"Fool Us Once"

"Fool Us Once"

A message for some of the people, some of the time...

by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - “There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.” - George W. Bush

“What if they’re wrong?” It was a question that came up a few times this week in Bill’s missives... and one that should always be on our mind. What if they’re wrong about the economy... about inflation... about climate... about masks and vaccines and two weeks to flatten the curve? What if they’re wrong about “the Fauci Effect”... about the $433 billion Inflation Reduction Act... about $80 billion in “aid” to the Ukraine?

Mind you, there’s nothing political here. Or at least, there shouldn’t be. Rather, the fact that merely asking the question - any question - has become politicized at all... is in itself a cause for concern.

Take the Covid, for example. Time was, regular, non-partisan citizens would want to know about the origins of a virus that spurred governments into shutting down the entire global economy... and pressing the “reset” button. “If we knew whence it came, perhaps we’d be able to better understand it,” Joe Citizen might reason. “Perhaps we’d be able to develop a whole range of treatments to help fight it. And maybe, just maybe, we could take measures to prevent such a thing from happening again.”

Seems... rational. But in the wake of the outbreak... and the subsequent lockdowns that were imposed, on the old and the young, the sick and the healthy, the at-risk and the carefree... to say nothing of the vaccine mandates, where people’s careers were destroyed, their reputations sullied, their families torn apart, all for standing up for nothing short of bodily autonomy...to so much as ask the question was tantamount to treason, to being against “The Science,” as if there were such a thing, set in stone and impervious to skepticism. (When of course, the exact opposite is true – science, as a process, nourishes itself on the prying curiosity of the skeptical mind.)

“A Devastating Take Down”: And yet, people who dared wonder aloud, to stick their neck out publicly, were cast as heretics, unbelievers, declared public enemies. Concerning the highly questionable efficacy of mass lockdowns, the director of the NIH, Francis Collins, exchanged emails with Tony “The Science” Fauci, in which he called for a “quick and devastating take down” of any dissenting discussion of the matter... including from leading experts in the field. You can read his actual email for yourself, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act filed by the American Institute for Economic Research, right here...

(Source: AIER)

Those “fringe epidemiologists” to whom Collins referred were professors Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta and Jay Bhattacharya... hailing from such off-the-wall conspiracy tanks as Harvard, Oxford and Stanford Universities, respectively. The crackpot trio of dangerous skeptics dared favor a policy they termed “focused protection,” in which high-risk populations, such as the elderly or those with medical conditions, were given extra care and the young and healthy were left to carry on with things like... oh, keeping the world economy from collapsing and tens of millions of people falling into poverty as a result. Thousands of scientists signed the declaration—provided, of course, they were able to learn about it.

Again, there shouldn’t be anything political about this... either lockdowns work, or they do not. A good-faith, open, objective examination of the evidence ought to help decide the case. Alas, when the situation calls for a scalpel, the administrative state arrives with a chainsaw, hacking away like a possessed maniac.

Of course, one can hardly blame them for behaving the way they do. You wouldn’t get mad with a crocodile for eating your pet chihuahua. (But you might not let Fluffy too close to the shore...) In the end, the feds have nothing but weapons of mass disruption... and a reflexive instinct to use them. There’s no finesse. No nuance. No gray area. So it goes in matters of monetary policy, too; there’s on... or off. Raise... or cut. Inflate... or die. It’s just the nature of the beast.

As to the question at hand, “What if they’re wrong?”, the market seems to believe that inflation is “whipped,” that the Fed can relax its rate hiking frenzy and that, therefore, the worst of the selling is over, with nothing but blue skies ahead.

Bonner Private Research’s Investment Director, Tom Dyson, is quite not so convinced. He dared question the prevailing narrative in a research note sent to members this past Wednesday. Here, Tom outlines the Big Picture as he sees it..."The long era of low inflation in the West is over. This era was fueled by cheap Chinese goods, cheap energy and cheap immigrant labor. It was temporary. And it’s finished.

We’ve now entered a new era of high but capricious inflation. This is the single most important long term economic fundamental you need to understand. It changes everything, and will determine the big trends in the markets for decades to come. Maybe even for the rest of our lives. Call it a generational regime change. Most people are completely unprepared for this. They continue to operate under the old regime. It’s going to be a long and painful adjustment for them.

High but capricious inflation means higher interest rates… everywhere. Why? Because the Feds have been fighting deflation with asset price inflation for 40 years. Now they’re going to be doing the opposite: fighting inflation with asset price deflation. It’s the reverse. They’re going to need persistently higher interest rates to do this. Talk of an imminent Fed pivot is nonsense. The Fed is going to keep raising interest rates and reducing the size of its balance sheet. Other central banks will follow the Fed’s lead.

Negative yielding debt will never be seen again. In fact, the entire central banker playbook will change. The old playbook said “always be easing.” The new playbook says “must fight inflation and must uphold central bank credibility.” No more quantitative easing. No more easy money backstop. No more “buy-the-dip.” Now inflation is here, these tools are redundant. Recessions will become more frequent. Like in the old days. It was normal to have two recessions per decade.

Stock market valuations will be lower, generally. Also like the old days. The last 40 years were an aberration. That high plateau of valuations is giving way to more normal valuations. If interest rates move permanently higher, then stock valuations must move permanently lower. Because of this, I think the S&P 500 is in the early stages of a long bear market."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

"How It Really Is"

"Shopping At Kroger Marketplace! Massive Price Increases!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 8/13/22:

"Shopping At Kroger Marketplace! Massive Price Increases!"

"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"C.S. Lewis’ Fantasy is Our Reality"

"C.S. Lewis’ Fantasy is Our Reality"

by William Kilpatrick

"George Orwell’s prophetic novel "1984" has often been invoked for its ability to predict the increasingly arbitrary and tyrannical nature of our present society. But three years before the publication of "1984", another dystopian novel which was in some respects more prescient than Orwell’s appeared in English bookstores.

Like "1984", only on a smaller scale, C.S. Lewis’s "That Hideous Strength" describes a descent into tyranny that bears an eerie resemblance to our current situation. However, Lewis foresaw a few things that weren’t on Orwell’s radar. When Orwell reviewed "That Hideous Strength" shortly after its publication in 1945, he warned that “we are within sight of a time when such [monstrous] dreams will be realizable.” But Orwell also criticized Lewis for bringing “supernatural elements” into the story because “they offend the average reader’s sense of probability.”

