Monday, March 6, 2023

Chet Raymo, “Into The Night”

“Into The Night”
by Chet Raymo

“I first became intimate with the night sky on the sleeping porch of my grandmother’s house on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the early 1940s. A screened sleeping porch might be found attached to any southern home of a certain vintage and substance, usually on the second story at the back. On sultry summer nights you could move a cot or daybed onto the porch and take advantage of whatever breezes stirred the air. I slept there when I visited because it was the only place to find a spare bed. I was usually alone in that big spooky space, with only a thin wire mesh separating me from the many mysteries of the night.

Far off in the house I could hear the muffled voice of the big Stromberg-Carlson radio in the parlor, where grown-ups listened to news of the war or the boogie-woogie tunes of the Hit Parade. Outside was another kind of music, nearer, louder, pressing against the screen, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a million scratchy fiddles, out-of-key woodwinds, discordant timpani. These were the cicadas, crickets and tree frogs of the southern summer night, but to me at that time they were the sounds of the night itself, as if darkness had an audible element.

Some nights the distant horizon would be lit with a silent, winking illumination called “heat lightnin’.” And closer, against the dark grass of the badminton court, the scintillations of fireflies- “lightnin’ bugs”- splashed into brightness.

The constellations of fireflies were answered in the sky by stars, which on those evenings when the city’s lights were blacked out for air-raid drills, multiplied alarmingly. I would lie in my cot, eyes glued to the spangled darkness, waiting to hear the drone of enemy aircraft or see the flash of ack-ack. No aircraft appeared, no ack-ack tracers pierced the night, but soon the stars took on their own fierce reality, like vast squadrons of alien rocket ships moving against the inky dark of Flash Gordon space.

In time I came to recognize patterns, although I did not yet know their names: the Scorpion creeping westward, dragging its stinger along the horizon; the teapot of Sagittarius afloat in the white river of the Milky Way; Vega at the zenith; the kite of Cygnus. As the hours passed, the Big Dipper clocked around the Pole. And sometimes, in late summer, I would wake in the predawn hour to find Orion sneaking into the eastern sky, pursuing the teacup of the Pleiades.

One memorable Christmas of my childhood, my father received a star book as a gift: “A Primer for Star-Gazers” by Henry Neely. As he used the book to learn the stars and constellations, he included me in his activities. The book was Santa’s gift to him. The night sky was his gift to me.

That book, now long out of print, is still in my possession. A glance takes me back half a century to evenings on the badminton court in the back yard of our own new home in the Chattanooga suburbs, gazing upwards with my father to a drapery of brilliant stars flung across the gap between tall dark pines. He told me stories of the constellations as he learned them. Of Orion and the Scorpion. Of the lovers Andromeda and Perseus, and the monster Cetus. Of the wood nymph Callisto and her son Arcas, placed by Zeus in the heavens as the Big and Little Bears. No child ever had a better storybook than the ever-changing page of night above our badminton court. My father also taught me the names of stars: Sirius, Arcturus, Polaris, Betelgeuse, and other, stranger names, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, the claws of the Scorpion. The words on his tongue were like incantations that opened the enchanted cave of night.

He was a man of insatiable curiosity. His stories of the stars were more than “connect the dots.” He wove into his lessons what he knew of history, science, poetry and myth. And, of course, religion. For my father, the stars were infused with unfathomable mystery, their contemplation a sort of prayer.

That Christmas book of long ago was a satisfactory guide to star lore, but as I look at it today I see that it conveyed little of the intimacy I felt as I stood with my father under the bright canopy of stars. Nor do any of the other more recent star guides that I have seen quite capture the feeling I had as a child of standing at the door of an enchanted universe, speaking incantations. What made the childhood experience so memorable was a total immersion in the mystery of the night- the singing of cicadas, the whisper of the wind in the pines, and, of course, my father’s storehouse of knowledge with which he embellished the stars. He taught me what to see; he also taught me what to imagine.”

"A Cherokee Proverb..."

"An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
"A Cherokee Proverb"

"One Chance..."; "It Just Means..."

