Saturday, September 3, 2022

"The Moment of Greatest Danger"

The Writing on the Wall
"The Moment of Greatest Danger"
by William Schryver

"With the incomprehensibly bloody and understandably merciless repulse of the hapless Ukrainian “Kherson counter-offensive”, and now the almost comical debacle of the bungled “commando raid” of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, the decisive military operations of the Ukraine War have taken a giant step towards their long-foregone conclusion. Russia will fully achieve the three objectives of its “special military operation” as explicitly stated by Vladimir Putin in his address to the world delivered on the opening day of the war: liberating the Donbass; excising the Nazi influence from the region, and demilitarizing Ukraine.

The demilitarization of Ukraine has assumed particularly gruesome proportions. What was the largest, best-trained, and best-equipped land force in Europe at the beginning of 2022 has been reduced to a pitiful shell of its former glory – close to 100,000 dead and twice that many permanently maimed. The troops now manning the front lines are a rag-tag assembly of mostly untrained conscripts, frequently forced at the point of their own officers’ rifles to face the massive artillery barrages of an enemy they will likely never see and at whom they will never even get a chance to shoot back before the shell with their name on it tears them to shreds at the bottom of a feces-littered foxhole.

To be sure, the Armed Forces of Ukraine still retain some dangerous long-range striking power in the form of a handful of surviving NATO-provided M-777 howitzers and whatever few rockets they have left for their dozen or so remaining HIMARS launchers. But this war has reached the stage equivalent to Nazi Germany in mid-January 1945: the war is lost; everyone knows it is lost, and all that remains is the positioning in advance of the inevitable surrender, the unrestrained looting, and the occasional harassment of the never-say-die snipers who will fight to their last round of ammo and last drop of blood. In other words, we’ve finally arrived at the most dangerous juncture of this conflict.

You see, as I have frequently observed, this war, at its deepest root, has always been an existential struggle between Russia and the rapidly declining fortunes and dominion of the long-since irredeemably corrupted American Empire. Beginning with the fall of the Soviet Union, and continuing throughout the 1990s, the western vulture capitalists raced to divide, conquer, and despoil the unfathomable natural resource wealth of the former USSR. And indeed, in ten short years, they managed to extract a massive pile of treasure at Russia’s expense, only to be prematurely thwarted by the unforeseen rise of the previously obscure Vladimir Putin.

At first, the finely accoutered locusts believed they could manipulate Putin as easily as they had his immediate predecessors. But they were soon disabused of that fallacy. So then they began to pressure Putin and Russia by methodically assimilating into their “defensive alliance” all the previously unaligned nations that stood between NATO’s 1997 borders and the Russian frontier.

This, of course, awakened in Russia a sober sense of their increasingly precarious position, and in 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, Putin delivered a landmark speech wherein he put the Empire on notice that Russia was drawing a line in the sand beyond which it would not permit further NATO expansion. That line extended from eastern Poland to northern Armenia.

Predictably, Putin’s declarations were first mocked and then summarily dismissed. I suspect this was the point at which Russia came to see that war was very likely inevitable in order to retain its sovereignty and security. Nevertheless, Putin exhibited extraordinary patience. While initiating an aggressive military upgrade and expansion program, he bided his time for the next several years.

But with the threat to Russia’s strategic naval base in Syria and the US-orchestrated coup d’etat in Ukraine, he was compelled to act, albeit with considerable restraint, to alter the trajectory of events. He dispatched an expeditionary force to Syria to prevent the fall of the Assad regime at the hands of US-supported “moderate rebels”; he moved to reclaim historically Russian Crimea, and to much more aggressively support the ethnic Russian separatists in the Donbass region of Ukraine who were waging a tenuously balanced civil war against the US-installed regime in Kiev.

American designs in Syria were foiled. But the ongoing de facto NATO assimilation of Ukraine continued, as the US and its NATO allies set out to methodically construct what would eventually become the most formidable proxy army in history, with ambitions to lure Putin into a Slavic civil war that would sap Russian strength, mortally wound its still-fragile economy, and induce social unrest within Russia and discontent among its various loci of domestic power, and ultimately effect “regime change” in the Kremlin. But, at every juncture, Putin out-maneuvered them.

Meanwhile, the decades-long superiority of Russian missile technology produced for Putin several trump cards in the form of long-range stand-off weapons capable of threatening prime US military assets virtually anywhere on the planet. Armed with this “ace in the hole”, Putin’s negotiation posture was significantly fortified, and from 2018 onward he began to articulate much more forcefully that Russia would not abide any further NATO expansion towards its borders – most explicitly in the case of Ukraine, where the ambitious training and outfitting of a NATO proxy army continued apace.

Yet again, Putin’s warnings were mocked and dismissed. Finally, when the overly confident Zelensky government in Kiev moved, in late 2021, to position its most experienced, best-armed, and best-trained forces in the Ukrainian-held western Donbass and in Mariupol, at the gate of the Crimean land-bridge – clearly preparatory to an attempt to subjugate the separatist-held regions of eastern Ukraine and to eventually retake Crimea – well, Putin knew the moment of truth had finally arrived.

In late December 2021 the Russians crafted and forwarded to the US and its NATO vassals a document articulating in exhaustive detail Russia’s explicit demands for the roll-back of NATO to its 1997 borders. Yet again Russia’s demands and warnings elicited scoffing summary dismissals from the United States and its submissive European colonies. And so, the long-inevitable war began on February 24, 2022 and continues to this day.

Now, it must be clearly understood that the war in Ukraine is about far more than simply Russia reestablishing strategic depth on its western border and the re-assimilation of ethnic Russian populations into the motherland. No, it is, as all the great powers of the planet very clearly recognize, about putting an end to unrestrained American hegemony – economically, politically, and militarily. At some level, there can be no question that this is now widely recognized as the second-order consequence of this war. It is unquestionably recognized as such at the highest levels of imperial power in Washington, New York, and London.

The decisive defeat of its Mother of All Proxy Armies in Ukraine, and that defeat’s indelible demarcation of the high-water mark of imperial expansion, will accelerate the already commenced transition of the planet to a multipolar, balance-of-powers paradigm such as characterized the world prior to the advent of American global dominance in the post-World War II era. 