But if there are supernatural forces at work in the world, wouldn’t one be remiss not to mention it? The dystopian society depicted in "1984" was based partly on Nazi Germany and partly on Soviet communism. Yet, both regimes took a deep interest in the supernatural. The Nazis hoped to replace Christianity with an occult religion centered on Hitler as savior. And the Leninists and Stalinist wished to stamp out belief in God altogether. They slaughtered tens of thousands of priests and nuns in the process.

Many Christians and some agnostics, as well, view our present culture wars in similar terms -as a conflict between those who believe in God and those who think that humans can shape their own destiny without any reference to God or his laws.

In bringing in the supernatural, Lewis may have been more prescient than Orwell. The members of the power-hungry National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.) are now a very recognizable type. Increasing numbers of our social elite seem to think that science has replaced God. And like the leaders of the N.I.C.E. Institute, many of our leaders think that science has all the answers to life’s problems - including the problem of crime and the problem of death.

Indeed, for the top brass at N.I.C.E., belief in progress through science has become a religion - to the point that they are willing to call down supernatural forces that they do not understand to aid them with scientific experiments that they do not understand. Tellingly, Hingest, the only really accomplished scientist in the Institute is murdered by his colleagues for fear that he will betray their plans.

At first, their plans go well. Before long, N.I.C.E. controls Bracton College, then the University of Edgestow, and then, the whole town. Nothing, it seems, can stop them from seizing control of all of England.

Then things begin to go awry. Because of their continued communication with the Macrobes -highly intelligent beings from outer space - the N.I.C.E. leaders begin to lose control of their powers of concentration. At one point, Professor Frost - one of the “inner circle” - finds himself unable to speak: “Nothing but nonsense syllables would occur to his mind.” Later on, at the long-awaited “victory” banquet at Belbury Hall, things fall apart.

The director of the Institute gets up to speak, but his speech soon turns to gibberish. Unable to help themselves, people in the audience begin to laugh. But old Jules is only a puppet - a figurehead. And he is expendable. John Wither, the Deputy Director, and the real head of N.I.C. E. muses to himself that it might be advantageous if Jules makes a fool of himself: “Jules was in many respects a nuisance, and this might be as good an opportunity as any other for ending his career.”

So, Wither who is also old, gets up, firmly forces the smaller man back into his seat, and takes over the podium. Then he begins to speak: "Tidies and fugleman - I sheel foor that we all-er-most steeply rebut the defensible, though, I trust, lavatory Aspasia which gleams to have selected our redeemed inspector this deceiving. It would - ah - be shark, very shark, from anyone’s debenture…" And then the whole room is thrown into pandemonium: hysterical laughter, a babble of voices, anger, fistfights - and worse. Before the night is over, the forces of N.I.C.E are either dead or scattered.

Reading the book again in light of current events, it struck me that Wither’s speech is an almost perfect send-up of President Joe Biden’s confused speech, and the pretensions of his administration. Yet the fact that the scene was written about the same year that Biden was born, suggests, pace Orwell, an almost supernatural prescience.

"That Hideous Strength" is, in part, a retelling of the story of the Tower of Babel - the story of men going beyond the proper boundaries God has set. In the Bible story and in Lewis’s novel, the confusion of tongues is both a punishment and a judgment - a judgment which reveals the absolute futility of man’s attempt to remake his nature and become godlike.

Could Joe Biden’s obvious confusion, his lapses and his gaffes also be a heaven-sent sign meant to alert us to the emptiness of the promises of the ideological movement which he represents? At times, Biden doesn’t seem to have a clue. On one level that can be just a sign of aging. On another level, God may be trying to tell us something. Here’s what I said a year ago about Biden’s confusion: "Is it possible that Joe Biden’s deterioration is a sign from God - a sign of what happens to a society that ignores the reality God has created and insists on creating its own?"

Before continuing in this vein, let me assure you that I am not the kind of person who sees signs everywhere. In fact, I’m agnostic about most supposed signs. If someone tells me that the design on the Oval Office drapes is actually a verse from the Koran, my first instinct is to say “Oh, come on!” And if I’m told that when a politician crosses his fingers in a certain way, he’s actually sending a signal to fellow white supremacists, I tend to be doubtful.

On the other hand, President Biden’s stumbling speech is a clear sign that his mind is confused. No one tries to deny it any more. And the Democrats now realize it’s well-past time to replace him. The situation is reminiscent of the banquet scene when Wither realizes that Jules must be replaced. But, as we’ve seen, that doesn’t work out too well. Wither’s speech is just as confusing as is Jules’. His mind is just as vacant.

Which brings up an obvious question: Who will replace Biden? The first in line is a woman whose ability to conceptualize doesn’t seem to rise above the level of “the more we get together, the happier we’ll be” (repeated ad nauseam). Nancy Pelosi, the next in line, is an 82-year-old who slurs her words and fills in the gaps in her sentences with frenzied gesticulations. Meanwhile, the daily spokesperson for the White House is Karine Jean-Pierre - an individual who seems forever surprised to discover that the press is interested in other things besides the fact that she is a black lesbian woman.

Not only has God sent us a sign. It appears as though he is sending us signs in abundance. And they are very obvious signs. Jesus said that “an evil and adulterous generation” would be given only one sign. But how about a stupid and gullible generation such as the one the one we live in? It might take a multitude of signs to wake us up.

Well, it looks like we’re getting them. There’s the bumbling Biden sign, the hapless Harris sign, and the clueless Karine sign. But there’s more. There’s the “trans friendly” sign on the bathroom door, the “shout out your abortion” sign at the pro-choice demonstration, and the “woman athlete of the year” certificate which was awarded this year to a male athlete. These are signs that are hard to miss.

And, of course, there’s the sign of the drag queen. As you may have noticed, drag queens are suddenly all the rage. Libraries have drag queen story hours for kids. U.S. military bases bring in drag queens to entertain the troops; and in Miami, a restaurant recently offered a “kid’s brunch” which included a sexually explicit drag show. Meanwhile, Salon.com published an op-ed explaining “How exposing your kids to drag performances can be a good thing.”

