Jeremiah Babe, 8/25/22:
"15,000 Cars Repossessed Per Day, People Losing Everything;
Mad Max Is Coming; The World Is Bankrupt"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, August 25, 2022
"I'm Sure..."
"I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life.
It's just been too intelligent to come here."
"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the
Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
- Arthur C. Clarke
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy some 200 thousand light-years distant, lies 5 million year young star cluster NGC 602. Surrounded by natal gas and dust, NGC 602 is featured in this stunning Hubble image of the region.
Fantastic ridges and swept back shapes strongly suggest that energetic radiation and shock waves from NGC 602's massive young stars have eroded the dusty material and triggered a progression of star formation moving away from the cluster's center. At the estimated distance of the Small Magellanic Cloud, the picture spans about 200 light-years, but a tantalizing assortment of background galaxies are also visible in the sharp Hubble view. The background galaxies are hundreds of millions of light-years or more beyond NGC 602.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130113.html
Chet Raymo, "Asperges Me, Domine "
"Asperges Me, Domine "
by Chet Raymo
"Our earliest mammalian ancestors were presumably nocturnal - to escape the predations of dinosaurs - but for most of human history we have been afraid of the dark, huddling in caves around stuttering fires, curled together in darkness like mice in a burrow. Night belonged to animals with big, dark-adapted eyes and sharp teeth, to footpads and graverobbers, to werewolves and vampires. Ironically, it was with the coming of electric illumination that it became reasonably safe to go out and about at night, even as the illumination erased the best reason to do so.
William Blake called day Earth's "blue mundane shell... a hard coating of matter that separates us from Eternity." At night we peer into infinity, awash in a myriad of stars. We creep to the door of the cave and look up into the Milky Way and catch a glimpse of divinity - everlasting, all-embracing, utterly unknowable. Night - that cone of shadow, that wizard's cap of spells and omens - is the chink in Earth's shell through which we court Ultimate Mystery the way Pyramus courted Thisbe.
Which is why, I suppose, that whenever I think of "the porch" of people who visit here, I imagine Carolina rockers on a southern summer verandah, far from city lights, Vega, Deneb and Altair swimming in the Milky Way, fireflies flickering on the lawn. At some point the conversation ceases and we simply sit, rock, and listen to the sounds of the night- the whippoorwill, the bullfrog, the cricket and the owl - and let starlight fall upon our heads like a sprinkling of holy water."
"Asperges Me, Domine"
"Wash me, Lord. Sprinkle me with hyssop and I shall be clean."
- The Catholic Mass
“Mind Games: Reading Classics Stimulates Brain Activity”
“Mind Games:
Reading Classics Stimulates Brain Activity”
by RT.com
by RT.com
“British scientists have proved that reading Shakespeare and other classics can stimulate the mind and has a beneficial effect on brain activity. Scientists at Liverpool University have monitored the brain activity of a number of volunteers while they were reading works by William Shakespeare, T.S Eliot and others, The Daily Telegraph reports. Then the original texts were altered and "translated" to simpler modern language and given to the readers again. The data recorded during reading both versions of the text proved that the more "sophisticated" the language in both prose and poetry the more electrical activity the reader's brain showed.
Scientists tracked the brain activity caused by certain words and saw that unusual words and complicated sentence structures stimulated the brain. "Serious literature acts like a rocket-booster to the brain. The research shows the power of literature to shift mental pathways, to create new thoughts, shapes and connections in the young and the staid alike," The Daily Telegraph quotes Professor Philip Davis involved in the study as saying.
According to the study poetry particularly stimulates activity in the right hemisphere of the brain responsible for self-reflection, creativity and imagination. "Poetry is not just a matter of style. It is a matter of deep versions of experience that add the emotional and biographical to the cognitive," Professor Davis said. Sophisticated and unusual words in the text also prompted better concentration of the reader after they've come across these words. The researchers' conclusion that reading the classics is better and more useful for the mind than easy-reads might not be a surprise to many avid readers.”
Scientists tracked the brain activity caused by certain words and saw that unusual words and complicated sentence structures stimulated the brain. "Serious literature acts like a rocket-booster to the brain. The research shows the power of literature to shift mental pathways, to create new thoughts, shapes and connections in the young and the staid alike," The Daily Telegraph quotes Professor Philip Davis involved in the study as saying.
According to the study poetry particularly stimulates activity in the right hemisphere of the brain responsible for self-reflection, creativity and imagination. "Poetry is not just a matter of style. It is a matter of deep versions of experience that add the emotional and biographical to the cognitive," Professor Davis said. Sophisticated and unusual words in the text also prompted better concentration of the reader after they've come across these words. The researchers' conclusion that reading the classics is better and more useful for the mind than easy-reads might not be a surprise to many avid readers.”
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"All the World's a Stage"
"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."
- William Shakespeare
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FREE download:
"Complete Works of William Shakespeare,"
every known work of the Bard, in one large volume:
Greg Hunter, "Mass Medical Bankruptcy & Collapse Coming – Dr. Elizabeth Eads"
"Mass Medical Bankruptcy & Collapse Coming – Dr. Elizabeth Eads"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"In May, Dr. Elizabeth Eads revealed the CV19 vax was causing extreme disease. Few doctors were sounding the alarm on the death and carnage from the bioweapon injections, and it’s going to get much worse before it’s over. Dr. Eads says, “Worldwide there are 10,000 deaths from these Covid vaccines daily. That’s a culmination of data collected from Israel, UK, Canada, the U.S. and Brazil. So,10,000 a day and they are estimating we are already up to 12 million deaths worldwide.” Dr. Eads thinks the death and injuries from the CV19 bioweapon will be orders of magnitude higher in the next five years.
Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, the FDA and CDC see what is coming. According to Dr. Eads, “They know this. They planned for it. They knew the consequences. They manipulated the vaccines as they went along and what was going into the vaccines to make the booster shots more lethal. Your immune system is absolutely destroyed with these shots. Every time you get a shot, you lose more of your immune system. You lose 30% after the first shot, 60% to 70% after the second shot, 80% or more after the third shot, and you lose 100% of your immune system after the 4th shot. You also have the propensity to develop vaccine induced aids.”
You can also get heart disease, blood clots, strokes, brain disease, extreme shingles and develop fast spreading extreme cancers, just to name a few of the effects of the bioweapon so-called vaccines, according to Dr. Eads.
Dr. Eads goes on to say, “People are waking up and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, what did I do to my immune system,’ and this is irreversible. It’s irreversible because you cannot not turn off the intercellular mechanism. You cannot turn off the nano particle system that is making these long clot-like structures in veins and arteries. There is no such thing as ‘Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. These are side effects of the vaccine. Nobody dies of ‘Sudden Death’ when they are otherwise healthy adults. There is no such thing. Here are the numbers I pulled off Attorney Todd Callender’s site. (He’s suing the U.S. military over the CV19 vax.) The all-cause mortality rate in the military is up 1,100%. The top five life insurance companies are banding together and are going to file a class-action lawsuit against Big Pharma.”
That’s not all, according to Dr. Eads, as she sees not only Big Pharma liable for damages but hospitals, doctors, nurses, drug store chains and all sorts of people who helped make this bioweapon genocide possible. Dr. Eads says, “You are talking about billions of dollars, and they are not going to be able to afford to pay out all these claims. It’s going to bankrupt Big Pharma, and Big Pharma will end up collapsing. Hospitals will also end up collapsing because they were complicit in death by ventilators and remdesivir. Mass medical bankruptcies are coming 100%. This is going to be the collapse of the Rockefeller medical industry.”
Dr Eads says there are treatments that can help both the vaxed and unvaxed with removing harmful spike proteins. Two she named are Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ). Dr. Eads says there are some other helpful treatments and procedures as well.
There is much more cutting edge, frontline medical information in the nearly 1-hour and 19-minute interview."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks to 25-year veteran Dr. Elizabeth Eads, DO, as she continues to highlight the worsening, and now obvious, effects of the CV19 bioweapon vax.
"It's Not Such An Easy Business..."
“Over the years you get to see what a struggle life is for most people, how tough it is, how easy it is to be judgmental and criticize and stand outside of situations and impart your wisdom and judgment. But over the decades I've got more tolerant of people's flaws and mistakes. Everybody makes a lot of them. When you're younger you feel: "Hey, this person is evil" or "This person is a jerk" or stupid or "What's wrong with them?" Then you go through life and you think: "Well, it's not so easy." There's a lot of mystery and suffering and complication. Everybody's out there trying to do the best they can. And it's not such an easy business.”
- Woody Allen
"Bank Scams are Rampant - You Have to Get Ready"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 8/25/22:
"Bank Scams are Rampant - You Have to Get Ready"
"Bank Scams are running rampant. You have to be leery of every communication you get that doesn’t seem normal from your bank. The scammers are using a very creative ways to get to your information."
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "FED Warns 'People Will Lose Their Jobs'; Cost Of Living Crisis; Inflationary Depression"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/25/22:
"FED Warns 'People Will Lose Their Jobs';
Cost Of Living Crisis; Inflationary Depression"
Comments here:
○
Related:
"Student Debt: Cancelled"
"Student Debt: Cancelled"
Next up, mortgages, auto loans, credit cards,
bar tabs and annoying social obligations!
by Bill Bonner
Poitou, France - "Every day the headlines come. And every day they are a mixture of real news, propaganda and claptrap. CNBC: "Biden cancels $10,000 in federal student loan debt for most borrowers. Nearly 45% of borrowers, or almost 20 million people, would have their debt fully canceled, according to the White House."
Isn’t that nice of him, dear reader? Of course, it wasn’t his money. And canceling the debt won’t cost him a penny. But Biden’s generosity is a big step forward in financial history. For thousands of years, we humans have been plagued by debt. And now we have the answer – just ‘cancel’ it. Free at last… free at last…
And now it’s time for Our Saviour to take aim at all the other disagreeable debits in our lives; he should cancel auto-loans… and mortgage loans… and payday loans… revolving loans… government debt… pawn shop loans… bank loans… credit card debt… margin loans… social obligations (‘they invited us…we need to reciprocate’) …loans for solar panels and EVs… child support… alimony… gambling debts… and bar tabs too.
Thanks to the Fed’s ultra-low interest rates and its ‘money-printing,’ our economy is burdened by $90 trillion in debt. And Mr. Biden has just shown us all how to get rid of it. And why stop there? Why should we have to return the umbrella we borrowed from the Merrion Hotel during a sudden downpour in Dublin… or the serving platter Ms. Jones left with us when she brought over some cookies? We also have a nice little rental car in the driveway; we’d like to keep it. Thank Divine Providence, our president is on the case!
