Tuesday, May 7, 2024

"An Enormous Chunk Of The U.S. Population Is Either Homeless, Living In Poverty Or Considered To Be Among The Working Poor"

"An Enormous Chunk Of The U.S. Population Is Either Homeless, 
Living In Poverty Or Considered To Be Among The Working Poor"
by Michael Snyder

"As the U.S. economy slows down, those at the bottom of the economic food chain are being hit the hardest. Homelessness is surging, the number of Americans living in poverty is rising, and more Americans are considered to be among “the working poor” than ever before. Unfortunately, we are witnessing a historic economic shift right now, and economic conditions are only going to get even more harsh during the months ahead. Needless to say, that is really bad news for all of us. According to a report from Harvard University, approximately 650,000 Americans were homeless at some point last year. That represented an increase of nearly 50 percent from 2015…

A January 25 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies estimated that over 650,000 Americans experienced homelessness in 2023 - up almost 50% from 2015. Costs of renting and home ownership have skyrocketed while wages largely stagnate. The Harvard report found that half of U.S. households are “cost-burdened” (meaning that 30-50% of monthly income goes to housing), and 12 million people are “severely cost-burdened.” These Americans stand one accident, health setback, or employment disruption away from eviction.

During the past several years, scores of tent cities have sprouted like mushrooms in and around U.S. cities from coast to coast. One 32-year-old woman named Brandy that is living in a tent city near Winterhaven, Florida says that she has been living there for five years and literally has nowhere else to go

Deep in the woods outside of Winterhaven, Florida, are a cluster of tents and tarps. There are 46 people that live in this homeless encampment, including Brandy C., who has been there for five years. “I just made a mistake and I’ve been stuck here since. I’m trying to fix it and I can’t,” Brandy told Scripps News Tampa. The 32-year-old said the homeless camp is not the safest environment, but it is somewhere she can lay her head at night. However, it could soon be taken away. “They tell us, ‘y’all know y’all fixing to have to leave,'” Brandy said. “We’re like, ‘so where do we go?’” These are the forgotten people that our politicians don’t like to talk about. And their ranks are growing with each passing day.

In Denver, officials have spent 274 million dollars to fight their homelessness crisis, but the area has still “added more homeless individuals than any other metro region in the country since 2018″…Metro Denver’s homeless crisis has worsened and become among the most acute in the nation despite the city of Denver contracting for at least $274 million from 2021 through 2024 to keep people off the streets. The Denver metro region has added more homeless individuals than any other metro region in the country since 2018, according to key metrics collected by the federal government. Like we are seeing in so many other cities, mass migration has been playing a major role in Denver’s homelessness crisis.

We can’t even come close to taking care of the hundreds of thousands of Americans that are already homeless, and more deeply impoverished people are constantly being allowed to pour over our borders. Meanwhile, the number of Americans that are living in poverty and the number of Americans that are considered to be among “the working poor” both continue to increase.

As I discussed last week, more than 11 percent of Americans are officially impoverished, and another 29 percent are “Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed”…"Over time, higher costs and sluggish wage growth have left more Americans financially vulnerable, with many known as “ALICEs.” Nearly 40 million families, or 29% of the population, fall in the category of ALICE - Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed - according to United Way’s United for ALICE program, which first coined the term to refer to households earning above the poverty line but less than what’s needed to get by. That figure doesn’t include the 37.9 million Americans who live in poverty, comprising 11.5% of the total population, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Do you understand what this means? More than 40 percent of the U.S. population is either homeless, living in poverty or among the ranks of the “working poor”. That is staggering. The middle class is being absolutely eviscerated, and a lot more pain is on the way.

Former Merrill Lynch chief economist David Rosenberg accurately predicted the recession that hit us in 2008, and he is now warning that things are about to get really bad in this country. In fact, even though the Biden administration is telling us that the economy added “175,000 jobs” last month, he is convinced that the economy is actually bleeding jobs…"The US economy added 175,000 jobs last month, shy of economists’ forecasts for 238,000. In notes to clients Friday, the former Merrill Lynch chief economist explained why he views the numbers as a cause for concern.

He said the data is inconsistent with numbers coming from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages and Business Employment Dynamics datasets, both of which stated the economy actually lost jobs in the third quarter. Given the disparity, Rosenberg said the data is likely ‘overstated – by historical proportions.’"

