Monday, February 6, 2023

Bill Bonner, "The Fed's Tragicomedy"

"The Fed's Tragicomedy"
Two scripts... with heroes and villains... 
elites and plebs... winners and losers...
by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - "In theaters now. Two plays. Two endings. Both pathetic. In one, the Republicans and Democrats pretend to battle it out over the federal budget. To bring you fully into the picture, the feds owe $31 trillion…give or take a trillion. They can’t pay it. And if interest rates are headed into ‘normal’ territory (2% or 3% above inflation), they can’t keep up with the interest payments. At 7% interest, the entire federal debt would cost more than $2 trillion per year in debt service. The feds don’t have that kind of money.

Last week brought ‘good’ news from the economy. Jobs are apparently plentiful. And that’s ‘bad’ news for investors, because it means the Fed has to keep nudging interest rates upward. Otherwise, workers might actually get a raise…driving up prices for everything.

So higher rates are coming down the pike. And now, if the federal government borrows more money, it drives up interest rates even more, brings on recession, depresses federal tax receipts and makes the deficits even bigger.

But one way or another, the federal government must finance its spending. Apart from borrowing, the only other choices are to cut spending…or ‘print’ the money. These are the subjects of the two dramas now on the big stage.

Same Old Script: The curtain goes up on the first one as the newly Republican House of Representatives brings out a cannon: the debt ceiling. They say they are going to fire it if spending…some spending…on projects they don’t care for…is not cut. And so, the dramatis personae are in place. The battle begins. Alvaro Vargas Llosa explains what happens next: "Here we go again. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warns that the federal government’s borrowing limit has been reached. Even with Treasury taking “extraordinary measures,” the government’s ability to meet payments will be exhausted in a few months.

Leaders of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives say the House won’t vote to raise the debt ceiling, which would allow further borrowing, without spending cuts. But the White House and Democratic leaders reject that proposition. Soon the bond markets will be roiled. Fear mongers will raise the alarm that the United States will default on its bond obligations and will no longer be able to make Social Security and Medicare payments.

The White House will bet that the standoff hurts the opposition, which it will, and then a deal will be reached that, in essence, involves the GOP-led House caving in while the White House and the Democrats agree to meaningless budget reductions (in reality, reductions in planned increases, not real cuts) that, if they ever materialize, will change little in the grand scheme of things. All this as the U.S. balance sheet continues its descent into banana republic unviability."

We’ve been here before. Nothing indicates that the current fight between the Republican House and the Democratic White House over the debt ceiling won’t follow a similar script.

Mock Showdown: Of course, it will follow the same script. The debt ceiling threatened to block federal spending 78 times in the last 63 years. And each time, the politicos voted to raise it. If there is one thing Republicans and Democrats agree on, it’s this: nothing can be allowed to interfere with the money machine. And the real role – for members of both parties – is the same…to keep the machine well-oiled and well fueled, taking money from the public – via taxing, borrowing, or inflation – and transferring it to the groups favored by the elite.

While the politicians are preparing a mock showdown over the budget, the Fed is putting on a spectacle of its own. It’s pretending to ‘hold the line’…firmly and resolutely promising to fight inflation until inflation has no fight left in it. Two percent is the limit. No more. No less. (Where that comes from, who knows?) And the Fed will continue to raise interest rates, perhaps only by ‘baby steps,’ until inflation bows down, bends its neck and offers its sword to the Federal Open Market Committee.

That at least, is the official script. Mr. Powell, et al, are supposed to keep up the fight until he can announce a ‘mission accomplished.’ But here again…the show is a fake. The outcome is a foregone conclusion. The Powell Fed – like the McCarthy House – will cave as soon as it faces a worthy enemy. The script may call for it to stick to its post, like the 300 Spartans. But in 1988…2000…2007…2020 – every time the Fed has faced a real enemy…a stock crash, recession, even a germ – it cut rates sharply, dropped its weapons, fled the field and claimed not only victory, but moral ascendance.

Disgraced Again: At the end of the ‘90s, Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers graced the cover of TIME magazine as the Committee to Save the World. What did they do to earn such fame and glory? They made more credit (and debt) available to troubled borrowers.

Then, following the mortgage finance crisis on Wall Street, Ben Bernanke did the same thing. He cut short the correction by making more credit available. He then had the cheek to claim he had not been routed in panic. He said he had the “Courage to Act.”