Robbing Peter to Forgive Paul: Only Fox News dared to ask: if the people who got the service don’t have to pay for it, who does? Education is a service. It has a cost. It must be paid by someone. Biden’s act of largesse means that the freight will be paid by people who didn’t ride the train, many of whom didn’t go to college and don’t earn as much as the people who did. In other words, the law clerks and bookkeepers will have to pay for their bosses’ professional training.
Is that such a good idea? Maybe not. But don’t worry about America’s middle class. The housing market may be rolling over. Mortgage payments may be going up. But at least, according to the mainstream press, the job market is still ‘red hot.’ Here’s the most recent monthly report, from the Wall Street Journal: "July Jobs Report: U.S. Added 528,000 New Jobs as Unemployment Rate Fell to 3.5%."
"U.S. employers added a robust 528,000 jobs last month, helping the economy recoup the 22 million positions lost early in the pandemic, as hirers clamored for workers despite a slowdown in economic growth. The labor-force participation rate - or the share of adults working or seeking a job - ticked down to 62.1% in July from 62.2% a month earlier. While the economy has recovered all the jobs it lost since February 2020, there are still 623,000 fewer people in the workforce…Wage growth was stronger than economists anticipated in July, with average hourly earnings rising 0.5% from June and 5.2% from a year ago."
Let’s see, wages are rising at a 5.2% rate. But prices are rising at an 8.5% rate. Doesn’t that mean that workers are worse off? Yes, of course it does. And what about all those people who don’t have jobs? David Stockman at ContraCorner: "According to the BLS, 243,000 workers dropped out of the labor market in July and 449,000 abandoned the search for work since March. In turn, these fugitives from the jobs market have caused the participation rate to fall to just 62.1%—-the lowest level (aside from the Lockdown plunge of April 2020) since April 1977!"
Working Class Ripoff: Since February, 2020, the adult US population has grown by about 6 million people. But the labor force is actually smaller – by 623,000 people. That must mean that there are 6.6 million MORE adults without jobs than there were 2 years ago. And here’s another part of the story worth mentioning: Inflation. Economists long ago noticed that inflation seemed to correspond with lower unemployment. From there it was a hop, skip and jump into error: that a little inflation was ‘good for the economy’ because it brought higher employment.
The French economist, Jacques Rueff, saw the scam immediately. If inflation lowers unemployment, he pointed out, it was only because it rips off the working class by reducing their real wages.
So, aren’t we lucky? We live in an enlightened Republic, where we are encouraged to borrow so that we can study gender fluidity and ‘intersectionality’ – rather than get a job and learn how to be a competent welder…where we are lured to borrow money to install solar panels on our roofs and drive a spiffy electric car…where we are less productive and earn less money… but we have a ‘red hot’ labor market…and where we can run up trillions in debt…and then, the government cancels it!"
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Joel’s Note: "As to the great student debt inferno, dear readers may fairly be wondering… what happens to honest, hard working folk who saved their money and paid back their college loans? Will they be getting a check in the mail?
What about people who chose to forego college altogether, so that they might proceed directly into the workforce, who were paying taxes while their comrades in college were playing beer pong and mastering the art of the keg stand? How about the truck driver who took out a loan to start his own small business… and had the audacity to pay it back? Or the stevedore who worked double shifts to pay off his mortgage? Or the joiner who bartended on weekends to get through his apprenticeship?
These people may not have blue hair or master’s degrees in Critical Everyone Else Is A Racist Theory, but surely their skills in building real world things that real world people use count for something, right? Moreover, what about the people who (and this concept will come as a triggering shock to many) chose not to go into debt in the first place, but to simply live within their means?
As it happens, one such everyman dared put the question to Senator Elizabeth Warren, an ardent champion of the bill who never saw a cent of someone else’s money she wasn’t willing to generously give away, back in 2020. Their brief exchange resurfaced yesterday… and promptly lit up the interwebs…
Senator Warren appeared on MSNBC around the time this clip was going viral (again) to express her confidence heading into the upcoming midterm elections. “I’m liking it, I’m liking it, I’m liking it!” she said, gleefully rubbing her palms together.
Dear readers heading to the polls in November may wish to recall H.L. Mencken’s wise words as they step into the booth: Every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods."
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Related:
"828 Million People Go To Bed Hungry Each Night, And That Number Will Soon Be Much, Much Higher"
"828 Million People Go To Bed Hungry Each Night,
And That Number Will Soon Be Much, Much Higher"
by Michael Snyder
"Will you go to bed hungry tonight? Probably not. Most of my readers are in the western world, and for now just about everyone in the western world still has enough to eat. But in other areas of the planet, hunger is spreading like wildfire. Multiple famines have already begun, and they are only going to get worse in the months ahead. As I have been carefully documenting in recent weeks, global food production is going to be way down in 2022. And the food that is not grown in 2022 will be a major global issue in 2023.
Of course we are already dealing with an extreme hunger crisis here in 2022. According to the World Food Program, 828 million people on this planet go to bed hungry each night…"As many as 828 million people go to bed hungry every night, the number of those facing acute food insecurity has soared – from 135 million to 345 million – since 2019. A total of 50 million people in 45 countries are teetering on the edge of famine." That is a lot of people. In fact, it is more than double the entire population of the United States.
The chief economist for the World Food Program says that this is a nightmare that is going “from bad to worse”…“It’s the story that keeps getting from bad to worse,” U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) Chief Economist Arif Husain told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). “When the World Food Programme is setting records, that’s not a good thing for the world. And we have been doing that since at least 2021.”
