"Parody Editorial: 'We Leftists Lost. Why?' Complete With Salt Mine Of Leftist Tears"

"Parody Editorial: 'We Leftists Lost. Why?' 

Complete With Salt Mine Of Leftist Tears"

by Rebecca Applebaum

"Our mistake was thinking we lived in a better country. I want to assure you that, you, GloboLeftist voter, are perfect and pure. There was in no way a problem with a candidate whose major achievements in life was getting an attendance award and showing up. While the lies, resentment, racism and misogyny of the Trump campaign were apparent to anyone as pure as we are, I believe that democracy was lost when the majority of Americans chose a competent white convicted felon Hitler who wants to holocaust, um someone over a Black woman. Our mistake was to think that democracy would work when people wanted competency (a dog whistle for white supremacy!) over a diverse POC who could read a teleprompter. And she read so well, at least at an eighth-grade level!

Only we, the GloboLeft, knew where the problems were and wanted to fix them. It is amazing to think that places like X.com could allow unfettered speech that wasn’t controlled, so ideas couldn’t be rigorously vetted by GloboLeftist fact checkers! We knew that toxic masculinity would want sexist things like a “marriage” (code word for establishing a Handmaid’s Tale world!) and family (oppression of women’s right to take jobs to make PowerPoints™ rather than be domestic slaves to their unwanted offspring.

In fact, we know that we should not change. We need to make sure that trans girls can play basketball against other girls, despite being 6’3” and able to bench press 225, since we know that’s no advantage. They dared call us “weather retards” when we want to keep a particular climate that existed between 1895 and 1953 rather than allow dangerous climate change to require us to raise our buildings six centimeters if they’re on the beach! We let them complain about their housing costs when otherwise strawberries might cost as much as $0.50 more a quart if we didn’t allow Guatemalans to live in four-star hotels in New York.

The media has failed us – they didn’t portray Donald Trump nearly as Hitlerly as we wanted them to, despite showing a Nazi rally that happened only 87 years ago, yesterday, when Donald Trump held a rally in that same place. Which is not at all what Bill Clinton did when he accepted the Democratic nomination, since Bill Clinton is not at all Hitlery. Plus, Russian collusion!

It sticks in my craw that that this affront to democracy happened when a vast majority of Americans voted for someone. That’s not at all our democracy. It’s because the voters are awful who disagree with the GloboLeft. And I certainly think that you should try to get Hondurans deported now that we know LatinX voters are going to turn into Hitler supporters over time.

What is the solution? It is certainly not to look at our failings and how our message of incompetence and crony capitalism combined with mainly aimless spending coupled with bureaucratic incompetency isn’t right. Our message is right. Every white person is a racist and white women are even misogynist! Imagine that! I imagine they pretend they’re in Margaret Atwood’s glorious non-fiction book, "The Handmaid’s Tale," as those strong, virile, white men thrust against them as their hands are bound, and they’re powerless to resist them, finally giving up and giving over to the pleasure...oh, I’m sorry. Got lost for a moment. White women are awful. They voted for this.

And, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr! How dare Donald Trump consider replacing Rachel Levine, trans hero and doctor, as a member of our federal bureaucracy. Kennedy, a curse on that hallowed family name, even thinks that the glorious COVID vaccine wasn’t glorious. Even though science says this largely untested vaccine is certainly safer than breathing. Why, Kennedy, with those strong muscles and couldn’t stand for a second in Rachel Levine’s size 18 pumps!

But the worst is Elon Musk. Elon Musk dares to allow people to say almost anything they want to on his hate-filled platform, X. They can show mean pictures of things that aren’t even true, like that squirrel, Peanut, clad in armor and blame what they call an authoritarian state just for serving a search warrant and keeping that horrible man who saved Peanut from a life in a house with people he loved and then, mercifully, euthanized him. I don’t understand it. They don’t even make plate armor for squirrels. And if a squirrel can’t be wild, it must be killed.

Why can’t MAGA understand that? These are damaged people. What should we do? There is no way we should engage, at all, in self-reflection to understand why a vast majority of people in this country didn’t like our message. That majority simply doesn’t understand our democracy.

Also, we should keep looking for the most extreme cases of trans people, like the trans woman who wants to be on the girls' swim team and let people know how Hitlery they are when they are bigots who don’t want middle-aged men looking at naked young girls in the locker room. This is normal because science from the last six months of human existence says so!

And keep sharing your stories like this one: "I was at a voting location in a deep-red state and a man with a beard covered in tobacco juice was standing behind a woman. She had a black eye. The man was telling the woman, I assume his wife, how to vote. I reported this to the precinct clerk and he just put some tobacco in his lip and said, 'This is MAGA country, missy!'”

Or this one: "My twelve-year-old daughter came up to me and said, “If only twelve-year-olds could vote, Adolf Drump would never have been elected since we know that the potential impact of tariffs may have an inflationary impact on our economy.” And then everyone in the Starbucks™ clapped." Things like this don’t sound made up at all, and make us more relatable.

