have the hours we have. The only difference is what we do with that time.

I mentioned in a previous post that (during the week) I often get by on scant hours of sleep. That’s because I have more things that I want to do in my life than I can fit in a day that’s less than 20 or 22 hours some days. I choose to try to do more, to try to make use of this time, because each moment is a gift.

Maybe I can settle for that definition of time: a gift. Each moment is a gift. Don’t beg for more, or live in fear of losing them. Just make each moment count. Perhaps that’s the secret and precious nature of time. It is the one thing we should never waste, and never wish away."

"Fools and Knaves..."

“In the mass of mankind, I fear, there is too great a majority of
fools and knaves; who, singly from their number, must to a certain
degree be respected, though they are by no means respectable.”
- Philip Stanhope

“There are more fools than knaves in the world,
else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.”
- Samuel Butler

"There Are Many Things Today..."

“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

The Daily "Near You?"

Birmingham, United Kingdom. Thanks for stopping by!

"Oh Great, Now We Could Lose The Petrodollar…"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report 4/2/22:
"Oh Great, Now We Could Lose The Petrodollar…"
"The economic sanctions that have been imposed upon Russia have caused immense damage, but a loss of the petrodollar would be absolutely devastating for the U.S. economy. Since making an agreement with the Nixon administration in 1974, the Saudis have traded oil exclusively for U.S. dollars. Today, approximately 80 percent of all oil produced in the entire world is traded for dollars, and the “petrodollar” has become one of the foundational pillars of the current global financial system. Most Americans don’t realize this, but far more dollars are actually used outside of the United States than inside the United States, and having the reserve currency of the world is a massive advantage for us. Up to this point, there has been an insatiable demand for U.S. dollars all over the planet, and that has allowed us to enjoy a standard of living that is way above what we actually deserve."

"Why The Cargo Ship Mess is Getting So Much Worse"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly PM 4/2/22:
"Why The Cargo Ship Mess is Getting So Much Worse"
"We have been told that our supply chain issues when it comes to the cargo ships have been resolved. I’m going to prove to you that this is much worse than it’s ever been. There is no resolution in sight. Global supply chains have been affected by everything that’s going on in the world. They’re only going to get worse in the coming months."

"The Russian Pivot - Not the Military One"

"The Russian Pivot - Not the Military One"
by Addison Wiggin

“Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland; 
who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
 who rules the World-Island commands the world.”
- Halford Mackinder

"The global economy’s predilection for the U.S. dollar is waning. Even the erstwhile champion of cable news, CNN, has figured out there’s a gaping yaw in U.S. policy today. “The West needs more oil now,” Zachary Wolf writes for CNN, stating the obvious. And the not-so-obvious. “The world needs to get off oil and gas ASAP. These competing, urgent realities are crashing into each other.” CNN:

"Climate. The world is approaching a more catastrophic phase of climate change and needs to move quickly to reduce carbon emissions.

Sanctions. Punishing Russia will raise prices in the West, particularly gas prices.

Economy. High gas prices could help drive the US into a recession and turn the outcome of the midterm elections in November."

President Biden’s solution promises to be about as effective as his promise to deliver more LNG to help the EU wean themselves off Russian natural gas. Yesterday, the president announced he’d be releasing oil from the strategic petroleum reserves (SPR) for the next six months. “Look, the bottom line is this,” Biden said at the White House. “Between ramping up production in the short term and driving down demand in the long term, we can free ourselves from our dependence on imported oil from across the world.”

What a quandary. The U.S. needs oil. Europe needs Russian gas. Politically, they can’t say it without destroying the climate change narrative they’ve been ginning up since An Inconvenient Truth ran amok in 2006. Not that it matters; most projections for energy independence scoot to 2030 and beyond. It doesn’t take a lot of math to conclude the president will likely have shed his mortal coil when that year dawns upon us. And with higher gas prices and a recession swirling about the news cycle, the midterms may clarify policy questions all by themselves.