I agree with Rosenberg. Large companies all over America have been conducting mass layoffs, and the numbers that we are getting from sources that are not controlled by the Biden administration clearly indicate that the economy is losing jobs.

But I am also convinced that our economic problems will accelerate significantly as we head toward the end of this year. A “perfect storm” of factors is hurting economic performance all over the world, and I anticipate that global turmoil is only going to become more intense as the months roll along.

So what is the bottom line? The bottom line is that more Americans will soon be homeless, more Americans will soon be living in poverty, and more Americans will soon be among the ranks of the “working poor”. Our standard of living is steadily declining, and if you want someone to blame you can blame those that are currently running the show in Washington."
But there's $95 billion for Israel and Ukraine, and $878 billion for "defense"...
Great is our sin indeed.

"Attitude..."

“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you
as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens
to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.”
- Kahlil Gibran

Monday, May 6, 2024

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

Deuter, "Along the High Ridges"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly.
The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”

"Any Other View..."

"Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told - and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion."
- Michael Crichton, "The Lost World"

The Poet: Maya Angelou, "A Brave And Startling Truth"

"A Brave And Startling Truth"
by Maya Angelou

"We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space,
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns,
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we discover
A brave and startling truth.

And when we come to it,
To the day of peacemaking,
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms.

When we come to it,
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate,
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean.
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass,
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil.

When the rapacious storming of the churches,
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased.
When the pennants are waving gaily,
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze.

When we come to it,
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders,
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce.
When land mines of death have been removed,
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace.
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh,
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse.

When we come to it,
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory,
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets.

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun.
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world.

When we come to it,
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe,
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace.
We, this people on this mote of matter,
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence,
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor,
And the body is quieted into awe.

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet,
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living.
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow,
And the proud back is glad to bend.
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines.

When we come to it,
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body,
Created on this earth, of this earth,
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety,
Without crippling fear.

When we come to it,
We must confess that we are the possible,
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world.
That is when, and only when,
We come to it."

"The True Dream..."

“Maybe we accept the dream has become a nightmare. We tell ourselves that reality is better. We convince ourselves it’s better that we never dream at all. But, the strongest of us, the most determined of us, holds on to the dream or we find ourselves faced with a fresh dream we never considered. We wake to find ourselves, against all odds, feeling hopeful. And, if we’re lucky, we realize in the face of everything, in the face of life the true dream is being able to dream at all.”
- Dr. Meredith Grey, "Grey's Anatomy"

"This Species is Amusing Itself to Death. The Addictive Contaminated Media Reality"

"This Species is Amusing Itself to Death.
The Addictive Contaminated Media Reality"
By Dr. Gary G. Kohls

“And when they found our shadows (grouped ‘round the TV sets), they ran down every lead; they repeated every test; they checked out all the data in their lists. And then the alien anthropologists admitted they were still perplexed, but on eliminating every other reason for our sad demise they logged the only explanation left: This species has amused itself to death.”  - Roger Waters

“Apathy and indifference are nurtured in the modern age as most peoples’ free time is frittered away with worthless trivia like ball games, computer games, movies and soaps, and fiddling with their mobile phones. These distractions might be fun, but after most of them you’ve learnt nothing of any value, and remain ignorant, malleable and suggestible, which is just how the elites want you.” – Clive Maund

“A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed… When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.” – Dresden James

“A lie gets halfway around the world before
the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
– Winston Churchill

"30 years ago (1985) Neil Postman (a professor of communications arts and sciences at New York University – until his death in 2003) wrote the best-selling book “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. (Free download below.) The book exposed, among other things, the subtle but profound dangers to the developing mind from the mesmerizing (and addictive) commercial television industry.

The lessons from that book have essentially been ignored by the amoral and corrupted sociopathic capitalist system that says “damn the torpedoes/full steam ahead” and blindly and greedily promotes unlimited growth no matter what the costs and who or what gets hurt long–term in the resource-extractive, exploitive and permanently polluting processes.

But Postman’s thesis applies even more strongly today to the current internet/computer/ age-inappropriate, pornographic sex and pornographic violence-saturated televangelist/political-contaminated media reality with which the prophetic Postman was properly alarmed.

