Sunday, February 5, 2023

"The Truth Virus: The Most Dangerous Virus in the World"

"The Truth Virus:
The Most Dangerous Virus in the World"
by Dog Poet

"I’ve got a virus. It doesn’t have a common name because it isn’t a common virus. It’s difficult to catch this virus because there are only so many ways for it to enter your system. You can catch it as a result of extreme trauma which results in all of your defenses being shut down. This includes all subconscious resistance and all systemic defenses. You can catch it as a result of long term abuse. This includes abuse visited upon you or abuse you visit on yourself. Often this abuse comes about because the virus is already looking for a foothold and it will attract one of these two kinds of abuse. You can catch it through diligent and repeated efforts to catch it, in an environment of quietude, created by a relentless persistence of the mind to cease from the production of thought. There are a few other ways.

Once you’ve got this virus there’s no cure for it. Every cell in your body is going to be replaced and the world will gradually - and sometimes not so gradually - take on the appearance of an insane asylum, while also becoming remarkably predictable. People think insanity is unpredictable but that’s just one of the illusions that are part of the ordinary mindset of the collectively insane.

People who have this virus can understand one another without having to say anything at all and if they should speak they are also understood by people who are vulnerable to this virus. This is one of the ways that the virus spreads. The impact of the virus speaking induces trauma that naturally moves toward the extreme. People who do not have the virus - and who are not susceptible to catching it - will not understand a single word being said. It will make them uncomfortable and sometimes it will make them angry but at no time will it be understood.

There’s a lot of news, noise and argument about Howdy Doody’s comprehensive health plan for the Teletubbies. Most people think that some permutation of universal health care is going to be a major step up for American society. They seem to think that having it is somehow going to lead to a more general state of well being among the population. There are several reasons why this isn’t going to make the slightest difference no matter what kind of a program finally gets decided on.

It doesn’t really matter whether you can see a doctor of your choice or not and have some amount of it paid for. It isn’t going to have any positive effect on your health. Health is the result of a few basic things and one of them is youth. The other things are diet and ones mental and emotional state. An awareness of ones relationship to all of these leads to making the right decisions about how one lives their life. A conscious awareness of diet has a profound effect on one’s well being. One’s mental and emotional states also play significant roles. One needs only to study how many stress-related diseases there are to understand this. If you factor bad diet into unbalanced mental and emotional states you’ve got a problem no doctor can deal with, especially if your medical system is of the allopathic variety.

The people who decide what doctors can and cannot do and what doctors can and cannot tell you are permanent bed-partners with various corporations for whom good health is a bad thing. These are the pharmaceutical concerns; the AMA, the hospital equipment industry and related suppliers of related products. These corporations have another relationship with the various food industries in the sense that they will not write or permit policy that impinges on major enterprises that bring you processed foods, fast foods, mystery meats, candy and soft drinks and whatever else hides under that umbrella. What this means is that, according to the capitalist mentality that rules this society, it is possible; it has to be possible and it damn well will be possible to eat anything you want, avoid exercise and generally break any and every rule of intelligent behavior and if there’s a problem they will either cut it out of you or suppress the symptoms until they have to cut it out of you.

Because the will of corporations is the rule of the land, there will be no change in the profit line for participating corporations. What will change will be the language that the non-change is presented in. To see into the black heart of the system in charge of American life you have only to look into the prison industry where 5% of the American public and 25% of the world’s prison population are incarcerated in American prisons. Why is this? It’s a business. Is it coincidence that America uses 60% of the world’s resources as well?

The unstated objective of American society is that a small percentage of its members shall possess the greatest amount of wealth at the expense of everyone else and will then be lauded for their efforts to assist the less fortunate where no such efforts exist. Such a system cannot survive and will not survive and is presently at the state where a number of shell games are being used to give the impression that the system is doing fine (nicely recovering from a bad scare) and going to get better as it approaches the lip of a high cliff. As things begin to fall from the cliff, you will see charts and graphs appear that indicate the true state and direction of the culture and economy but they will probably be holding these charts and graphs upside down.

I see these things and many other things because I have this virus. Others have this virus too and many more are on the verge of infection. The biggest concern of the TPTB is the proliferation of this virus. Their concern about all other viruses, which they manufactured to begin with, is just Slim Shady dining at the Red Herring Restaurant.

