Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 11/16/27
"BRICS Better Get Ready,
Trump Is About To End The Fed"
Comments here:
o
Richard Wolff, 11/16/24
"BRICS Countries Replacing
the US dollar in International Trade"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, November 16, 2024
"A Look to the Heavens"
"NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a reflection nebula, dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by interstellar dust. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus, it lies at the edge of a large, star-forming molecular cloud.
This telescopic close-up spans about two full moons on the sky or just over 15 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 1333. It shows details of the dusty region along with telltale hints of contrasty red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars. In fact, NGC 1333 contains hundreds of stars less than a million years old, most still hidden from optical telescopes by the pervasive stardust. The chaotic environment may be similar to one in which our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago."
Paulo Coelho, "Killing Our Dreams"
"Killing Our Dreams"
by Paulo Coelho
"The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the Good Fight.
The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the Good Fight.
And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams – we have refused to fight the Good Fight.
When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illnesses and psychoses arise. What we sought to avoid in combat – disappointment and defeat – come upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of our Sunday afternoons."
The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the Good Fight.
And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams – we have refused to fight the Good Fight.
When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illnesses and psychoses arise. What we sought to avoid in combat – disappointment and defeat – come upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of our Sunday afternoons."
"Benedicto"
"The summit is believed to be the object of the climb. But its true object - the joy of living - is not in the peak itself, but in the adversities encountered on the way up. There are valleys, cliffs, streams, precipices, and slides, and as he walks these steep paths, the climber may think he cannot go any farther, or even that dying would be better than going on. But then he resumes fighting the difficulties directly in front of him, and when he is finally able to turn and look back at what he has overcome, he finds he has truly experienced the joy of living while on life's very road."
- Eiji Yoshikawa
○
"Benedicto"
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you - beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.”
- Edward Abbey
"Making Your Best Guess"
"Making Your Best Guess"
by Arthur Silber
"We are not gods, and we are not omniscient. We cannot foretell the future with certainty. Most often, cultural and political changes are terribly complex. It can be notoriously difficult to predict exactly where a trend will take us, and we can be mistaken. We do the best we can: if we wish to address certain issues seriously, we study history, and we read everything that might shed light on our concerns. We consult what the best thinkers of our time and of earlier times have said and written. We challenge everyone's assumptions, including most especially our own. That last is often very difficult. If we care enough, we do our best to disprove our own case. In that way, we find out how strong our case is, and where its weaknesses may lie.
Barring extraordinary circumstances, we cannot be certain that a particular development represents a critical turning point at the time it occurs. If we dare to say, "This is the moment the battle was lost," only future events will prove whether we were correct. We do the best we can, based on our understanding of how similar events have unfolded in the past, and in light of our understanding of the underlying principles in play. We can be wrong. "
“The Bewildered Herd..."
“The bewildered herd is a problem. We've got to prevent their roar and trampling. We've got to distract them. They should be watching the Superbowl or sitcoms or violent movies. Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like "Support our troops!" You've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they're properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they're not competent to think. Therefore it's important to distract them and marginalize them.”
- Noam Chomsky
○
"Those who can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities."
- Voltaire
The Poet: Rolf Jacobsen, "When They Sleep"
"When They Sleep"
"All people are children when they sleep.
There's no war in them then.
They open their hands and breathe
in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.
They pucker their lips like small children
and open their hands halfway,
soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.
The stars stand guard
and a haze veils the sky,
a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.
If only we could speak to one another then
when our hearts are half-open flowers.
Words like golden bees
would drift in.
God, teach me the language of sleep."
- Rolf Jacobsen,
"The Roads Have Come to an End Now"
"The Aenean Challenge" (Excerpt)
"The Aenean Challenge" (Excerpt)
The Reality of the Present Confronts the Possibility of the Future
by The Tree Of Woe
Excerpt: "Last week, in an uncharacteristic moment of optimism inspired by the red wave that swept across America, I announced the dawn of a new civilization - one based on what I call the Aenean soul, the successor to the Faustian soul that has animated the West from the Renaissance until now. But, in truth, the new civilization has not yet dawned. We remain in the twilight of the Faustian age. And in these darkening hours, the West faces a confluence of crises, some proclaimed loudly by environmentalists, others muttered in shadowed corners of boardrooms, and still others dismissed by those who believe tomorrow must always resemble today.
