"Wars And Rumors Of War: The Middle East, 7/30/24"

George Galloway, 7/30/24

"‘If Israel Starts War With Lebanon 

They’ll Be Destroyed Within 24 Hours’"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Dialogue Works, 7/30/24

"Col. Larry Wilkerson: Israel on the Verge of a Major Defeat? 

The Shocking Truth You Need to Know!"

"Col. (ret.) Lawrence Wilkerson's last positions in government were as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff (2002-05), Associate Director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff under the directorship of Ambassador Richard N. Haass, and member of that staff responsible for East Asia and the Pacific, political-military and legislative affairs (2001-02).

Before serving at the State Department, Wilkerson served 31 years in the U.S. Army. During that time, he was a member of the faculty of the U.S. Naval War College (1987 to 1989), Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93), and Director and Deputy Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia (1993-97). Wilkerson retired in 1997 and began work as an advisor to General Powell. He has also taught national security affairs at the George Washington University."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"Israel Arrests 9 IDF Soldiers For Rape... Why Now?"

By Redacted

"Israel arrested nine soldiers on charges that they raped a Palestinian prisoner so bad that the victim could not walk. The soldiers reportedly resisted arrest by barricading themselves in the detention center and defending themselves with pepper spray but they were eventually taken into custody.

Anyone who has studied Israeli detention of Palestinians knows that this is not new and has been happening since long before October 7. Why arrest these rapists now? Why this victim? Some say that this was intended as a show to the International Criminal Court to prove that Israel could be trusted to hold its soldiers accountable.

That has backfired as protestors are protesting the arrests. Protestors are against... accountability for rape? They are demanding impunity to rape? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the faction that stormed the detention center and called for "immediate calming of spirits."

Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir condemned the arrest of the soldiers as "shameful" and called them the "best heroes." He said the message to the world should be this: "light treatment of terrorists is over. Soldiers need to have our full support.” In other words: prisoners shall expect to be raped to the point of hospitalization. That is against all international laws of human rights. Someone wanna tell him that?"

- https://www.middleeasteye.net/

o

"All Palestinian Prisoners To Be Executed And Shot In The Head"

"The Minister of National Security of Israel, Itamar Ben-Gvir, says he plans to introduce legislation in the Knesset which reads: "All Palestinian prisoners to be executed and shot in the head." – The Minister of National Security of Israel, Itamar Ben-Gvir

Watch this monster say it himself!

- https://twitter.com/Megatron_ron/status/1807385593506103757

"Israel is Evil personified. Israel is Evil embodied."

- Scott Ritter

OMG... God damn these psychopathically degenerate monsters to Hell!

And YOU, Americans, pay for it all, every bullet, every bomb, every tank, everything! 

All that blood's on YOUR hands too! Eternal shame and disgrace on us all...

Dan, I Allegedly, "AM/PM 7/30/24"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 7/30/24

"We Don’t Make Anything -

 Another Manufacturer is Leaving the US"

"John Deere is outta here. Thousands of jobs are lost.

 We make nothing in this country."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, PM 7/30/24

"While You Were Distracted, This Happened"

"We are learning the insiders are selling stocks at a record pace. 

The latest is Warren Buffett to sell a huge chunk of Bank of America stock."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"US Debt Clock"

Click image for larger size.

"$35 trillion. That is the U.S. national debt, a record reached on Monday. According to the House Budget Committee, that debt equates to $104,497 per person, $266,275 per household and $483,889 per American child. The debt increased by $2.35 trillion in the last year alone."

View in real time here, if you dare:

- https://usdebtclock.org/

Bill Bonner, "Lies, Lies, Lies..."

"Lies, Lies, Lies..."

The ‘greatest economy ever’ is the one no politician can create. 

It’s where people are free to decide where, how and when to spend

 their time and money. Only then do they get what they really want...

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "The news this morning, Cryptopolitan: "US debt hits all-time high over $35 trillion." Another milestone... on the road to Hell. Mentioned yesterday were claims that we have the ‘greatest economy ever.’ Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have said so. Both claim to be its creator. Herewith, a paternity test.

In the first place, the ‘greatest economy ever’ is the one no politician can create. It’s where people are free to decide where, how and when to spend their time and money. Only then do they get what they really want... which is what an economy is meant to provide. Every interference - taxes, war, tariffs, subsidies, regulations, inflation - subtracts from the greatness.

This point is puzzling and frustrating to mainstream economists. They think GDP growth is all that matters. Or low unemployment. Or low inflation. They think these things are policy choices... and they pretend that they - the elite - know how to get them.

