Friday, March 3, 2023

"What In The World Has Happened To Our Society?"

"What In The World Has Happened To Our Society?"
By Michael Snyder

"Things weren’t always this horrible. Once upon a time, America’s shiny new cities were the envy of the entire world. Our citizens dressed sharply, they treated one another with respect, and they worked incredibly hard. But now our country is teeming with extremely slothful degenerates that want everything handed to them on a silver platter. Rampant greed is everywhere that you look, crime is completely out of control, we are facing the worst drug crisis in the entire history of our nation, millions of our fellow citizens are absolutely seething with hatred for one another, and those that attempt to stand up for what is right are considered to be the problem. We should be deeply grieved by what has happened to our society, because it truly is a great tragedy.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. On Wednesday, Matt Walsh published an excerpt from a letter that an infantryman sent to his family during the Civil War…"If you want to see how much the English language has deteriorated in modern times, go read the letters that random infantrymen wrote home to their families during the Civil War. These were young men often without much formal schooling who wrote naturally like poets. One example:"
Can you write like that? I certainly can’t. Those of us in this generation like to think of ourselves as the pinnacle of human history, but the truth is that we can’t even compare to those that have come before us.

Let me give you another example. More than a century ago, the streets of New York City were filled with extremely civilized people that dressed incredibly well when it was time to go out into the public arena…
Full screen recommended.
But now New York City is a crime-ridden, drug-infested hellhole. At this point, drug overdoses account for 80 to 85 percent of all accidental deaths in the Big Apple…
New York Times 3 days ago:
Is this “progress”? I don’t think so.

In Portland, conditions have gotten so bad that more than 2,600 businesses have left the downtown area over the past few years…"Business owners are fleeing Portland in droves amid a pronounced rise in crime and homelessness, officials in the Democratic stronghold have revealed. Public data shows that since the pandemic, more than 2,600 downtown businesses have filed changes of address with the U.S. Postal Service to leave their downtown ZIP codes. Several big-name employers, from Unitus Community Credit Union to Umpqua Bank, have been among the mass exodus, carried out by owners who have taken issue with the rising crime levels and homelessness – and the city’s failure to address it."

Apparently officials want even more businesses to leave, because now a bill that would give homeless individuals $1,000 a month “in no-strings-attached cash” is being seriously considered…"Oregon is considering giving its vast homeless and low-income population $1,000 in no-strings-attached cashThe bill was proposed last month by woke State Senator Wlnsvey Campos – who was among those calling to abolish the police in the summer of 2020 when the city of Portland was besieged by protesters – and Rep. Khanh Pham." If they actually do this, most of that money will go straight to the drug dealers.

Down in San Francisco, drug addicts are fueling a crime spree that is worse than anything that the city has ever experienced. When one woman recently went into the city for a yoga class, she was told that the building “had been broken into six times in two months”…"Yesterday I went to a yoga class in San Francisco for the first time in years. They had the front door locked (had to be buzzed in), a sign on it that said “no cash on premises,” and the woman at the front desk said they had been broken into six times in two months."

Over in Los Angeles, violent crime has become such a problem that extremely expensive “executive protection dogs” have become a very hot commodity…"The elite animals - typically German shepherds, Belgian Malinois, Dobermans, cane corsos or a mix of those breeds - are marketed under names such as “personal canine bodyguards” and “executive protection dogs.” Amid a spate of high-profile crimes in upscale parts of Los Angeles, they have become highly sought after among the rich, many of whom worry about being targeted.

Protection dogs, they say, provide an immediate layer of front-line defense, unlike security cameras (which merely show an intruder on the property, and only if the devices happen to be pointed in the right direction) and home alarm systems (which can be bypassed or ignored). Even if police are summoned, they can be slow to respond, if at all. So homeowners who can afford it are being more proactive."

This is the world that we live in now. But most Americans don’t seem to care. We are literally living in an “idiocracy” in which people are dropping dead all around us, but most Americans are so far gone that they can’t even understand what is happening.

Of course it isn’t just the United States that is facing such problems. Up in Canada, crime rates are absolutely exploding thanks to the reckless policies of the Trudeau regime…"The Toronto Police Service data portal shows that Toronto experienced a 17.2 per cent spike in overall major crimes in 2022, including a 9.8 per cent increase in assaults, a 44.2 per cent spike in auto thefts, 6.5 per cent growth in break and enters, a 28.5 per cent jump in robbery, an 11.3 per cent increase in sexual violence, and a 35.8 per cent gain in theft over cases."

And in many areas of South America crime has risen to levels that we have never seen before…"Countries across Latin America and the Caribbean continued to experience high murder rates in 2022, as cocaine production reached new heights, the fragmentation of gangs continued, and the flow of weapons across the region grew more acute.

For Ecuador, the situation was downright catastrophic. Historic amounts of cocaine entering the country fueled violence, with murders skyrocketing as gangs targeted judicial officials and killed police officers at record ratesThat cocaine came largely from Colombia, where recently inaugurated President Gustavo Petro has promised to shift away from the war on drugs in favor of efforts to achieve a “Total Peace” with the country’s rebel and criminal groups."