Most recently, the Fed could have fought a last-ditch battle in 2020, forcing the feds to come to terms with their own over-spending. The politicians gave away trillions in stimmies, PPP loans, and other boondoggles. Where did they get the money? From the Fed. Instead of holding the line, the Fed disgraced itself once again. It shamelessly turned tail...and ran through the bushes where the rabbits couldn’t go, ‘printing’ an unprecedented $4.5 trillion.

Will either of today’s performances turn out differently? Under real pressure both Congress and the Fed will do what they are paid to do; they will keep the money coming to themselves…and the elite who support them. Stay tuned."

Jim Kunstler, "Where Do Things Stand?"

"Where Do Things Stand?"
by Jim Kunstler

“The world, however, is moving on from the Davos unitary world governance prescription, to de-centralization and multi polarity – in pursuit of the renaissance of autonomy, historic values and sovereignty.” - Alastair Crooke

"Have you forgotten the Chinese balloon incident yet? Don’t worry, you will. It was just a momentary distraction from the slow-motion crack-up of our country. And it came along with a boffo jobs report, led by hiring in “leisure and hospitality.” Oddly, the same month saw a record car re-po number, even higher than the depths of the 2009 Great Financial Fiasco — raising the question: how will all those people without cars actually get to Disney World? And what will they use for money there?

America was bundled up last week, huddled beside space heaters and wood-stoves against an Arctic super-blast that also distracted us from the global warming scare-talk which the agit-prop industry has ramped up to replace the disintegrating Covid-19 story in the public’s attention-space. Lesson: The more impotent and inept our government gets, the more it will seek the appearance of exquisite control over everything… employment… the weather. The key fallacy of the climate change crusade is that there’s nothing our government can do about it except posture and pretend - and issue more idiotic regulations that prevent people from doing business and leading their lives.

The citizenry, a.k.a. the public, has been successfully divided and groomed into two political factions. On the Left: those who believe anything government officials tell them, no matter how absurd. Most of that faction’s senior members used to be people who believed nothing the government told them, but then they got “Woke.” Now, they believe that mRNA vaccines are really good for you… that basing all social conduct on skin color will exorcise racism from society… and that sexual confusion is the highest-and-best psychological state of being. If you try to debate any of these points with them, they’ll block or cancel you. If that doesn’t work, they’ll orchestrate a new episode of political chaos as an excuse to push you around.

On the Right: those skeptical and worried about government overreach, those opposed to meddlesome official censorship, those who resist the manipulation of language to invert and subvert a formerly coherent value-system, those who recognize a hustle when they see it and coercion when they feel it, those who respect the long struggle of mankind to construct a comprehensible view of reality and mechanisms for testing it. Those who insist on a certain degree of personal liberty under a fair and upright rule-of-law.

Nothing is more self-evident than how implacably at-odds these two factions are. The ascendence of the Left follows exactly our glide-path into collapse. The so-called mass formation phenomenon rises as a function of suppressed panic over America’s wobbling business model, especially among the managerial class and the “experts” who are supposedly in charge. The more their management and expertise fails, the more desperately they seek to control every lever of daily life. Pretty soon, their policies become mindless - in the pure sense of the word.

The Right perceives that its opponents have lost their minds, but there is no arguing with people who are literally insane. What must be done is to wrest political power away from them. In the madness of the Left, power is solely a destructive force, and coercion is a form of pleasure-seeking. Unable to control the dynamics in-play, they seek to wreck the dynamics, to induce as much chaos as possible, so as to punish the non-insane.

That is exactly what the Green New Deal does. Unable to control the dynamic disruptive changes in the global oil-and-gas industry that our high-tech economies depend on, the Left pretends that there is work-around “Green” energy system that can replace fossil fuels with wind and solar devices that don’t scale up and which require fossil fuels to make and deploy. It’s slick and grandiosely hypothetical (i.e., wishful thinking), and the net effect of this major crusade will be to hasten the collapse and impoverishment of our society (the punishment).

Keep all this in mind as you watch the Congressional inquiries now just getting underway. Much as they are likely to reveal the insane and arguably criminal machinations of a panicked bureaucracy, and the figures who run it, the Left will remain impervious to any truthful revelations that emerge. Of course, many of these officials are culpable for actions extremely damaging to the people of this land, and the masses on the Left who supported those actions - such as mandatory vaccinations - will be among the most damaged. They will find it hard to admit that they did it to themselves.

So, the hearings upcoming, such as the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, will probably not change the minds of your friends and relatives stuck in the mass formation of Jacobin-Wokery. But the hearings will be a step in wresting power away from these maniacs. Part of that step will be to demonstrate the dishonesty of recent elections, so as to remove the implanted mechanisms that enabled that dishonesty: mail-in, no-ID ballots, “motor-voter” laws, electronic vote-counting machines. If that can be fixed, the left can be voted out of power.

