Bill Bonner, "Dreamworld"

"Dreamworld"

Both Biden and Trump claimed to have the ‘greatest economy ever.’ 

But it wasn’t true for either one. Real US growth rates, 

real final sales, real industrial productivity and output - are all down.

by Bill Bonner

"The constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want.”

- Hannah Arendt

Poitou, France - "Vladimir Putin argues that ‘the West’ has lost its bearings. At the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics on Friday evening it looked as though he were right.

On a barge was what used to be called a ‘freakshow.’ The bearded lady! The dwarf acrobat! The whole world gawked and swallowed hard. Oddballs, weirdos... ’originals’ - people who dance to their own drummer —- they will always be amongst us. They have their own crosses to bear... and deserve respect; plus, they make life interesting for the rest of us.

But we look for patterns. And what we thought we saw coming down the Seine in 2024 was not the spirit of the Spartan Olympics, put on by Greek city states three thousand years ago, but the depraved entertainments of the Roman Empire.

Suetonius commenting in his Twelve Caesars on Elagabalus: "Finally, he set aside a room in the palace and there committed his indecencies, always standing nude at the door of the room, as the harlots do, and shaking the curtain which hung from gold rings, while in a soft and melting voice he solicited the passers-by. There were, of course, men who had been specially instructed to play their part..."

And think changing one’s sex is a new thing? On Nero: "He castrated the boy Sporus and actually tried to make a woman of him; and he married him with all the usual ceremonies, including a dowry and a bridal veil, took him to his house attended by a great throng, and treated him as his wife."

One of the more disagreeable features of a late, degenerate empire is the way it depends so much on lies. People get used to them and hardly notice them anymore. Men can act like women. They can look like women. But except perhaps for the mythical Greek character, Tiresias, no man has ever been turned into a real woman. Still, the ‘trans’ fantasy is a minor one. More damaging are the delusions and lies in the political and financial sectors.

Joe Biden, last week, brought lies into focus: “I’m the first president in this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.” At almost that very moment, US warplanes were bombing Yemen... US artillery shells were lobbed into Gaza. And US bombs were dropped on the Ukraine.

Both Biden and Trump claimed to have the ‘greatest economy ever.’ But it wasn’t true for either one. Real US growth rates... real final sales... real industrial productivity and output - all have deteriorated to the lowest levels since the Great Depression. And, now, the whole tower of US capital is erected on a beach of $100 trillion in soft ‘credit dollars,’ ready to be washed away in the next storm.

The Fed itself lives in a dreamworld. It pretends to be working for the American people (it is owned by big banks). Jerome Powell implies that the hacks on the Federal Open Market Committee know what interest rates should be... how much inflation the US should have... what unemployment rate is tolerable... and when the economy is running at Full Capacity. Actually...they know none of those things, and merely bumble along, helping the rich get richer with artificially low interest rates.

In politics... for the last four years we’ve heard, over and over, about how eager the Democrats are to ‘protect American democracy.’ And yet, what democracy are they talking about? Coming up is the first election in forty-eight years with no Bush, Clinton or Biden on the ticket. And where did Kamala come from? She was selected by party insiders, not by ‘the People.’ 

Like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Democrats crown their own kings. Adam Tooze: "So monarchical is the American conception of the presidency that Biden is feted as a ruler who ‘gave up power’ in favor of an anointed successor rather than a vain politician who misjudged his sell-by date and had been belatedly persuaded to spare himself humiliation and give Dems a chance."

We have a Republican party too which has lost all interest in Republican ideals. Instead, it has come around to ‘national conservatism’ as its creed. Separation of powers, limited government, states’ rights and balanced budgets... the traditional Republican virtues... are out the window. Instead, the strongman leader is expected to lead his nation to glory (more likely, to disaster.)

