Monday, October 24, 2022

Bill Bonner, "Racist Chickens"

"Racist Chickens"
Plus American road tripping, 
a hard day's work and signs of the times...
by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "I want to live in a world where a chicken can cross a road without having its motives questioned. ~ Sign in a bar in Virginia.

We spent last week on the road… down US 95 to Florida. And back. Why? We had business to attend to in Florida. And the thought of getting on another airplane was just too depressing to face. Instead, the wheels under our F-150 pick-up rolled along nicely. The cab was comfortable. And we could stop along the way to visit friends.

Observations: Thank God for the industrial revolution. Before railroads and highways, it would have taken weeks of hard travel to go from Maryland to Florida and back. Today, it is easy… and can be enjoyable. As we passed towns and monuments, Elizabeth checked them out on her phone – the history of the cotton trade… the origins of Savannah… the Indian Wars; we soon realized we were following in the footsteps of Jefferson Davis. When the war was lost, he and a small escort of soldiers headed south… from Richmond, Virginia to Irwinville, Georgia, where he was captured.

Virginia’s ‘Northern Neck’ is a pleasant area. It’s far enough away from Washington to maintain a little dignity. There are a lot of pick-up trucks and churches. Many of the houses are old and the small towns have a rural charm. It is here where the first US settlers made their homes, down near the mouth of the James River. It was a clumsy project. Though the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries were then rich in fish and oysters, the settlers didn’t know how to make use of them. In the ‘Starving time’ of 1609-1610 four out of five of the colonists died. Bones found later suggest that the survivors resorted to cannibalism to stay alive.

End of an Era: When the going gets tough, people do tough things… things that they would find disgusting or immoral when the going is good. By 1610, the Virginians were getting on their feet and soon began a disgraceful series of wars, massacres, and murders with the local Indian tribes. Women and children were killed in the hundreds, by both sides.

It was also during these early days that John Rolfe, a settler who had brought with him a few seeds of a “sweet” strain of tobacco, showed the way forward for the colony. The plants flourished and tobacco quickly became Virginia’s leading export, guaranteeing the financial success of the colony.

More settlers came. In a few years, they were spreading out. The first bunch arrived in Maryland in 1634. And as late as the 1960s, we were still planting tobacco, much as it was done 300 years before. We had tractors, rather than horses, to do the plowing and pull the wagons. But most of the work – ‘topping’ the plants, cutting and spearing them onto ‘tobacco sticks,’ hanging them in a barn, and then ‘stripping’ off the leaves… tying them up into ‘hands’… and packing them into ‘hogsheads’ or ‘burthens’ – was done by hand just as it always had been.

In the 1970s, though, tobacco farmers’ motives came into question. Were they just trying to make money? Or were they trying to kill people? Prices fell… farm labor became difficult to get… and governments began paying farmers not to plant tobacco. In the space of about 20 years, the tobacco economy all but disappeared.

Driving further south, the flags become bigger, while the trees grow smaller. North Carolina is the ‘tar heel’ state. We wondered where the ‘tar heel’ designation came from. A couple of explanations were offered. The most plausible is that making turpentine in North Carolina was a good business. It was made from pine sap that was known locally as “tar.”

Stars and Bars: Driving on, we noticed something missing. People used to fly the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy from their pick-ups and front porches. They were proud of their southern heritage, and perhaps eager to show that while they had no animosity towards the Yankees passing through, they would prefer that they just kept moving.

No more. We saw only two confederate flags along the way. With so many northerners moving to the South, maybe the culture has changed… or maybe people are now embarrassed by the Confederate flag… or perhaps they are intimidated by those who see the flag of the Confederacy as a symbol of slavery or racism.

At the very least, anyone who flies the ‘stars and bars’ today will have his motives questioned. He risks being regarded as an unreconstructed racist… or a white supremacist. Some people will say that flying the flag is a kind of ‘hate speech’ and wonder what it is that its owner hates so much.

A private conversation: “I’m becoming a racist. I never thought I was a racist before. I’m from New York, not Alabama. And I take people as they come; I really don’t care what race they are. But now, I’m told that treating people as individuals is racist… being ‘color blind’ is supposed to be racist… That’s what they tell me. And if I notice that most professional basketball players are black while most mathematicians are white – it’s a racist comment. Everything is racist. So I must be racist too. And you want to know why the chicken crossed the road? Because it was a racist chicken.”

Trash Talk: We stopped for the night in Savannah. During the pandemic we spent a night there and found it delightful. But now, the crowds are back. Savannah has become a big convention town, like New Orleans, with tourists filling up the hotels and lining up at the good restaurants.