The hearings will take place against the back-drop of our deteriorating charade over in Ukraine. The Zelensky regime that we used to foment this conflict with Russia is losing its mojo for creating chaos in that corner of the world. The newly-announced tank caper will amount to nothing. Russia’s war-aim is simple: the elimination of chaos on its border. This is something that America’s Party of Chaos can’t understand. How will it react when chaos gets cancelled in Ukraine? Probably by attempting to foment chaos in another corner of the world - another reason that power must be wrested away from it.

Also, of course, there is the deteriorating economic scene in the background of things political. The insolvency contagion is spreading now among the big boys, the global corps, the national brands, the car-makers, the giant retailers who are shuttering their outlets by the hundreds. This is actually a positive trend. As the giants fall, their roles in daily life will be assumed by the smaller organisms occupying niches in local economic ecologies. This is one bright horizon for young people otherwise sunk in hopelessness. Get ready to do business! Opportunity awaits! When you embrace it, your insanity will dissolve and the world will look meaningful again."

Sunday, February 5, 2023

"Gas Stations Will Go Empty And Fuel Prices Will Shoot Up In The Coming Weeks As Supplies Run Dry"

Full screen recommended.
"Gas Stations Will Go Empty And Fuel Prices Will
 Shoot Up In The Coming Weeks As Supplies Run Dry"
By Epic Economist

"A new Bloomberg report exposes that energy supply shortages are emerging all around the nation, with gasoline and diesel stockpiles still at the lowest levels in a decade. In less than a month, the national average price of a gallon of gasoline rose by over 40 cents, and GasBuddy experts anticipate this increase in fuel prices will double over the next 30 days, sparking even more financial stress for Americans, as well as supply chain disruptions, and price volatility in most segments of the industry.

On Monday, Bloomberg published an exposé explaining that the European Union’s ban against fuel imports made from Russian crude oil takes effect over the next couple of weeks, and the United States will likely see a major impact on its fuel stockpiles, and conditions can get extremely dire for East Coast markets. Such market imbalances could trigger a ripple effect across the nation, experts say. Particularly because gasoline stockpiles already are at the lowest in about a decade, with inventories in most regions still below the five-year average for this time of year. To prevent the East Cost and the rest of the country from running out of fuel, suppliers will need to get creative, they added.

“Production remains the big problem, and traders appear to be betting on continued tight supply because of this fact,” Irina Slav says. “There is simply not enough refining capacity in the U.S. to ramp up production fast enough to respond to demand levels,” she continued. At the same time, the national average has climbed by more than 9% since the end of last year – the biggest jump to start a year since 2009, according to Bespoke Investment Group. With all that said, industry analysts alert that the average price could hit $4 over the next 30 days.

Meanwhile, refinery capacity is still being compromised by several disrupting factors. CNN reports that the extreme weather in much of the United States near the end of last year resulted in a series of outages at the refineries that produce the gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel that keep the economy humming.

For example, Colorado’s sole refinery, the Suncor refinery outside of Denver, was forced to halt operations due to freezing temperatures. When the refinery tried to restart, it suffered a fire, and equipment got damaged. Suncor has indicated that the refinery could be offline for weeks. No wonder why gas prices in Colorado have surged by nearly $1 a gallon over the past 30 days.Refineries elsewhere have been sidelined by extreme weather as well. At the moment, U.S. refineries are operating at just 84% of capacity, down from the mid-90% range at the start of December, Bespoke data shows.

Overall, price volatility and shortages may have far-reaching and devastating effects on many sectors of the economy and the daily lives of Americans. The lack of enough fuels could rapidly bring the nation to a standstill because the very fabric of society is built upon the ability to move and transport goods. The cascading effects of the shortages would be felt by every one of us, from the loss of jobs and homes to the shortages of essential goods and services. The economy could be pushed to the brink, as businesses struggle to keep their doors open, and the nation itself could be plunged into darkness if the energy sector fails. This is a very dire scenario that we are facing – one that must be averted at all costs." (And just how do we do that? - CP)

"Things Are Too Good To Be True; Starving Americans Dumpster Diving In Texas; Don't Be Stupid"

Jeremiah Babe, 2/5/23:
"Things Are Too Good To Be True; 
Starving Americans Dumpster Diving In Texas; Don't Be Stupid"
Comments here:

"A Sad Fact..."

