Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/8/23:
"Hidden In Plain Sight: The World Economy Is Collapsing,
But You Are Not Supposed To Know"
Comments here:
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So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
"Stock Up At Aldi Before The Next Price Increase! What's Coming?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/8/23:
"Stock Up At Aldi Before The Next
Price Increase! What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are at Aldi, and are noticing some price increases on groceries! With prices going up all over the world, we are seeking out some options to stock up on, and prepare for the worst."
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Tuesday, March 7, 2023
"Don't Be A Delusional Zombie, Get Ready For More Inflation, Rate Hikes And A Depression"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/7/23:
"Don't Be A Delusional Zombie, Get Ready For
More Inflation, Rate Hikes And A Depression"
Comments here:
"The Coming Wave of Evictions Is More Than a Housing Crisis"
Full screen recommended.
"The Coming Wave of Evictions Is
More Than a Housing Crisis"
by Epic Economist
"A devastating wave of evictions is about to hit the United States, and this is more than a reflection of the dire housing crisis the country is facing – but proof that we are in a rigged system that doesn’t allow us to build equity through homeownership and continues to force us into renting properties that are getting increasingly more expensive and precarious at the same time. Right now, distortions are getting so extreme in the rental market that evictions in middle-class suburbs are rising faster than in lower and upper-income neighborhoods. Our middle class is being hollowed out, and poverty levels are on the rise again. Today, virtually everyone in the country is cost-burdened by rent. And experts are warning that housing insecurity will be the future of the vast majority of the U.S. population as affluent investors control 40% of single-family rental homes and hike rent prices to astronomical highs.
For the longest time, being able to afford decent quality, stable housing in a safe neighborhood was a critical component of financial and personal security for middle-income Americans. But the latest data shows that with each passing month, more and more middle-class households are getting priced out of middle-class neighborhoods. The number of middle-class families evicted from their homes in suburbs across the country has been on the rise for years, according to Princeton researchers.
And today, the rate of evictions in middle-class suburbs is at the highest level on record, growing at a faster pace than evictions in low-income neighborhoods, the researchers found. The Cleveland-Elyria, Ohio, metropolitan area experienced the largest increase in suburban evictions. With evictions of middle-income households rising by 55%.
With rent prices set to rise even further this summer, this could trigger a major eviction crisis and leave lots of middle-class and former-middle-class renters struggling to find a place to live. The tight housing market we have today is not giving any chances for millions of middle-income earners to start building wealth via homeownership. Prospective home buyers have been forced to grapple with not just high mortgage rates and home values, but also, competition from investors with deep pockets.
Estimates from MetLife Investment Management indicate that Wall Street investors are going to control as much as 40% of single-family rental homes by 2027. And that's a bad thing for the rental market as a whole. For the first time ever, 44 million American renters are spending 30% of their income on rent or more, something Moody’s Analytics calls a “rent burden.” Middle-income households renting a two-bedroom apartment in most of our metropolitan areas must direct 41% of their incomes towards rent every month. Meanwhile, 17 million low-income workers lose up to 55% of their pay just to cover rent. They are considered “severely housing cost-burdened,” and they are a single unexpected event away from losing their homes.
Unfortunately, it seems like this has been the plan all along. First, government officials fueled the growth of the largest housing bubble we have ever seen. Then, they allowed investors to snatch the supply of homes that would otherwise be bought by U.S. families, forcing people to be subject to absurd price increases, dismantling the middle class, killing the dream of homeownership, and making housing insecurity the new normal. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Our leaders have broken our housing system, and by now, it is too late to find an easy fix, so we will all have to deal with this the hard way."
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”
Full screen recommended.
Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”
"A Look to the Heavens"
"These two mighty galaxies are pulling each other apart. Known as the "Mice" because they have such long tails, each spiral galaxy has likely already passed through the other. The long tails are created by the relative difference between gravitational pulls on the near and far parts of each galaxy. Because the distances are so large, the cosmic interaction takes place in slow motion - over hundreds of millions of years.
NGC 4676 lies about 300 million light-years away toward the constellation of Bernice's Hair (Coma Berenices) and are likely members of the Coma Cluster of Galaxies. The featured picture was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2002. These galactic mice will probably collide again and again over the next billion years so that, instead of continuing to pull each other apart, they coalesce to form a single galaxy."
Chief Tecumseh, "So Live Your Life"
Full screen recommended.
