Monday, March 6, 2023

“The Loss Of Dignity”

“The Loss Of Dignity”
by The Zman

“If you step back and think about it, the normal man can probably list a dozen things he cannot say in public that he grew up hearing on television, usually as jokes. Then the jokes were no longer welcome in polite company and soon they were deemed “not funny” by the sorts of people who worry about such things. The same was true of simple observations about the world. Somehow noticing the obvious became impolite, then it became taboo and finally prohibited.

The reverse is true as well. Middle-aged men can probably think of a dozen things that were unimaginable or unheard of, which are now fully normal. Of course, normal is one of those things that is now prohibited. It implies that something can be abnormal or weird and that itself is forbidden. The proliferation of novel identities and activities that demand to be treated with dignity and respect is a function of the old restraints having been eliminated. When everything is possible you get everything.

The strange thing about all of this is there is seemingly no point to it. The proliferation of new taboos was not in response to some harm being done. In most cases, the taboos are about observable reality. The people turning up in the public square with novel identities or activities demanding respect did not exist very long ago. If they did, not one was curious enough to look into it. The public was happy to ignore people into unusual activities, as long as they kept it to themselves.

Of course, none of what we generally call political correctness is intended to be uplifting or inspirational. The commissars of public morality like to pretend it is inspiring, but that’s just a way to entertain themselves. These new identity groups are not demanding the rest of us seek some higher plane of existence or challenge our limitations. In fact, it is always in the opposite directions. It’s a demand to lower standards and give up on our quaint notions of self-respect and human dignity.

In the "Demon In Democracy", Polish academic Ryszard Legutko observed that liberal democracy had abandoned the concept of dignity. This is the obligation to behave in a certain way, as determined by your position in society. Dignity was earned by acting in accordance with the high standards of the community. In turn, this behavior was rewarded with greater privilege and responsibility. Failure to live up to one’s duties would result in the loss of dignity, along with the status it conferred.

Instead, modern liberal democracy awards dignity by default. We are supposed to respect all choices and all behaviors as being equal. There are no standards against which to measure human behavior, other than the standard of absolute, unconditional acceptance. As a result, the most inventively degenerate and base activities spring from the culture, almost like a test of the community’s tolerance. Instead of looking up to the heavens for inspiration, liberal democracies look down in the gutter.

Dignity comes from maintaining one’s obligations to his position in the social order, but that requires a fidelity to a social order. It also requires a connection to the rest of the people in the society. In a world of deracinated individuals focused solely on getting as much as they can in order to maximize pleasure, a sense of commitment to the community is not possible. Democracy assumes we are all equal, therefore we have no duty to one another as duty requires a hierarchical relationship.

In the absence of a vertical set of reciprocal relationships, we get this weird lattice work of horizontal relationships, elevating the profane and vulgar, while pulling down the noble and honorable. The public culture is about minimizing and degrading those who participate in the public culture. In turn, the public culture attracts only those who cannot be shamed or embarrassed. The great joy of public culture is to see those who aspire to more get torn down as the crowd roars at their demise.

The puzzle is why this is a feature of liberal democracy. Ryszard Legutko places the blame on Protestantism. Their emphasis on original sin and man’s natural limitations minimized man’s role in the world. This focus on man’s wretchedness was useful in channeling our urge to labor and create into useful activities, thus generating great prosperity, but it left us with a minimalist view of human accomplishment. We are not worthy to aspire to anything more than the base and degraded.

It is certainly true that the restraints of Christianity limited the sorts of behavior that are common today, but he may be putting the cart before the horse. The emergence of Protestantism in northern Europe was as much a result of the people and their nature as anything else. Put more simply, the Protestant work ethic existed before there was such a thing as a Protestant. The desire to work and delay gratification evolved over many generations out of environmental necessity.

Still, culture is an important part of man’s environment and environmental factors shape our evolution. It is not unreasonable to say that the evolution of Protestant ethics magnified and structured naturally occurring instincts among the people. With the collapse of Christianity as a social force in the West, the natural defense to degeneracy and vulgarity has collapsed with it. As a result, great plenty is the fuel for a small cohort of deviants to overrun the culture of liberal democracies.