The USA democracy itself -- which is supposedly so successful that we wish to implant it all over the world - is a fraud. The voters, largely ignorant of important policy issues, vote for representatives, also largely ignorant... who then take their places in Congress where they are given 1,000-page proposals... and told by lobbyists and party hacks which way to vote. The president - a front man for his party, not a leader - then signs the bill, which he hasn’t read either... it becomes the law of the land... and the insiders take the money."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com

o

Related:

• "A Grateful Olympic Nod to the Divine"

• "Yes, The Olympic Ceremony Parodied The Last Supper"

Jim Kunstler, "You’ll Never Work in This Town Again!"

"You’ll Never Work in This Town Again!"

By Jim Kunstler

“The kids are hooked on wokeness now. 

They’d be better off with cigarettes.” 

- Ian Miles Cheong on “X”

"Did we just witness the suicide of Wokery? I think you saw what’s called, in the argot of progressive thinking, the “queering” of the Olympics. That was some spectacle. First, Death on a Pale Horse came galloping down the Seine River so that no one would miss the point of the symbolism to follow: the beheaded Marie Antoinette portrayed singing in the window of a flaming palais (revolution anyone?) Then, a tableau vivant of DaVinci’s "The Last Supper" “queered” to-the-max with a tattooed land-whale in the Jesus seat offering a Satan hand-signal among the swaying drag queens, plus one child ostentatiously in the mix (say, whu?)... followed by a blue Dionysius crooning about nudity (“Nu”) on a giant fruit platter, with his ball-sack clearly on display among the cherries and nectarines. It rained...tant pis. The power went out and Paris ceased to be the City of Light. Finis...

Not all of Western Civ was amused by these... antics. Many complained that the show portrayed Christianity in a less than favorable light. Ya think? The next day, the Paris-24 organizing committee offered the world an apology of sorts. Spokesperson Anne Descamps explained that the idea was “to celebrate community tolerance.” Or, shall we say, to test it? Apparently, it flunked the test. Director of the extravaganza, Thomas Jolly, said (translation), “Our intention was never to be impertinent.” Of course, he lies, and of course it is the foundational premise of those in the Satanic fold to lie about everything. (Just as America’s Democratic Party lies about everything.) Within hours, sponsors revolted and pulled their support for the games altogether. Lord knows what the BRICs nations make of all this. Probably something like pity.

Two-hundred-thirty years ago in Paris the Jacobin faction behind the Reign of Terror was put out of business, suddenly, all in one night, really, after turning French daily life upside-down and inside-out for one year, to the huge annoyance of the French public. On July 27 (9 Thermidor), 1794, chief Jacobin activist Maximillian Robespierre made a speech before the Convention (national assembly) denouncing those who were denouncing him (theories of conspiracy!), and the audience commenced to pelt him with fruit, vegetables, and opprobrious invective. Cries rang out for his arrest. Before long: pandemonium in the chamber! The Jacobins fled and took refuge in the city hall (Hôtel de Ville), but it was too late. The whole city had turned on them. Robespierre got shot in the jaw, possibly by himself. The Jacobin gang were declared “outlaws.” The following evening, the Jacobin leaders were all executed by guillotine in the Place de la Concorde.

Thus began the Thermidorian Reaction - called that, because the Jacobins had added an extra mid-summer month, Thermidor, to their cuckoo calendar. Now, one might ask, was July 27, 2024, the start of the revolt against progressive Woke-ism? It’s hard to imagine what kind of public spectacle the Left could come up with to beat the Olympic opener. Maybe human sacrifice, say Hillary Clinton eating a parboiled toddler in front of three thousand shrieking cat-ladies at the Democratic National Convention. Has it come to that?

It’s hard to escape the feeling now that our own reign-of-terror, the Woke-Marxist psychopathocracy, has played out its string. A month of garish events and revelations has left the USA a hot mess: the momentous Supreme Court decisions, the debate horror show, the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump and the many loose ends still hanging from it, the (probably) coerced election withdrawal of “Joe Biden” and the shocking discovery (to many) that he’s only partly still there, and the elite selection process that “nominated” Kamala Harris - these strange doings have rocked the American Zeitgeist. The artificially-induced rapture that attended the apotheosis of Veep is sputtering out as the internet explodes with memes putting her clueless vacuity on laughable display.