“You get that one chance; and damn it, you’ve got to take it! If there’s one lesson I know I will take with me for eternity, its that there are those things that might happen only once, those chances that come walking down the street, strolling out of a cafĂ©; if you don’t let go and take them, they really could get away! We can get so washed out with a mindset of entitlement – the universe will do everything for us to ensure our happiness – that we forget why we came here! We came here to grab, to take, to give, to have! Not to wait! Nobody came here to wait! So, what makes anyone think that destiny will keep on knocking over and over again? It could, but what if it doesn’t? You go and you take the chance that you get; even if it makes you look stupid, insane, or whorish! Because it just might not come back again. You could wait a lifetime to see if it will… but I don’t think you should.”
- C. JoyBell C.

The Poet: Langston Hughes, “Life Is Fine”

“Life Is Fine”

“I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn’t,
So I jumped in and sank.
I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn’t a-been so cold
I might’ve sunk and died.
But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.
I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn’t a-been so high
I might’ve jumped and died.
But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I’m still here livin’,
I guess I will live on.
I could’ve died for love -
But for livin’ I was born.
Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry -
I’ll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!”

- Langston Hughes

The Daily "Near You?"

Lawton, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"A Wise Man Once Said..."

“A wise man once said you can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it. What he meant is nothing comes without a price. So before you go into battle, you better decide how much you’re willing to lose. Too often, going after what feels good means letting go of what you know is right, and letting someone in means abandoning the walls you’ve spent a lifetime building. Of course, the toughest sacrifices are the ones we don’t see coming, when we don’t have time to come up with a strategy to pick a side or to measure the potential loss. When that happens, when the battle chooses us and not the other way around, that’s when the sacrifice can turn out to be more than we can bear.

So, how do you beat the odds when it’s one against a billion? You’re just outnumbered. You stand strong, keep pushing yourself against all rational limits, and never give up. But the truth of the matter is despite how hard you try and fight to stay in control, when it’s all said and done, sometimes you’re just outnumbered.”
- "Meredith", "Gray's Anatomy"
o
“You cannot kill me here. Bring your soldiers, your death, your disease, your collapsed economy because it doesn’t matter, I have nothing left to lose and you cannot kill me here. Bring the tears of orphans and the wails of a mother’s loss, bring your God damn air force and Jesus on a cross, bring your hate and bitterness and long working hours, bring your empty wallets and love long since gone but you cannot kill me here. Bring your sneers, your snide remarks and friendships never felt, your letters never sent, your kisses never kissed, cigarettes smoked to the bone and cancer killing fears but you cannot kill me here. For I may fall and I may fail but I will stand again each time and you will find no satisfaction. Because you cannot kill me here.”
- Iain S. Thomas

“Screw The Way Things Are, I Want Out!”

“Screw The Way Things Are, I Want Out!”
by Paul Rosenberg

“This is a beautiful planet, filled, in the main, with decent, cooperative humans. And yet, I want out. Give me any kind of functional spaceship and any reasonable chance, and I’ll take it. This place is anti-human. It chokes the best that’s in us, aggressively and self-righteously. I was struck not long ago by a comment of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s, in which he expressed the same kind of feeling: “I ought to have become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth…”

All of us who’ve had a moment of transcendence - who made some type of contact with what is truly the best inside ourselves - have also sensed that life in the current world is incompatible with it. I think we should stop burying that understanding beneath piles of “that’s the way things are,” “we should be realistic,” and “you can’t fight City Hall.”

Screw the way things are, screw “realistic,” and screw City Hall too. I was made for better things than this, and you were too.

Everywhere I turn, some kind of ruler, sub-ruler, enforcer, regulator, or “right-thinking” quasi-enforcer demands not only my money but also for me to make myself easy to punish, thus showing myself to be a good subservient. That’s not just wrong; it’s a disease. I don’t care whether such people are “following orders,” “just doing their job,” or whatever else they tell themselves to soothe their rightly troubled souls. That mode of living is perverse, and these people are enforcing a disease.

Let me make this part very clear: The desire to control others is disease; it is corruption. Willing controllers are a morally inferior class. And the truly deranged thing is that these people rule the world! Forget about why this is so - we can debate that later - focus rather on the utter insanity of this: A minority of moral defectives, who think extortion is a virtue, rule people who are happy to live and let live, by force.