With this virus I can see that the appetites and desires being milked by corporations in order to promote and sell their products leads directly to aberrant behavior which leads to the prison industry for those who are not making the laws that route the unfortunate toward the prison or the grave with that long interlude of enslavement at the looping track of life where they chase the uncatchable dream rabbit that is already steaming in the pot of their betters.

With this virus I can look directly at the lies of politicians and religious leaders and hear the truth that spotlights the pies around the corner and their relationship to the pies in the sky which are moving on conveyor belts behind unbreakable Plexiglas. I can see that there are no pies because the pies are only video projections of pies bounced off of a series of mirrors. I can see the people who do no have the virus and I can see the world they are looking at and it turns out that this world is also just a projection bouncing off of mirrors and one of those mirrors is their minds. These projections then activate the furnace in the visceral brain which causes those without the virus to dance like millions of chickens on a hot griddle that somehow got the impression that they are auditioning for American Idol.

It is not possible to create a society, based on the principles that some of us have read and most of us have heard about, when corporations are the ruling authority of the land, because the intent of a corporation is diametrically opposed to the principles that some of us have read and most of us have heard about. You can’t make Beef Stroganoff out of pork rinds and Velveeta but you can convince people that that is what they are eating and that is the point.

There’s a debate that has been going around since Cain brained Abel and that debate centers on whether it is better to have this virus or some form of all the other viruses. The awareness that comes with having this virus can lead to the rack, the auto da fe and other less pleasant locations. Having the other viruses can lead to being a hamster or some part of a compost pile and a fire burns there as well. They can lead to being cannon fodder and the merciless hands of those who practice a form of medicine that has little to do with the stated intentions of the art. The hands of these practitioners are often more dangerous than the problem that brought you there.

Most people spend more than ninety percent of everything they have saved in their lives in the last year of their life on an industry whose purpose is exactly for that reason.

This virus of mine- and perhaps you have it too- is not an easy burden to bear. You can never pull the covers over your head again. You know there’s no monster in the closet but you also know where the real monsters dwell. You are doomed to an unending quarantine even as you move among your fellows. One thing you do acquire as a result of this virus is compassion and, as Lao Tzu said long ago, “Compassion is a weapon from the sky against being dead.” Realization may not be all the things we imagine it to be, but it is preferable to the restless sleep of nightmares wielded by the whip hand of psychopaths."
o
Full screen recommended.
"They Live - Sunglasses"
o
"Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?" But remember: "I didn't say it would be easy. I just said it would be the truth."
- Morpheus

The Poet: Neil Gaiman, "What You Need To Be Warm "

"What You Need To Be Warm" 
by Neil Gaiman

 "A baked potato of a winters night to wrap
your hands around or burn your mouth.
A blanket knitted by your mother's cunning fingers. 
Or your grandmother's.

A smile, a touch, trust, as you walk in from the snow
or return to it, the tips of your ears pricked pink and frozen.
The tink tink tink of iron radiators waking in an old house.

To surface from dreams in a bed, 
burrowed beneath blankets and comforters,
the change of state from cold to warm is all that matters, 
and you think just one more minute snuggled here 
before you face the chill. Just one.

Places we slept as children: 
they warm us in the memory.
We travel to an inside from the outside. 
To the orange flames of the fireplace
or the wood burning in the stove. 

Breath-ice on the inside of windows,
to be scratched off with a fingernail, melted with a whole hand.
Frost on the ground that stays in the shadows, waiting for us.

Wear a scarf. Wear a coat. Wear a sweater. 
Wear socks. Wear thick gloves.

An infant as she sleeps between us. 
A tumble of dogs, a kindle of cats and kittens. 
Come inside. You're safe now.
A kettle boiling at the stove. 
Your family or friends are there. They smile.
Cocoa or chocolate, tea or coffee, 
soup or toddy, what you know you need.
A heat exchange, they give it to you, you take the mug
and start to thaw.

While outside, for some of us, the journey began
as we walked away from our grandparentshouses
away from the places we knew as children: 
changes of state and state and state,
to stumble across a stony desert, or to brave the deep waters,
while food and friends, home, a bed, even a blanket become just memories.

