"Russian Forces and U.S./NATO Forces Will Collide Directly"

Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Straight Calls, 7/9/23

"Russian Forces and U.S./NATO Forces Will Collide Directly"

"Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current geopolitical events in the United States of America and the world."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

Full screen recommended.

And we, folks, are the band. 

It has been a privilege playing with you...

"The 'Titanic' Analogy You Haven't Heard: Passively Accepting Oblivion"

 "The 'Titanic' Analogy You Haven't Heard: 

Passively Accepting Oblivion"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"You've undoubtedly heard rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as an analogy for the futility of approving policy tweaks to address systemic crises. I've used the Titanic as an anology to explain the fragility of our financial system and the "glancing blow" of the pandemic:

"Why Our Financial System Is Like the Titanic" (March 15, 2015)

"Coronavirus and the "Unsinkable" Titanic Analogy" (January 29, 2020)

But there's a powerful analogy you haven't heard before. To understand the analogy, we first need to recap the tragedy's basic set-up.

On April 14, 1912, the liner Titanic, considered unsinkable due to its watertight compartments, struck a glancing blow against a massive iceberg on that moonless, weirdly calm night. In the early hours of April 15, the great ship broke in half and sank, ending the lives of the majority of its passengers and crew. Of the 2,208 passengers and crew onboard, 1,503 perished and 705 survived. The lifeboats had a maximum capacity of 1,178, so some 475 people died unnecessarily. Passengers of the Titanic (Wikipedia)

The initial complacency of the passengers and crew after the collision is another source of analogies relating to humanity's near-infinite capacity for denial. The class structure of the era was enforced by the authorities - the ship's officers. As the situation grew visibly threatening, the First Class passengers were herded into the remaining lifeboats while the steerage/Third Class passengers - many of them immigrants - were mostly kept below decks. Officers were instructed to enforce this class hierarchy with their revolvers.

Two-thirds of all passengers died, but the losses were not evenly distributed: 39% of First Class passengers perished, 58% of Second Class passengers lost their lives and 76% of Third Class passengers did not survive.

Rudimentary calculations by the ship's designer, who was on board to oversee the maiden voyage, revealed the truth to the officers: the ship would sink and there was no way to stop it. The ship was designed to survive four watertight compartments being compromised, and could likely stay afloat if five were opened to the sea, but not if six compartments were flooded. Water would inevitably spill over into adjacent compartments in a domino-like fashion until the ship sank.

What did the authorities do with this knowledge? Stripped of niceties, they passively accepted oblivion as the outcome and devoted their resources to enforcing the class hierarchy and the era's gender chivalry: 80% of male passengers perished, 25% of female passengers lost their lives. The loading of passengers into lifeboats was so poorly managed that only 60% of the lifeboat capacity was filled.

What if the officers had boldly accepted the inevitability of the ship sinking early on and devised a plan to minimize the loss of life? It would not have takes any extraordinary leap of creativity to organize the crew and passenger volunteers to strip the ship of everything that floated - wooden deck chairs, etc. - and lash them together into rafts. Given the calm seas that night and the freezing water, just keeping people above water would have been enough.

Rather than promote the absurd charade that the ship was fine, just fine, when time was of the essence, the authorities could have rounded up the women and children and filled every seat on lifeboats. Of the 1,030 people who could not be placed in a lifeboat, 890 were crew members, including about 25 women. The crew members were almost all in the prime of life. If anyone could survive several hours on a partially-submerged raft, it would have been the crew. (The first rescue ship arrived about two hours after the Titanic sank.)

Would this hurried effort to save everyone on board have succeeded? At a minimum, it would have saved an additional 475 souls via a careful loading of the lifeboats to capacity, and if the makeshift rafts had offered any meaningful flotation at all, many more lives would have been saved. Rather than devote resources to maintaining the pretense of safety and order, what if the ship's leaders had focused their response around answering a simple question: what was needed for people to survive a freezing night once the lifeboats were filled and the ship sank?

I think you see the analogy to the present. Our leadership, such as it is, is devoting resources to maintaining the absurd pretense that everything will magically re-set to what was normal if we just print enough money and bail out the financial Aristocracy.

Whether we realize it or not, we're responding with passive acceptance of oblivion. The economy and social order were precariously fragile before the pandemic, and now the fragilities are unraveling. We need to start thinking beyond pretense and PR."

- http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com

○

Full screen recommended.

"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!"

- https://kunstler.com/

"More Than 105 Million Working-Age Americans Do Not Have A Job Right Now"

"More Than 105 Million Working-Age Americans

Do Not Have A Job Right Now"

by Michael Snyder

"Our long slide toward economic oblivion continues, and survey after survey has shown that most Americans are deeply unsatisfied with the current state of the U.S. economy. Inflation is out of control, most Americans are getting poorer due to the rapidly rising cost of living, the housing bubble has started to burst, and the commercial real estate market is a giant mess. But employment is supposed to be our bright spot. The Biden administration continues to tell us that the unemployment rate is less than 4 percent and that there are lot of jobs available for those that want them. But is this really true?