That’s outright lunacy. And to support the lunacy, we have lies, intimidation, and slogans: “In a democracy, you’re really ruling yourself,” “Only crazy people disagree,” “It’s always been this way,” and so on. To all of which I reply, How stupid do you think we are? You drilled that crap into us when we were children, but we’re not children anymore. And if “our way” isn’t as bad as North Korea, that makes it right? Only to a fool.

And the results of “the way it’s always been”… my God, the results… A study from the 1980s found that since 3600 BC, the world has known only 292 years of peace. During this period there have been 14,531 wars, large and small, in which 3.6 billion people have been killed.

This is what I’m supposed to serve with all my heart and soul? A Bronze Age system that can’t keep itself from slaughter? We’re talking about a 5,600-year track record of mass death, and yet fundamental change is considered unthinkable? Well, screw that too, because I think deep, fundamental change is called for, and was called for a long time ago.

Again, this is a wonderful planet and most of the people on it are decent, but it is ruled by insanity, and I want out. Yes, I know, there’s really nowhere to go. Every place I might go is dominated by the same diseased model, and dissent is punished the same, and in some places worse. That’s one of the reasons space appeals to me; it gives me a chance to escape this madness.

I’ll draw this to a close with a passage from C. Delisle Burns’s wonderful "The First Europe," describing why the Roman Empire collapsed: “Great numbers of men and women were unwilling to make the effort required for the maintenance of the old order, not because they were not good enough to fulfill their civic duties, but because they were too good to be satisfied with a system from which so few derived benefit.”

I, for one, am unwilling to expend any effort to maintain the present order. It is by its nature incompatible with the best that is in us, and always will be. Those of us who want to be more and better cannot support the current order without opposing what’s best in ourselves. Screw that.”

"Doubt..."

“Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the handmaiden of truth. Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery. A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief. Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false. Let no one fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief. The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing, for truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure. He that would silence doubt is filled with fear; the house of his spirit is built on shifting sands. But he that fears no doubt, and knows its use, is founded on a rock. He shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work of his hands shall endure. Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help. It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the handmaiden of truth.”
- Robert T. Weston

"Stop Believing"

"Stop Believing"
by Jeff Thomas

"In 1776, Thomas Jefferson was asked to create a draft for a founding document for what was to become the United States. In his second paragraph, he said. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." So firm was the vision of America’s founding fathers that this statement represented their collective belief that the twenty-eight signatories accepted it without any change in wording.

Could the same be said today? Do Americans possess a collective belief today? Do Americans perceive the word "rights" collectively? How about "liberty?" Would a random sampling of Americans generate the same definition of such words? Or, considering that most Americans who are unable to answer such simple questions as, "What state is New Your City in," how many Americans would respond to a request to define these words with no more than a blank stare?

But why should this be? Only a generation or two ago, Americans enjoyed educational standards that were exemplary in the world. Yet, today, it’s universally accepted that Americans have been dramatically "dumbed-down" to such an extent that a majority of high school graduates are not even proficient in simple math and grammar skills.

More worrisome is the fact that the basic beliefs of Americans have been transformed from relative certainty to being both arbitrary and confused. Let’s look at a few of these:

Religious faith: Most people imagine that they possess a basic understanding of right and wrong. Yet Americans often readily excuse Muslims for crimes against women, as they are merely "practicing their religion." Similarly, rap artists can be forgiven for misogyny, as their endorsement of abuse is classified as "cultural." Therefore, religious "conviction" actually becomes flexible depending upon whom it applies to.

Further, although roughly three-quarters of Americans see themselves as Christians, merely identifying oneself as a Christian may be sufficient to be accused of being antisemitic or racist. No logic is needed to explain this accusation; to be accused is to be guilty.

Family: For decades, welfare has helped to eliminate marriage, as a woman receives more welfare if there is no man present. During the COVID pandemic, parents discovered that their children are being indoctrinated by schools in ways parents never approved. Further, they were routinely told that the schools had greater authority over choice of information than parents. Parents are responsible for paying the expenses of the child, but the school is responsible for deciding what the child believes.