Finally, in Florida, the cars are all fast and new, while the people are slow and old. At a sidewalk coffee shop in Delray Beach, Florida… the following conversation was overhead: “I’m leaving Florida,” said a well-tattooed young man. “I can’t afford to rent a place anymore. These old bast**ds come down from New York and Chicago, driving up prices.” “What about your job?” asked his companion. “F**k that. I don’t go into the office anyway. The boss is a racist a**hole. He wants us in the office because he thinks we’ll work better. He thinks we’re just goofing off. “I put in a good couple of hours every day. For what they pay me, that’s all they deserve. And I’ve got my own life to lead…”

While we were wondering what kind of life he led… and what kind of office would want him… a woman walking down the sidewalk suddenly slipped and fell. We rushed to help. “Are you okay,” we asked, helping her to her feet. “Yeah… but they ought to fix the f**king sidewalk.”

"12 Reasons Why It Is Impossible For Any Rational Person To Be Optimistic About The U.S. Economy At This Point"

"12 Reasons Why It Is Impossible For Any Rational Person
 To Be Optimistic About The U.S. Economy At This Point"
by Michael Snyder

"Things haven’t looked this bad for the U.S. economy since 2008. We are in the midst of the worst inflation crisis in decades, the housing market has started to collapse, some of the largest companies in America have begun laying off workers, and economic activity is slowing down all around us. Of course Joe Biden is telling us that our economy is “strong as hell”, but that is just because he wants his party to do well in the upcoming elections. Ultimately, anyone that takes a truly objective view of things is forced to admit that the outlook for the months ahead is incredibly bleak. The following are 12 reasons why it is impossible for any rational person to be optimistic about the U.S. economy at this point…

#1 According to a recent Gallup survey, two-thirds of Americans believe that economic conditions are getting worse. When such a large proportion of the population starts behaving as though an economic downturn is coming, that actually makes an economic downturn even more likely. So many Americans are starting to hold on to their money more tightly, and that is having lots of ripple effects.

#2 The second largest auto lender in the United States just announced that it “saw charge-offs for retail auto loans quadruple in the third quarter”. We are also seeing credit card delinquencies start to rise. We certainly aren’t at 2008 levels yet, but we are moving in that direction.

#3 Cargo traffic at the Port of Los Angeles just declined to the lowest level that we have seen since the early days of the pandemic. As I noted earlier, economic activity is beginning to slow down all over the nation. One recent survey discovered that 98 percent of corporate CEOs believe that a recession is coming, and those CEOs are behaving accordingly.

#4 Major retailers such as Walmart and Target have been canceling billions of dollars in orders as they seek to cut back inventory levels. In all my years, I have never seen our largest retailers cancel so many orders just prior to the holiday season. Are they expecting the next couple of months to be a total bust?

#5 Existing home sales just fell to a 10 year low. We all knew that the housing market was going to implode once the Federal Reserve started to aggressively raise interest rates, but at this point that implosion is happening faster than most of the experts had anticipated.

#6 U.S. homebuilder sentiment has declined for 10 months in a row. That is a brand new record. I really feel sorry for you if you are a homebuilder or if you work for one. The months ahead are not going to be pleasant for you.

#7 60,000 real estate deals were called off in the month of September alone. I was stunned when I first saw that number. All over the country buyers are realizing that they agreed to pay too much and are feverishly trying to back out of deals while they still can.

#8 Mortgage demand has plunged to the lowest level in 25 years. Things never even got this bad during the downturn of 2008 and 2009. To me, this is a really troubling sign.

#9 Ian Sheperdson, the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, is projecting that home prices could fall 20 percent over the next year. Hopefully that will not happen, but there is also a possibility that they could fall even further than that. We will just have to wait and see how rapidly this new crisis plays out.

#10 U.S. diesel inventories have fallen to the lowest level since 2008. This is something that we will want to watch very carefully, because the U.S. economy runs on diesel.

#11 The core consumer price index has just surged to “the highest level since 1982”. Even though the Federal Reserve has been on an insane rate hiking spree, our inflation crisis continues to rage out of control. And as prices continue to soar, our standard of living is being absolutely eviscerated.

#12 A model created by Bloomberg economists Anna Wong and Eliza Winger indicates that there is a 100 percent chance of a recession within the next 12 months. Of course it is entirely possible that their model could be wrong. But without a doubt this is not a good sign.

Right now, even some of our society’s most relentless optimists are warning that tough economic times are ahead. For instance, in a post on Twitter Elon Musk just suggested that we could be suffering through a recession until the spring of 2024…"If Elon Musk is any type of financial prognosticator, the market and economy could be in trouble for more than a year to come. When prompted in a Twitter thread early on Friday morning, the Tesla CEO said that he thought the current recession would last “probably until spring of ’24”.

Because he is such an optimist, Musk believes that economic conditions will turn around eventually. But what if they don’t? What if the “perfect storm” that we are currently enduring ultimately results in the collapse of everything? Are you prepared for such a scenario?

Previous generations of Americans handed us the keys to the most prosperous economy that the world has ever seen. But instead of managing it carefully, we have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the planet, we have transformed Wall Street into the globe’s largest casino, and we have systematically destroyed the reserve currency of the world.