"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."
- Richard Ford
o
“Passion doesn’t count the cost. Pascal said that the heart has its reasons that reason takes no account of. If he meant what I think, he meant that when passion seizes the heart it invents reasons that seem not only plausible but conclusive to prove that the world is well lost for love. It convinces you that honor is well sacrificed and that shame is a cheap price to pay. Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde, Parnell and Kitty O’Shea. And if it doesn’t destroy it dies. It may be then that one is faced with the desolation of knowing that one has wasted the years of one’s life, that one’s brought disgrace upon oneself, endured the frightful pang of jealousy, swallowed every bitter mortification, that one’s expended all one’s tenderness, poured out all the riches of one’s soul on a poor drab, a fool, a peg on which one hung one’s dreams, who wasn’t worth a stick of chewing gum.”
- W. Somerset Maugham
o
“Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”
- Sydney J. Harris

“Get Up Off Your Knees!”

“Get Up Off Your Knees!”
On your knees you may live to see another day, 
but you’ll never live to see better days.
by Robert Gore 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We Popped the Balloon"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 2/5/23:
"We Popped the Balloon"
"The Chinese weather balloon was shot down over Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. My subscriber, Bob and his wife Josie noticed a balloon over their house. They began to take footage when they heard F-16 fly overhead. What they got was absolutely amazing."
Comments here:

"Everything You Need To Know About The Lab Leak (But Were Not Allowed To Ask)" Excerpt

"Everything You Need To Know About The Lab Leak
 (But Were Not Allowed To Ask)"
by Pat Fidopiastis

"Between 2014 and 2019, US tax dollars were funneled to the Wuhan Institute of Virology via EcoHealth Alliance. Given that US scientists have far more virology expertise than the Chinese, this begs an obvious question: what type of research were US tax dollars paying for in Wuhan, China? Dr. Fauci’s surprising statement in an interview might provide the short answer to this question: “You don’t want to go to Hoboken, NJ or Fairfax, VA to be studying the bat-human interface that might lead to an outbreak, so you go to China.”

Given what we’ve endured for the past three years, Fauci’s “so you go to China” comment suggests that he hadn’t considered the global implications of a highly transmissible coronavirus leaking from a Chinese lab plagued by serious safety issues.

Unwilling to admit that he, EcoHealth Alliance, and their Chinese collaborators, are suspects in one of the largest crimes against humanity, Fauci instead opted to conspire with his boss, Francis Collins, to declare “lab leak” a “destructive conspiracy” that must be “put down.” Sadly, it’s clear that from the beginning, these two distinguished scientists made up their minds about virus origin without evidence from both sides of the debate.

Even worse, renowned scientists that rely on Fauci for their research funding, fearful of sanctions being placed on their life’s work, rallied around the “anti-lab leak” stance. One of the premier scientific journals, Science, whose political bias has become very apparent, attempted to provide legitimacy to Fauci’s position by publishing a paper by authors that claimed “dispositive evidence” that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from an animal at the Wuhan market. This paper allegedly “crushed” the lab-leak hypothesis, despite leaving much room for debate."
Full article is here:
If I were facing a firing squad, and we all are,
I'd at least want to know and understand how and why...
Wouldn't you?

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind XII: “In the Moment”

Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind XII: “In the Moment”

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The Horsehead Nebula is one of the most famous nebulae on the sky. It is visible as the dark indentation to the orange emission nebula at the far right of the featured picture. The horse-head feature is dark because it is really an opaque dust cloud that lies in front of the bright emission nebula. 
Like clouds in Earth's atmosphere, this cosmic cloud has assumed a recognizable shape by chance. After many thousands of years, the internal motions of the cloud will surely alter its appearance. The emission nebula's orange color is caused by electrons recombining with protons to form hydrogen atoms. Toward the lower left of the image is the Flame Nebula, an orange-tinged nebula that also contains intricate filaments of dark dust. Two prominent reflection nebulas are visible: round IC 432 on the far left, and blue NGC 2023 just to the lower left of the Horsehead nebula. Each glows primarily by reflecting the light of their central star.

"We All Got Problems..."

“We all got problems. But there’s a great book out called “Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart.” Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin’ about what’s wrong, because everybody’s had a rough time, in one way or another.”
- Quincy Jones

"Warning: Bank Runs Are Coming & World War 3 w/Gerald Celente"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 2/5/23:
"Warning: Bank Runs Are Coming & 
World War 3 w/Gerald Celente"
Comments here:

"If It Were Named What It Really Is..."

 

The Daily "Near You?"

Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Grand Inevitability of Unavoidable Endings"

o

"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: