Monday, May 15, 2023

Jim Kunstler, "Dirty Secrets"

"Dirty Secrets"
by Jim Kunstler

“The average Democrat knows the Biden family is profoundly corrupt and they simply don’t care…Sam Harris spoke for all of them when he said it wouldn’t matter if Hunter’s laptop was packed w/pictures of dead kids.” - MartyrMade on Twitter

This is the dirty secret of our time: the device that the Woke / Progressive elite used to finally get rid of Donald Trump - Covid-19 - shoved them over a cliff Wile E. Coyote style. And now, as they freefall off that cliff, the supposed antidote to Covid-19 - getting vaccinated - is blowing up in their faces, again, Wile E. Coyote style. The elite now have to wake up every day and wonder if the vaccines they rushed to get will end up killing them prematurely. This is what has finally driven them crazy. And, of course, crazy people will do crazy things: like destroy their own country.

I decided early-on to not get vaccinated for a simple reason: as the vaxx program got up to speed in the late winter and spring of 2021, reports came out that the spike protein in it attacked the endothelial lining of the blood vessels and led to unusual blood-clotting. As someone who had bypass surgery some years earlier, that was all I needed to hear. This was before any Censorship Industrial Complex formed to attack “misinformation.” The news was still getting out.

By then, Mr. Trump was out, too, deposed in a janky election rigged with Covid-19 ballot “innovations” that made fraud easy. He was replaced by a fake chief executive too impotent to even campaign, but useful as a front for the gigantic “security” bureaucracy that was actually running things. This naturally raises the question: what exactly is the relationship between the political elite and this security state?

The elite are the useful idiots of the security state. They enable it and protect it with their divisive antics. The dirty secret of the security state is that it’s not about the security of the state, that is, of the nation known as the USA. Its about the security of the people running the security state, the agency heads and their officers in the Intel Community and all its spinoffs, the State Department, the Justice Department, and the Defense Department and their accomplices in Congress and the federal judiciary.

What does this security state need protection from? From accounting for all its prior cumulative crimes against the nation. These crimes slowly accreted over the decades after the Cold War and then blossomed in 2016 - slowly, and then all at once - when the security state was rocked by the election loss of its avatar, Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Clinton had many crimes of her own to conceal, most of them committed with the help of the security state, such as the Uranium One grift, the Skolkovo transfer of US computer tech to Russia, and the Clinton Foundation’s financial escapades following the 2010 Haiti earthquake, to name a few biggies.

The person who beat Mrs. Clinton had averred publicly and shockingly to her crimes during the campaign, going so far as to label her “Crooked Hillary.” That is why the Russia Collusion hoax became the centerpiece of security state harassment during Mr. Trump’s term in office. The Democratic Party was enlisted as the praetorian guard for the security state. The public had to be conditioned to believe any number of things that were the opposite of true.

Like myriad institutions in recent decades, the Democratic Party had come to be dominated by women. Women, being hard-wired for safety-seeking, were easily manipulated by the security state into an hysteria fixated on Donald Trump, who was made to represent everything that seemed unsafe. They gave the game away on Mr. Trump’s inauguration day with their women’s march that featured thousands wearing the emblematic “pussy hats.” Message: don’t think you can have your wicked way with this!

The hysteria hasn’t let up since then, and now that Mr. Trump is resurging from a thousand attempts to kill him off like some implacable axe-murderer in a horror movie, the corps of useful idiots is showing signs of nervous exhaustion. The Democratic Party’s front-man, “Joe Biden” (or the claque behind him backstage), has screwed the pooch on just about every matter of vital public interest at home and abroad, and now this president stands revealed as the head of a racketeering operation that specialized in bribery. Yet, oddly, it is Mr. Trump who has been fed into the cogs of the judiciary on an unending set of Mickey Mouse charges. There’s a pretty fair possibility that none of that will work.

The Democrats must suspect this, and their nemesis has declared his intentions for a return to power pretty clearly: fire all the seditionists in the security state, pardon all the people on the Right who were unjustly prosecuted, and commence some righteous prosecutions against people who actually deserve it. Thus, the Left plunges ever-deeper into mental illness - celebrating it at every opportunity and even shoving it America’s face, Joker-style, in defiance: Here, have another drag queen….

A big part of the Left’s mental illness is the inability to even notice their own self-destructive trajectory. There’s a way out for them but it’s pretty drastic. That would be turning to RFK, Jr. for leadership. Trouble is, Mr. Kennedy intends to go after the Democrats’ patron, the security state itself, which he’s publicly blamed for the deaths of his father and uncle. Bobby Kennedy also happens to be an enemy of the US public health agencies and especially a critic of the Covid-19 vaccines that the Left has hung its identity on. They still can’t admit that getting vaxxed and boosted was a tragic mistake.