These crises are rooted in resource depletion, and they threaten to collapse Western civilization long before it can achieve its Aenean destiny. The prophets of decline - be they neo-Malthusians or the stewards of the Club of Rome - warn of limits that cannot be ignored. The Faustian soul denied that such limits existed except in the minds of doomsayers. The Aenean soul acknowledges the limits but aims to overcome them with courage and wisdom. This article is my effort to make that acknowledgment and assess the challenges we face."
Full, lengthy, and most highly recommended article is here:
"My Task..."
“My task, which I am trying to achieve, is by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel; it is, before all, to make you see. That and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there, according to your deserts, encouragement, consolation, fear, charm, all you demand – and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.”
- Joseph Conrad
“Thoughts on Evil, Human Nature”
“Thoughts on Evil, Human Nature”
by W. Christopher Epler
“Carl Sagan, author and astrophysicist from Cornell, used to wonder if atomic weaponry would be the nemesis of most “advanced species”. A flight of fancy of sorts since whales and elephants are certainly advanced species but don’t feel the need for technology (and should we patronize them for this since they aren’t rapidly destroying the planet?). Is it possible that much of science and technology are actually synonyms of self destructive stupidity? A kind of short sighted greed, perhaps.
In any event, what has now totally blocked the evolution of the human species is pure evil. The fringe of astronomically rich sociopaths is the absolute outer limit of evil. Similarly, so do all mentally ill religious fanatics poison the march of human civilization. And, probably most of all, the Earth’s Paris Hiltons and astronomically rich parasites (and vampires – remember, it’s all really OUR wealth), necessitate convoluted social/financial structures and processes which are the “crown of thorns” or highway to hell (or your metaphor of choice) for Homo sapiens. Maybe the wrong species got killed off during the demise of the Neanderthals.
Remember, “human” is a generic word that evolution has experimented with in actually a great many forms – we’re just the form that is still standing. But what’s the problem? Not a candy ass “religious” problem or a candy ass “political” problem but THE problem? Why is our species well on its way to going extinct? Indeed, why is it a near certainly that Home sapiens are going bye bye in the relatively near future (and taking countless “innocent by-stander” species with us in the process)? However, alas, they are just a sample of evil, since evil is as omnipresent as our breath. But what IS evil? Well, we don’t have to get particularly metaphysical about this. Evil is a function of human society. It has to do with the interactions of quantities of us (or probably any advanced life form).
So there’s a decidedly “quantitative” variable here. As our numbers increase, so does the complexity of our social infrastructure. And that seems to be the rub, since invisibly and insidiously the “social game rules” are conditioned into our vulnerable, biological brains. And just here is the door to hell. This dimension can be called “consensus reality” and it’s an admixture of language (always language!), the past, memory (not always our friend), and the miscellaneous conditionings of our time, place, and families (often profoundly dysfunctional). More openly, here are the programmed religions, laws, constitutions, and “theories” we so love to worship. In short, here is the stopping point of our species. Not atomic weapons, but the accumulated programming of years of social/psychological conditioning. The “operational definition” of all of the above is thought, because consensus realty IS thought; hence the thing the human race does best is think itself to death.
On a positive note, words like liberation, transcendence, and Enlightenment are “mystical” (the shoe fits) alternatives to this “swallowed whole” existence. The intelligence limitations of our species are still sublimely unknown, but whatever pragmatic value consensus reality may offer, our lives don’t even BEGIN until we get straight that this fire storm of conditioning that has become the “mind set” of the entire human race (indeed, the very “God” of the human race), is fundamentally, radically, and biologically arbitrary and random. In the context of this piece, what this means is that the social game rules that perpetuate the “Have’s,” that justify their astronomical wealth and power, and that (worst of all!) give an obscene “righteousness” to deranged lunatics who so love to commit genocide for the glory of God, aren’t worth the toilet paper they are printed on.
And exactly here is where our species is probably doomed, since many are called but few are chosen when it comes to being true to your birthright self and finding a reality/creativity/intelligence center that trivializes millennia of evil-perpetuating conditioning. Remember phrases like, “Might makes right”, “Manifest Destiny”, “survival of the fittest” (translation, survival of the wealthiest), and the loathsomely hypocritical “Divine Right”.