Our entire world is deeply sick. We have turned our backs on what is good, and we continue to run after evil as rapidly as we can. As a result, our society is a complete and total mess. We truly are living during one of the most critical times in all of human history, and we desperately need to change course. Unfortunately, most people seem to think that everything is just fine, and so they see no need for a new direction."

Stipendium peccati mors est...

"Bad Guy Theory (BGT)"

"Bad Guy Theory (BGT)"
"Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia..."
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

San Martin, Argentina - "I finally watched "All Quiet on the Western Front" this past weekend. It was unrelentingly depressing and horrible. Not the quality of the film itself. Just the whole sad story of all those wasted lives. Not recommended for children or anyone under 18 really. Extremely graphic. I'm sure there have been a lot of useless, pointless wars in human history. But I've never read about one that was so wasteful of human life as World War One. And absolutely unnecessary in every way." ~ Dan Denning

“Over 100 Russian tanks destroyed in Vuhlehar,” says a headline. “Russian soldiers dying in large groups, pleading with Putin for help,” says CNN . And here’s one from Bloomberg: "Tycoon Deripaska Warns Russia May Run Out of Money in 2024."

But wait…who are the bad guys? And why do we care? Bad guy theory (BGT) was developed, by us, to make fun of those who think people can be so clearly divided, between good and bad. True or False. Us vs. Them.

Us vs…The Baddies: The ‘bad guys’ phrase became popular during America’s hapless wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. Military spokesmen couldn’t keep up with the pace of shifting sands. Was it ISIS we were fighting, or the Taliban? The Shiites…or the Houthis? Terrorists or freedom fighters? Recognizing that the ‘enemy du jour’ menu changed without notice, and that it didn’t really make much difference who we were killing anyway, they resorted to calling the corpses simply “the bad guys.”

In WWI, the Germans became the ‘bad guys.’ What had they done? France declared war on Germany…France was allied with Russia. This triggered the Schlieffen Plan, by which Germany hoped to prevent a dreaded ‘two-front war’ by knocking out the French quickly.

It began as a rather typical European war…in which the parties fought to the death for no apparent reason and with nothing much at stake. America had no business in it. But “war is the health of the state,” as Randolph Bourne put it. And the Wilson administration was determined to get in shape with a little European exercise. War didn’t do the media any harm either. The press ran lurid stories, claiming that the Huns were spearing Belgian babies on their bayonets…and raping French nuns by the dozens. None of it was true.

Then as now, the press also eagerly supported the fantasies – that the war would “make the world safe for democracy,” or that it was a “war to end all wars.” All you had to do was to kill the bad guys.

Mr. Wilson’s War: If only it were that simple. But that is the problem with Bad Guy Theory; it is dangerous nonsense that only appeals to simpletons. People are neither always good, nor always bad…but always subject to influence. And the greatest progress ever made in Western society was probably the abandonment of BGT.

“Jesus taught that we should hate sin, but love the sinner,” says our brother-in-law, a Baptist preacher. Instead of looking at the person, as inherently bad or good, civilized people began to look at his acts. It was not ‘who’ you were that mattered; it was ‘what’ you did. You weren’t automatically guilty because you were a Jew or a Republican. And you weren’t automatically good because you were Black, or sleeping with a member of your own sex. The enlightened judge didn’t care. He didn’t ask himself if it was ‘ok to be white.’ He just wanted to know where you were on the night the girl was killed.

But Mr. Wilson called no witnesses. He convened no court. He presented no evidence, to no jury, and waited for no verdict. Instead, he sent US troops. Wilson believed US soldiers would come into the war like exterminating angels, smiting the bad guys in Germany and thereby saving civilization. Then, he – the Archangel Woodrow – would put things to right…with freedom, justice and democracy…and a League of Nations to guarantee that there would be no more war, ever again. (Historical note: The League of Nations charter – or at least a version of it – was said to be drafted in what is now our office in Baltimore.)

“Are we the Baddies?” Poor St. Woodrow. He arrived in Le Havre with his 14 Points. The Europeans ignored him. And mocked him. “Even God himself only had 10,” remarked Clemenceau, the French president. And after a few state dinners and diplomatic maneuvering, the Europeans were back to their familiar squabbling and backstabbing.

Wilson’s entry into the war brought fresh meat into the abattoir. It prolonged the killing for another two years…with an additional 10 million dead. This contribution to slaughter won Wilson a Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. Germany was not only beaten, but humiliated and starved. Then, rather than restore a healthy, honest economy, with a polite, peaceful government, the Germans sought a re-match.

Meanwhile, the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires both collapsed. The result was chaos, poverty…and an opportunity for world improvers – such as Kamenev, Trotsky and Lenin – to make an even bigger wreck of civilized society. By 1945 another 80 million had died, and not all of them were bad guys. Good work, Woodrow! Your legacy is alive and well!"
o
Joel’s Note: "Speaking of Bad Guy Theory (BGT), remember this classic sketch, from back when the BBC was still watchable?
“You haven’t been listening to allied propaganda again, have you? Of course they’re gonna say we’re the baddies…” Pure. Comedic. Genius.