But an election contest between RFK, Jr. and Donald Trump would be a most salutary exercise for our country. Both of them want to dismantle the overgrown surveillance apparatus and severely reform the agencies under the executive branch. That is, they are both intent on disarming the security state and the Censorship Industrial Complex it spawned. They are both against the stupid Neo-con wars. Trump versus RFK, Jr. would bring the people of this country together and refocus the nation’s attention on things that matter. It would also be the Baby Boomer’s last stand."

"Downsizing America"

"Downsizing America"
'Secular' inflation, unaffordable autos 
and exploding homelessness...
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

“...and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
- John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath"

Youghal, Ireland - "The ‘information content’ of last week’s news was low. We learned that, overall, inflation is continuing its very modest decline. But ‘core’ inflation, without energy or food, is still over 5%...and ‘sticky’ inflation – which includes things that don’t move very quickly, such as rent, insurance, and medical care – is, well, stuck. It hasn’t come down much. As we will see, ‘inflation’ is no accident. It’s government policy. It has a purpose. And lo…the wrath grows. Here’s the story.

‘Secular’ Inflation: While the CPI has gone down, the nature of inflation has changed. The first inflation shock, at the end of 2021, was probably the result of failures in 2020. Politicians, state and federal, including most prominently Donald Trump, used a panic over the Covid virus to pump trillions of new dollars into the economy. Stimmie checks, loans you didn’t have to pay back, unemployment ‘boosters’ (so you got more money than when you were on the job), mortgage and student loan payment suspensions…etc. etc. – consumers’ pockets were stuffed with cash.

The problem was, the authorities also shut down theaters, restaurants, cruise lines, amusement parks, public beaches and anything and everywhere people went to spend money and have a good time. Their options limited, people ordered ‘stuff’ from Amazon. And all of a sudden, there wasn’t enough stuff to fill the orders. Prices rose.

But as Dan signaled to us on Friday, that first wave of inflation hit the boardwalk months ago. What’s coming now are smaller, but more persistent, waves of ‘secular’ inflation. We suppose the word ‘secular’ was chosen because economists didn’t know what else to call it. Applied to inflation, it means that the sources of price increases are hard to identify and seem to come from many different directions.

Here’s an example. The Washington Post: "New cars, once part of the American Dream, now out of reach for many." "Even as inflation is easing and global chip supply shortages are beginning to resolve, more Americans are being priced out of the nation’s new car market, industry and government data suggests. Spending on new cars by the lowest 20 percent of earners dropped to its lowest level in 11 years. Meanwhile, spending on new cars by the top 20 percent reached its highest level on record, going back to 1984, according to the most recent data from the 2021 Consumer Expenditure Survey, not adjusted for inflation."

What happened? Did the price of steel shoot up? Silicon chips? Rubber? Did automakers suddenly get greedy? Or, are financing costs putting new autos out of reach of the people who need them? And it’s not just autos that are becoming unaffordable.

Exploding Bidenvilles: The average house is selling for $450,000. An average mortgage, at 6.5% interest, would be about $30,000/yr – in interest alone. But average household income is only around $75,000. Can an average family afford an average house?

Economic Collapse: "Homeless Encampments Are Exploding In Size All Over America As Rents Soar And Evictions Surge." Communities all over the United States are being taken over by giant homeless encampments, but we are supposed to believe that this is perfectly normal. The Biden administration is trying very hard to convince all of us that the economy is in fine shape even though many of our most prominent corporations are currently conducting mass layoffs and even though Challenger, Gray & Christmas is telling us that the number of jobs cuts during the first three months of this year was up 396 percent compared to the same period last year. Just like in 2008 and 2009, large numbers of people that have lost their jobs or their businesses are ending up living in the streets, and as a result, homeless encampments are absolutely exploding in size from coast to coast."

Economists can study the in-puts. They can trace price increases all up and down the supply chain and explain why takin’ the Chevy to the levee ain’t as cheap as it used to be. But they would do better to look at the demand chain – specifically, at the links with politicians’ fingerprints on them. More on that tomorrow…and at how inflation destroys the “hardworking American families” that politicians claim to be working for."

Joel’s Note: Earlier this year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development released its first comprehensive Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR) in two years. The findings were not inspiring.