When is the last time that you saw an interview with a mother that just lost a child to starvation in eastern Africa on the nightly news? You aren’t seeing it because that isn’t what they want you to focus on. Instead, they want you to focus on the endless games that our politicians are playing. But even though the nightly news is largely ignoring this crisis, it is very real.
According to McKinsey, several factors have combined to reduce the size of the global food supply dramatically in 2022, and things are supposed to get a whole lot worse in 2023…"In 2022 alone, these crises are expected to result in a deficit of roughly 15-20 million metric tons of wheat and corn from the global supply, according to research by McKinsey. That number is expected to nearly double by 2023."
There isn’t enough food for everyone in the world right now. And next year there will be even less. Even in the wealthiest countries, producing enough food is becoming a major problem. For example, just check out what is happening in Italy…"Massimo Saronni walks across his rice field, each step a loud crunch. This field should be flooded with water, flourishing with four-foot emerald green blades and golden rice panicles. Instead, the plants have taken on a yellow-brown tinge and the soil has hardened from lack of rain. Small patches of survivors dot the field, but they only reach his ankle.
“These crops are seriously damaged. They haven’t had water, so they’re not going to make it,” says Saronni, who has worked as a rice farmer for over 30 years. He cultivates different rice varieties, including carnaroli, a high-starch rice prized in Italian cuisine for the creamy risotto it makes." Italians love their risotto, and so this is a really big deal over there.
Just like so much of the rest of western Europe, northern Italy desperately needs rain. At this point, we are being told that this is the worst drought that the region has experienced “in more than 70 years”…"Northern Italy is suffering from spiking temperatures and its worst drought in more than 70 years. Broad stretches of the Po, Italy’s longest river, have turned to sandy beaches. Its famed lakes, including Maggiore and Como, are also receding. Many canals that branch out of freshwater sources and feed agricultural fields like Saronni’s are now stagnant and drying up."
Other parts of Europe are being hit even harder, and this has caused widespread crop failures. Overall, it is being reported that Europe is now dealing with the worst drought that it has seen “in at least 500 years”…"Europe is facing its worst drought in at least 500 years, with two-thirds of the continent in a state of alert or warning – reducing inland shipping, electricity production and the yields of certain crops, a European Union agency said on Tuesday. The August report of the European Drought Observatory (EDO), overseen by the European Commission, said 47 per cent of Europe is under warning conditions, with clear deficit of soil moisture."
Conditions are quite dire here in the United States as well. At this point, “66 percent of the area of the continental United States” is currently experiencing drought. That number has been above 60 for 82 of the past 98 weeks.
As I discussed yesterday, this is the worst multi-year megadrought to hit the western half of the nation in 1,200 years, and countless farmers are deeply suffering. In fact, it is being reported that nothing at all has been planted on 531,000 acres of farmland in the state of California alone…"California’s years-long megadrought has left more than 531,000 acres of the state’s farmland unplanted, the US Department of Agriculture has revealed – leading experts to warn that supplies of key crops could become scarce during next year’s harvest. At-risk crops include wheat, cotton, rice, and alfalfa, officials say, due to dwindling water levels and supplies incurred by the dry spell, which has pressed on for the past three years. The increase in unplanted land represents a 36 percent hike from this time last year, shortly before California water officials warned citizens to prepare for another dry year after experiencing a significant lack of snow that winter."
If farmers do not grow our food, we do not eat. And in 2023, there will be much less food to go around. But don’t worry, the elite have a plan. “Beetle-burgers” may not sound very appetizing, but they could soon start showing up at your local grocery store…“Beetle-burgers” could soon be helping to feed the world, according to new research. A group of scientists say the insects’ larvae - better known as mealworms - can serve as an abundant meat alternative that helps to alleviate hunger around the globe. Mixed with sugar, they taste just like the real thing, according to the South Korean team. The study contends that mealworms could soon be an alternative in convenience foods such as sausages or chicken nuggets, since they are also a tasty source of extra protein."
I’ll bet you can’t wait to put a couple of those burgers on the grill. Unfortunately, normal food is just going to keep getting more and more expensive. I just heard from a friend that said that she was handed a bill for more than 50 dollars after her and her husband had a couple of burgers at a popular chain restaurant recently. She also told me that she isn’t going back.
But the truth is that what we have experienced so far is just the very beginning of this crisis. Global food supplies are going to get tighter and tighter and tighter. So if you plan to stock up, I would do it now. Things are starting to get really crazy out there, and I expect global events to accelerate even more once the summer is over."
"Stocking Up At Kroger! Prepping For The Future! Get It Before It's Gone!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 8/25/22:
"Stocking Up At Kroger!
Prepping For The Future! Get It Before It's Gone!"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases, and are prepping for the future! 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:
Celente & The Judge, "Taxation is Theft. CIA = KGB"
Full screen recommended.
Celente & The Judge, 8/24/22:
"Taxation is Theft. CIA = KGB"
"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."
Comments here:
"Taxpayers Get Fleeced - Again"
"Taxpayers Get Fleeced - Again"
by Brian Maher
“The wicked borroweth,” reads Psalms 37:21, “and payeth not again.” The president is evidently facilitating wickedness by the wholesale…Yesterday he announced plans to wash away up to $10,000 in student loan debt for those wicked debt-kiters earning under $125,000 per year. Those who received Pell Grants may be forgiven $20,000. The United States Department of Education estimates 27 million wicked will qualify for the $20,000 forgiveness.
In all, some 45 million groan beneath a combined $1.7 trillion of student debt. And so the president declared this afternoon: "In keeping with my campaign promise, my administration is announcing a plan to give working- and middle-class families breathing room as they prepare to resume federal student loan payments in January 2023."
Just so. Yet why now? Might it relate to the upcoming midterm elections?
Election-Year Politics: We suspect strongly a political motivation. A recent poll - a Harvard poll - revealed that 85% of voters below 30 declared for wickedness. They are for debt erasing to one degree or other. Fully 38% were for a complete clearing away of all student loan debt - wickedness absolute, wickedness unadulterated. The president’s scheme was likely hatched to draw this crowd to the polls (or the drop boxes?) in November. Does the president wield the authority to clear away student debt at a stroke?
We have scoured Article II of the United States Constitution. We discovered no lawful provision. Not even our legal analysts - themselves vastly skilled in the dark and oily arts of constitutional interpretation - can locate one. Yet put the Constitution aside… as it has been put aside for much of American history. We appeal instead to simple justice.
The Taxpayer Foots the Bill: The proposal is merely a weight transfer from one set of shoulders to another. Student loan forgiveness does not mean creditors will go scratching under the customary system of profit and loss. Behind these loans stands the taxpayer, the sore-beset taxpayer - the taxpayer who must tend to his own debts - with no one to cushion his fall lest he fall into arrears. On his shoulders the load will fall. He will make good the differences. He will ensure that creditors walk away undamaged, with whole skins.
Many taxpayers have also assumed past student debt. Yet they met the terms of their contracts… and retired their debts, honestly and honorably. And now they must brunt the burden for those absolved of their debts - many of whom pursued joke degrees in sociology or gender studies or some other juiceless discipline. Here television personality Mike Rowe levels his darts at this system of “higher” education: "America is lending money it doesn't have to kids who can’t pay it back to train them for jobs that no longer exist. That’s nuts."
Is This Just? Many newly burdened taxpayers take in a good deal less than the wicked whose debts they will assume. Should a fellow earning $46,000 per year take the burden of another hauling in $124,999.99? No, thunders Jim Rickards: "Working-class people will now pay more in taxes to cover the costs of forgiving student loans for elites who got college degrees or professional training. What do you do for a kid who paid her debt? What do you do for those who paid tuition upfront? What do you do for a kid who never went to school? What do you do for a kid who spent four years in the military to pay for school?"
We believe you know the answers. Research by the Wharton School of Business concludes that: "Between 69–73% of the debt forgiven accrues to households [that rank] in the top 60% of the [U.S.'] income distribution."
So Much for Deficit Reduction: Meantime, the fresh Inflation Reduction Act - so-called - pledges a good hacking away at deficits. The Congressional Budget Office estimated it would slim the deficit by $305 billion over the next decade. We do not believe the legislation would reduce deficits in the least. Yet let us accept CBO’s optimistic crystal gazing, that the bill would clear $305 billion over the next decade.
Now consider this: This proposed student loan forgiveness would put the $305 billion right back upon the books - and then some more. The abovesaid Wharton School of Business and its numbers crackerjacks estimate that: "Forgiving $10,000 for those earning below $125,000 will add $330 billion to the deficit over the next decade." A $25 billion overall addition to the deficit - how do you like it? We have seen estimates higher yet… incidentally.
The Student Loan Shell Game: Yet Jim Rickards sketches the scene in darker colors yet. He argues student loan forgiveness will send deficits spiraling. Here we quote Jim at length: "To understand the importance of this announcement, it’s necessary to drill down a bit on exactly how the student loan market works.
The total amount of student loans outstanding is about $1.7 trillion. [That’s not reported as part of the deficit because] the Treasury is not the actual lender (this is done through third-party lenders and loan servicers). But the Treasury guarantees repayment of the loans to the lenders. Since the obligation is a guarantee rather than a loan, it is “off-the-books” for budget deficit purposes. That’s fine as long as the loans are repaid. But when the loans default, the lenders turn to the Treasury to compensate them by performing on the guarantee.
The Treasury writes a check to the lender and that’s when the bad loan hits the government books. When that happens, the entire $1.7 trillion will hit the deficit books at one time on top of the multiple trillions of dollars of deficit spending that has already occurred. And who pays for that deficit spending? In the end, you pay for it as a taxpayer.
None of this is well understood by the general public… The less people know, the easier it is to hijack $1.7 trillion of taxpayer wealth. That bill is coming soon and it’s just one more headwind to economic recovery, as if we don’t face enough already."
A, B and X: We do not pretend to know how high deficits will mount over the next 10 years or even the next two years - though we hazard they will be plenty handsome. We are far more confident in our understanding of politicians, particularly in election years such as this. The great Mencken argued that democratic elections are “a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” We believe there is great justice here.
Baltimore’s sage further argued that, “When A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel.” In the case before us B is the American taxpayer and X is the student loan-indebted - the wicked under Psalms 37:21. And A is the sitting president…"
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Related:
"The Student Loan Forgiveness Scam"
"It’s hard to imagine how we could screw up higher education any more than we already have, but we’re about to - by making sweeping student loan forgiveness a reality. How? To answer this question, we must start by asking another one: cui bono?"
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
Judge Napolitano, Judging Freedom: "Scott Ritter - Ukraine, Russia & Poland"
Full screen recommended.
