Jim Kunstler, “Who Elected YOU Boss of This Outfit?”

“Who Elected YOU Boss of This Outfit?”

“There’s some perversion that’s happened

 in our country in the last several years.”

- Candidate Kamala Harris

by Jim Kunstler

"You might well wonder: how does the Democratic Party rank and file sustain such fervor for the wrecking crew of Harris & Walz conjured up with zero input from the Party’s demos? Just plopped onstage as by the old MGM studio heads casting a pair of iffy contract players in a “B” movie musical called "Our Pronouns Are Cash and Carry."

So far, Harris and Walz levitate in fake polls on gusts of idiot wind from the Party’s unofficial public relations team of the The New York Times / MSNBC / CNN / NPR media matrix. But it’s already obvious that Veep Kamala Harris’ brain is just a laugh generator triggered by anything that sounds like an idea from the material world: the economy? Hee-haw...Ukraine? Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha...The border? Tee-hee...Transitioning minor children? Yuk-yuk-yukity-yuk...The Middle East? Cackle cackle...

You are well aware, I’m sure, that the veep has yet to be exposed to a single unscripted interchange with anyone outside her promotional circle. It’s been kind of neat trick to behold, like watching a barking terrier walk around the stage on its hind legs —-but after a while the audience might be thinking, What else can you show me?

You must not suppose this liminal moment in history between the defenestration of “Joe Biden” and the apparent selection of Harris & Walz is anything but a transient psychotic episode in American politics. The tell is that nobody in the Dem fold is inquiring as to how it happened, and especially who is behind it. Has the Dem Party become just Speaker emeritus Nancy Pelosi’s personal mafia? It appears that she was the one who delivered the black spot to “JB.” Do Chuck Schumer and Hakim Jefferies even matter in that supposed hierarchy, or is Mrs. Pelosi sole proprietor of the org now?

There must be a few unfettered souls among the Dem delegates who detect that, without the smoke and mirrors of the media matrix, Harris & Walz can’t possibly make the case for getting elected honestly. And the odds of successfully rigging another national election seem to be on-the-fade, too, with such obvious pranks as registering 371 illegal aliens (non-citizens) to vote using an address that turns out to be a Walmart parking lot. Yesterday, Governor Glen Youngkin of Virginia signed an excutive order requiring paper ballots and voter ID along with other new regs. Is a trend underway among the states to clean up their acts?

The so far railroaded national Dem delegates have ten more days to watch the Harris/Walz tag-team get vivisected on “X”, which, like it or not, has become the sole open conduit for news and commentary in a nation ruled by a psychopathocracy. You can say that because the policies they promote are obviously inimical to our country’s well being - open borders, harrassment, arrest and censorship of political opponents, the pointless Ukraine war, sexual mutilation of children, mass digital surveillance, medical quackery, and a policy of lying about absolutely all of it. Many still recognize insanity when they see it in action. These matters are not defensible and, deep down, they must know it, and maybe enough of the delegates will decide to do something about it - like revolt against the candidates foisted on them.

One possible result, of course, is that such a revolt will rip the party to shreds. You can easily imagine chaos in the streets of Chicago among the disaffected delegates and the Antifa shock troops called forth to punish them. Chaos for its own sake is highly valued by so-called “progressives” looking to progressively destroy the entire armature of civilized life in order to create out of the ashes a nirvana of sadomasochistic persecution and punishment - their Hieronymus Bosch Wokester utopia.

I’m guessing that there will be untoward discoveries about, and mortifying blunders galore by, Harris & Walz these ten days ahead, and they will go into the Chicago convention like two pitiful creatures marked for sacrifice. Gawd knows what will emerge from the turbulence that ensues - but I’m still dogged by the feeling that the only plausible outcome is a giant flying reptile with a face like Hillary’s swooping into the arena on her great, flapping, leathery wings crying, "Caw caw caw, I own you all now, you miserable cat ladies, incels, nose-rings, and sundry victims of hateful offense! Follow me once more into the glorious rapture of defeat! And it shall be done!"

- https://kunstler.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "The Bubbles Just Keep Getting Bigger"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/8/24

"The Bubbles Just Keep Getting Bigger"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern: Weekly Wrap"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 8/8/24

"INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern: Weekly Wrap"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Oltremare"

Ludovico Einaudi, "Oltremare"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe - a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way. 

Along with a bright central core, this stunning galaxy portrait, a composite of image data from amateur and professional telescopes, highlights youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries tracing the galaxy's spiral arms. It also shows off remarkable reddish jets of glowing hydrogen gas. In addition to small companion galaxy NGC 4248 at bottom right, background galaxies can be found scattered throughout the frame. M106, also known as NGC 4258, is a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, seen across the spectrum from radio to X-rays. Active galaxies are powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.”