Even so, there does seem to be something else. Liberal democracy has not produced great art or great architecture. The Greeks and Romans left us great things that still inspire the imagination of the man who happens to gaze upon them. The castles and cathedrals of the medieval period still awe us. The great flourishing of liberal democracy in the 20th century gave us Brutalism and dribbles of pain on canvas. The new century promises us primitives exposing themselves on the internet.

There is something about the liberal democratic order that seeks to strip us of our dignity and self-respect. Look at what happened in the former Eastern Bloc countries after communism. Exposed to the narcotic of liberalism they immediately acquired the same cultural patterns. Fertility collapsed. Religion collapsed. Marriage and family formation collapsed. These suddenly free societies got the Western disease as soon as they were exposed to western liberal democracy.

The reaction we see today is not due to these societies being behind the times, but due to seeing the ugly face of liberal democracy. It is much like the reaction to the proliferation of recreational drugs in the 1970’s. At first, it seemed harmless, but then people realized the horror of unrestrained self-indulgence. That’s what we see in the former Eastern Bloc. Their leaders still retain some of the old sense of things and are trying to save their people from the dungeon of modernity.

That still leaves us with the unanswered question. What is it about liberal democracy that seems to lead to this loss of dignity? It is possible that such a fabulously efficient system for producing wealth is a tool mankind is not yet equipped to handle without killing ourselves. Maybe we are just not built for anything but scarcity. Want gives us purpose and without it, we lose our reason to exist. Either way, without dignity, we cannot defend ourselves and the results are inevitable.”

Sunday, March 5, 2023

"More Walmarts Close For Good; Food Lines Get Longer"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/5/23:
"More Walmarts Close For Good; 
Food Lines Get Longer"
Comments here:

"Alert: Moscow Explosion; Russia Preps for Martial Law"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/5/23:
"Alert: Moscow Explosion; 
Russia Preps for Martial Law"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Supertramp, "Take The Long Way Home"

Full screen recommended.
Supertramp, "Take The Long Way Home"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"NGC 3199 lies about 12,000 light-years away, a glowing cosmic cloud in the nautical southern constellation of Carina. The nebula is about 75 light-years across in this narrowband, false-color view. Though the deep image reveals a more or less complete bubble shape, it does look very lopsided with a much brighter edge along the top. 
Near the center is a Wolf-Rayet star, a massive, hot, short-lived star that generates an intense stellar wind. In fact, Wolf-Rayet stars are known to create nebulae with interesting shapes as their powerful winds sweep up surrounding interstellar material. In this case, the bright edge was thought to indicate a bow shock produced as the star plowed through a uniform medium, like a boat through water. But measurements have shown the star is not really moving directly toward the bright edge. So a more likely explanation is that the material surrounding the star is not uniform, but clumped and denser near the bright edge of windblown NGC 3199."

"And That's Why..."

“I don’t believe in ‘original sin.’ I don’t believe in ‘guilt.’ I don’t believe in villains or heroes – only right or wrong ways that individuals have taken, not by choice but by necessity or by certain still-uncomprehended influences in themselves, their circumstances, and their antecedents. This is so simple I’m ashamed to say it, but I’m sure it’s true. In fact, I would bet my life on it! And that’s why I don’t understand why our propaganda machines are always trying to teach us, to persuade us, to hate and fear other people on the same little world that we live in.”
- Tennessee Williams

The Poet: Carl Sandburg, "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind "

"Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"
 The past is a bucket of ashes.

1
 "The woman named Tomorrow
sits with a hairpin in her teeth,
and takes her time,
and does her hair the way she wants it,
and fastens at last the last braid and coil,
and puts the hairpin where it belongs
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it?
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone.
What of it? Let the dead be dead.

2
The doors were cedar,
and the panels strips of gold
and the girls were golden girls
and the panels read and the girls chanted:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.

The doors are twisted on broken hinges.
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind
where the golden girls ran and the panels read:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.