RedFrost Motivation,
Chief Tecumseh, "So Live Your Life"
Read by Shane Morris
"It's Just... Life"
“Bad things don’t happen to people because they deserve for them to happen. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s just… life. And no matter who we are, we have to take the hand we’re dealt, crappy though it may be, and try our very best to move forward anyway, to love anyway, to have hope anyway… to have faith that there’s a purpose to the journey we’re on.”
- Mia Sheridan
"A 'Greatest Depression' Scenario Is Unfolding, Be Ready For It"
Gregory Mannarino, 3/7/23:
"A 'Greatest Depression' Scenario Is Unfolding,
Be Ready For It"
Comments here:
"The Weight of Russian Manpower is Crushing Ukrainians"
Full screen recommended.
"In Focus", 3/7/23:
"Douglas Macgregor, Straight Calls, 3/7/23:
"The Weight of Russian Manpower is Crushing Ukrainians"
"Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of
current geopolitical events in the United States and the world."
Comments here:
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Scott Ritter, 3/7/23:
"Grinding Down the Ukrainian Armed Forces"
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "Bad Guy Rising"
"Bad Guy Rising"
A new enemy on the horizon,
plus updates from life up in the Andes...
By Bill Bonner
Salta, Argentina - "Here’s the latest from Bloomberg: "China Warns US Risks Catastrophe With Moves to ‘Contain’ Beijing." "China’s new foreign minister warned that soaring US-China tensions risk blowing past any guardrails in the relationship, showing that divisions between the world’s biggest economies are becoming more entrenched.
“The US claims that it seeks to outcompete China but does not seek conflict,” Foreign Minister Qin Gang said Tuesday at his first news briefing since taking office late last year. “Yet in reality, its so-called competition aims to contain and suppress China in all respects and get the two countries locked in a zero-sum game.”
Let’s continue scanning the horizon, searching for the dust of an approaching ‘cluster.’ Like Apaches on the warpath, trouble may be headed our way. Today, we look at the warpath itself.
Wokish Crime and Time on the Vine: First, a brief update on life in the far Andes. Here, in the 1990s, the government gave the “originarios” permission to go on the warpath against local landowners. The land itself has changed hands peacefully for the last 400 years – or ever since it was conquered by the Spanish conquistadors.
The ‘originarios’ say they do not recognize the titles issued by the Spaniards, going back to the 16th century. And thanks to recent attempts to protect indigenous culture, squatters can declare themselves “originarios,” and they can’t be put off your land. There being a lot more potential ‘originarios’ than landowners, the local politicians, the police, and the courts, tend to take their side…especially when they are in conflict with a foreign, absentee landowner. So, while the government recognizes our title to the land, it doesn’t stop someone from fencing off part of it and building a house for himself.
But all is quiet…at least in our part of the pre-cordillera. The main trouble-maker on our ranch went to the police and charged us with theft (we moved some roof beams, illegally stored on our land….thus making it harder for her to put up another illegal house)…and with “gender violence,” a new, wokish crime leveled at men, just because they are men, and widely regarded as a joke. We counter-charged her with trespassing, squatting and so forth. All a waste of time.
The woman is living, unauthorized, on our land (one of many illegal residents!)…in a house built illegally. As a single mother (her companion, Carlos, drowned in a suspicious accident 2 years ago) she gets money from the government. But now, it looks like the trouble-maker made trouble for herself. “She’s so annoying to everyone,” reports Gustavo, our foreman, “that she’s made enemies of the other originarios. Everybody is hoping she’ll just move away.” The bigger problem for us is that too many calves die. More about that anon.
The Fin del Mundo: But apart from the ‘originario war.’ And, of course, the periodic droughts…the dead calves (10% of the births)…and losing money every year…life in the valley goes on. It rained this year. The grass is high. The cattle are fat. The grapes are ripening.
Normally, the grapes are harvested at this time of year. But a late frost delayed the budding out. Now, we have to worry that an early frost will destroy the grapes before they are ready to pick.
So, let’s go back to something easier: Bad Guy Theory (BGT). It’s the lamebrain idea that some people are good and others are bad. Naturally, we Americans are among the good ones. And since we are good guys, we can do what we want. Then, ‘bad’ things (blowing up an important pipeline, for example) magically become good.