Biology: Here, belief becomes even more confused. Americans are told that men can be women and vice versa. All that’s required is to "identify" as the opposite gender, and it becomes an accepted fact. But it doesn’t stop there. There are no longer two genders; there are scores of them – so many that no one can remember them all, yet young people are continually fearful that they may refer to one of their classmates as one gender, mistaking the classmate’s self-perception and inviting shame from other classmates. LBGTQ+ has become a nightmare of confusion – an ever-morphing labyrinth that no one can get correct at this point.

Equality: Possibly one of the loftiest of beliefs is that of equality. Yes, we are all different in countless ways, but the concept of equality suggests that all people should have equal opportunity. It’s then up to the individual what he does with that opportunity. But equity inserts the word "fair." In practice, this has come to mean that, to be fair, we must ignore equality and embrace preference and prejudice.

Those with darker skin must receive greater entitlement, and those with lighter skin must experience shame. Those who are male must be diminished socially unless they identify as women, in which case, they may enjoy an advantage in sporting competitions. Those who are from a racial or ethnic minority must be given preference or even sole access to designated job opportunities. As George Orwell famously stated in his book Animal Farm, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

So, what’s happening here? Is it simply that people are questioning traditional beliefs more than before? Are they becoming more open-minded and willing to consider alternative perceptions? Well, no. If that were true, then those who held a conventional view would not be shamed by those who did not. Students who defend conventional beliefs are expelled from their schools. Employees who defend conventional beliefs have been fired from their jobs merely for thinking "incorrect" thoughts. Those who decide not to get vaxxed can expect to have their basic rights removed.

There is a concerted movement, led by the media but supported by much of the public, to question conventional beliefs and eliminate them. So, is there a new set of beliefs that are meant to supplant the old beliefs? Well, not really. Last week, there were 52 genders; this week, there are 74. How about next week?

At this point, the average individual, try as he may (I hope that’s an acceptable pronoun), is likely to say, "Jeez, I don’t know what to believe anymore." And there we have it… the entire point of the re-education of belief. The point is to create such a level of confusion that people not only cease to voice their beliefs but eventually do away with their beliefs, agreeing with whatever they’re told to believe… for the moment. In doing so, a compliant populace is created. If totalitarian rule is to be accomplished, people must, above all, be compliant. They must willingly (and immediately) agree with whatever belief is being foisted upon them.

But for what purpose? Well, without belief, the individual is, in fact, not an individual. He is merely a useful tool of the state. Let that thought sink in a bit. This is the point at which it becomes necessary to step back and take in the big picture. When any state has reached the point that it grooms its people to cease to have beliefs, it has already gone far beyond the point of validity.

At such a point, the populace is faced with a very unpleasant choice of possible ways forward: The first is to rebel against the state in some form. The second is to bail out – to leave one’s country in hopes of finding greener pastures elsewhere. If both of these choices are too daunting to consider, there is a third choice.

Submit."

"Breaking! Biden Declares National State of Emergency as Putin Takes Key Ukraine City"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 3/6/23:
"Breaking! Biden Declares National State of 
Emergency as Putin Takes Key Ukraine City"
"President Biden just signed a national declaration of emergency over Ukraine. This gives him unprecedented executive powers. In today's show, we're looking at his new moves on surveillance, digital currency and more."
Comments here:

"Peak Focus for Complex Tasks With Beta Isochronic Tones"

Full screen recommended.
"Peak Focus for Complex Tasks 
 With Beta Isochronic Tones"
by Jason Lewis - Mind Amend

"This is a high-intensity audio brainwave entrainment session, using isochronic tones. Listen to this when you need a strong burst of intense focus to concentrate and study things like advanced mathematics, scientific formulas, financial analysis or any other complex mental activity. Listen to this track with your eyes open while doing the task/activity you want to focus on. Use this session in the morning, afternoon or early evening, to train your brain for better cognition, focus and thought processing. You can either sit somewhere quiet and comfortable with your eyes closed and give your brain a nice workout, or you can also listen to this while doing an activity that requires a boost in concentration.