Simply put, it marks the end of the American empire. And, as such, we are now at the most dangerous moment humanity has faced in the previous three-quarters of a century – very possibly in its entire history. Now we will find out what the self-anointed Masters of Empire will do when faced with the impending loss of their dominion over the earth.

Something tells me they are highly unlikely to shrug their shoulders, wax philosophical about the whole thing, gather up all their military toys, and go home. To do so would signal to all their colonies and vassals that the jig is well and truly up; NATO will effectively cease as a meaningful and credible alliance; the European Union as presently constituted will quickly dissolve.

That said, I have no capacity to predict what the imperial powers-that-be will do at this pivotal moment in human history, nor can I confidently anticipate what the consequences of their actions will be. All I know is that the moment of greatest danger in all our lives is now bearing down upon us. At some point – likely sooner than later – those who wield the power and control the levers of empire will make a move to preserve its dominion. I am personally convinced they will fail – and abysmally so – but almost certainly not without leaving oceans of blood and mountains of ashes in their wake.

Prepare yourselves accordingly…"

"The Way You Carry It..."

"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it."
- Lena Horne

"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! What's Next? What's Coming?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 9/3/22:
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! 
What's Next? What's Coming?"
"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:
If they'll do this for a tv, what happens when there's no food?
Well,just wait until EBT runs out and the stores run out of food.
 Imagine how they'll behave then. This you have to see!
Very strong language alert, and I can't post it here:
Hat tip to the Burning Platform for this material.

"What Happened to American Labor?"

Editor’s note: Here, on this Labor Day weekend, we reprint a previous article acknowledging the American worker. In real terms, he has barely budged a jot in 40 years. But why? Today we grope for answers - and ponder his future.
"What Happened to American Labor?"
by Brian Maher

Annapolis, Maryland - "This we learn from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics: American productivity has increased 62% since 1979. But average real hourly pay (adjusted for inflation, that is) has scarcely increased 17% across the same space. That is, productivity has run 3.5 laps around wages since 1979. Thus the average American worker finds himself a hamster upon a wheel… jogging largely in place.

Here our co-founder Bill Bonner reduces to concrete the abstract plight of the American worker: "In 1971, you could buy a new Ford F-150 for $2,500. At $4 an hour, it took 625 hours to buy the truck. Today’s model costs $30,000, and the average hourly wage is $26. So the wage earner has to work for 1,154 hours to get a standard F-150. Put another way, he has to sell almost twice as much of his time to get a set of wheels.

But it is not only the F-150 owner who has lost the value of his dearest commodity - time: You can do the same calculation for housing. An average man paid about $24,000 for the average house in 1971. Today, he pays $371,000. Priced in time, the house cost 6,000 hours in 1971 and 14,269 hours today… It takes more than seven years of work for the average guy to buy the average house today – four years more than it took in 1971."

Is it a coincidence that Mr. Bonner selects the year 1971 to draw a contrast? We do not believe it is coincidence.

The Fiat Dollar and Globalization: In August 1971, old Nixon slammed shut the gold window... and lowered the shade. The gold standard was a mere rump in its dying days. It nonetheless kept the balance of trade in a range. A nation running a persistent trade deficit risked depleting its gold stocks. The unbacked dollar - the ersatz dollar - removed all checks.

America no longer had to produce goods to exchange for other goods… or fear for its gold. “By the sweat of your brow you will eat,” Genesis instructs us. Under the new dollar standard, America could eat by the sweat of foreign brows - without perspiring one bead of its own. Scraps of paper, rolling off an over-labored printing press, were its primary production. Ream upon ream went abroad in exchange for goods - real goods.

The international division of labor was suddenly opened to the world’s sweating and heaving masses. Many were peasants from the labor-rich fields of China. They entered the factories in their millions, each toiling for one dollar per day. Perhaps two. The competition depressed average American wages - wages that have never recovered. Meantime, the past decade has only deepened existing trends…

The Sparrows Go Hungry: The trickle-down theory of economic progress argues you must first feed the horses in order to feed the sparrows. It contains much justice - poor men do not open businesses. They do not provide employment. They put no bread in mouths.

But the Federal Reserve’s stable hands have overfed the horses. Those earning $1 million or more have captured 63% of all capital gains this past decade. But the sparrows went scratching along on the leavings. The Main Street economy has guttered along at a lilting 2.1% annual pace. Never had the gap between stock market and economy stretched so broadly. The sparrows - incidentally - presently wilt beneath a terrible inflation that plunders them insidiously. Is there a way out of the maze? Yes, argue the technologists...

The Promise of Technology: They insist automation, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will soon catapult the economic system into vastly more productive realms. By 2030 alone, they project (at least before the pandemic) it could yield an additional almost $16 trillion to global GDP. They further claim 40–50% of human occupations will be subject to automation over the next 15–20 years.

These occupations are not limited to trucking, taxi driving, manufacturing and construction. To these, we must add white-collared jobs in law, finance, medicine, accounting, etc. What would become of the attorney at law, we wonder - and the human helmsman of the ambulance he chases? In truth, we are unconvinced automation will proceed at the rollicking gallop its drummers project. But suspend all assumption for the moment... and drive on to the inevitable question: What happens when robots acquire the brains to perform nearly all human labor?

Creative Destruction: Economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) shoved the term “creative destruction” into general circulation. For Schumpeter, capitalism was the “perennial gale” of creative destruction. Capitalism blows away the old and inefficient. It hauls in the new and improved. Because of capitalism’s perennial gale, today’s serf lives more royally than yesteryear’s king.

Explains economist Richard Rahn of the Cato Institute: "The average low-income American, who makes $25,000 per year, lives in a home that has air conditioning, a color TV and a dishwasher, owns an automobile and eats more calories than he should from an immense variety of food. Louis XIV lived in constant fear of dying from smallpox and many other diseases that are now cured quickly by antibiotics. His palace at Versailles had 700 rooms but no bathrooms (hence he rarely bathed), and no central heating or air conditioning."

Here is progress itself. All because capitalism’s creative gales flattened all before it. Capitalism’s obvious glories are why most notice the “creative” side of the ledger sheet. But what about the equally critical “destruction” side?