By the end of 2022, the number of people “experiencing homelessness” (what used to be called “homeless people”) in the USA stood at 582,462. The total, nation-wide number increased every single year measured since 2016, with a majority of states seeing increases during that period. (Delaware, Vermont, Louisiana and Maine all saw their homeless populations more than double since 2019.) California, Vermont, Oregon, Hawaii and New York had the highest homeless residents per capita.

Chronic homelessness, defined as “people who have been homeless for more than 12 months or have experienced extended periods of homelessness over the past three years,” has increased by 65% since 2016 (from 77,500 to 127,700).

More than half (52%) of the homeless population is found in major cities, with Los Angeles (54,469 individuals) and New York City (32,308) having by far the largest numbers of homeless people, collectively accounting for nearly one-fifth of the country’s rough sleepers.

Having spent hundreds of billions of dollars over six decades on its War on Poverty, the United States Government proposes to solve the problem by (wait for it…) spending more money it doesn’t have on programs that demonstrably do not work. Last month, President Biden proposed a 2024 budget that would direct $10.3 billion in federal funding for homelessness assistance programs, a 6% increase from FY 2023 and an increase of…

• 90% for DOJ’s Transitional Housing Assistance Grants to Victims of Sexual Assault
• 64% for Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness and
• 23% for Health Care for the Homeless

Apparently the 100-plus federal programs already in existence, plus the dozens of education and job-training programs, 17 different food-aid programs, and over 20 housing programs, were not sufficient. The CATO Institute crunched the numbers…"Altogether, the federal government spends more than $1.1 trillion a year on 134 welfare programs. State and local governments add about $744 billion more. Thus, government at all levels is spending roughly $1.8 trillion per year to fight poverty. Stretching back to 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson first declared a “war on poverty,” anti‐​poverty spending has totaled more than $30 trillion."

Here’s the chart…
And yet, despite the myriad programs, committees, departments and agencies, the poverty rate remains almost exactly where it was when LBJ declared “War on Poverty” in his 1964 State of the Union Address. It was 13.5% then… and is 13.2% today (having fluctuated between a low of 11% in 1973 and a high of 15% in 1982 and 2012.) No doubt it’s a complex problem in search of a real solution. But who knows… maybe renaming “homeless people” to “people experiencing homelessness” will finally do the trick?"

"Massive Price Increases At Walmart! This Is Crazy! What Now?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 5/15/23
"Massive Price Increases At Walmart! 
This Is Crazy! What Now?"
"In today's vlog we are at Walmart and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
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"Banks Closing Credit Cards"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 5/15/23
"Banks Closing Credit Cards"
"We are seeing a complete problem with banks, globally, closing credit cards, and shutting off credit lines. It doesn’t matter how good of a customer you are. We are seeing these problems multiply."
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Gregory Mannarino, "U.S. Economic Meltdown Worsening"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 5/15/23
"U.S. Economic Meltdown Worsening"
Comments here:

"Economic Market Snapshot 5/15/23"

"Economic Market Snapshot 5/15/23"
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...

Sunday, May 14, 2023

"Russian Typical (Regional) Supermarket Tour"

Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 5/14/23
"Russian Typical (Regional) Supermarket Tour"
"Take a walking inside a Russian typical Supermarket with me and find out what a Russian Supermarket looks like in Regional Moscow, 50km from the city center. How does a Regional Supermarket look inside? What are the differences?"
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"People Have No Idea What's Coming - Catastrophic Crash Inevitable; Lose Your Addictions Now"

Jeremiah Babe, 5/14/23
"People Have No Idea What's Coming - 
Catastrophic Crash Inevitable; Lose Your Addictions Now"
Comments here:

"Scott Ritter - Ukraine: A Pawn in the US-Russia Game"

Col. Douglas Macgregor, 5/14/23
"Scott Ritter - Ukraine: A Pawn in the US-Russia Game"
Comments here:

"Aldi Products Are Getting 200% More Expensive As Grocery Shortages Spark Chaos At Stores"

Full screen recommended.
"Aldi Products Are Getting 200% More Expensive 
As Grocery Shortages Spark Chaos At Stores"
By Epic Economist

"Is Aldi really the cheapest discount retailer out there? Consumers are certainly doubting this right now. An updated report released by grocery market data collection company Greenbook revealed that food prices are rising faster at Aldi stores than at other big box retailers this year, marking the second consecutive year the grocer reports the biggest price increases in the entire industry. In this video, we tracked which items are seeing the sharpest price hikes at Aldi – spoiler alert: some have experienced a 200% jump since the pandemic. On top of that, we also compiled several data, customer feedback, and expert analyses about which products shoppers typically think are cheaper at Aldi but, in reality, they are not.