Again, the problem isn’t us and our message being incoherent or directly unconnected with reality. No. It’s someone else. And we’ll be the ones that will have to pick up the pieces, unless they put us in "Handmaid’s Tale" outfits and, oh, those thrusting hips. Whew. There must be Global Warming because it’s certainly getting hot in here."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

(Inspired by this piece of trash – LINK)

Rebecca Applebaum is the author of the books, "Why Not Me: Why Do Men Ignore Me" and the follow-up,"Why White Men Who Won’t Date Me Are the Cause Of All Bad Stuff, Especially Brad Who I Had A One-Night Stand With And Who Never Called Me Back."  Her new book, "Cats, Wine, and Toxoplasmosis Are Why I Hate Trump" is due to hit bookstores next month.

o

Related, and very real insanity...

Click image for larger size. Die laughing in scorn and ridicule.

"Plan 4B: Don't Spread For Red"

"‘No man will touch me until I have my rights back’: 

why is the 4B movement going viral after Trump’s win?"

- https://www.theguardian.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "The Next Phase Is Stagflation As The FED Fuels The Fire"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/7/24

"The Next Phase Is Stagflation 

As The FED Fuels The Fire"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Atmospheres"

Deuter, "Atmospheres"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex.

About five light-years "tall", the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434. Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left. The gorgeous color image combines both narrowband and broadband images recorded using three different telescopes.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100513.html

Chet Raymo, “Strange”

“Strange”

by Chet Raymo

“In a review in the “New York Times” Book Review, Daniel Handler writes: “And strange? Well, let’s get this straight: All great books are strange. Every lasting work of literature since the very weird “Beowulf” has been strange, not only because it grapples with the strangeness around us, but also because the effect of originality is startling, making even the oldest books feel like brand new stories.”

Strange: Out-of-the-ordinary, unusual, curious. “The strangeness around us,” says Handler. There is a paradox here. What could be less strange than the world around us? It is the same world that was here yesterday, and the day before that. More to the point: It is a world ruled by law. Inviolable causal bonds. That’s what makes science possible.

And yet, and yet. I walk wary. Strangeness lurks on ever side. Strangeness leaps out of every pebble in the path, every wildflower, every spider web flung between weedy stalks. In the midst of the utterly ordinary the extraordinary abounds. Nothing is so commonplace as to be common. The strangeness of the world, as in literature, has its source in the head, in the convoluted interaction of mind with world. Strange, that we should be here, strangers in a strange land, pilgrims on our own yellow brick roads where nothing is ordinary because everything is perceived through the filter of a unique consciousness.

And strange? Well, let’s get this straight. I hope never to lose the capacity to see the strangeness in the familiar, the curious in the everyday, the exception in the unexceptional. 

“I do not expect a miracle, 

or an accident, 

to set the sight on fire...” 

wrote Silvia Plath. Just being here is enough. Just being here is surpassing strange.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Most People..."

"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

Gerald Celente, "The Trump Boom: It's The Economy, Stupid!"

Gerald Celente, 11/7/24

"The Trump Boom: It's The Economy, Stupid!"

"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/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Israel in Turmoil"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 11/7/24

"Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Israel in Turmoil"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Housing Bubble Alert! Property Values Are Set To Plunge By 25% Until December"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 11/7/24

"Housing Bubble Alert! Property Values Are 

Set To Plunge By 25% Until December"

"Picture this: a quarter of your home’s value – gone by December. It sounds impossible, right? But across the U.S., we’re seeing the housing market shift in ways few could have predicted. The question is…how deep will it go? 2024 started with sky-high home prices, but that could all change soon, according to new reports. Let's be clear: A home price correction started months ago. In parts of the country, the correction has already been considerable.

But now, a sudden cooling trend is leaving sellers desperate and buyers cautious. With inventories rising and sales collapsing, experts are warning of a possible 25% drop before year’s end. They say a price crash is a risk in more than 200 markets across America. While that's great news for first time buyers, it's a huge blow for those who already own a home and have been benefiting from elevated prices. So, what’s triggering this drastic shift? Is it merely a bubble on the edge of bursting, or is something more profound at play? Let’s uncover the truth today."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Valley Center, Kansas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"War..."

"War does not determine who's right... only who's left."

- Bertrand Russell

"The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting

 each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals."

- Edward Abbey

"What Might Have Been..."

“Space I can recover. Time, never.” 

-  Napoleon Bonaparte

“Lands can be reconquered, indeed in the course of a battle, a hill or a certain plain might trade hands several times. But missed opportunities? These can never be regained. Moments in time, in culture? They can never be re-made. One can never go back in time to prepare for what they should have prepared for, no one can ever get back critical seconds that were wasted out of fear or ego. Napoleon was brilliant at trading space for time: Sure, you can make these moves, provided you are giving me the time I need to drill my troops, or move them to where I want them to be. Yet in life, most of us are terrible at this. We trade an hour of our life here or afternoon there like it can be bought back with the few dollars we were paid for it. And it is only much, much later, as they are on their deathbeds or when they are looking back on what might have been, that many people realize the awful truth of this quote. Don’t do that. Embrace it now.”

- Ryan Holiday

Dan, I Allegedly, "Business Looks Great From Here"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 11/7/24

"Business Looks Great From Here"

"Welcome back to IAllegedly! Today, we're diving into the alarming trend of mortgage applications plummeting 40% year-over-year. Despite the Fed's interest rate cuts, we're seeing a puzzling decline. Why aren’t people refinancing? Let’s unpack this economic shift. Plus, hear about the rising layoffs from big names like GoPro and Schaeffler, and how it signals a broader economic issue. We'll also explore the impact on industries like retail and automotive, showcasing incredible setups at SEMA in Vegas."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

"14 Words"

"14 Words"

by Paul Rosenberg

"Imagine a pretty spring day. You’re standing on your front porch or some other pleasant vantage point and looking out at a sunlit landscape: trees, grass, and singing birds. Then your five-year-old child or grandchild walks up to you and tugs on your hand to get your attention. You turn and the child asks, “What kind of world is this?” What do you reply?