Today, we’re focused on a different kind of inconvenient truth. “I don’t want to overegg the pudding,” Sean Ring wrote in the Rude Awakening on the day I interviewed him for The Wiggin Sessions. He was referring to Valdimir Putin demanding Russian oil and gas be paid for in rubles. He was also referring to a deal the Chinese made with the Saudis to pay for their oil in yuan. “Today will be remembered as the day power shifted irrevocably eastward,” Mr. Ring says, “towards Mackinder’s Heartland and away from its periphery. How did it all come to this? Oh, that’s easy. Hubris and a lack of strategic thinking. Lesser sons riding on the momentum of better men.”

Sean laid out specific reasons why he believes the time is nigh for the end of U.S. dollar hegemony. We crib:

• There’s nothing the U.S., EU and U.K. have that Russia needs.
• There are many things Russia has that the U.S., EU and U.K. need.
• The U.S., EU and U.K. have proven themselves utterly untrustworthy as asset custodians.

Thanks to stupid Western policy, the China’s Belt and Road Initiative is now a must for the “World Island.” “Halford Mackinder, a British geographer,” Sean points out, “summarized his Heartland Theory thus” — bringing to our attention a strategic theory we have never considered…

• Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
• Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island;
Who rules the World-Island commands the world.

Mackinder viewed the world like this:
“Why is Eastern Europe, and hence, Ukraine, so important?” Sean asks. “Because it’s the only flat land route to invade Russia. And that’s what this is ultimately all about. The Heartland itself is mostly Russia.” It’s also what makes China’s Belt and Road initiative so important. “Feast your eyes on the map below,” Sean suggests.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative essentially obviates the need for an open water navy. “You know,” says Ring, “what American taxpayers have been spending so much money on…” We dig deep into Sean’s analysis of Russia’s pivot east because of the war, the West’s sanctions and the incoherent policy being advocated by the administration right now. We also take a look at China’s position while the West and Russia rebuke one another."

"How It Really Is"

 

"Death Of The Dollar Begins; The Final Chapter Of A Debt-based Empire"

"Death Of The Dollar Begins; 
The Final Chapter Of A Debt-based Empire"
by Mike Adams

“If you want gas, find rubles.” Those are the words of Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, as reported by the BBC this week. The story follows up with a bombshell that has been scarcely reported: "The Kremlin also said Russia could start demanding payment in rubles for other commodities such as fertilizer, grain, metals and timber. This means that Russia isn’t merely demanding rubles for gas and oil exports; it’s also going to demand rubles for commodities.

The ruble requirement began Friday. It won’t be demanded across all energy contracts immediately, but it will be rolled out across existing contracts over the next several weeks and months, Russia says. Many European nations (like Germany) depend almost entirely on Russian gas to power their economies. The day that the gas stops flowing is the day that Germany’s economy plunges into collapse, suffering irreversible economic damage due to mass bankruptcies of German-based businesses. “Germany and Austria have taken the first steps towards gas rationing,” the BBC adds. Austria relies on Russia for 80% of its natural gas.

Western nations cut Russia off from dollars and euros, yet they insist on paying Russia with the very same dollars and euros that Russia can no longer use. European leaders have said they refuse to pay for Russian energy exports with rubles. But these same nations took part in a financial system de-platforming of Russia that means Russia is largely unable to use dollars or euros. So there’s no point in Russia trading gas for fiat currencies that it can’t use and doesn’t want.

In fact, as long as the West’s economic sanctions are in place, if Russia were to sell gas for dollars or euros, that would be the equivalent of giving away its natural resources for free. And no country is going to give away energy for free. Especially not to a group of “unfriendly” nations that unleashed economic warfare against you in the first place.

Watch the ruble climb as it is backed by energy, commodities and gold: The ruble has already achieved a full recovery from its initial plunge following the economic sanctions put in place by the West. While the corporate media was initially claiming Russia’s currency would collapse within days, quite the opposite has happened. Russia’s currency is actually climbing steadily in value while the dollar, the euro and the yen are all losing value at a shocking rate.