According to Greenbook’s March analysis of grocery prices at 11 major US retailers released last week, Aldi has reported grocery price inflation of 26.7% in February, slightly up from the 23.4% recorded the same time a year ago, and about 9.6% higher than the average inflation rate seen at other retailers like Publix, Target, and Costco, which reported a 17.1% surge. That marks the second consecutive year that Aldi prices rose faster than the prices of its rivals over a 12-month period. U.S. consumers have been coping with sustained increases in their grocery bills since late 2021 which is having a big impact on their lives and the way they have been spending their money.

Aldi Brand products remain 19.7% higher than they were in 2019, the data showed. But name-brand items are still more expensive, rising on average by 21.6%, according to Greebook’s analysis of inflation on more than 25,000 food and drink products. Mashed reports that some of the staples that registered the biggest spikes in price are cornflakes, mozzarella, brie, frozen strawberries, soda, oatmeal, fish sticks, protein bars, and energy drinks – all more than doubling in price at Aldi stores.

Consumers aren’t taking the latest price surges lying down. In recent weeks, Reddit has been in shambles over the 200% jump seen in Aldi egg prices. A post shows a photo of large grade-A eggs with a price of $3.69 per dozen. The top comment is that with the price of these eggs, one might as well pay the extra dollar and a quarter for the premium version. Some commenters even said organic eggs were currently priced the same as non-organic eggs near them. When Greenbook evaluated prices at the chain in March 2022, a dozen eggs at Aldi cost $1.10. That's over a 200% increase in price over a little more than a year.

“Worryingly our tracker shows that some everyday essentials have more than doubled in price over the last year – with name brand items particularly hard hit,” the analysts noted. On Facebook, another loyal customer shared the story of a very frustrating shopping experience he had at Aldi. With a shopping car containing only 8 items, the shopper was incredibly shocked to see a grocery bill of $45. The consumer took to a local community group on the platform to ask “What’s happening to Aldi?” after the bill.

It seems like conditions are deteriorating for everyone in the grocery market at this point, and the biggest losers, unfortunately, will be average U.S. consumers. There is no single answer that explains why food prices are still reaching new records, but even so, we must start adjusting our budgets accordingly."
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"My Home"

 
We know who owns whom, and it ain't me! lol

Musical Interlude: 2002, "River Of Stars"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "River Of Stars"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Distorted galaxy NGC 2442 can be found in the southern constellation of the flying fish, (Piscis) Volans. Located about 50 million light-years away, the galaxy's two spiral arms extending from a pronounced central bar give it a hook-shaped appearance. This deep color image also shows the arms' obscuring dust lanes, young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions surrounding a core of yellowish light from an older population of stars.
But the star forming regions seem more concentrated along the drawn-out (right side) spiral arm. The distorted structure is likely the result of an ancient close encounter with the smaller galaxy seen near the top left of this field of view. The two interacting galaxies are separated by about 150,000 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 2442."
http://www.antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090228.html

"Why Do We Look to the Stars?"
"The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

For as long as there has been humans we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. This perspective is a courageous continuation of our penchant for constructing and testing mental models of the skies; the Sun as a red-hot stone, the stars as a celestial flame, the Galaxy as the backbone of night.

The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky. Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere."
- Carl Sagan

"The Dynamics of a Riot"

"The Dynamics of a Riot"
by Jeff Thomas

"In my lifetime, I’ve had the misfortune of being present in two major natural disasters and one violent social crisis. Each taught me valuable lessons.

In the aftermath of a natural disaster, there’s the danger of the loss of shelter, services, and food. In most cases, people who experience the loss of shelter and services realize that “things are bad all around” and they tend to do the best they can, accepting that life will be hard for a period of time.

Food is a different matter. People, no matter how civilized, tend to panic if they become uncertain as to when they will next be able to eat. And, not surprisingly, this panic is exacerbated if they have dependents, particularly children who are saying, fearfully, “Daddy, I’m hungry.” As Henry Lewis said in 1906, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” Quite so. Intelligent, educated, otherwise peaceful people can be driven to violence and even murder if the likelihood of future meals becomes uncertain. This has been the cause of spontaneous riots throughout history.

But this is not the only cause of riots. In the post-1960 period in the West, a new phenomenon has occurred that has steadily grown: Governments and the halls of higher education have increasingly taught people that they are “entitled.” Governments have been guilty of this for millennia, beginning at least as early as the “bread and circuses” of ancient Rome. It’s a way for governments to get people to be dependent upon them and thereby to do their bidding. But, since the 1960s, it’s become a systemic norm.