This child deserves the truth. You won’t be able to use fancy words or long explanations, but truth doesn’t require those things. This child is ready to hear the truth about the world. This kind of moment comes along haphazardly, and you can’t be sure if or when another might show itself. Your answer may affect this child for the rest of his or her life. What do you say?

The 14 Words: As you stand on the porch, away from everything but nature and your child, the only intimidations, biases, and slogans present will be those inside of you… and your child should be insulated from such things. You have to speak truth. And as I say, it doesn’t have to be long and complex; in fact it can’t be, if you want to help a five year old. And it comes to just 14 words:

We are a beautiful species, living in a beautiful world, ruled by abusive systems.

Later – after true words have sunk into the young mind – you can explain that we’re not a perfectly beautiful species, that most people are often confused and that a few are just plain bad. You can further explain that volcanoes and hurricanes and grizzly bears exist. But if you value your child enough to tell them the plain truth, you’ll tell him or her the 14 words first and let them sink in before getting to the small print. With that said, I’ll move to some explanation for the adults.

A Beautiful Species: 11,000 or 12,000 years ago, humanity – perhaps five million of them – stumbled out from an ice age and began to spread across the earth, most of them having nothing in the way of science and technology. Since then, we’ve learned to fill the earth with food, build machines that race across the face of the earth, sail oceans and streams, and fly through the atmosphere at fantastic speeds. Imagine trying to explain these things to the people wandering away from their receding glaciers.

And not only this, but we’ve cured the vast majority of diseases, figured out the smallest parts of the machinery of life, built compendia of human knowledge, made them available anywhere and everywhere, and landed men on the moon. We are a magnificent species. If that triggers “Never forget the darkness!” voices in you, please hang on to “We are a magnificent species” until they subside.

Here are two passages from G.K. Chesterton’s book, "The Defendant," that bear upon dark, automatic thoughts: "There runs a strange law through the length of human history – that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility."

Every one of the great revolutionists, from Isaiah to Shelly, have been optimists. They have been indignant, not about the badness of existence, but about the slowness of men in realizing its goodness. You can find the same thing in the Bible, by the way. Theologies be damned, this is what Psalm 82 says, and which Jesus repeated: "You are gods; all of you children of the most High."

A Beautiful World: This is a beautiful world. Get out and look at it: lay outside on a summer night and gaze at the stars for an hour; explore the wilderness. Don’t watch it on TV; go out and experience it. It is beautiful. Perhaps not perfectly beautiful, but one flaw among fifty beauties does not negate those beauties.

Abusive Systems: We all know the systems that rule mankind are abusive. I’m not going to itemize, since we complain about these things every day. You already know. The problem with most of mankind is not that they can’t recognize abuse; it’s that they think they deserve it.

Now, let’s be clear on another thing: Rulership requires us to stay focused on evil. They have to frighten people and portray their competitors as “evil Huns.” They have to publicize threat levels and convince people they need to be saved from impending death. And of course, their dear friends in the media promote evil-consciousness 24/7. Do you think, just maybe, that all this fear has bad effects upon us?

The Truth: The truth is that we are surrounded by people who cooperate, who assist one another, and who care about one another. But those aren’t the things we think about – those are things we’ve learned to ignore. The flashing images of evil surround us and scream at us, after all: The Russians are going to attack, the other candidate is going to destroy all you hold dear, SARS (or bird flu or swine flu or Ebola) is about to kill us all! It’s a long, dark symphony of manipulation. The truth is we’re a beautiful species, living in a beautiful world. The systems that wish to rule us are quite otherwise."

- www.freemansperspective.com

"The Signs Of The Next Times"

"The Signs Of The Next Times"

by The ZMan

"One of the weird things about how the American empire operates is that there is a long waiting period between the presidential election and the installation of the winner, if the winner is not the incumbent. In most countries with elections, the transition happens within a week or two of the election. In America, the new president has months to wait for his turn at the wheel and the outgoing administration has months to do their worst, often with the goal of hobbling the next president.

The latter was on full display after the 2016 election. The last months of the Obama administration were used to set up the Russian collusion hoax, along with other schemes to prevent a smooth transition. The Trump administration was crippled right out of the gate, forced to go through the absurd theater of a special counsel to investigate what everyone knew was a political dirty trick. Between November and January, the fate of the Trump administration was sealed.

That is something to keep in mind this time. Like 2016, the political class was sure they had fended off the invisible army of orange Hitlers, only to find that their blue wall had crumbled once again. Unlike 2016 there was no way for them to claim it was fraudulent or illegitimate, since the results were conclusive. This may explain the relative quiet this time compared to 2016. By the standards of presidential elections, this was a trouncing in both the electoral college and popular vote.