To answer that question, it is imperative to understand that our government places unemployed persons into one of two categories…

Jobless people are classified into one of two categories by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) - either unemployed or not in the labor force. To be classified as unemployed in the month they are surveyed, people must be actively looking for work. If they are not actively looking, they are classified as not in the labor force.

Over time, the definition of “officially unemployed” has gotten more restrictive, and today only 6.097 million working age Americans are considered to be in that category. Meanwhile, a staggering 99.800 million working age Americans are considered to be “not in the labor force”. When you add both categories together, you get a total of 105.897 million working age Americans that do not have a job right now.

Let me try to put that into perspective. During the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, that number never even got up to 90 million. So that means that the number of working age Americans that are not employed at this moment far surpasses anything that we witnessed during the Great Recession.

Please do not believe the garbage that the federal government is trying to sell you. Unemployment is not low. In fact, John Williams estimates that the real rate of unemployment in this country is somewhere around 25 percent. If you are out of work at this moment, please realize that you are not alone.

In April, 37-year-old North Carolina resident Al Brown lost his job, and now his family is really struggling…"Al Brown and his fiancée faced a tough call in May when reviewing their weekly budget: What’s a higher priority, more food or dish soap? Based in Concord, North Carolina, Brown was the main breadwinner for his fiancée and their two children. Then in April, he was let go from his job as a global director of business development at software company Cascade.

He’s since quit his gym membership and sold miscellaneous items around his home, including a computer and yard furniture, to make ends meet. His 13-year-old son quit the basketball team. While losing the family’s source of income has taken a financial toll, it’s also resulted in a mental one.

Since he was laid off, Brown has submitted more than 600 job applications, but that has produced only a few interviews and no job offers…Brown, 37, now spends his days scouring the internet for jobs or reaching out to potential connections. After filing over 600 applications, only a handful have produced interviews, he says."

If jobs are easy to get, why hasn’t Al Brown been able to find one? Can anyone out there explain that to me? Perhaps I am just a little slow, because what the Biden administration is telling us about the economy does not seem to correspond with reality at all.

54-year-old Nina McCollum has applied for “hundreds of jobs” since losing her position in March, and she is still jobless as well…"Nina McCollum, 54, was laid off from her writing gig at jobs site Glassdoor back in March. She hasn’t found a new role since, despite applying to hundreds of jobs. She’s been living off her savings, selling her blood plasma and frequenting food pantries just to get by - all while taking care of a teenage son. Her domestic partner helps out, but he can’t make up for her lost income."

Why can’t these people find work? What is wrong with them? Of course the truth is that there is nothing wrong with what they are doing. They are diligently searching for jobs, but the reality of the matter is that the employment market has gotten very tight.

Meanwhile, the cost of living just continues to rise, and that has resulted in a “collapse of household savings”…"In February, the U.S. personal savings rate was estimated to be around 4.6 percent—much below the decades-long average of about 8.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. But what does this mean?

Some economists think that the collapse of household savings could lead to a spending slowdown and trigger a recession. The Biden administration may never admit that we have entered a major economic downturn, but that is precisely what we are witnessing.

In fact, the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing purchasing managers index has now been below 50 for eight months in a row…"The U.S. manufacturing sector fell deeper into recession territory in May, extending a multimonth slump as experts warn that the economy faces “clear challenges.”

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said in a report Monday that its manufacturing purchasing managers index dropped to 46.0 last month, the lowest reading since May 2020 and the eighth consecutive sub-50 reading. Any readings below 50 represent recession, with all key sub-components in contraction, including the employment index, suggesting layoff pressures are building. It’s really happening.

Other than for a brief period during the pandemic, we have not seen economic turmoil of this magnitude since 2008 and 2009. Unfortunately, we are still only in the very early chapters of this crisis. The economic outlook for the remainder of 2023 is very bleak, the outlook for 2024 is even worse, and the long-term outlook is nightmarish.

But you have to give our leaders credit for propping things up for as long as they did. By flooding the system with money, they were able to delay our moment of reckoning for a long time. Of course their gimmicks were also making our long-term problems even worse, and now our long-term problems have become our short-term problems. There is so much pain ahead of us, and our country is not prepared to handle it."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

o

"Corporate Bankruptcies Reach Highest Level Since 2010"

"Epiq Bankruptcy, a U.S. bankruptcy filing data provider, confirmed that 2,973 total commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcies were filed in the first half of 2023, up 68 percent from the same period in 2022."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

And as they go all their jobs go with them...