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

Chet Raymo, "Lessons"

"Lessons"

by Chet Raymo

"There is a four-line poem by Yeats, 

called "Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors":

"What they undertook to do

They brought to pass;

All things hang like a drop of dew

Upon a blade of grass."

"Like so many of the short poems of Yeats, it is hard to know what the poet had in mind, who exactly were the unknown instructors, and if unknown how could they instruct. But as I opened my volume of "The Poems" this morning, at random, as in the old days people opened the Bible and pointed a finger at a random passage seeking advice or instruction, this is the poem that presented itself. Unsuperstitious person that I am, it seemed somehow apropos, since outside the window, in a thick Irish mist, every blade of grass has its hanging drop.

Those pendant drops, the bejeweled porches of the spider webs, the rose petals cupping their glistening dew - all of that seems terribly important here, now, in the silent mist. There is not much good to say about getting old, but certainly one advantage of the gathering years is the falling away of ego and ambition, the felt need to be always busy, the exhausting practice of accumulation. Who were the instructors who tried to teach me the practice of simplicity when I was young - the poets and the saints, the buddhas who were content to sit beneath the bo tree while the rest of us scurried here and there? I scurried, and I'm not sorry I did, but I must have tucked their lessons into the back of my mind, a cache of wisdom to be opened at my leisure. Whatever it was they sought to teach has come to pass. All things hang like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

“Albert Camus on Strength of Character and How to Ennoble Our Minds in Difficult Times”

“Albert Camus on Strength of Character 

and How to Ennoble Our Minds in Difficult Times”

by Maria Popova

“In 1957, Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) became the second youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded to him for work that “with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” (It was with this earnestness that, days after receiving the coveted accolade, he sent his childhood teacher a beautiful letter of gratitude.)

More than half a century later, his lucid and luminous insight renders Camus a timeless seer of truth, one who ennobles and enlarges the human spirit in the very act of seeing it – the kind of attentiveness that calls to mind his compatriot Simone Weil, whom he admired more than he did any other thinker and who memorably asserted that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

Nowhere does Camus’s generous attention to the human spirit emanate more brilliantly than in a 1940 essay titled “The Almond Trees” (after the arboreal species that blooms in winter), found in his “Lyrical and Critical Essays” (public library) – the superb volume that gave us Camus on happiness, despair, and how to amplify our love of life. Penned at the peak of WWII, to the shrill crescendo of humanity’s collective cry for justice and mercy, Camus’s clarion call for reawakening our noblest nature reverberates with newfound poignancy today, amid our present age of shootings and senseless violence.

At only twenty-seven, Camus writes: “We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as humans is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks we take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.

Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” [D.H.] Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”

In a sentiment evocative of the 1919 manifesto “Declaration of the Independence of the Mind” - which was signed by such luminaries as Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, Rabindranath Tagore, Jane Addams, Upton Sinclair, Stefan Zweig, and Hermann Hesse – Camus argues that this “kick” is to be delivered by the deliberate cultivation of the mind’s highest virtues: “If we are to save the mind we must ignore its gloomy virtues and celebrate its strength and wonder. Our world is poisoned by its misery, and seems to wallow in it. It has utterly surrendered to that evil which Nietzsche called the spirit of heaviness. Let us not add to this. It is futile to weep over the mind, it is enough to labor for it.

But where are the conquering virtues of the mind? The same Nietzsche listed them as mortal enemies to heaviness of the spirit. For him, they are strength of character, taste, the “world,” classical happiness, severe pride, the cold frugality of the wise. More than ever, these virtues are necessary today, and each of us can choose the one that suits him best. Before the vastness of the undertaking, let no one forget strength of character. I don’t mean the theatrical kind on political platforms, complete with frowns and threatening gestures. But the kind that through the virtue of its purity and its sap, stands up to all the winds that blow in from the sea. Such is the strength of character that in the winter of the world will prepare the fruit.

Elsewhere in the volume, Camus writes: “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” Each time our world cycles through a winter of the human spirit, Camus remains an abiding hearth of the invisible summer within us, his work a perennial invitation to reinhabit our deepest decency and live up to our most ennobled nature.

Complement this particular excerpt from the thoroughly elevating “Lyrical and Critical Essays”, with Nietzsche on what it really means to be a free spirit, and Susan Sontag on how to be a moral human being, then revisit Camus on happiness, unhappiness, and our self-imposed prisons and our search for meaning.“

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

Judge Napolitano, "Col. Douglas Macgregor: Is Israel On the Ropes?"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 8/8/24

"Col. Douglas Macgregor: Is Israel On the Ropes?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no 

place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel." 

- Rabbi Ovadia Yosef

o

"Body Counts and Blood Libels in the Israel/Gaza Conflict"

"The State of Israel as 'Cartoonishly Evil'"? 