And it always ends in the same way. The false economy of “free stuff” eventually devolves into overtaxation and economic collapse. When it does, people are more likely to riot, as the entitlements are “owed” to them. In today’s world, however, this condition has peaked far beyond what the world has ever seen before.

Increasingly, those who are angry that the free stuff they are receiving is not enough to placate them take to the streets. Typically, they throw rocks and Molotov cocktails, burn cars at random, destroy buildings, and loot stores. All of this activity, of course, does not make it more likely that they will receive more free stuff from the authorities who presumably owe it to them. Instead, it victimizes those who have lived lawfully and with less dependence upon the state.

Riots occur for a great variety of reasons. The trigger can be something as absurd as in the 2011 Vancouver, Canada riot, in which locals became infuriated over the loss of a hockey game. Over 140 people were injured and over 5 million dollars in damage was done in a five-hour period. That last bit of information should be emphasized, as the fans had plenty of time to calm down after their team’s loss, but the rage, once ignited, became self-regenerating. This is one of the important dynamics of a riot that’s often overlooked. The riot, which may begin as a reaction to an event, becomes the event and is continued for its own sake.

In the same year, thousands of people rioted in London. The trigger was more serious this time: the shooting of a local man by a policeman. (Although the man had fired on police prior to being shot himself, this fact failed to deter rioters.) The riots, like most irrational retaliations, only served to cause more deaths and injuries. The riots lasted a full five days over a dozen London boroughs, then ignited further in a dozen other cities. Over £200 million in damages occurred, and over 3,400 crimes were logged.

There’s another dynamic that’s not revealed as it’s seen from the safety of our television screens, and that is the spontaneity of a riot. For anyone who has lived through a riot, as I have, the lesson is an indelible one. Riots, on occasion, are planned and, once they begin, there are occasions in which individuals capitalize on them (such as the riots in Ferguson, Missouri, where hired rioters were bussed in). But, in most cases, they’re spontaneous. They begin as a reaction to pent-up anger. (In the Vancouver incident, the anger was building even before the hockey game had ended, but many riots, especially socially related riots, are often the result of many years of pent-up anger.)

The riot itself is generally a small spark that’s added to the existing anger and is often related to a specific event, such as the riots in US cities the night Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in 1968. Once started, riots, for the most part, are entirely unplanned and rely on random acts of violence. Within minutes of the first violent act, entire neighborhoods spontaneously ignite. As in the London riots, the same incident can spark off multiple riots, miles from each other.

A third often misunderstood dynamic is uncontrollability. Police can race to the center of a riot and, in some cases, quell the rioters, but, as the riot is not “organized,” the rioters have merely to stop whatever they’re doing and, for the moment, they cease to be participants. If police move on to other riot locations, the rioters who had been temporarily inactive could begin to riot again. Even if police are successful in quelling all violent activity in a neighborhood, they could receive a radio call directing them to a new riot location, just blocks away.

In my own experience, new locations of violence erupting seemed to be going off all around the city, like popcorn. Before one could be quelled, others would pop up. The incidents were therefore unstoppable by authorities.

Warfare has traditionally been approached from the standpoint that one army faces another and they fight until one surrenders. Guerilla warfare, however, has always proven unwinnable, as long as the guerillas are fighting on their home turf. Rioters have the same advantage as, say, an armed sheepherder in Afghanistan or a rice farmer in Vietnam. The violence only ends when all rioters have decided they’ve had enough.

Of course we’d hope that rioters would learn from their crimes, but this is rarely the case. In the London riots of 2011, rioters burned down the local Sainsbury’s in their own neighborhood. The next day, the same people were on the streets, in front of the television cameras, angrily stating that their grocery store was now gone and their children needed food. They demanded that the government truck in free food as an emergency measure and, not surprisingly, that’s what they got. This is exemplary of the fact that, in every case, reason is abandoned and anger rules the day. No lessons are learned by the rioters. In fact, months later, rioters have often been quoted as saying, “We showed ’em.”

So, what can we take away here? First, and most importantly, that riots are by their very nature spontaneous, mindless, and, for the most part, uncontrollable. Second, if an individual lives in or near a location where sociopolitical tension is on the increase, he is living in danger. The spontaneity of a riot means that he cannot prepare for it. If it arrives on his doorstep, or if he’s on the street at the time when it occurs, he may lose everything, including his life.