SOMA, the Drug That Predicted Prozac by 50 Years: In the classic “Brave New World” (1932) Aldous Huxley wrote about the new form of totalitarianism that has now come to pass in the developed world, thanks to the privatized profit-driven, drug, medical and psychiatric corporations whose practitioners were once (naively or altruistically?) mainly concerned with relieving human suffering and trying to holistically and permanently cure their distressed patients’ ailments (rather than lucratively “managing” said “clients” as permanently paying consumers of unaffordable prescription drugs). Nearly 30 years after he wrote the book, Huxley said,

“And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.” Neil Postman’s very last sentence of his book concerned the prescription drug-infested victims of the new form of totalitarianism that Huxley had described in “Brave New World”.

Of course, Huxley’s book was all about his imaginary psychotropic drug SOMA that Prozac’s makers and promoters in the late 1980s to falsely claim to make its swallowers “feel better than well”. One of the characters in Brave New World said: “And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always Soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always Soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears; that’s what Soma is.”

Postman ended his book by writing: “What afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.” A couple of years after the publication of Postman’s book, Roger Waters (of “Pink Floyd’s The Wall” fame) released a “concept” album that was inspired by the book. He titled the album “Amused to Death”. The lyrics of the title track are as follows:
“Amused To Death”
by Roger Waters

"Doctor, Doctor what’s wrong with me?
This supermarket life is getting long.
What is the heart life of a color TV?
What is the shelf life of a teenage
queen?
Ooh western woman,
Ooh western girl,
News hound sniffs the air
When Jessica Hahn goes down
He latches on to that symbol of
detachment
Attracted by the peeling away of
feeling
The celebrity of the abused shell
of the belle
Ooh western woman
Ooh western girl
And the children of Melrose strut
their stuff
Is absolute zero cold enough?
And out in the valley warm and clean
The little ones sit by their TV screens
No thoughts to think
No tears to cry
All sucked dry down to the very
last breath.

Bartender what is wrong with me,
Why I am so out of breath?
The captain said excuse me ma’am,
This species has amused itself to death
We watched the tragedy unfold,
We did as we were told.
We bought and sold,
It was the greatest show on earth.
But then it was over,
We oohed and aahed,
We drove our racing cars,
We ate our last few jars of caviar,
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out
Spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah.

And when they found our shadows,
Grouped ‘round the TV sets,
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test,
They checked out all the data in
their lists.
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed.
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise,
They logged the only explanation left.
This species has amused itself to death.
No tears to cry,
No feelings left,
This species has amused itself to
death…"
Freely download “Amusing Ourselves to Death:
Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, by Neil Postman, here:

Jeremiah Babe, "Small Businesses Can't Pay Their Rent; Renters Will Never Be Able To But A Home"

Jeremiah Babe, 5/6/24
"Small Businesses Can't Pay Their Rent; 
Renters Will Never Be Able To But A Home"
Comments here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Fife Lake, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

'A Wise Man Once Said..."

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

"Code Red Emergency Alert! Russian Nukes Near Ukraine; Israel Invasion Begins"

Canadian Prepper, 5/6/24
"Code Red Emergency Alert! 
Russian Nukes Near Ukraine; Israel Invasion Begins"
Comments here:
o
GTA5 Gameplay, 5/6/24
"Larry Johnson Warning: Nuclear Crisis - 
Russia's Fury Unleashed by NATO & France's Provocation"
"In this critical analysis, Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and recognized expert in global security, examines the perilous escalation of military activities between NATO and Russia over the Ukraine crisis. This video delves into recent developments, highlighting France's deployment of troops to Ukraine and Russia's alarming response with nuclear exercise announcements.

Johnson discusses the strategic implications of these moves and how they reflect on the broader NATO-Russia relations. He provides a thorough breakdown of the potential risks involved, especially considering Russia's declaration not to step back in the face of U.S. missile deployments targeting their territory. This situation marks a dangerous pivot towards heightened military readiness on both sides, with the potential to spiral into a direct and uncontrollable conflict. 

With precision and clarity, Johnson analyzes how each action by NATO and the U.S. could be perceived as provocations by Russia, leading to a series of retaliatory measures that could very well push the world to the brink of a nuclear conflict. His insights offer a sobering look at the delicate balance of international power and the catastrophic consequences of miscalculations. 