We’re informed (in great detail here by Naomi Wolf) that the Veep’s handlers haven’t even bothered with the required Federal Election Commission filings to be a candidate (nor has “Joe Biden” submitted his official withdrawal paperwork). So, you can surmise that the whole thing is another Democratic Party prank, leading to more shenanigans as the August 19 Convention cometh.

Do you think the repulsive Olympic opener was unconnected to what has been going on in our country? And do you doubt that the tide is now going out on all that?"

- https://kunstler.com/

The full name of Kunstler's website is so absolutely true...

Adventures With Danno, "Meijer Store Brand Products, Likes & Dislikes"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 7/29/24

"Meijer Store Brand Products, Likes & Dislikes"

"In today's vlog, I am at Meijer and are going over all the Meijer brand products that I like or dislike. As prices continue to rise all around the world, we are seeking out cheaper options that are good quality as well!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot 7/29/24"

"Economic Market Snapshot 7/29/24"

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Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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"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:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data 

○

- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

○

Comprehensive, essential truth.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

○

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: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

○

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

○

- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...

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And now... The End Game...

o

Jeremiah Babe, "Spending Like There's No Tomorrow - People Are Being Enslaved By Credit Card Companies"

Jeremiah Babe, 7/28/24

"Spending Like There's No Tomorrow - 

People Are Being Enslaved By Credit Card Companies"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Yanni, "To The One Who Knows", "You Only Live Once"

Full screen recommended.

Yanni, "To The One Who Knows",

"You Only Live Once"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Why isn't this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that is distinctly not round?

Clues might include the high 1000-kilometer per second speed of the expelled gas, the light-year long length of the structure, and the magnetism of the star visible above at the nebula's center. One possible answer is that Mz3 is hiding a second, dimmer star that orbits close in to the bright star. A competing hypothesis holds that the central star's own spin and magnetic field are channeling the gas. Since the central star appears to be so similar to our own Sun, astronomers hope that increased understanding of the history of this giant space ant can provide useful insight into the likely future of our own Sun and Earth.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150426.html

Chet Raymo, “The Silence”

“The Silence”

by Chet Raymo

“The hiding places of my power

Seem open; I approach, and then they close;

I see by glimpses now; when age comes on,

May scarcely see at all, and I would give,

While yet we may, as far as words can give,

A substance and a life to what I feel…”

“These few lines from Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” leapt off the page at me. They capture well enough what my life has become. All those years of teaching, of writing in the Boston Globe, were years of sharing public knowledge, knowledge that had been vetted by the scientific community. The work was not about me. The teacher was me, the writer was me, but what I taught and wrote was reliable, consensus knowledge of the world. A student in my classes or a reader of my newspaper columns would have been hard pressed to know my politics or my religion or the nature of the questions that came in the darkest hours of the night. And that is the way it should have been; that was my homage to objectivity.

Those were valuable years, years of building up a sturdy polder in the sea of mystery, a place to stand with a firmness of foot. And now, in retirement, with time on my hands- and on my mind- I find myself more inclined to explore what Wordsworth called “the hiding places of my power.” I approach. They close. I touch with my hand the surface of the pond that Pat wrote about the other day; my hand comes out of the depths to meet me. I see by glimpses. It is, I suppose, a kind of forgetting. With the forgetting comes a certain freshness. My fingertip touches the surface of the world from above and from below, and concentric circles spread outwards, rippling, like a soundless sound, and I struggle, in words, as best I can, to give a substance and a life to what I feel.