3
It has happened before.
Strong men put up a city and got
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women
to warble: We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation,
nothing like us ever was.
And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened
and paid the singers well
and felt good about it all,
there were rats and lizards who listened
and the only listeners left now
are the rats and the lizards.

And there are black crows
crying, Caw, caw,
bringing mud and sticks
building a nest
over the words carved
on the doors where the panels were cedar
and the strips on the panels were gold
and the golden girls came singing:
We are the greatest city,
the greatest nation:
nothing like us ever was.

The only singers now are crows crying, Caw, caw,
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways.
And the only listeners now are the rats and the lizards.

4
The feet of the rats
scribble on the door sills;
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints
chatter the pedigrees of the rats
and babble of the blood
and gabble of the breed
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers
of the rats.

And the wind shifts
and the dust on a door sill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was."

- Carl Sandburg, 1878 - 1967

"Never Regret Anything..."

The Daily "Near You?"

Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"What is it Really Worth?"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 3/5/23:
"What is it Really Worth?"
"We have breaking news. With all the rain that we’ve had here in Southern California you have one house that is in danger of falling down the hillside. The surrounding houses have been yellow tagged. Plus, I cover the story of the woman that got completely fleeced when purchasing a vehicle."
Comments here:

"Sharks in the Canals"

"Sharks in the Canals"
Lessons in the Law of Unintended Consequences 
from our pre-award winning series...
By Joel Bowman

"The older I get, the better I was."
~ Van Dyke Parks

"Welcome to another Sunday Sesh, dear reader, that time of the week when we kick back with a glass or two of fat-bottomed bonarda and praise Zeus we’re here to spin another yarn.

Today’s tall tale begins on the City of the Gold Coast, where as a child your carefree editor frolicked, cherub-like, we are told, on the sun-kissed sands of his coastal home town, nestled cozily in Queensland’s great southeast.

When not dazzling beachcombers with his totally bodacious surfing skills, helping injured kittens across the street, or rescuing pensioners from lofty mango tree branches, your humble weekend correspondent spent a good deal of time splashing about in the city’s Venice-like canal system. The man-made estuaries are a spectacular feature of “Australia’s playground,” as the tourist Mecca is known to people who don’t live there. Or at least, they used to be...
Arial view of the canals behind Broadbeach, with your editor's 
childhood house in the upper right, just behind the mango tree.

We all heard the rumors, of course. Bazza’s second cousin spotted a dorsal fin around dusk over the Ekka day break... Dazza’s dad landed a bull pup while fishing for bream and flathead off the Tally bridge... Gazza’s mom lost her leg after the old man pushed her off the back of their tinny, which is why the family moved back to Wagga Wagga and were never heard from again...It was the kind of antipodean schoolyard scuttlebut you’d expect to hear on the playground over little lunch (provided you remembered your hat and were therefore allowed out from under the dreaded “shelter shed”).

Still, we were all a bit shocked when the Gold Coast City Council (GCCC) stepped in (sometime around eighth grade, if memory serves) and decided to “do something” about the shark problem. For one thing, it legitimized the issue, thereby exonerating the ‘azza’s from the unforgivable charge of schoolyard perjury. (Whatever did happen to Gazza’s mom, anyway?)

More importantly, however, it provided our very first real world lesson in the Law of Unintended Consequences. (That is, if you don’t count the whole Prickly Pear debacle... and the Myxomatosis disaster... and the local Cane Toad infestation... to say nothing of the devastating Drop Bear invasion…

And so it came to pass that, in their decidedly finite wisdom, and deaf to the lessons of history, the GCCC decided to “net off” the canal system at its twin seaways – the Tweed River to the south and, to the north, ironically enough, the Southport Spit, known to locals as, simply, “The Spit.”

The idea was simple-minded enough, even for a group of councilmen: Use small gauge gillnets to stop the big, bad bull sharks swimming upstream and attacking the ‘azzas and their mates. Which is exactly what they did. Mission accomplished, no? Well... no.