This video is a must-watch for those seeking to understand the intricate dynamics of global military strategy and the dire consequences of escalating aggression in Eastern Europe. Tune in as Larry Johnson guides us through this high-stakes geopolitical chess game, where the stakes could not be higher."
Comments here:

"Wars And Rumors Of Wars"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 5/6/24
"Ray McGovern: Israel’s Extremist War Agenda"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 5/6/24
"Russia's Patience Has Limits, 
Ukraine Faces Total Collapse & Never Become NATO"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 5/6/24
"Warning! 'Ukraine Will Colllapse in 2 Weeks!' 
Putin Readies Massive Offensive"
"Vladimir Putin has issued his toughest statement yet against NATO aggression. At the same time, European leaders are pushing to send troops into direct confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. Military experts agree that Russia is days away from launching a massive Spring offensive to end the war."
Comments here: 

"How It Really Is"

Dan, I Allegedly, "This is an Economic Clown Show"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 5/6/24
"This is an Economic Clown Show"
"We’re supposed to believe that our leaders have our best interest at heart. Now we’re finding out that the government doesn’t even know simple, economic terms, and how money works. Plus, the youth of today is being derailed by giving them less challenges in life."
Comments here:

Bill Bonner, "Black and White"

"Black and White"
Is that the way God sees it? Does He favor those
 who are good at killing? Or those who are not?
by Bill Bonner

"And did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?"
- Pink Floyd (1975)

Dublin, Ireland - "Whoa! Here we have what appears to be a landmark reversal. For many years, Americans have been accustomed to thinking of Israelis as the ‘good guys.’ The Saudis, meanwhile, were the ‘bad guys.’ In our simple-minded, un-nuanced way, that was all we needed to know. But now, even New York Times’ columnist Tom Friedman says they might have changed places: “To put it bluntly, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has put his country’s worst religious extremists in jail, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has put his country’s worst religious extremists in his cabinet.”

We do not claim to know God’s Plan. And we’re suspicious of those who do. Their world is too tight, too neat…with only two colors - black and white - very unlike the real world. In the real world, colors fade... run... and turn gray. And God keeps His plans to Himself.

Encouraging support for the latest $93 billion ‘foreign aid’ bill, Mike Johnson, House Speaker, identified Hamas as a “terrorist organization.” His heroes were fighting ‘terrorism;’ end of story. Johnson neither increases our respect for Congress, nor diminishes it. But an honest family man often doubts that he is doing the right thing for his own children; does Johnson really think he knows the right thing for the children of Israel or Gaza?

Hamas is the elected government of Gaza, a small area effectively, but not entirely, under Israeli military control. Hamas has little conventional military capability - no tanks, no bombers, no serious artillery or navy, no be-medaled generals, no nuclear submarines or ‘Iron Dome’ to protect it from aerial attack. Vastly outgunned, its campaigns tend to be of a ‘terrorist’ nature, along with Al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other ‘terrorist’ groups.

Even at terrorism, Hamas is not especially good. Up until September of last year (if we read the data correctly) it was responsible for 1,455 deaths. Often, Hamas attacked Israeli military installations. A campaign against a military target should not be counted as a genuine act of ‘terrorism,’ anyway; it is an act of war. Often as not, there were no casualties on the Israeli side.

By contrast, Larry Johnson, an ex-CIA analyst, counts the number of Palestinian deaths, at the hands of the Israelis, at 8,660, almost six times as many. If America wanted to be on the winning side, surely Israel was the way to go. But is that the way God sees it? Does He favor those who are good at killing? Or those who are not? Larry Johnson: “A fair analyst would conclude that the Palestinians are more victimized than the Israelis based on the lop-sided number of killed and wounded on the Palestinian side.”

That was the score up until September of 2023. Since then, the balance of killing has tipped even further in favor of the Israelis. In the attack launched by Hamas in October, some 1,143 people were killed. It appears that many of those who died, however, were actually killed by “friendly fire” from the Israelis themselves... we don’t know how many.

Israel counterattacked. About 35,000 Palestinians - most of them women and children - have died so far (many of them still uncounted under the rubble.) This brings the total number of souls snuffed by Hamas terrorism to around 2,598, while those killed by Israel‘s military tote to more than 43,000. Based on the body-bag count alone, the Israeli army is 16 times more of a threat to human life than “terrorists.”