Thanks to a very long series of incredibly foolish decisions by our leaders, we are now facing a war with Russia, a collapse of the housing market, a global food crisis, a global inflation crisis and a worldwide financial meltdown simultaneously. The entire system is starting to crumble all around us, but most people still believe that things will “return to normal” at some point. Personally, I would love to see things “return to normal”, but unfortunately it appears that is not likely to happen any time soon."

Sunday, October 23, 2022

Canadian Prepper, "Red Alert! Russia Just Made an Emrgency Call to Washington"

Canadian Prepper, 10/23/22:
"Red Alert! Russia Just Made an Emrgency Call to Washington"
"Major Development: Russia's defense minister has contacted every major NATO government in the last 24 hours and is frantic in its allegations about an impending Nuclear incident."
Comments here:

"The Food Crisis Of 2023 Is Going To Be Far Worse Than Most People Would Dare To Imagine"

Full screen recommended.
"The Food Crisis Of 2023 Is Going To Be Far Worse
 Than Most People Would Dare To Imagine"
by Epic Economist

"Many people won't be able to stomach the shocking news we're about to report in this video. But we must face the fact that we're not being told the whole truth. The global food crisis that is about to burst in 2023 is going to be far worse than most people dare to imagine, and those in a position of power are purposely leaving us in the dark so we don't have an idea of the true scale of the danger we're facing. But it's time we unveil the facts and understand just how bad the situation is about to get. The term “perfect storm” doesn’t even begin to define the extent of the disaster that is brewing right now. That’s why we’re trying to sound the alarm about this as loudly as we can – and maybe you should start doing that, too.

A week ago, the UN World Food Program issued an urgent call for action to address the root cause of this crisis, noting that the entire world is at risk of yet another year of record hunger. The report also notes that the fact that this is happening at the time we’re moving towards a global economic recession makes everything exponentially worse. In several countries, governments’ ability to respond is constrained by their own economic woes, such as currency depreciation, inflation, and debt distress.

Many of us haven’t seen hunger spreading so rapidly in our lifetime. At this very moment, there are large numbers of people that are now facing starvation in the backyard of the United States. Local reports reveal that in Haiti hunger is at catastrophic levels and the country is at a breaking point. As UN officials noted in a recent study, what’s happening in developing nations right now is a “sneak peek” at what life will be like in America and Europe when food shortages and food inflation start to become really oppressive in the months ahead. But the western world won’t care until they are going hungry themselves. The problem is that given the pace at which conditions are deteriorating, that day may be a lot closer than a lot of people ever imagined.

In Europe, skyrocketing natural gas prices led to the shutdown of more than two-thirds of all fertilizer production capacity. That’s extremely alarming because without fertilizer we would only be able to feed approximately half of the global population. Meanwhile, crazy global weather patterns and the worst drought of the century are absolutely devastating agricultural production. Data compiled by the Washington Post revealed that “more than 80 percent of the U.S. is facing troubling dry conditions” right now.

We must wake up to the fact that those in positions of power don’t really care about finding a solution to our problems, but we don’t have to say that. You know that already. Sadly, this all means that at the end of the day, there isn’t going to be nearly enough food for everyone on the planet in 2023, and millions upon millions of deeply suffering individuals will soon be desperately hungry."

Musical Interlude: Kevin Kern, "Another Realm"

Full screen recommended.
Kevin Kern, "Another Realm"

Beautiful...

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax galaxy cluster. 
This sharp color image shows intense star forming regions at the ends of the bar and along the spiral arms, and details of dust lanes cutting across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the central black hole. Discovered on October 27, the position of a bright supernova is indicated in NGC 1365. Cataloged as SN2012fr, the type Ia supernova is the explosion of a white dwarf star.”

"And Never, Never To Forget..."

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."
- Arundhati Roy

Paulo Coelho, "Be Like a River"

"Be Like a River"
by Paulo Coelho

“A river never passes the same place twice,” says a philosopher. “Life is like a river,” says another philosopher, and we draw the conclusion that this is the metaphor that comes closest to the meaning of life. Consequently, it is always good to remember during all the year:

• We are doing things for the first time. While we move between our source (birth) to our destination (death), the landscape will always be new. We should face these novelties with joy, with fear – because it is useless to fear what cannot be avoided. A river never stops running.

  In a we walk slower. When everything around us becomes easier, the waters grow calm, we become more open, fuller and more generous.

 Our are fertile. Vegetation only grows where there is water. Whoever comes into contact with us needs to understand that we are there to give the thirsty something to drink.

  Stones should be avoided. It is obvious that water is stronger than granite, but it takes time for this to. It is no good letting yourself be overcome by stronger obstacles, or trying to fight against them – that is a useless waste of energy. It is best to understand where the way out is, and then move forward.

  Hollows call for patience. All of a sudden the river enters a sort of hole and stops running as joyfully as before. At such moments the only way out is to count on the help of time. When the right moment comes the hollow fills up and the water can flow ahead. In the place of the ugly, lifeless hole there now stands a lake that others can contemplate with joy.