Of course these sayings (and even laws) are merely the tip of the iceberg. The dungeon is elsewhere. It is deep within the infrastructure of the collective human mind. Do we know that it is infinitely unjust that the elites spend more money on their wardrobes than most of us spend on our families in an entire lifetime? Do we know it is evil when religious fanatics try to steal an entire country and turn the lives of the people who have been living there for centuries into a WW2 concentration camp?
One response to these questions could be that we’re not sure if these things are evil, but almost certainly the world does know these things are filthy, evil, and infinitely unjust. However, you can know things on the “surface” of your mind that you play games with in the depths of your mind. The tragedy is that the world basically turns the other way from these evils and injustices because in the depths of our conditioning we are historically programmed to accept them. Hence, it is the deep, collective mind set that permits and justifies evil. We know better, but our “unconscious” (to use that word) “accepts” evil because we have been programmed to adapt to it for millennia.
The literally unimaginable suffering that necessarily goes with the existence of Greek God-like elites would make Jesus weep, but we accept The Haves (the evil) – indeed, most of us probably envy them. This is the paradox of evil. If we didn’t “accept” evil, it couldn’t exist! But since literally billions of us DO accept evil, that makes us an evil species.
This is not intellectualizing or empty theory. If the human race said no to “The Beast”, to the “Have’s”, to genocidal religious fanatics, to the Rockefeller’s, to the Rothschild’s, to the Bush’s, to murder in the name of God subhuman filth, to Saudi Princes, etc., etc., we could destroy them in a week. And I mean “non theoretically” destroy them in a week. Remove them from the planet as in cease to exist – now you see them, now you don’t! There are times in life you must be limitlessly aggressive. We can either watch The Beast destroy Mother Nature and our children’s future, or WE can destroy the beast. Remember, we know exactly who they are and we know exactly where they are. So what in the name of truth, beauty, and goodness are we waiting for? Certainly not for the paper bullets of religion and politics. ULTIMATE hardball is the name of this game.
Hence, looked at one way, there is great hope. Looked at another way, it is hopeless. It all comes down to how each of us deals with a lifetime of conditioning. Liberation is transcending the box. The world IS the box. So consensus reality (the home of evil) can be left. This is called being true to ourselves, or perhaps even Enlightenment. However, as a species, the probability that we will leave the box in sufficient percentages to “eliminate” evil is probably very, very small. Fortunately, even though our paralyzed and conditioned species continues to equate life with a moronically defective consensus mind set, each of us is still able to stretch our intelligence/spiritual eagle wings and leave this evil box forever. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: we’re the dogs – never the tails.”
o
Freely download “Beyond Good And Evil”, by Friedrich Nietzsche, here:
"Do You Wish To Know?"
"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"
"I... don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him?"
"To shrug."
- Ayn Rand, “Atlas Shrugged”
o
"Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard - the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money - the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law - men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims - then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed."
An excerpt from “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand.
Full text of “Francisco’s Money Speech” is here:
Freely download "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand, here:
"Bankruptcies Will Surge 118% As Layoffs Smash 2009 Financial Crisis Levels"
Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, AM 11/16/24
"Bankruptcies Will Surge 118% As
Layoffs Smash 2009 Financial Crisis Levels"
"Recent data indicates that achieving the Federal Reserve's 2% inflation target may require more time than initially anticipated. Concurrently, companies are grappling with significant challenges to their sustainability, resulting in layoffs reaching historic levels not seen since 2009. As bankruptcies continue to surge, we're looking at the worst financial crash in the last 20 years."