This does not mean, I trust, that I am going soft, finding supernaturalist religion or getting all New Age squishy as “age comes on.” I keep my feet planted on solid fact and read my weekly “Science” and “Nature” along with my Wordsworth. No, it is rather a simple freedom to explore the hiding places, attending to private particulars as opposed to public universals, listening for the small voice that whispers from the nooks and crannies of yet unassimilated reality.

There is a passage in “The Prelude” where a young Boy (the poet?), standing in evening air by the glimmering lake, makes a mimic hooting with his hands to his mouth and the owls answer. Twooo-twooo. And the reply. Twooo-twooo. Then, unaccountably, the answers cease. And in the silence the boy becomes more keenly aware than ever of water, rocks, and woods, and mountain torrents, “that uncertain heaven, received into the bosom of the steady lake.” Thoreau has something similar. He rejoiced in owls; their hoot, he said, was a sound well suited to swamps and twilight woods. The interval between the hoots was a deepened silence, suggesting, to Thoreau, “a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized.” It is that that I now attend: the deepened silence between the hoots.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Edward Gibbon: On The Seven Key Indicators Of Civilizational Decline"

"Edward Gibbon: On The Seven Key 

Indicators Of Civilizational Decline"

By Kaisar

"Most modern historians are weak. But there is one who stands out above the rest. I can think of no post-Enlightenment historian who better captured why civilizations wither and die than Edward Gibbon. His 1788 work "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" describes the process of collapse well, using Rome as the example. I highly recommend this read, even if using the abridged versions.

Here is a brief summary: "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" is a monumental work by Edward Gibbon, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. Gibbon’s magnum opus provides a comprehensive historical account of the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire, spanning from the height of its power to its eventual fragmentation and fall. The work is considered a masterpiece of historical literature and a key text in the study of the Roman Empire.

Gibbon begins with the reign of Marcus Aurelius in the second century AD and traces the history of the Roman Empire through its various phases, ultimately concluding with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. You can take his causes of decline from the fall of Rome and apply it to every major national collapse since then. We can summarize these causes into seven key categories:

Internal Decay: Gibbon argues that internal decay played a crucial role in Rome’s decline. This included moral decadence, corruption, and a loss of civic virtue among the ruling class.

Military Challenges: The Roman military, once a formidable force, faced challenges such as overextension, external invasions, and reliance on mercenaries, contributing to its decline.

Economic Issues: Economic factors, including heavy taxation, inflation, and a reliance on slave labor, are highlighted by Gibbon as contributing to the empire’s decline.

Religious Factors: Gibbon explores the role of religion in the decline, emphasizing the rise of Christianity and its impact on the traditional Roman values and institutions. This created a breakdown from the original tradition, and a splintering within the foundational values of the state.

Barbarian Invasions: External pressures from barbarian invasions, particularly by Germanic and Hunnic tribes, are obviously identified as significant contributors to the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

Administrative Inefficiency: Gibbon critiques the Roman administrative system, pointing to bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption, and a lack of responsiveness to emerging challenges.

Division of the Empire: The division of the Roman Empire into East and West is seen as a weakening factor, with the Western Roman Empire eventually succumbing to various pressures while the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) persisted for several more centuries.

Any of those sound familiar? I have written on each one of these regarding the current American system:

Internal Decay: America Is Babylon

Military Challenges: The Condition Of The U.S. Military: Lying Dog-Faced Pony Soldiers

Economic Issues: Recognizing The Foundational Crack

Religious Factors: The Fall Of Christendom And The Great Lie Of The Enlightenment

Barbarian Invasions: The Ominous Purpose Of Illegal Immigration

Administrative Inefficiency: Bureaucracy Will Destroy Us

Division of the Empire: The [Much Needed] Great American Partition

If you didn’t know I was talking about Rome when you read the first list, you’d probably think this article was about the United States. Even the division piece – we don’t have an outright division yet, but the foundation is there, just as it was for Rome.