Arguably, since WWII, no nation has done as many bad things as the US. We have that on the authority of a report from China. Patrick Lawrence reports: “U.S. Hegemony and Its Perils” is a thorough, carefully organized inventory of Washington’s imperial conduct, evidently written by one or more ministry officials who has or have done considerable reading and homework. While it is focused on the decades since the 1945 victories in Europe and the Pacific, in its indictment of U.S. policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean it reaches back to the earliest decades of our republic. For a taste of the tone, this from the opening section:
In 1823, the United States announced the Monroe Doctrine. While touting an “America for the Americans,” what it truly wanted was an “America for the United States.” Since then, the policies of successive U.S. governments toward Latin America and the Caribbean Region have been riddled with political interference, military intervention and regime subversion.
Heaven and Hell: The US is the only country to ever use a nuclear bomb – against civilians, no less. Twice. It has invaded 32 different countries (since WWII). It has meddled in foreign elections, assassinations, murders, coups d’etat – you name it. When it comes to ‘bad guy’ goings on, the US is Number One. Of course, all this was done by the ‘good guys,’ so it was done for a good reason, even if it didn’t always turn out so good.
Even at home, America’s shining goodness is a little tarnished. The US puts more people in jail than any other major nation. At more than 600 people per 100,000 in the hoosegow, the US locks up twice as many of its own people as Russia, and five times as many as China. (Soon, we predict, BGT will be used at home to lock up even more people. That was the real significance of Biden’s strange ‘red light speech.’ His aim was to turn his rivals from worthy opponents into “bad guys.”)
As the world’s good guys, we don’t need to leave it to God to determine who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell. We can decide for ourselves. And now, the press…the intellectuals…the feds…the whole Establishment – have designated a new bad guy du jour: China. Stay tuned…"
"We're All Mad Here..."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the cat.
"We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll,
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"
Oh, I know, I know, some days...lol
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"We work in the dark. We do what we can to battle the evil that would otherwise destroy us. But if a man's character is his fate, this fight is not a choice but a calling. Yet sometimes the weight of this burden causes us to falter, breaching the frazzled fortress of our mind, allowing the monsters without to turn within. We are left alone staring into the abyss; into the laughing face of madness."
- "Fox Mulder", "The X-Files"
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Strange days indeed...
John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me"
"Another Bank Goes Bust"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 3/7/23:
"Another Bank Goes Bust"
"Silvergate capital is a bank that has been open since 1988. They have billions of dollars worth of assets and have been the victim of the crypto industry. Plus, the central bank digital dollar is about to be unveiled. This will track everything that we do."
Comments here:
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"Relax..."
"Relax. They're not going to kill us. They're going to
TRY and kill us. And that is a very different thing. "
- Steve Voake, "The Dreamwalker's Child"
"Nine Meals from Anarchy"
"Nine Meals from Anarchy"
by Jeff Thomas
"In 1906, Alfred Henry Lewis stated, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” Since then, his observation has been echoed by people as disparate as Robert Heinlein and Leon Trotsky. The key here is that, unlike all other commodities, food is the one essential that cannot be postponed. If there were a shortage of, say, shoes, we could make do for months or even years. A shortage of gasoline would be worse, but we could survive it, through mass transport or even walking, if necessary.
But food is different. If there were an interruption in the supply of food, fear would set in immediately. And, if the resumption of the food supply were uncertain, the fear would become pronounced. After only nine missed meals, it’s not unlikely that we’d panic and be prepared to commit a crime to acquire food. If we were to see our neighbor with a loaf of bread, and we owned a gun, we might well say, “I’m sorry, you’re a good neighbor and we’ve been friends for years, but my children haven’t eaten today – I have to have that bread – even if I have to shoot you.”
There’s no need to speculate on this concern yet. There’s nothing so alarming on the evening news yet to suggest that such a problem might be on the horizon. So, let’s have a closer look at the actual food distribution industry, compare it to the present direction of the economy, and see whether there might be reason for concern.
The food industry typically operates on very small margins – often below 2%. Traditionally, wholesalers and retailers have relied on a two-week turnaround of supply and anywhere up to a 30-day payment plan. But an increasing tightening of the economic system for the last eight years has resulted in a turnaround time of just three days for both supply and payment for many in the industry. This a system that’s still fully operative, but with no further wiggle room, should it take a significant further hit.
