Wednesday, March 27, 2024

"'Life Doesn’t Owe Anyone a Damn Thing'; or 'Handle Hard Better'"

"'Life Doesn’t Owe Anyone a Damn Thing'; 
or 'Handle Hard Better'"
by Justin Smith

“We all wait in life for things to get easier. It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better. That’s what happens. Most people think that it’s going to get easier. Life is going to get easier. Basketball is going to get easier. School is going to get easier. It never gets easier. What happens is you become someone who handles hard stuff better. And if you think life when you leave college is going to all of a sudden get easier because you graduated, and you got a Duke degree, it’s not going to get easier. It’s going to get harder. So make yourself a person that handles hard well.” ~ Kara Lawson, Head Coach for Duke University Women’s Basketball Team and Graduate of the University of Tennessee [July 5th 2022]

An incredible number of Americans today have been coddled, pampered and fed a sense of entitlement from birth that continued into their early adulthood, making them always look to others or the government for help in acquiring their needs and wants. They have been raised without a backbone, weak-willed and dependent; and so, whenever they find themselves to be in a minority, they more often than not petition the federal and state governments, protest and riot, in order that their particular concerns are proactively pursued and implemented as favored, privileged and superior, no matter how insane, from destroying humanity by way of transgenderism or energy and job-killing fallacious “climate change” policies.

From my earliest memories, I saw hard men, laughing, loving, fighting hard and playing just as hard, as they’d rise each day to head out to work, in the mines, the forests, office buildings and on the nation’s lines of defense, and in particular I recall learning something of worth from each of them, much as I did from my Granddad Spurge, who was a coal miner and a stone mason. They were a hardy bunch of industrious scrappers, who pulled up their sleeves and worked hard to make a better life for themselves and their children, to build better communities, a better America.

But what passes for young “men” today is but a mere shadow of men of worth from better days gone by, what with their feminine appearances and their aversion to doing anything to break a sweat. And aside from weak bodies, too much coddling has made their minds work in a new, cunning devious manner, in which they waste enormous amounts of effort sidestepping real work and figuring out how to get something for nothing rather than perform an honest day’s work to pay for bills they make, without any intention of ever repaying, such as student loans.

Half of America seems content to allow Uncle Sam to make life better for them and their children via the welfare system and the government cheese, even tho’ it means a life of subsistence, just scraping by. Although today, many have developed gaming the system into a real art, whereby they live just about as good as anyone working a full-time job, complete with HUD homes, EBT cards, late model cars, color T.V.s and government purchased cellphones.

Life doesn’t owe any of us a thing, regardless of the circumstances and station of our birth. The miracle of your birth alone doesn’t mean you are automatically owed a job, a house, a bed or a single meal after you are a grown adult and supposedly capable of doing for yourself. You’re not owed recognition and understanding for simply existing, and neither are you owed success and comfort, abundance and happiness or immunity from the problems, pain and suffering that is simply a part of the human condition, and you certainly aren’t due any money you haven’t earned through your own sweat and effort, not from me, the American taxpayers or the U.S. government.

The only thing anyone should expect from The Government, if we are to accept the Contract found in our Constitution, are those things enumerated in its original form, and in that sense, we are owed a strong, affirmative and fierce defense of our Inalienable God-given Rights, as expressed and defined in the Bill of Rights, to be left alone to our own devices to live and thrive as free born Americans, without interference from The Government and its agents where no real harm is being done.

People aren’t created equal in the very real definition of the word and life has never been fair to anyone, and yet, the constant refrain heard all across all levels of American society today, from the ranks of the Mau Mau Marxist-Maoist totalitarians, those lovers of “democracy”, is “the world is so unfair”. They were evidently raised to believe “all men are created equal” in the context of the Declaration of Independence meant they are somehow guaranteed equal outcomes in everyday life, instead of the simple “equality under the law” as intended. And their voices are now amplified by an out-of-control regime that seeks to use their envy to complete the fundamental transformation of America, by any means necessary, no matter how unconstitutional or illegal they might be and are currently proving to be.

Standing on one’s own two feet and making your way through the merit of your own knowledge and work are now a thing of the past, as the poorest results in school and on the job are given the same weight and worth as the best and everybody gets a participation trophy. And in its place, envy, greed, sloth, gluttony, lies, sex and murder, the destroyer of worlds, are the rule, for a generation indoctrinated through Marxist-Maoist multiculturalist doctrine and propaganda, taught from kindergarten through university, who are now driven by an unhinged hate and anger directed at white society and capitalism.

This, in part, is the reason we see whole cities, controlled by the Marxist-Maoists and the totalitarian minded, enacting new “laws” that make the theft of anything $900 or less a misdemeanor, giving way to thousands of groups of poorly taught, undisciplined, predominantly black “youths” rampaging, rioting and looting numerous times a day, taking $900 dollars worth of merchandise nine times a day, if not more, taught racism and hatred and driven by envy and greed. It’s the reason cities across America are folding up, shriveling like a crop attacked by locusts and dying on the vine where once they thrived, back when our people, indeed our youth, had more pure hearts and moral directions and had not strayed far and away from America’s Christian roots.

Over the past thirty years, the nutcases of the Democrat Party have advocated a pathologically negative agenda for America that is based on destroying the Founding and revising history to portray early America as evil and worth casting on the ash-heap of history. Accelerating their plans through the public education system, an entire generation of America’s youth have been brainwashed to believe our planet is dying due to manmade CO2 and “climate change”, in defiance of actual science, and as if that isn’t enough, we are all constantly inundated with one alarm after another raised over racism — even as reverse racism against whites is now advocated, capitalism — which hasn’t really existed in America for over 100 years, homophobia / gender bigotry, capitalist oppression — even tho’ our system is economic fascism, and the fallacious assertion that White Supremacist Nazis are ascending in every community in America.