Since riots are mindless, rioters cannot be reasoned with. There’s no talking your way out of the danger, once it has reached you. Finally, as riots cannot effectively be controlled, the one and only defense against them is to conclude that, if one lives in an area where socioeconomic conditions indicate that the location (whether it be a neighborhood or even an entire country) is unsafe, it may be time to move. The key here is that the move occur before violence erupts. Once it has, it’s too late."

"Our Dilemma..."

"Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time;
what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better. "
- Sydney J. Harris

"U.S. Faces 'Significant Risk' of Running Out of Cash in June"

Full screen recommended.
Peak Prosperity, Chris Martenson, 5/14/23
"U.S. Faces 'Significant Risk' 
of Running Out of Cash in June"
"The Congressional Budget Office said on Friday that there was a “significant risk” that the federal government could run out of cash sometime in the first two weeks of June, setting the United States up for a default. The warning came as the White House and congressional leaders spent the week in negotiations over how to raise the $31.4 trillion borrowing cap."
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o

The Daily "Near You?"

Ingersoll, Ontario, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

“In The Long Run… We Are All Alive”

“In The Long Run… We Are All Alive”
by MN Gordon

“In 1976, economist Herbert Stein, father of Ben Stein, the economics professor in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, observed that U.S. government debt was on an unsustainable trajectory. He, thus, established Stein’s Law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Stein may have been right in theory. Yet the unsustainable trend of U.S. government debt outlasted his life.  Herbert Stein died in 1999, several decades before the crackup. Those reading this may not be so lucky.

Sometimes the end of the world comes and goes, while some of us are still here. We believe our present episode of debt, deficits, and state sponsored economic destruction, is one of these times.. We’ll have more on this in just a moment. But first, let’s peer back several hundred years. There we find context, edification, and instruction.

In 1696, William Whiston, a protégé of Isaac Newton, wrote a book. It had the grandiose title, “A New Theory of the Earth from its Original to the Consummation of All Things.” In it he proclaimed, among other things, that the global flood of Noah had been caused by a comet. Mr. Whiston took his book very serious. The good people of London took it very serious too. Perhaps it was Whiston’s conviction. Or his great fear of comets. But, for whatever reason, it never occurred to Londoners that he was a Category 5 quack.

Like Neil Ferguson, and his mathematical biology cohorts at Imperial College, London, Whiston’s research filled a void. Much like today’s epidemiological models, the science was bunk. Nonetheless, the results supplied prophecies of the apocalypse to meet a growing demand. It was just a matter of time before Whiston’s research would cause trouble…

Judgement Day: In 1736, William Whiston crunched some data and made some calculations. He projected these calculations out and saw the future. And what he witnessed scared him mad. He barked. He ranted. He foamed at the mouth to anyone who would listen. Pretty soon he’d stirred up his neighbors with a prophecy that the world would be destroyed on October 13th of that year when a comet would collide with the earth.

Jonathan Swift, in his work, “A True and Faithful Narrative of What Passed in London on a Rumour of the Day of Judgment,” quoted Whiston: “Friends and fellow-citizens, all speculative science is at an end: the period of all things is at hand; on Friday next this world shall be no more. Put not your confidence in me, brethren; for tomorrow morning, five minutes after five, the truth will be evident; in that instant the comet shall appear, of which I have heretofore warned you. As ye have heard, believe. Go hence, and prepare your wives, your families, and friends, for the universal change.”

Clergymen assembled to offer prayers. Churches filled to capacity. Rich and paupers alike feared their judgement. Lawyers worried about their fate. Judges were relieved they were no longer lawyers. Teetotalers got smashed. Drunks got sober. Bankers forgave their debtors. Criminals, to be executed, expressed joy.

The wealthy gave their money to beggars. Beggars gave it back to the wealthy. Several rich and powerful gave large donations to the church; no doubt, reserving first class tickets to heaven. Many ladies confessed to their husbands that one or more of their children were bastards. Husbands married their mistresses. And on and on…

The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Wake, had to officially deny this prediction to ease the public consternation. But it did little good. Crowds gathered at Islington, Hampstead, and the surrounding fields, to witness the destruction of London, which was deemed the “beginning of the end.” Then, just like Whiston said, a comet appeared. Prayers were made. Deathbed confessions were shared. And at the moment of maximum fear, something remarkable happened: the world didn’t end. The comet did not collide with earth. It was merely a near miss.