If there were a month where significant inflation took place (The Feds lie say 9.1%; really now at least 17%), all profits would be lost for the month for both suppliers and retailers, but goods could still be replaced and sold for a higher price next month. But, if there were three or more consecutive months of inflation, the industry would be unable to bridge the gap, even if better conditions were expected to develop in future months. A failure to pay in full for several months would mean smaller orders by those who could not pay. That would mean fewer goods on the shelves. The longer the inflationary trend continued, the more quickly prices would rise to hopefully offset the inflation. And ever-fewer items on the shelves.
From Germany in 1922, to Argentina in 2000, and to Venezuela in 2016, this has been the pattern whenever inflation has become systemic, rather than sporadic. Each month, some stores close, beginning with those that are the most poorly capitalized.
In good economic times, this would mean more business for those stores that were still solvent, but in an inflationary situation, they would be in no position to take on more unprofitable business. The result is that the volume of food on offer at retailers would decrease at a pace with the severity of the inflation.
However, the demand for food would not decrease by a single loaf of bread. Store closings would be felt most immediately in inner cities, when one closing would send customers to the next neighborhood seeking food. The real danger would come when that store also closes and both neighborhoods descended on a third store in yet another neighborhood. That’s when one loaf of bread for every three potential purchasers would become worth killing over. Virtually no one would long tolerate seeing his children go without food because others had “invaded” his local supermarket.
In addition to retailers, the entire industry would be impacted and, as retailers disappeared, so would suppliers, and so on, up the food chain. This would not occur in an orderly fashion, or in one specific area. The problem would be a national one. Closures would be all over the map, seemingly at random, affecting all areas. Food riots would take place, first in the inner cities then spread to other communities. Buyers, fearful of shortages, would clean out the shelves.
Importantly, it’s the very unpredictability of food delivery that increases fear, creating panic and violence. And, again, none of the above is speculation; it’s a historical pattern – a reaction based upon human nature whenever systemic inflation occurs.
Then… unfortunately… the cavalry arrives. At that point, it would be very likely that the central government would step in and issue controls to the food industry that served political needs rather than business needs, greatly exacerbating the problem. Suppliers would be ordered to deliver to those neighborhoods where the riots are the worst, even if those retailers are unable to pay. This would increase the number of closings of suppliers.
Along the way, truckers would begin to refuse to enter troubled neighborhoods, and the military might well be brought in to force deliveries to take place. (If truckers could afford $5.75 a gallon diesel fuel.)
So, what would it take for the above to occur? Well, historically, it has always begun with excessive debt. We know that the debt level is now the highest it has ever been in world history. (US debt as of October 2022: $31.12 trillion; World debt as of Feb. 2022: $303 trillion.) In addition, the stock and bond markets are in bubbles of historic proportions. They will most certainly pop.
With a crash in the markets, deflation always follows as people try to unload assets to cover for their losses. The Federal Reserve (and other central banks) has stated that it will unquestionably print as much money as it takes to counter deflation. Unfortunately, inflation has a far greater effect on the price of commodities than assets. Therefore, the prices of commodities will rise dramatically, further squeezing the purchasing power of the consumer, thereby decreasing the likelihood that he will buy assets, even if they’re bargain priced. Therefore, asset holders will drop their prices repeatedly as they become more desperate. The Fed then prints more to counter the deeper deflation and we enter a period when deflation and inflation are increasing concurrently.
Historically, when this point has been reached, no government has ever done the right thing. They have, instead, done the very opposite – keep printing. A by-product of this conundrum is reflected in the photo above. Food still exists, but retailers shut down because they cannot pay for goods. Suppliers shut down because they’re not receiving payments from retailers. Producers cut production because sales are plummeting.
In every country that has passed through such a period, the government has eventually gotten out of the way and the free market has prevailed, re-energizing the industry and creating a return to normal. The question is not whether civilization will come to an end. (It will not.) The question is the liveability of a society that is experiencing a food crisis, as even the best of people are likely to panic and become a potential threat to anyone who is known to store a case of soup in his cellar.
Fear of starvation is fundamentally different from other fears of shortages. Even good people panic. In such times, it’s advantageous to be living in a rural setting, as far from the centre of panic as possible. It’s also advantageous to store food in advance that will last for several months, if necessary. However, even these measures are no guarantee, as, today, modern highways and efficient cars make it easy for anyone to travel quickly to where the goods are. The ideal is to be prepared to sit out the crisis in a country that will be less likely to be impacted by dramatic inflation – where the likelihood of a food crisis is low and basic safety is more assured."