"15 Signs Walmart Is Falling Apart Before Our Eyes"

Full screen recommended.

The Finance Corner, 7/9/23

"15 Signs Walmart Is Falling Apart Before Our Eyes"

"Walmart's empire is quietly disintegrating as the United States heads toward another recession. When you're the biggest retailer in the world, even a 1% decline in sales can result in billions of dollars in losses. However, profits are down nearly a quarter from a year ago, indicating that the big-box retailer's problems are much worse than anyone could have anticipated. Walmart was the business rivals dreaded most for decades, but recent data indicates that the retailer has been slipping behind. Walmart has started to lose consumer favor, and significant gaps are beginning to appear in its revenue stream. Because the issues it faces differ globally, the company has largely kept its financial struggles out of the news, allowing the superstore chain to go unnoticed in the big picture.

Worse news is released. It turns out that Walmart's issues are not as serious as its "profits." The retailer spent $3.8 billion in the most recent quarter rather than producing any cash from operations. Walmart's free cash flow for the third quarter was a depressingly negative $7.3 billion after accounting for capital expenditures of $3.5 billion. According to historical data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, the company hadn't had negative cash from operations since Q3 1995, more than 25 years ago.

Additional monetary losses for Walmart may be on the way Earnings have actually decreased over the last three quarters by an average of 4.5%, according to the IBD Stock Checkup. This falls far short of the investors' desired 25% growth. The retail chain's monthly sales have increased on average by 10% over the last three years. Its predicted 4% sales growth for the last quarter of 2022 appears so unimpressive because of this. In other words, investors currently consider Walmart stock to be a no-buy.

Both domestically and internationally, the traditional Walmart business model continues to show signs of weakness. Walmart may be crushed by e-commerce competitors and pushed into the same downward spiral that so many other retailers have experienced in recent years if the retail behemoth fails to adapt to changing market trends. Will the scene's largest retailer fall prey to the relentless retail apocalypse? That is still up in the air. However, the outlook isn't good right now, and the most recent earnings report was a disaster that caused significant losses just after the retail chain went on a really bad losing streak. In the end, a company's failure is merely a reflection of a failing economy, and the setbacks Walmart, American consumers, and our entire economy have already experienced are just the beginning.

When we read between the lines, as Motley Fool's Travis Hoium observed, we can quickly identify a company in serious trouble and speculate that it may be the "latest in a long line of leading retailers to go from boom to bust in the blink of an eye." Since Walmart's best days are behind it, we've gathered a number of figures, statistics, and facts to support this claim in the video above."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"10 Food Shortages Coming This Fall And Winter! This Is Not Good!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 7/9/23

"10 Food Shortages Coming This 

Fall And Winter! This Is Not Good!"

"In today's vlog, we are going over 10 major food shortages that are coming in Fall of 2023 and into 2024. We explain how if these food items disappear, it will be absolutely devastating all around the world. We are facing more shortages than ever, and must prepare ourselves!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

We're in big trouble, folks...

MUST VIEW! Canadian Prepper, "I Wasn't Going To Upload This: Some Very Bad News"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 7/8/23

"I Wasn't Going To Upload This: Some Very Bad News"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Alert! Your Drinking Water Is Poisonous, Get A Water Filter Now; American Society Is Collapsing Fast"

Jeremiah Babe, 7/8/23

"Alert! Your Drinking Water Is Poisonous, 

Get A Water Filter Now; American Society Is Collapsing Fast"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"No More Homes"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 7/8/23

"No More Homes"

"Arizona has just announced that you cannot get a building permit for any new homes. No more homes!. The Airbnb market is collapsing. Real estate is falling apart. You are saying hotel owners give the keys back to the banks what’s next?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Two Steps From Hell, "Downstream"

Full screen recommended.

Two Steps From Hell, "Downstream"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What powers are being wielded in the Wizard Nebula? Gravitation strong enough to form stars, and stellar winds and radiations powerful enough to create and dissolve towers of gas. Located only 8,000 light years away, the Wizard nebula, pictured above, surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer.

The active star forming region spans 100 about light years, making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon. The Wizard Nebula can be located with a small telescope toward the constellation of the King of Aethiopia (Cepheus) Although the nebula may last only a few million years, some of the stars being formed may outlive our Sun.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/

"Time: It’s The Only Thing You Have"

"Time: It’s The Only Thing You Have"

by John Wilder

"Time. Of things that have long fascinated me, time is at the top of the list. Even when I was a little kid, time fascinated me. The idea that time, of all of the physical parameters of the world there was the one that we couldn’t control. Humanity has mastered the power of the atom, at least partially. We haven’t tamed fusion, but we can create it, and have several fewer islands in the Pacific because of it.