Sometimes it only takes a stranger, in a dark place,
to hold out a badly-knitted scarf, to offer a kind word, 
to say we have the right to be here, 
to make us warm in the coldest season.
You have the right to be here. "

- Neil Gaiman

"How It Really Is"

 

"Too Often..."

"The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world. There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have a potential to turn a life around. It's overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt."
- Leo Buscaglia

"A Must View: Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor, 2/5/23"

Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor, 2/5/23:
"Russia's Deliberate And Methodical Conquest Of Ukraine"
"Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United states and the world. Geopolitics. No ego descriptions. No small talk. Straight to the point. Calls with the relevant analysis only."
Comments here:

"Lt. Col. Daniel Davis Warnings Of Nuclear War: U.S. Has 'No Plan' In Ukraine, This Is Not A 'Video Game'" (Excerpt)

"Lt. Col. Daniel Davis Warnings Of Nuclear War: U.S.
Has 'No Plan' In Ukraine, This Is Not A 'Video Game'"
By Joshua Klein

Excerpt: "Providing new tanks to Ukraine won’t change the reality on the ground of the current conflict with Russia, according to retired Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, who claimed the United States has “no plan” or strategy and warned of the real-world danger of invoking NATO’s “mutual defense” clause, which would trigger a nuclear war.

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Thursday, Davis discussed the situation on the ground in Ukraine. Davis, a Defense Priorities senior fellow and military expert, spent over two decades in active service, which included combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was awarded two Bronze Star medals.

“It just doesn’t work that way in reality.” Calling the recent decision by the U.S., Germany, and other European nations to send tanks to Ukraine a “huge information operation ‘game changer,’” Davis cautioned that “information operations and claims don’t translate into reality on the battlefield.” “From someone who has done combat operations in tank-on-tank fights; in operations patrolling the East-West border during the Cold War and its potential Soviet invasions; and was the second-in-command of an armored cavalry squadron for the First Armored Division in the mid 2000s in Germany; I can tell you that just having NATO tanks does not equal battlefield success,” he explained."

Davis cast doubt on the perception many have on how effective the new tanks will prove on the battlefield. “The problem is that what works on video games and on paper — you have to make it work on the ground,” he said. “And very few people anywhere in the western media or anywhere in the other media, for that matter, understand how combat power is made. And it’s not just the platform, though that is very important, but roughly 90 percent of the success is the people who operate the equipment,” he added.

In order to achieve that, he explained, a “trained individual at each of the positions within a tank” is needed, in addition to “a trained crew that knows how to fight well together.” “And then you have to have a trained platoon, platoons in a company; and a company in the battalion; and if you’re talking about the inner-level operations, battalions within brigades etc,” he said. “So all of those are necessary and they all take time,” he added.

Recalling his unit’s “intense training” in Europe and Saudi Arabia prior to battle in order to “replicate” how war would play out, Davis noted that it had all taken place with military officials in key positions with many years of experience - something he asserted could not be “manufactured.”

“You can’t send 500 [Ukrainian] dudes to Germany and conduct six weeks of maneuver training and think you’re going to get the same output, because those guys don’t have the experience,” he said. “They don’t even have the baseline understanding that we had a whole career and our whole training before we even arrived at that one year preparation.”

Davis suggests imagining the chances that someone who has “never even seen this equipment” will “have to just fall in on it while they’re in [combat] potentially a few months from now - which is what they’re saying they’re trying to do - and it’s somehow those things are going to be effective in combat.”

“I mean just on the surface of it, that’s ridiculous,” he said. “I mean it’s people who just don’t have any idea of how actual combat power is generated that would believe that. Because maybe it works for movies and in video games - just getting this capacity on your video game and poof, you’ve got the full capacity as though you were fully trained, but it just doesn’t work that way in reality,” he added. “What makes somebody think that just the presence of a different kind of tank is suddenly going to change all that?”
Full, highly recommended article is here:

"There Are Times..."

"There are times the lies get to me, times I weary of battering myself against the obstacles of denial, hatred, fear-induced stupidity, and greed, times I want to curl up and fall into the problem, let it sweep me away as it so obviously sweeps away so many others. I remember a spring day a few years ago, a spring day much like this one, only a little more sun, and warmer. I sat on this same couch and looked out this same window at the same ponderosa pine.