The experience of Whiston, and his pseudoscience prophecy, shows that predictions of the end of the world come and go while people still remain. Sometimes the fallout of these predictions, and the foolishness they provoke, is limited. Other times the foolishness they provoke leads to catastrophe. Here’s what we mean…

“In the long run we are all dead,” said 20th Century economist and Fabian socialist, John Maynard Keynes. This was Keynes rationale for why governments should borrow from the future to fund economic growth today. Of course, politicians love an academic theory that gives them cover to intervene in the economy. This is especially so when it justifies spending other people’s money to buy votes. Keynesian economics, and in particular, counter-cyclical stimulus, does just that.

U.S. politicians have attempted to borrow and spend the nation to prosperity for the last 80 years. Over the past decade, the Federal Reserve has aggressively printed money to fund Washington’s epic borrowing binge. Fed Chair Jay Powell confirmed that the Fed will pursue policies of dollar destruction to, somehow, print new jobs.

The world as it was once known – where a dollar was as good as gold – has come and gone. Today, in life after the end of that world, we are witnessing the illusion of wealth, erected by four generations of borrowing and spending, crumble before our eyes. Moreover, contrary to Keynes, in the long run we are not all dead. In fact, in the long run we are all very much alive. And we are all living with the compounding consequences of shortsighted economic policies.”

“Your Whole Life Is Borrowed Time”

“Your Whole Life Is Borrowed Time”
by David Cain

“I can’t remember if this is a real movie plot, or if I just want it to be. A man with a boring job is on his way to work when his attention is caught by some unexpected detail in his otherwise familiar routine – a peculiar insect, a pattern in the concrete, a cryptic slogan on a t-shirt. This detail seems extremely significant to him, but he doesn’t know why.

The strange sight wakes him up from the autopilot-mode by which he has been living his life. He is suddenly aware, for the first time, how complex and interesting his local high street is, and he stops to take it in. Around him pass hundreds of distinctly different people, each a unique individual, driven by some unseen personal motivation. Shops are filled with thousands of trinkets, tools, snacks, and books. Delivery trucks roll past, music plays from somewhere, buildings rise above him. The scene is miraculous to him.

As he surveys the street, he witnesses something surreal: another version of himself is walking away from him, towards his usual bus stop, evidently not having had this same moment of self-awareness. For reasons he is never told, at that moment his life had apparently split in two. However, his double does not make it onto the bus: as he waits, an air conditioning unit falls from a window above, killing him instantly. In a very unexpected and unstorylike way, his life ends.

The man has no idea what has happened, and never receives an explanation. The authorities never identify the person beneath the air conditioner, and the man never tells anyone what he witnessed because nobody would ever believe it. There is nothing to do but carry on with his life. But he is a changed man.

Every morning he is amazed to find another whole day awaiting him. Every meal, every phone call, every greeting from his doorman feels like an undeserved gift, as though he’d mistakenly been given the honeymoon suite at a hotel. He feels grateful even for his problems.

None of the details of his life have changed, except one thing. He now lives with an awareness that he was never truly entitled to be alive; he just happened to be, and still is. His ability to breathe, see, feel, and make choices now seems to him like an unearned, arbitrary status- one that he may freely enjoy, but which can be revoked at any time without explanation. He hopes he never loses this sense that his life is essentially a bonus round, consisting entirely of borrowed time, not just from the day of his strange experience, but from the beginning.
I once attended a networking event for entrepreneurs, in Toronto. The host had booked a private room beneath a restaurant in Greektown. I was early, so I spent some time in a nearby park, then checked out the shops and restaurants on Danforth Avenue. I stopped in front of a church to tie my shoe. I remember being nervous about meeting a bunch of new people. Of course, it went fine and I had a good time. I had interesting conversations with entrepreneurs in all sorts of spaces: fitness, web development, beard grooming, venture capital. The food was excellent.

The experience was distant enough from my normal routine that, during the event, I was struck by how easily we find ourselves in moments we could not have pictured. For all the certainty we feel when we plan for (or ruminate about) the future, life unfolds in ways that are ultimately unpredictable. We just end up places. Two weeks after that event, a deranged man with a gun walked down the same stretch of Danforth Avenue and shot fourteen people at random, then shot himself.

I don’t mean to sound dramatic. It wasn’t a close call, at least for me. I’m sure a hundred thousand people walked down that stretch of road in the weeks surrounding the incident. There are people who literally dodged the bullets. But when I watched videos of eye-witness accounts, including some in front of the church where I tied my shoes and the corner where I nervously loitered, it gave me a vital bit of perspective: I happen to be alive, and there’s no cosmic law entitling me to that status. Being alive is just happenstance, and not one more day of it is guaranteed.