Humanity has dammed the largest of rivers, giving us power. We have used technology to shrink the world. The first recorded circumnavigation of the world took 1082 days. Magellan didn’t quite make the whole trip, but he still gets the credit on a technicality. Now? The International Space Station does an orbit in 90 minutes or so at 17,150 miles per hour, which is nearly as fast as Haitians are entering Texas.

Humanity has conquered the riddle of steel – we’ve made steel buildings that reach upwards into the sky to please Crom. We have conquered climate – people live at the South Pole in perfect comfort, as well as managing to live in Houston without melting into puddles of sweat.

We can see at night. We can talk, nearly instantly, with people a continent away. My phone buzzes every time there is motion outside my front door – it’s like having a superpower of sensing where and when there is activity at a distance. Another superpower is being able to access obscure facts anywhere on the planet that can reach a cell signal.

But time remains fixed. It flows only one way. And it is the most subjective of our senses. Even Pugsley notices it: “This summer was so short!” He’s in high school. That’s when the transition from the endless summers of childhood begin to transform into the fleeting, never-ending carousel of years that is adulthood. I’ve long felt that I understood why this was. Let me give it a shot.

For a newborn, the second day it’s outside and breathing is 50% of its entire life. For a six-year-old, half of their life is three years – much more. It’s not a big percentage, but it’s much smaller than 50%. For a sixteen-year-old, half their life is eight years. If you’re forty – half your life is twenty years. 1/8 versus 1/20? It’s amazingly different. We don’t perceive life as a line. We’re living inside of it – we compare our lives to the only thing we have . . . our lives. Each day you live is smaller than the last.

But that’s not everything. As we age, novelty decreases. When we’re young, experiences and knowledge are coming at us so quickly that we are presented with novel (new and unique) information daily. New words. New thoughts. New ideas. That’s why babies keep falling for that stupid “got your nose” thing. They don’t realize that I can reattach it. Over time, though, novelty decreases, as does the percentage of your life that each day represents. Ever drive a new route somewhere? When I do it, I have to focus my attention. It seems like it takes longer because I’m having to deal with novelty.

I’ve had my “new” laptop nearly seven years. I had my old laptop for longer than that, yet my “new” laptop still seems like it’s temporary.

There are only so many routes I can drive to work, so much novelty that I can find in a daily drive. Even a commute of an hour begins to fade into a brief moment in time if it’s the same commute, day after day.

Work is similar. Over time, we gain experience. Experience shows us how to fix problems (and sometimes how not to fix them). But that experience of taking a solution and modifying it to fix the next problem isn’t as hard as fixing the first problem.

The fact that each day is a smaller portion of my life, combined with the fact that as I get older, the possibility that I see something new dims. I’ve solved a bunch of problems in my life. Finding a new one is... difficult. Life goes faster, day by day for me. Every endless summer day of youth is in my rearview mirror.

And yet... Each day is still 24 hours. I can still use each day and live it with all of the gusto of a 10-year-old fishing for trout after building a tree fort, playing with his dog, and building a model of a Phantom F-4 to dogfight with the MiG 21-PF already hanging from the ceiling. Even though those 24 hours seem shorter now than at any time in my life, they are relentless in their exact sameness. I get to choose how I spend those moments in my life. I get to choose what I want to produce, and how hard I work to make it happen.

Humanity may never have the ability to crack time – it appears that even today, outside of sands falling from an hourglass, we can only describe time as a fundamental entity, something we measure against. Does the flow of time vary? Certainly. But only if we’re moving at large fractions of the speed of light or are caught in a huge gravity well, but let’s leave your mother out of this.

I have come to the conclusion that I will likely never understand what, exactly, time is, outside of this: Time is all we have – it is what makes up life. We measure our lives in it, because no man can buy an extra hour of life. We have the hours we have. The only difference is what we do with that time.

I mentioned in a previous post that (during the week) I often get by on scant hours of sleep. That’s because I have more things that I want to do in my life than I can fit in a day that’s less than 20 or 22 hours some days. I choose to try to do more, to try to make use of this time, because each moment is a gift.

Maybe I can settle for that definition of time: a gift. Each moment is a gift. Don’t beg for more, or live in fear of losing them. Just make each moment count. Perhaps that’s the secret and precious nature of time. It is the one thing we should never waste, and never wish away."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Hans Zimmer, "Time"

"The Essence Of Human Existence..."

"Curiosity is the essence of human existence.

'Who are we? Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?'

I don't know. I don't have any answers to those questions.

I don't know what's over there around the corner. But I want to find out."

- Eugene Cernan

The Poet: Edward Hirsch, "I Was Never Able To Pray"

"I Was Never Able To Pray"

"Wheel me down to the shore

where the lighthouse was abandoned

and the moon tolls in the rafters.