Lewis anticipated this woke weirdness in "That Hideous Strength."  The top people at the N.I.C.E. Institute are all rather strange…sort of like the top people in the Biden administration. Wither, the Deputy Director of N.I.C.E., is lost in a mental fog. He talks in high-sounding but thought-deadening cliches. Frost, who is second in command to Wither, is as cold-hearted as his name suggest. Dr. Filostrato, an Italian scientist and a eunuch has a dirt phobia. He wants to improve the human race by getting rid of breeding, birth, and death. He hopes to create a sterile and artificial world to replace the fertile and organic world which he loathes. His experiments center around what we would now call “transhumanism.” And then there is “Fairy” Hardcastle—the sadistic head of the N.I.C.E. police force. “Fairy” is a ‘butch’ lesbian who enjoys beating up people and torturing young women.

Lewis, in short, was well aware of the perverted side of human nature. He would not have been surprised by a culture (like our own) which believes that exposing children to drag performance “can be a good thing.” Nor would he have been surprised to learn that well-funded doctors in England and America would one day perform ghastly surgeries in order to turn boys into girls and girls into boys.

Still, Lewis’s odd cast of characters (which includes a re-animated Merlin) might, as Orwell suggested, “offend the average reader’s sense of probability.” Yes, but probabilities need to be recalculated from time to time. For example, what’s the probability that the next president of the United States will be a member of a billionaire family that is investing its fortune in promoting transgender ideology and transhumanism? The answer? Probably higher than you think.

J.B. Pritzker, the current governor of Illinois is frequently mentioned as a prime candidate for president. And yes, his wealthy extended family - one of the richest in America according to Forbes - is deeply involved in engineering what one journalist called “a new way to be human.” Given their interest in re-engineering the human race along more efficient lines, one might think of them as a family of Filostratos.

J.B. and his wife M.K. have developed a long-term strategy for the J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Foundation which will fund research on early childhood education as well as research on transgenderism and gender nonconformity. In addition, as Governor, Pritzker has issued executive orders and signed education bills which put a heavy emphasis on encouraging children to explore their gender identity. Meanwhile J.B.’s cousin, Jennifer Pritzker (formerly known as James), founded the Tawani Foundation to provide funding for numerous universities, institutes, and medical centers which pursue sexual diversity studies or are involved in providing “gender affirmative care” (i.e., hormone treatments and/or surgery) for the gender confused.

A retired Colonel for the Illinois Army National Guard, James…er, Jennifer also created the first chair of transgender studies at the University of Victoria. At the transgender studies annual conference in 2016, the featured speaker was Martine Rothblatt, a “renowned transhumanist,” who once stated: “We are making God as we are implementing technology that is ever more all-knowing, ever-present, all-powerful, and beneficent.”

“Beneficent?” Well, that’s okay then. Sometimes the “all-knowing” powers get out of hand. But with all that money, the Pritzker’s must know what they’re doing. Rumor has it that the next family project will be a giant skyscraper in the form of a ziggurat. The project is said to be code-named B.A.B.E.L II. When asked for a comment, the family spokesman would only say that the project is “sop tecret and - er - striply confusensual.”

https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.

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Freely download "That Hideous Strength", by C.S. Lewis, here:

- https://archive.org/

Canadian Prepper, "This Will be THE WORST CRISIS in History"

Canadian Prepper, 8/12/22:

"This Will be THE WORST CRISIS in History"

"Unprecedented global water shortages are contributing to massive crop failures."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Number Of Americans Living In Their Vehicles Explodes As The Middle Class Continues To Disappear"

Full screen recommended.

"The Number Of Americans Living In Their Vehicle

 Explodes As The Middle Class Continues To Disappear"

by Epic Economist

"As the gap between the rich and the poor gets wider and wider, the U.S. middle class continues to erode. Americans are currently witnessing the biggest surge in the cost of living in a generation. The dramatic increase seen in the cost of daily essentials over the past few years is pushing millions of families to the brink. Now, new numbers show that more and more people are falling out of the middle class and into poverty with each passing day, and this is one of the big reasons why homelessness is steadily growing. At this point, the number of families living in their vehicles is already exploding all across the country, and this worrying trend is expected to worsen as we enter another devastating recession.

We all can tell by now that things are going from bad to worse in our nation. The number of people who can no longer afford housing is rising extremely rapidly, and now many Americans are resorting to living in their vehicles, even though the practice is considered illegal in many U.S. cities. According to local reports, the number of unsheltered people living in Los Angeles has shot up by a staggering 75 percent over the last five years. But of course, L.A. is far from alone. Many major cities on the West Coast are seeing a rise in the number of homeless people. Seattle is one of them. An article published by Government magazine exposed that the Emerald City has seen a 46 percent rise in the number of people residing in campers and other vehicles in the past year alone.

We have to start coming up with better solutions to provide shelter for millions of people that are putting their lives at risk every night, Monroe adds. But instead, local governments have been passing laws that make it illegal for people to sleep in their vehicles in many communities across the country. A recent survey conducted by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which tracks policies in 187 cities, has shown that the number of prohibitions against vehicle residency has more than doubled during the last decade.

Americans are living at a time when the cost of living is going through the roof, but their living standards and their paychecks are not keeping up with the soaring prices of everything. Middle-class families are now experiencing unprecedented levels of financial distress. Over the past five decades, the share of adults who live in middle-class households fell by almost 15%, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. On top of that, the share of aggregate household income held by the middle class has fallen steadily since 1970. Back then, adults in middle-income households accounted for 62% of aggregate income, a figure that dropped to 42% in 2020.

Housing is the main asset of most middle-class families. But with home prices completely out of control even after the recent burst of the housing bubble, building wealth has never been more difficult. In the past, the U.S. middle-class had the ability to save money and protect their finances. This ability is being washed away as prices increase and wages drop. That has led consumer debt in the United States to jump to an all-time high. But the consequences of taking on so much debt eventually arrive and put these people in an even worse financial situation. The truth is that from now on, we are all going to have to work harder, smarter and more efficiently, and we are definitely going to have to tighten our belts because the U.S. economy is not going to be getting any better than it is right now. Now it is time to be a lean, mean saving machine because we all will need to have a financial cushion for the hard times that are already upon us."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"World Governments Are Preparing For An Extinction Level Event (ELE)"

"World Governments Are Preparing 

For An Extinction Level Event (ELE)"

by Mike Adams

"We have two bombshell stories to bring you in today's article and Situation Update podcast (shown below).