Remember: this work was written around 1788. When you read the above seven points, you would think it’s a critique of the current American state. But nope, this was Rome circa pre-collapse. It’s a great work, if you can stomach the sheer amount of content included. Those seven key indicators of decline are helpful to recognize; to properly discern the signs of the times. The lessons the book provides are phenomenal for extrapolating to future collapses. And pensively, to our own current condition."

- https://identitydixie.com/

Freely download "The Decline and Fall

 of the Roman Empire" here:

- https://ia800902.us.archive.org

The Daily "Near You?"

Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"A Strange Game..."

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

- "War Games"

"This is the "lesson" scene from the movie "War Games" where we learn that the only way to win in Nuclear War is not to play.

The story behind the quote: The quote comes from the 1983 science fiction thriller, "WarGames." In the film, all of the United States nuclear launch capabilities is given to a computer called “Joshua” or WOPR, which stands for War Operation Plan Response. It is programmed to consistently run military simulations to concoct the best plan of an attack if nuclear retaliation is needed. David Lightman (played by Matthew Broderick) unwittingly hacks into Joshua and causes the computer to think that the Soviet Union has launched missiles at the United States.

The quote comes from the very end of the film. David forces Joshuat to play tic-tac-toe against itself in the attempt to make it understand the concept of mutually assured destruction. As Joshua obtains the final launch code, it runs through all the possible scenarios in an attempt to find a winning plan. After cycling through all of them and not finding one where anyone survives, the machine delivers the quote."

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"It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump." 

- David Ormsby-Gore

"We Do Choose..."

"All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live."

- Joseph Epstein

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"George Harrison knew something most of us didn't and still don't: there is a reality beyond the material world and what we do here and how we treat others affects us eternally. As he sings in "Rising Sun":

"But in the rising sun you can feel your life begin,

Universe at play inside your DNA.

You're a billion years old today.

Oh the rising sun and the place it's coming from

Is inside of you and now your payment's overdue."

Lyrics here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

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"Death twitches my ear. 'Live," he says, 'I am coming.'"

~ Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)

"How It Really Is"

 

Jethro Tull, "Locomotive Breath"

"Here's A Question..."

“Here’s a question every angry man and woman needs to consider: How long are you going to allow people you don’t even like – people who are no longer in your life, maybe even people who aren’t even alive anymore – to control your life? How long?”

- Andy Stanley

“That goes for old wounds, too, you know. I really wish we’d had the chance to talk before this,” he says, cracking the window so the smoke can escape. “There’s a Longfellow quote I have stuck on my bulletin board at the church office – ‘There is no grief like the grief that does not speak’ – and it’s true. I’ve found that keeping pain inside doesn’t give it a chance to heal, but bringing it out into the light, holding it right there in your hands and trusting that you’re strong enough to make it through, not hating the pain, not loving it, just seeing it for what it really is can change how you go on from there. Time alone doesn’t heal emotional wounds, and you don’t want to live the rest of your life bottled up with anger and guilt and bitterness. That’s how people self-destruct.”

- Laura Wiess

"The Curse of Interesting Times"

"The Curse of Interesting Times"

Things are the most interesting they've been

 in 80 years, 250 years, and, well, ever.

by Contemplations on the Tree of Woe

"The Chinese curse their enemies with the phrase “may you live in interesting times.” Or, rather, Americans think that Chinese curse their enemies like that; according to Infogalactic, “despite being widely attributed as a Chinese curse, there is no equivalent expression in Chinese.”

Fortunately, there’s an actual Chinese phrase that’s much more interesting. It’s found in a 1627 short story collection by Feng Menglong called "Stories to Awaken the World," and it states "better to be a dog in a peaceful time, than to be a human in a chaotic times.” And to be a dog in 17th China didn’t mean being a beloved fur baby with your own YouTube channel. It meant being a workbeast that got eaten when times were lean. The Chinese still have an annual dog meat festival.