"Israel Is in a Death Spiral, Who Will It Take Down with It?"

Gerald Celente, "Markets Up = Market Madness, Worst Yet To Come"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 8/8/24

"Markets Up = Market Madness, Worst Yet To Come"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."

https://trendsjournal.com/

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The Daily "Near You?"

Scottsboro, Alabama. USA. Thanks for stopping by!

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

"I Was Never Able To Pray"

"Wheel me down to the shore

where the lighthouse was abandoned

and the moon tolls in the rafters.

Let me hear the wind paging through the trees

and see the stars flaring out, one by one,

like the forgotten faces of the dead.

I was never able to pray,

but let me inscribe my name

in the book of waves

and then stare into the dome

of a sky that never ends

and see my voice sail into the night."

- Edward Hirsch

"The Universe"

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

- www.tut.com

"Every Day..."

“Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans to gain or maintain power. What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy. If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”

– J. K. Rowling, Harvard Commencement, June 5, 2008

Travelling with Russell, "I Went to Russia's Most Famous Place: Red Square"

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell, 8/8/24

"I Went to Russia's Most Famous Place: Red Square"

Walking through the centre of Moscow on a sunny day, there is nothing better. Walking through the middle of Red Square, and then walking inside the famous GUM Shopping Centre. Discover with me how nice walking in Moscow is on a sunny day."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

Dan, I Allegedly, "End of the Bubble - This is It!"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 8/8/24

"End of the Bubble - This is It!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "Extreme Fear"

- https://www.linkedin.com/

"Extreme Fear"

The biggest policy error is the Fed’s fantasy that it knows what it is doing... and makes

 any policy decisions at all. And if we are right, the Primary Trend will tell the tale.

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "Not to worry! The standard, accepted, certified correct view of the stock market is that it always goes up ‘over the long-term.’ Based on figures from the S&P 500, investors have come to expect a total return of 10% per year. And the ‘price’ of getting these long-term gains, according to the sales pitch, is that you have to suffer occasional episodes of FOMO NO MO’, with a median temporary setback, since 1928, around 13% each year.

This is just one of those ‘drawdowns,’ says Wall Street. CNN: "US stocks wavered Wednesday, giving back earlier gains as investors tried to recover from the week’s bruising losses. The Dow fell 234 points, or 0.6%, after gaining more than 400 points earlier in the day. The S&P 500 declined 0.8% and the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.1%. CNN’s Fear & Greed Index, which measures seven barometers of market sentiment, closed in “extreme fear” territory."

Extreme fear? A 0.6% loss? Our point today is that CNN may have to readjust its index. When we look at it in terms of real, durable wealth - gold - we get a very different picture. In 1928, you could buy the S&P 500 for one ounce of gold. Now, after at least thirty years of price manipulation by the Fed, the S&P will cost you two ounces. That’s the entire real capital gain over a 96-year period. And more than likely, in the next major episode of FOMO NO MO’, it will disappear. The price of US stocks should return to a more normal level, where you’ll again be able to buy the S&P for one ounce of gold.

In other words: stocks do not always go up. In fact, it appears that they never really go up at all. Take away the fake dollar, the fake interest rates... and ten years of lending at zero by the Fed... and what do you have? Stocks at about the same real value they had in 1928. All amateur investors have really gotten since then are dividends. But wait. What about those drawdowns? Are they only 13% per year?

S&P 500 to Gold Ratio

Click image for larger size.

In 1967, you could buy the S&P for 2.6 ounces of gold. Then, over the next thirteen years, a drawdown took the price down to 0.17 of a single ounce - a 96% loss. The price of the S&P didn’t fully recover until 1997 - thirty years after the drawdown began.

And in the summer of 2000, the S&P/gold ratio rose to an all-time high over five ounces to the S&P. Then, it began to fall, eventually dropping down to 0.70 of an ounce in September 2011 - a drawdown of 86%. Now, almost a quarter of a century later, after the most aggressive central bank stimulus in history, investors have not even recovered half of what they lost. Sell the S&P today and you can buy just a bit more than two ounces of gold.

Bonds are different. The interest rate (the coupon) doesn’t change. So the value of the bond is said to be more stable and reliable than a stock. Investors typically retreat to bonds when they fear a drawdown in the stock market. But since 2020, we’ve seen that bonds are no guarantee of financial safety; they’ve just suffered the worst sell-off in history.

Why did this happen? Because the Fed kept real interest rates below zero for more than ten years. This was ‘misinformation.’ And it misled the bond market. Investors overpaid for tiny yields. Then, when interest rates returned to more normal levels (the Fed had to raise rates to fight inflation in 2022) bond prices fell.