As it turned out, the problem wasn’t what the nets did stop... but what they did not stop, i.e., baby (pup) sharks. And now that the pups were in, they were free to feast, unmolested by their natural, open ocean predators. Oh yeah, and they couldn’t get out, either. So they did what all animals do when there’s nothing better on the discovery channel. They bred. A lot. Today, the Gold Coast canal system is full of the hungry man/woman/they-eaters. We had to go all the way back to yesterday to find the latest news footage from our childhood hunting grounds. Here’s the video..."Gold Coast Local Films Jumping Bull Sharks in Currumbin Creek Near Swimming Spot."

Fortunately for local residents, bull sharks aren’t even in the top two most dangerous sharks in the whole world (those being the Great White and the Tiger Shark, respectively). Unfortunately, bull sharks are known to thrive on a steady diet of illiterate tourists, drunk kayakers and kids who like dangling their fleshly little limbs off the back of dad’s jetty on a weekend.

But we’ll leave the Darwin Awards for another Sunday. For now, let us stick with the Law of Unintended Consequences lesson in today’s weekend column, below...
o
"Sharks in the Canals"
By Joel Bowman

Chief Brody: “Why don’t we have one more drink and go down and cut that shark open.”
Ellen Brody: “Can you do that?”
Chief Brody: “I can do anything. I’m the chief of police.”
~ From the 1975 classic movie, "Jaws"

"Welcome to the Age of Causes Great and Grand, dear reader, where no calamity, neither borne of nature nor of man, is so disastrous that our better angels do not stand at the ready to make matters infinitely worse. From Covid hysteria to the climate “emergency”... on matters of policy domestic and foreign... whether tilting at turbines or howling at balloons...when the situation calls for a scalpel, you may count on The State to arrive with a chainsaw. The consequent mess, as predictable as its perpetrators are pathological, is afterwards debated in unread sections of mainstream newspapers and in fringy weekend columns like these, but the results remain the same; whether the razor belongs to Hanlon or Occam (or both!), the blade still weighs heavily on the public’s jugular, even as the cut-throats escape, scot-free.

We commence our pre-award-winning series on governmental ineptocracy with the Great Covid Debacle of 2020-202? (Don’t worry, we’ll get to War, Inflation, Climate and the rest of the third rail subjects in coming Sundays. So if you’re not offended today, stay tuned...)

When confronted with the epic blunder that was the government’s response to the virus, one feels rather like a mosquito at a nudist colony... wherever to begin?! How about... at the beginning?

Year of the New Narrative: Your weekend correspondent is old enough to remember the censorious climate of 2020, when so much as hypothesizing over a possible “lab leak” origin of the virus was tantamount to suggesting the moon was made of stilton or that only a woman could give birth. Indeed, respected scientists were publicly mocked, ridiculed and ostracized from “polite” society which, as we all know, consists mostly of people who still believe Jimmy Fallon’s laugh is genuine.

And yet, here we are, in Year of the New Narrative 2023... and once again the tin foil hat brigade has proven itself well ahead of the curve. Already the long-haired hippies over at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have declared the most likely scenario is that Covid leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China (the very same lab which the Chinese cheekily located right next to the infamous wet market, whence the superbug allegedly escaped... and where not a single animal, not even a bat, has tested positive for the virus since. Hmm...)

Here’s FBI director and unreconstructed Grateful Dead fan, Christopher Wray, on Fox earlier this week...“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan." Step back for a second, the FBI has folks, agents, professionals, analysts, virologists, microbiologists, etcetera who focus specifically on the dangers of biological threats, which include things like novel viruses, like covid.

“The concern is that, in the wrong hands, some bad guys, a hostile nation state, a terrorist, a criminal... the threats that those could pose. So here, you’re talking about a potential leak, from a Chinese government-controlled lab that killed millions of Americans. And that’s precisely what that capability was designed for.”

(An inquiring mind might well wonder, not so much why China... but why now? Ah... but we’ll save foreign misadventures Meanwhile, here comes The Wall Street Journal, which reported last weekend that another fringy, racist, alt-right, transphobic, science-denying organization had jumped on board the trending lab leak bandwagon. From the WSJ...

WASHINGTON— "The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress [...] The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory."