And here, on a totally unrelated subject… China's Foreign Ministry recently published a lengthy report titled "US Hegemony and Its Perils" (Full Read). Here’s a little taster of what “the other side” is saying (umm, is “trigger warning” itself a trigger word these days?)…

"The history of the United States is characterized by violence and expansion. Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawaii. After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the way for expansionist objectives. In recent years, the US average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion US dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world's total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.
[…]
US military hegemony has caused humanitarian tragedies. Since 2001, the wars and military operations launched by the United States in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions. The 2003 Iraq War resulted in some 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, including over 16,000 directly killed by the US military, and left more than a million homeless."

And on and on it goes, page after page after page…Adroit readers will notice the timing of the release… just as “baddie rhetoric” is ramping up on both sides of the Pacific… and the US Energy Department (finally) joined the FBI and Jon Stewart in telling the American public that the Wuhan Lab Leak theory is now not just for conspiracy theorists after all. Who woulda thunk? If all this is getting a bit complicated, just remember Orwell’s helpful words: 'The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.' ~ George Orwell, "1984"

"Overcrowded Dollar Tree As SNAP Benefits Come To An End! This Is Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/3/23:
"Overcrowded Dollar Tree As SNAP Benefits
 Come To An End! This Is Ridiculous!" 
"In today's vlog we are at Dollar Tree, and are noticing huge crowds amid the SNAP Benefits coming to an end. Everyone is looking for cheaper options as most grocery stores have gotten very expensive on groceries! We are also noticing more products that have shrunk in size at Dollar Tree!"
Comments here:

"Now It Really Is"

 

"Why Billions Swallowed the COVID Hoax"

"Why Billions Swallowed the COVID Hoax"
Propaganda Perpetuates the Pandemic and Censorship
by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Excerpt: "Story At-A-Glance:
COVID-19 is the largest, most sophisticated propaganda operation in history. Psychological techniques were extensively used during 2020 to incite fear and panic in the population.
Propaganda strategies were also used to get people to support and defend irrational COVID measures such as masking, isolation, social distancing, lockdowns and jab mandates.
What the COVID propaganda so much more effective than any previous propaganda operation is the fact that a virus is the perfect enemy. It’s invisible, could be carried by anyone, including those you love the most, and could “get” you anywhere.
Classical rhetoric is about persuasion through argument. It appeals to logic. Propaganda, on the other hand, is a kind of subrational manipulation that appeals to our most basic instincts, such as fear. An informal definition of propaganda is “an organized attempt to get people to think or do something - or not think or do something.”

The Great Lie is possible because the more divorced a lie is from reality, the more likely it is to succeed, as most people are reluctant to think that authority figures would lie and completely ignore reality."
Full article here:
o
Comment: "Most people are reluctant to think that authority figures would lie and completely ignore reality." No one wants to hear or believe an unpleasant fact, but this truth is so mind boggling, so horrifyingly incomprehensible in it's scope and intent, so incredibly unbelievable, it's truly astonishingly mind-numbing when confronted as the truth and fact that it is. But we've all seen athletes and celebrities suddenly collapse, and many thousands do so every day we hear nothing about, but this is just the beginning, and this is why. Of course, believe what you want, but make it an informed, objective decision. If you've been vaccinated may God have mercy on you...- CP
o
"Put simply, it means the vaccines were designed 
to contain the very element that’s killing people."

"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."
I suggest you read the full article here:

Jim Kunstler, "We’ll Soon Find Out"

"We’ll Soon Find Out"
by Jim Kunstler

"The crown of America sits in a gutter begging 
someone to pick it up before the nation collapses."
- Auron MacIntyre, "The Blaze"

"In an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier last Tuesday, FBI Director Chris Wray said, “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.” Like so much else in America’s tortured, distractable life these days, the meaning larded into that that utterance went clear over the collective heads of just about everybody.

What was the key part of that statement? “For quite some time now….” Gee, really? Like, how long? One year? More than that? Maybe since March 2020? And you didn’t say anything, Mr. FBI Director? You didn’t do a thing to dispel the Covid-19 miasma that swaddled Washington DC like a smallpox blanket of yore? The question of where the novel coronavirus came from has been a ferocious national controversy since late 2019, you understand. Several government agencies, including the CIA and all the offices under the gigantic National Institutes of Health (NIH) - including the NIAID run for decades by Dr. Anthony Fauci - plus the FDA and CDC, tucked into the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)… all of these outfits have pretended to not know the true origin of Covid-19 for over three years. And the FBI Director, who could have shed some authoritative light on the matter by stepping up to a podium and weighing in, just let all that chaos roll?

And by-the-by, let’s not forget that the whole time Chris Wray knew with moderate certainty that Covid-19 came from the Wuhan virology lab, he was in charge of a batallion of FBI agents assigned to managing Twitter, Facebook, and Google - that is, the apps that comprise the digital Public Square - to make sure that anyone who opined about Covid coming from the Wuhan lab got censored, banished, cancelled, reputationally destroyed.