Judge Napolitano, Judging Freedom, 8/24/22:
"Scott Ritter - Ukraine, Russia & Poland"
Comments here:
"Doug Casey on Propaganda, Changing Language, and Thought Crimes"
"Doug Casey on Propaganda,
Changing Language, and Thought Crimes"
by International Man
"International Man: Recently, the Biden administration tried to change the traditional definition of a recession which is "two consecutive quarters of decline in a country's GDP." The new definition of a recession is more vague and is "a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months." What's your take on this?
Doug Casey: Odd. It sounds like the definition of a depression, not a recession that I've used for years. Words shape thoughts, and thoughts shape beliefs. That was a major theme in Orwell's book "1984". The government consistently changed the meaning of words, labeling some as "bad think" or "thought crime." "1984" is the ultimate evolution of cancel culture, PC, wokeism, and the like.
It's critical that words be defined and used precisely. If definitions are nebulous and can be changed at will, it becomes hard to communicate. The closer we come to redefining "blue" as "red," or "war" as "peace," or "recession" as "prosperity," the closer we come to literally not knowing what we're talking about.
Politicos don't like the word "recession." You may recall when Alfred Kahn, Jimmy Carter's chief economic advisor, joked he'd rename a recession a "banana" because the word wouldn't scare people so much. During the last depression, Roosevelt said that "All we have to fear is fear itself." But that was totally untrue. What the country really had to fear was his destructive policies.
As for the definition of a recession, their previous "two-quarters of decline in GDP" was arbitrary - but at least it allowed everyone who juggled economic numbers to use a meaningful shorthand. Though frankly, who can even be sure what the GDP even is with trillions of new fiat dollars injected into the economy? And the value of the currency fluctuating wildly against everything? Even by the government's own inaccurate figures, the currency is losing value at nearly 10% per year. It's hard for even an honest observer to put his finger on what a recession is when a currency is dropping radically by an indeterminate amount.
Who can trust any of the stats that the government comes up with these days? For instance, how many of the millions employed directly by the State, and millions more indirectly as contractors, are doing something truly productive, something that's actually needed and wanted? Many of them are just pointlessly digging ditches during the day and filling those ditches up at night.
Their costs and income are credited to GDP, but their product is economically marginal or worthless. In fact, creating regulations and shuffling paper, their main "product," often creates negative value. Actually, digging ditches and then filling them up might at least be neutral.
Let's forget about a recession. We're in the early stages of a severe depression. I define that as a period of time when most people's standard of living drops substantially.
International Man: The roll-out of the COVID vaccine has led to the CDC changing its definition of a vaccine - eliminating the point about it "producing immunity from a specific disease." The new definition states that a vaccine is "a preparation that is used to stimulate the body's immune response against diseases." What are the implications of something like this?
Doug Casey: Everybody has to favor Edward Jenner's invention of a smallpox vaccine 200 years ago. It was a major medical breakthrough. I am not anti-vaccine, but the fact is that children are now given 65 or 70 vaccines before they're six years old. Many of them are given in batches. Apart from the fact that many or most of these vaccines may not be efficacious or necessary. There's always risk with injections; putting that many foreign substances in young kids' bodies that quickly is unlikely to be a good idea. It may take decades to tell what the effects may be.
Controversy correctly surrounds conditions like autism. These things ought to be investigated, not automatically dismissed as hysteria. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of vaccines today are unnecessary.
Good nutrition, cleanliness, and a general high standard of living - not widespread inoculations - have eliminated most causes of disease. The current mania to vaccinate everybody for everything is unnecessary and probably dangerous. Perhaps very dangerous.
There's a moral dimension to this too. The fact is, your primary possession is your body. If you can't control your own body, you don't control anything. Anything a person does with his body is their own decision. That includes taking drugs and vaccines - another word where the definition has recently been changed.
From a moral point of view, anybody should have the right to take any drug: marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, or a thousand others that are illegal. It's rather odd that you're totally prohibited under penalty of long-term imprisonment or death to take some drugs and at the same time forced to take others. In medicine, the Hippocratic Oath is being replaced by the Statist rule "Anything that's not mandatory is prohibited." It's a huge moral violation. Borderline insane, actually.
A vaccine, if it works, should be there to safeguard you and your health. If you're afraid of catching some disease - smallpox, polio, the flu, or hundreds of others - it's your business how you want to balance the risk of taking a vaccine against the risk of getting the disease.
International Man: From its founding in 1828, Webster's Dictionary has always defined inflation as an increase in the money supply. Then in 2003, it changed the definition to mean a rise in the general price level. Today, most are unaware of the traditional definition of inflation. What is going on here?
Doug Casey: Definitions of words are absolutely critical because if we don't understand precisely and exactly what words mean, we cannot communicate with each other. Changing definitions subtly and over time can only lead to a lack of understanding and confusion. What amounts to enforced stupidity.
Economics, the study of how the world of human action works, has turned into a pseudo-religion, and Ph.D. economists been have turned into a priesthood. People have come to believe these secular priests are needed to interpret statistics - most of which are unreliable - and formulate policies, most of which are unrealistic at best. Garbage in, garbage out, GIGO. From the night watchman who writes down whatever he wants in order to report something to the computer programmed this way or that way with abstruse academic notions.
The fact of the matter is that everybody should be an economist, not just a designated priesthood that have received an arcane and largely irrelevant education focused on mathematics with little to do with how the world actually works. It's important to understand how people go about producing, consuming, and trading with each other.
One of the most misunderstood words in economics is "inflation," which, as you pointed out, used to mean something very different than it does today. Misdefining inflation confuses cause and effect. That's devastating to clear thinking in any area of interpreting reality.