 We are one. We were born in a place that was meant for us, which will always keep us supplied with enough water so that when confronted with obstacles or depression we have the necessary patience or strength to move forward. We begin our course in a soft and fragile manner, where even a simple leaf can stop us. Nevertheless, as we respect the mystery of the source that gave us life, and trust in eternal wisdom, little by little we gain all that we need to pursue our path.

 Although we are one, soon we shall be many. As we travel on, the waters of other springs come closer, because that is the best path to follow. Then we are no longer just one, but many – and there comes a moment when we feel lost. However, “all rivers flow to the sea.” It is impossible to remain in our solitude, no matter how romantic that may seem. When we accept the inevitable encounter with other springs, we eventually understand that this makes us much stronger, we get around obstacles or fill in the hollows in far less time and with greater ease.

 We are a means of transportation. Of leaves, boats, ideas. May our waters always be generous, may be always be able to carry ahead everything or everyone that needs our help.

 We are a source of inspiration. And so, let us leave the final words to the Brazilian poet, Manuel Bandeira:
“To be like a river that flows
silent through the night,
not fearing the darkness and
reflecting any stars high in the sky.

And if the sky is filled with clouds,
the clouds are water like the river, so
without remorse reflect them too.”

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "What I Have Learned So Far"

"What I Have Learned So Far"

"Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.

All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
light is the crossroads of- indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone."

~ Mary Oliver

"On Going Seriously Boom"

"On Going Seriously Boom"
by Fred Reed

"Pleasurable excitement ripples through the usual boredom of Washington, and the resident curiosities enjoy exquisite frissons, over the possibility of nuclear war over the Ukraine. Some official of the EU, or maybe it was the mediocrity in the White House with the truculence problem, but anyway one of the geniuses ruling the planet’s fate has said that if Russia used nukes, the Russian army would be destroyed, grrr, bowwow, woof. Exactly how it would be destroyed, the sayer didn’t say. Anyway, the threats and counterthreats swirl around the idea that a nuke war between Russia and the West might occur. Maybe, with tactical nukes in the Ukraine, about which nobody gives a rat’s nether region. The world is full of damned fools.

But: The general staffs of both Russia and China are, whatever else you may think of them, sane. They know of America’s massive nuclear forces. They are not going to launch an atomic war. Sane behavior cannot be relied on with Washington’s second-rate lawyers, but the generals in the Pentagon are not crazy. They like hobbyist wars and big budgets, but if Biden ordered a nuclear strike, they would be likely to suddenly remember that Congress has to declare war and, seeing that their radar screens were empty of incoming missiles, and say, “Mr. President, we are not authorized to do that.” And recommend a committee.

What would such a war be like? Let’s guess.

America is fragile. We don’t notice because it works smoothly and because when a local catastrophe occurs - earthquake, hurricane, tornado - the rest of the country steps in to remedy things. The country can handle normal and regional catastrophes. But nuclear war is neither normal nor regional. Very few warheads would serve to wreck the United States beyond recovery for decades. This should be clear to anyone who actually thinks about it.

Defense is impossible. Missile defenses are meaningless except as money funnels to the arms industry. This is not the place to go into decoys, hypersonics, Poseidon, maneuvering glide vehicles, bastion stationing, MIRV, just plain boring old cruise missiles, and so on. Coastal cities are particularly easy targets, being vulnerable to submarine-launched sea-skimming missiles. Washington, New York, Boston, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle for starters, all gone.

A modern country is a system of systems of systems, interdependent and interconnected - water, electricity, manufacturing, energy, telecommunications, transportation, pipelines, and complex supply chains. These are interconnected, interdependent, and rely on large numbers of trained people showing up for work. Modern warheads are not the popgun squibs of Hiroshima. Talking of repair any time soon after the nuclear bombing of a conurbation is foolish because the city would have many hundreds of thousand of dead, housing destroyed, massive fires, horrendously burned people with no hope of medical care, and in general populations too focused on staying alive to worry about abstractions like supply chains.

The elimination of transportation might cause more death than the bombs. Cities, suburbs, and towns cannot feed themselves. They rely on a constant, heavy influx of food grown in remote regions. This food is shipped by rail or truck to distribution centers, as for example Chicago, whence it is transshipped to cities like New York. Heavy megatonnage on Chicago would disrupt rail lines and trucking firms. Trains and trucks need gasoline and diesel which come from somewhere, presumably in pipelines. These, broken by the blast, burning furiously, would take time to repair. Time is what cities would not have.

What would happen in, say, New York City even if, improbably, it were not bombed? Here we will ignore the likelihood of sheer, boiling panic and resultant chaos on learning that much of the country had been flattened. In the first few days there would be panic buying with shelves at supermarkets being emptied. Hunger would soon become serious. By day four, people would be hunting each other with knives to get their food. By the end of the second week, people would be eating each other. Literally. This happens in famines.