So, why did Mr. Wray make this statement on Tuesday… “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed…” Probably we’re hearing the old Modified Limited Hangout strategy, a venerable ruse, which is when a criminally culpable government throws the public a bone of admission about something that is common knowledge anyway — the thing everybody knows — while pretending that they were in on the common knowledge all along — which just adds another layer of perfidy to the giant matrix of lies laid down by US agency officials in this disgraceful episode of US history.

What Mr. Wray left out of his statement this week is any hint that a gang of US scientists and doctors under Dr. Fauci were directly and intimately involved in the activities at Wuhan that produced the virus that killed millions around the world, and led to the warp speed production of a “vaccine” mere weeks after the organism appeared — which will probably end up killing and maiming more people than the disease itself.

It happened also this past week that a team of distinguished medical warriors including Drs. Martin Makary of Johns Hopkins, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford testified before the opening session of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Dr. Makary began his remarks stating boldly: “The greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government…”

Misinformation that…
 Covid was spread through surface transmission.
 That vaccinated immunity was far greater than natural immunity.
 That masks were effective. Now we have the definitive Cochrane review. What do you do with that review? Cochrane is the most authoritative evidence body in all of medicine and has been for decades. Do you just ignore it and not talk about it?
 That myocarditis was more common after the infection than after the vaccine. Not true, it is 4-28 times more common after the vaccine.
That young people benefit from a booster, misinformation. Our two top experts on vaccines quit the FDA in protest over this particular issue, pushing boosters in young, healthy people. The data was never there. That’s why the CDC never disclosed hospitalization rates among boosted Americans under the age of 50.
That vaccine mandates would increase vaccination rates. A George Mason University study shows that it didn’t. It did one thing, it created “Never-Vaxxers” who are now not getting the childhood vaccines they need to get.

Over and over again, we’ve seen something that goes far beyond using your best judgment with the information at hand. We’ve seen something that is unforgivable, and that is the weaponization of medical research itself. The CDC putting out their own shoddy studies, like their own study on natural immunity looking at one state for two months, when they had data for years on all 50 states. Why did they only report that one sliver of data? Why did the salami slice the entire database? Because it gave them the result they wanted.

The same with the masking studies. The data has now caught up in giant systematic reviews, and public health officials were intellectually dishonest. They lied to the American people.”

This week, Edward Dowd, the former BlackRock trader-turned-Covid-statistician - and author of the new book "Cause Unknown" - released preliminary fourth quarter 2022 “excess deaths” numbers for group life insurance death claims compiled by the International Society of Actuaries (SOA).

For the age group up to age 44 excess deaths rose above the baseline (normal): 13 percent in October, 21 percent in November, and 43 percent in December. For the age group 45 to 64, the death rate above baseline rose 4 percent in October, 16 percent in November, and 35 percent in December. Mr. Dowd says that he is told the rates moving into the first quarter of 2023 are higher still. This is a what’s known as a trend, and a pretty ominous one.

It boils down to an awful lot of people in the prime of life dying off, and more every month. Nobody in any of the US public health agencies is talking about this. One very prominent official, Rochelle Wallensky, head of the CDC, is still busy arranging to dispense more Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines to America’s school-children - the “vaccines” being the prime suspects causing those stunning excess death rates among the young and employed demographic. Nice work, Rochelle!

How do the approximately 70 percent of vaxxed-up Americans deal with this reality? Many, of course, are noticing vaxxed family members, friends, colleagues, sports figures, acquaintances getting sick and dying of sudden heart failure, strokes, aggressive cancers, strange neurological problems, and other mystifying syndromes. The aggregate reaction so far seems to be a numb despair. But then, the still-living vaxxed also have to contend with the anxiety over what is going on in their own bodies. Perhaps they’ve heard whispers from the more extreme voices on the margins of this discussion that every single person who got vaxxed might be subject to an early death on way or another. That’d be a reason to withdraw into the first stage of the Kübler-Ross Transect of Grief, which is denial… and just hunker down there… for now. It’s an awful lot to contend with.

What’s next then? Consider that around 30 percent of Americans are not vaxxed, and are free of the anxiety that they are designated goners - notwithstanding the basic limits of the human condition. That 30 percent of Americans, and perhaps even some of the 70 percent vaxxed, will possibly be concerned with the other enormous threats to our national life: the insane Ukraine project, which looks like the overture to World War Three (no thank you); and the collapsing US economy, with features such as unaffordable food and fuel, scarcity of parts for fixing anything that’s broken, and a pretty good chance that retirement accounts will be wiped out in a coming equity-and-bond market “correction.”

All of which is to ask: when will the people of this land finally get pissed-off at the managers who are running everything? And when will the people start to express their new-found rage? I’ll make a wild-hair guess. By May, when the weather really starts lightening up, the people will be out in the streets looking to smash anything that appears to represent authority. Welcome to the season of real chaos and crisis, possibly many seasons, maybe years. Take great care of yourselves and your situations. Prepare if you can. How does it feel…to be on your own? The bard sang sixty years ago. We’ll soon find out."
o
"The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing
 the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world."
Freely download "The Vaccine Death Report" here:

Canadian Prepper, "Top Russian Commander Reveals Plan; Doomsday Plane On Alert In Euro"

Canadian Prepper, 3/2/23:
"Top Russian Commander Reveals Plan;
 Doomsday Plane On Alert In Euro"
Comments here:

Thursday, March 2, 2023

"Food Banks Will Be Overrun!"