The first story concerns new intel from commercial suppliers, indicating that governments of the world are stockpiling supplies like never before, seemingly in anticipation of an Extinction Level Event (ELE) that threatens to wipe out the vast majority of human beings living today.

The second story concerns the CDC suddenly reversing itself on all the key pillars of COVID theater: Masks, quarantines, social distancing, vaccines, testing asymptomatic patients and more. Suddenly, the CDC has essentially admitted it was all theater from the very start and was never backed by actual "science" in the first place."

Get the full article and podcast here.

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Related:

"The End of COVID, And Mining Salt From Leftist Tears"

Musical Interlude: Moody Blues, "Land of Make-Believe"

Full screen recommended.

Moody Blues, "Land of Make-Believe"

"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.”

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

“Get Up Off Your Knees!”

“Get Up Off Your Knees!”

On your knees you may live to see another day,

but you’ll never live to see better days.

by Robert Gore 

“Zoos are among the saddest places on earth: magnificent but confined creatures on display for gawking crowds, prevented from living out their biological destinies, fed their daily rations, and domesticated beyond where they could ever return to the wild. You have to feel pity and sorrow for these innocent prisoners; they’d flee in a heartbeat if they could.

Humans have made themselves inmates – whether of a zoo, prison, or asylum is hard to say, likely a combination of all three. Animals earn our admiration because they resist losing their freedom. Humans occasionally do too, but usually surrender theirs for promises and trifles. The promises are broken and the trifles grow more trifling as humanity for the most part gives up. Keep people amused and make sure the rations don’t stop and no outrage rousts them to try to reclaim their birthright. When they visit the zoo, the animals stare back at them with contempt.

In this country, we sing, “Sweet land of liberty,” and, “The land of the free, and the home of the brave.” We incant “freedom” and “liberty” during election seasons, but anything beyond that is considered embarrassing, bad form. A legislator denouncing a proposed law as an infringement of freedom would be regarded as a lunatic. Millions of pages of federal, state, and local laws and regulations already infringe freedom. The denouncer might be irrefutably right, but his denunciation would be irrelevant.

While wildlife should be free in the wild, coping with the risks to the best of their capabilities, humans are supposedly unsuited for freedom. Free humans might develop their own talents and capabilities, produce, exchange, exercise their rights, and engage in voluntary association and social intercourse, all unsupervised. You can argue that such activities are generally beneficial. However, there is a special class who are permitted to supervise and coerce the rest of us, to curtail our freedom. This special class ensures fairness or equality or some such thing. Who knows what might happen without them. Think of the dangers!

Just consider the concept of people deciding what’s in their own best interest. A hyphenated word lurks: self-interest. The special people are motivated by everything but self-interest, or so they say. Indeed, nobility of motive justifies their power and the destruction of your liberty. The desire to better your life is selfish, unlike the impulses supposedly animating those holding the guns to your head. After widespread surrender, few champion their right to their own lives, which is selfish after all, or challenge the special people’s moral superiority, which confers their right to hold the guns.

It might mitigate moral condemnation for liberty’s surrender if it had produced some benefit for those waving the white flag. An old bromide has it that liberty is irrelevant when people are starving. Nothing is further from the truth; it’s freedom that feeds people, creates wealth, and advances humanity. The historical record offers ample proof. It’s the absence of liberty that produces starvation, poverty, decay, destruction, genocide, and war. Here too the historical record is clear, one need go no farther back than the last century. During this ascendancy of the special people, humanity fought its two deadliest wars and over a hundred million were murdered, victims of special plans for a better world.

But somehow it’s liberty that’s dangerous. Fortunately the special people still rule, to make sure it doesn’t break out somewhere. Their reign assures that this century will challenge the last for the title: Century of Slaughter. They see their subjects are domesticated draft animals, just smart enough to keep economies running, not smart enough to challenge domestication. However, it’s been free minds and free markets, not draft animals, that have produced the wonders that make modern life modern. Welfare states are halfway houses to totalitarianism. As they grow, liberty shrinks and progress slows, stops, and reverses, the deterioration culminating in either anarchy or tyranny.

Judging from the prevalence of terms like “secular stagnation” and the “end of growth,” we are in the stop phase and reversal is nigh. People have seen their freedom shrink and have borne the consequences, although most don’t make the connection between the two. Incomes have stagnated, opportunities have diminished, life grows ever coarser, and fear of a looming apocalypse pervades the popular consciousness. Many are preparing for a future in which modernity is no longer modern, where access to necessities and conveniences cannot be taken for granted. Guns and gold are at the top of checklists, for a day when the inevitable failure of the special people leads to the inevitable tyranny or anarchy.

The discontent sweeping the planet is recognition that things are wrong on multiple fronts, although recognition of the root cause is rare. The idea that changing the hands on the levers offers solutions is magical thinking. The problems stem from granting the special people the levers in the first place. They may be replaced, but once the replacements have their hands on the levers, they’ll feel special, too. Power assuredly corrupts.

We’re closer to the real solution in the lament: “Why can’t they just leave us alone?” They – the special people – must leave us alone, it’s our moral right. Those who think the collapse will never come, or that freedom can be reclaimed without a fight, delude themselves. The craven adage: It’s better to live on one’s knees than die on one’s feet, offers a false choice. On your knees you may live to see another day, but you’ll never live to see better days. You may die on your feet, but liberty offers the only hope for better days. It’s worth fighting for. It’s worth dying for.”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

The Poet: Charles Bukowski, "The Laughing Heart"

"Did Lockdowns Turn Americans Into Lazy Bums?"

"Did Lockdowns Turn Americans Into Lazy Bums?"

by Jeffrey Tucker

Editor’s note: "Lockdowns changed the way many of us work, as we were no longer required to report to the office. All we needed was an internet connection. But was it for the better? Today, Jeffrey Tucker wonders if it made us a nation of “goof-offs.”