In terms of real purchasing power in America, the dollar is actually losing an astonishing 2% per month. If you have dollars in a bank account, you are effectively earning negative 2% interest every month in terms of the loss of its actual value. To make matters even worse, Biden has proposed a $5.8 trillion federal spending spree for 2023, meaning the government will be spending nearly $1 trillion every other month. And that doesn’t count the bailout money that’s coming in 2023, which will likely reach several trillion dollars all on its own. We aren’t far from the US central bank printing a trillion dollars a month.

Putin, on the other hand, made a tactically brilliant move in demanding payment in rubles because that will drive demand for rubles for years to come. The petro dollar is now giving way to the hydrocarbon ruble. Since Russia sits on about 30% of all known natural resources in the world, tying the ruble to those natural resources instantly makes the ruble a store of value, especially given that every nation in the world needs energy, grains, minerals, timber and other resources that will be linked to the ruble.

Nobody needs dollars, really, since dollars are a failing fiat currency that’s being devalued by the day. It’s sort of like investing in an athlete who just jumped out of an airplane without a parachute. What people need are things like food, heating fuel, electricity, oil and so on. This is what Russia’s exports provide. This is what’s backing Russia’s new vision for the ruble.

Everybody is fleeing the dollar and getting into something that holds value: All the top financial minds see this unfolding in real time. It is irrefutable that the dollar goes to zero. Because of this realization, every person who is capable of grasping this reality is fleeing the dollar and shifting into other things that tend to hold value:

• Physical gold and silver
• Land
• New or used vehicles
• Residential homes or commercial buildings
• Ammunition and firearms
• Tractors and farming equipment

Some people are also shifting funds into cryptocurrencies, vaulted precious metals or fiat currencies of other nations. I spoke with a vaulted gold service provider yesterday and they confirmed they are slammed with new business as thousands of people are signing up to buy either physical gold or vaulted (stored) gold that’s held for them. The gold service providers on the front lines are simply being overrun with demand.

The ignorant masses who stupidly believe the corporate media, of course, will be utterly wiped out when the dollar goes to zero. They will be stunned, surprised and betrayed, unable to understand that their gullibility lead to their financial demise. Many will starve, others will be left homeless. Some will turn to crime to try to survive, and some of those will end up getting shot by the well-prepared who are defending their preps.

When the dollar goes to zero, the U.S. empire of debt collapses with it. The debt was never sustainable, of course. And MMT was never anything but a silly delusion. Sure, the government will try to push a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), but no one with any IQ points at all will want anything to do with the system, especially after realizing how badly everyone was deceived and betrayed by the central banks’ crashing of the fiat dollar. (Inflation doesn’t go away just because you make money digital. If anything, it only invites even more rapid money printing and currency devaluation.)"

Today’s Situation Update covers all this in much more detail:
Related:

"Shopping At Dollar General! Finding Deals & Some Special Offers!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 4/2/22:
"Shopping At Dollar General! 
Finding Deals & Some Special Offers!"
"In today's vlog we are at Dollar General to check out another food option as prices across the country are getting super expensive! We are here to explain skyrocketing prices, and the empty shelves situation!"

Friday, April 1, 2022

"Panic Buying Frenzy Sweeps Across China As People Rush To Hoard Food Supplies At Supermarkets"

Full screen recommended.
"Panic Buying Frenzy Sweeps Across China As 
People Rush To Hoard Food Supplies At Supermarkets"
by Epic Economist

"China’s lockdowns have set off a massive new wave of panic buying this week as millions scrambled to stock up on food supplies and medicine before movement restrictions were reimposed in several major cities. While some prepared for a lengthy period stuck at home, others were forced to quarantine in their offices to keep business running, and some were caught by surprise by the renewed mandates and remained isolated in quite unusual locations.