Most things in America rely on electricity. This comes from generating plants which burn stuff, usually natural gas or coal. These arrive on trains, which would not be running, or in trucks, not likely to be running. They depend on oil fields, refineries, and pipelines unlikely to function. All of the foregoing depend on employees continuing to go to work instead of trying to save their families. So - no electricity in New York, which goes dark.

This means no telephones, no internet, no lighting, and no elevators. How would this work out in a city of high rises? Most people would be nearly incommunicado in a lightless city. Huge traffic jams would form as people with cars tried to leave - to go where? - as long as gasoline in the tank lasted.

Where does water come from in New York? I don’t know, but it doesn’t flow spontaneously to the thirtieth floor. It needs to be pumped, which involves electricity, from wherever it comes from to wherever it has to go. No electricity, no pump. No pump, no water. And no flushing of toilets. River water could be drunk, of course. Think of the crowds.

In all likelihood, civil society would collapse by the end of the fourth day. The more virile ethnics would surge from the ghettos with guns and clubs to feed. Police would have disappeared or be either looking after their families or themselves looting. Civilization is a thin veneer. The streets and subways are not safe even without a nuclear war. The majority would be unarmed and unable to defend themselves. People who had never touched a gun would suddenly understand the appeal. If you think this would not happen, give my best to Tinker Belle.

Thus it would not be necessary to bomb a city to destroy it, only to cut it off from transport hubs for a couple of weeks. An attacker would of course destroy many cities in addition to necessary infrastructure. Those who plan nuclear wars may be psychopaths, or just insular geeks fiddling with bloodless abstractions, but they are not fools. They have carefully calculated how to most seriously damage a target country. In no more than a couple of months, perhaps two hundred million people would starve to death. Do you think this fantastic? Tell me why it is fantastic.

Parenthetically, in my days of walking the E-ring in the Pentagon, I read manuals on how to keep soldiers fighting after they had received lethal doses of radiation. They don’t die immediately and, depending on dosage, might be administered stimulants to keep them on their feet, or so the manuals said. These manuals also discussed whether these walking dead should be told that they were about to die. The authors used the evocative phrase “terrain alteration” to describe landscapes with all the trees lying on their sides, and we have all heard of “overkill.” After a nuclear war, millions would slowly die of radiation - read up on Nagasaki and Hiroshima - and burned corpses would rot in the streets, too numerous for burial by survivors with other things on their minds.

How would the next season’s crops be planted? Answer: they wouldn’t be. Where would fertilizer come from? Parts for tractors, trucks, harvesters? Making these requires functioning factories which require electricity, raw materials, and workers. If the attacker chose to hit agricultural lands with radiation-dirty cobalt bombs, these regions would be lethal for years. Nuclear planners think about these things.

Among “defense intellectuals,” there is, or was when I covered such things, insane talk of how America could “absorb” a Russian first strike and have enough missiles in reserve to destroy Russia. These people should be locked in sealed boxes and kept in abandoned coal mines.

Note also that Biden, Blinken, and Bolton, bibbety bobbety boo, and their families, live in DC, the priority target. While the rats are aboard the ship, they won’t sink it. If they are discovered boarding a Greyhound out of Washington at three a.m., dressed as washerwomen, it will be time to worry."

The Daily "Near You?"

Dysart, Iowa, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Canadian Prepper, "Warning: Tactical VS Strategic Nuclear Weapons"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 10/23/22:
"Warning: Tactical VS Strategic Nuclear Weapons"
"We discuss some misconceptions and clarify the 
difference between tactical and strategic nuclear weapons."
Comments here:
Related:
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/26/22:
"How Russia Might Win WW3: Peter Vincent Pry"
"What we are seeing is a fiction... the bigger conflict is coming".
 Dr. Peter Vincent Pry breaks down his theories 
about whats actual going on in the Far East."
Comments here:

Note EMP information beginning at 30:00...
"A Chilling Warning From a Wise Old Man 
About What's Coming..."

"Balls Of Steel"

"Balls Of Steel"
by Gerard Wall

"This is Marshall Josep Broz Tito, former President of Yugoslavia who not only stood up to the biggest, most evil dictator in the history of mankind, Stalin, but publicly threatened to have him murdered.

After World War II, in which Yugoslavia held their own, they weren’t saved by the Soviets, or the Western Allies, so they could decide their own fate. Tito (the partisan leader) set about forming the combined states of Yugoslavia. They refused to be a part of the Soviet Bloc, we’ll do our own thing, thank you very much. This annoyed Stalin to the extent that he sent several assassins to kill Tito.

Marshall Tito’s response was exemplary - “Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle. [...] If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second.”

Balls of steel, on this hombre. He died in 1980, at the age of 87."

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: Manipulation On An Unprecedented Scale!"

Gregory Mannarino, 10/23/22:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: 
Manipulation On An Unprecedented Scale!"