Whichever adage you prefer, our times are both chaotic and interesting. In fact, they are monumentally interesting - they are so interesting as to beggar coherent description, to put to shame historical comparison, so remarkable that every single one of us would be justified in screaming from the rooftops in shock and awe. And yet we don’t. We keep calm and carry on, sturdily gripped by our bias for normalcy, by our human ability to adapt to even the most bizarre circumstances. It’ll be fine, we tell ourselves. This is fine.

But what if we put aside our normalcy bias for a moment and look at how just how “interesting” our times really are? What do we see then?

Once Every 80 Years…Once every 80 years, a country enters a crisis. That is, at least, the assertion of Strauss-Howe Generational Theory. According to Strauss and Howe, human history is organized into repeating patterns marked by four “turnings”: the High, the Awakening, the Unraveling, and the Crisis. Each turning is approximately 20 years long, and an entire cycle of four turnings is therefore about 80 years long. According to Strauss and Howe, American history looks something like this:

○ American Revolutionary Crisis, 1765 - 1785

○ American Civil War Crisis, 1855 - 1875

○ Great Depression and World War II Crisis, 1930 - 1950

○ You Are Here, 2010 - 2030

If we believe Strauss-Howe Generational Theory, we are in the midst of what they call a Fourth Turning - a moment of Crisis.

Are we in a Fourth Turning? I certainly believe so. As I documented in "Running on Empty," the United States now stands at a financial precipice. US inflation is at its worst in 40 years because the monetary system we established under Truman and rejuvenated under Nixon is now about to collapse. With that crisis have come challenges from a resurgent Russia and burgeoning China that could lead to a Third World War or, at best, a post-American world order. The Thucydides Trap has never been so close to springing. It’s no wonder then that US fears of nuclear war have surged to levels not seen since the Cold War. But unlike the Cold War, no one wants to ‘ask what they can do for their country’ anymore. US Army recruitment is at its worst in 50 years. And why would they want to serve? Our nation is divided into warring camps. US partisan distrust of the opposing party is at its worst in 30 years.

All right. That all sounds bad. But if Strauss-Howe Generational Theory is true, the Fourth Turning will be over in about 5-10 years and we’ll move into the next Turning, the High. And those are awesome! But what if we won’t be heading into another high?"

Full, fascinating, most highly recommended article is here:

- https://treeofwoe.substack.com/

○

Freely download "Stories to Awaken the World", 

by Feng Menglong, here:

- https://oceanofpdf.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Banks Are Stashing Cash for a Crisis?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 7/28/24

"Banks Are Stashing Cash for a Crisis?"

"Banks are HOARDING cash and what they’re not telling you! With major players like JP Morgan, Bank of America, and Citigroup stashing away billions, it’s clear they’re bracing for massive losses - but why? I unpack these staggering figures and reveal the unsettling reality behind the banking industry’s cash hoarding frenzy. The big four banks are saving billions of dollars to protect themselves against credit card losses. These numbers are staggering."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Canadian Prepper, "WTF Now?! Huge Blackout At Olympics; US Approves Israel War Plan"

Canadian Prepper, 7/27/24

"WTF Now?! Huge Blackout At Olympics;

 US Approves Israel War Plan"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Dangerously High Lead Levels, Ground Cinnamon!"

Adventures With Danno, PM 7/27/24

"Dangerously High Lead Levels, Ground Cinnamon!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

Musical Interlude: Herb Ernst, "Awakening Stars"

Herb Ernst, "Awakening Stars"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"These are galaxies of the Hercules Cluster, an archipelago of island universes a mere 500 million light-years away. Also known as Abell 2151, this cluster is loaded with gas and dust rich, star-forming spiral galaxies but has relatively few elliptical galaxies, which lack gas and dust and the associated newborn stars. The colors in this remarkably deep composite image clearly show the star forming galaxies with a blue tint and galaxies with older stellar populations with a yellowish cast.