The real problem found within the ranks of the Takers? They just can’t face the fact that life isn’t easy for anyone, especially the Makers; and it never has been, although exceptions can be found in those born into wealth. But even the wealthy are weighted with life’s problems, if of a different variety, much as the old adage says that “money can’t buy you love or happiness”, even if it does buy you a line of coke and hookers, in a sad sort of dystopian world of a different immoral construct.

The routines many of us indulge in daily have made the largest percentage of Americans, a fairly large majority, complacent and apathetic, caring next to nothing on matters of government and whether or not they are actually living free.

Americans rise each morning, check their emails and cellphones, shower, shave and maybe brush their teeth, to rush off to their same, everyday, boring regular job that may or may not quite pay the bills, grabbing their $7 dollar cup of Starbucks special latte of the day, to do a job they find meaningless. At day’s end, they may grab some overpriced fast-food on the way home, to relax and maybe drink a cheap beer or glass of whiskey, while they watch The Voice — or is it porn [?] — call some friends to complain over how bad things are, and then simply watch some news, ’til they call it a night, sleeping fitfully and rising the next morning to do it all over again, and everyday afterward, year after year, until one day someone hands them their walking papers or a copper watch upon their “retirement”.

Too many live under the delusion that they should be able to drive brand new $60k cars, own $400k homes complete with the most exquisite adornments and furniture on their $15 per hour paycheck at McDonald’s, having never put forth the effort to gain useful knowledge demanded by skilled and professional career positions, in order to make themselves more valuable to society on the whole, and thus able to demand a salary that would allow them to buy all the trappings of such success. Instead, they cast an envious eye in the direction of the Makers and scheme on how to take what they want, by any scheme, any illegal act, any means necessary. They believe their mere existence entitles them to other people’s property, just because deep down in their black little souls, they really, really want it — just not enough to go after it the right way.

Our youth have lost all sense of shame and seem fine with getting anything they want, right when they want it, no matter how they come to acquire it. They never learned that something worth having is worth the work it takes to purchase, as if stuff is just supposed to fall from the heavens and land in their lap.

Things of real worth don’t come easy.

Sure. Not everyone has the intelligence and capability to become a surgeon, but if that’s your dream, you will never know if you could have been one, until you try — same for anything else that any of you are dreaming of being, no matter if you dream of being a content farmer or a successful writer. Whatever you want in life, put forth the effort to achieve competency in that field and then go do it.

If you want something of worth in life, stop depending on others. Venture out on your own in some business or capacity you love, rather than settling to work for someone else your entire life. And for your own sake, quit wallowing in self-pity over bad circumstances created by your own bad choices.

As Ms Lawson notes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDzfZOfNki4) at one point: "Any pursuit in life, if you want to be successful, it goes to the people that handle hard well. Those are the people that get the stuff they want. People that wait around for easy, you probably see them at the bus stop. They’re waiting on the easy bus to come around. Easy bus never comes around. Go handle hard.”

Too many parents, too many schools, too many churches have failed America by failing to teach them that hard times won’t break you if only you have the right state of mind on life — that there is a loving God — and no one will ever find a fulfilling or positive way of life by looking to The Government for answers and solutions. Our society stopped teaching the youth how to be strong and independent somewhere along the way, as the tyrant-wannabes persisted in teaching “everyone is a victim”; but the fact remains today, anyone can be a proud survivor of hard times, if only they persevere and never give-up and never give-in to defeat, choosing to ultimately succeed and live good, prosperous and happy lives."
Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.

"War Crisis! NATO No-fly Zone For F-16s; France Mobilizes Troops; Ukraine Collapsing; Belarus Nukes"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/26/24
"War Crisis! NATO No-fly Zone For F-16s; 
France Mobilizes Troops; Ukraine Collapsing; Belarus Nukes"
Comments here:

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

"Walmart Is Making Changes To Their Self-checkout System, And People Are Furious!"

Adventures With Danno, PM 3/26/24
"Walmart Is Making Changes To Their 
Self-checkout System, And People Are Furious!"
Comments here:

Jeremiah Babe, "Alert! Doomed Cargo Ship Causes Massive Economic Disaster"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/26/24
"Alert! Doomed Cargo Ship Causes Massive 
Economic Disaster; Death Of American Cities"
Comments here:

Gerald Celente, "Duh-Mock-Racy: An Idiot's Delight!!"

Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 3/26/24
"Duh-Mock-Racy: An Idiot's Delight!!"
"'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."
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"Prepare For Chaos: Rush To The Store And Stock Up Food Items Now! Things Are Getting Crazy"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 3/26/24
"Prepare For Chaos: Rush To The Store And 
Stock Up Food Items Now! Things Are Getting Crazy"
"Grocery prices have surged by a staggering 30% in just four years! But how did we get here? After World War II, the grocery industry was built on affordability and abundance. But today, the landscape has drastically changed. The pandemic disrupted supply chains, giving grocery giants the green light to hike prices while selling less food. Join us as we uncover the shocking truth of why you should go and stock up on food from the store."
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Musical Interlude: Moody Blues, "Tuesday Afternoon"

Moody Blues, "Tuesday Afternoon"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Except for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial circle. Its classic appearance is understood to be due to our own perspective, though. The recent mapping of the expanding nebula's 3-D structure, based in part on this clear Hubble image,indicates that the nebula is a relatively dense, donut-like ring wrapped around the middle of a (American) football-shaped cloud of glowing gas. 
The view from planet Earth looks down the long axis of the football, face-on to the ring. Of course, in this well-studied example of a planetary nebula, the glowing material does not come from planets. Instead, the gaseous shroud represents outer layers expelled from the dying, once sun-like star, now a tiny pinprick of light seen at the nebula's center. Intense ultraviolet light from the hot central star ionizes atoms in the gas. The Ring Nebula is about one light-year across and 2,500 light-years away."