Again, we turn to gold to keep score... The yield on a 10-year bond was only 0.84% in 1928. If we understand the research from NYU’s Stern School of Business correctly, a $100 bond purchased in 1928... if it had been held to the present... would have given you a total return of $7,278. Again, adjusting for inflation (using gold as our measuring stick), we see that $100 would have bought 4.8 ounces of gold back then. Today, $7,278 buys just 3 ounces of gold – representing a real loss of $4,309.

Stock investors generally accept episodes of FOMO NO MO’ gracefully. They believe they get a ‘risk premium’ (over bonds) to compensate. The sell-off from the last three weeks, for example, will set them back about 10%. But it comes after a 20% gain over the last 12 months... leaving them ahead of the game.

Still, hopes for an ‘emergency’ rate cut are rising. Seasoned investors are no dummies. They are like people who got into a Ponzi scheme early. They know it’s a scam... but they believe that they are the ones who will benefit from it.

As we saw yesterday, the Fed has an obvious bias. Whatever it does is sure to be a policy error (it can’t possibly know what interest rates the economy actually needs today... let alone those that it will need until the next quarterly FOMC meeting). But it won’t be a random error. The Fed is a creature of Wall Street and Washington... it will err on the side of easy money, with interest rates that are generally too low, not too high. This bias assures the pros that help is on the way. The Fed will soon make another policy error... putting the S&P back on track for another unhealthy gain.

The biggest policy error is the Fed’s fantasy that it knows what it is doing... and makes any policy decisions at all. And if we are right, the Primary Trend will tell the tale. While the Fed may be able to goose up nominal prices - for stocks and bonds - in the short term…the real, long-term trend is down... meaning, they are both going down in terms of gold. For stocks, the loss is likely to be 50% or more. For bonds... especially, US treasuries... the loss is expected to be even greater. ‘Extreme fear’ will come; but only when investors realize that the Fed’s policy errors won’t save them."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Situation Critical! This Is Your Wakeup Call! Expect Price Controls, Shortages, Rationing"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/8/24

"Situation Critical! This Is Your Wakeup Call! 

Expect Price Controls, Shortages, Rationing"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "My Very Frustrating Trip To Kroger!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, AM 8/8/24

"My Very Frustrating Trip To Kroger!"

"In today's vlog, I am at Kroger and am noticing many issues as they are doing a complete overhaul on this store. Not only are items in different areas, but they are narrowing the aisles, making it very difficult to get around."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Canadian Prepper, "Holy F#:$#! Russia Lines Collapse, Putin Calls Emergency Meeting"

Canadian Prepper, 8/7/24

"Holy F#:$#! Russia Lines Collapse, 

Putin Calls Emergency Meeting"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Everybody Knows The Captain Lied" (Excerpt)

"Everybody Knows The Captain Lied" (Excerpt)

By Jim Quinn

"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded,
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows the war is over,
Everybody knows the good guys lost."

- Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

Excerpt: "Having heard this Leonard Cohen classic on the radio a few days ago, the lyrics have been rattling around in my head as a perfect description of the dystopian horror show we are experiencing in the world today. The song has a dark, foreboding, cynical tone, capturing the sense of a coming catastrophe which everybody can see coming, but we are helpless to stop. Cohen wrote the song in 1987 and it perfectly captures the mood of a Third Turning Unraveling, where greed; narcissism; the breakdown of societal trust; confidence in governmental and financial institutions; and the deterioration of society into the “haves” and “have nots”; sets the stage for the Fourth Turning Crisis of financial collapse, war, and a violent bloody resolution by 2032. Third Turnings are periods of cynicism, deterioration of manners and civil authority, societal disunity, and a cultural descent towards degeneracy.

It was fitting Cohen wrote this song in the same year Oliver Stone’s "Wall Street" movie splashed onto movie screens, reflecting the “greed is good” mentality of the nation. The insider trading scandals of the mid-1980s informed the good guys that the bad guys had rigged the system, and always won. The early enthusiasm of Reagan’s “Morning in America” presidency had dissipated in a blizzard of scandals, promises unfulfilled, and space program disaster. The 1986 stock market crash had shaken the confidence of the working class, while Greenspan’s bailout of the bankers who owned him, proved the dice were loaded.

It was not so evident at that point that the good guys (you and me) had already lost the war. Cohen didn’t know it at the time, but he was describing the Deep State/Invisible Government control over every aspect of our lives. The dystopia he describes has grown a hundred-fold in the 37 years since he wrote the song, and it keeps getting worse. We are approaching our rendezvous with destiny and everybody who is capable of critical thought knows the next several years will be fraught with peril, determining the future course of mankind.