The Destructive Side of Capitalism: Innovation and technology have always allowed humans to mine fresh sources of productive employment. The 19th-century farmer became the 20th-century factory worker… became the 21st-century computer programmer. Now introduce an omnipotent robot...A robotic brute that can drive home a rivet is one thing by itself. But a genius robot that could do anything a human can do - yet better - is another entirely. This robot would tower above the human as the human towers above the beasts of the field. An Aristotle, a da Vinci, an Einstein would be pygmies next to it.

What human ability would lie beyond this unnatural beast? Artistic expression, perhaps? A 900-IQ robot might run its circles around the human antique, you say. But it could not appreciate beauty - much less express it. The robot is all brains, that is… but no heart, no soul. The kingdom of the arts belongs to man and man alone. Well, please introduce yourself to AIVA (Artificial Intelligence Virtual Artist)

Will the Next Mozart Be a Computer? AIVA is a computerized composer. Programmers drummed into its ears the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and other colossi of the classical canon. AIVA teased out their tricks... and taught itself to compose original music based upon them. Its outpourings are indistinguishable from the carbon-based professional’s. They have been featured in cinematic soundtracks. Advertisements. And computer games. Will the next Mozart be a computer? Not even the oldest profession is safe from robotic invasion - but let it pass for now. What about technology’s impact on the general community?

Winners and Losers: Schumpeter’s creatively destructive gales tear apart the social fabric… Capitalism puts out its tongue at tradition. It yanks the roots out of communities. It swings the human being around hairpin turns of social and technological change, like a lad pinballing on a carnival ride. Within a generation, the centuries-old farming community has given over to the assembly line and the punch clock. A generation later, the factory goes dark as creative destruction blows the jobs clear to China… or Vietnam… or wherever labor is cheapest.

Americans must often rip up their families to follow the jobs - thus, they can sink little root in the local topsoil. Not all the displaced can take up new lines of employment. Many are simply left behind, broken… and can never catch up.

Capitalism, Progress, Must Advance: We are heart and soul for capitalism. We do not believe a superior system exists. And as political theorist Kenneth Minogue has noted: “Capitalism is what people do when you leave them alone.” We are for leaving people alone - and for being left alone.

Hence we are for capitalism. The river of progress must carry forward. Do you reject progress? Then you must believe the man who tamed fire should himself burn eternally... that the inventor of the wheel should be broken upon the very same wheel... That Franklin should have fried in an electric chair for discovering electricity… that Ford should have been knocked flat by his auto... that Salk should sulk in endless miseries for scotching polio.

If this is what you believe, please drive on. But let us recognize: The advancing river of progress sometimes takes the human note with it. And not all change is progress. Within cold and lifeless economic data, behind dense forests of statistics, exist living human beings with beating hearts. And many with broken hearts.

To these, our fellow Americans - to all who hew the nation’s wood and draw its water - we hoist an acknowledging toast today."

"How It Really Is"


Friday, September 2, 2022

Canadian Prepper, "Humans Will Be Extinct By 2030"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/2/22:
"Humans Will Be Extinct By 2030"
"This is probably one of the most dire predictions ever. In this video I interview Dr. Guy McPherson, he makes some bold predictions that all humans will be gone in a few years... Lets hope he's wrong!"
Comments here:

"Our Major Cities Are Being Transformed Into Stomach-Churning Cesspools Of Squalor"

Full screen recommended.
"Our Major Cities Are Being Transformed Into 
Stomach-Churning Cesspools Of Squalor"
by Epic Economist

"All over America, large portions of our major cities are becoming disgusting cesspools of misery. The standard of living that fueled the growth and prosperity of previous generations no longer exist. And now, we’re confronting a decaying reality of rising poverty, homelessness, and substance abuse even in some of the nation’s wealthiest areas. The decline of our main metropolitan areas is just a reflection of an economy that is steadily falling apart. And the greatest threat we are currently facing is a rapidly deepening downturn that is likely to unleash civil unrest all around the country. But while some are rushing to flee dysfunctional cities before another black swan event hits, millions remain trapped in stomach-churning conditions, completely unaware of the dangers that lie ahead.

Not long ago, columnist LZ Granderson authored an op-ed piece in which he described what life is like in Los Angeles right at this moment. In 2021, LA spent over $620 million in tax dollars just to address its homelessness crisis, and yet, the homeless population jumped by 16% in the past year alone, representing an additional 60,000 people living on the city’s streets. “As a Los Angeles resident, I am among those who wonder what the mayor’s office is doing. When I lived downtown it was virtually impossible to walk a full block in any direction without seeing a homeless person. In Silver Lake where I live now, there are tent cities. On my drive to work, I see people living underneath the highway overpasses. It’s no longer Skid Row here. The skid is everywhere,” Granderson wrote.

Sadly, that description could also apply to San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and countless other U.S. cities. Similarly, in New York, giant piles of trash are being spotted in every corner of the city. And despite the rampant levels of societal rot, it turns out that it’s incredibly expensive to live among the garbage. Since January, rents rose 33 percent in New York City, 16 percent in Los Angeles, and 12 percent in Chicago. But many Americans are realizing that living in these decaying places is unsustainable, and they’ve been doing everything they can to relocate before another disaster, emergency or downturn emerges.

With housing affordability issues worsening, and a huge part of the population at risk of facing energy poverty this winter, have you already stopped to wonder what are those cities going to look like once we get deep into the ongoing economic downturn? Most people will continue to live in denial until the very end. And even though 61 percent of the population is living paycheck to paycheck, people continue to rack up debt as if there was no tomorrow. Americans are drowning in debt, but the cost of living continues to climb much faster than inflation, leaving us imprisoned in a system that is doomed to fail. At this point, everyone should be building up their financial cushions, because what is coming is not a joke. The time to wake up is now. Those who refuse to face this reality will find themselves ill-prepared to handle the very harsh economic environment that is ahead."