The sharp picture spans about 3/4 degree across the cluster center, corresponding to over 6 million light-years at the cluster's estimated distance. Diffraction spikes around brighter foreground stars in our own Milky Way galaxy are produced by the imaging telescope's mirror support vanes. In the cosmic vista many galaxies seem to be colliding or merging while others seem distorted - clear evidence that cluster galaxies commonly interact. In fact, the Hercules Cluster itself may be seen as the result of ongoing mergers of smaller galaxy clusters and is thought to be similar to young galaxy clusters in the much more distant, early Universe."

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140625.html

"Most People Are Good..."

"Most people are good and occasionally do something they know is bad. Some people are bad and struggle every day to keep it under control. Others are corrupt to the core and don't give a damn, as long as they don't get caught. But evil is a completely different creature. Evil is bad that believes it's good." 

- Karen Marie Moning

Travelling with Russell, "I Visited The Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces"

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell, 7/27/24

"I Visited The Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces"

"Park Patriot in Moscow, Russia has one of the most famous Churches in all of Russia. The Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces is a spiritual symbol of Russia, glorifying the greatest victory of life over death."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Oh my God...

The Daily "Near You?"

Middleville, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Dan, I Allegedly, "We Have a Cost of Living Crisis"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 7/27/24

"We Have a Cost of Living Crisis"

"You can kid yourself and then say that inflation is slowing and going

 down. Inflation is still here. People are affected by this cost of living crisis."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Free Download: Viktor Frankl, "Man's Search for Meaning"

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual…

There is also purpose in life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden…

What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment…"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way…

Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

- Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning”

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"Man's Search for Meaning"

by Viktor Frankl

"Some details of a particular man's inner greatness may have come to one's mind, like the story of a young woman whose death I witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems like a poem.

This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge. 'I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,' she told me. 'In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously.' Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, 'This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.' Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. 'I often talk to this tree,' she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. 'Yes.' What did it say to her? She answered, 'It said to me, "I am here - I am here - I am life, eternal life."

Freely download "Man's Search for Meaning", by Viktor Frankl, here:

-https://ia801809.us.archive.org/

"One Man Found The Infamous “Carpet Trails” In Florida That Lead To Enormous Homeless Encampments Way Back In The Woods"

"One Man Found The Infamous “Carpet Trails” In Florida

 That Lead To Enormous Homeless Encampments Way Back In The Woods"

by Michael Snyder

"If you are still able to afford a decent home, you should consider yourself to be incredibly blessed, because vast numbers of Americans do not have a permanent place to live at this point. Homelessness in the United States is at the highest level ever recorded, and it has been growing at the fastest pace ever recorded. The homeless encampments that have been popping up all over our major cities have been making lots of headlines in recent years, but many of the homeless live and die in very isolated places far from public view. What I am about to share with you should deeply sadden all of us.

Way back in the woods in southwest Florida, trails that have been made out of discarded carpets lead to absolutely enormous homeless encampments where hordes of homeless people have made homes for themselves. One man was able to find these infamous “carpet trails”, and he posted footage of them on his YouTube channel…

Full screen recommended.

Coastal areas of southern Florida are very popular among the homeless because the nights never get too cold even during the winter. But there are plenty of other hazards, and just trying to stay alive can be a real struggle.

Of course the west coast is dealing with an even greater crisis. In Portland, homeless encampments have taken over vast stretches of the city and nobody seems to have any solutions. KATU recently visited one of the most notorious homeless encampments, and they discovered that it has gotten even bigger since the last time they visited it…

Full screen recommended.

This is what a collapsing society looks like. Poverty and hunger are spreading like wildfire, and the deplorable conditions in many of our core urban areas are being openly mocked all over the globe. In fact, in China they are actually “producing documentaries on the collapse of American cities”…"The Chinese are now producing documentaries on the collapse of American cities. What this showcases is the grim aftermath of decades of deindustrialization, disastrous progressive policies, and an opioid crisis - ironically fueled by China.