"It looks as if we can add another line to the long list of lockdown harms: sloth. This explains so much actually. For months, we’ve been watching working/population ratios and labor participation rates and have been stunned by how they both continue to plummet. We search for explanations. Early retirement. Women driven out due to child care shortages. Unemployment payments. All these factors contribute but there is still more to explain. In the midst of the astonishing hullabaloo over the raid of Donald Trump’s home - and the confiscation of a pro-freedom Republican congressman’s smartphone - the Bureau of Labor Statistics dropped a remarkable report on labor productivity. Here we see something we’ve never seen before.

Crashing Labor Productivity: It’s low and falling. Lower than it has been in the entire postwar period. It breaks all records. This chart is from 1948 to the present. It adjusts for all factors including participation, population, retirement and so on. It only looks at hours over output. Here is what we see:

What does this mean? The immediate response might be that Americans have gotten lazy. They got used to their Zoom lifestyles and pretending to work. They want to hang around on apps, tweet, chat it up with their friends on Facebook or Slack and otherwise fake out the boss who can’t fire them anyway for fear of lawsuits. They aren’t doing much anymore, at least not those in high-end employment in professional office suits.

I resisted that conclusion and looked more deeply into how this number is calculated. It looks at total economic output compared with the number of labor hours from wage and salary employees involved in making that output. The result is a figure that estimates productivity per hour. And yes, it is probably widely inaccurate, as these sorts of macroeconomic magnitudes tend to be. We use them anyway because they are consistently inaccurate: The same method used to calculate in one quarter is used to calculate in all. It thereby becomes useful.

A Nation of Goof-offs: And what it reveals is probably what we might expect. American workers have dealt with lockdowns and shutdowns, plus vaccine mandate demoralization, plus inflation eating away at real wages, plus an existing or impending recession and you have the result. A nation of goof-offs.

It might be more than that. Lockdowns kicked off a national substance abuse crisis: liquor, drugs, weed, you name it. And depression too. Even today, one cannot help but notice the smell of weed in large cities. This is not the smell of ambition and productivity. We can combine this with the sheer number of people who have left the workforce completely and you paint a grim picture.

Economist and Brownstone Senior Fellow David Stockman has an interesting take on this. Rather than just fire people outright, companies are keeping unproductive employees on the payroll just in case. He writes: "[The latest] Q2 productivity report… came in at -4.7%, on top of the -7.7% decline posted in Q1. Together they amount to the worst back-to-back productivity declines ever reported. Our point is that this development puts a whole new angle on the so-called “strong” labor market. To wit, owing to the labor market turmoil and disruptions of the COVID lockdowns and massive stimmy injections since 2020, employers are apparently hiring on a just-in-case basis like rarely before. This is otherwise known as top-of-the-cycle labor hoarding…

Since Q4 2021, economic output, which is a close derivative of real GDP, has shrunk by -1.2%. By contrast, the U.S. nonfarm payroll has increased by 2.77 million jobs, or nearly +2.0%. Needless to say, with far more labor spread over contracting output, labor productivity took it on the chin. That is to say, bad Washington policies including $6 trillion of stimmies, massive money-pumping and the brutal lockdowns of the Virus Patrol have apparently left employers dazed and confused.

At length, however, employers will wake up to the fact that bloated payrolls against declining sales will result in a severe profit margin squeeze. Then the labor-shedding and layoffs will commence big-time, even as the Keynesians in the Eccles Building are reduced to babbling about the “strong” labor market, which suddenly vanished."

What he is getting at is what I’ve called (after Keynes) the coming euthanasia of the overclass. It won’t be the people actually doing real stuff who will face layoffs but the Zoom workers who stayed home because government said they could and their employers could not object. Employees gradually discovered that they could be anywhere - at the pool, in bed, on the road, climbing mountains - and so long as they had a Slack app running, no one could tell.

Lockdowns acculturated an entire generation to believe that work is fake, productivity is a ruse, money comes for nothing, the boss is an idiot and many workers are privileged to be wealthy forever due to papers handed out for $200,000 by colleges and universities. Who needs productivity, much less ambition?

Good News for Some, Bad News for Others: In the old days, in an ethos formed from bourgeois experience over hundreds of years, the idea of working and doing one’s part was ingrained as a moral habit, part of the liturgy of life itself. When the government told everyone to stop in the name of virus control, something went haywire in people’s brains.

If governments say that the work ethic amounts to nothing but pathogenic spread, and we can all contribute more by staying home and doing less, it’s hard to go back. It wrecked a generation. We are paying the price now.

The good news for the productive few is that this means higher wages and job opportunities galore, especially if you have actual skill and a desire to work. The bad news for everyone else is that many companies will soon discover that you are useless. That’s when the unemployment numbers will start ticking up, making this recession look more like ones in the past except for the relentless decline in real wages. To answer the question about whether Americans have become lazy bums, the answer is many but not all. It’s sector specific. And individual specific.

Strange times. Sad times."

- dailyreckoning.com

"A Horrifying Drought Is Causing Widespread Crop Failures Throughout The United States And Europe"

"A Horrifying Drought Is Causing Widespread 

Crop Failures Throughout The United States And Europe"

by Michael Snyder

"We really are reaching a major crisis point. Thanks to soaring fertilizer prices, insane weather patterns and the war in Ukraine, global food supplies have been getting tighter and tighter. So we really needed a banner year for agricultural production in both the United States and Europe in 2022, and that is not going to happen. In fact, unprecedented drought is absolutely devastating crops all over the northern hemisphere. A lot of people are complaining about how high food prices are right now, but just wait. If some sort of a miracle doesn’t happen, agricultural production is going to be way below expectations in both the United States and Europe, and that is going to have very serious implications for 2023.

Let me start by talking about the nightmare that is starting to unfold in Europe. According to CNN, it is now being projected that farmers in Italy have lost “up to 80% of their harvest” because the drought has become so severe…"In Italy, farmers in some parts of the country have lost up to 80% of their harvest this year due to severe weather anomalies, the Coldretti farming association said Thursday." How are those farmers going to survive?