Of course, this all accords perfectly with emails obtained through a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request over a year ago, which showed that Netflix’s preferred medical establishmentarian, Mr. Dr. Anthony Stephen Fauci, BA MD OMRI Sir, was not only aware of the likelihood that the virus emerged from the Wuhan lab, but actively colluded with then-director of the National Institute of Health, Francis Collins, to discredit the theory before the public ever got wind of it. “Call it Plato’s ‘noble lie’ if you must,” we wrote, back in April of last year. “Just don’t call it ‘truth.’”

Now, what “unintended consequences” might such an abrupt about-face have on the public’s confidence in its vaunted institutions? What damage did all this authoritarian, Capital S “Sciencing” do to actual science, the kind that comes from objective analysis, double-blind tests, peer reviewed literature, open inquiry, good faith skepticism and all that unfashionable 2+2=4 stuff?

To coin a phrase, where are the sharks in the canals? Never mind all that, chorus the egg spurts. Regular citizens need not concern themselves with such lofty matters anyway. Higher minds are on the case. Like the higher minds that told us masks were safe... ahem, effective... ahem, mandatory... ahem, oh, just shut up and wear the damned thing already!

And yet...Here comes a pesky new “gold standard” review. The good folks over at The Free Press were on the case..."We now have the most authoritative estimate of the value provided by wearing masks during the pandemic: approximately zero. The most rigorous and extensive review of the scientific literature concludes that neither surgical masks nor N95 masks have been shown to make a difference in reducing the spread of Covid-19 and other respiratory illnesses."

Bu... bu... bu...Sorry... *removes mask*

But what about the documented developmental problems associated with masking children (who were, as it turns out, at vanishingly low risk of the virus anyway)? What about, as TFP puts it, the litany of other “social, psychological, and medical problems, including a constellation of maladies called “Mask-Induced Exhaustion Syndrome”? Where are the sharks, damnit?!

Said Tom Jefferson (the Oxford one, who led Cochrane the study, not the Monticello guy): “There is just no evidence that [masks] make any difference. Full stop.” And what does Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC and general menace to sobriety, have to say? From her congressional hearing earlier this month, in reference to the study’s findings: “Our masking guidance doesn’t really change with time.”

Or facts, apparently. Again, what might be the reputational damage to Ms. Walensky’s (okay, we’ll pile on...) Covid Derangement Center be? What about the squillions of funky fiat dollars spent on masks, Lysol and personal protective gear (PPC), like the $200 million shelled out by New York City, which was quietly auctioned off last week for a measly $500k? (A 99.57% loss, for some rough, back-of-the-mask math.)

Anythey? Anythey? All we can say is, thank goodness the vaccines were safe and effective and that nobody who did the right thing and rolled up their sleeves either contracted or transmitted the disease.

Oh, wait... here’s Woody Harrelson, setting the record straight on that one, too, during what will surely be his last ever SNL appearance...Careful, Woody... in certain elite political circles, that’s just the kind of thing that can get you suicided.
And that will do us for another Sunday Sesh, dear and patient reader. As usual, don’t forget to like and share our work and, if you’re so inclined, to dive into the comments section below. (It’s pretty safe… usually.)

Bill will be back tomorrow with his regular missives from the ranch. Tom and Dan will return with their market research notes on Wednesday and Friday, respectively. Meanwhile, we’re off to a Buenos Aires institution today… El Pobre Luis. Supposedly, it’s the best ojo de bife in town. We’ll report back next week with our findings. Whatever you’re up to this weekend, have a great one!

Cheers,

"Expected Food Shortages In 2023! Stock Up Now!"