"The Things We Did Not Do..."

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."
~ Sydney J. Harris

The Poet: Charles Bukowski, “Mind and Heart”

“Mind and Heart”

“Unaccountably we are alone,
forever alone,
and it was meant to be
that way,
it was never meant
to be any other way -
and when the death struggle begins
the last thing I wish to see is
a ring of human faces
hovering over me -
better just my old friends,
the walls of my self,
let only them be there.

I have been alone but seldom lonely.
I have satisfied my thirst
at the well of my self
and that wine was good,
the best I ever had,
and tonight, sitting,
staring into the dark
I now finally understand
the dark and the
light and everything
in between.

Peace of mind and heart arrives
when we accept what is:
having been born into this strange life
we must accept
the wasted gamble of our days,
and take some satisfaction in
the pleasure of leaving it all behind.

Cry not for me.
Grieve not for me.
Read
what I’ve written
then forget it all.
Drink from the well
of your self and begin again.”

- Charles Bukowski

The Daily "Near You?"

Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

"If You Caught A Glimpse..."

"If you caught a glimpse of your own death,
would that knowledge change the way you live the rest of your life?"
- Paco Ahlgren, "Discipline"

"New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco And Baltimore Were Once Such Beautiful Cities…"

"New York, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco
 And Baltimore Were Once Such Beautiful Cities…"
by Michael Snyder

"If America is heading in the right direction, why have so many of our major cities become cesspools of violence, drugs, theft, trash and homelessness? Once upon a time, millions of young people from all over America flocked to our rapidly growing metropolitan areas. Today, there is a mass exodus out of our largest metropolitan areas due to the absolutely deplorable conditions. If you are not yet convinced that we are a nation in decline, spend some time wandering around our core urban areas. The shiny new cities that previous generations of Americans built for us are degenerating at a pace that is absolutely stunning.

Just look at what is happening to New York. A couple of decades ago, it was still in relatively good shape. But now it is going down the tubes really fast. A shopping mall in the Big Apple that cost a billion dollars to build just ten years ago is being permanently shut down because conditions in the city have become so intolerable…"A MAJOR city mall with dozen of stores is planning to shut up shop as America’s theft epidemic continues to batter businesses. Retail operator Westfield announced that it intends to end its lease and sever all operations with the Fulton Center in Lower Manhattan. Westfield put pen to paper on a two-decade long lease in 2014. However, as levels of theft and homelessness continue to spiral, the company have decided to forego the contract 10 years early."

Westfield has cited soaring crime and quality of life concerns as their reason for terminating the lease. Yes, things really are that bad. Walking away from a billion dollar project is not an easy decision, but Westfield apparently has come to the conclusion that conditions are not going to improve any time soon.

Just because a city was great at one time does not mean that it will always be great. Detroit was once one of the greatest cities on the entire planet, but now it has become a cautionary tale…"Detroit was once the symbol of the mighty industrial power of America. It was the home of the “Big Three” American car companies that dominated car production around the world. It was America’s success at developing a large industrial middle class.

Today one finds articles like the Guardian’s “The Death of a Great American City: why does anyone still live in Detroit?” So what has happened to what was once one of the greatest Rust Belt cities? The story of Detroit is a much larger tale of what has been happening in the city of Gary in Indiana – a ghost town in the making."

Other major cities should learn from what has happened to Detroit. But instead, many of them are making the exact same mistakes. Years of progressive policies have turned some of our most appealing cities into horror shows. It wasn’t too long ago that the glamour of Hollywood drew in visitors from all over the globe, but now Hollywood is absolutely packed with homeless encampments…"A large Hollywood Boulevard homeless encampment that residents say is a hotspot for selling and buying drugs, a trash-strewn tent city they say took the city three months to clear, has sparked continued concern as unhoused residents are already returning to the location. The encampments are a persistent problem plaguing neighborhoods not just in Hollywood but across greater Los Angeles."

Conditions are similar up north in San Francisco. I have written extensively about the hordes of addicts that wander aimlessly through the streets. These addicts leave trash and human excrement wherever they go, and as a result San Francisco is an extremely filthy city today. If that wasn’t bad enough, the city itself is “dumping raw sewage and trash directly into the Bay at a magnitude that’s almost incomprehensible”

Sejal Choksi-Chugh, Baykeeper’s executive director, said, “There’s no excuse for polluting the Bay with sewage and trash, and those who pollute must be held accountable. Dumping millions of gallons of untreated sewage into Mission Creek and the Bay is unacceptable, avoidable, and illegal.” Nearly all of SFPUC’s discharges flow into Mission Creek and Islais Creek, Baykeeper found. The nonprofit’s field investigators visited Mission Creek during sewer discharges and saw the presence of fecal matter, plastics, syringes, and condoms in the water. “San Francisco is dumping raw sewage and trash directly into the Bay at a magnitude that’s almost incomprehensible,” said Baykeeper attorney Eric Buescher.