Headphones are NOT REQUIRED for this video. Although headphones are not required you may find they produce a more intense effect, because they help to block out distracting external sounds.
o
"Isochronic tones are a fast and effective audio-based way to stimulate your brain. Among many of the benefits, they can help improve focus, relaxation, energy levels, sleep and more, without taking drugs or needing any special equipment. What isochronic tones essentially do is guide your dominant brainwave activity to a different frequency while you are listening to them, allowing you to influence and change your mental state and how you feel."
I strongly suggest you read Comments here:
"Isochronic Tones –
How They Work, the Benefits and the Research"
This is a brainwave entrainment audio session using isochronic tones combined with music. The isochronic tones are the repetitive beats you can hear on top of the music throughout the track. If you are new to this type of audio brainwave entrainment, find out how isochronic tones work and how they compare to binaural beats here: 
Listen folks, we're out of time! Whether you want to know it or not we're literally in the fight of our lives, for our lives, right now, and it's going to get much, much worse. Some of you reading this will not survive, and I may not either, so I'll take any edge I can get, and you should too... This works for me. Prepare yourself, brace for impact...
- CP

"How It Really Is"

"People are About to Spend Less"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 3/6/23:
"People are About to Spend Less"
"It’s very apparent in the economy that people are spending less money than ever. As spring approaches, people realize that they do not have the money for anything extracurricular."
Comments here:

"Economic Market Snapshot 3/6/23"

"Economic Market Snapshot 3/6/23"
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: creditequity valuationfunding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United Statesother advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Job cuts and much more.
Commentary, highly recommended:
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
And now... The End Game...

"Heaven from Hell"

"Heaven from Hell"
Debt and deficits join forces with war 
and inflation to assail the reigning empire...
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

"So you think you can tell,
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skies from pain..."
~ Pink Floyd

San Martin, Argentina - "Our story so far…The feds spent too much money. Prices went up. The Fed raised rates. Stocks and bonds went down. ‘Not to worry,’ they said; the inflation was “transitory.” But months go by and prices are still going up. Friday’s news from Breitbart: "With the February jobs report delayed until next Friday, a lot of focus today was on the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) services sector index for February. The ISM index held steady at 55.1, just one-tenth of a point below the January reading and above the consensus estimate."

Readings above 50 indicate expansion, while readings below indicate contraction. A reading at 50 exactly indicates levels were unchanged from the prior month. In other words, this was a serious blow to Team Transitory.

The subindexes were also uncomfortably hot and point to inflation pressures remaining high. The employment index jumped from 50 to 54, indicating payroll expansion. That suggests we may get a hotter-than-expected payrolls number next week, which would increase pressure on the Federal Reserve to ramp up the pace of its rate hikes to 50 basis points.

Cluster Threats: So, the Fed must continue to raise its key rate until either 1) it gets ahead of inflation and/or 2) something goes seriously wrong. Note that as long as assets are going up faster than interest rates, people will continue borrowing to speculate. This raises stock prices. But it also increases the money supply (banks create money as it is lent out). As the supply of fast money increases, prices rise (inflation). One way or another, the Fed must bring down the financial markets as well as inflation.

That is why Number 2 is what we’re prepared for here at the Bonner Private Research headquarters in Argentina; it’s where the risk is. We avoid it by only owning things (stocks, gold…real estate) that we want to hold for a long time, even through a major 10-year bear market.

All of that seems obvious to us. Less obvious are the bigger, ‘cluster’ threats. Those are: The growing, unpayable, ‘national’ debt…War, and the decline of the US empire…The forced abandonment of traditional energy sources…And the destruction of the US economy by excess government spending and regulation…silly, distracting ‘culture wars’…sanctions and tariffs…and inflation.

Regulatory Drag: These things pose even more risks to investors. We already have a government with $31 trillion of debt. The deficit for this year is headed towards $1.4 trillion. And interest payments of more than $1 trillion per year are coming soon.

The ‘green transition’ crusade is going to be expensive too. ‘Alternative’ energy costs more than traditional oil and gas. And since energy is an essential component of modern life, at a minimum, standards of living will fall.