"Greatest Crash Ever Will Cause Hell On Earth; System Is Breaking Apart; Markets On Borrowed Time"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/2/22:
"Greatest Crash Ever Will Cause Hell On Earth; 
System Is Breaking Apart; Markets On Borrowed Time"
Comments Here:

"The Forgotten Man"

"The Forgotten Man"
by Jeffrey Tucker

"The classic movie "Gold Diggers of 1933" featured a song-and-dance number called “Remember My Forgotten Man.” The movie was ostensibly about how farm girls who moved to the city and faced economic depression would do whatever it took to get along. That was the theme of the opening song, “We’re in the Money,” the lyrics of which are truly hilarious once you understand the point.

But the deeper theme was summed up in the final number about the Forgotten Man. It was based on a hugely impactful essay by the same name written by sociologist William Graham Sumner in 1916. It’s the story of a lost generation of young men who lost jobs, social status, dignity and hope due to war, conscription and generally being treated like animals by the state.

In 1923, we saw a huge loss in life expectancy among the young generation. This was due to drugs and alcohol poisoning plus suicide. The loss was particularly poignant at that time because we had seen nothing but progress since 1870, when the great American economic boom took place that transformed life on Earth. The Great War was an interruption in this progress. As an attempt to shape people up, the U.S. government under expert medical advisers implemented nationwide alcohol prohibition. It was a disaster, driving people from controlled liquor to bathtub gin and resulting in poisoning.

Disaster Then and Now: Such dramatic shifts in vital statistics are worth a focus. They signal massive calamity. That’s how we might sum up the CDC’s newest statistical release that shows how three years of life expectancy have been lost in a mere two years. Stunning.

It’s not the fault of COVID. The same data sets show how COVID deaths in total were borrowed from what might have otherwise been flu and other deaths by respiratory ailments. In other words, viral crowding out. The average age of death from COVID is equal to or above life expectancy in 1919. The real problem traces to despair and ill health caused by the pandemic response. That’s right: In the name of protecting our health, governments around the country wrecked health. That should not surprise us at all. It’s consistent with the law of unintended consequences.

This mess is showing up in every area of economic life. The latest employment report shows a slight but mostly meaningless uptick in the unemployment rate. Buried in the report and getting almost no public attention was the data on worker/population ratios and labor force participation rates. These are still nowhere near recovered from 2019.

At least a million people are missing from the workforce. It particularly affects men, whose labor force participation is shockingly low. In terms of job creation, there are more and more jobs being created. True. How is this magic possible? A flat percentage of the workforce is accepting two or three part-time jobs, scrambling just to stay ahead of inflation.

Meanwhile, at the Fed: I’ve got a theory about what the Fed is doing now. They know two things for sure: Recession is already here, awaiting final confirmation, and inflation is still with us in one form or another. They have decided to announce this as policy to get ahead of reality. This way they can say: This is exactly what we were intending!

Truth is that they have no idea what they are doing. The interest rate increases are cooling off money expansion but that might be entirely because the economy is slowing through lending restrictions, particularly as it affects housing. Beyond that, they have no real means to sop up the $6 trillion-plus in new liquidity that they dumped on the markets between March 2020 and March 2022. They know that this new money has to make its way through the system through larger prices.

They further know that prices in general are NOT going to go down. At best, they will in general settle down to a more reasonable rate of increase. All told, 15% of the purchasing power of the dollar has been stolen in a mere 2½ years. That’s something we’ve not seen in 40 years but probably not really since the latter days of the American Revolution.

Knowing all of this and aware that the Fed has no power to do anything about it, the new policy is to act like this was the whole point of the policy, thus perpetuating the myth that these masters of money have intelligence and competence.

The Red Dictator: No summary of the present calamitous moment would be complete without an assessment of the goings on of the Biden administration. The creepy red dictator-chic backdrop to Biden’s fiery speech yesterday was no accident. These people are facing disaster and ready to try anything to distract the country from the ongoing economic meltdown. Therefore, they decided to take a page out of the 1932 book by Carl Schmitt called "The Concept of the Political."

In Schmitt’s view, the best means to hold onto power is to reinforce a friend/enemy distinction. You need to rally a nation of friends around the idea that an enemy exists among them and in order to survive that enemy needs to be extinguished. He tried this last summer by the demonization of the unvaccinated. The same tactics are being intensified now in an effort to call all Trump sympathizers “semi-fascists” who are a threat to democracy itself.

Chutzpah: Now, this tactic really requires some chutzpah, especially if you are going to deliver the message from a quasi-fascist stage with lighting pulled from interwar dictator rallies. But there you go. There is something in the heart of man, they believe, that longs for an iron hand. If they really are planning to unleash an army of tax collectors, attempt to arrest the former president and punish all political dissent with censorship and media demonization, they might as well go the full way.

Will this work? I’m no longer willing to offer a prediction either way. Dictatorship in history is far more politically popular and effective than anyone likes to admit. We can only await the polls, provided we can trust them. At this point, we might find that people are afraid to tell pollsters their true views. This is what happens at a time of growing state power.

Forgotten, Not Gone: We might look back at the summer of 2022 as the calm before the storm. Inflation is certainly returning. It will leave electricity and re-enter oil. It will leave financials and go back to groceries. It will leave housing and re-enter durable goods. Finally, it will hit commodities. By this winter, layoffs will increase and a new Republican Congress will be frantically and wildly fighting with a hateful White House and administrative state. There will be no progress toward fixing anything for another two years.

Meanwhile, the demographic problems we face today are truly grim, and potentially more devastating than the economic ones. Take care my friends: There is never a case for despair, only ever more reasons to reach deep and find a source of hope from within."
Full screen recommended.
"Gold Diggers of 1933", "We're in the Money"
The famous opening song from the film "Gold Diggers of 1933", performed by Ginger Rogers. All musical scenes in the film, including this one, were choreographed by the legendary Busby Berkeley.