The dice have been loaded for decades. The war was over in 1963 when the CIA, on behalf of the Deep State, murdered John F. Kennedy. The American people (the good guys) lost, and the Deep State won. They got their war in Vietnam. They got their Welfare State. They got guns, butter, a currency unlinked from gold, and the green light to create debt to infinity. The Deep State has consolidated their power and control over every aspect of our lives in the six decades since they killed JFK.

They have used every crisis they create to abscond with more of our liberties, freedoms, rights and wealth. In addition to the never-ending wars created around the globe to benefit their military industrial complex, their wars on poverty, drugs, terror, CO2, and covid have enriched them and their lackeys, while exacerbating the very things they declared war upon. None of these wars are meant to be won. Keeping the masses in fear and ignorance makes them easier to control."

Full, most highly recommended  article is here:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/2

o

- Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Believe"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Believe"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax galaxy cluster.

This sharp color image shows intense star forming regions at the ends of the bar and along the spiral arms, and details of dust lanes cutting across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the central black hole. The position of a bright supernova is indicated in NGC 1365. Cataloged as SN2012fr, the type Ia supernova is the explosion of a white dwarf star.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap121124.html

"No Smooth Road..."

"Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere

of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps,

till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself."

- W. C. Doane

"Our Crisis of Institutional Competence"

"Our Crisis of Institutional Competence"

Why things don't work anymore.

by Glenn Harlan Reynolds

"Almost everywhere you look, we are in a crisis of institutional competence.

The Secret Service, whose failures in securing Trump's Butler, PA speech are legendary and frankly hard to believe at this point, is one example. (Nor is the Butler event the Secret Service's first embarrassment.)

The Navy, whose ships keep colliding and catching fire.

Major software vendor Crowdstrike, whose botched update shut down major computer systems around the world.

The United States government, which built entire floating harbors to support the D-Day invasion in Europe, but couldn't build a workable floating pier in Gaza.

And of course, Boeing, whose Starliner spacecraft is stuck, apparently indefinitely, at the International Space Station. (Its crew's six-day mission, now extended perhaps into 2025, is giving off real Gilligan's Island energy.) At present, Starliner is clogging up a necessary docking point at the ISS, and they can't even send Starliner back to Earth on its own because it lacks the necessary software to operate unmanned – even though an earlier build of Starliner did just that.

Then there are all the problems with Boeing's airliners, literally too numerous to list here.

Roads and bridges take forever to be built or repaired, new airports are nearly unknown, and the Covid response was extraordinary for its combination of arrogant self-assurance and evident ineptitude.

These are not the only examples, of course, and readers can no doubt provide more (feel free to do so in the comments) but the question is, Why? Why are our institutions suffering from such widespread incompetence? Americans used to be known for "know how," for a "can-do spirit," for "Yankee ingenuity" and the like. Now? Not so much.

Americans in the old days were hardly perfect, of course. Once the Transcontinental Railroad was finished and the golden spike driven in Promontory, Utah, large parts of it had to be reconstructed for poor grading, defective track, etc. Transport planes full of American paratroopers were shot down during the invasion of Sicily by American ships, whose gunners somehow confused them for German bombers. But those were failures along the way to big successes, which is not so much the case today.

But if our ancestors mostly did better, it's probably because they operated closer to the bone. One characteristic of most of our recent failures is that nobody gets fired. (Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle did resign, eventually, but nobody fired her, and I think heads should have rolled on down the line). Even the FBI agent who accidentally shot a man while dancing in a bar was allowed to carry a gun again. He also avoided jail time with a sweet plea deal.

I believe that incentives matter. Just compare the performance of SpaceX to that of Boeing here. SpaceX's rockets work. The Crew Dragon capsule has been flying for quite a while, even as this debacle with Starliner was that vehicle's first crewed flight. SpaceX has been operating in a "bet the company" mode since its first Falcon flight, and while Elon Musk is quite tolerant of rocket explosions as a part of iterative learning, I don't think he's tolerant of people who are acting stupidly or lazily or not learning. And consequently, as soon as Starliner developed problems people started speculating about a SpaceX rescue mission.

A famous essay by Nico Colchester divided approaches into "Crunchy" and "Soggy." When things are crunchy, you know how you're doing: "Crunchy systems are those in which small changes have big effects leaving those affected by them in no doubt whether they are up or down, rich or broke, winning or losing, dead or alive. The going was crunchy for Captain Scott as he plodded southwards across the sastrugi. He was either on top of the snow-crust and smiling, or floundering thigh-deep. The farther south he marched the crunchier his predicament became. Sogginess is comfortable uncertainty. The modern Scott is unsure how deeply he is in it. He can radio for an airlift, or drop in on an American early-warning station for a hot toddy. The richer a society becomes, the soggier its systems get."