Adventures With Danno, 3/2/23:
"Food Banks Will Be Overrun!"
"Extra SNAP Benefits have come to an end, and has millions of people wondering how they will put food on the table! With grocery store prices continuing to skyrocket we are afraid food banks will get overrun!"
Comments here:

"The Financial Carnage Is Coming Fast And Furious; Blackstone Defaults"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/2/23:
"The Financial Carnage Is Coming Fast 
And Furious; Blackstone Defaults"
Comments here:

"Middle-Class Americans Are On The Brink Of Bankruptcy As Hard Times Coming"

Full screen recommended.
"Middle-Class Americans Are On The Brink 
Of Bankruptcy As Hard Times Coming"
by Epic Economist

"Millions of American families have lost everything in recent years, and new data shows that middle-class households are going bankrupt at a faster pace than households in other income groups. A scarcity of well-paying jobs, astronomical price increases, and the runaway increase of mortgage rates in an age of stagnant paychecks have all contributed to the financial struggles of middle-class Americans. But at the end of the day, it all boils down to the fact that even with two incomes, becoming and staying in the middle class has never been harder. The current economic downturn is threatening to make things even more complicated for middle-income earners. They are standing on very thin ice, and the cracks are starting to show. Many of them are already on the brink and are likely to the pushed over the edge by an unexpected job loss or emergency expense in the months ahead, experts say.

Middle-class Americans accounted for 66% of personal bankruptcies in the country in 2022. Today, many of the staples of middle-class life such as college education and homeownership carry with them more financial risk, requiring more borrowing and new riskier forms of borrowing, especially at a time of rampant interest rates. And now more than ever, consumer debt has become the go-to pressure valve for squeezed middle-class families. However, more consumer debt puts them in a precarious financial situation, economists say. “It is the people in the middle — not the richest or the poorest — who accumulate the most debt on their credit cards. It is these same people who seek relief in the bankruptcy courts,” highlights economist and management consultant, Amelia Tyagi.

A generation ago, a typical middle-class family with one income committed about 54% of their pay to the basics — housing, health insurance, transportation, and taxes. That is, the one-income family spent about half its income to cover all the bills — “the essential expenses that must be paid even if someone gets sick or loses a job,” Tyagi says. In 2023, these basic expenses, including child care so that both parents can work, consume 75% of the family’s combined income. With 75% of income allocated for fixed expenses, the finances of today’s middle-income households have no margin for error.

“When we think of bankruptcy, we often think of celebrities who have gone broke, companies that failed, and crooks who are trying to cheat the system. But as it turns out, bankruptcy is most common among middle-class Americans,” says MarketWatch financial analyst Jana Kasperkevic. During an interview, bankruptcy lawyer Craig D. Robins emphasizes that nowadays, those who are most likely to file for bankruptcy are middle-class families of the baby-boomer generation – “the typical Long Island family,” he said. “We previously considered middle-class families as a stereotypical group noted for their financial stability and for the vitality they provide to the American economic system. It is the middle-class family, however, that now has become the stereotypical bankruptcy filer,” Robins outlines.

Carrying high levels of debt during such uncertain times may push many of these households over the edge financially in the months ahead. As the recession unfolds, layoffs and the lack of job creation will continue to fuel the personal bankruptcy boom. That’s how you know when a country is broken. The foundation of our economy is desintegrating before our eyes. And many people will be shocked to find out that poverty may be just one headwind away."
Comments here:

Gerald Celente, "Market Madness And More War Coming"

Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 3/2/23:
"Market Madness And More War Coming"
"The Ukraine War continues to rage, with no end in sight. As we have long noted, by the facts, Wall Street and Main Street are worlds apart and have no interrelationship. On the market front, again, as we have continually detailed, the one percent own some 54 percent of all the equities and when you add up the top 10 percent in total, they own 90 percent of the stocks. It is clear proof of who runs and who ruined what was once called “The Land of Opportunity.”
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Stillpoint"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Stillpoint"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Magnificent island universe NGC 2403 stands within the boundaries of the long-necked constellation Camelopardalis. Some 10 million light-years distant and about 50,000 light-years across, the spiral galaxy also seems to have more than its fair share of giant star forming HII regions, marked by the telltale reddish glow of atomic hydrogen gas. The giant HII regions are energized by clusters of hot, massive stars that explode as bright supernovae at the end of their short and furious lives.
A member of the M81 group of galaxies, NGC 2403 closely resembles another galaxy with an abundance of star forming regions that lies within our own local galaxy group, M33 the Triangulum Galaxy. Spiky in appearance, bright stars in this colorful galaxy portrait of NGC 2403 lie in the foreground, within our own Milky Way.”