Yuck! I thought that progressives were supposed to be in favor of protecting the environment. On the east coast, the city of Baltimore is facing a different sort of crisis. After years of disastrous policies, the police shortage in the city has reached an “apocalyptic” level… "Baltimore is now facing apocalyptic levels of policing shortages. Last week, THREE police officers patrolled a whole district of 61,000 residents. Police are now UNABLE to respond to calls, including for child assault. The department is now postponing police training in an attempt to solve shortages."

At one time in my life, I would visit Baltimore pretty regularly. And I was always thankful to get out of the city safely. Of course things are much worse now, and at this point I don’t know why anyone would still want to live there.

Pittsburgh is also experiencing a very serious shortage of police officers. In fact, things have gotten so bad that police in the city will no longer “respond to any calls that aren’t in progress emergencies”…"Beginning Monday, Pittsburgh police won’t respond to any calls that aren’t in progress emergencies. Chief Larry Scirotto wants to cut their call volume from approximately 200,000 calls per year down to about 50,000. That essentially means that calls for criminal mischief, theft, harassment and burglary alarms, just to name a few, will all be handled by the telephone reporting unit or online reporting."

This is what a nation in decline looks like. We have turned our backs on the values that this nation was founded upon, and as a result we are now experiencing social decay on an epic scale."

Bill Bonner, "Live and Let Die"

"Live and Let Die"
A history of bloodshed and lessons ignored...
by Bill Bonner

"Let the Messiah... the king of the Jews... 
come down from the cross now, so we can see and believe."
~ The Chief Priests of Jerusalem

Dublin, Ireland - "Sunday marked the beginning of Holy Week, and the day when Christ made his way, in triumph, into Jerusalem. He did not ride a warhorse. He didn’t swing a big sword, gaud himself up in royal robes or send drones to prepare the way. Instead, he rode on an ass... a donkey... and dressed in a modest robe. This was not some bogus victor, like Maxwell Taylor in Saigon or David Petraeus in Baghdad. It was a real triumph, the sort of victory that Steven Pinker might celebrate.

Even back then, the local priests saw Jesus not as a messiah, but as a provocateur... a poseur... an imposter, claiming to be “king of the Jews.” Blasphemy! They knew a king when they saw one; and he didn’t look like one. They treated him like a whistleblower or a terrorist. Then, Judas Iscariot betrayed him... the other disciples denied him... a servant girl denounced Peter... and the crowd wanted blood.

And it still wants blood. What has changed? The New York Times: "Gaza’s Shadow Death Toll: Bodies Buried Beneath the Rubble." "Gaza has become a 140-square-mile graveyard, each destroyed building another jagged tomb for those still buried within. The most recent health ministry estimate for the number of people missing in Gaza is about 7,000. But that figure has not been updated since November. Gaza and aid officials say thousands more have most likely been added to that toll in the weeks and months since then.

The buried make up a shadow death toll in Gaza, a leaden asterisk to the health ministry’s official tally of more than 33,000 dead, and an open wound for families who hope against hope for a miracle. Most families have accepted that their missing are dead..."

By the Sword: We have been a regular churchgoer for seventy years. We are not particularly ‘religious,’ but we keep an open mind. And whether fact or fiction, Bible stories are a good source of instruction. They tell us the way the world works... that the race goeth not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong... that he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword... and that where a man’s purse is, there also is his heart - among many other things.

This is not the world of material or scientific progress - racing ahead with gizmos and gadgets. This is the world of flesh and blood, not much improved over thousands of years. The ancient scribes and prophets - observing it over so many hundreds of years - didn’t miss much. What they described was a ‘moral’ world, like it or not. There’s always ‘more’ to the story. And always a moral to it.

Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, questioned Jesus when he was brought before him. He found no wrongdoing in him and suspected that the Jewish priests were just jealous of him. But the crowd insisted; ‘crucify him!’ they shouted.

Or course, people are not crucified anymore. Progress! They do not suffer on a cross for hours... days... before dying. Then again, they didn’t crucify children in the old days, either. Julius Caesar, in a display of mercy, had a group of pirates strangled before crucifying them. Who strangles the children today, before they are buried under piles of rubble?

A History of Bloodshed: One of the great triumphs of human civilization was the elimination of slavery in the 19th century. But slavery - compared to many other things - wasn’t so bad. The owner had a keen interest in keeping his slaves in good condition. Rarely did he kill them. Historian Jim Downs argues that more slaves died from freedom than from slavery. In the chaos of liberation during and after the War Between the States, an estimated one million former slaves died of disease or starvation.

Steven Pinker makes a persuasive case that we are generally less bloodthirsty today than we used to be. Few people attend a hanging for the entertainment. Few people go to insane asylums to gawk and laugh. Few people - with many exceptions, such as those who work for ‘security forces’ of the US, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia... or any one of dozens of other countries - still get a thrill by torturing people. Still, it is remarkable what goes on.

When George Floyd was snuffed by police, almost everyone thought it was an appalling act of violence or carelessness... perhaps having its origins in race hatred. There followed days of outrage. That was surely a milestone in the march toward a more empathetic, less violence-prone public. But scarcely two years later, wars in the Ukraine... and mass murder in the Holy Land... suggest substantial backsliding in the march of human social progress. And looking back, we see an almost unbroken string of butcheries - like a necklace made of human ears - stretching back to long before Jesus was born.

A Grim Record: Jerusalem must hold some sort of grim record in this regard. Placed as it is, on the likely path from Africa to the rest of the world, it might have seen extermination-level battles between Neanderthals, or other archaic human forms... and homo sapiens. Then came the Canaanites, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Jews, the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Hasmonians, Romans...we pause to catch our breath...