Systems are soggy when nobody's life is obviously affected by failure. Any system involving civil service employees or contractors on cost-plus contracts is likely to be soggy. As long as Elon Musk is at the helm, SpaceX will be crunchy, though given time it's likely to tend toward sogginess, as most institutions do. Colchester concludes: "A crunchy policy is not necessarily right, only more certain than a soggy one to deliver the results that it deserves." Stay crunchy, my friends."

- https://instapundit.substack.com/

"America Is Entering A Horrific Economic And Social Crisis - Will It Survive?"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/7/24

"America Is Entering A Horrific Economic

 And Social Crisis - Will It Survive?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Vail, Arizona, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Gerald Celente, "Politicians Bent On Vengeance: It's The American Way"

Gerald Celente, 8/7/24

"Politicians Bent On Vengeance: It's The American Way"

The "Trends Journal" is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times.

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"Unknown Knowns: Part I"

"Unknown Knowns: Part I"

Willful ignorance and the long road to Kamala Harris...

by Joel Bowman

“There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.”

~ Donald Rumsfeld explains “The Rumsfeld Matrix” (2002)

Savannah, Georgia - "The great “Kamala Crash”... vice presidential vices... and the mass gaslighting of the American mind. What a time it is to be alive, dear reader! Known knowns... known unknowns... unknown unknowns... And lo! here cometh man, soft-bellied and blinded by hope, determined to add another category to the Rumsfeld Matrix: unknown knowns!

Our subject of late, known to all, is ignorance. Today, we delve a little deeper... into a specific subset of the unknown: willful ignorance. It is generally acknowledged that ignorance is no excuse in the eyes of the law. Lawyers may even charge you a fee for quoting the principle in Latin: ignorantia juris non excusat. But not knowing something, in and of itself, is certainly no crime. And a good thing, too. The cell blocks would be overflowing! Voters’ craniums are crammed with all they don’t know...and plenty they don’t even know they don’t know.

It is the acknowledged role of the politician – and his apple-polishing fabulists in the mainstream press – to fill that gaping void. This they typically do with lies, damned lies and political slogans. So far, so bad…

The Great Unknowing: But while there is no shame in quiet, even humble ignorance (of which we all stand guilty)...willful ignorance is another matter altogether. Which brings us to Kamala Harris...and the media’s orchestrated “unknowing” of all that was once known about her. But in order to understand this remarkable phenomenon, we must first go back to the beginning, to the very outset of the Great Swamp Battle...

2016 was supposed to be the Year of Hillary Clinton. Anointed by Deep State war hawks... beloved by mainstream presstitutes and Ivy League hackademics... adored by Hollywood’s shiniest trophy people... and championed by useful idiots from sea to shining sea... Hillary Clinton was all set to lead a pantsuit revolution of “I’m with her” apparatchiks back into the very Oval Office her husband had once so… enjoyed.

Barely had she ordered the new drapes and rethought those sofa cushions when...Orange Man Bad. On the eve of the election, Hillary was positively shocked to learn that, even after all her warmongering and profiteering abroad, despite the shocking disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, even after the expanded drone strike operations in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, the American public was somehow unwilling to give her the nuclear codes. Incredible, no? Even branding half the country a “basket of deplorables” didn’t seem to help. Humph!

The Devil They Knew: Passing over the “devil they knew,” voters chose instead a political outsider who promised to “drain the swamp.” The response: Swamp Creatures of the world, attack! For the better part of the last eight years, the American voter has endured a Niagara of mis-, dis- and mal-information at the hands of the reliable propagandists in the long-disgraced Fourth Estate. In its crosshairs, the man who left their warrior goddess jilted at the presidential altar.

Even before the 2016 election of Donald Trump, rumors began swirling in the press that he was “colluding” with America’s #1 boogeyman. The “Russia collusion” story would persist, unrelenting and unproven, well into The Donald’s presidency. Daily were America’s leading mastheads electrified by gossip, whispers and scuttlebutt. Nightly did the unfunniest men in late night television reiterate and reinforce The Narrative. That the Donald was a “foreign asset,” a “traitor to his country,” a “treasonist,” “terrorist” and “threat to democracy!” was a foregone conclusion. Every right-thinking citizen with a New York Times subscription said so. All that was needed was the proof!

Damage Done: What followed was one of the deepest, most protracted and, at $32 million, costliest investigations ever conducted into a sitting United States president. The resulting Mueller Report was a bombshell for everyone who had apparently hoped to be living under the illegitimate presidency of a hostile foreign enemy state. From the Mueller Report: "The investigation “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

Similar “lawfare” investigations, including from the FBI, the DOJ and other federal agencies, plagued Trump through his presidency. Only last year, an investigation conducted by Justice Department special counsel John Durham, concluded that (per USA Today): “The FBI should have never launched an investigation into alleged Russian collusion with Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, given the slim evidence.”