Chet Raymo, “Under the Surface”

“Under the Surface”
by Chet Raymo

“Somewhere, in something I have written, I recall quoting with approval this passage from Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire": “For my own part I am pleased enough with surfaces - in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child's hand in your own, the flavor of an apple, the embrace of a friend or lover, the silk of a girl's thigh, the sunlight on rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of granite and sand, the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind - what else is there? What else do we need?”

Pleased enough with surfaces. Yes, I know what I meant. Pleased enough with this world, here and now, this world of light and matter. Not wanting or needing that other world that occupies so many people, a world of supernatural agencies, spirits, disembodied presences. Give me a world I can see and hear and touch and taste. Give me a world with heft and substance, a world with surfaces that shine and shimmer. What else is there? What else do we need?

Well, maybe not. I was scanning issues of “Science” and “Nature,” with their usual illustrations of the molecules of life, the nuclei acids and the proteins. The elaborate machinery that unseen, under the surface, endow the apple's flavor, the silk of skin, the abrasion of sand. Think of it. Atoms that are mere whiffs of resonance, binding into molecules, twisting and turning into endless shapes, fitting together like hand and glove, endlessly spinning and weaving, all without the slightest conscious participation on our part. Abbey's world of surfaces spun out of the mysterious, endlessly active, subsurface stuff of the world.

Pleased enough with surfaces? Not really. I want to know what's under the surface, that world of molecular frenzy that cannot be touched or seen, a world that in its own way is as beautiful and as meaningful as the macroscopic world we consciously inhabit. We don't need to know it. We can live a fulfilling life without knowing it. But I want to know it. I want to know what goes on behind the curtain of the senses. I want to hear that silent and ceaseless music of creation.”

"A Hammer Blow..."

"Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie."
- Dean Koontz

Greg Hunter, "Deep State Absolutely Wants to Kill You"

"Deep State Absolutely Wants to Kill You"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular books “Deep State” and “Crimes of the Educators,” predicted at the beginning is this year that the Deep State demons will have one crisis after another to keep people confused and afraid. The latest crisis is the economic and ecological disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. Newman says expect many more disasters and explains, “All across the country we are seeing very bizarre things happen. Factories and chemical plants going up in flames, food processing facilities blowing up, airplanes crashing in mysterious ways, and I think we are heading into an era of really serious crisis. Last summer, I was putting together the wave of crises that the Deep State was preparing for us, and one of the terms I used was ‘polycrisis.’ Then, right before the World Economic Forum meeting this year, they actually put on their website is 2023 the year of the polycrisis? Of course, it will be the year of the polycrisis. I think we are prepared and being groomed for cyber-attacks, currency crisis, economic crisis and, of course, Russia/Ukraine and China/Taiwan. I think all of this is going to be used for a series of never-ending crises until we are ready to give up our freedoms, give up our national sovereignty and self-government, and move towards this crazy totalitarian, technocratic system they want.”

Newman says it’s not going to be a kind transition for most people. Newman says, “The thing that is so hard for people to understand is that there are very powerful people that are working together, and they absolutely want to kill you. That is not speculation. These people have been openly saying for a century that they believe there are too many people on this planet. The eugenics movement never died. Margaret Sanger, the Rockefellers, Dr. Joseph Mengele was funded by the Rockefeller dynasty. These people are very much still around. Bill Gates is the perfect example. His dad was on the board of Planned Parenthood, the largest butcher of unborn babies in America. Bill Gates says openly and frequently that there are too many people on this planet. He wants to use vaccines and healthcare to reduce the number of people on the planet.”

Newman has a dark warning for America and explains, “Now that they are done with America and we are no longer useful and an obstacle to this global agenda, they need to knock us out. They may not want to resort to nuclear bombs, but if they did, it would not surprise me. America is founded on very important ideals, and these are, once again, making a resurgence. Our self-evident truths that are enshrined in our Constitution, that God created us equally, that God gave us the right to property. God gave us our right to life. Government exists to protect these rights. These are Biblical ideas distilled into a political document. These are ideals that are fundamental to liberty, and as long as the United States exists in its present form. America is a major threat to this agenda. I don’t think we should put it past them that they would use nuclear bombs against us. I also think there is a fifth column in Washington that would be more than happy to collaborate." There is much more in the 35-min interview.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with hard hitting journalist Alex Newman, founder of LibertySentinel.org and author of the book “Deep State.” 

The Poet: Galway Kinnell, "Another Night in the Ruins"

"Another Night in the Ruins"

"How many nights must it take
one such as me to learn
that we aren't, after all, made
from that bird that flies out of its ashes,
that for us
as we go up in flames,
our one work is
to open ourselves,
 to be the flames?"

~ Galway Kinnell

“A Sane Person..."

“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.” 
– Kurt Vonnegut, "Welcome to the Monkey House"
o

Free Download: Jiddu Krishnamurti, “The Book of Life”

"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. 
That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, 
that is why you must sing and dance, 
and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Freely download “The Book of Life”, by Jiddu Krishnamurti, here:
https://selfdefinition.org/krishnamurti/

The Daily "Near You?"