It is possible that the energy has run out of crazy land. People want to think the madness set in during the 2016 election, but it started way back in 2000 when the people we call the left went nuts over the Florida recount. It has been a steady decline into madness for over two decades. That is a long time to sit in the pumpkin patch waiting for the conspiracy theories to be proven true. Perhaps they got tired of waiting and are making their way back to the fringes of sanity.

It is impossible to know, primarily because it is impossible for the non-ideological to understand the mind of an ideologue. The former group tends to the practical, while the latter tends to the fanciful. Most people think half a loaf is better than no loaf, while the ideologues look at such a compromise as a conspiracy against the tides of history and a justification for violence. It is why normal people are always surprised by how the ideologues react to events.

The best we can do is look for clues around the issues of the day. Project Ukraine, for example, has been central to the usual suspects for a decade. Trump is no fan of this project, and he is no fan of Ukraine. People tend to forget that Ukraine was central to his first impeachment. The people responsible for Project Ukraine are the main players in the anti-Trump stuff going back to 2016. They are also something like a drug-resistant virus that never stops trying to kill the host.

At the moment, what we are getting is the usual stuff from the usual suspects laundered in regime media as news and analysis. This Wall Street Journal story tries to frame the Trump plan as a choice between Russia surrendering or Russia giving Ukraine time to regroup and restart the war after Trump. This is the same narrative they have been shopping in one form or another for a year. In other words, the usual suspects may not have a scheme ready for Trump 2.0.

Another place to look for clues is in the antiwhite subculture. They have been weirdly muted for the past year. One reason is the backlash to DEI that took down a few prominent people. These were financed by members of the economic elite, which might mean money is drying up for the antiwhite bigots. This tweet from New York Times rage head Ida Bae Wells reads like a resignation letter. In 2016 these bigots were enraged by Trump winning, but this time they are despondent.

The antiwhite race rackets are worth billions, so there is no reason to think their relative quiet this time is a sign that they are about to fold up their tents and get jobs down at the local Home Depot. It is worth noting that crying “white nationalism” has lost all its punch over the last few years. In other words, their muted response could be part of a longer downward trend or simply part of a regrouping. Like the neocons, how these people respond over the next months will provide some clues.

Another area to watch to get a sense of what is happening is the media. Crazies like Rachel Maddow were slightly less nutty this time, but other nodes on the media rage machine were strangely sober. Again, the decisive victory this time might be the issue as there is no easy bogeyman for them to blame. On the other hand, the Biden debate performance and the aftermath may have broken whatever spell had kept these people within the narrative.

It feels like a lifetime ago, but the night of the Trump – Biden debate, it was clear that the chattering skulls were stunned to see that desiccated husk of Joe Biden drooling on himself and staring into the nothingness. It is possible that there was some sort of awakening among some parts of the media. These people are sociopaths, so no one should be optimistic, but how they react over the next months will provide some clues as to what is happening behind the scenes.

There are plenty of other places to look, but the reason it feels like there is an eerie calm over the battlefield is everyone expected the orcs to keep fighting, despite the results of the election. Instead, they have retreated over the hill and are murmuring amongst themselves. The thing to accept is they never quit. They will be back, so the question is in what form will they return? What path back to perfidy will they take in the coming months to continue the fight?"

- https://thezman.com/

o

"The Meltdowns And The Tantrums Have Begun"

"No Amount Of Evidence..."

"No amount of evidence will ever convince an idiot."

– Mark Twain

Gregory Mannarino, "Trump Doubles Down On Crypto; Updates: Stocks, Banks, Crypto, Gold"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/7/24

"Trump Doubles Down On Crypto;

 Updates: Stocks, Banks, Crypto, Gold"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "Punched in the Face"

"Punched in the Face"

The Trump Team will stick with the Primary Political Trend, which is toward more 

spending, bigger deficits and more debt. Investment markets know what time it is.

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - “That’s it. I’m voting for Trump.” Such were the words of [a member of our own household] when she got back from the grocery store on Monday. “I got a single bag of groceries. I’m sure it would have cost me about $50 a few years ago. Now, it’s $120. It’s no wonder Trump has so much support.” With these thoughts the country veered away from ‘more of the same’... to... more of the same. And today, we celebrate the exquisite blockheadedness of our great democracy.

The stock market reacted yesterday... anticipating easier credit. The Dow rose more than 1,500 points. And the world’s 10 richest people ended the day $64 billion dollars richer. During the four years of the Trump Team, 2016-2020, the US saw the greatest wingding of government spending in history. The federal budget went from $3.8 trillion in outlays during Obama’s last year, to $7.2 trillion in Trump’s last year. The nation had never seen anything like it... with trillions out the door and down the drains in stimmies, PPP loans, and the like.

And then, as if that weren’t enough, the Biden Team came into office and added another $1.2 trillion of boondoggles and giveaways. What happens when you add that kind of money to the economy? Milton Friedman, recently channeled by Elon Musk, explained:

"Inflation is made in Washington because only Washington can create money, and any other attribution to other groups of inflation is wrong. Consumers don’t produce it. Producers don’t produce it. The trade unions don't produce it. Foreign sheiks don't produce it. Oil imports don't produce it. What produces it is too much government spending and too much government creation of money and nothing else."

Chad Champion adds empirical evidence: "A recent study out of MIT showed that “the overwhelming driver of that burst of inflation in 2022 was federal spending, not the supply chain.” Recall that there was about $7.5 trillion in additional spending from March 2020 when COVID hit, through December 2022."