The paper went on..."The investigation into the "collusion" clouded Trump’s entire presidency, and Democrats harnessed the tale to paint Trump as an illegitimate president." Durham slammed the FBI’s investigation – dubbed Crossfire Hurricane – into the Trump campaign for its “serious lack of analytic rigor” and a “cavalier attitude” for accuracy. “...We conclude that the Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote.

For its part, the FBI does not dispute the report’s findings, but says it has already taken action and added safeguards in its investigations. And yet, the damage was already done. The country had so divided itself over the Russia collusion hoax, there was simply no going back. And if Trump wasn’t guilty of trading with the enemy, he was sure as heck guilty of something. It became the media’s job to find out what...and if it couldn’t find anything, it would have to invent it. After all, “democracy” was on the line..."

- https://joelbowman.substack.com/

"There Was Truth..."

"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. 

There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth 

even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

- George Orwell, “1984”

"The Sharp Tang And Savor Of Existence..."

"The Sharp Tang And Savor Of Existence..."

"The thought of the disaster which almost certainly lay in wait for the Other Men threw me into a horror of doubt about the universe in which such a thing could happen. That a whole world of intelligent beings could be destroyed was not an unfamiliar idea to me; but there is a great difference between an abstract possibility and a concrete and inescapable danger. On my native planet, whenever I had been dismayed by the suffering and the futility of individuals, I had taken comfort in the thought that at least the massed effect of all our blind striving must be the slow but glorious awakening of the human spirit. This hope, this certainty, had been the one sure consolation. But now I saw that there was no guarantee of any such triumph. It seemed that the universe, or the maker of the universe, must be indifferent to the fate of worlds. That there should be endless struggle and suffering and waste must of course be accepted; and gladly, for these were the very soil in which the spirit grew. But that all struggle should be finally, absolutely vain, that a whole world of sensitive spirits fail and die, must be sheer evil. In my horror it seemed to me that Hate must be the Star Maker.

Not so to Bvalitu. "Even if the powers destroy us," he said, "who are we, to condemn them? As well might a fleeting word judge the speaker that forms it. Perhaps they use us for their own high ends, use our strength and our weakness, our joy and our pain, in some theme inconceivable to us, and excellent." But I protested, "What theme could justify such waste, such futility? And how can we help judging; and how otherwise can we judge than by the light of our own hearts, by which we judge ourselves? It would be base to praise the Star Maker, knowing that he was too insensitive to care about the fate of his worlds." Bvalitu was silent in his mind for a moment. Then he looked up, searching among the smoke-clouds for a daytime star. And then he said to me in his mind, "If he saved all the worlds, but tormented just one man, would you forgive him? Or if he was a little harsh only to one stupid child? What has our pain to do with it, or our failure? Star Maker! It is a good word, though we can have no notion of its meaning. Oh, Star Maker, even if you destroy me, I must praise you. Even if you torture my dearest. Even if you torment and waste all your lovely worlds, the little figments of your imagination, yet I must praise you. For if you do so, it must be right. In me it would be wrong, but in you it must be right."

He looked down once more upon the ruined city, then continued, "And if after all there is no Star Maker, if the great company of galaxies leapt into being of their own accord, and even if this little nasty world of ours is the only habitation of the spirit anywhere among the stars, and this world doomed, even so, even so, I must praise. But if there is no Star Maker, what can it be that I praise? I do not know. I will call it only the sharp tang and savor of existence. But to call it this is to say little."

- Olaf Stapledon, "Star Maker"

o

Freely download “Star Maker”, by Olaf Stapledon, here:

-  https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/

"How It Really Is"

“We'll know our disinformation program is complete 

when everything the American public believes is false.”

- William Casey, former director of the CIA

o

"American Stasi:

 Tulsi Gabbard Confirms 'Quiet Skies' Nightmare"

"The Stasi- Old School Masters of PsyWar"

"Donald Trump Says That A Great Depression Is Coming. He Is Right"

"Donald Trump Says That A Great Depression Is Coming.

He Is Right"

by Michael Snyder

"Do you believe Donald Trump? He is entirely convinced that if we stay on the path that we are currently on we are heading into a “great depression”, and many believe that he is right on target. Unemployment is rising, manufacturing activity is contracting, bankruptcies are soaring, home sales have fallen to depressingly low levels, the cost of living crisis never seems to end, poverty is soaring and homelessness is at the highest level ever recorded. Since Barack Obama first entered the White House, our politicians in Washington have been propping up the economy by adding 25 trillion dollars to the national debt. Now our national debt has crossed the 35 trillion dollar mark, and our politicians continue to spend money at a pace that is absolutely absurd. But despite this tremendous influx of borrowed cash, the wheels are starting to come off the U.S. economy anyway.