But imagine that they come up with the idea of digging a huge transcontinental canal... from Los Angeles to New York. To get the job done, they hire millions of people to work on it... and pay them each $100,000 per year. The project is, of course, cockeyed from the get-go. It would actually lower the real wealth of almost everyone... by diverting time and resources from things that people really want to things almost no one wants. But the key metrics - GDP growth and employment - would soar. It would be the ‘greatest economy ever.’ Of course, they’d have to pay for it with printed-up credit dollars. But the inflation effect would be downstream, not immediate.

By the Numbers: If you look at real GDP growth per person, you see that Donald Trump’s administration trailed Kennedy, Johnson, Truman, Reagan, Clinton, Carter, Ford, Nixon, and Obama, with an annual gain of 1.03%, compared to nearly 4% for the Kennedy/Johnson years. But there’s more to the story. The Covid hysteria showed up on Trump’s watch. It was a medical concern. Trump turned it into an economic disaster. He forced millions of people to stop working... greatly lowering output.

Then, to make up for lost real wealth, he provided phony wealth - trillions in ‘credit dollars.’ Even with so much cash sloshing through the system, however, the economy was weak. Growth in final sales (more reliable as a measure than GDP... people can decide to buy, or not) were actually weaker under Trump than they had been under Obama, 1.52% compared to 1.74% -  the lowest increase in final sales in the last seventy years.

His supporters maintain that we get a more accurate view by looking at his pre-Covid performance. But even there, Trump’s results were poor. Final sales through the first quarter of 2020 were still lower than those under Obama in his last quarter. Nor was there any real improvement in the jobs metric. Obama’s second term saw an increase of 215,000 jobs per month. Trump, pre-Covid, added 185,000 per month.

A better measure of ‘employment’ is the hours worked, not number of jobs. Here again, no cigar from Donald Trump. David Stockman: "To wit, during Obama’s second term the index of total hours work rose by 1.80% per annum compared to 1.67% during the Donald tenure through February 2020. So, again, the Trump growth rate for the period prior to the Lockdowns was well below the 2% average between 1964 and the year 2000, not evidence of the Greatest Economy Ever.

The whole idea that the president ‘creates’ jobs... or boosts GDP... or makes people better off - is mostly baloney. A president only makes people better off by helping to get the government off their backs so they can produce/trade/save/spend as is their wont. In this regard, a tax cut is generally a plus. But only if it is brigaded together with a spending cut. Otherwise, it just shifts the burden from the present (taxation) to the future (inflation)."

But sticking with the statistics - if only to show that even in their own terms, neither Trump nor Biden presided over the ‘greatest economy ever’ - we see that at the end of The Donald’s term there were three million fewer people with jobs than there had been when he started.

Finally, after Trump failed to create the greatest economy ever, Joe Biden tried his hand. He began in the typical manner - by flooding the economy with more credit dollars. Between Trump’s first stimmie... and Biden’s cherry-on-the-cake ‘Inflation Reduction Act’... the feds pumped some $8.12 trillion in free money to America’s money-hungry millions.

The world had never seen so much stimulus. You’d think the economy would be white hot, right? Well, in May of this year, real disposable income per capita stood at $50,491. That was actually lower than the $50,635 figure for May 2021. In other words, the biggest burst of stimulus Planet Earth has ever seen produced zero increase in real wealth for most people.

And between 2016 when Donald Trump entered the White House... through to the end of this year (we are anticipating)... the feds will have almost doubled the nation’s debt. This ‘investment’ - nearly $17 trillion - supposedly produced the two greatest economies the US had ever seen.

Lies, lies, lies..."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM Warning! What Is About To Happen Is Going To Destroy US, And There's No Way To Stop It"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/30/24

"Warning! What Is About To Happen Is Going To Destroy US, 

And There's No Way To Stop It"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/30/24

"Something Dreadful Is Being Set Up, 

We Are Pawns In A Terrible Thing"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "AM/PM 7/30/24: Expect Food Shortages & Some Empty Shelves!"

Adventures With Danno, AM 7/30/24

"Expect Food Shortages & Some Empty Shelves!

Walmart, Aldi, and Kroger All Affected!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Adventures With Danno, PM 7/30/24

"Massive Cinnamon Recall! This Is Getting Ridiculous!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Meanwhile, in a sane, civilized society...

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell , 7/30/24

"I Went to a Brand New (Dutch Owned) Supermarket in Russia"

"EuroSPAR is a Dutch Owned Supermarket chain operating 13,996 stores

 in 48 countries. Including stores in sanctioned Russia, where the supermarket

 chain currently operates more than 530 locations across the country."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Look at the people... what do you see?