And how about the rest of the world? Statista reports that in an average year of the 21st century about 20,000 people died from ‘terrorism.’ Most of these incidents, as you would expect, occurred in the Middle East or Africa. Meanwhile, Brown University’s “Cost of War” project puts the number of people directly killed by America’s ‘War on Terror’ at 929,000, about a third of them civilians. In other words, for every victim of terrorists, the US and its allies killed two people.

An even broader view comes to us from Professor R.J. Rummel, who estimated and summed the number of innocent people killed, not by terrorists, but by legitimate governments. In the 20th century, there were intentional famines, for example, both in the Soviet Union (Holodomor) and in China (Cultural Revolution). There were also purges, genocide, ethnic cleansing, concentration camps... killing fields, and mass murderers whose crimes take our breath away - Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao... and many others. Rummel puts the total number of dead from communist regimes alone at 148 million.

James A. Lucas, meanwhile, doesn’t let Americans off the hook. He puts the number of dead in America’s unnecessary wars since WWII - Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan et al - at 20 million. ‘We are killing the bad guys,’ Mr. Mike Johnson might reply, ‘and thank God, we’re killing a lot of them.’ And who knows; maybe God agrees with him. Or, maybe He doesn’t."

Jim Kunstler, "Prisoners of Themselves"

"Prisoners of Themselves"
by Jim Kunstler

“Ok, let’s be clear. If the intelligence community 
led by the CIA is not the “deep state,” what is?” 
- Jeffrey Tucker

"You realize, don’t you, that the gross misconduct of government officials from RussiaGate on down to the courtroom of Judge Juan Merchan has amounted to one continuous operation against the American people? If it were ever honestly adjudicated, many hundreds of them might go to prison, or worse. Each successive seditious and treasonous action they attempt against their arch-nemesis, Mr. Trump, only compounds their criminal liability - the Steele Dossier, CIA agent Eric Ciaramella’s 2019 impeachment prank, the Covid-19 caper, the George Floyd-BLM hustle, the 2020 election hijinks, the J-6 op and the House J-6 Committee conjured up to spin it, the present battery of farcical court cases - and yet the Golden Golem of Greatness not only remains defiantly at large, but seems to amass ever more electoral mojo.

The epic failure of these mighty efforts, and the humiliation entailed, has lately driven this vast bureaucratic cabal - collectively styled as “the blob” - to a stage of abject desperation that looks a lot like insanity. They fear for their lives, their fortunes, their chattels, and their families, and they seem ready to wreck the republic to save themselves. They have so far pretty much wrecked American justice with their lawfare tactics - a degenerate campaign to use the vested authority of prosecutors and judges to twist and cheat the law at the cost of the law’s legitimacy. Merrick Garland, Norm Eisen, Andrew Weismann, Mary McCord, Lisa Monaco, Marc Elias, Christopher Wray, Letitia James, Fani Willis, Alvin Bragg have made law the enemy of the people.

All this becomes more obvious each day, for instance events of the past week in Judge Aileen Cannon’s federal courtroom in Florida where the Mar-a-Lago documents case proceeds. Turns out that Special Counsel Jack Smith has deliberately messed with the evidence, which is patently felonious. Also, turns out that sometime between the “Joe Biden” inauguration and the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in August, 2022, boxes of presidential documents stored by the US General Services Administration were “delivered” to Mr. Trump’s mansion without any proper accounting for what might have been in them. A set-up you suppose? Why not? After everything else the FBI and the DOJ have attempted since 2015?

Christopher Wray in particular might have wanted some surefire probable cause to get his agents into Mar-a-Lago where, rumor has it, Mr. Trump kept his own dossier of evidence against the FBI and DOJ officials who concocted the “Crossfire Hurricane” chapter of RussiaGate. Even if you assume that Mr. Trump had multiple copies of the thing, FBI Director Wray - in position since 2017 throughout most of RussiaGate - surely wanted to see what Mr. Trump was holding if it would become necessary for current and former FBI/DOJ officials to defend themselves in court against very serious charges.