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"Countless Americans Plunge Into Despair As Hunger Spreads Like Wildfire All Across America"
"Countless Americans Plunge Into Despair As
Hunger Spreads Like Wildfire All Across America"
By Michael Snyder
"We haven’t seen anything like this in a long time. A couple of factors are combining to push millions of Americans into a state of food insecurity. First of all, food prices have been rising aggressively throughout the past year, and so our money does not go nearly as far as it once did. Meanwhile, food stamp benefits are being slashed. The federal government had greatly enhanced food stamp benefits for many Americans during the pandemic, but now that emergency program is coming to an end. So what this means is that many Americans are going to have very little money to spend on food at a time when economic conditions are starting to get really rough.
The Washington Post recently sent a reporter named Tim Craig to Kentucky, and he discovered that poor people are waiting in “a mile-long line” just to get some free food…"As he claimed the first spot in a mile-long line for free food in the Appalachian foothills, Danny Blair vividly recalled receiving the letter announcing that his pandemic-era benefit to help buy groceries was about to be slashed.
Kentucky lawmakers had voted to end the state’s health emergency last spring, by default cutting food stamp benefits created to help vulnerable Americans like Blair weather the worst of covid-19. Instead of $200 a month, he would get just $30. Blair actually gets up at 4 AM in the morning so that he can be first in line for these handouts. On the Friday that the reporter from the Washington Post interviewed him, he ended up staying in that line for nine hours."
I couldn’t imagine waiting in line for that long, but Blair feels like this is what he and his wife must do in order to survive…"He crumpled up the letter and threw it on the floor of his camper. “I thought, ‘Wow, the government is trying to kill us now,’” said Blair, 63, who survives on his Social Security disability check and lives in a mobile home with his wife after their house burned down five years ago. “They are going to starve us out.”
Blair and his wife hop into their truck twice a month at 4 a.m. to ensure they get a few staples at the Hazel Green Food Project’s giveaway. On a recent Friday, they waited nine hours until local prisoners on work duty started loading bags of meat and vegetables, potato chips and cookies into vehicles in one of the nation’s most impoverished communities."
Sadly, there are countless others out there that are in the same position. The Post also interviewed another man named Henry Tolsen that openly admitted that he is so poor that the day before he “only ate a bowl of cereal and a can of peaches”…“Yesterday, I only ate a bowl of cereal and a can of peaches,” said Tolsen, as he turned off his truck to save gas until the line started moving again. “I would like to be able to eat bacon and eggs, biscuits and gravy for breakfast, a decent lunch, and a homegrown supper like I used to.”
This is the country that we live in now. Once upon a time, we had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now the middle class is being systematically destroyed. The cost of living is increasing faster than our paychecks are, and that means that our standard of living is going down.
For example, it is being reported that housing is more unaffordable right now than it was at any time during the last housing crash…"The Atlanta Fed’s Housing Affordability Monitor, which compares median home prices and other housing costs with median household income, shows that housing affordability is worse today than during the peak of the 2008 housing bubble. As of December, the median American household would have to spend about 42.9% of their income to afford the median-priced house, according to the index."
Auto loans have become extremely oppressive as well, and now that the economy is going downhill the number of Americans getting behind on their payments is rapidly increasing…"Borrowers with low credit scores are falling behind on their car loan payments as inflation eats away at consumer spending power. A report from Cox Automotive found 1.89% of auto loans in January were “severely delinquent” and at least 60 days behind payment, the highest rate since 2006."
Unfortunately, this is just the beginning. We are in the early chapters of a major economic downturn, and the tsunami of layoffs that we have been witnessing is going to get a lot worse. In fact, we just learned that Salesforce will be giving the axe to approximately 8,000 highly valued workers…"Salesforce, the cloud-based “customer relationship management” software colossus co-helmed by the definitely-not-Hawaiian Marc Benioff, is the latest in a slew of tech giants to lay off thousands of employees, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Per the WSJ, the company will be letting go of 8,000 members from its massive workforce, formerly referred to by Benioff - who, again, is definitely not Hawaiian - as the “Salesforce ohana,” ohana being the Hawaiian name for “family.” (Salesforce stepped away from using that and other Hawaiian terminology and practices back in 2019 due to cultural appropriation concerns.)
The economic despair that we are already witnessing should break all of our hearts, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. As economic conditions continue to deteriorate, the suffering that we will eventually see will be off the charts. And when people get desperate, they can often do desperate things.