Regulations also cost money. Here’s Gilder Guideposts: "According to the American Action Forum, quoted in the Wall Street Journal, in two years the Biden administration has imposed 517 “regulatory actions,” with some $318 billion in total costs, worse even than the Obama administration’s $208 billion in costs in its first two years. In his entire term, Trump’s additional regulatory burden came to just $64.7 billion."

Federal regulations are gouging at least $2 trillion a year from the U.S. economy, some 8% of U.S. GDP, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEE). That comes to some $14,684 per family more than is extracted by the federal income tax, the CEE reported.

And then, there’s the war agenda. It already costs as much as $1 trillion per year – 4% of GDP – to fund the Pentagon, spy on everyone, everywhere, maintain bases all over the world and meddle in the affairs of foreign nations.

Enemy of the People: Between war, interest on the debt, and regulation, we’re already facing $4 trillion a year. This is equivalent to spending about 85 cents of every dollar of federal tax income on things that ‘The People’ don’t really want or need…things that will make us all poorer.

Last week, we recalled our Bad Guy Theory (BGT). It’s a way of explaining the otherwise incomprehensible tendency for the press and the public to suddenly make an enemy out of people who’ve done them no harm…and to spend trillions of dollars going to war with them.

In 2002, for example, George W. Bush’s speechwriter, David Frum – who later went on to greater fame by suggesting that people who didn’t get vaccinated against Covid should be punished – came up with the “Axis of Evil” jingo. The idea wasn’t that Iraq, Iran and North Korea had actually done anything for which they should be penalized; it was that they were “bad guys.” Frum et al think they can tell Heaven from Hell. In their doltish way, they think some people are good; some are bad. You can make a better world, they believe, by eliminating the bad ones.

The US soon invaded Iraq…spent 2 trillion dollars…killed hundreds of thousands of people…turned millions into refugees. And now Iraq is arguably a worse guy. But no one talks about Iraq anymore. Now we have a new bad guy, China! Stay tuned..."

Joel’s Note: As the third largest line item on the Federal Government’s expenses, National (ahem) Defense costs the nation roughly the same amount as net interest on the debt, education, veteran’s benefits, transportation and all those pesky expenses lumped together under “other”… combined.

See the nifty chart below, which BPR’s macro analyst, Dan Denning, forwarded over yesterday…
Click image for larger size.
The chart shows total receipts and outlays for the Federal Government so far for the fiscal year 2023 (which, for their own accounting purposes, the government begins each year in October). That little yellow line you see dangling beneath the green receipts, the $406 billion underlap, represents the deficit… so far. “That's 9% above pace from last year,” writes Dan, “and on pace for $1.4 trillion for the year.”

Continues Dan…"The top five spending items make up 95% of federal revenue year to date. Every other dollar of spending is borrowed. And remember, the YTD $194 billion net interest is just interest on money we've already borrowed. Annualized, through the end of 2022, net interest expense was $852 billion. Probably higher now."

Here’s another chart Dan shared, this one depicting the Federal Government’s interest payments…
Click image for larger size.
Perhaps more concerning even that the total outflows here is the accelerating trend, the dreaded “hockey stick” you see in the upper right corner. Not pretty. “I began the chart in 1971,” Dan notes, “the year of our Fake Dollar (In FD terms, we are in year 52...52 FD).”

For comparison, annualized net interest expense on Federal debt was $34 billion back in Q1 1971… or about as much as the Biden’s Climate Envoy, John Jetsetter Kerry, spends on restocking his Gulfstream minibar every year…

The final line of Dan’s email is worth reprinting verbatim. “If the Feds ever do default, I don't think you want a piece of paper in your hand, or a few digits in the ether, as the substance of your bet. I'd prefer something more physical, dense, and golden.”