Many farmers in France are facing similar losses because they have only been receiving a fraction of the rainfall that they normally get…"In France, where an intense drought has hammered farmers and prompted widespread limits on freshwater use, there was just 9.7 millimetres (0.38 inches) of rain last month, Meteo France said. That was 84 percent down on the average levels seen for July between 1991 and 2022, making it the driest month since March 1961, the agency added."

Crop failures in France would be a really, really big deal, because France is normally “the fourth-largest exporter of wheat” in the entire world…"France is the fourth-largest exporter of wheat and among the top five exporters of maize globally. Poor harvests due to drought may heap further pressure on grain supplies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused global shockwaves."

The situation in Germany is also extremely dire. It is being reported that things are already so bad that some sections of the Rhine River have dropped to dangerously low levels…"Germany’s most-important river is running dry as Europe suffers through a drought that is on course to become its worst in 500 years, with terrifying wildfires burning once again in France. Water levels in the Rhine – which carries 80 per cent of all goods transported by water in Germany, from its industrial heartlands to Dutch ports – are now so low that it could become impassable to barges later this week, threatening vital supplies of oil and coal that the country is relying upon as Russia turns off the gas tap."

Of course the U.S. is dealing with severe drought too. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, about half of the nation is experiencing some level of drought at this moment, and we are being told that the ongoing megadrought in the Southwest is the worst in 1,200 years.

Things are particularly bad in Texas. If you can believe it, Dallas just had a stretch in which they had no measurable rain at all for two straight months…"The daily highs in Dallas have been 95 degrees or higher for three straight weeks, much hotter than normal for this time of year. The Dallas-Fort Worth area has even more problems amid an extreme drought going as far back as May 17. One hundred percent of Dallas County is in an extreme drought, while 21 percent of the whole state is experiencing exceptional drought - the most intense category of drought - according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. A 67-day stretch with no measurable rain came to an end in Dallas on Wednesday when 0.41 of an inch of rain fell. That was the second-longest dry streak at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. The standing record was 85 consecutive days that spanned much of the summer of 2000."

The lack of moisture has been crippling for the state’s absolutely massive agriculture industry. There are 247,000 farms and ranches in Texas, and nearly all of them are deeply suffering right now…"The drought pressing Texas’ agriculture industry - which is responsible for 10 percent of the state’s gross domestic product - is pushing farmers and ranchers to the brink. The state’s 247,000 farms and ranches covering 127 million acres haven’t had a whole year of rain since 2017. Almost 24 million of Texas’ population lives in drought-facing areas.

As of the first of August, less than 1 percent of the state was not facing some level of drought or abnormal dryness. At this point, conditions are so dry in Texas that many ranchers have been forced to “panic sell” their herds. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “Ranchers Are Selling Off Their Cattle In Unprecedented Numbers Due To The Drought, And That Has Enormous Implications For 2023”.

Other states in the Southwest are also being hit extremely hard by this drought. Over in Utah, the size of the Great Salt Lake just continues to get smaller and smaller due to the relentlessly dry conditions…"The warm arid desert in the West certainly had its fair share of the summer heat. Salt Lake City International Airport recorded a high of 100 degrees on July 28, marking the 16th day that month of triple-digit temperatures and breaking the previous record of 15 in July 1960. Last month, the city tied its record for the hottest recorded temperature of 107 degrees for the fourth time, according to NOAA weather data. The other occasions on which the mercury rose to 107 in Salt Lake City were in June 2021, July 2002 and July 1960. Record-keeping began there in 1874."

That intense heat hasn’t just made the residents of Utah sweat though - it has also magnified the ongoing megadrought, which has contributed to the dire state of the Great Salt Lake. Between July 2021 and 2022, the average daily water level of the lake dropped by about one foot, a historic low, and is expected to fall even farther.

There have always been times of drought all throughout history, but in modern times we have never seen the United States and Europe simultaneously experience such a severe drought for such an extended period. For years I have been warning that we are moving toward a time when global famines will become quite common, and widespread crop failures throughout the western world this year would greatly accelerate that process.

We are being told that a child dies every 11 seconds from malnutrition. But as food supplies get tighter and tighter, global hunger is going to get far, far worse than it is now. In 2023, there simply is not going to be enough food for everyone. I hope that you are getting prepared for that, because next year is just around the corner."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

○

Related:

"Grocery Inflation Hits Highest Level In 43 

Years Despite Biden’s 'Zero' Inflation Messaging"

○

"Nine Meals from Anarchy"

"And Yet, Sometimes..."

So, you look around in horrified astonishment at how totally insane it all really is, how the never ending bad news is everywhere you look, how truly hopeless it really is, and know there's nothing at all you can do about it, can't save anyone, can't even save yourself. So you remember what they said and how you need to be, and carry on...

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, 

but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

- Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"

“That millions of people share the same forms of 

mental pathology does not make these people sane.”

- Erich Fromm, "The Sane Society"

“Laugh whenever you can. Keeps you from killing

 yourself when things are bad. That and vodka.”

- Jim Butcher, "Changes"

And yet, sometimes, at the end of another long day, 

your defenses are just worn out and you lose control and feel like this... 

Full screen recommended.

The Trashmen, "Surfin Bird - Bird is the Word," 1963

Until tomorrow, when you do it all over again...

And so it is, lol...

The Daily "Near You?"

Liberty, South Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"You Will Lose Your Job - Plan For Emergency Now; Fake Markets Have Created Hell On Earth For You"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 8/12/22:

"You Will Lose Your Job - Plan For Emergency Now; 

Fake Markets Have Created Hell On Earth For You"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"We Are Living Through An Epic Collapse"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 8/12/22:

"We Are Living Through An Epic Collapse"

"One day we're told there’s zero percent inflation and the next we find out that food inflation has risen to 13 1/2%. We can’t have it both ways. Business is suffering like never before."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "What if They're Wrong?"

"What if They're Wrong?"

On climate... on inflation... on the economy...

 on how best to run YOUR life?

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "Yesterday, Massachusetts signed onto the Great Transition crusade. The Washington Post: "Described as a “landmark bill,” the Massachusetts climate legislation notably includes a provision - the first of its kind for the state - that would allow 10 municipalities to legally ban fossil fuel infrastructure in new and major construction projects. With this policy, certain cities and towns in Massachusetts could soon join others across the country that have taken similar steps to change local building codes to block the use of fossil fuels, such as natural gas - meaning many people who want gas stoves or furnaces are probably out of luck in these places." What if they’re wrong? What if trying to change the earth’s climate is a wild goose chase?