"Alert! WW3 New Front; Israel Preps Nukes; NATO Strikes Russian Nuke Bomber; Civil War Begins!"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 7/29/24

"Alert! WW3 New Front; Israel Preps Nukes; 

NATO Strikes Russian Nuke Bomber; Civil War Begins!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Massive Warehouses Sit Empty; Banks In Big Trouble"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 7/29/24

"Massive Warehouses Sit Empty; 

Banks In Big Trouble"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Deli Meat Recall Is Getting Worse, Many Grocery Stores Affected!"

Adventures With Danno, PM 7/29/24

"Deli Meat Recall Is Getting Worse, 

Many Grocery Stores Affected!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "River Of Stars"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "River Of Stars"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Who knows what evil lurks in the eyes of galaxies? The Hubble knows -- or in the case of spiral galaxy M64 - is helping to find out. Messier 64, also known as the Evil Eye or Sleeping Beauty Galaxy, may seem to have evil in its eye because all of its stars rotate in the same direction as the interstellar gas in the galaxy's central region, but in the opposite direction in the outer regions. Captured here in great detail by the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, enormous dust clouds obscure the near-side of M64's central region, which are laced with the telltale reddish glow of hydrogen associated with star formation.

M64 lies about 17 million light years away, meaning that the light we see from it today left when the last common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees roamed the Earth. The dusty eye and bizarre rotation are likely the result of a billion-year-old merger of two different galaxies."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210329.html

"Promise Me..."

 

The Universe

“There are no accidents. If it's appeared on your life radar, this is why: to teach you that dreams come true; to reveal that you have the power to fix what's broken and heal what hurts; to catapult you beyond seeing with just your physical senses; and to lift the veils that have kept you from seeing that you're already the person you dreamed you'd become. There are no accidents. And believe me, that was one heck of a dream.”

“Tallyho,”

The Universe

“Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!”

- www.tut.com

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, “The Geranium”

“The Geranium”

“When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,

She looked so limp and bedraggled,

So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,

Or a wizened aster in late September,

I brought her back in again

For a new routine -

Vitamins, water, and whatever

Sustenance seemed sensible

At the time: she’d lived

So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,

Her shriveled petals falling

On the faded carpet, the stale

Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.

(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!

The dumb dames shrieking half the night

Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,

Me breathing booze at her,

She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me -

And that was scary -

So when that snuffling cretin of a maid

Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,

I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,

I was that lonely.”

- Theodore Roethke

Gregory Mannarino, "Banks Are About To Dump Billions In Debt Onto The Markets"

Gregory Mannarino, 7/29/24

"Banks Are About To Dump 

Billions In Debt Onto The Markets"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Wimberley, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Laughing Face Of Madness..."

"We work in the dark. We do what we can to battle the evil that would otherwise destroy us. But if a man's character is his fate, it's not a choice but a calling. Sometimes the weight of this burden causes us to falter from the fragile fortress of our mind, allowing the monster without to turn within. We are left alone staring into the abyss, into the laughing face of madness."

- Fox Mulder, "X-Files"

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself

 does not become a monster, when you gaze long

 into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”

- Nietzsche

o

Freely download “Beyond Good And Evil”, by Friedrich Nietzsche, here:

- https://ia803401.us.archive.org/

"Wars And Rumors Of War: The Middle East, 7/29/24"

A MUST VIEW!

Full screen recommended.

Scott Ritter, 7/29/24

"Edge of Annihilation! Israel Faces 

Unthinkable Defeat Against Iran & Hezbollah"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 7/29/24

"AMB. Alastair Crooke: Will There Be War In Lebanon?'"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 7/29/24

Comments here:

"Ray McGovern: Iran and a Pretext for War"

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Hindustan Time, 7/29/24

"After Invasion Threat, Turkey’s Personal Attack On Netanyahu;

 ‘Like Genocidal Hitler Met His End…’

"Turkish Foreign Ministry has made a bold statement, likening Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler. In a fiery address, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned of potential military action against Israel, citing Turkey's military interventions in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh as examples of its strength. This dramatic rhetoric comes amid escalating tensions with Hezbollah and recent clashes."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"A Musical How It Really Is: The Temptations, "Ball of Confusion"

Full screen recommended.

The Temptations, "Ball of Confusion" (1970)

Prophetic...

Dan, I Allegedly, "A Fast and Easy Way to Lose Money"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 7/29/24

"A Fast and Easy Way to Lose Money"

"The big four banks are not going to pay back on disputed charges from your credit cards and bank accounts. There has been $880 million in payments that they refused to repay in the last year and a half."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Enemies..."

"You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve 

stood up for something, some time in your life."

– Victor Hugo (often mistakenly attributed to Churchill)

“Never hate your enemies. It clouds your judgment.”

- "Michael Corleone"

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"

○

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:

- 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/

○

Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

"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

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!