Over the past few days, supermarket shelves were left bare by panic buyers, creating shortages of a series of products and leading some shoppers to engage in physical altercations over the remaining supplies. The fresh measures to contain the latest outbreak are also triggering shock waves on the global supply chain, sparking mass businesses shutdowns, port closures, and pushing domestic production down. All of these disruptions are adding immense pressure on food prices – not only in China but in global markets as well.

Mass testing is also being conducted to screen all of Shanghai's residents for the virus. Given that the city is home to 25 million people, rumors started circulating that authorities would actually extend the city’s lockdown for several days to be able to spot all new cases and contain local outbreaks. As a result, residents started another panic buying frenzy in anticipation of the restrictions. “We're all wondering if it's really possible to test, analyze and then sweep up the [infected] among almost 25 million people in a matter of days, then simply open up again. We're preparing for weeks of this," said one resident.

Others have been forced to isolate themselves in far more unusual locations. One woman’s story went viral this week when her community's lockdown began while she was at the gym. Her experience was similar to a widely reported of a woman in Zhengzhou who had to quarantine for several days at a hot pot restaurant. On the other hand, for millions of people, the restrictions have caused lots of anxiety. One footage showed supermarket shelves completely emptied out of all products. Additional video captured the moment two men erupted into a fight near fresh produce stands. Some have also taken to social media platform Weibo to urge help as they were not able to get medicine or treatment due to pharmacy closures.

The chaos is expected to continue as the number of cases keeps rising. Some of the nation’s biggest ports have been shut down, disrupting trade, domestic production, and the flow of goods in and out of the country. Both Shenzhen and Shanghai are important economic powerhouses for the rest of the world, and the recent closures are raising fears about severe interruptions to the global shipping industry and supply chains, according to industry insiders. That is already sparking massive ‘shock waves’ across global supply chains, and contributing to rampant food inflation, they added.

The disruptions are affecting the stability of the global manufacturing supply chain, creating huge backlogs and exacerbating shortages in foreign markets. However, the damages consumers are going to face are likely to be deeper and more long-lasting than what most companies are going through. The impact of shortages, delivery delays, and sudden movement restrictions will continue to weigh on prices and make food inflation a permanent reality, not only for the Chinese but also for consumers all over the world."

"Banks Will Seize Your Money During Crash, Get It Out And Stockpile Food; Economy Being Disabled"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 4/1/22:
"Banks Will Seize Your Money During Crash, 
Get It Out And Stockpile Food; Economy Being Disabled"

Gerald Celente, "Ukraine War, Start to Finish, Who’ll Win? Why and When? - Interview with Scott Ritter"

Gerald Celente, Trends Journal,
"Ukraine War, Start to Finish, Who’ll Win? 
Why and When? - Interview with Scott Ritter"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets And More: Hidden In Plain Sight, What You Need To Know Now"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/1/22"
"Markets And More: Hidden In Plain Sight,
 What You Need To Know Now"

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What powers are being wielded in the Wizard Nebula? Gravitation strong enough to form stars, and stellar winds and radiations powerful enough to create and dissolve towers of gas. Located only 8,000 light years away, the Wizard nebula, pictured above, surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer.
The active star forming region spans 100 about light years, making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon. The Wizard Nebula can be located with a small telescope toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus) Although the nebula may last only a few million years, some of the stars being formed may outlive our Sun.”

Bill Bonner, "The Great Beyond"

"The Great Beyond"
by Bill Bonner

San Martin, Argentina - "We rode over to the cemetery – a real Boot Hill – to see Carlos’s grave. Carlos died by drowning, a very rare thing in a very dry country. It was ruled an ‘accident’ by the police. But it didn’t look like an accident to us. It looked like suicide. The footprints showed that he walked around the reservoir to the deep end – the only place he could have drowned. His cellphone was placed on the ground. Then, the feet came together…. and disappeared. There were no other footprints. What would make Carlos – a simple field hand – want to kill himself? Nobody wants to ask.
We have our suspicions. They would surprise no one. Jealousy. Hate. Betrayal. Desperation. Talking to his wife, we had the strong sense that she knows something that she’s not telling us. But there is no point to going any further with this; the heart has its stories… often best left untold.