This thought instantly relieved me of any angst over that particular day’s troubles: technical issues on my website, an unexpected major expense, an acute sense that I’m getting old. Those problems remained, and they are real problems. But they immediately became only relatively important. They lost their sense of absolute importance. In fact, any personal problem I could think of now seemed to be a small, aesthetic complaint about the grand, mysterious gift of being randomly, unfairly alive that day.

This perspective made it easy to tackle the problems I could, and live at peace with the others, all with a breezy sense that this is just a bonus round anyway. Despite the awful news, it was a productive and enjoyable day, and I would like to live all my days that way. That was a few weeks ago. Not surprisingly, the breezy feeling now comes and goes – too many years of seeing my latest dilemma as absolutely important, rather than just relatively important.

This “I could be dead” perspective isn’t a sentimental thinking exercise. I think it’s a more honest view of our ever-tentative situation, one that respects the impersonal, flippant way in which fate handles our lives. The shooting just forced me to see my day in that way, but a random crime is only one of many possible (and still possible) endings. There are always speeding cars, rare diseases, gas explosions, and treacherous stairwells. And none of these events, when they do happen, are negotiable.

The universe is not at all sentimental – aliveness is always going to be an arbitrary status that can be revoked at any time. No recourse, no due process.

Equally mysterious is that our lives began at all. As my favorite philosopher, Douglas Harding, tried to remind us before he died: “It’s the very last thing, isn’t it, that we feel grateful for: having happened. You know, you needn’t have happened. You needn’t have happened. But you did happen.”

And we needn’t still be happening. But we are. I suppose the trick is to remember that fact even in the throes of our worst moods and toughest dilemmas. Maybe I’ll get a reminder tattooed on my wrist, for whenever my complaints start to seem absolutely important: This is borrowed time, all of it. Would you rather give it back?”

The Poet: James Kavanaugh, “Searchers”

“Searchers”

“Some people do not have to search -
they find their niche early in life and rest there,
seemingly contented and resigned.
They do not seem to ask much of life,
sometimes they do not seem to take it seriously.
At times I envy them,
but usually I do not understand them -
seldom do they understand me.
I am one of the searchers.
There are, I believe, millions of us.
We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content.
We continue to explore life,
hoping to uncover its ultimate secret.
We continue to explore ourselves,
hoping to understand.
We like to walk along the beach -
we are drawn by the ocean,
taken by its power, its unceasing motion,
its mystery and unspeakable beauty.
We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers,
and the lonely cities as well.
Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter.
To share our sadness with the one we love is
perhaps as great a joy as we can know -
unless it is to share our laughter.
We searchers are ambitious only for life itself,
for everything beautiful it can provide.
Most of all we want to love and be loved.
We want to live in a relationship that will not impede
our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls.
We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love.
We are wanderers, dreamers and lovers,
lonely souls who dare ask of life everything good and beautiful.”

- James Kavanaugh

"Beethoven’s 'Ode to Joy' Brought to Life in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians"

Full screen recommended.
"Beethoven’s 'Ode to Joy' Brought to Life
 in a Spanish Flashmob of 100 Musicians"
By Maria Popova

"Imagine what life would be like if lived, in May Sarton’s lovely phrase, with “joy instead of will.” That is what Beethoven imagined, and invited humanity to imagine, two centuries ago in the choral finale of his ninth and final symphony, known as “Ode to Joy” - an epochal hymn of the possible, half a lifetime in the making.

In the spring of 2012, the Spanish city of Sabadell set out to celebrate the 130th anniversary of its founding with a most unusual, electrifying, and touchingly human rendition of Beethoven’s masterpiece, performed by a flashmob of 100 musicians from the Vallès Symphony Orchestra, the Lieder, Amics de l’Ã’pera and Coral Belles Arts choirs. Watching the townspeople - children with kites, elders with walkers, couples holding hands - gather to savor the unbidden music in a succession of confusion, delight, and ecstasy is the stuff of goosebumps: living proof that “music so readily transports us from the present to the past, or from what is actual to what is possible.”

"How It Really Is"

 
Oh, but not for you, right Joe?

Yeah, it is what it looks like...
o

"Nobody Walks In LA"

Full screen recommended,
Dan, I Allegedly 5/14/23
"Nobody Walks In LA"
"Jamie Dimon is complaining that the bank debacle will cause more bank regulation. The large banks have to start paying the FDIC back for loses and this is going to affect each banks individual bottom line."
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"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! This Is Crazy! What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 5/14/23
"Massive Price Increases At Aldi! 
This Is Crazy! What's Next?"
"In today's vlog we are at Aldi and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
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