Pontius Pilate was recalled from Judea soon after the Resurrection and disappeared from history. But the history of massacre and conquest on the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean continued. The Byzantines, Arabs, Seljuks, Crusaders, Mamluks, Ottoman, English, Zionists... a war in 1948... another in 1967 - from siege to battle... to mass murder and exile... and another massacre in 2023-2024.

Who took Christ down from the cross? Jesus’s message was that we should do unto others what we would have them do unto us. Win-win. It was such a revolutionary new creed... too bad it never quite caught on."
o
"Heaven On Their Minds"

"Jesus Christ Superstar," Full album. Listen on YouTube:

"How It Really Is"

 

Dan, I Allegedly, "People Are Getting More Desperate"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 3/26/24
"People Are Getting More Desperate"
"It was just announced that the inventory at pawnshops is growing across the United States. From small pawnshops to very large ones inventory is up almost 10%. People are so desperate. They are trying to get cash anyway they can."
Comments here:

Adventures With Danno, "Holiday Sales At Meijer This WEEK!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 3/26/24
"Holiday Sales At Meijer This WEEK!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Meijer and are going over all the different holiday sales this week. Get your notepad ready as you will not want to miss these deals!"
Comments here:

Judge Napolitano, "Scott Ritter: On the Brink of Nuclear War"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 3/26/24
"Scott Ritter: On the Brink of Nuclear War"
Comments here:

"Everyone in the World Needs to See This: Footage Shows IDF Drone Killing Gazans"

WARNING! Absolutely Horrifying!
Full horrifying screen recommended.
"Everyone in the World Needs to See This:
 Footage Shows IDF Drone Killing Gazans"
By Jessica Corbett

"An Israeli army drone pursued four civilian youths who attempted to reach their destroyed homes and killed them with missiles in Khan Younis at the start of last February. "There is no way they could have been considered combatants," said one writer and analyst. "This is unreal."

Adding to the mountain of evidence that Israel is engaged in a genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, Al Jazeera on Thursday aired footage of what the news outlet reported was an Israeli drone targeting four Palestinians in Khan Younis last month. Those killed by the unmanned aerial vehicle in the rubble of the southern Gaza city appear to be unarmed teenagers or young men. According to a translation of the coverage, they were not identified in the reporting.

"Outrageous even after months of outrages," declared Palestinian American political analyst Yousef Munayyer. "This video shows an Israeli military drone literally stalking four unarmed civilians posing no threat and eliminating them one after the other!"

Tariq Kenney-Shawa, Al-Shabaka's U.S. policy fellow, said: "This is among the worst footage I've seen. Not only were these boys clearly unarmed and present no threat whatsoever, but they were struck multiple times even after stumbling/crawling away. There is no way they could have been considered combatants. This is unreal."
o
"Israel is Evil personified. Israel is Evil embodied."
- Scott Ritter

A Comment: OMG...33,000 men, women, old people, and 14,000 CHILDREN slaughtered, 76,000 wounded, with 8,000 more missing and buried under the rubble caused by 29,000 2,000 lb. bombs from America! THIS is what these bloodthirsty psychopathically genocidal monsters are! I've never allowed profanity on this blog over 16 years and 90,000 posts, but oh I want to, I'm filled with a ferocious, hate filled rage at this horror! And YOU, Americans, hang your goddamned heads in shame and total disgrace because YOU paid for every bullet, all of it, and allow and support it continuing...
- CP, that's my opinion and I don't give a damn who doesn't like it!

"Stipendium peccati mors est," Israel.

"The Gangster State"

"The Gangster State"
by The ZMan

"Whenever there is a terrorist attack, the main question immediately after it is who conducted the attack. This is not just for the mundane reason of apprehending the people responsible, but also for understanding why they did it. Terrorism, by definition, exists within the context of a larger political cause. A crazy person opening fire at a mall is a different thing than an Antifa member opening fire at a church school. The former is simply crazy while the latter has a political motivation.

After the attack on the Moscow music venue over the weekend, the first thing people naturally asked is who did it. The Russians quickly apprehended the four gunmen and then the question shifted to who sponsored it, as it was clear that these four people could never have done this alone. The Russians have arrested a dozen other suspects they think may have been involved, but the four Tajiks have been identified as the shooters and they have confessed.

The bullets were still flying when the many bot accounts operated by American intelligence started to flood social media platforms with claims that it was Islamic terrorism, which was a red flag. Then Washington rolled out the ISIS-K claim, which is another red flag. No one had ever heard of ISIS-K until now, so that is one problem, but the bigger problem is ISIS is an American creation. Coupled with the recent State Department warnings, it looks suspicious.

It gets even more suspicious when internet sleuths figured out that the head of ISIS-K is a person calling himself Sanaullah Ghafari, who used to work at Bagram airfield as a special guard to the vice president of the American backed Afghan government, until that government was ousted by the Taliban. Mr. Ghafari also has ties to NATO as a sanctioned arms dealer. Maybe this is the wrong Sanaullah Ghafari, it is a common name, but it is another red flag.

What we know is that four Tajiks were given weapons that are exceedingly rare on the black market and paid a quarter of a million dollars each to go on a shooting rampage in Moscow and then they fled toward Ukraine. Washington claims they were backed by an organization that was created by Washington and appears to be led by a man with deep ties to American intelligence. It should be noted that Washington is now backing off the ISIS story, which can be interpreted in several ways.

There is another way of looking at this. It is possible that the White House simply has no idea what is going on with Project Ukraine. This would not be the first time they were caught off-guard by a terrorist act. After the Nord Stream attack, the Biden admin jumped from story to story, trying to find a narrative that people would accept, until the CIA planted the story of Ukrainian frogmen using a dingy to float out into the sea and plant the bombs on the gas pipeline.