So what is inflation? Inflation is a verb, not a noun. In brief, it's an increase of purchasing media, which lessens its value. In today's world, dominated by central banks, it's the active debasement of the value of a currency. Anybody should be able to understand most of what they need to know about economics simply by asking questions and demanding precise answers. But that's impossible when words can mean anything or nothing.
International Man: Currently, the EU is attempting to change the definition of "green energy" to help serve their interests. With a full-blown energy crisis in Europe looming, the EU is set to reverse its stance on natural gas and anoint it as "green." What is your take on this?
Doug Casey: Everyone wants clean water and clean air. That makes sense. But what started out as a simple desire to avoid corruption of one's environment has, like economics, developed into a religion. Its main denomination is Greenism. Their path to salvation is guided by laws and regulations, which are not only costly but arbitrarily interpreted and applied by bureaucracies.
In a free market world, if somebody corrupts your water or air, the matter would wind up as a tort suit before an arbitration agency. That would dispense with the gigantic and counterproductive superstructure that we have today. Being against pollution has evolved into a war against the periodic table.
Sulfur was considered a demon element, then uranium, then lead was the enemy. Then coal. From there, the jihad moved to more obscure things like cadmium and arsenic. Then plastics became the enemy, then petroleum. Then, as you pointed out, natural gas became the new naughty compound. Even though, perversely, it has "natural" in its name. Trying to dispense with coal, uranium, petroleum, and natural gas is tantamount to destroying civilization.
Greens, especially in Europe, have found themselves in a self-created crisis. At the moment, they're looking to reform the reputation of natural gas because they don't want to freeze in the dark. I'm all for natural gas. It's a simple and very clean fuel; it's primarily methane. There are a few problems with methane, the chemical symbol CH4. But there are problems with absolutely everything. The solution lies with economics—trading risk for reward—and property rights. Not passing laws and regulations. Why not? I recall one interviewer very successfully asking members of the public to sign a petition banning dihydrogen oxide because it was causing scores of thousands of deaths per year. They had no idea it's also known as water.
But back to natural gas. Weight-wise, it's mostly carbon, the current enemy element, supposed to cause global warming. Methane is said to be 50 times more inducive to global warming than carbon dioxide. It's a hugely overrated hysteria.
When you drill for natural gas, some winds up being released into the atmosphere at the wellhead and more is released through unsightly and dangerous pipelines, which lead to large and dangerous storage and processing facilities. Natural gas is a fossil fuel like oil. In the US, most is generated through fracking, which is another no-no.
The Greens view natural gas as a stop-gap, an improvement over evil petroleum. But the ultimate solution in the back of these people's minds is to reduce the population so that less of Gaia's natural resources are used. That's their ultimate solution to the non-problem of global warming - less energy, less power, and a lot less people. Human sacrifice is a tenet of the Green religion. If conversion to the dogma becomes too widespread, it will result in the collapse of civilization. But not to worry. This civilization will be replaced by… something.
International Man: What will happen to people who commit so-called "thought crimes" and don't go along with the government and media's new definition of words?
Doug Casey: We're reverting to acting like primitive people with taboos like South Pacific natives who dare not say certain words because it will bring down the wrath of the gods. Primitive? In Europe and the US, you still can't discuss COVID skeptically without risk. How many people actually get sick with it? How serious is it? How many people die from it? Exactly why do they die? Exactly what are its origins? And what cures are there other than the vaccine? What are the dangers of the vaccine itself?
These things are basically not allowed to be discussed in the public media or even scientific forums. If you do, and if you're a medical professional, you risk losing your license, your livelihood, and being ostracized as a "conspiracy theorist." The same is true of discussing global warming. It's insane. Not long ago, the safest and most innocuous subject of conversation was the weather. Not now.
Neither can you discuss the differences between races. Human races are the equivalent of breeds of dogs. Rottweilers are protective, border collies are smart, and labs are friendly. With humans, I'll generally want West Africans on my track team, Icelanders on my weight lifting team, and Jews on my chess team. But you're not allowed to say that. I say to hell with these self-appointed censors.
Opinions on these things have turned into religious heresies. If you say, or even think, something unorthodox that the priesthood doesn't affirm, bad things can happen to you. It's created a very toxic atmosphere. If you can't discuss, explore, and debate what's right and wrong, true and false, real or imaginary, the result is ignorance. And ignorance creates fear. And fear leads to violence.
The solution is totally free speech on everything and anything, including "hate speech." A big redeeming factor to "hate speech" is that only by allowing people to express themselves can you find out what's really on somebody's mind. It's nice to know what kind of person you're dealing with, rather than having to guess because everyone is afraid to talk. If you can't broach touchy subjects, then you can't be sure of the character and the nature of the person you're dealing with.
Hate speech is prohibited, and now there's mandatory "love speech" as well. It's equally destructive. For instance, talk about the military today must always make obeisance to its selfless devotion to the country. A cynical observer might say the military is just a heavily armed version of the Post Office. There are a myriad of reasons soldiers join up. But how often is the military just robotically serving the government as opposed to the country? The government and the country are two different things. Imprecise thinking combined with emotive words is very dangerous.
There's a thesaurus of words for new concepts recently ginned up out of nothing, like ESG, which stands for environmental, social, and corporate governance. That and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) are used to psychologically and verbally sanitize the melding of business and government. Leftists, progressives, and wokesters are succeeding in concretizing views that are not only inaccurate but, in some cases, purposefully misleading. It's dangerous and destructive. We owe it to ourselves to challenge the misuse of words at every opportunity."
CanadianPrepper, "Peter Schiff's Final Warning: 'Stores Will Be Empty'"
Full screen recommended.
CanadianPrepper, 8/24/22:
"Peter Schiff's Final Warning: 'Stores Will Be Empty'"
"In todays video our guest financial commentator Peter Schiff discusses
hyperinflation, shortages, the end of the dollar, and the breakdown of society."
Comments here:
"Supply Chain Collapse Will Make Americans Panic As Extensive Shortages Emerge"
Full screen recommended.
"Supply Chain Collapse Will Make Americans
Panic As Extensive Shortages Emerge"
by Epic Economist
"Supply chains remain chaotic, volatile, and unpredictable. The maritime and logistics industry has been in a continuous loop of problems, and now U.S. ports are dealing with a massive flood of empty containers as land capacity issues persist. Companies fear that the renewed congestion will be translated into extensive product shortages on Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Christmas. Meanwhile, consumers are set to face some serious sticker shock given that a new series of disruptions are adding to inflationary pressures all around the globe.
Global supply chains are set for further disruption as hundreds of thousands of workers around the world demand better pay in face of soaring inflation. Many countries are currently seeing slower port operations as labor standoffs continue, including Germany and the U.S. More recently, transport unions in the UK organized a strike that led to the temporary closure of the nation’s biggest port. “Even minor interruptions to port operations can have a major impact on container line network efficiency and cause a domino effect up and down supply chains,” explained Christian Roeloffs, CEO & Co-founder of Container xChange. The strike will also impact U.S. companies and industries that export to the U.K. In August 2021, a total of $66.7 million in US exports were processed in the Port of Felixstowe.
At the same time, in the U.S., land capacity problems are creating port and terminal congestion, a lack of railcars, and the unavailability of truckers and chassis, impacting all trade participants. A massive backlog of empty containers is slowing the processing of new imports arriving at ports every day, spreading fresh fears among exporters and importers over whether the huge volume of cargo will be delivered on time. “Further delays to move cargo could mean shipments don’t arrive by Christmas,” according to cargo brokers and shipping executives.
FMC Chairman Daniel Maffei said that the excessive amount of empty containers and the need for them to be removed are a chief cause of the current congestion woes. “When ocean carriers continue to bring thousands of containers per month to a port and only pick up a fraction of that number, it creates an untenable situation for terminals, importers and exporters, trucking companies, and the port itself,” Maffei said in a statement. Robert Lewis-Manning, the president of the Chamber of Shipping, compared the shipping containers to Lego bricks. "They're piled up and there's just no more place to put them,” he emphasized.
The situation is creating a nightmare scenario for several U.S. industries, but things have been particularly dire in the nation’s auto industry, with parts shortages stalling production amid increased demand. On Friday, Renault’s CEO said that there will be no sudden let-up in the supply chain shortages that have been plaguing the autos industry, which has been facing an “emergency period” due to the ongoing semiconductor shortage.
U.S. consumers are also set to face more challenges. Ultimately the longer wait times, and delays will result in extra costs that will be passed along to consumers, at a time Americans are coping with rising costs for housing, energy, and more. The latest Consumer Pulse Survey found that consumer confidence has plummeted to a new low, with one third of Americans saying that they are feeling pessimistic and that we may be headed toward one of the worst recessions we’ve ever seen. Conditions will continue to deteriorate as we approach the busy holiday season, impacting millions of businesses and consumers in the U.S. and all across the globe. The supply chain chaos has only just begun, and we will be extremely lucky if another collapse doesn’t occur before year’s end."
"Another Massive Bailout Today As You Go Broke; Economic Disaster Has Begun; Credit Scores Collapse"
Jeremiah Babe, 8/24/22:
"Another Massive Bailout Today As You Go Broke;
Economic Disaster Has Begun; Credit Scores Collapse"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"How did galaxies form in the early universe? To help find out, astronomers surveyed a patch of dark night sky with the Very Large Telescope array in Chile to find and count galaxies that formed when our universe was very young. Analysis of the distribution of some distant galaxies (redshifts near 2.5) found an enormous conglomeration of galaxies that spanned 300 million light years and contained about 5,000 times the mass of our Milky Way Galaxy. Dubbed Hyperion, it is currently the largest and most massive proto-supercluster yet discovered in the early universe.
A proto-supercluster is a group of young galaxies that is gravitationally collapsing to create a supercluster, which itself a group of several galaxy clusters, which itself is a group of hundreds of galaxies, which itself is a group of billions of stars. In the featured visualization, massive galaxies are depicted in white, while regions containing a large amount of smaller galaxies are shaded blue. Identifying and understanding such large groups of early galaxies contributes to humanity's understanding of the composition and evolution of the universe as a whole."
"It Is Only When..."
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"Happily men don't realize how stupid they are, or half the world would commit suicide. Knowledge is a will-of-the-wisp, fluttering ever out of the traveller's reach; and a weary journey must be endured before it is even seen. It is only when a man knows a good deal that he discovers how unfathomable is his ignorance. The man who knows nothing is satisfied that there is nothing to know, consequently that he knows everything; and you may more easily persuade him that the moon is made of green cheese than that he is not omniscient."
- W. Somerset Maugham
○
“It takes considerable knowledge just to
realize the extent of your own ignorance.”
- Thomas Sowell
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