Comments here:
"Wars And Rumors Of Wars"
War Echo Zone TV, 11/16/24
"Scott Ritter: 30,000 Russia Troops Land In Iran,
Netanyahu Pushes Israel to Death"
"Scott Ritter provides a critical analysis of the intensifying geopolitical crisis in the Middle East, spotlighting the reported deployment of 30,000 Russian troops to Iran and its implications for the region. He discusses Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s aggressive strategies, which are pushing Israel into a precarious position, while the U.S. allegedly considers nuclear options to counter Iran’s growing power. Ritter examines the risks of escalation, the shifting balance of power with Russia’s involvement, and the catastrophic consequences of nuclear confrontation, emphasizing the urgent need for diplomacy and restraint."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Times Of India, 11/16/24
Elon Musk Shocks Zelensky On Ukraine;
'Not Putin, But U.S. Responsible
"Elon Musk shared a video of economist Jeffrey D. Sachs on X, where Sachs criticized U.S. and NATO expansion, blaming it for provoking Russia's military response in Ukraine. Sachs argued that U.S. ambitions to include Ukraine in NATO, despite Putin's warnings, escalated the conflict."
Comments here:
o
600,000 dead Ukrainian soldiers, 80,000 dead Russians, 20 million refugees escape to neighboring countries, $150 BILLION in "aid" to Ukraine while our own country rapidly descends into economic, social and societal chaos and destruction... WHY? Cui bono?
Adventures With Danno, "Very Shocking Prices At Aldi, Here We Go"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 11/16/24
"Very Shocking Prices At Aldi, Here We Go"
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "Banks Preparing For A Major Crisis"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 11/16/24
"Banks Preparing For A Major Crisis"
"Banks are hiding a dark secret about commercial real estate. Join me as we uncover the looming crisis and its potential impact on the economy. Hey everyone, it's Dan from IAllegedly. In today's video, we dive into the troubling state of commercial real estate loans and how banks are preparing for massive failures. We'll explore the Fed's recent report, Jamie Dimon's surprising statements, and the potential for banking deregulation."
Comments here:
Friday, November 15, 2024
Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Nuclear War With Iran! Economic Crash!"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 11/15/24
"Alert! Nuclear War With Iran! Economic Crash!"
Comments here:
"Target Is Rapidly Deteriorating Before Our Eyes, And It’s Worse Than You Realize"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 11/15/24
"Target Is Rapidly Deteriorating Before Our Eyes,
And It’s Worse Than You Realize"
"Target seems to be facing a never-ending nightmare. Since early 2022, its financial performance has been disappointing executives and investors alike, and it’s been raising alarms cross the entire retail industry. How one of the biggest American companies can sustain itself if sales are falling all across the board quarter after quarter?
In fact, just a few months ago, Target revealed that it faced the first full-year decline in sales in a long time. This means the retail giant has faced acute losses for four quarters in a row in 2023, and it's on track for a repeat in 2024 as inflation-weary shoppers cut back on discretionary purchases, which accounts for more than half of Target's merchandise. The retailer is now taking desperate measures to save its business, but that may not be enough to prevent its imminent downfall. The chain continues to close multiple locations using excuses that do not stick anymore.
Something far more disturbing is behind Target’s woes. Target is a barometer of the American consumer. When shoppers are struggling financially, it shows on the retailer's bottom line. In October, the chain reported that, in 2023, it faced its first full-year of sales declines in seven years. Between Q1 and Q4 sales dropped by an average of 3.7% per quarter, a very concerning development considering that, in 2022, sales growth was already dismal, at just 0.8% year-over-year. In that year, the company lost money in all four quarters, but not mainly due to lower sales volumes. Target was forced to take a profit hit as it slashed prices for thousands of items consumers were not interested to buy.
The industry titan saw profits dropping by 49% in Q1, 90% in Q2, 54% in Q3, and 52% in Q4. That cost the chain an estimated $8 billion, according to retail experts. Now, CEO Brian Cornell is predicting a sluggish 2024 given that economic conditions have further deteriorated Americans purchasing power.
Target's middle-class customer base has been strained by higher prices over the past couple of years, leading many to pull back on discretionary goods. So far in 2024, Target’s sales have declined for three straight quarters, hinting that it might end in the red for yet another year. Investors are panicking about the prospect of another unprofitable quarter, and they have been dumping Target stock at an unprecedented rate. The company's shares have dropped by 43% since its peak."
Comments here:
"Things Aren't Normal; Social Security Is A Ticking Time Bomb, You Will Work Till You Die"
Jeremiah Babe, 11/15/24
"Things Aren't Normal; Social Security Is A Ticking Time Bomb,
You Will Work Till You Die"
Comments here:
Musical Interlude: Soothing Relaxation, "Stardust: Relaxing Fantasy Music with Beautiful Night Skies"
Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation, "Stardust:
Relaxing Fantasy Music with Beautiful Night Skies"
"Relaxing fantasy music with beautiful night skies filled with stars.