"Doomsday For Banks; Auto Loan Debt Is Spiraling Out Of Control; Consumer Is Done; 401 Scam - Beware"

Jeremiah Babe, 10/23/22:
"Doomsday For Banks; Auto Loan Debt Is Spiraling 
Out Of Control; Consumer Is Done; 401 Scam - Beware"
Comments here:

"Useful Idiots"

"Useful Idiots"
"How one group of Scientists got a 
glimpse into the coming Dark Ages..."
by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Welcome to another Sunday Session, dear reader, that time of the week when we pull up a barstool at the virtual watering hole, take stock of the week just gone, and try to recall a little perspective to our lives... one nip of flu medicine at a time (we’ve been “crook as a dog” all week, to put it in Australian vernacular, but seem to be on the mend now)...

It ought to go without saying that we live in an unprecedented Age of Abundance. Our modern economy is one brimming with cheap and abundant goods... manufactured using cheap and abundant energy... financed using cheap and abundant credit. For better and worse, modern man scarcely wants for his bare necessities. His physiological requirements, the base of Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, he takes more or less for granted. If anything, he is overburdened with worldly goods, a slave to his possessions.

But when he requires painkillers – as we did during the week – he need only visit a drugstore and choose from a variety of on- and off-label products. Pills, potions, capsules and caplets... daytime, nighttime... drowsy, non-drowsy... balms, rubs, ointments. You name it.

As Bill wrote during the week, such a casual cornucopia of pharmaceutical remedies and therapeutics were not so readily available in the recent past... not even to a man whose word was law and who ruled over the richest land on earth. (Read Bill’s excellent essay about King Louis XIV’s toothache ordeal here.)

But what happens when the things we take for granted... simple things, like light... and heat... and door-to-door food delivery... suddenly cease to work? One group of climate activists snatched a valuable glimpse into this Modern Dark Ages earlier in the week, when the company they were “occupying” decided to “just stop oil” by shutting off the power. Read on for their tale of irony and woe, below...

"Useful Idiots"
by Joel Bowman

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
 ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"Poor Gianluca Grimalda. The 51yr-old researcher must have thought he’d found his higher calling, discovered his raison d'être, caught a glimpse of his name, for one fleeting moment, etched in the history books. Donning a symbolic white lab coat, Grimalda joined a group of die-soft climate activists last Wednesday in “occupying” a Volkswagen showroom in Wolfsburg, Germany. Here’s how that went down...

Like similar stunts played out across the UK over the past month, this antic involved, predictably (and rather unimaginatively, it must be said), the group gluing themselves to the floor in front of three top of the line Porsches... photos of which appeared in newspapers across Europe and all over the Internet, presumably saving the auto company millions in advertising.

Alas, no sooner had the petrochemical-based adhesive set when the campaign started to go south. Summoning the kind of staying power that would make Liz Truss cringe, the group quickly ran into a slew of entirely foreseeable difficulties. Scientist Grimalda (who was live Tweeting the whole thing from his compost-powered smartphone) dutifully posted: "@VW told us that they supported our right to protest, but they refused our request to provide us with a bowl to urinate and defecate in a decent manner while we are glued, and have turned off the heating."

Bad Xenia: Yes, gentle reader, not only had the ungracious hosts neglected to provide their trespassing protestors with a proverbial pot to piss (etc.) in, but they had the hide to turn off the heat and even the lights, too... and at night time! (Wait, wasn’t this about “decarbonizing?”) More unsettling yet, VW dared to monitor their own private facility, without so much as informing the unhinged interlopers, who had stuck themselves right next to the company’s rather expensive private property.

And what were these renegade Long Marchers to eat, anyway, now that they had gone dozens of minutes without DoorDash? The situation was getting grim. Relayed Scientist Grimalda (whose Tweeting was beginning to show understandable signs of fatigue, perhaps due to malnutrition): "We can't order our food, we must use the one provided by Wolkswagen. Lights off. Random unannounced checks by security guards with bright torches. Police just came in."

Next, as if the situation could not get any more dire, the unthinkable happened. For almost three heartbreaking hours, Grimalda and his team went dark. Like witnessing an Apollo mission lost to the dark side of the moon, the free world waited. Still, no word. Without firewood to burn or dung huts to keep out the elements, loved ones huddling in the parking lot, several yards away, had all but given up hope when... contact! Scientist Grimalda, emotional, but alive: "I love so much all fellow scientists supporting us outside....(emoji love heart) you don't know how important this is for us!"

But the danger was not yet past. Digging deep into his training as a social psychology researcher, Scientist Grimalda and his Super Scientific team of Scientists settled in for the long night ahead... laying themselves down in the refulgent glow of the headlights of a skeek, white 2022 Porsche Panamera. (For details, see here.)

Almost a whole day into the grueling campaign, Scientist Grimalda recorded another video on his renewable phone, leveraging their obvious position of strength to summon the Volkswagen CEO. (And also to alert the free world that the team – that’s Team Science, made up of Scientists – had indeed received pizza on their first night. Phew!)