This week, everyone is talking about a “recession” because of what has been happening in the financial markets. Prior to Tuesday’s session, more than 6 trillion dollars in global stock market wealth had already been wiped out… Bloomberg estimates that approximately $6.4 trillion has been erased from the value of global stock markets over the past three weeks. Investors were desperately hoping for a bounce on Tuesday, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average only jumped 294 points. Needless to say, that is not the bounce that they were looking for.

The turmoil that we have witnessed on Wall Street in recent days also caught the attention of Donald Trump. On Truth Social, he blamed crashing stock prices on Kamala Harris and he warned that a “great depression” is on the way…"Trump took to Truth Social to blast Harris for the “Kamala Crash” in a series of posts. “Of course there is a massive market downturn. Kamala is even worse than Crooked Joe. Markets will NEVER accept the Radical Left Lunatic that destroyed San Francisco and California, as a whole,” Trump wrote. “Next move, THE GREAT DEPRESSION OF 2024! You can’t play games with MARKETS. KAMALA CRASH!” he added."

Of course Trump is in the middle of trying to win an election, and his goal was to make Kamala Harris look bad. But he is quite right that if we stay on the road that we are on it will only end in disaster.

Last Friday, the Sahm rule was triggered when the unemployment rate went up again…"The Sahm rule, created by the former Federal Reserve official Claudia Sahm, triggers when the unemployment rate’s three-month moving average moves 50 basis points above its 12-month low. That rule was triggered Friday, with the moving average rising 53 basis points above that one-year trough, according to the real-time Sahm Rule Recession Indicator from the St. Louis Federal Reserve. The Sahm rule has successfully predicted every single recession since 1970, and it is indicating that another recession is here."

Sadly, the unemployment rate is likely to go even higher during the months ahead because large companies all over America continue to conduct mass layoffs. Today, we learned that Dell is planning another round of mass layoffs…"While Dell has confirmed the layoffs, it hasn’t revealed how many employees are losing their jobs. SiliconAngle reports that roughly 12,500 Dell employees are being laid off this week, citing an unnamed source. Impacted employees are primarily on Dell’s sales and marketing teams. A layoff tracker has since reported the same number. Former Dell employee Ian Armstrong, who previously worked on the company’s UX design team for eight years, called the layoffs a “bloodbath” in a post, reporting that Dell has now laid off 24,500 staff in the past 15 months."

Meanwhile, the cost of living crisis continues to crush working families all over the nation. At this point, it takes an additional thousand dollars a month for the typical U.S. household to buy the exact same goods and services that it did three years ago…"The typical U.S. household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation, according to calculations from Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi shared with FOX Business. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 more compared with three years ago, before the inflation crisis began."

Consumer spending has always been so critical to the U.S. economy. And at this point, a very large portion of the population is simply tapped out. That is one of the primary reasons why credit card debt is at an all-time high and credit card delinquencies are soaring into the stratosphere…"Credit card delinquencies continued to rise from their pre-pandemic levels in the second quarter. As of June, about 9.1% of outstanding credit card debt was in some stage of delinquency, up from 8.5% the previous quarter.

The rise in credit card usage and debt is particularly concerning because interest rates are astronomically high right now. The average credit card annual percentage rate (APR) hit a new record of 20.73% last week, according to a Bankrate database that goes back to 1985. The previous record was 19% in July 1991."

Of course it isn’t just millions of consumers that have reached a breaking point. As I discussed a few days ago, we are witnessing a very alarming surge in business bankruptcies…"Over the past year, business bankruptcy filings are up 40.3 percent, and have now reached a number not seen since the second quarter of 2020, at the peak of lockdowns. American households are following along, with total bankruptcy filings up 16.2 percent in the past year, including 132,710 new filings in the second quarter of 2024 alone."

A 40 percent increase in one year is quite serious. And every day even more businesses are going belly up. Here is one of the latest examples…"A popular Italian restaurant chain has filed for bankruptcy – just days after it abruptly shut 13 underperforming locations across the US. Court documents filed just before midnight on Sunday show Buca di Beppo owes as much as $50million – yet has assets of under $50,000. Last week, the chain – known for its family-style dishes and vintage décor – permanently closed restaurants in California and Florida. It also shut its last remaining locations in Michigan and Pennsylvania."

It is a horror show out there. According to the Sahm rule, a new recession is now upon us. But if Donald Trump is correct, something even worse is looming. Unfortunately, most people just don’t get it. If people really understood what is on the horizon, they would be behaving very differently. Most of the population is still convinced that things will turn out just fine somehow, and for the moment ignorance is bliss."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"GPS Is Blocked! Iran-Israel War Could Break Out In Next 48 Hours"

Larry C. Johnson, 8/7/24

"GPS Is Blocked! Iran-Israel War 

Could Break Out In Next 48 Hours"

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