The Biden admin was also lost when Daria Dugina was blown up by a car bomb in an attempt to assassinate her father, Alexander Dugin. The first story said that there was no way the Ukrainians were behind it. Eventually, they had to admit that it was most likely Ukrainian intelligence behind the assassination. This event was the start of a pattern where Ukraine or friends of Ukraine in the murky world in which the Kagan cult operates do things outside official channels.

Of course, stupidity always plays a role in these things now. Back when all the best people were sure the looming Ukrainian offensive would smash the Russian lines, Mark Milley, told a gathering of top NATO commanders and Ukrainian special forces being trained by the American military, “There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they’re going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night. You gotta get back there, and create a campaign behind the lines.”

Every day for over two years voices of authority in Washington have said that Ukraine must win by any means necessary. European leaders come out daily and say there are no red lines when it comes to beating Russia. France is now threatening to send their troops into Ukraine and encouraging other NATO countries to join them. If you are running a CIA operation in Syria, like Sanaullah Ghafari, you are not going to hesitate to help your friends put together a terror attack in Moscow.

Getting back to the central question of terrorism, the answer here may be that this is the result of the Biden administration losing control of their foreign policy. They are no longer calling the shots. Instead, it is the shadowy world of the usual suspects doing what they like without regard to the political or geopolitical consequences. It is not as if the political class ever had tight control of foreign policy. Maybe now they no longer have any control over what happens in their name.

If you want further evidence that the White House no longer controls foreign policy, you can look at what Israel is doing. Netanyahu is openly defying the White House in his campaign to drive the Arabs out of Gaza. Anthony Blinken has been sent there to beg Netanyahu to stop a dozen times to no avail. If America’s greatest ally no longer cares what the White House has to say, maybe Israel is simply working with people it sees as more important than the White House.

Since the most likely suspect in the Israel case is also behind Project Ukraine, it is not a big leap to think they are working with the Ukrainians to conduct terrorism. It is also not a big leap to think that these same people would turn their weapons on politicians that do not support their projects. Given the direction of the Ukraine war, this may explain why European politicians make daily devotionals to the project. They do not want any Tajiks showing up at their house.

All of this is speculation and supposition, but it fits in with the general breakdown of order we see in the Global America Empire. For the last ten years this has been the defining feature of America. The rules are falling to pieces because powerful people refuse to abide by them or enforce them. This Ukraine fiasco suggests that America is falling into gangsterism. Powerful players no longer care what elected officials say or think as they conduct their private agendas."

Monday, March 25, 2024

"Col. Douglas MacGregor, 'This Was The Last Straw For Ukraine, it's Over'"

Redacted, 3/25/24
"Col. Douglas MacGregor, 
'This Was The Last Straw For Ukraine, it's Over'"
Comments here:

"Pawn Shops Are Buying It All As Desperate People Try To Survive"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/25/24
"Pawn Shops Are Buying It All As 
Desperate People Try To Survive"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Yanni, “The Storm”

Full screen recommended.
Yanni, “The Storm”

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Fans of our fair planet might recognize the outlines of these cosmic clouds. On the left, bright emission outlined by dark, obscuring dust lanes seems to trace a continental shape, lending the popular name North America Nebula to the emission region cataloged as NGC 7000. To the right, just off the North America Nebula's east coast, is IC 5070, whose avian profile suggests the Pelican Nebula. The two bright nebulae are about 1,500 light-years away, part of the same large and complex star forming region, almost as nearby as the better-known Orion Nebula. At that distance, the 3 degree wide field of view would span 80 light-years.
This careful cosmic portrait uses narrow band images combined to highlight the bright ionization fronts and the characteristic glow from atomic hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen gas. These nebulae can be seen with binoculars from a dark location. Look northeast of bright star Deneb in the constellation Cygnus the Swan."

"Worth Fighting For..."

Sam: "It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing, this shadow, even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you, that meant something even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand, I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for."
- Samwise Gamgee, "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"

"Not Much Mental Distance..."

“A man who has blown all his options can't afford the luxury of changing his ways. He has to capitalize on whatever he has left, and he can't afford to admit - no matter how often he's reminded of it - that every day of his life takes him farther and farther down a blind alley. Very few toads in this world are Prince Charmings in disguise. Most are simply toads, and they are going to stay that way. Toads don't make laws or change any basic structures, but one or two rooty insights can work powerful changes in the way they get through life. A toad who believes he got a raw deal before he even knew who was dealing will usually be sympathetic to the mean, vindictive ignorance that colors the Hell's Angels' view of humanity. There is not much mental distance between a feeling of having been screwed and the ethic of total retaliation, or at least the random revenge that comes with outraging the public decency.”
- Hunter S. Thompson

"Pawn Shop Inventories Are Exploding As The Failing U.S. Economy Hammers Those At The Bottom Of The Economic Food Chain"

"Pawn Shop Inventories Are Exploding As The Failing U.S. Economy 
Hammers Those At The Bottom Of The Economic Food Chain"
by Michael Snyder

"How much longer will the Biden administration and the mainstream media continue to deny that we are in the midst of a very painful economic downturn? Debt levels have never been higher, delinquency rates are spiking, the commercial real estate market is crashing, the banking industry is mired in turmoil and large companies are conducting mass layoffs all over the nation. Anyone that attempts to claim that the U.S. economy is in good shape is just being delusional. Unfortunately, it is those that are at the bottom of the economic food chain that are being hurt the most.

If you want to know what is really going on with the economy, pawn shops are a great place to look. When the economy is doing well, pawn shop inventories tend to go down because people aren’t pawning much stuff and there is lots of buying going on. But when the economy is not doing well, pawn shop inventories tend to go up because people are pawning lots of stuff for fast cash and there aren’t as many buyers as there were during the good times. So what are we seeing during the early stages of 2024?

One pawn shop owner that was recently interviewed by USA Today admitted that he has “a glut of inventory” right now…"Clay Baron has everything in his pawn shop from gold rings and pearl necklaces to vintage cowboy boots, silver belt buckles, stereos and ticking clocks. The only thing he’s short on is space. “Right now we have a glut of inventory,” Baron said, “which tells me that our clientele doesn’t necessarily have money.”

Accumulating pawn shop inventory means fewer buyers than sellers – a sign that for the lowest-income Americans, times remain tough. That same article pointed out that inventory levels have also grown rapidly at some of the largest pawn shop chains in the entire nation…"Two of the largest, publicly traded pawnshop corporations in the U.S. – which between them own roughly 1,700 pawnshops nationwide – are also reporting growing inventory and increased demand for short-term loans.

FirstCash Holdings Inc. operates nearly 1,200 pawnshops under the FirstCash and Cash America brands in 29 states and the District of Columbia. The company reported “record pawn receivables” in its most recent year-end earnings report and a 10% increase in inventory at its U.S. stores.

EZCORP Inc. also owns 530 pawnshops in the U.S. and reported an 8% increase in inventory at U.S. stores in the company’s latest earnings report. The “challenging macro-economic backdrop” continued to fuel demand for short-term cash loans, the company said.

If anyone comes to you and tries to convince you that the economy is doing well, just show them these numbers. That will be the end of any debate.

One of the reasons why so many Americans need fast cash is because debt loads have risen to unprecedented levels. Here is just one example…"For Denise and Paul Nierzwicki, credit cards are the only way to make ends meet. The couple, ages 69 and 72, respectively, have about $20,000 in debt spread across multiple cards, all with interest rates above 20%.

The trouble started during the pandemic, when Denise lost her job and a business deal for a bar that they owned in their hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, went bad. They applied for Social Security, which helped, and Denise now works 50 hours a week at a restaurant. Still, they’re barely scraping together the minimum payments for their credit card debt.

Can you imagine how much stress they must be feeling on a daily basis? Sadly, there are millions of others that are in similar positions. The combination of high debt levels and high interest rates has created a “perfect storm” of suffering for U.S. consumers, and so it should be no surprise that delinquency rates have been surging…"The signs are obvious. Last week we noted that banks’ charge-offs are accelerating, and are now above pre-pandemic levels
…and leading this increase are credit card loans – with delinquencies that haven’t been this high since Q3 2011."

On top of that, while credit cards and nonfarm, nonresidential commercial real estate loans drove the quarterly increase in the noncurrent rate, residential mortgages drove the quarterly increase in the share of loans 30-89 days past due. When large numbers of people start getting behind on their mortgages, it is only a matter of time before foreclosures start to spike. And that is precisely what we are witnessing…"Home foreclosures rose again in February as Americans continue to grapple with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. That is according to a new report published by real estate data provider ATTOM, which found that there were 32,938 properties in February with foreclosure filings, which includes default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions."

Sadly, things are only going to get worse during the months ahead, because the labor market is starting to get very tight. One 26-year-old woman that has multiple degrees hasn’t been able to find a job even though she has already applied for approximately 1,000 different positions… "Cheyenne Barton, 26, of Kissimmee, Florida, graduated in December with one degree in biomedical sciences and another in computing technology and software development – the kind of practical background employers have coveted. She initially targeted software development jobs but is now looking for “really any job” where she can use her degrees. Barton has applied for about 1,000 positions but hasn’t yet notched an interview. Companies “say they want recent grads who are teachable and can learn quicker,” she says. “But then you apply for the job and it’s like, ‘Oh, we already have over 100 applications with people who are more qualified.’”

Wait a second. Joe Biden told us that good jobs are easy to find these days. So why can’t Cheyenne Barton even get an interview? Something is not adding up.

Of course the truth is that we have seen a major shift in the labor market in recent months. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of layoffs in February was the highest that they have ever recorded for that particular month…"The pace of job cuts by U.S. employers accelerated in February, a sign the labor market is starting to deteriorate in the face of ongoing inflation and high interest rates. That is according to a new report published Thursday by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which found that companies planned 84,638 job cuts in February, a 3% increase from the previous month and a 9% jump from the same time last year." It marked the highest layoff total for the month of February in data going back to 2009.

The outlook for the rest of the year is absolutely dismal. So even more Americans will fall into poverty. And even more Americans will fall into hunger. And even more Americans will end up homeless.

Over the weekend, a story about a homeless man in Wasco, California that was apparently eating “a severed human leg” has been going viral…"Video footage shot in Wasco, California appears to show a crazed maniac waving around a severed human leg and taking bites out of it before police apprehended him Friday. Reports have suggested that the man ‘stole’ the leg from the scene of a train accident, where a person was earlier hit and killed. The footage shows the man, identified as 27-year-old Resendo Tellez, holding and examining the limb, with witnesses saying he was eating parts of it, before attempting to walk away waving it around as multiple police cars close in on him."

That is pretty shocking. But it is also a preview of where this country is heading. The economic suffering of the past couple of years has been very painful, but the truth is that it isn’t even worth comparing to what is in front of us."

The Daily "Near You?"

Lake Village, Indiana, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Just Look At Us..."