“Chinese are making documentaries about ultra-extreme poverty and decaying cities since they don’t exist in China anymore,” X user S.L. Kanthan wrote in a recent post, accompanied by a short clip from the documentary highlighting the implosion of Oakland, California. Since the video was narrated in Chinese, X user TranslateMom translated some of the captions, which said, “Everywhere is garbage. People don’t live in places. There are wanderers everywhere.”

One of the primary reasons why so many people are forced to live in the streets is because housing has become ridiculously unaffordable. If you can believe it, there are now 237 U.S. cities where “buyers will find a price tag of $1 million or more on the typical starter home”…

"A million-dollar price tag no longer means lavish and luxurious living. In more than 200 U.S. cities, buyers will find a price tag of $1 million or more on the typical starter home, a new Zillow® analysis finds. The typical “starter home” - defined for this analysis as being among those in the lowest third of home values in a given region - is worth at least $1 million in 237 cities, the highest number of cities ever. Five years ago, there were only 84 such cities.

That is nuts! Who can afford to pay a million bucks for a “starter home”? This is what rampant inflation has done to us. It has absolutely eviscerated our standard of living, and ordinary Americans such as you and I are feeling a tremendous amount of pain right now.

According to Zillow, California, New York and New Jersey are the states that have the most cities where a typical “starter home” costs at least a million dollars…"Exactly half of all states have at least one city with a typical starter home worth $1 million or more. There are 117 such cities in California, well ahead of New York (31) and New Jersey (21), which have the second- and third-highest numbers. Florida and Massachusetts round out the top five with 11 each.

Among metropolitan areas, the New York City metro, which includes parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, has the most cities with million-dollar starter homes at 48. The San Francisco metro has the next highest count at 44, followed by Los Angeles (35), San Jose (15), and Miami and Seattle, each with eight. Irvine, with a population of more than 300,000, is the biggest city with $1 million starter homes."

Of course California is also being overwhelmed by homeless encampments right now too. Progressive policies have resulted in a chronic shortage of affordable housing, and that isn’t going to change any time soon. Sadly, conditions are only going to get worse all over the nation because our economic momentum is rapidly taking us in the wrong direction.

For example, we just learned that credit card delinquency rates have risen to the highest level ever recorded…"A growing number of Americans are falling behind on their monthly credit card payments as they continue to battle high inflation and interest rates. New data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia shows that credit card delinquency rates in the first quarter of 2024 rose to the highest level since 2012, when the Fed began tracking the data. All stages of credit card delinquency - 30, 60 and 90 days past due - rose during the first three months of the year."

And another major retailer just went bankrupt and is closing lots of stores…"Home goods retailer Conn’s HomePlus filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday and announced plans to close at least 70 locations across 13 states. On its website, Conn’s says it will close 18 locations in Florida, nine in Texas and seven in Arizona. Other states that will see stores close include Virginia, Colorado, Mississippi and Oklahoma, among others."

Everywhere you look, there is suffering. But for the moment, those at the very top of the economic food chain are still thriving. In fact, the wealthiest one percent have actually gotten 42 trillion dollars wealthier during the past decade…"The world’s richest one percent increased their fortunes by a total of $42 trillion over the past decade, Oxfam said Thursday, ahead of a G20 summit in Brazil where taxing the super-rich tops the agenda. Despite this windfall, taxes on the rich had plummeted to “historic lows”, the NGO added, warning of “obscene levels” of inequality with the rest of the world “left to scrap for crumbs”.

A day of reckoning is coming for them too. In fact, a day of reckoning is rapidly approaching for the entire planet. Our system is fundamentally flawed, and decades of really bad decisions have brought us to a breaking point. So please don’t look down on those that have lost their homes and have no place to live, because lots more people will be joining them soon."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"How It Really Is"