Their demands were simple-minded enough. Decarbonize the global auto industry. Lobby to reduce the speed limit in Germany to 100kms/h. Reintroduce €9 public transport tickets (presumably so the Scientists from Team Science could get home). Oh, and ensure the earth’s temperature be managed within 1.5% degrees from pre-industrial levels by a certain calendar date some decades into the future.

Lest you think that’s all a bit rich, coming from a group of adult humans who could not collectively foresee their next bowel movement, may we hasten to remind you: these are not mere humans, like you and me... they’re (capital “S”) Scientists.

The Speed of Science: That’s right. The same mob who brought you “2 weeks to flatten the curve,” who fought to clandestinely quash any open dialog regarding blanket Covid lockdowns, who sent infected seniors back into aged care facilities, who declared masks, then no masks, then masks, then no masks (etc...), who shuttered your children’s schools, who brought you a “vaccine” that stopped neither transmission nor infection and that, it turns out, wasn’t even tested for efficacy against transmission before it hit the market.

These are the same people who travel, not by Porsche sports coupe, but by “the speed of Science,” who constantly invoke “The Science” as if it were the final unalterable word and not, as is actually the case, a process, and whose very climate models have so far predicted that... the earth would enter into another Ice Age by 2021. That “major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020.” That Arctic summers would be ice free by 2000... 2004... 2008... 2013... 2014... 2015... 2017. Or that Australia would have “no more snow” by 2020 when, actually, Australia saw huge snowfalls to kick off the 2022 Season. One could go on... and on...

But never mind all that. Unwilling to let a track record entirely devoid of correct forecasts damper their spirit, Team Science fought marched sat boldly on. Until, that is, they didn’t. After twenty-six hours of grueling, unrelenting sitting down and a harrowing night in which he nearly got no sleep, Scientist Grimalda’s hand – the one he had voluntarily glued to somebody else’s ground – got a bit swollen.

Assessing the “life-threatening” situation confronting him, and no doubt tapping into his special skill set... as a Scientist, Grimalda made the tough decision to allow doctors (summoned to the scene at his request) to unglue him and transport him (presumably by bicycle or sedan chair) to (a solar powered) hospital for further tests. “My health is of course paramount,” he video tweeted before adding, in case of any lingering doubt, “I feel pain, but not so much. And nothing in comparison to the suffering that people in Africa and other countries have to suffer.”

Thanks to the brave sacrifice of Scientist Grimalda and his Scientific team of Scientists, we have some small insight into what a cold, dark, hungry world it might be without fossil fuels.

Thank goodness for useful idiots.

And that’ll do for this short ‘n’ snappy Sunday Session, dear reader. Grateful for the miracles of modern medicine, we’re heading back to the couch to find a mindless show to binge watch while we await our food delivery. A hot toddy or two ought to knock this bug on the head in the meantime. Tune in again next week when Bill will be back with his regular weekday missives. Whatever you’re up to this weekend, give a little thanks to the wonders of the modern world… without which, we’d just be a bunch of Grimaldas, lost in the dark."

Until next time...Cheers,
Joel Bowman

"Massive Shrinkflation At Dollar Tree! This Is Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended
Adventures with Danno, 10/23/22:
"Massive Shrinkflation At Dollar Tree! This Is Ridiculous!"
"In today's vlog we are Dollar Tree, and are noticing massive food products that have shrunk in size! We are also noticing a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:

"17 Out-of-Place Artifacts That Suggest High-Tech Civilizations Existed Thousands - or Millions - of Years Ago"

"17 Out-of-Place Artifacts That Suggest High-Tech 
Civilizations Existed Thousands - or Millions - of Years Ago"
by Tara Macisaac

Excerpt: "According to our conventional view of history, humans have only walked the Earth in our present form for some 200,000 years. Much of the mechanical ingenuity we know of in modern times began to develop only a couple hundred years ago, during the Industrial Revolution. However, evidence today alludes to advanced civilizations existing as long as several thousand years ago—or possibly even earlier.

“Oopart” - or “out-of-place artifact” - is the term given to numerous prehistoric objects found in various places across the world today that show a level of technological sophistication incongruous with our present paradigm. Many scientists attempt to explain these ooparts away as natural phenomena. Yet others say that such dismissive explanations only whitewash over the mounting evidence: that prehistoric civilizations had advanced knowledge, and this knowledge was lost over the ages only to be developed anew in modern times.