Trump planted wicked seed. Biden (and Harris) fertilized it and reaped the bitter harvest. Price increases showed up the year after Trump left office, with inflation ramping up to a 7% annual rate in the first quarter. In June, 2022, inflation hit a 9% rate. And while the rate of inflation has come down since then, the effect of sustained inflation at relatively high rates has raised prices across the board.

During the Biden years, the cost of energy rose 34%. Car insurance went up 56%. Hotels 45%. Peanut butter, 41%. The price of the basic Ford F-150 went from $30,000 in 2019 to $39,000 today - up 30%. The price of a new house rose from $380,000 in 2019 to more than $500,000 today - a 25% increase.

More than any human being on the planet, Donald Trump was responsible for these price increases. He was where the buck should have stopped. Instead, he passed out trillions of bucks. These are the bucks that raised consumer prices... and turned people against the Biden Team, helping Donald Trump retake the White House.

And now, apart from the personal wackiness and unpredictability of the man himself, the Trump Team will stick with the Primary Political Trend... which is toward more spending, bigger deficits and more debt. Investment markets know what time it is. Barrons: "Treasury debt gets ‘punched in the face’. The Treasury market, arguably the world’s financial backbone, is seeing yields erupt higher as investors respond to the big shifts that could come from a second Donald Trump presidency. This isn’t a buying opportunity. The yield on the 10-year note, a metric that sets rates on mortgages and credit cards, leapt Wednesday to close at 4.425%, its highest end-of-day value since July, from 4.290% on Tuesday."

Bloomberg: "US Treasury yields surged - with the 30-year rising the most since the global flight to cash in March 2020 - as investors piled back into bets that Donald Trump’s return to the White House will boost inflation."

Donald Trump is, after all, a “low interest guy.” As a leveraged New York real estate speculator, he understands as well as anyone what artificially low interest rates can do for rich people with financial assets. But as we’ve seen, ultra-low rates have a wretched effect on the real economy and real people with real jobs. That is the indiscreet charm of American democracy. The politicians do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. And the public, bloodied and abused, then re-elects the scoundrels who did it to them."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Adventures With Danno, "I Was In Complete Shock At Kroger Today"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 11/7/24

"I Was In Complete Shock At Kroger Today"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Chrysalis"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Chrysalis"

“Oceans of strings and choirs, flutes and keyboards lift us 

out of the trials and tribulations of our daily lives as though 

we were on a ship with gossamer sails, sailing on the moonlight.” 

– Steve Ryals

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It's hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait, though. Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy sports characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars.

Remarkably, this deep image also finds NGC 3521 embedded in gigantic bubble-like shells. The shells are likely tidal debris, streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210402.html

"I Keep Saying That..."

"Angel: Well, I guess I kinda worked it out. If there's no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters... then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do. Now. Today. I fought for so long, for redemption, for a reward, and finally just to beat the other guy, but I never got it.

Kate Lockley: And now you do?

Angel: Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help, because I don't think people should suffer as they do. Because, if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.

Kate Lockley: Yikes. It sounds like you've had an epiphany.

Angel: I keep saying that, but nobody's listening."

- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0512846/quotes

"The Mark Of Him..."

“The barbarian hopes, and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.“

- Hilaire Belloco

Dan, I Allegedly, "It’s Time to Pay the Bill"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, PM 11/6/24

"It’s Time to Pay the Bill"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Scott Ritter: Hezbollah Wipes Out Israeli Ground War, IDF Collapses on All Fronts"

Danny Haiphong, 11/6/24

"Scott Ritter: Hezbollah Wipes Out Israeli Ground War, 

IDF Collapses on All Fronts"

Former UN Weapons Inspector and US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer Scott Ritter EXPOSES Israel's massive defeat at the hands of Hezbollah as the IDF's ground operation in Lebanon is put to a screeching halt. This must see video breaks down the massive impact that Israel's rapidly deteriorating situation in Lebanon will have on the region at large.

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Scott Ritter, "The Fall of Israel"

"The Day Has Been So Full Of Fret And Care..."

“The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smiles; and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone. Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night’s heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but angels of God.”

- Jerome K. Jerome

The Daily "Near You?"

Fort Smith, Arkansas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Too Often..."

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word,

a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring,

all of which have the potential to turn a life around."

- Leo Buscaglia

"The Last Time Always Happens Now"

"The Last Time Always Happens Now"

by David Cain

"William Irvine, an author and philosophy professor I’m a big fan of, often tries to point people towards a little-discussed fact of human life: "You always know when you’re doing something for the first time, and you almost never know when you’re doing something for the last time."

There was, or will be, a last time for everything you do, from climbing a tree to changing a diaper, and living with a practiced awareness of that fact can make even the most routine day feel like it’s bursting with blessings. Of all the lasting takeaways from my periodic dives into Stoicism, this is the one that has enhanced my life the most. I’ve touched on it before in my Stoicism experiment log and in a Patreon post, and I intend to write about it many more times in the future (but who can say?)

To explain why someone might want to start thinking seriously about last times, Bill Irvine asks us to imagine a rare but relatable event: going to your favorite restaurant one last time, knowing it’s about to close up for good.

Predictably, dining on this last-ever night makes for a much richer experience than almost all the other times you’ve eaten at that restaurant, but it’s not because the food, decor, or service is any different than usual. It’s better because you know it’s the last time, so you’re apt to savor everything you can about it, right down to the worn menus and tacky napkin rings. You’re unlikely to let any mistakes or imperfections bother you, and in fact you might find them endearing.

It becomes clearer than ever, in other words, how great it was while it lasted, and how little the petty stuff mattered. On that last dinner, you can set aside minor issues with ease, and appreciate even the most mundane details. Anything else would seem foolish, because you’re here now, and this is it. It might even occur to you that there’s no reason you couldn’t have enjoyed it this much every time you dined here – except that all the other times, you knew there would be more times, so you didn’t have to be so intentional about appreciating it.

That’s an exceptionally rare situation though. Almost always, we do things for the last time without knowing it’s the last time. There was a last time – on an actual calendar date – when you drew a picture with crayons purely for your own pleasure. A last time you excitedly popped a Blockbuster rental into your VCR. A last time you played fetch with a certain dog. Whenever the last time happened, it was “now” at the time.

You’ve certainly heard the heart-wrenching insight that there’s always a last time a parent picks up their child. By a certain age the child is too big, which means there’s always an ordinary day when the parent picks up and puts down their child as they have a thousand times before, with no awareness that it was the last time they would do it.

Ultimately there will be as many last times as there were first times. There will be last time you do laundry. A last time you eat pie. A last time you visit a favorite neighborhood, city, or country. For every single friend you’ve ever had, there will be a last time you talk, or maybe there already has been.

For ninety-nine percent of these last times, you will have no idea that that’s what it is. It will seem like another of the many middle times, with a lot more to come. If you knew it was the last-ever time you spoke to a certain person or did a certain activity, you’d probably make a point of appreciating it, like a planned last visit to Salvatore’s Pizzeria. You wouldn’t spend it thinking about something else, or let minor annoyances spoil it.

Many last times are still a long way in the future, of course. The trouble is you don’t know which ones. The solution, Irvine suggests, is to frequently imagine that this is the last time, even when it’s probably not. A few times a day, whatever you’re doing, you assume you’re doing that thing for the last time. There will be a last time you sip coffee, like you’re doing now. What if this sip was it? There will be a last time you walk into the office and say hi to Sally. If this was it, you might be a little more genuine, a little more present.

The point isn’t to make life into a series of desperate goodbyes. You can go ahead and do the thing more or less normally. You might find, though, that when you frame it as a potential last time, you pay more attention to it, and you appreciate it for what it is in a way you normally don’t. It turns out that ordinary days are full of experiences you expect will keep happening forever, and of course none of them will.

It doesn’t matter if the activity is something you particularly love doing. Walking into a 7-11 or weeding the garden is just as worthy of last-time practice as hugging a loved one. Even stapling the corner of some pages together can generate a sense of appreciation, if you saw it as your final act of stapling in a life that’s contained a surprising amount of stapling.

Irvine uses mowing the lawn as an example, a task he doesn’t love doing. If you imagine that this is the last time you’ll mow the lawn, rather than consider it a good riddance, you might realize that there will be a time when you’ve mown your last lawn, and that there were a lot of great things about living in your lawn-mowing, bungalow-maintaining heyday. A few seconds later, it dawns on you that you still are.

You can get very specific with the experiences you do this with. The last time you roll cookie dough between your palms. The last time you get rained on. The last time you sidestep down a crowded cinema aisle. The last time your jeans smell like campfire smoke. The last time your daughter says “swannich” instead of “sandwich.” Virtually everything is a worthy candidate for this reflection.

It always brings perspective to your life as it is now, and it never gets old. It’s an immensely rewarding exercise, but it not a laborious one. It takes only two or three seconds - allowing yourself “a flickering thought,” as Irvine put it - to notice what you’re doing right now, and consider the possibility that this is indeed the last escalator ride at Fairfield Mall, the last time you put on a Beatles record, the last time you encounter a squirrel, or the last time you parallel park in front of Aunt Rita’s building."

- https://www.raptitude.com/

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Full screen recommended.

The Rolling Stones, "The Last Time"

"Halt And Catch Fire"

"There's a great phrase, 'Halt and Catch Fire', which means, basically, you know sh&t's going to hit the fan, so you stop, accept it and move the [another expletive we'd prefer not to write] on. 'Halt and Catch Fire'is an early machine command that sent the machine into a race condition, forcing all conditions to compete for superiority at once." 

- Addison Wiggin

Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Great News, Civil War Averted! WW3 Cancelled? Economy Fixed?"

Canadian Prepper, 11/6/24

"Alert! Great News, Civil War Averted! 

WW3 Cancelled? Economy Fixed?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Politics of Cultural Despair"

"The Politics of Cultural Despair"

It is despair that is killing us. It fosters what the Roger Lancaster 

calls “poisoned solidarity,” the intoxication forged from 

the negative energies of fear, envy, hatred and a lust for violence.

by Mr. Fish

"In the end, the election was about despair. Despair over futures that evaporated with deindustrialization. Despair over the loss of 30 million jobs in mass layoffs. Despair over austerity programs and the funneling of wealth upwards into the hands of rapacious oligarchs. Despair over a liberal class that refuses to acknowledge the suffering it orchestrated under neoliberalism or embrace New Deal type programs that will ameliorate this suffering. Despair over the futile, endless wars, as well as the genocide in Gaza, where generals and politicians are never held accountable. Despair over a democratic system that has been seized by corporate and oligarchic power.

This despair has been played out on the bodies of the disenfranchised through opioid and alcoholism addictions, gambling, mass shootings, suicides - especially among middle-aged white males - morbid obesity and the investment of our emotional and intellectual life in tawdry spectacles and the allure of magical thinking, from the absurd promises of the Christian right to the Oprah-like belief that reality is never an impediment to our desires. These are the pathologies of a deeply diseased culture, what Friedrich Nietzsche calls an aggressive despiritualized nihilism.

Donald Trump is a symptom of our diseased society. He is not its cause. He is what is vomited up out of decay. He expresses a childish yearning to be an omnipotent god. This yearning resonates with Americans who feel they have been treated like human refuse. But the impossibility of being a god, as Ernest Becker writes, leads to its dark alternative - destroying like a god. This self-immolation is what comes next.

Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, along with the establishment wing of the Republican Party, which allied itself with Harris, live in their own non-reality-based belief system. Harris, who was anointed by party elites and never received a single primary vote, proudly trumped her endorsement by Dick Cheney, a politician who left office with a 13 percent approval rating. The smug, self-righteous “moral” crusade against Trump stokes the national reality television show that has replaced journalism and politics. It reduces a social, economic and political crisis to the personality of Trump. It refuses to confront and name the corporate forces responsible for our failed democracy. It allows Democratic politicians to blithely ignore their base - 77 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents support an arms embargo against Israel. The open collusion with corporate oppression and refusal to heed the desires and needs of the electorate neuters the press and Trump critics. These corporate puppets stand for nothing, other than their own advancement. The lies they tell to working men and women, especially with programs such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), do far more damage than any of the lies uttered by Trump.

Oswald Spengler in “The Decline of the West” predicted that, as Western democracies calcified and died, a class of “monied thugs,” people such as Trump, would replace the traditional political elites. Democracy would become a sham. Hatred would be fostered and fed to the masses to encourage them to tear themselves apart.

The American dream has become an American nightmare. The social bonds, including jobs that gave working Americans a sense of purpose and stability, that gave them meaning and hope, have been sundered. The stagnation of tens of millions of lives, the realization that it will not be better for their children, the predatory nature of our institutions, including education, health care and prisons, have engendered, along with despair, feelings of powerlessness and humiliation. It has bred loneliness, frustration, anger and a sense of worthlessness.

“When life is not worth living, everything becomes a pretext for ridding ourselves of it,” Émile Durkheim wrote. “There is a collective mood, as there is an individual mood, that inclines nations to sadness. For individuals are too closely involved in the life of society for it to be sick without their being affected. It's suffering inevitably becomes theirs.”

Decayed societies, where a population is stripped of political, social and economic power, instinctively reach out for cult leaders. I watched this during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. The cult leader promises a return to a mythical golden age and vows, as Trump does, to crush the forces embodied in demonized groups and individuals that are blamed for their misery. The more outrageous cult leaders become, the more cult leaders flout law and social conventions, the more they gain in popularity. Cult leaders are immune to the norms of established society. This is their appeal. Cult leaders seek total power. Those who follow them grant them this power in the desperate hope that the cult leaders will save them.

All cults are personality cults. Cult leaders are narcissists. They demand obsequious fawning and total obedience. They prize loyalty above competence. They wield absolute control. They do not tolerate criticism. They are deeply insecure, a trait they attempt to cover up with bombastic grandiosity. They are amoral and emotionally and physically abusive. They see those around them as objects to be manipulated for their own empowerment, enjoyment and often sadistic entertainment. All those outside the cult are branded as forces of evil, prompting an epic battle whose natural expression is violence.

We will not convince those who have surrendered their agency to a cult leader and embraced magical thinking through rational argument. We will not coerce them into submission. We will not find salvation for them or ourselves by supporting the Democratic Party. Whole segments of American society are now bent on self-immolation. They despise this world and what it has done to them. Their personal and political behavior is willfully suicidal. They seek to destroy, even if destruction leads to violence and death. They are no longer sustained by the comforting illusion of human progress, losing the only antidote to nihilism.

Pope John Paul II in 1981 issued an encyclical titled “Laborem exercens,” or “Through Work.” He attacked the idea, fundamental to capitalism, that work was merely an exchange of money for labor. Work, he wrote, should not be reduced to the commodification of human beings through wages. Workers were not impersonal instruments to be manipulated like inanimate objects to increase profit. Work was essential to human dignity and self-fulfillment. It gave us a sense of empowerment and identity. It allowed us to build a relationship with society in which we could feel we contributed to social harmony and social cohesion, a relationship in which we had purpose.

The pope castigated unemployment, underemployment, inadequate wages, automation and a lack of job security as violations of human dignity. These conditions, he wrote, were forces that negated self-esteem, personal satisfaction, responsibility and creativity. The exaltation of the machine, he warned, reduced human beings to the status of slaves. He called for full employment, a minimum wage large enough to support a family, the right of a parent to stay home with children, and jobs and a living wage for the disabled. He advocated, in order to sustain strong families, universal health insurance, pensions, accident insurance and work schedules that permitted free time and vacations. He wrote that all workers should have the right to form unions with the ability to strike.

We must invest our energy into organizing mass movements to overthrow the corporate state through sustained acts of mass civil disobedience. This includes the most powerful weapon we possess – the strike. By turning our ire on the corporate state, we name the true sources of power and abuse. We expose the absurdity of blaming our demise on demonized groups such as undocumented workers, Muslims or Blacks. We give people an alternative to a corporate-indentured Democratic Party that cannot be rehabilitated. We make possible the restoration of an open society, one that serves the common good rather than corporate profit. We must demand nothing less than full employment, guaranteed minimum incomes, universal health insurance, free education at all levels, robust protection of the natural world and an end to militarism and imperialism. We must create the possibility for a life of dignity, purpose and self-esteem. If we do not, it will ensure a Christianized fascism and ultimately, with the accelerating genocide, our obliteration."

- https://chrishedges.substack.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Massive Price Increases At Dollar General & Empty Shelves Everywhere"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, AM 11/6/24

"Massive Price Increases At Dollar General & 

Empty Shelves Everywhere"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Trump Shocks The World (This Is Karma); Stock Market Goes Crazy; When Does the Chaos Begin?"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/6/24

"Trump Shocks The World (This Is Karma); 

Stock Market Goes Crazy; When Does the Chaos Begin?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "The Primary Political Trend"

"The Primary Political Trend"

Big Government was triumphant. And Big Government means big spending, 

big budgets, big deficits, big debt... and knucklehead, big-shot delusions.

by Bill Bonner

"Yes, I know I've been untrue.

And I have hurt you through and through.

But please have mercy on this heart of mine,

Take me back and try me one more time."

- Ernest Tubb

Baltimore, Maryland - "Finally, the election fever has broken. The sun still shines. The world still turns. Beer still goes flat. The nation has taken Donald J. Trump back. It will give him another try.

Last week came an opinion from Rana Foroohar in the Financial Times. It’s not too late, she says. We can still make America great again. All we need to do is to identify the problems and make the right choices. Just as we did in the 1890s.

"Both countries [Britain and the US] were ultimately able to pass sweeping reforms that improved workers’ rights and labour standards, increased access to education, enfranchised new groups of voters and so on.  The national renewal of Victorian Britain and Progressive-era America reflect this point. In both cases, political and business figures, activists, trade unions and various grassroots movements were part of a robust national discussion about reform. I’d argue that this factor is also present in the US today where, despite political polarization, there is a rich bottom-up debate about how the country should change."

Oh my. Ms. Foroohar completely misunderstands what happened. She thinks that anti-trust legislation... labor protections... giving women the vote - the conscious efforts of well-meaning citizens in the late 19th century - pulled the country out of a funk.

What really happened, we believe, was just the opposite. The 1880s were the most successful years in America’s history... with more wealth and more freedom than we had before or since. But then, prosperity and success turned Americans’ heads. They came to believe that they could force other people to do things that would make a better world. They passed new laws. They wrote new rules. They hired G-men…government men…to enforce the ruling elites’ decrees.

“There are tides in the affairs of men,” wrote Shakespeare. Just as there are ‘Primary Trends’ in markets...there are tides in politics, too...powerful currents that have a life of their own. These deep currents are not driven by what people want or what they think; instead, like an unrelenting river, they carve the valleys, shape the stones, and erode the shorelines of human thought.

And now...in what direction does the water flow? Whatever it is, the president is elected to follow, not to lead. He drifts with the Primary Political Trend; he doesn’t create it. For all the arguments about whose economy - Trump’s or Biden’s - was better, the truth is, presidents don’t really affect near-term results very much. Whatever trend was underway when the new president entered the White House is the same trend we’re likely to have when the president leaves.

Year after year, administration after administration...ever since Jimmy Carter left the White House, federal power has increased. Budgets got bigger. Deficits got larger too. The three biggest spenders in US history (in terms of the percentage of debt added) were Roosevelt, Wilson and Reagan, in that order. Roosevelt had a war to deal with. Wilson found a war he could get into. And Reagan thought he was in a life-or-death struggle with communism. No matter what their thoughts...they all did the same thing - expanding the reach of the Federal government.

Reagan was obviously mistaken. By 1991, communism - a creed based largely on fantasy economic theory - had collapsed. At that point, the US could have enjoyed a massive “Peace Dividend.” For the next 33 years, America faced no real military challenge.

But by the ‘90s, it was too late. The current was too strong. There was no choice. Big Government was triumphant. And Big Government means big spending, big budgets, big deficits, big debt... and knucklehead, big-shot delusions. And now, happy days are here again. Mr. Trump - whose first administration added more new government debt/year than any other in history - can get back to work."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

o

Ernest Tubb, 'Try Me One More Time"

Jeremiah Babe, "Brace For Impact, Your Life Depends On Tonight's Election"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/5/24

"Brace For Impact, 

Your Life Depends On Tonight's Election"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald Celente, "Live Election Night - Trends Analysis & Consequences"

Full screen recommended.

Gerald Celente, 11/5/24

"Live Election Night - 

Trends Analysis & Consequences"

Tune in for Live Coverage of the U.S presidential election 

with Gerald Celente, Scott Ritter, Garland Nixon, and Joe Lauria"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Prelude, "After The Gold Rush"

Prelude, "After The Gold Rush", Studio version.

Prelude, "After The Gold Rush", Live version.