You see the desperation, don’t you? And how stupendously amateurish these machinations have been? Planting evidence and then fiddling around with it? I’m waiting for the moment when Judge Cannon summons Jack Smith and announces to his face that she is tossing the case for prosecutorial misconduct. Will she add a criminal referral to that? How will that affect the other case (attempting to overturn the 2020 election) brought against Mr. Trump in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s DC federal district court? Who will prosecute it if Jack Smith can no longer function as Special Counsel? And since the case was contrived in his name - even if Eisen, McCord, Weissmann, and others are really the authors - does that case blow up, too?

Letitia James’s real estate case under Judge Arthur Engoron was so idiotic it can’t possibly survive an ultimate appeal, and the Alvin Bragg confection under Judge Merchan is playing out like something that usually only happens in places like Honduras or Liberia. Yet the American Left, the “progressive” Democratic Party, is staking everything on it. It’s all they have left Lawfare-wise, at least for now. Which brings us to the question: Why do the non-governmental elites of this land, the managerial and thinking classes, the college presidents, the cable news producers, the corporate execs, the movie directors, the whole arts establishment...why do they feel compelled, for nearly a decade now, to hitch their identity and their self-respect to this fantastic train of Kafka-esque corruption, tyranny, and abuse? How did they get owned by the blob?

We may never find out, and they may never know either, even after they snap out of the mass formation they’ve been in thrall to. But they have made themselves ridiculous - figures like Sam Harris, Steven Colbert, and Rob Reiner - yelling about “saving our democracy” while the blob they worship systematically disassembles the US Constitution, and makes American law a global laughingstock.

Most of my old ex-friends are riding the same ideological bus. You have to wonder: how did the likes of “Joe Biden,” Merrick Garland, Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, Christopher Wray, Fani Willis, Anthony Fauci, Klaus Schwab, and Bill Gates become their heroes? Did the Covid vaccines destroy their minds? Are they really avid for central bank digital money and surveillance of their every move? Do they want to be told how to live by the WHO? Things are going south fast now in our country. If these people ever cherished the idea of being free to think their own thoughts and live their own lives, it’s getting late in the game. They will end up prisoners of themselves."
o

"Economic Market Snapshot 5/6/24"

"Economic Market Snapshot 5/6/24"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
o
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
Comprehensive, essential truth.
Financial Stress Index

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

Sunday, May 5, 2024

"80 Years Old And Homeless Veteran In Los Angeles Needs Help"

Full screen recommended.
Invisible People, 5/5/24
"80 Years Old And Homeless Veteran 
In Los Angeles Needs Help"

"Wendell is an 80-year-old retired veteran who finds himself facing the harsh realities of homelessness in Los Angeles. After a life marked by service and sacrifice, including the heartbreaking loss of one son in the Afghanistan war and another in a tragic car accident, Wendell's challenges escalated when his beloved wife was diagnosed with cancer. Despite spending every penny on her treatment, she passed away, leaving Wendell without his life partner and financially devastated. Today, Wendell lives in a broken-down RV, a stark reminder of the cascading tragedies that led him to this point.

The crisis of elderly homelessness is escalating, with countless older adults like Wendell finding themselves without a safe place to call home. The vulnerability of this population is profound, as they face unique health and mobility challenges, exacerbated by the lack of stable housing. In urban areas like Los Angeles, where the cost of living is high and social services are stretched thin, the plight of elderly homeless individuals is particularly acute.

A dedicated street medicine team brought Wendell's situation to our attention, emphasizing his reluctance to ask for financial help. Wendell's humble wish is for a functioning RV, allowing him the dignity of mobility and the ability to relocate to a place he can once again call home. Understanding the improbability of such a donation, we convinced Wendell to agree to a GoFundMe campaign. Rest assured, this campaign is transparent—every cent raised goes directly to Wendell’s bank account to fund his new RV. We have made sure that there are people involved to help Wendell drive to the location that he wants to go and that he will be taken care of. "
Comments here:

Help Wendell get an RV to go back home - https://gofund.me/e55367c9

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "I Giorni"

Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, "I Giorni"

"A Look to the Heavens..."

“To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. M6 can best be seen in a dark sky with binoculars towards the constellation of Scorpius, coving about as much of the sky as the full moon.
Like other open clusters, M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars, although the brightest star is nearly orange. M6 is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe.”