We will look at a variety of ooparts here, ranging from millions to hundreds of years old in purported age, but all supposedly demonstrating advancement well beyond their time. Whether these are fact or merely fiction we cannot say. We can only offer a glimpse at what’s known, supposed, or hypothesized regarding these phenomena, in the spirit of being open-minded and geared toward real scientific discovery."
View this complete, fascinating, article here:

"How It Really Is"

 

Saturday, October 22, 2022

"People Are Not Paying Their Bills"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 10/22/22:
"People Are Not Paying Their Bills"
"Credit card delinquencies are only going to get worse. Banks are building war chests to combat the delinquencies. Banks are putting up unusual holds on accounts and real estate is still going through the roof."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Greater Than The Sum"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Greater Than The Sum"
In Ancient Greece, philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
wrote “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“How many arches can you count in the below image? If you count both spans of the Double Arch in the Arches National Park in Utah, USA, then two. But since the below image was taken during a clear dark night, it caught a photogenic third arch far in the distance- that of the overreaching Milky Way Galaxy. Because we are situated in the midst of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, the band of the central disk appears all around us.
The sandstone arches of the Double Arch were formed from the erosion of falling water. The larger arch rises over 30 meters above the surrounding salt bed and spans close to 50 meters across. The dark silhouettes across the image bottom are sandstone monoliths left over from silt-filled crevices in an evaporated 300 million year old salty sea. A dim flow created by light pollution from Moab, Utah can also be seen in the distance.”

"Perhaps..."

"Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in 
heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through
 and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy."
~ An Eskimo saying.

"And It Was Pointless..."

“And it was pointless… to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell… for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn’t changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You’re left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is to go on or not. But if you go on, it’s knowing you carry your scars with you.”
- Charles Frazier

“The Immutable Laws of Nature, and Murphy’s Other 15 Laws”

“The Immutable Laws of Nature, and Murphy’s Other 15 Laws”
by Peter McKenzie-Brown

“The Immutable Laws of Nature”

•Law of Mechanical Repair: After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you’ll have to pee.
•Law of Gravity: Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible place.
•Law of Probability: The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.
•Law of Random Numbers: If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal; someone always answers.
•Law of Variable Motion: If you change traffic lanes or checkout queues, the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now.
•Law of the Bath: When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone will ring.
•Law of Close Encounters: The probability of meeting someone you know increases exponentially when you are alongside someone you don’t want to be seen with.
•Law of the Damned Thing: When you try to prove to someone that a machine or device won’t work, it will.
•Law of Biomechanics: The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.
•Law of the Spectator: At any theatrical, musical or sporting event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, for beer, or to the toilet and who leave before the end of the performance or game. Those who occupy the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies and stay seated beyond the end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.
•Law of Coffee: As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your partner will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.
•Murphy’s Law of Lockers: When only 2 people are in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.
•Law of Plane Surfaces: The chance that a slice of marmalade toast will land face down on a floor is directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.
•Law of Logical Argument: Anything is possible when you don’t know what you are talking about.
•Law of Physical Appearance: If clothes fit, they’re ugly.
•Law of Public Speaking: A closed mouth gathers no feet
•Law of Commercial Marketing: As soon as you find a product that you really like, it will cease production or the store will stop selling it.
•Law of Psychosomatic Medicine: If you don’t feel well, make an appointment to see to the doctor and by  the time you get there, you’ll feel better. If you don’t make an appointment you’ll stay sick.

“Murphy’s Other 15 Laws”

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
2. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
3. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
4. A day without sunshine is like, well, night.
5. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
6. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.
7. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
8. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.
9. It is said that if you line up all the cars in the world end-to-end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them.
10. If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.
11. The things that come to those who wait, may be the things left by those who got there first.
12. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
13. Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries.
14. God gave you toes as a device for finding furniture in the dark.
15. When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.”

Chet Raymo, “Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright…”

“Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright…”
by Chet Raymo

“Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet.” You may recall these words from Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.” There is nothing intrinsically cheerful about the world, she says. To live is to die; it’s all part of the bargain. Stars destroy themselves to make the atoms of our bodies. Every creature lives to eat and be eaten. And into this incomprehensible, unfathomable, apparently stochastic melee stumbles… You and I. With qualities that we have - so far - seen nowhere else. Hope. Humor. A sense of justice. A sense of beauty. Gratitude. But also: Anger. Hurt. Despair. Strangers in a strange land.

Galaxies by the billions turn like St. Catherine Wheels, throwing off sparks of exploding stars. Atoms eddy and flow, blowing hot and cold, groping and promiscuous. A wind of neutrinos gusts through our bodies, Energy billows and swells. A myriad of microorganisms nibble at our flesh.

We have a sense that something purposeful is going on, something that involves us. Something secret, holy and fleet. But we haven’t a clue what it is. We make up stories. Stories in which we are the point of it all. We tell the stories over and over. To our children. To ourselves. And the stories fill up the space of our ignorance. Until they don’t. And then the great yawning spaces open again. And time clangs down on our heads like a pummeling rain, like the collapsing ceiling of the sky. Dazed, stunned, we stagger like giddy topers towards our own swift dissolution. Inexplicably praising. Admiring. Wondering. Giving thanks.”
“The Tyger”

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?
And what shoulder, and what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? and what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?”

- William Blake

The Daily "Near You?"

Peterborough, New Hampshire, USA. Thanks for stopping by!