Leesburg, Florida, USA. Thanks or stopping by!

"A Long March Through The Night..."

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

"In Life..."

Strong Language Alert!
 "In life you have to do a lot of things you don't ****ing want to do.
Many times, that's what the **** life is... one vile ****ing task after another.
But don't get aggravated - then the enemy has you by the short hair."
“Al Swearengen”,
Ian McShane's character in “Deadwood”
o

"The Sane Who Know..."

“Human beings are, necessarily, actors who cannot become something before they have first pretended to be it; and they can be divided, not into the hypocritical and the sincere, but into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.”
- W.H Auden

"A dog might feel as majestic as a lion, might bark as loud as a roar, might have a heart as mighty and brave as a Lion's heart, but at the end of the day, a dog is a dog and a lion is a lion."
 - Charlyn Khatero

"Takeover of the Machines"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 3/2/23:
"Takeover of the Machines"
"Technology will make it so you will never want to be late on your vehicle payment ever again. Ford just filed for a patent where it will have the ability to repossess your car on a whim if you don’t make your payments."
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

 

"Ukrainians Are Falling Apart"

Straight Calls with Douglas Macgregor, 3/2/23:
"Ukrainians Are Falling Apart"
"Your home for analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United States and the world. Russia-Ukraine conflict latest news update with Colonel Douglas Macgregor."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 3/2/23:
"Putin Warns STOP This Now As 
NATO Crosses Red Line In Ukraine"
Comments here:
o
Excerpt: "There are numerous accounts from returning mercenary soldiers about what is really going on. Ukrainians slaughtering Russians who surrender. I have videos so horrible of crucifying Russian soldiers and then burning them alive. Zelensky then wants to put out the bullshit that Russia is committing war crimes?"
Don't you dare look away! This is what YOU, Good Citizen, 
and all of us, have paid at least $121 BILLION for. Proud?

Bill Bonner, "The Panic Pivot"

"The Panic Pivot"
Sooner or later, the real massacre will begin...
By Bill Bonner

San Martin, Argentina - "A few years ago, we developed what we called Bad Guy Theory (BGT). The idea was that there are good guys and bad guys. The bad guys change, of course. Germany was bad in 1940. Now it is good. Ditto with Japan. Today, Russia and China are bad. The bad guys come and go. But the good guy – the USA, the “one, indispensable nation” – never changes. And since good guys do only good things, bad things miraculously become good things when they do them. Such as, invading Iraq. Or blowing up other peoples’ pipelines. Or assassinating their leaders. Without noticing, the good guy becomes a bad guy.

The Panic Pivot: We’ll come back to that as we puzzle out how China became a bad guy…what America is becoming…and why you should brace yourself as the US rehearses the unhappy comeuppance of empires throughout the ages. But today, let us check in on how the financial reckoning is going.

Our hypothesis: the inflation Indians are off the reservation. The Fed will continue to raise rates, trying to get them under control, until the economy reaches a crisis point. Then, it will panic and ‘pivot’ towards more money-printing.

Here’s one little item from YahooFinance: "Car Debt Is Piling Up as More Americans Owe Thousands More Than Vehicles Are Worth." "The build-up in negative equity - or the amount that debt exceeds a vehicle’s value - is rattling consumers and raising alarms within the industry. Though it’s not unusual for drivers to carry negative equity, some dealers say more people are arriving at their lots up to $10,000 underwater, or “upside down,” on their trade-ins. They’re buying at still-sky-high prices and rolling debt from one car to another and even onto a third. Loans are commonly stretching to seven years.

“As trade-in values begin to cool, each month more and more consumers will find themselves falling from positive to negative equity,” said Ivan Drury, director of insights at auto-market researcher Edmunds. “Unless American car shoppers break their habit of buying again too soon, we’ll see the negative equity tide continue to rise.”

Disruptors Disrupted: As cars decline in value, so does the car-selling industry. Carvana – the ‘disruptor” that was once worth $31 billion has lost 96% of its value. It’s lost money every year since it was created in 2014. A $100 million loss one year, $150 million the next. But last year, it lost $1.5 billion, for a total loss of $2.107 billion during its career. Meanwhile, another ‘disruptor,’ WeWork, has wiped out $15.5 billion of capital since it began in 2016.

These are not just the ‘paper’ losses of stock market speculators. This is real wealth – time and resources – squandered on bad ideas, a total of more than $17 billion by these two companies alone. That’s about what the total national debt was during the Dust Bowl drought of 1931 (not adjusted for inflation). Back then, the debt-to-GDP ratio was a mere 22%.

While speculators lose money, so does the middle class; its houses are going down as well as its cars. Mortgage applications are at their lowest level since 1995, while mortgage payments rose 26% last year…and the average sale price fell 16% since last July. Home sales fell for the last 12 months straight…and are now 37% below their level of a year ago…the biggest decline on record.