I was frightened, and lonely. Frightened of a future that looks dark, and darker with each passing species, and lonely because for every person actively trying to shut down the timber industry, stop abuse, or otherwise bring about a sustainable and sane way of living, there are thousands who are helping along this not-so-slow train to oblivion. I began to cry.

The tears stopped soon enough. I realized we are not so outnumbered. We are not outnumbered at all. I looked closely, and saw one blade of wild grass, and another. I saw the sun reflecting bright off the needles of pine trees, and I heard the hum of flies. I saw ants walking single file through the dust, and a spider crawling toward the corner of the ceiling. I knew in that moment, as I've known ever since, that it is no longer possible to be lonely, that every creature on earth is pulling in the direction of life- every grasshopper, every struggling salmon, every unhatched chick, every cell of every blue whale - and it is only our own fear that sets us apart. All humans, too, are struggling to be sane, struggling to live in harmony with our surroundings, but it's really hard to let go. And so we lie, destroy, rape, murder, experiment, and extirpate, all to control this wildly uncontrollable symphony, and failing that, to destroy it."
- Derrick Jensen, 
"A Language Older Than Words"

"Strange Prices At Walmart! This Is Absolutely Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 2/5/23:
"Strange Prices At Walmart! This Is Absolutely Ridiculous!"
"In today's vlog we are at Walmart, and are noticing some strange price increases on groceries! 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:
o
If they'll do this for a TV, 
what happens when there's no food?

Saturday, February 4, 2023

"My Cheap Toyota Camry Runs Great; Balloons Flying Over Your House; Scary Times Ahead"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 2/4/23:
"My Cheap Toyota Camry Runs Great; 
Balloons Flying Over Your House; Scary Times Ahead"
Comments here:

"Balloongate Ends, WW3 Escalates"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 2/4/23:
"Balloongate Ends, WW3 Escalates"
"Balloongate continues as the world braces for global conflict. 
It's about to get crazy."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Oltremare"

Ludovico Einaudi, "Oltremare"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe - a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way. 
Along with a bright central core, this stunning galaxy portrait, a composite of image data from amateur and professional telescopes, highlights youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries tracing the galaxy's spiral arms. It also shows off remarkable reddish jets of glowing hydrogen gas. In addition to small companion galaxy NGC 4248 at bottom right, background galaxies can be found scattered throughout the frame. M106, also known as NGC 4258, is a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, seen across the spectrum from radio to X-rays. Active galaxies are powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.”

"The Ironic, The Tragic Thing..."

“One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless… I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side.”

“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.”
- Henry Miller

Chet Raymo, "Lessons"

"Lessons"
by Chet Raymo

"There is a four-line poem by Yeats, called "Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors":

"What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass."

Like so many of the short poems of Yeats, it is hard to know what the poet had in mind, who exactly were the unknown instructors, and if unknown how could they instruct. But as I opened my volume of "The Poems" this morning, at random, as in the old days people opened the Bible and pointed a finger at a random passage seeking advice or instruction, this is the poem that presented itself. Unsuperstitious person that I am, it seemed somehow apropos, since outside the window, in a thick Irish mist, every blade of grass has its hanging drop.

Those pendant drops, the bejeweled porches of the spider webs, the rose petals cupping their glistening dew - all of that seems terribly important here, now, in the silent mist. There is not much good to say about getting old, but certainly one advantage of the gathering years is the falling away of ego and ambition, the felt need to be always busy, the exhausting practice of accumulation. Who were the instructors who tried to teach me the practice of simplicity when I was young - the poets and the saints, the buddhas who were content to sit beneath the bo tree while the rest of us scurried here and there? I scurried, and I'm not sorry I did, but I must have tucked their lessons into the back of my mind, a cache of wisdom to be opened at my leisure.

Whatever it was they sought to teach has come to pass. All things hang like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass."

"Don't Worry About Any of This"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 2/4/23:
"Don't Worry About Any of This"
"The job numbers came in and they were absolutely amazing. There is not a care in the world because everybody has a job. You don’t have to worry about inflation anymore or the fact that people cannot afford to heat their homes."
Comments here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Koln, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Thanks for stopping by!

"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, "The Cost of Living"

"Knowing..."

“Knowing can be a curse on a person’s life. I’d traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn’t know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can’t ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.”
- Sue Monk Kidd

"How It Really Is"

"Thailand Declares Death Con 3 On Pfizer"

"Thailand Declares Death Con 3 On Pfizer"
By Chris Black

"A few days after receiving her booster injection, the Thai princess “suddenly” collapsed. Three weeks later she remains in a coma. The Thai Royal Family was just informed that the initial “bacterial infection” diagnosis was in fact always untrue; thus, from the very start there was a coordinated cover-up by the BigPharma captured authorities.

The Thai king is finally making the obvious connection that Pfizer’s mRNA “vaccine” is a slow kill bioweapon.

He will be declaring the Pfizer contract null and void due to fraud, which will result in the stripping away of all immunity. Lawsuits and compensation payments just in Thailand will be greater than the billions in COVID profits that Pfizer stole on the backs of taxpayers (theft)."
Comments here:
o
You were warned right here since May 28, 2021, and again and again...
o
"Everyone Vaccinated For Covid Will DIE, Warns French Virologist"
"There is no chance of long-term survival for anyone who received a Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) injection, according to leading French virologist Luc Montagnier. Everyone who is getting jabbed for the Chinese Virus will die, he reportedly stated during a recent interview, which you can watch at Brighteon.com. “There is no hope and no possible treatment for those who have already been vaccinated,” Montagnier stated plainly during the segment. “We must be prepared to cremate the bodies.” After studying at length the ingredients contained in the injections and what they do, Montagnier came to the conclusion that every single person who gets the shot will eventually die from antibody-dependent enhancement, or ADE. “That is all that can be said,” he added."
Full article here:

May God have mercy on you if you've taken the shot...

"How to Love the Bomb"

"How to Love the Bomb"
Powell's rate hike, climbing Mt. Midas and
 the "greatest speculative bubble in history"...
by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - “They blew up the greatest speculative bubble of all time...” So began Investment Director Tom Dyson’s research note to Bonner Private Research members earlier this week... We’ll return to Tom’s observations in a moment... but first, let’s check in with the markets. It was another rough and tumble week, dear reader, with plenty of thrills and spills for the brave and the brainless.

Speaking of which, woe to he who follows the headline news! Here’s a smattering from the sages in the MSM over the past few days...

“Dow closes more than 350 points higher...” ~ CNBC (Wednesday)
“Dow falls 275 points on jobless claims...” ~ Investors Business Daily (Thursday)
And, our personal favorite, courtesy of YahooFinance (on Friday): “Why you should stop caring about the Dow Jones Industrial Average...”

“…and learn to love the bomb,” we might have added.

The major indices ended the week mixed, with the Dow slightly lower, by 0.15% and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq higher by 1.6% and 3.3% respectively. The Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq are up 2.4, 8.7 and 15.6% year-to-date.

Climbing Mt. Midas: Meanwhile, gold too has been up and down like a cheerleader’s... acrobatics. The Midas Metal popped $30/oz on Tuesday... and another $30/oz on Wednesday, both moves on strong volume. So far, so good... Then, just when the psychological $2,000/oz threshold was within reach... Big Au fell $40/oz on Thursday... and $50/oz on Friday, to end the week down $70. (These are rough numbers, as you see.) The spot price was last seen hovering around $1,865/oz, still up over 6% for 2023.

It was a tough week in the energy markets, too, as investors fretted about demand from China and substantial US inventory builds (coming off a pretty dry base, it must be said). A barrel of black gold (WTI) goes for around $73 and change.

And finally, over in the crypto world, top dog Bitcoin smashed through the $24,000 mark on Thursday, before “settling” around $23,300 on Friday. (“Settling,” that is, to the extent that a currency which has appreciated over 40% year-to-date can be said to have “settled.”)

But all eyes this week were on Jerome Powell and the Fed’s decision to raise rates for the 8th time since March, this time by a quarter of a percent. Mr. Powell assured pundits that it was too early to “declare victory” over transitory inflation just yet...“We will need substantially more evidence to be confident that inflation is on a long, sustained downward path,” said he.

Toggling between Mr. Powell’s remarks and the price action in the market, we imagined the following conversation...