The Pentagon was in the news yesterday too. In what ‘CovertAction’ calls the “Most Bloated Military Budget in History,” Democrats and Republicans joined hands to deliver defense contractors an $850 billion payday – a $45 billion increase. Supporters say the US needs to spend such huge amounts of money to counter the many threats they’ve managed to stir up – Russia, China… terrorists… gender inequality!

A Lifetime Setback: But what if they’re wrong? What if all that spending actually weakens the US economy… frightens foreigners… and causes potential enemies to ‘gun up’ themselves? Terrorists… Chinese… Russians – aren’t we pushing them to find new forms of money… new weapons… new friends?

What does it matter if you’re wrong? Marry the ‘wrong’ person, for example, and you might dread every breakfast. Making the wrong career choice, too, could be a lifetime setback.

In matters of public policy, the consequences of wrongness are directly proportional to the ambition of the undertaking. Generally, the grander the project, the greater the damage. Many public policies are just reflections of a consensus – drive on the right… don’t throw trash out the window – and do little damage. Otherwise, they are threats to life and property. They impose the fads of the ruling class upon everyone else and divert time and resources from what ‘the people’ actually want.

Does that make sense? We hope so; if not, we’d have to revise our entire weltanschauung. And now… you are faced with a choice. You can believe the ‘inflation has peaked’ narrative… for example. If it is true, the Fed can now ease off of its ‘tightening’… and soon return to doing what it does best – inflating."

- bonnerprivateresearch@substack.com

○

"What if They're Wrong?" This is how they really think. 

- Jacques Attali, "Verbatem"

Sound familiar? Look around...

"Is the Food Crisis Over or Just Getting Started?"

"Is the Food Crisis Over or Just Getting Started?"

by Chris MacIntosh

"Are you hungry? Good, according to the central planners. The folks over at the UN stopped destroying the world for a brief few minutes to publish a piece (snapshot below) justifying their behavior and explaining the "benefits" of the famine they’ve engineered.

Not making this up. The article remained on the UN website for a day or so before being deleted after it went viral on social media, with people horrified at the truly unbelievable evil. The good thing about this is that as they continue with their predictive programming and NLP (seriously, look into both and it promises to blow your mind), more and more people wake from their trance. Once woken, they realize the incredible danger they are all in. And that is a good thing because you can’t fight an enemy until you understand one exists.

The "great reset" requires a populace beholden to the government and nobody else. As the central planners pursue their agenda of getting there, this is bound to be fraught with an awakening and a lot of angst.

The Great Awakening of the Average Joe: While Joe Sixpack doesn’t understand most of these, he doesn’t actually need to. What Joe does care about is when he can’t afford groceries and when his electricity bill now suddenly wipes out his entire annual disposable income. And that is enough to provide both pushback and an increasing ability to awaken to the horrors of what comes for him if this communist agenda masquerading as a plan to "save us from climate change" is NOT stopped in its tracks. And with this realization will come politicians - many who themselves are parasites but doing what comes naturally to them: sensing a shift in the winds and rushing to get in front of it, champion it, and gain support.

Here, take a look. According to France24, Giuseppe Conte, the head of Five Star, said: "I have a strong fear that September will be a time when many families will face the terrible choice of paying their electricity bills or buying food. We are absolutely willing to dialogue, to make our constructive contribution to the government, to Draghi, (but) we are not willing to write a blank cheque." He’s not wrong, of course, but this is a thug who was a massive contributor to the problems our proverbial "Joe" now faces. Take a look at this.

And as we’ve been continuously saying: energy underpins EVERYTHING. Which is why Eurozone CPI looks like it just mainlined viagra. And this is saying something because as you know the way they measure CPI is, of course, complete hogwash and roughly half the real rate. Check out John Williams’ Shadowstats, where inflation in the US is calculated based on the methodology used back in the 80’s (pre-fraud). It just hit 17.3%. That’s a tad more than the 9.1% print they just tried to trick you with.

The other thing "Joe" cares about is when the government - under the guise of "saving the planet" - begins the process of stealing up to 50% of the farms in the Netherlands.

Reducing Nitrogen Emissions: Under a ridiculous narrative of "reducing nitrogen omissions" the Dutch government are proceeding with a blatant land grab of 30% of the Farmland. It is worth pointing out that air is 78% nitrogen. These morons have literally decided that air is dangerous. Anyway, the farmers are having none of it and have blockaded roads, airports, and distribution centers. The fishermen have joined in and blocked the ports.

Domestically the Dutch farmers have massive support. Gratefully, people seem to intuitively understand that without them there will be no food. The propaganda is no longer having the desired effect on the populace. What a shame! Every day a few more people wake to reality, and once you wake, you can’t unsee what you’ve seen. The existing political parties’ credibility is severely damaged. I’ve thought for some years now that if there is to be a shift, it will likely come from third parties. This is true across the Western world, and not uniquely a Dutch thing. The Farmer–Citizen Movement in the Netherlands is now gaining momentum and size faster than any other.

Over in France, the Marxist agenda gathers momentum. France plans full nationalization of power utility EDF: "France will fully nationalize EDF (EDF.PA), Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne said on Wednesday, in a move that would give the government more control over a restructuring of the debt-laden group while contending with a European energy crisis."

It is at this point that we should review a little history. The last head of a European government to be killed and eaten by a mob was Dutch Johan de Witt in 1672, who was mutilated, hung, and had his liver roasted and digested by Orangists in the Hague.

Davos man deserves at least as much. In the meantime, Europeans are going to be cold and hungry. Winter is just a few short months away now. The stampede will begin in earnest for food and all those banned products like fertilizer."

- internationalman.com

○

Related:

"Epic Collapse Is Upon Us"

"It's What You Know For Sure..."

“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests,’ as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.“

- Nouriel Roubini

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.