Gregory Mannarino, "The Debt Market Hyper-Bubble Remains Unstable And Could Crack At Any Moment - Be Ready"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/2/22:
"The Debt Market Hyper-Bubble Remains Unstable
 And Could Crack At Any Moment - Be Ready"
Comments here:

"Banks Don’t Want to Give You Your Money"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 9/2/22:
"Banks Don’t Want to Give You Your Money"
"Thanks for making it near impossible for you to take withdrawals from the bank. They are doing everything they can to limit your access to your money. This includes making you wait three weeks for a withdrawal and having you provide documentation to prove your identity. It’s just ridiculous."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, “Cycle Of Time”

Full screen mode recommended.
2002, “Cycle Of Time”

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Braided, serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Like its mythological namesake, the nebula is associated with a dramatic transformation.
The planetary nebula phase represents a final stage in the evolution of low mass stars like the sun, as they transform themselves from red giants to hot white dwarf stars and in the process shrug off their outer layers. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa's transforming star is near the center of the overall bright crescent shape. In this deep telescopic view, fainter filaments clearly extend below and to the left of the bright crescent region. The Medusa Nebula is estimated to be over 4 light-years across.”

"The Heart of Humanity"

"The Heart of Humanity"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and we will come out the other side. The last thing most of us want to hear or think about when we are dealing with profound feelings of sadness is that deep learning can be found in this place. In the midst of our pain, we often feel picked on by life, or overwhelmed by the enormity of some loss, or simply too exhausted to try and examine the situation. We may feel far too disappointed and angry to look for anything resembling a bright side to our suffering. Still, somewhere in our hearts, we know that we will eventually emerge from the depths into the light of greater awareness. Remembering this truth, no matter how elusive it seems, can help.

The other thing we often would rather not hear when we are dealing with intense sadness is that the only way out of it is through it. Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and the faith that we will come out the other side. With courage, we can allow ourselves to cycle through the grieving process with full inner permission to experience it. This is a powerful teaching that sadness has to offer us - the ability to surrender and the acceptance of change go hand in hand.

Another teaching of sadness is compassion for others who are in pain, because it is only in feeling our own pain that we can really understand and allow for someone else’s. Sadness is something we all go through, and we all learn from it and are deepened by its presence in our lives. While our own individual experiences of sadness carry with them unique lessons, the implications of what we learn are universal. The wisdom we gain from going through the process of feeling loss, heartbreak, or deep disappointment gives us access to the heart of humanity."

"Remember: Your Mission Isn’t Done"

"Remember: Your Mission Isn’t Done"
by John Wilder

"One winter, while hunting elk up on Wilder Mountain, we had, well, an issue. We were about fifteen or twenty miles in from the nearest pavement, and headed home. It was overcast. It was lazily spitting snow, with a breeze that was slowly picking up. Looking to the west, where there should be a resplendent sunset, the sky was dark, heavy, and pendulous with brooding storm clouds that blotted out even a hint of the winter Sun.

That was when the problem hit. Pa Wilder, while driving over a “road” that was little more than a common path cut by four-wheel-drive vehicles over the course of decades of hunting and firewood gathering, drove over a small branch that had fallen in the road. Not a problem, right? Well, it was a problem. In this case, the branch had the stem of a broken off limb, sticking straight up. Pa drove the GMC Jimmy® right over that sharp shard of limb. In the span of a dozen or so feet, we had lost not one, but two tires. It penetrated the center of each tire, poking a hole the size of a half-dollar coin in each.

Amazingly, we had lost another tire already that day, already. We now had a four-wheel drive with five tires and three flats. In winter. As a blizzard approached and night was setting in. And all of this was in country where it could easily hit -40°F as night descended.

I bring this up to say that we had a mission. Our mission at that point in time was to get home. There were several challenges, and I’m pretty sure if most people were in the backcountry as a blizzard was descending that the last person they would choose would be a 12-year-old boy to be a guy on the team. Which is sad.

Children can have missions. Children can face danger. Children can do important things. We forget that because we’re in a society that doesn’t give children important things to do, mostly. Midshipmen in the Royal Navy were as young as 14. To be clear: Midshipmen in the Royal Navy were 14. A midshipman is an officer. If you were unaware, the Royal Navy wasn’t a social club, and often those boys fought in wars. As officers. So we forgot that boys can be given real, substantial responsibility. But there’s also the chance that we forget something else: that each of us is on a mission. And each of us has a role to play.

We currently are in a place where freedom is an increasingly precious and rare commodity. It’s not just in the United States – Trump may have said, “Make America Great Again” but down under they seem to be following the “Make Australia A Prison Again” plan. And Canada? I love our Canadabros that come by regularly (Canada is the second-largest readership here), but Canada seems to be determined to become the Soviet Above the 49th Parallel, led by that Tundra Trotsky, Trudeau.

It seems like in this day and age we all have a mission. Just like 12 isn’t too young, 80 isn’t too old. Frankly, we need all hands on deck. The size of the mission is the largest on the North American continent since 1774. I almost wrote that the idea was to preserve the Constitution and the Republic. Seriously, I’d love nothing more than to write that.

I’d love for that to happen. I’d love for us to come together. I’d settle for the laws to look like they did 90 years ago. Heck, even 70 years ago. That would be preferable to today. A reversion, sadly, is impossible. Whatever will come from tomorrow will not look like the past. It may be a shadow. The Holy Roman Emperors weren’t Roman. And the Holy Roman Empire wasn’t the Roman Empire. Or it may be something entirely different. I think it will be entirely different.

And that’s where you come in. Yes, you. You have a mission to create a new nation here. It won’t look like what we have today – it simply cannot, since we have created a situation that is at the far end of stability. I assure you, you play a part. The initial conditions of what happens are crucial to the final outcome. If George Washington had wanted to be King? If Thomas Jefferson had been a Martian Terminator Robot like the one that keeps triggering my motion detector lights at night even though the sheriff won’t believe me?

Things would be entirely different. And you are important. Your actions in the next decade are critical to the creation of what will come after. Do we want a nation that will be based on slavery, control, and that eternal boot stamping on a human face? I’d vote no. If you’re a regular here, I’m betting that’s your vote, too.

If so, let me shout as loudly as I can: You Are Not Done. This is Not Over. What is it that you can do to create a world where freedom beats slavery? What can you do to create a world where children can run free from the indoctrination of an all-powerful, all-regulating state?

There’s a lot. Our nation was, thankfully, built on the consent of the governed. Most things that local government provides, we want. To quote Python, Monty: "But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"

To be clear: the Federal government does very little to make anything in the list above better, and often does a lot to make them worse. Except for the interstate highways. Those are actually pretty cool.