Adventures With Danno, 3/5/23:
"Expected Food Shortages In 2023! Stock Up Now!"
"Going over a variety of food shortages expected in 2023! 
 How to prepare, and how to prevent being left behind!"
Comments here:
o
Adventures With Danno, 3/5/23:
"Dollar Stores Overcrowded 
As SNAP Benefits Are Massively Reduced!
"As SNAP BENEFITS have been massively reduced for millions of people, we are starting to notice large crowds in value type stores!"
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

 

Saturday, March 4, 2023

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Dreams Of Peace"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Dreams Of Peace"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 1055 is a dominant member of a small galaxy group a mere 60 million light-years away toward the aquatically intimidating constellation Cetus. Seen edge-on, the island universe spans over 100,000 light-years, a little larger than our own Milky Way galaxy. The colorful, spiky stars decorating this cosmic portrait of NGC 1055 are in the foreground, well within the Milky Way. But the telltale pinkish star forming regions are scattered through winding dust lanes along the distant galaxy's thin disk.
Click image for larger size.
With a smattering of even more distant background galaxies, the deep image also reveals a boxy halo that extends far above and below the central bulge and disk of NGC 1055. The halo itself is laced with faint, narrow structures, and could represent the mixed and spread out debris from a satellite galaxy disrupted by the larger spiral some 10 billion years ago."

“The Bewildered Herd..."

“The bewildered herd is a problem. We've got to prevent their roar and trampling. We've got to distract them. They should be watching the Superbowl or sitcoms or violent movies. Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like "Support our troops!" You've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they're properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they're not competent to think. Therefore it's important to distract them and marginalize them.”
- Noam Chomsky
"Those who can make you believe absurdities
 can make you commit atrocities."
- Voltaire

The Poet: Charles Bukowski, "The Laughing Heart"

The Daily "Near You?"

West Coxsackie, New York, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Brace Yourself For Extreme Economic Turbulence"

"Brace Yourself For Extreme Economic Turbulence"
by Michael Snyder

"Why is the U.S. economy suddenly deteriorating so rapidly all around us? Well, the short answer is that this downturn is way overdue. For years, our leaders tried to cheat the laws of economics. The Federal Reserve pushed interest rates all the way to the floor, which is something that never would happen in a true free market economy, and they pumped trillions of fresh dollars that they literally created out of thin air into the financial system. Meanwhile, our politicians in Washington were engaging in the greatest debt binge that the world has ever seen.

All of this reckless manipulation seemed to work for a while, but many of us warned that it would inevitably create a major inflation crisis, and that is precisely what happened. So now the Fed is aggressively hiking interest rates in a desperate attempt to tame the inflation monster that they helped to create, and higher rates are absolutely crushing economic activity.

At this point, most Americans understand that something has seriously gone wrong, and this is pushing consumer confidence lower. On Tuesday, we learned that consumer confidence has now fallen for two straight months to start 2023…"U.S. consumer confidence unexpectedly fell for the second straight month in February as Americans’ outlook on the economy tumbled further, showing how persistent inflation is weighing on shoppers amid looming recession fears.

The Conference Board’s latest Consumer Confidence Index released Tuesday declined to 102.9 for this month, slipping from 106.0 in January - which was revised lower. Economists polled by Refinitiv had expected February’s index to tick up to 108.5."

Even more troubling is the fact that Americans seem to be bracing themselves for more economic turbulence as 2023 rolls along. The Conference Board’s senior director of economics, Ataman Ozyildirim, is warning that U.S. consumers are planning to do far less spending in the months ahead… “Expectations for where jobs, incomes, and business conditions are headed over the next six months all fell sharply in February,” Ozyildirim reported, noting that “consumers may be showing early signs of pulling back spending in the face of high prices and rising interest rates.

Fewer consumers are planning to purchase homes or autos and they also appear to be scaling back plans to buy major appliances,” the economist added. “Vacation intentions also declined in February.”

So home sales could go down even more? That is really bad news, because home sales in southern California have already fallen to the lowest level ever recorded…"When Christmas lights go up, home sales typically go down as buyers and sellers take a break. But this past Christmas, Santa delivered a giant lump of coal to Southern California’s housing market, as well as to real estate agents, lenders, escrow officers and anyone else who gets paid by the transaction.

Closed sales this past January - which reflect deals signed during the holiday season - fell to 9,938, the lowest number of transactions in records dating back 35 years, real estate data firm CoreLogic reported Tuesday, Feb. 28."