Investors: “So... a rate cut coming soon then, eh?”
Mr. Powell: “Given our outlook, I don’t see us cutting rates this year...”
Investors: “OK... then howzabout a pause?”
Mr. Powell: “Did you hear what I just said?”
Investors (to each other): “Whatevs. The man has no idea what he’s talking about. Buy!!!”

And that, dear reader, is how you get speculative bubbles and the madness of crowds… and how you learn to stop fearing and love the bomb. Which brings us back to Tom’s research note to BPR members from Wednesday. Here’s a key passage... “They blew up the greatest speculative bubble of all time and now that bubble wants to deflate. There’s so much malinvestment. Think of all the terrible decisions businesses made when $18 trillion of bonds were trading at negative yields and the Fed was saying, in 2021, “we aren’t even thinking about thinking about” raising interest rates."

It all needs to be liquidated. Giant losses need to be realized. Huge mistakes need to be corrected. So we’re now in a bear market. That’s just the nature of artificial, credit-driven booms. They end. Bull markets turn to bear markets.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government is the most indebted it has ever been. Its spending is out of control. It’s made endless promises it’ll never be able to keep. A bear market will put unbearable stress on government finances as tax receipts crash and expenditures balloon. They should have kept something in reserve for a rainy day, but they didn’t. They just borrowed and spent without any thought of ever having to pay it back.
Click for larger size.
You can see the problem. A bear market will destroy the government’s finances. And the first place this problem manifests itself is illiquidity in the government bond market, which is what we started seeing last year. (The government’s gargantuan appetite for dollars can’t be met by investors at prevailing interest rates.)

The solution, from the government’s perspective, is currency debasement. Effectively, what debasement does is push losses onto the currency market and off nominal prices in the bond and stock markets. It socializes losses. It turns the dollar into a release valve. It puts a bid under nominal stock, bond and real estate prices.

And that’s what we’ve been calling inflation volatility or “inflate or die”. It’s the vacillation between deflation and currency debasement by the Feds, as they try to keep the government solvent during the collapse of the greatest ever debt bubble."

"Ridiculous Price Increases At Kroger! This Is Frustrating! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 2/4/23:
"Ridiculous Price Increases At Kroger! 
This Is Frustrating! What's Next?"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases on groceries! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and the empty shelves situation! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:

Friday, February 3, 2023

"We're Entering A Full Blown Crisis; Credit Card Limits Coming"

Jeremiah Babe, 2/3/23:
"We're Entering A Full Blown Crisis;
 Credit Card Limits Coming"
Comments here:

"Oh Sh*t, Here We Go"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted news, 2/3/23:
"Oh Sh*t, Here We Go"
"Overnight the head of NATO said that that Russia is mobilizing an additional 200,000 troops readying a massive offensive. Poland is ready to send F-16 jets to Ukraine in coordination with NATO. And Ukraine’s head of intelligence says Crimea will be retaken by Ukraine. Colonel Douglas MacGregor joins Clayton Morris to talk about the latest developments."
Comments here:

"15 Stats That Prove Working-Class Families Are Getting Hit From All Sides"

Full screen recommended.
"15 Stats That Prove Working-Class
 Families Are Getting Hit From All Sides"
by Epic Economist

"Millions of working-class families are living on the edge, and they are struggling to keep their dreams alive in the face of overwhelming odds. These people are getting hit from all sides in today's economy. Working-class Americans have been facing some of the hardest economic challenges for decades. Despite being the group that contributed the most to the rise in overall productivity levels, their wages have fallen behind all other income groups, rising at the slowest pace compared to middle-class, and upper-class Americans. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average hourly wage of working-class Americans adjusted for inflation has only risen by 0.6% per year from 1980 to 2022.

This means, that over the past 42 years, this group has seen a mere 25.2% rise in their incomes, compared to an average increase of 160.3% for upper-income individuals. But the lack of wage growth is not just a problem for workers and their families, it also has broader implications for the economy as a whole. When working-class Americans have less money to spend, they are less able to contribute to the economy through consumption. This can lead to lower economic growth and a decrease in demand for goods and services, which in turn can result in job losses and further economic hardship.

Home and rent prices are soaring above what most blue-collar workers can pay. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, in 2022, the average fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment was $1,192, while the hourly wage needed to afford this rent without paying more than 30% of income was $24. However, the average pay of a minimum wage worker is only $7.25. No wonder why more than half of labor-class renters in the US are cost-burdened, with approximately 11.2 million working-class households in the US paying more than 50% of their income on housing. Last year, only 28 affordable and available rental homes existed for every 100 extremely low-income renters, making it increasingly difficult for them to afford adequate and stable housing.

Working-class individuals are typically low-income workers, and the amount they make every month is often insufficient to cover everyday necessities, including food and utilities. And despite government assistance programs, many families still struggle to put food on the table and keep their lights on due to the record rise in consumer prices. Labor Department data shows that the average household food insecurity rate for working-class families is 32%. In 2022, the average monthly cost of utilities for a low-income US household took over 10% of their pay every month. That’s why approximately 22% of such families were unable to pay their energy bills on time, while about one in five had to choose between paying for food or utilities.

Financial insecurity, job loss, debt, and limited upward mobility are just some of the obstacles they must navigate in order to make ends meet. The grim reality facing these families is reflected in the statistics we compiled in today's video, which tell a tale of struggle, hardship, and despair. These numbers don't just demonstrate the difficulties faced by working-class families, they also shine a light on the systemic issues that impact our entire society."
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"It’s Too Late For NATO To Win The War Against Russia… Here’s Why" (Excerpt)

"It’s Too Late For NATO To Win 
The War Against Russia… Here’s Why"
by Mike Adams

Excerpt: "While the prostituted propaganda media absurdly claims that Russia is retreating and NATO forces are winning the war in Ukraine, the truth is far more sobering: NATO has already lost the war with Russia. Here’s how we know: A land war with a major military power is a long, drawn out slug fest that requires the sustained expenditure of enormous quantities of munitions: Artillery shells, rockets, missiles, small arms cartridges and so on.

To supply these munitions, a fighting force needs to be backed by a strong munitions manufacturing infrastructure or have huge stockpiles that can sustain the war while supplies are depleted. The United States has neither. No sufficiently large stockpiles and no existing munitions manufacturing infrastructure that can keep pace with Russia, which at times has expended up to 20,000 artillery rounds per day. (Note: The existing munitions infrastructure in the United States can’t even churn out that many rounds in a full month of production…)

Consider this recent article from Breitbart.com: "Endless Arms Flow to Ukraine Raises Worry over U.S. Military Readiness Against China", which warns that U.S. precision-guided munitions would run out in just one week: "A recently-published think-tank analysis warned that as it currently stands, the U.S. would run out of long-range, precision-guided munitions in a war with China over Taiwan in less than a week — a problem that author Seth Jones called one of “empty bins.” “The United States has been slow to replenish its arsenal, and the DoD has only placed on contract a fraction of the weapons it has sent to Ukraine,” Jones, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wrote."
Full article is here:
Full video is here:

"Breaking News: Here's Why They Don't Shoot Down The China Balloon"

Canadian Prepper, 2/3/23:
"Breaking News: Here's Why They 
Don't Shoot Down The China Balloon"
Comments here:

Judge Napolitano ,"Scott Ritter, Is The U.S. Forcing Putin's Hand In The Ukraine War?"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 2/3/23:
"Scott Ritter, Is The U.S. Forcing 
Putin's Hand In The Ukraine War?"
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Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“This shock wave plows through space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Moving toward to bottom of this beautifully detailed color composite, the thin, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge on. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its narrow appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula.
About 5 light-years long and a mere 800 light-years away, the Pencil Nebula is only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter and is the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar gas.”

Chet Raymo, “We Are Such Stuff...”

“We Are Such Stuff...”
by Chet Raymo

“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again.”

"Caliban is talking to Stephano and Trinculo in Shakespeare's “Tempest”, telling them not to be "afeard" of the mysterious place they find themselves, an island seemingly beset with magic, strangeness, ineffable presences. And you and I, and, yes, all of us, find ourselves inexplicably thrown up on this island that is the world, and we too, if we are attentive, hear the strange music, the sounds and sweet airs, that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere

No, I'm not talking about the usual ubiquitous clamor, the roar of internal combustion, the blare of the television, the beeping of mobile phones. I'm not talking about the Limbaughs and the Becks, the televangelists, the blathering politicians, the twitterers and bloggers (including this one). I'm not even talking about the exquisite music of Mozart, the poetry of Wordsworth, the theories of Einstein.

I'm talking about the sounds we hear in utter silence, in moments of repose, in the heart of darkness, when we are a little bit afraid, disoriented, off kilter. A strange music that comes from beyond our knowing, a felt meaning. You've heard it. I've heard it. You'd have to be deaf not to have heard it.

Where we differ is how we describe it. Mostly, we give its source a name. Angels. Fairies. Gods or demons. Yahweh. Allah. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Nixies, E.T.s, shades and shadows. Naiads, dryads, Ariel and Puck. A host of invisible creatures who are, in one way or another, images of ourselves. And, in naming, we are a little less afraid.

And some of us are just content to listen, to take delight. Having woken to the inexplicable mystery of the world- the sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not- we let the music lull us back into a sweet slumber, a kind of dreamless dream, a reverie. Does reverie share a deep root with reverence? I don't know.”

"How the Brain Stops Time"

"How the Brain Stops Time"
by Jeff Wise

"One of the strangest side-effects of intense fear is time dilation, the apparent slowing-down of time. It's a common trope in movies and TV shows, like the memorable scene from "The Matrix" in which time slows down so dramatically that bullets fired at the hero seem to move at a walking pace. In real life, our perceptions aren't keyed up quite that dramatically, but survivors of life-and-death situations often report that things seem to take longer to happen, objects fall more slowly, and they're capable of complex thoughts in what would normally be the blink of an eye.

Now a research team from Israel reports that not only does time slow down, but that it slows down more for some than for others. Anxious people, they found, experience greater time dilation in response to the same threat stimuli. An intriguing result, and one that raises a more fundamental question: how, exactly, does the brain carry out this remarkable feat?

Researcher David Eagleman has tackled his very issue in a very clever way. He reasoned that when time seems to slow down in real life, our senses and cognition must somehow speed up-either that, or time dilation is merely an illusion. This is the riddle he set out to solve. "Does the experience of slow motion really happen," Eagleman says, "or does it only seem to have happened in retrospect?" To find out, he first needed a way to generate fear of sufficient intensity in his experimental subjects. Instead of skydiving, he found a thrill ride near the university campus called Suspended Catch Air Device, an open-air tower from which participants are dropped, upside down, into a net 150 feet below. There are no harnesses, no safety lines. Subject plummet in free fall for three seconds, then hit the net at 70 miles per hour.

Was it scary enough to generate a sense of time dilation? To see, Eagleman asked subjects who'd already taken the plunge to estimate how long it took them to fall, using a stopwatch to tick off what they felt to be an equivalent amount of time. Then he asked them to watch someone else fall and then estimate the elapsed time for their plunge in the same way. On average, participants felt that their own experience had taken 36 percent longer. Time dilation was in effect.

Next, Eagleman outfitted his test subjects with a special device that he and his students had constructed. They called it the perceptual chronometer. It's a simple numeric display that straps to a user's wrist, with a knob on the side let the researchers adjust the rate at which the numbers flash. The idea was to dial up the speed of the flashing until it was just a bit too quick for the subject to read while looking at it in a non-stressed mental state. Eagleman reasoned that, if fear really does speed up our rate of perception, then once his subjects were in the terror of freefall, they should be able to make out the numbers on the display. As it turned out, they couldn't. That means that fear does not actually speed up our rate of perception or mental processing. Instead, it allows us to remember what we do experience in greater detail. Since our perception of time is based on the number of things we remember, fearful experiences thus seem to unfold more slowly.

Eagleman's findings are important not just for understanding the experience of fear, but for the very nature of consciousness. After all, the test subjects who fell from the SCAD tower certainly believed, as they accelerated through freefall, that they knew what the experience was like at that very moment. They thought that it seemed to be moving slowly. Yet Eaglemen's findings suggest that that sensation could only have been superimposed after the fact. The implication is that we don't really have a direct experience of what we're feeling ‘right now,' but only a memory - an unreliable memory - of what we thought it felt like some seconds or milliseconds ago. The vivid present tense we all think we inhabit might itself be a retroactive illusion."