But I will tell you – you are the seed of the future of this country. You are the seed of the future of this continent. You are the seed of the future of this world. It doesn’t matter how old you are. The time is coming, and coming quickly where great injustices will be attempted. And you are the seed to make what comes after better for humanity. Would the world rather live in 1950’s America or 1930’s U.S.S.R.?

The choice is stark. Your mission is clear. How will you act to make your county, your state, your country one where free men can walk? It’s up to you.

Back to the mountain. For me, it was a game. That’s the advantage of being 12. Pa Wilder and my older brother (also named John due to a typographical error) and I wheeled the tires so we had two good ones in front. We locked in the hubs on the four-wheel drive.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to drive up a mountain path in a car with only two tires in a snowstorm as it got darker every minute. It doesn’t work very well. The flat back wheels couldn’t push the Jimmy® up the hill. That’s where I came in. It was my job to take the winch cable, run up the hill, and loop the cable up the base of a tree. Pa would then use the combination of the winch and the two front tires to pull the Jimmy© up. Tree by tree, cable length by cable length, we worked pretty flawlessly as a team to get the Jimmy™ to the top of the hill. Thankfully, for the most part it was downhill from there. Although Pa was driving on the rims, we got it home.

Was there danger? Certainly, there always is. We had snow, so we had water. Ma would have called the Sheriff not too long after dusk, and even though the mountains were a labyrinth of roads, people had seen us. We also had matches, hatchets, wool blankets, gasoline, and a mountain’s worth of firewood to keep us warm. But we also had a mission. Each of us served our purpose, and we got home.

Pa was a bit raw about having to buy two new rims and three new tires for a day’s worth of not seeing any elk, though. For the record, I never saw a single elk when hunting with Pa. I’m telling you, that man knew how to hunt. Finding? Sometimes I think he just wanted a good drive in the woods and hike with his boys, teaching them about living. Teaching them about missions, and the part that they play, whether they know it or not.

In this life, we all have a mission, and we all play a part in it. I can assure you that your part is not done, because you’re above ground, breathing, and reading this. I hate to repeat something so trite, but in this case, it’s true: you are not done. This is not over. And the whole world depends...on you. It’s up to you. You will create the future.

So, go do it."

"A Long March Through The Night..."

"The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair."
- Bertrand Russell
This always suggested the March of Mankind through the ages, 
and, incredibly, despite ourselves, we march on...
Vangelis, "Alpha"

Bill Bonner, "Bonds, Lame Bonds"

"Bonds, Lame Bonds"
Welcome to the first bear market in bonds in a generation.
by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "The most important story in finance was hardly mentioned in the popular press. But Bloomberg is on the case: "Global Bonds Tumble Into Their First Bear Market in a Generation." "Under pressure from central bankers determined to quash inflation even at the cost of a recession, global bonds slumped into their first bear market in a generation. The Bloomberg Global Aggregate Total Return Index of government and investment-grade corporate bonds has fallen more than 20% below its 2021 peak, the biggest drawdown since its 1990 inception…

Soaring inflation and the steep interest-rate hikes deployed by policy makers in response have brought to an end a four-decade bull market in bonds. That’s creating a particularly difficult environment for investors this year, with bonds and stocks sinking in tandem…Bloomberg’s bond gauge is down 16% in 2022, while MSCI Inc.’s index of global stocks has seen a larger decline.

Dear Readers are reminded that we play the long game, here at Bonner Private Research. We have no idea what stocks will do tomorrow… nor can our guesses about tomorrow’s inflation be relied upon. Instead, we just try to ‘connect the dots’ in order to understand what is going on. We look for the Primary Trend… the deep tide beneath the waves… the one that will raise our boats for many years – or sink them.

Here is what we see: The stock market topped out in December, 2021, with the Dow over 36,000. The bond market topped out in the summer of 2020, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury well below 1%. This is not just a pause in the Bull Market of the last 4 decades; it marks a new Primary Trend.

A 700 Year Drop: Bonds – and the interest rates they reveal – tell us which way the strong undercurrents are running. They measure (indirectly) how much capital is available and (directly) how much it costs. A place like Switzerland, with abundant savings and reliable borrowers, typically enjoys low interest rates. A West Baltimore, ‘payday loan’ joint or a poor country such as Haiti or Burkina Faso will have much higher rates, because there is less capital available… and borrowers might not pay it back. And generally, as the world grew richer, interest rates went down. Paul Schmelzing, at the Bank of England, showed them falling for the last 700 years.

But the Fed got up to mischief 20 years ago – dropping its key rate from above 6% to below 1%. Was the country suddenly richer? Were savings more abundant? Of course not. The Fed was giving out a lie. What is important about interest rates is not that they are high or low, but that they are honest. And the Fed was manipulating credit prices in order to give the impression that we were richer than we really were. The idea was to boost stock prices, increase spending and stimulate the economy. Then in 2008, it repeated the scam, this time pushing rates down to ‘effectively zero.’ In real terms, adjusted for inflation, the Fed Funds rate stayed below zero for more than a decade – where it remains still.

No wonder speculators acted as though money had no value – bidding up prices of meme stocks and cryptos to preposterous levels. No wonder businesses borrowed to buy back their overpriced shares. And no wonder the US government spent trillions on unwinnable wars abroad and jackass boondoggles at home.

And no wonder, the country now has $90 trillion of debt – public and private… so much that the pain of reducing inflation will now be likely more than the elite can stand. In order to stop inflation, the Fed must raise interest rates. And every 1% increase – if applied to the whole debt load – would add $900 billion in extra expense annually.

Dow Below 20,000? Alert readers will wonder: where does the money go? If debtors pay out an additional $900 billion, creditors must take in an additional $900 billion. The economy has lost not a single penny, right?

Not exactly. As interest rates rise, fewer people borrow and more existing credits are canceled or go bad. Our monetary system is based on credit; a decline in the amount of credit outstanding is the same as a contraction in the money supply…so, a decline in the bond market tells us that the tide of credit, on which the whole economy – real and fake – floats, is going out.

Already, the Dow boats are down 15%. The 10-year Treasury bond yield has more than quadrupled from its 2020 low. And mortgage rates have doubled. But these are, so far, just mild corrections. If this is the Primary Trend we think it is, it may take us all the way down to where the last one began – in 1980. If so…

The Dow will keep dropping… down below 20,000.