This soothing instrumental music is called "Stardust" by Peder B. Helland."
"I am a composer from Norway and I started this channel with a simple vision: to create a place that you can visit whenever you want to sit down and relax. I compose music that often can be described as sleep music, calm music, yoga music, study music, peaceful music, beautiful music and relaxing music. I love to compose music and I put a lot of work into it.
Thank you very much for listening and for leaving feedback. Every single day I am completely astonished by all your warm support and it really inspires me to work even harder on my music. If you enjoy my work, I would be very happy if you decided to subscribe and join our community. Have a wonderful day or evening!"
Peder B. Helland, composer for Soothing Relaxation
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Blown by fast winds from a hot, massive star, this cosmic bubble is huge. Cataloged as Sharpless 2-308 it lies some 5,000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Big Dog (Canis Major) and covers slightly more of the sky than a Full Moon. That corresponds to a diameter of 60 light-years at its estimated distance. The massive star that created the bubble, a Wolf-Rayet star, is the bright one near the center of the nebula. Wolf-Rayet stars have over 20 times the mass of the Sun and are thought to be in a brief, pre-supernova phase of massive star evolution.
Fast winds from this Wolf-Rayet star create the bubble-shaped nebula as they sweep up slower moving material from an earlier phase of evolution. The windblown nebula has an age of about 70,000 years. Relatively faint emission captured by narrowband filters in the deep image is dominated by the glow of ionized oxygen atoms mapped to a blue hue. Presenting a mostly harmless outline, SH2-308 is also known as The Dolphin-head Nebula.”
The Poet: Mary Oliver, “October”
“October”
"There’s this shape, black as the entrance to a cave.
A longing wells up in its throat
like a blossom
as it breathes slowly.
What does the world
mean to you if you can’t trust it
to go on shining when you’re
not there? and there’s
a tree, long-fallen; once
the bees flew to it, like a procession
of messengers, and filled it
with honey.
I said to the chickadee, singing his heart out in the
green pine tree:
little dazzler
little song,
little mouthful.
The shape climbs up out of the curled grass. It
grunts into view. There is no measure
for the confidence at the bottom of its eyes-
there is no telling
the suppleness of its shoulders as it turns
and yawns.
Near the fallen tree
something - a leaf snapped loose
from the branch and fluttering down - tries to pull me
into its trap of attention.
It pulls me into its trap of attention,
And when I turn again, the bear is gone.
Look, hasn’t my body already felt
like the body of a flower?
Look, I want to love this world
as thought it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get
to be alive and know it.
Sometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not
the flowers, not the blackberries
brimming in the thickets; I won’t drink
from the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees;
I won’t whisper my own name.
One morning
the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
and didn’t see me - and I thought:
so this is the world.
I’m not in it.
It is beautiful."
- Mary Oliver
Dan, I Allegedly, "The End of Shoplifting?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, PM 11/15/24
"The End of Shoplifting?"
Comments here:
"Prime Minister Winston Churchill's Address to Harrow School on October 29, 1941"
"Prime Minister Winston Churchill's Address
to Harrow School on October 29, 1941"
"Almost a year has passed since I came down here at your Head Master's kind invitation in order to cheer myself and cheer the hearts of a few of my friends by singing some of our own songs. The ten months that have passed have seen very terrible catastrophic events in the world - ups and downs, misfortunes - but can anyone sitting here this afternoon, this October afternoon, not feel deeply thankful for what has happened in the time that has passed and for the very great improvement in the position of our country and of our home?
Why, when I was here last time we were quite alone, desperately alone, and we had been so for five or six months. We were poorly armed. We are not so poorly armed today; but then we were very poorly armed. We had the unmeasured menace of the enemy and their air attack still beating upon us, and you yourselves had had experience of this attack; and I expect you are beginning to feel impatient that there has been this long lull with nothing particular turning up!
But we must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally said that the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes months - if it takes years - they do it.
Another lesson I think we may take, just throwing our minds back to our meeting here ten months ago and now, is that appearances are often very deceptive, and as Kipling well says, we must "...meet with Triumph and Disaster. And treat those two impostors just the same."