It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

- Mark Twain

Jim Kunstler, "Gestapo the Steal"

"Gestapo the Steal"

by Jim Kunstler

"To America’s political Left, serving its masters in the runaway deep state, reality itself must be portrayed as “baseless,” as in nothing to see here, folks. Is it any wonder, then, that half the country has gone mental. The reality they don’t want you to see is that the intel-and-surveillance agencies of our Republic have taken on a rogue life of their own as a dominant “fourth branch of government,” and that some time ago they embarked on a crime spree against anyone threatening their operations.

That would include especially target number one: Donald Trump. For a masterful explication of how this amazing clusterf**k developed, I commend you to The Conservative Treehouse website where the writer who styles himself as “Sundance” put together a four-part report on how the original sin of RussiaGate metastasized into the stage-four cancer of institutional necrosis that culminated in this week’s raid on Mar-a-Lago.

The gist is: it turns out that the president does not have sole authority, in practice, to declassify and release government documents. With the rise of the security state, many new procedures have been erected within that massive labyrinth to prevent it or slow-walk it. The most effective has been to make the president himself a target of, or a material witness in, drawn-out investigations. That was the exact purpose of the Mueller exercise. Any exculpatory documents released by Mr. Trump - for instance, the complete unredacted text exchanges of FBI employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page - could have been used to hang an obstruction of justice charge on the president.

Mr. Trump adroitly avoided that trap, and many other legal pitfalls the deep state laid for him, and might have won reelection but for the well-organized ballot fraud of 2020. But the epic blunders of “Joe Biden” are giving Mr. Trump, and the movement behind him, a pretty good shot at routing the incumbent regime. Doing so, first in the 2022 midterms and then in the 2024 presidential election, portends a now quite visible effort coming to dismantle that reckless, unelected “fourth branch” of government. So, the intel-and-surveillance agencies are fighting for their lives - and the actual humans in charge must be keenly aware of their criminal liabilities.

Despite all attempts to disable him in office, Mr. Trump, as president, got to see an awful lot of classified material, including all the evidence of Hillary Clinton’s Russia Collusion hoax, abetted by the FBI, the DOJ, CIA, and DOD, plus all the lawless shenanigans that took place in the FISA court. A lot of it was assembled when, late in the game, Mr. Trump was finally able to appoint Directors of National Intelligence he could trust - Ric Grenell and then John Ratcliffe - who wrested many documents out of the foot-dragging agencies. Further maneuvers by artful Attorney General William Barr - the appointment of John Durham as Special Counsel and his drawn-out investigations - kept Mr. Trump from releasing any declassified RussiaGate material ever since. The catch was: he still had bales of that evidence in his possession among the personal papers he took with him from the White House.

Now, it also happens that in March of this year Mr. Trump filed a lawsuit in Florida against Hillary Clinton and many entities and persons who abetted the construction of RussiaGate. The person assigned to preside over the case was magistrate judge Bruce Rhinehart, a one-time DOJ attorney who had been involved in the 2007 Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking prosecution, and who then mysteriously switched sides in mid-litigation and signed on as a lawyer for Epstein. Epstein was soon let off of serious charges with a wrist-slap, amid suspicions that he was an intel agency operative who required protection. And, of course, now Mr. Epstein is dead, offed under highly mysterious circumstances while in federal custody.

Bruce Rhinehart was involved in the 2013 government defense of IRS officer Lois Lerner, who never answered for targeting conservative organizations for tax punishment and “losing” thousands of emails pertaining to the cases. Bruce Rhinehart also left a long record of social media posts denouncing Mr. Trump for one thing or another. He remained as presiding judge over the Trump lawsuit against Hillary, et al., in Florida since March and then suddenly recused himself on June 22 of this year. Naturally, many of the aforesaid unclassified documents in Mr. Trump’s possession would be introduced as evidence in an effort to prove that Hillary Clinton sought to defame and defraud him over the confected Russia Collusion story.

And so it happened that Bruce Rhinehart was just the right person for the FBI to seek a warrant from, though the choice looks ludicrous now. And hence, the desperate raid on Mar-a-Lago to get that trove of evidence, especially with an election looming that could transform congress and lead next year to a raft of investigations into the corrupt intel-and-surveillance deep state. Of course, it’s laughable to imagine there aren’t copies of all that material in other places, so it’s not as though the FBI can make the evidence just disappear. But the apparent object of the move is to hastily convict Mr. Trump in a DC federal district court on any Mickey Mouse charge involving his dispute with the National Archives that would, theoretically, prevent him from running again in 2024.

One must wonder if Mr. Trump did not catch the FBI (and DOJ) in a “rope-a-dope” operation of his own. He’d just come off a successful primary season in which over 90 percent of his endorsees won their races. The midterm elections look increasingly dire for the Democrats, the Party of Chaos, as led by the transcendentally incompetent “Joe Biden.” In June, Mr. Trump had met at Mar-a-Lago with FBI agents and produced many documents requested under a subpoena. Were the FBI and DOJ alarmed by what Mr. Trump handed over then, and did it suggest there was plenty of other material, possibly more damaging, in the former president’s collection headed into court? The momentous lawsuit against Hillary - which gets no coverage in the Left agit-prop news media - is not over.

In any case, the FBI and DOJ ended up embarrassing themselves with the August 8 Mar-a-Lago raid, an act as ham-fisted and tone-deaf as any in the nauseating annals of “Joe Biden’s” sinister regime. They outed themselves as an American Gestapo, dedicated chiefly to persecuting the ruling regime’s political enemies, and they probably succeeded in galvanizing even sturdier opposition to be expressed at the polling places this November, at great peril to the agencies’ officers, and perhaps even the agencies’ continued existence."

- https://kunstler.com/

"We Like To Think..."

“We like to think that we are rational beings; humane, conscientious, civilized, thoughtful. But when things fall apart, even just a little, it becomes clear we are not better than animals. We have opposable thumbs, we think, we walk erect, we speak, we dream, but deep down we are still routing around in the primordial ooze; biting, clawing, scratching out an existence in the cold, dark world like the rest of the tree-toads and sloths.”

- “Grey’s Anatomy”

"Crazy Prices At Family Dollar! This Is Getting Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 8/12/22:

"Crazy Prices At Family Dollar! This Is Getting Ridiculous!"

"In today's vlog we are at Family Dollar, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

CanadianPrepper, "The Situation Is Out Of Control"

CanadianPrepper, 8/11/22”

"The Situation Is Out Of Control"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/