Earlier today, I was horrified to learn that Antifa just attacked a police facility in the Atlanta area…
That attack appears to have been politically motivated, but I believe that much of the civil unrest that we will eventually see will be sparked by economic turmoil. When people don’t have enough food to eat, they tend to get really angry. And at this moment hunger is spreading like wildfire all across America. You better buckle up, because we are about to experience a very bumpy ride."
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"Shopping At Meijer! Major Baby Formula Shortage"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno,3/7/23:
"Shopping At Meijer!
Major Baby Formula Shortage"
"In today's vlog we are at Meijer, and are noticing a major baby formula shortage. This is not good as stores around the country have been struggling to get it. We are also shopping some shelf stable items, as we prep for the future!"
Comments here:
Monday, March 6, 2023
"Things Are Becoming Very Dangerous; People Are Getting Nervous; Mortgage Rates Will Rise Much Higher"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/6/23:
"Things Are Becoming Very Dangerous;
People Are Getting Nervous; Mortgage Rates Will Rise Much Higher"
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "Systemic Breakdown Accelerating"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/6/23:
"Systemic Breakdown Accelerating.
Bank of America WARNS "Inflation Has NOT Peaked."
Comments here:
"Walmart Permanently Shut Down All Stores In Portland As Historic Theft Rises"
Full screen recommended.
"Walmart Permanently Shut Down
All Stores In Portland As Historic Theft Rises"
By Epic Economist
"Our cities are deteriorating so rapidly that now big names in the industry are announcing widespread store closings, and last week, Walmart joined the list saying it will shut down all of its stores in Portland. The company has started to close multiple locations in several states, eliminating thousands of jobs, and leaving communities it served for years. A massive wave of store shutdowns is taking place all over the United States right now as businesses’ financial losses continue to rise.
By the end of this month, Portland residents won’t be able to visit their local Walmart stores anymore. Late last week, the big-box retailer announced it will close all of its stores in the city, noting that the closings are being conducted because the locations were not meeting the company’s financial expectations. But this isn’t the whole story. Many people have questioned if the decision came about as the result of rampant shoplifting. Portland has seen a massive increase in the rate of serious offenses, theft, and depredation of local businesses, and Walmart hasn’t been immune to that.
A few months ago, CEO Doug McMillion warned that the retail chain would close stores and hike prices due to historically high rates of theft at its locations. "Theft is an issue. It’s higher than what it has historically been," McMillion stressed. He added that "prices will be higher and stores will close" because authorities don’t crack down on prosecuting shoplifters.
The stores that are about to go dark have become a staple in the retail habits of so many. At least 580 jobs will be lost due to the closures. And thousands more are on the line as the company prepares to shutter unprofitable locations in Wisconsin, Illinois, Arkansas, Washington, Florida, Louisiana, and New Mexico. In places like Portland, which used to have a prosperous economic landscape until criminality became an epidemic, many companies are being forced to leave given that authorities continue to overlook the city’s social issues. In recent years, thousands of downtown businesses have been closed, with 2,600 shutdowns happening just over the past three years.
Needless to say, the more chaos we witness in our core urban areas, the more people and businesses run away in search of greener pastures. Sadly, it isn’t just our big cities that are falling apart. Our whole society is deteriorating. If we stay on this self-destructive path, the consequences are going to be downright terrifying. And our population has no idea how messed up the state of our economy really is.
Things weren’t always this horrible. America used to have some of the brightest, most opulent cities in the world. Our citizens once had opportunities for personal financial growth, they treated one another with respect, and they worked incredibly hard. But now our nation is teeming with extremely slothful degenerates that want everything handed to them on a silver platter.
Moral decay is everywhere that you look, delinquencies are completely out of control. We are facing a drastic shift in our standard of living, and businesses and consumers alike are suffering from all that. So let us hope that we reverse course while there is still time to do so because evil continues to spread like wildfire all over America. And our time is running up."
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"A Look to the Heavens"
“NGC 253 is not only one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, it is also one of the dustiest. Discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel in the constellation of Sculptor, NGC 253 lies only about ten million light-years distant.
NGC 253 is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest group to our own Local Group of Galaxies. The dense dark dust accompanies a high star formation rate, giving NGC 253 the designation of starburst galaxy. Visible in the above photograph is the active central nucleus, also known to be a bright source of X-rays and gamma rays.”
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 café; 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
"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
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