"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality"
- Michael Ellner
"Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"; but there isn't one. It is like betting on the future of the human race - I might wish to lay a bet that the human race would destroy itself by the year 3000, but there is nowhere to place the bet. On the contrary, I am involved in the world and must try to see that it does not blow itself to pieces. I once had a terrible argument with Margaret Mead. She was holding forth one evening on the absolute horror of the atomic bomb, and how everybody should spring into action and abolish it, but she was getting so furious about it that I said to her: "You scare me because I think you are the kind of person who will push the button in order to get rid of the other people who were going to push it first." So she told me that I had no love for my future generations, that I had no responsibility for my children, and that I was a phony swami who believed in retreating from facts. But I maintained my position.

As Robert Oppenheimer said a short while before he died, "It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so." You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. Maybe that is the way it has got to be. Maybe I should not say anything at all about the folly of trying to put things to right but simply, on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise."
- Alan Watts

"This Was No Ordinary Jihad Attack"

"This Was No Ordinary Jihad Attack"
by Leo Hohman

"I’ve been slow to write anything about the horrific terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue last Friday that claimed the lives of 143 Russians on the outskirts of Moscow. I’m not one who is given to knee-jerk reactions, especially when the stakes are as high as they are now. Most Americans are not aware of it yet, but what happened in Russia on Friday, March 22, places all of us in grave danger, especially those of us who reside in the U.K. and U.S., but also in France, Germany or Poland. Not to mention Ukraine, which is already feeling the brunt of Russian anger over what happened.

I don’t need to regurgitate the details but, basically, four Muslims, in a highly coordinated military style assault, shot their way into the building, then shot everyone they came in contact with. It was indescriminate killing. Then they burned the building down. The U.S. almost immediately came out and blamed ISIS-K in Afghanistan for the attack and ISIS-K dutifully took responsibility. So we have little doubt that the shooters were somehow connected to ISIS-K at least on a surface level.

But the message coming out of the Russian media is very different. There’s been no emphasis on ISIS being the main facilitator of the attack. They believe Ukraine was at least partially responsible and Putin hinted in his address to the nation on March 23 that there could be others who worked behind the scenes to “organize” and “prepare” the attack. He talked about Ukraine preparing “a window” through which the shooters tried to escape and the shooters were apprehended heading in the direction of Ukraine. So something doesn’t add up with this whole ISIS narrative.

In a normal jihad attack, the perpetrators don’t try to escape. They keep killing until confronted and killed by authorities. They want to be killed because that’s the only way to receive their promised reward from Allah on the other side of this life. They get their 72 black-eyed, full-breasted virgins and get to have fun for the rest of eternity (or so they believe). But these killers did not kill for a heavenly reward. They killed for an earthly reward. Money.

In his initial interrogation, captured on video, one of the shooters told the Russians that he was promised in a deal made over the Telegram messaging app to be paid $5,400 for the job of shooting up a bunch of Russians. The initial conversation was with an assistant to an Islamic cleric. He flew to Turkey where he received further instructions and training. Who paid for that flight? Who paid for the weapons?

As has been widely reported, the U.S. State Department also warned its embassy staff in Moscow on March 7 that ISIS was planning to carry out a terrorist attack in the Moscow area and they should avoid concerts and other large gatherings. That was very specific information and no other information was reportedly sent to the Russian government, according to former CIA analyst Larry Johnson speaking in an interview with Judge Andrew Napalitano.

But it gets even weirder. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland announced her resignation from the State Department just over a month ago. In a February 22 speech, marking the second anniversary of Russia sending troops into Ukraine, Nuland stated: “With this money, Ukraine will be able to fight back in the East and accelerate the asymmetric warfare that has been most effective on the battlefield. And as I said in Kyiv three weeks ago, this supplemental funding will ensure Putin faces some nasty surprises on the battlefield this year.”

Was March 22 one of those “nasty surprises”? Was it part of Ukraine’s assymetrical warfare against Russia? Maybe this was just your typical ISIS jihad attack. We may never know for sure. But U.S. government statements leading up to the attack seem awfully strange. It seems that whoever hatched and planned this attack did it with the intention of escalating and widening the war between NATO-proxy Ukraine and Russia. And the timing is suspect, coming just as Russia is destroying what’s left of the Ukrainian army on the battlefield.

If we know nothing else about NATO it’s this: NATO has never given a single sign or indication that it would like the war in Ukraine to come to a peaceful end. Its leaders have given many statements that indicate they would like to see the war continue. The statements of Emmanuel Macron, president of France, have been the most provocative, as he has twice stated his intentions to send French troops into Ukraine to fight Russians. NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg has also given no ground on the issue of Ukraine joining NATO, which NATO knows is a huge issue that Putin will never accept. Stoltenberg said it’s a “matter of when not if” Ukraine is admitted into NATO - these are fighting words in the ears of any patriotic Russian.

So don’t think that ISIS is the sole perpetrator. It’s possible, but unlikely. And what matters most is that Putin and the Russians don’t believe ISIS acted alone in the slaughter of 143 Russians. They believe Ukraine and possibly other state actors were involved and have already started unleashing retribution, crossing over Polish airspace over the weekend on their way to a missile bombardment of Ukraine the likes of which had not been seen to date. An angry Russia is a dangerous Russia and NATO seems intent on making sure that Russia gets angrier and angrier. This won’t end well for the West if it continues down the path of poking the bear.

And let’s not forget who facilitated the rise of ISIS in the first place. It was the United States of America and its allies under the administration of Barack Obama. ISIS was never fully destroyed, as Donald Trump boasted. ISIS is too valuable to the West as a useful idiot, a patsy, to ever be fully destroyed. Because you never know when you might need to pull the trigger on another “nasty surprise” for some foreign leader."