You cannot tell from appearances how things will go. Sometimes imagination makes things out far worse than they are; yet without imagination not much can be done. Those people who are imaginative see many more dangers than perhaps exist; certainly many more than will happen; but then they must also pray to be given that extra courage to carry this far-reaching imagination.
But for everyone, surely, what we have gone through in this period - I am addressing myself to the School - surely from this period of ten months, this is the lesson:
Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
We stood all alone a year ago, and to many countries it seemed that our account was closed, we were finished. All this tradition of ours, our songs, our School history, this part of the history of this country, were gone and finished and liquidated.
Very different is the mood today. Britain, other nations thought, had drawn a sponge across her slate. But instead our country stood in the gap. There was no flinching and no thought of giving in; and by what seemed almost a miracle to those outside these Islands, though we ourselves never doubted it, we now find ourselves in a position where I say that we can be sure that we have only to persevere to conquer.
You sang here a verse of a School Song: you sang that extra verse written in my honor, which I was very greatly complimented by and which you have repeated today. But there is one word in it I want to alter - I wanted to do so last year, but I did not venture to. It is the line: "Not less we praise in darker days." I have obtained the Head Master's permission to alter darker to sterner. "Not less we praise in sterner days."
Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race."
"Whiskey And Car Keys..."
"Giving money and power to government is like
giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
- P.J. O'Rourke
"The Worst Part..."
"People cry not because they are weak.
It's because they've been strong for too long."
- Johnny Depp
"This Is Why They Won’t Be Able To Block Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth And RFK Jr."
"This Is Why They Won’t Be Able To Block Matt Gaetz,
Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth And RFK Jr."
by Michael Snyder
"This week, Donald Trump shocked the Washington D.C. establishment to the core. For decades, the unelected bureaucrats that control our mammoth federal agencies have been running our country into the ground. No matter who we have sent to Washington, the culture in these federal agencies has remained the same. But now Trump has nominated firebrands such as Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr. for some of the most important positions in his cabinet, and this shows that he is quite serious about “draining the swamp” during his second term. In essence, there will be a bunch of “mini-Trumps” running around firing hordes of useless bureaucrats and dismantling federal power structures that have existed for generations. Needless to say, many on the left are in a state of panic now that it appears that many of the institutions that they cherish so much could literally be turned completely upside down.
For a lot of Democrats, the possibility that Matt Gaetz could be the next attorney general is truly a nightmare scenario. When his nomination was announced, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy called him “dangerously unqualified”…"Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., warned Tuesday that President-elect Trump’s selection of former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., to be U.S. attorney general signaled Trump’s intention to follow through on promises to persecute his opponents.
Murphy called the firebrand Floridian “dangerously unqualified” to lead the Justice Department, noting that Gaetz urged the need to abolish the FBI and other law enforcement agencies that do not get in line with conservative priorities."
Many in the corporate media are freaking out about the Gaetz nomination as well. For example, Geraldo Rivera says that he “threw up in my mouth” when he heard that Gaetz was the pick… “When I heard that Matt Gaetz was picked to be attorney general, I threw up in my mouth,” Rivera told host Leland Vittert. “I think it is a horrible, creepy choice. I have no idea why he did it.”
The nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to be the director of national intelligence has also caused a tremendous amount of outrage…"Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., declared in a post on X that she was “appalled” by the selection of Gabbard for the role. “Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar-al Assad and Vladimir Putin,” Spanberger claimed in a post on X."
Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., called the choice of Gabbard as DNI “incredibly reckless,” declaring in a tweet, “Putting someone with known sympathies for foreign adversaries is not putting America’s interests first – it’s putting our security at risk.”
I find it quite comical that Democrats are now talking about “putting America’s interests first”, because they haven’t been doing that for years. At the Pentagon, the environment is “like a morgue” now that Pete Hegseth has been nominated to be the new boss of the Department of Defense…"But the surprising top cabinet-post appointment came as an absolute shock to Pentagon career employees – who weren’t anticipating such a non-establishment pick to lead the nation’s largest federal agency with a $800 billion budget.