"Major Price Increases At Walmart! This Is Getting Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/6/23:
"Major Price Increases At Walmart! 
This Is Getting Ridiculous!"
"In today's vlog we are at Walmart, and are noticing major price increases on groceries! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of bare shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products, and keeping them at an affordable price!"
Comments here:

Jim Kunstler, "Allegorical Intermezzo"

"Allegorical Intermezzo"
By Jim Kunstler

” If, however, as Pareto suggested… a governing elite is inevitable, then we are certainly under the wrong elites. Whether a circulation of elites can be completed in time to save the world economic system from ruin and the majority from destitution and veritable slavery is a question of no little urgency.” - Michael Rectenwald

Imagine that on an April evening in 1912, the captain of the RMS Titanic had announced a grand ball at which the male passengers were asked to wear their wives’ clothing and vice-versa. That was approximately the condition of Western Civ verging on springtime in 2023: preoccupied with silliness while the iceberg awaits.

But who would have thought the sinking of civilization would occur with such fantastic comic ornamentation? Men, in more ways than mere costuming, pretending to be women…incompetence honored, feted, even worshipped…intellect reduced to anti-thinking…anything of value thrown overboard in some weird post-modern potlatch ceremony of twisted moral righteousness…? But the hour is late, the party is near its end, and the iceberg is struck. The rest of the story will be you holding onto a few valuables, including your life, while the lifeboats get lowered.

From here forward, things get pretty interesting. And from here on, nobody is really in charge. The vacuum of leadership we’ve been living in becomes impossible to ignore, and nature (it’s rumored) hates a vacuum. For the moment, circumstances are in charge, not personalities.

Look no further than the fiasco in Ukraine, engineered by geniuses of the US foreign service in some daft exercise to show the world who’s who and what for. And, remind me: what was the basic idea there? To hamstring and hogtie Russia so badly that her people would overthrow the only rational head-of-state in Christendom, a figure who makes the presidents, chancellors, and prime ministers of Western Civ look like a troop of gibbering mandrills, with painted faces and blue butts, the ass-clowns of geopolitics.

Something tells me that this gang will not make it to the lifeboats. They’ll be left on deck gripping bottles of single malt scotch whiskey, singing Don’t Cry for me Argentina as the band plays, while the whole wicked colossus slides beneath the moonlight-tinted green waves. All of which is to say: these perilous and confounding times we live in are coming to a climax. Events are afoot now, choices must be made, truths will emerge, no one will be untouched, be careful who your friends are.

We’re waiting for financial markets, banks, and monies to blow, as an engine will when submerged in water. It can’t not happen, though every known device has been deployed to keep up appearances. The credibility of finance was thrown overboard a long time ago. Capital was sloshing around in the bilges as the ship heaved and pitched in the angry waters, and it had to go somewhere. The next turn will be when you go looking for where it went and you discover to your nauseated chagrin that the capital is just…gone! Through some legerdemain of physics, it disappeared…turned into a kind of anti-matter…fell through a black hole (possibly ripped by that iceberg), or up the smokestacks, like it was never there at all.

When that happens, our collective attention finally gets galvanized as by no shock before. When capital is truly gone, transmogrified into a whole lot of nothing, the time for standing by making faces and whining is over. By the way, this is the way the world ends for the vacuum known as “Joe Biden” and the Party of Chaos he is propped up to represent. Chaos, we will be astounded to learn, is not your friend, is not the solution to anything, least of all a polity that is floundering in lifeboats over cold, dark, deep water a thousand leagues from dry land. What’s more, there are no ships coming to the rescue. Guess why they put oars in the boats. Get set to pull, me hardies!

Yes, we’re at sea now, without a compass. Yet the stars sparkle dazzlingly above, and some aboard can actually read what they say and what they point to. If safety and sanity will not find us, maybe we can pull together toward wherever they wait. My gawd, it’s going to be a long haul, but have a little faith - remember what that is? (It’s the conviction that all of us together stand in some meaningful relation to existence.) Even if you’re too mentally drained to believe it, act as if it is so. Or, in post-modern parlance, fake it till you make it.

Didn’t think it would come to this when you signed on to the voyage? I guess so. You were comfortably ensconced one winter night in the mini-McMansion, on the overstuffed sofa, entertained by some Netflix inanity, scarfing down the microwaved cheeze morsels…when the wife said, “Hey, let’s book a cruise!” Seemed like a good idea at the time, which is what everything in the annals of history is and was. And now, look at where you are!"