Bonds will be crushed. Low coupon bonds will once again be regarded as “certificates of guaranteed confiscation” as they were in the ‘70s.

Mortgage rates will shoot up over 18%.

And America – economically and politically – will turn into a quivering jello of confusion and despair.

We remind readers too of a Bonner dictum: the force of a correction is equal and opposite to the claptrap that preceded it. By that alone, the developing Primary Trend should be one for the record books."
Related:
"What’s frightening is the amount of leverage and debt 
we have now compared to 2007. This unwind will be biblical."

The Daily "Near You?"

Georgetown, Maine, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Western-System is More Fragile Than Ever... Here's What Comes Next"

"The Western-System is More Fragile Than Ever...
 Here's What Comes Next"
by Chris MacIntosh

"Two things I want to point out. One is that John Locke was right. "Government has no other end than the preservation of property. Tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right… there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression." -John Locke If ever there was a catalyst to galvanize and accelerate an alternate system or systems to provide relief from the tsunami of oppression coming at us, then surely this is it.

And secondly… the galvanizing of current existing alternative systems, which, if I’m even half right, will morph during the course of the decade resulting in something that will be unrecognizable from its current state. While the Western "democratic" world focuses on ensuring the gender confused have tampons in the boys' loos, dramatic changes are afoot in that world outside of the narrow Western dominated MSM scope.

At the recently convened St Petersburg International Economic Forum Vladimir Putin put it like this: "To reiterate, these changes are fundamental, groundbreaking and rigorous. It would be a mistake to assume that at a time of turbulent change, one can simply sit it out or wait it out until everything gets back on track and becomes what it was before. It will not."

Now think what you will of Vlad but to discount his views is foolish. If nothing else his grasp of history, economics and realpolitik is vastly superior to any of the podium donuts in literally any western country today.

Differing ideologies, differing economic, political and social systems: As the central planners at the WEF, NATO, EU, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and US administration press ahead with what can only be described as a tyrannical evil agenda, this creates a greater synergy and connectivity for those systems which are in disagreement, even if only marginally so.

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend": Remember… The Allies joined with Stalin in World War II in order to defeat Hitler. Go back to what we’ve seen taking place over the last, 40 odd years. The Western-led system has been de-industrializing, shifting manufacturing to Eurasia (China in particular), India, South East Asia and Latam (Mexico in particular).

Raw material production, especially in energy, has been shifted… largely to Russia from the Western Europeans, and from North America to the Middle East. The latter being both a reduction in North American energy production as well as leaving a power vacuum in the Mid-East, now rapidly being filled by China, Iran and Russia. This has now formed a system whereby the Eurasian leadership now controls vast amounts of the marginal manufacturing, energy and raw materials supplies.

A look at "our" system. That of the liberal West: Here, infrastructure is largely privatized and forms a natural monopoly, extracting rent from citizens directly while the taxes paid, ostensibly for said services, remains high. It is a double taxation system which has eroded the middle class, together with the de-industrialization mentioned which eroded the working class, offshoring their jobs while increasing the profits of the 1%.

The situation we find ourselves in now is one where the West finds itself burdened with an over indebted economy, where the middle-class rely on credit to finance their living standards, and the government relies on debt issuance to finance these living standards. I can’t think of a more fragile system than credit being used for consumption rather than production.

The result in the West is an extraordinarily high-cost system where housing, education, and everyday consumption is debt financed. The costs to businesses, (minimum wage, taxes, red tape, insurance, legal etc.), especially industrial production, are simply too high - and hence the "offshoring" of this work. Keeping this unsustainable system going, has led to the US ensuring - or more accurately, attempting to ensure - that other major economic blocs don’t seek better terms with the Eurasian bloc. Those economic blocs that are now under this system and collapsing with it are principally Western Europe, the UK and Japan.

Towards a Global Conflict: And for those who say "meh… look at Russia. Stupid, ignorant Ruskies. Their GDP is the same as Italy (3rd largest in Eurozone) and then look at the US. They’re massive." What these academics entirely miss is how GDP is measured. The GDP of the US in particular is based on companies such as Apple, Tesla, Facebook and Twitter, sprinkled with a healthy dose of mortgage backed securities, and an alphabet soup of "credit instruments".

Fine, but let me know how your Tesla drives when you can’t source the copper, lithium or various petrochemicals to manufacture it, let alone the electricity to power it. How great is that iPhone with Facebook and Twitter when food can’t get to your door because the fact is all this stuff just doesn’t work without oil, gas, petrochemicals and metals… all the things that Russia has.

The Western world is rapidly finding out where stuff actually comes from, and while that’s a painful experience, it is nothing compared to the grand picture here and how these competing systems are leading us towards a global conflict."
And so...finding out where stuff actually comes from...

Coming consequences will be a "painful experience" indeed...

Must Watch! Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 9/2/22"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 9/2/22"
Fraud, Lies, Psyops, Cheating For Midterms,
 More Vax Dead, More War
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"The amount of psyops for the Deep State Dems to win in November is kicking into high gear. They are way behind in the real polls, but that does not stop them from lying to make you think otherwise in the phony polls. (As I have said in the past, the real approval rating for Biden is 11% to 12%.) This is why the Democrat strategy must include fraud, lies, psyops, cheating and rigging for Midterms come November. They sure as heck do not have any policy to make the lives of ordinary Americans better, unless you think killing your unborn baby or paying much more at the gas pump and grocery store will enrich your life. Don’t fall for the psyops. You are not hearing any good ideas from Democrats because they don’t have any.

Another week and more young healthy people die from “unknown causes.” When are we all going to say enough and call this what it is - people are being murdered from the bioweapon injections they passed off as a “vaccine.”

The War in Ukraine could have been stopped in April, but the UK and the West halted any hint of peace to stop the bloodshed. Meanwhile, Germany’s economy is about to totally shut down and destroy the lives of its citizens all in an effort to support Ukraine. Now, natural gas from Russia has been cut to zero as the Russians say the Nord #1 pipeline is down for repairs. When it reopens (and who knows when that will happen), it will be running at 20% of capacity, just like before. Germans are trying to find coal to burn so they don’t have to burn their furniture to stay warm this winter. If the economy shuts down anymore, can the banks also suffer from this? Deutsche Bank (DB) is in Germany, and the IMF has been calling it “the most systemically dangerous bank in the world” for the past few years. Is the German economic shutdown over this stupid war going to help or hurt DB?" There is much more in the 45-minute newscast.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these 
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 9/2/22.:

Jim Kunstler, "Soul Man"

"Soul Man"
by Jim Kunstler

"I knew we were in for the business with that “soul of the nation” build-up ballyhoo, but I didn’t exactly expect Independence Hall to be decorated in blood red and sepulchral black à la the-mouth-of-hell for a sermon by the Lord of the Flies himself. Somehow his staff managed to get the Old Trickster to the fiery podium on-time, where, in his trademark inside-out and upside-down mode of argument, he inveighed wrathfully against the “grave threat to democracy” posed by an opposition laboring to undermine “our personal rights…the pursuit of justice [and] the rule of law.” Roger that, Kemosabe.

I confess, I was hoping to see MAGA superhero Homey D. Clown materialize in a puff of rainbow-colored smoke right up there beside the sulfurous incarnation of “Joe Biden.” “MAGA Republicans have made their choice,” the hypothetical president shouted. “They embrace anger… they live, not in the light of truth, but in the shadow of lies.” “I don’t think so,” Homey would have surely retorted. Upon which, Homey whaps the Party of Chaos’s front-man upside his hair-plugged noggin with a sock full of Milk Duds. “Homey don’t play that.” So much for reveries of true righteousness….

And thus went this watershed moment in our floundering nation’s politics du jour. Did you catch an odor of desperation in that marvelous spectacle? A politician does not declare war on half the country in a spirit of comity. Something’s up in this land and it don’t feel all comfy-cozy as we turn the corner on our election season. A lot of things are up, in fact, all of them kind of sketchy and dark.

“Joe Biden’s” guardian of the rule of law, the DOJ under Merrick Garland, is on a rampage, not just seeking long prison sentences on J-6 misdemeanor defendants, but now going after their very attorneys, officers of the court, for daring to represent them. There is the recent Mar-a-Lago caper, of course, in which the FBI snatched a bale of documentary evidence Donald Trump had collected detailing these agencies’ four-year campaign to overthrow him. And, having gotten their mitts on it, the AG declared all the material part of a bogus “ongoing investigation” in order to prevent the docs being introduced in Mr. Trump’s just-opened defamation and racketeering lawsuit against HRC, her posse of Lawfare ninjas, and most of the people who worked in leadership of the FBI and DOJ circa 2016-2021. In short, the FBI stole evidence of their own prior crimes to evade prosecution. Something tells me that’s not going to work out so well for AG Mr. Garland and Chris Wray of the FBI.

You realize, don’t you, that all of “Joe Biden’s” scripted maundering about “democracy” and “justice” and “the rule of law” is a smokescreen sent up to hide the many crimes committed by his shadowy managers just now breaking into disclosure, and they are running out of dodges and distractions to divert the pliable center of the voting public from seeing it all.

Following Mark Zuckerberg’s epic mistake telling Joe Rogan that the government used his company, Facebook, and Jack Dorsey’s Twitter, to squash the first amendment, the wheels came off any pretense that this was not direct interference in the 2020 election by activists in government. For a whole year, the FBI sat on evidence that candidate “Joe Biden’s” family was running an international grifting operation fronted by his son Hunter, and when news reports about the notorious laptop began to leak out, the agency used its considerable powers of intimidation to make the news disappear. Now the FBI fears the next step: who exactly in the agency managed that operation along with supervisory agent Timothy Thibault - hustled into retirement days ago after lawyering up - and who, in that exceedingly hierarchical org, approved of it? It’s all coming out now.

Thursday night, “Joe Biden” heralded a US economy firing on a gazillion cylinders. “American manufacturing has come alive across the heartland, and the future will be made in America, no matter what the white supremacists and the extremists say,” he declared. Is that so? Of course not. The country is verging on an economic catastrophe more consequential than the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the harbinger of it, a financial market crash, is sure to occur before November 8th. Everybody and his uncle on Wall Street knows that. The shadow regime behind “JB” knows that. He didn’t dare mention the word inflation, as if no one has noticed it. (Anyway, white supremacists did that.)

The regime is backpeddling so hard on its Covid-19 bullshit that it has burst clean through the looking-glass it rode into in 2021, when, in the name of “choice,” it mandated that millions of Americans submit to forced shots of unsafe and ineffective pharmaceuticals. They know we are entering another flu season with those millions of people tragically left with wrecked immune systems courtesy of the vaxxes. They see the numbers of mystery deaths happening right now in this country and the rest of western civ and they’re working furtively to attempt to change the story. Guess what? It’s not working. Too many people have seen the damage first-hand. We know exactly who is responsible for all that, and it’s not white supremacists.

The war in Ukraine instigated by “JB” and Company hasn’t panned out so well on any grounds - as a distraction from problems at home, as a geopolitical gambit against Russia, or as anything remotely beneficial to Ukraine itself. The endgame on all that approaches as Germany and the rest of NATO are forced to the negotiating table, with or without the USA’s cooperation, or else face a rapid return to the thirteenth century. The terms will end up being more embarrassing than the exit fiasco a year ago from Afghanistan. The voters will notice it had nothing to do with white supremacists. Yes, they will.

“I give you my word as a Biden, I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future,” the old faker intoned last night. His word as a Biden? So sayeth the Soul Man."
Let's go Brandon!

Gregory Mannarino, "Important Updates"

Gregory Mannarino, 9/2/22:
"Important Updates"
Comments here:

"Strange Prices At Target! This Is Crazy! What's Coming?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 9/2/22:
"Strange Prices At Target! This Is Crazy! What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are at Target, 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:

Musical Interlude: Jason Mraz, "I Won't Give Up"

Full screen recommended.
Jason Mraz, "I Won't Give Up"
"If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told
the nearest land was a thousand miles away, I'd still swim.
And I'd despise the one who gave up."
- Abraham Maslow

And don't you ever give up, never ever...