The Real Massacre: And here’s Breitbart, adding it up: "Homeowners in the United States have lost $2.3 trillion in total value since its peak in June, according to an analysis from Redfin. “The total value of U.S. homes was $45.3 trillion at the end of 2022, down 4.9% ($2.3 trillion) from a record high of $47.7 trillion in June,” an analysis of the Redfin Housing Value Index claimed. The research indicated that the drop in total valuation across the United States is the “largest” drop in total percentage terms from June to December since 2008."

What can desperate consumers do? Borrow! Credit card balances just took their biggest jump since the 2001 recession. Total debt for millennials is up 27% since 2019, the most for any age group. Millennials also had the highest delinquency rate. In other words, so far, so good. Both the rich (investors) and the not-so-rich (the middle class) are getting scalped.

Sooner or later, we think, the real massacre will begin…and the Fed cavalry will, alas, come to the rescue…like Custer to the Little Big Horn. Stay tuned."

"It's Coming Apart: The Economy, World Markets, The Global Financial System"

Gregory Mannarino, 3/2/23:
"It's Coming Apart: The Economy,
 World Markets, The Global Financial System"
Comments here:
o
Related:

"Saving Where We Can At Kroger! Major Price Increases On Food!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/2/23:
"Saving Where We Can At Kroger! 
Major Price Increases On Food!"
Comments here:

"Col. MacGregor: Ukraine Has Been Destroyed And There's Nothing Left"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 3/1/23:
"Col. MacGregor: Ukraine Has 
Been Destroyed And There's Nothing Left"
"Ukrainian president Zelensky just admitted that American troops will be needed to keep Ukraine from total collapse. At the same time NATO announces Ukraine will become a member of the alliance before too long. This is a non-starter for Russian President Putin. Colonel Douglas MacGregor joins Redacted host Clayton Morris for the very latest developments."
Comments here:
o
Related:

Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Warning: The Coming Collapse Of The Food Supply"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/1/23:
"Warning: The Coming Collapse Of The Food Supply"
"Joel Salatin talks about one the greatest threats 
to our food production that no is talking about."
Comments here:

"Used Car Retailer And Subprime Auto Lender Collapse As Car Loan Crisis Intensify"

Full screen recommended.
"Used Car Retailer And Subprime Auto Lender 
Collapse As Car Loan Crisis Intensify"
by Epic Economist

"In the past, America has seen a massive stock market and housing bubble burst – but a car market bubble burst? That’s new. And yes, it seems absurd but that’s what is happening right now. According to Bloomberg, the dominoes are already starting to fall. A few weeks ago, we discussed the “perfect storm” that was brewing for the U.S. auto market. Fitch data revealed that today more Americans can’t afford their car payments than during the peak of the Great Recession. But that wasn’t exactly a surprise, after all, with the highest interest rates in 15 years, auto loans became too expensive for millions of struggling Americans.

Yesterday Bloomberg exposed that the calm before the storm was actually briefer than we all thought. That’s because on Friday, one of the most famous used car retailers in the United States and subprime auto lender, American Car Center, suddenly shut down all of its operations, closing all of its 50 dealerships across 10 states.

The abrupt collapse of the auto lender and car retailer was likely the first of many and highlights the deteriorating state of the subprime auto loan market. Millions of people are starting to fall behind on their car payments, and the distress cycle is rapidly accelerating.

According to Cox Automotive, 7.11% of subprime loans were severely delinquent in the last month, up from 6.75% in the month prior and from 5.48% in the same period a year ago. Even more concerning, the 7.11% severe delinquency rate was the highest monthly figure since Cox began tracking the data in 2006. A seriously delinquent auto loan means the borrower is more than 90 days behind on payments.

On top of that, IBIS World data shows that about US$19.6 billion of subprime auto loans are expected to be written in the U.S. in 2023. This amount represents only about 11% of the overall U.S. auto market of US$173.2 billion, but the sharp increase in delinquencies among the riskiest auto borrowers could very well be a leading indicator of broader auto loan problems and pose a threat to the overall economy.

Even though the idea of a car market bubble seems quite absurd, as opposed to a stock or housing bubble. That’s the perfect way to define what this is. Encouraged by easy credit conditions, Americans have borrowed huge amounts of money for their cars over the past two decades. At the turn of the millennium, Americans had less than $600 billion in motor-vehicle loans outstanding, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. By the end of 2022, Americans owed just shy of $1.4 trillion on car debt, a full doubling in barely a decade. People have been borrowing more money per vehicle — from about $26,000 in 2010 to $$40,155 in January — an exponential spike!

However, interest rates for auto loans have gone from 7.4 percent to 9 percent in a year, and monthly payments from $506 to $600. Seven-year loans are gaining in popularity. But not everyone can shoulder the higher monthly payments, as well as higher down payments, so car sales, and car prices, are crashing.

The truth is that auto loans have long been what people in the industry call “a shitshow.” When lenders face a day of reckoning for all of these bad loans, shockwaves will ripple through financial markets and panic will ensue. Now it’s understandable why Tesla CEO said the auto loan crisis would trigger “the biggest financial crisis ever”. The outlook is looking gloomier by the day, and now we’re waiting to see the next domino to fall."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Dire Straits, "Private Investigations"

Dire Straits, "Private Investigations"