Let me hear the wind paging through the trees

and see the stars flaring out, one by one,

like the forgotten faces of the dead.

I was never able to pray,

but let me inscribe my name

in the book of waves

and then stare into the dome

of a sky that never ends

and see my voice sail into the night."

- Edward Hirsch

Free Download: Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World"

“O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is!

O, brave new world, That has such people in't!”

- William Shakespeare, “The Tempest” (V, 1)

○

“Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too - all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides - made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions...”

- “Brave New World: Suggestions from the State”

○

Freely download “Brave New World", by Aldous Huxley, here:

- https://fb2bookfree.com/uploads/files/

The Daily "Near You?"

Wimberley, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"You Finally Find What You're After..."

"When we're headed toward an outcome that's too horrible to face, that's when we go looking for a second opinion. And sometimes, the answer we get just confirms our worst fears. But sometimes, it can shed new light on the problem, make you see it in a whole new way. After all the opinions have been heard and every point of view has been considered, you finally find what you're after - the truth. But the truth isn't where it ends, that's just where you begin again with a whole new set of questions."

- "Grays Anatomy"

“5 Painfully Obvious Truths We Tend to Forget in Hard Times”

“5 Painfully Obvious Truths

We Tend to Forget in Hard Times”

by Angel Chernoff

“This is going to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

We are going to get through this, I promise,

and we’re going to get through it together. “

- Dr. Jon LaPook

“You know how you can read or hear something dozens of times in dozens of different ways before it finally sinks in? The little truths listed below fall firmly into that category – timeless life lessons that many of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of ever since, yet for whatever reason we tend to forget in the heat of the moment. This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all, especially as we collectively cope with the evolving reality of economic and life circumstances.

1. Life is short, and nothing is guaranteed. We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step. You expected there to be one more stair than there is, and so you find yourself off balance for a moment, before your mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is.

LIVE your life TODAY! Don’t ignore death – or the imminent dangers now becoming obvious – but don’t be afraid of life either. Be afraid of a life you never lived because you were too afraid to take positive action today. Death is not the greatest loss in life, neither is illness. The greatest loss is what dies inside you while you’re still alive and well. Even in these difficult times, be bold, be courageous, be a scared to death, and then take the next step anyway. Just change the way you do it.

Invest your heart and soul into whatever you have right in front of you. Bring passion into otherwise ordinary moments. You don’t have to be surrounded by lots of people. You don’t have to be going anyplace new. You can distance yourself and still passionately engage in each moment.

2. Everything will change again soon. Embrace change and realize in many ways it’s necessary. It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end most forms of change are worthwhile because they force us to grow. So keep yourself in check right now.

What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow. You never know. Things change, often spontaneously. People and circumstances come and go. Life doesn’t stop for anybody. It moves rapidly and rushes from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds, and happens like this to people every day. It’s likely happening to someone nearby right now.

Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction of our lives. A seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a meteorite striking Earth. Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event. And these events are always happening – as they are right now.

So just remember, however good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the one thing you can count on. Accept it. Breathe. Be where you are. You’re where you need to be right now. There’s a time and place for everything, and every hard step is necessary. Just keep doing your best, and don’t force what’s not yet supposed to fit into your life. When it’s meant to be, it will be.

3. Changing your response is what puts you back in control. Have patience with everything that remains unresolved in your head and heart. And realize that patience is not about waiting, but the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard to stay true to your intuition and values. This is your life, and it is governed by your choices. May your actions speak louder than your words. May your daily choices preach louder than your lips. May your inner sense of satisfaction be your noise in the end.

And if your present life only teaches you one thing, let it be that taking a passionate leap is always worth it. Even if you have no idea where you’re going to land – even when there are so many unknowns – be brave enough to stand up and listen to your heart. Remember that the most powerful moments in life happen when you find the courage to let go of what can’t be changed. Because when you are no longer able to change a situation, you are challenged to change yourself – to grow beyond the unchangeable. And that changes everything! (Marc and I discuss this in more detail in the “Passion and Growth” chapter of “1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.“)

4. Life’s storms can be a great source of strength. Hard times are like strong storms that blow against you. And it’s not just that these storms hold you back from places you might otherwise go. They also tear away from you all but the essential parts of your ego that cannot be torn, so that afterward you see yourself as you really are, and not merely as you might like to be.

Ultimately, you realize you are here to endure these storms, to sacrifice your time and risk your heart. You are here to be bruised by life. And when it happens that you are hurt, or betrayed, or rejected, let yourself sit quietly with your eyes closed and remember all the good times you had, and all the sweetness you tasted, and everything you learned. Tell yourself how amazing it was to live, and then open your eyes and live some more.

Because to never struggle would be to never grow. You must let go of who you were so you can become who you are. Again, it is within the depths of the strongest and darkest storms that you discover within you an inextinguishable light, and it is this light that illuminates the path forward.

5. You don’t need all the answers right now. Accept the feeling of not knowing exactly where you are going, and train yourself to love and appreciate this sensation of freedom. Because it is only when you are suspended in the air, with no destination in sight, that you force your wings to open fully so you can fly. And as you soar around you still may not know where you’re traveling to. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is the opening of your wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as your wings are spread, the winds will carry you forward.

Truth be told, some of the greatest outcomes that transpire in your life will be the ones you never even knew you wanted. As long as you keep your mind open to new perspectives and yourself moving forward, there really are no wrong turns in life, only paths you didn’t know you were meant to travel. And you never can be certain what’s around the corner. It could be everything, or it could be nothing. You keep gliding steadily forward, and then one day you realize you’ve come a long way from where you started.

All details aside, someday all the pieces will come together. Unimaginably good outcomes will likely transpire in your life, even if everything doesn’t turn out exactly the way you had anticipated. And you will look back at the hard times that have passed, smile, and ask yourself… “How in the world did I get through all of that?”

- https://www.marcandangel.com/

"So We All Ran Around..."

“So we all ran around in mad, mindless, meaningless circles, as if we were in a cotton-candy eating contest where the grand prize was getting kicked in the face. We were oblivious to everything around us that no truly sane person would ever tolerate. And we needed someone else to tell us to stop it.”

- Edward M. Wolfe

"How It Really Is"

Oh how it really is, lol...

Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.

"The Russian Anaconda"

"The Russian Anaconda"

by The ZMan

"Wars are often described in the context of the diplomacy between the combatants and the battles that make up the war. Today is the anniversary of the launch of Operation Citadel by the Germans in the Second World War. This battle was part of the larger Battle of Kursk, which featured the largest tank battle in history. This battle, like the war itself, is described by its various operations. It was decided, however, by decisions made by both sides long before the battle took place.

It is those decisions made in advance of war that play the biggest role. The planning of both sides, their assumptions about the other side, as well as assumptions about the course of the war, are the major factors in a war. Once the fighting begins, both sides are often swept up in the action, which is the product of their plans and assumptions interacting with the plans and assumptions of the other side. Fighting becomes a machine with a mind of its own.

We see this with the Ukraine war. Before the actual fighting, both sides were busy preparing for what they assumed would come next. The Russians amassed about 150,000 men on the border of the Donbas. The Ukrainians had been preparing a summer attack on the Donbas but switched to preparing for a defense. Both sides were preparing based on the assumptions they were making about the other. In the case of Ukraine, their assumptions were NATO assumptions.

The Russians were the first to move their pieces on the board. They assumed that the Ukrainians would not want a war. They assumed Europe would jump in to broker some sort of peace deal based on the Minsk agreements in 2014. They crossed the border in Ukraine assuming they would not have to do much fighting. The sight of Russian tanks outside Kiev would conjure images of war, which would cause the Europeans to rush to the table offer a peace deal.

This plan was a total failure for the Russians because they were operating from assumptions about the West that were all wrong. Ukraine was not interested in a deal and the Europeans would not try to persuade them because Washington was not interested in a deal. Washington wanted regime change in Russia, which meant they wanted war with Russia in the Ukraine. Not only that but the Minsk agreements were a deliberate ruse to sucker the Russians.

In the spring of 2022, the Russians had to rethink everything. This meant new assumptions and new plans based on those assumptions. This is when they reorganized their command structure, called up hundreds of thousands of reserves and embarked on an entirely new strategy for dealing with the West. The Russians pulled out a blank piece of paper, wrote down what they knew, what they thought they knew and then built a war plan from what they had on the paper.

On the other side, the West had been preparing for this war since Washington overthrew the government of Ukraine in 2014. Their base assumption was that Russia was too weak to either stop NATO from expanding into Ukraine or two weak to sustain the effort required to halt NATO expansion. They would either put nuclear missiles on Russian’s border or they would get war that would quickly exhaust the Russians, thus ushering in the planned breakup of Russia.

At the start of the war, the Ukrainians were faced with the same choices that faced the Confederacy at the start of the Civil War. When facing a more powerful opponent, you can either make a daring attack on their forces hoping to force a truce, fall back into defense hoping to sap their will to fight or you can look for some way to reduce their ability to conduct the war. This may mean using unconventional tactics to destroy their war production and logistics networks.

In the case of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis preferred the defensive strategy, assuming the North would quickly tire of the war. General Lee preferred to go on attack, largely based on the same assumption. The superior field commanders of the South would quickly drive up the cost of war for the North. Stonewall Jackson, on the other hand, saw the problem in both strategies. He preferred to attack the North’s industrial capacity and logistics. Lee won the argument and lost the war.

Like the Confederates, the West made the same assumptions about the other side’s willingness and ability to sustain the war. They chose two of the three options, by waging a sanctions war on Russia to reduce her capacity to fight and had the Ukrainian army dig in for a long siege. Even to this day, Western media is predicting that the Russians will collapse any minute. The long-promised summer offensive was predicated on this key assumption about the Russians.

In what may go down as one of history’s greatest ironies, the West has made the same mistake that was made by the Confederacy. It turns out that the Russians can wage war for as long as it takes to achieve their goals. Not only that, but Russia also has large untapped resources to supplement what she had on-hand. As some Western analysist have noted, the Russians are stronger now than at the start of the war. The key assumption of the West about Russia has proven to be wrong.

Once the Russians realized their blunder, they found themselves with the same choices as the North in the Civil War. They could sue for peace and accept whatever would come from it. They could ramp up for a massive offensive against the Ukrainians and accept sizable losses or they could prepare for a war of attrition aimed at sapping the ability of Ukraine to maintain her army in the field. The Russians settled on what amounts to a Slavic version of the Anaconda plan.

The Russians appear to have made three key assumptions. One is they assumed the West lacked the military industrial capacity to fight a war of attrition based on artillery and mine warfare. The second assumption was the West could not replace the Ukrainian air defense system once it was depleted. This would give Russia control of the skies over the battlefield. Finally, the Russians assumed that eventually the West would force the Ukrainians to go on offense using NATO tactics.

The first assumption has proven to be true. The West is running out of stocks to send Ukraine and has limited ability to produce more. The American military system is not built for this sort of war. Ukraine uses in a month what the West produces in a year in terms of artillery shells. This is a fraction of Russian production. Added to this is the fact that the Russians are simply better than the West at artillery war. They have better guns, better training, and better tactics.

The second assumption has also proven correct. At the start of the war, the Ukrainians had the second-best air defense systems in Europe. The reason is they were using the same systems as the country with the best systems, Russia. Again, this is not something in the Western toolkit. American strategy is to use air power to control the skies, not ground based missile systems. That missile barrage against power plants was meant to deplete Ukrainian stocks and it has succeeded.

Finally, the long-awaited offensive by Ukraine is looking like what the Russians prepared for over the last six months. Like the German army in the Battle of Kursk, the Ukrainians are running into complex defenses based on slowing them down so Russian artillery and air power can destroy them. That plus the extensive use of mines to entangle Ukrainian forces as they approach has led to scenes like this one during the early days of the long anticipated offensive.

NATO is set to meet this month to discuss where they go next with this war, so the Ukrainians are desperate to find a victory somewhere to show them. They are currently back to hurling infantry at Russian defenses around Bakhmut. Given the Russian understanding of the dynamics of this war, it is possible that Ukraine wins a battle for a village or two at some point along the front. The point is to keep driving up the cost to the Ukrainians in terms of men and material.

To bring us back to where we started, the long promised Ukrainian counter-offensive is looking a lot like the Battle of Kursk. The Russians were prepared and understood what they were facing. Like the Germans, the Ukrainians have misread things and continue to operate from false assumptions about their opponent. The result is the Russian anaconda plan is about turn this offensive into Gettysburg. It is a defeat from which Ukraine can never recover.

- https://thezman.com/

"Frustrating Trip To Kroger! This Was Terrible! Angry People Everywhere!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 7/8/23

"Frustrating Trip To Kroger! 

This Was Terrible! Angry People Everywhere!"

"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are noticing a lot of angry shoppers in the store. With grocery prices being at an all-time high, we are seeing people with fewer items in their carts and having just an all-around feel of frustration in the air!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

The Real Economy, 7/7/23

"Fruit And Vegetable Prices Keep Rising! 

How Do We Feed Our Families?!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Angry people everywhere?" Oh, folks, you ain't seen nuthin' yet...

but you will.

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal 7/7/23"

Full screen recommended.

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal 7/7/23"

"Clusterf*ck: US Sends Cluster Bombs To Ukraine"

"In this weeks TITN Gerald Celente discusses the latest developments in the Ukraine war, the current decline in the US equity markets and much more. The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsresearch.com

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEtODAGge8s

Gerald's in fine form today... lol

"15 Grocery Essentials That Will Become Priceless In The Months Ahead"

Full screen recommended.

"15 Grocery Essentials That Will Become

 Priceless In The Months Ahead"

By Epic Economist

"Major changes are already taking place at US grocery stores, and during the fall and winter, many grocery essentials will become priceless as demand soars but supplies don't keep pace. We haven't seen the worst of food inflation, and big companies like Oreo maker Mondelez are still announcing price increases for the second half of 2023. Lots of popular products such as frozen pizzas, waffles, and snack cakes are about to see some steep price increases that will certainly shock American shoppers in the next few months.

Prepare to pay more for pepperoni, jerky, bacon, ham, sausages, and other packaged meats in the next few quarters. Meat processors are still coping with rising labor costs, fewer workers, and other operational issues that are making the production of packaged meats cost more while output goes down. If you’ve been grocery shopping in recent weeks, you probably already noticed how prices are changing fast, and from this point on, these products aren’t going to get any cheaper. Whenever you find deals at stores, buy some of your favorite packaged meats and a few extra to save throughout the next seasons.

The price of popular and handy breakfast meals is about to go through some seasonal changes. With kids going back to school, and temperatures going down in the months ahead, demand for frozen breakfast foods is expected to rise by 16.43 percent, according to estimates released by the top grocer in the US, Walmart. The price of its Great Value Buttermilk Pancakes is going to rise from $3.93 right now to $4.48 by the end of the third quarter. Meanwhile, Eggo Original Waffles and Kellogg’s Blueberry Waffles are going to see a 40-cent increase, from $4.49 to $4.89 by the beginning of September. Further price increases can take place during the winter, but specific data hasn’t been provided yet. In any case, if you don’t want to feel the pinch of the upcoming price hikes, make some room in your freezer to stock up on these goods while they’re still cheaper.

Great Value Hamburger Dill Chip Pickles are now selling for $2.67 for a 32 fl oz jar. Although that’s only 8.7 percent higher than a year ago levels, in 2023, food makers faced a series of challenges to produce and distribute these products, and the impact of these supply chain problems is about to hit stores and raise the cost of pickles between 12 to 17 percent during the third and fourth quarter. For the year, experts at The Cold Wire.com estimate that the cost of this beloved condiment will jump by 25 percent. Relief is expected by the second quarter of 2024 when production levels are expected to stabilize. Until then, adding a few extra jars to your cart next time you go shopping may help you fight inflation and potential shortages.

Even though Americans continue buying considerable amounts of chocolate each month, slower production and elevated costs for sugar are leading to a decline in supplies, which is quite worrying considering that Halloween is right ahead, and many holiday season recipes require chocolate. CNBC reports that in June, chocolate prices rose by 14 percent. With the cost of cocoa soaring in the global market right now, we should brace for some serious sticker shock in the next few months. For that reason, for this video, we decided to track which products are expected to face higher consumer demand and higher prices for the rest of the year."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Michael Franti, "Hey World (Don't Give Up)"

Full screen recommended.

Michael Franti, "Hey World (Don't Give Up)"

"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.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111220.html

Chet Raymo, "The Ring of Truth"

"The Ring of Truth"

by Chet Raymo

"In Salley Vickers' novel, "Where Three Roads Meet," the shade of Tiresias, the blind seer of the Oedipus myth, visits Sigmund Freud in London during the psychoanalyst's final terrible illness. In a series of conversations, Tiresias retells the story of Oedipus- he who was fated to kill his father and sleep with his mother- a story at the heart of Freud's own theory of the human psyche. At one point in the conversations, as Tiresias and Freud discuss the extent to which our lives are fated, the question of immortality arises. Freud says of Oedipus that "he made his story into an immortal one, so far as any story is." And Tiresias replies, "But, Dr. Freud, stories are all we humans have to make us immortal."

Oedipus lives on, whether he lived or not in actuality. Sophocles lives in our consciousness as vigorously as ever he did in life. They live because their stories touch something resonant and unchanging in human nature. Vickers suggests that what makes the Oedipal story immortal is not any necessary tendency of humans to act out the Oedipal myth, a la Freud, but rather Oedipus's rage to know the truth- or become conscious of a truth he has known all along and suppressed - even though the truth will be his undoing.

The poet Muriel Rukesyser got it exactly right when she said: "The universe is made of stories, not atoms." Even atoms are stories we tell about the world, having first paid close attention to how the world works. The plays of Sophocles and the other Greek dramatists live on not because their authors were immortal, but because nature endures and their stories tell us something that rings true about enduring nature. And, like Oedipus, we have a rage to know, even if knowledge will unseat some of our more comfortable illusions.

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

Free Download: Gustave Le Bon, "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind"

"The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."

- Gustave Le Bon

Freely download "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind",

by Gustave Le Bon, here:

- https://www.fulltextarchive.com/pdfs/The-Crowd.pdf

○

“Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than

when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.”

- Laurens van der Post

"A Companion..."

"Someone once told me that time is a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, that reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we live it. After all, Number One, we're only mortal."

- Captain Jean-Luc Picard