As I keep telling my readers, a new housing crash has begun. In fact, U.S. home prices have now declined for six months in a row…"US home prices fell for the sixth month in a row in December, as rising mortgage rates pushed prospective buyers out of the housing market, according to the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index, released Tuesday."

Sadly, home prices will likely fall quite a bit more in many areas if the Federal Reserve keeps raising rates. Higher rates are also really hurting the auto industry, and Zero Hedge is reporting that one of the most prominent subprime auto lenders in the entire country has just collapsed…"Well, after a lengthy period in which nothing seemed to happen, suddenly the dominoes are starting to fall, and as Bloomberg reports, used car retailer and subprime auto loan lender, American Car Center, told employees the business was closing its doors, just one day after the company had hoped to pull off a funding Hail Mary by selling a $222 million bond (it failed).

According to Bloomberg, the used car retailer, which targets consumers regardless of their credit history (and thus targets almost entirely subprime borrowers who can’t get a loan elsewhere), said in an email to employees on Friday the firm was ceasing all operations, closing its headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, and that all employees would be terminated by the end of the business day, the people said. It employed about 288 people at its headquarters."

Yes, the dominoes are certainly starting to tumble. But at least things in the U.S. are still better than they are over in Europe. Right now, consumers in the UK are literally fighting over cucumbers as the nationwide rationing of fruits and vegetables starts to become extremely painful…"A supermarket shopper has described ‘customers fighting over the last box of cucumbers’ on the first day that Aldi and Tesco imposed rationing on some of its fresh produce. The two retailers announced limits on purchases of certain fruit and vegetables on Thursday.

It followed similar moves from Morrisons and Asda, with four major supermarkets now limiting the number of items people can buy across items such as peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. The temporary measures are in response to a nationwide shortage of some fruit and veg."

And food prices in the UK continue to spiral completely out of control…"A measure of UK grocery price inflation soared to a record high this month - that’s more bad news for consumers already facing a shortage of fruit and vegetables that has led to rationing at major supermarkets.

Grocery prices rose 17.1% in the four weeks to February 19, compared with the same period a year ago, according to data published by Kantar Tuesday. That’s the highest rate of inflation since the data company started tracking it in 2008, and is equivalent to adding an extra £811 ($980) to a household’s average yearly grocery bill."

Unfortunately, what we are facing is a global crisis. Economic conditions all over the planet will deteriorate in the months ahead, and so I would encourage you to brace yourself for a tremendous amount of economic turbulence. Because it is coming, and at this point there is nothing that our leaders can do to stop it.

For such a long time, central banks and politicians all over the world tried to cheat the system. But in the process they made our long-term problems even worse. Now a moment of reckoning is here, and every man, woman and child on the entire planet will feel the pain."
o
And so, despite the many, many warnings most people wallowed in their willful and determined ignorance, exclaiming so loudly and self-righteously,"Oh that could never happen here!" Well, Pilgrims, guess what? Here it is, right now, and this is just the beginning. It will get incredibly worse, and you, and all of us, better brace for impact, because...
Robert Palmer, 
"You're Gonna Get What's Coming" 


"Russians Don't Bluff!"; "Everyone Should Be Afraid of War"

Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 3/4/23:
"Russians Don't Bluff! 
They're Going To Do Exactly The Way They Said"
Comments here:
o
Douglas Macgregor, Straight Calls, 3/4/23:
"Michael Savage Calls Douglas Macgregor:
 Everyone Should Be Afraid of War"
"Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of
current geopolitical events in the United States and the world."
Comments here:
o
"We know that those attacks would never be possible in absence of a very deep & sophisticated assistance by the US to the Ukrainian military."

How It Really Is"

"Get Ready for Extreme Turbulence"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 3/4/23:
"Get Ready for Extreme Turbulence"
"We are seeing so many changes in the economy. We are seeing consumer sentiment drop to an all time low in February 2023. The real estate transactions are dropping to record low levels."
Comments here:

"Major Price Increases At Kroger! What Now? Not Good!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/4/23:
"Major Price Increases At Kroger!
 What Now? Not Good!"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases on groceries! We are here to look at some cheap options as SNAP Benefits have ended for millions of people. It's getting rough out here as stores grocery prices are at an all time high."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
St.Petersburg - Me, 3/4/23:
"So, it's a year of Russian sanctions, a year of SMO. How does a Russian shopping mall look like now? What has changed after a year? No people, empty shelves?"
Comments here:

And how's your local mall doing? Look like this one?