One defense official told DailyMail.com that it was ‘like a morgue’ inside the Pentagon after Trump’s announcement. They said the career staff were ‘apoplectic’ after hearing Hegseth, who has no government or management experience, would be taking over administration of the largest joint fighting forces in the world. In the past, Hegseth has talked about the need to fire all of the “woke” generals, and I certainly think that would be a promising step in the right direction for our military."
After all of the other nominations that Trump has made this week, he topped things off by choosing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services…"I am thrilled to announce Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as The United States Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health. The Safety and Health of all Americans is the most important role of any Administration, and HHS will play a big role in helping ensure that everybody will be protected from harmful chemicals, pollutants, pesticides, pharmaceutical products, and food additives that have contributed to the overwhelming Health Crisis in this Country. Mr. Kennedy will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!"
At this moment, the corporate media is begging for the Senate to block these nominations. But that isn’t going to happen. As U.S. Representative Thomas Massive has correctly pointed out, even if the Senate does not want to confirm these nominees Trump can just push them through as recess appointments…"In a video posted to X by Haley Talbot, a reporter with CNN, Massie was asked if he thought Gaetz would be confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as the Attorney General. “Do you think he’ll get confirmed by the Senate?” a reporter asked Massie, to which Massie could be heard responding, “recess appointments.” “He’s the Attorney General,” Massie added. “Suck it up!”
Many people don’t realize this, but the U.S. Constitution specifically gives whoever is president the power to make recess appointments… A recess appointment, however, allow presidents to install their nominee to the position while the Senate is in recess, without a confirmation hearing or vote, according to the Recess Appointments Clause in the U.S. Constitution. It says: “The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.”
So this means if a president manages to make a recess appointment, that individual’s term would only last for about two years. At that point, the person could be appointed again through the same recess appointment or through the regular Senate confirmation process. The Supreme Court has ruled that recess appointments are only allowed if the U.S. Senate is not in session for at least 10 days. But of course our senators are so lazy that they like to take lots of long breaks. And since Republicans now control the Senate, there probably won’t be any dramatic moves to stop Trump from getting the recess appointments that he wants.
Some “experts” are making it sound like Trump intends to do something out of the ordinary, but the truth is that other presidents made large numbers of recess appointments…"According to the Congressional Research Service, former President Obama made 32 recess appointments while in office; Bill Clinton made 139 and George W. Bush made 171."
When Senate Majority Leader John Thune was asked about the possibility of recess appointments a few days ago, he specifically mentioned “recess appointments” as one of the ways that Trump could get his nominees in place “as soon as possible”… “We must act quickly and decisively to get the president’s cabinet and other nominees in place as soon as possible to start delivering on the mandate we’ve been sent to execute, and all options are on the table … including recess appointments,” he said in a statement."
Of course the radical left is not just going to sit back and let Trump do whatever he wants. In fact, they are already planning massive protests for Trump’s inauguration…"Flyers are now appearing on complete campuses in DC. These fliers have QR codes. When you scan the code, the links invite you to “fight fascism” by protesting Trump’s inauguration on 1/20."
So violent leftist groups have begun recruiting WokeQaeda. One of the groups is Students for Justice in Palestine. If that doesn’t sound familiar, that’s the group that one of the primary factors of the violent protests on college campuses.
It appears that there will be a great deal of turmoil in the streets of Washington D.C. on January 20th, and that will just be a preview of the widespread turmoil that is coming all over America. After everything that they have said and done during the past eight years, the radical left is not going to suddenly change course and decide that it is time for “healing” and “unity”. Our nation is more divided right now than it has ever been in my entire lifetime, and we should all be deeply concerned about what is coming next."
Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/ McGovern & Johnson: Weekly Wrap Up"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 11/15/24
"INTEL Roundtable w/ McGovern & Johnson:
Weekly Wrap Up"
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Danny Haiphong, 11/15/24
"Scott Ritter: Hezbollah Obliterates IDF,
Netanyahu Dooms Israel to Extinction"
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Dialogue Works, 11/15/24
"Larry C. Johnson: Iran & Hezbollah Prepare
For All-Out War as IDF Faces Major Setbacks!"
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Full screen recommended.
OpenmindedThinker Show, 11/15/24
"Mass Exodus Of Soldiers Rock IDF
After Bloodiest Day Ever In Lebanon"
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