Our beat is money. But on its own, money is worthless. It is the heart, with its wants and needs, its vanities and mysteries, that gives money meaning. So, today, we will dig a bit further into the mush and muscle, in the hopes that we might learn something.

State-Sanctioned Suicide: No sooner had we absorbed news of Carlos’s death than another death came our way. An old friend, in Switzerland, committed suicide. This was a death of an entirely different sort. Premeditated. Assisted. Sanctioned by the government. Here’s the report (from a family member): “Marie got in touch with an organization called ‘Exit.’ Normally, they help terminally ill people kill themselves. But they will also do it for people who are severely depressed. Marie had cut herself off from her two children. I think it was over money. She had become a recluse. And she was very unhappy.

She called me about a month ago to say that she had contacted the Exit people and was planning to commit suicide. I didn’t know what to do. Or how to take it. She could be melodramatic. And very emotional. I figured she was just telling me how depressed she was. I knew she was taking antidepressants. I thought she had it under control. Then, she called to say she had a date – about a week ahead. She seemed very determined. Calm. Her mind was made up.

Apparently, the Exit group did interviews with family and friends to make sure that she was in her right mind and was unlikely to ever recover from her depression. Then, they came to her apartment, along with a policeman as a witness; they gave her a pill. I heard from her friend, who must have been with her, that she was smoking a cigarette, calmly and even making jokes. Then, she took the pill, fell asleep and died. Rest in peace. Another family member reported that the end was “serene”… and that “it was what she wanted.”

Total Control: But the news left others deeply disturbed. One offered a comment: “Rest in peace? What kind of peace is that? She was obviously at war with her own children… and it tormented her… drove her crazy… so crazy that either she wanted to escape by killing herself… or wanted to torment them by removing all possibility of a reconciliation. Either way, it was the wrong thing to do. Not just ‘wrong’ like a mistake… but wrong – sinful… selfish and mean."

That’s what is wrong with our whole modern world,” she continued. “It has lost its soul. Imagine, people who come to your house… give you a pill… and watch you die. What’s wrong with these people? Didn’t anyone try to stop her? Didn’t anyone try to save her? Suppose you saw someone getting ready to jump off a bridge? Would you just say ‘oh well, that’s their business’? And didn’t it occur to anyone that killing people – even people who say they want to be killed – is wrong?

Look… I have no idea whether Marie should live or die. But neither do they. It’s one thing when people suddenly shoot themselves and there’s nothing you can do about it. But coming to her apartment with a pill?

This is so disappointing… and so sad. These people think they can make life or death decisions based on interviews and psychological profiles. How did they know what was really in her heart… or what Marie’s suicide would do to her children… or her friends? Why did they think she had any choice in the matter? She didn’t choose to be born; who gave her the right to choose to die? Those are things we shouldn’t decide for ourselves. How did they know whether she was meant to live or die… or whether she might some day see a burning bush… and get down on her knees to beg forgiveness… beg her children and her god… to take that iron corset off her heart and let her live?

I find it just overwhelmingly sad… crushingly sad… as if there really were no God at all… no real grace or beauty… no hope of redemption… as if we were now all at the mercy of soulless technicians with their crackpot theories on their power trips… with their charts and graphs… telling us the planet can only be 1.5 degrees warmer… or that we should have 2% inflation, not more, not less… and telling us when we can go a restaurant… and giving children vaccines that they don’t need… and censuring what we say…and insisting that we put their medicines into our bodies… you’re always going on about the Fed monkeying with interest rates and printing fake money… and I guess that’s part of it too… they think they can control everything and everybody…and now, they think they have the right to tell us who can die… and when."

“Very sad.”

"The Image That Comes To Mind..."

"The image that comes to mind is a boxing ring. There are times when you just want that bell to ring, but you're the one who's losing. The one who's winning doesn't have that feeling. Do you have the energy and strength to face life? Life can ask more of you than you are willing to give. And then you say, 'Life is not something that should have been. I'm not going to play the game. I'm going to meditate. I'm going to call "out". There are three positions possible. One is the up-to-it, and facing the game and playing through. The second is saying, "Absolutely not. I don't want to stay in this dogfight." That's the absolute out. The third position is the one that says, "This is mixed of good and evil. I'm on the side of the good. I accept the world with corrections. And may the world be the way I like it. And it's good for me and my friends." There are the only three positions."
- Joseph Campbell

"The Coming American Dictatorship"

"The Coming American Dictatorship," Part I
by John Wilder

“Well, Captain, the Klingons called you a tin-plated, overbearing, swaggering dictator with delusions of godhood.” – Star Trek

“Comrade Stalin, a fortune-teller came to see you!” “Execute him. If he was any good, he would have known not to come.”

"Most people like to be told what to do. They want to be led. That makes sense, given the history of humanity. We work best when we work together, and the worst group is a group of a dozen people who each think they’re the leader. Because of this, hierarchy is a built-in feature to our operating system. Get a group of lumberjacks together, and one of them will want to be named the branch manager.

The downside of this “working together” is that the vast mass of people are willing to behave like lemmings and all jump off the cliff, as long as that’s what everyone else in the group is doing. Heck, lemmings would even jump off a dock, if they felt pier pressure. For me, the last few years has been the biggest revelation in human behavior and how easily people (especially NPCs) can be reprogrammed.

The three biggest reprogramming efforts in the last few years have been Trump, COVID, and Ukraine. I’ll skip Trump for the moment, and jump into COVID. Was the ‘Rona a real disease? Certainly. The reaction to it was overblown at every level. The average age of people who died from Corona-chan was (through my rough calculations) 73 in the United States.

In two years, a total of 921 deaths below the age of 17 were recorded. By my calcs, this was less than 1% of the deaths from all causes for kids of that age. In other words, it was uncommon. For that, though, we shut down schools, shut down the economy, and tossed trillions in cash out everywhere. That led to pent-up demand – when the local Lego® store reopened, people lined up for blocks.

You’re aware of all of that, of course. This isn’t ancient history. But the number of Americans who became Corona believers overnight was in the tens of millions. The reactions of panic were amazing. It became the reason for the existence of the news media and Big Tech® to actively put a blanket of censorship on all views that didn’t agree with whatever the blessed St. Anthony Fauci, PBUH, didn’t believe that afternoon.

The ‘Rona continued to be a means of control, as well as amazing profitability for the vaxx makers. Biden even tried to up the ante with controls that would have made Brezhnev blush that were (in some cases) later defeated, which made him stop before he went full Trudeau. Never go full Trudeau.

Eventually, the vaxx requirements and silly Corona restrictions got so politically muddled and unpopular that the subject had to be changed. A desperate politician with low approval ratings decided that the best thing that could have happened to him is... Russia. Leftists have been head over heels hating Russia for quite a long time, even more than they hate having to switch cars after the Amber Alert comes over the radio. I started to write a paragraph as to why – but why doesn’t matter.

It would have been elementary statecraft for Biden to get Ukraine and Russia to have a peaceful settlement, or at least one short of war. Instead, every public statement was a variant of “let’s you and him fight.” Biden actively egged on the conflict that no one believed would actually happen. Why? This why is important.

It was to swap out the chips. COVID-19 Fear Enabler™ was replaced with 2022 Russia Hate®. Joe saw his shot to again become nearly as popular as “that dance the kids are doing, the twist” and someone decided to make the chip swap.

Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t valid reasons to be on the side of Ukraine – there are. Me? I’m not on either side – I don’t need to choose between various them. But the real loser of this war won’t only be Ukraine and Russia. In the long run, I think the biggest loser will be the economy of the United States, especially with unemployment after Ukraine has to lay off the Biden, Pelosi, and Romney families.

I see that there is a very, very significant portion of the populace that is highly susceptible to this reprogramming – again – no every Russia hater is an NPC, but many are. The technology for this reprogramming has been honed very well over time. People who couldn’t spell Ukraine and couldn’t find it on a map want to intervene with a no-fly zone and troops. One wonders if they know that “no-fly” has nothing to do with zipperless pants.

Whether planned or not, this will very likely result in the final crisis that the United States will face in its current form. The difficulty is that we are a population that is already divided. I feel that the recent sanctions against Russia are an own goal that will ultimately result in the death of the dollar as the reserve currency and wrote about that here.

Ultimately, this leads to that final crisis that we’ll face as a nation. How will we deal with an economic crisis? Certainly there is the possibility of Civil War 2.0, which is what I had previously had as my number one risk. It’s still there, but a new risk is becoming more and more probable as we head towards Biden’s Depression. What kind of crisis? That one is simple. Economic disruption in the United States of Weimar proportions, as I’ll outline below.

A move away from the US dollar as the reserve currency (which is happening right now) will create poverty. Yes, we make food in the United States. But we don’t make the microchips required to run the John Deere® harvesters. We also make most of the energy that we consume. But we don’t make the steel to produce the pipe to drill it or move it. We’ve simply lost much of the technological and experience base required to make the things we need, except for Doritos®.

As noted above, I can see other probabilities, but Biden’s driving Russia and China together to create a Eurasian bloc that has both raw materials and production capacity will upset and supplant the unipolar world we had since 1992. This creates the conditions necessary to crush a United States built on a FIRE economy.

What’s a FIRE economy? Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate. Yup, that’s the United States. Regardless of how it has been used, it is an economy that’s built around sloshing money around. No matter what the condo sells for in New York, it won’t put a single more hamburger into a McDonald’s® in Manhattan.

Russia can make and harvest the food, because they can make tractors or import them from China. Russia can make excess energy, as well as the pipe to move it. They don’t even need China for that. The United States used to be indispensable. Now?

The United States imports $90 billion a month more than it exports. $90 billion. Why do people sent us $90 billion in stuff every month more than we send out? Because we pay with dollars. These dollars exist because we just print them, or, more likely, create electronic bits that we call dollars. It was a good gig, but Biden’s sanctions against Russia have shown the Russians that they don’t need the Western financial system. They can sell oil and fertilizer and grain for rubles. Or gold. Or microchips. They don’t need the dollar.

This sort of crisis facing the United States has happened before. Most of the time, it rhymes.

A decadent people: Weakened through a fixation only on pleasure and power, because they live in abundance, are confronted with a crisis – typically ending the pleasure. What, then, do the people want? Well, of course, they want the pleasure back. They want the abundance back. What are they willing to do? Anything. As I said, people like to be led. So, when the Strong Man shows up with the Plan, they’re ready to accept it.

What does the Strong Man require to return the pleasure and abundance back? Simple, said the spider to the no-fly zone: Control. Who is ready to give control? People who can swap programming nearly immediately, to swap out COVID Fear Pack™ to Save Ukraine 2022 Upgrade© without skipping a beat. And that’s how you get a Dictator."

The Daily "Near You?"

Bulverde, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"What If..."

"What if when you die they ask, "How was Heaven?"
~ Author Unknown

A truly terrifying thought...

"Business Lunacy, and Civility is Dead"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, AM 4/1/22:
"Business Lunacy, and Civility is Dead"
"There are so many things in the economy that we keep getting more news on day after day. Whether it’s real estate, interest rates or the potential diesel fuel shortage the stories have lax and continue to get new information. We also are going to talk about the fact that civility is dead. Civility is dead in business and in our personal lives."