"Hang On! They're Finally Admitting This After 3 Years?"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 3/4/23:
"Hang On! They're Finally Admitting This After 3 Years?"
"A new study finds that having had Covid provides at least as much immunity as two doses of the Covid vaccine. This comes from the Lancet medical journal. The journal reviewed 65 prior studies that concluded that prior infection can be considered inoculation. Not only did natural exposure provide immunity as well as the vaccines, it also provided “protection against severe disease… for all variants.” This is something that the medical community has long-since known and yet experts still advised people who had Covid to get vaccinated without exception in the U.S. "
Comments here:

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up"
CV19 Bioweapon/Vax Bell Has Rung, 
CV19 Vax Dead Piling Up & Inflation Economy
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

The bell has rung on the fraud of the CV19 plandemic. From infection to injection, it was all a bioweapon used to kill and disable an unsuspecting global population. 13 billion doses were shot into people worldwide, and it did not help one single person—period. Woody Harrelson rang the bell that could not be unheard on Saturday Night Live when he said governments and media were bought off by Big Pharma. They locked us down, and the only way to get out was to take their drugs (CV19 Vax) over and over. People are waking up to the deadly and debilitating scam of Covid and the bioweapon/vax used to murder people.

The dead keep piling up from the CV19 bioweapon/vax. Wall Street analyst extraordinaire Ed Dowd says excess death numbers for group life insurance companies are up more than 40% over normal in 2022—and they are trending much higher in 2023. We are just getting started, and this evil debacle is nowhere near the peak. This does not account for the thousands every week who are left completely disabled and can no longer work. The one thing that could help people now is Ivermectin, but the medical community and the government are still trashing it and restricting it. Looks like Justin Bieber’s career is over as he has cancelled the remainder of his world tour because of health problems caused by the CV19 injections. Could Ivermectin help him? Vax injury expert Dr. Pierre Kory says he has helped many with Ivermectin.

We keep hearing that the Fed is going to pivot and start cutting interest rates. The market rallied on Thursday because of some dovish comments by one Fed President. Is anyone listening to the rest of the Fed? Nearly all, including Fed Head Jay Powell, say they are raising rates, and they are not going to stop raising them anytime soon. We have an inflation economy. Can it be brought under control without killing business?" There is much more in the 52-minute newscast.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about 
these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.

Scott Ritter, "Russia is Mobilizing 300,000 Troops"

Scott Ritter, 3/3/23:
"Russia is Mobilizing 300,000 Troops"
Comments here:

Friday, March 3, 2023

"NATO Pushing Massive Escalation Against Putin By Using China As Excuse"

Redacted, 3/3/23:
"NATO Pushing Massive Escalation 
Against Putin By Using China As Excuse"
"Is the war in Ukraine all but over? Is that why the U.S. seems to be upping the rhetoric on China? We break down the odd timing of this war escalation that is costing Ukrainians their lives."
Comments here:

"Nord Stream: Seymour Hersh Discusses Explosive Report With Gerald Celente"

Gerald Celente, 3/3/23:
"Nord Stream: Seymour Hersh Discusses 
Explosive Report With Gerald Celente"
"Pulitzer Prize winning reporter gives an in-depth interview about his reportage into the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines that connect Russia to Germany and why he believes President Joe Biden approved the bombing."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Courting the Moon"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Courting the Moon"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a reflection nebula, dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by interstellar dust. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus, it lies at the edge of a large, star-forming molecular cloud. 
This telescopic close-up spans about two full moons on the sky or just over 15 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 1333. It shows details of the dusty region along with telltale hints of contrasty red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars. In fact, NGC 1333 contains hundreds of stars less than a million years old, most still hidden from optical telescopes by the pervasive stardust. The chaotic environment may be similar to one in which our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago."