"Mr. Biden's War"

"Mr. Biden's War"

by Joel Bowman

"Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes

Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord

And when you ask 'em, "How much should we give?"

Ooh, they only answer, "More, more, more, more!"

~ "Fortunate Son," by Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969)

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Speaking of the End of the World... has anybody checked Joe Biden’s meds recently? (Or Hunter Biden’s cocaine stash?) Apparently not content with having detonated his own political party at home, the Warmonger In Chief now appears bent on dragging the whole world to the brink of nuclear annihilation before he shuffles from the Oval Office in a couple of months.

From NATO’s newswire of choice, Reuters: "WASHINGTON - President Joe Biden's administration has allowed Ukraine to use U.S.-made weapons to strike deep into Russia, two U.S. officials and a source familiar with the decision said on Sunday, in a significant reversal of Washington's policy in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Ukraine plans to conduct its first long-range attacks in the coming days, the sources said, without revealing details due to operational security concerns."

Headless Chickenhawks: Mere hours after Washington gave the green light, those missiles lit up the eastern skies, blasting deep into Russian territory. They included U.S.-made long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) and, as of yesterday, British-made Storm Shadow cruise missiles.

Who said ol’ Joe Reaper can’t still “get ‘er done”? This is a man, after all, whose career lowlights include goading the US Senate into funding the quagmire in Iraq, as well as supporting bombing campaigns in Serbia and Montenegro and, as Vice President, strikes in both Libya and Syria. Yessir, with millions of corpses piled high on his bloodstained resumé, Biden’s is the kind of foreign policy record that should be hung alongside those of the Clintons, Bushes, Obamas and Cheneys, et al. Hang ‘em good and hang ‘em high, we say.

But wait, there’s more! It’s not only supersonic ballistic missiles on the outgoing President’s Christmas list. He also approved the Ukraine’s use of anti-personnel landmines (which the US just happens to have lying around in convenient stockpiles), a move that has drawn sharp criticism from international human rights organizations. Remarked Ben Linden, a top official with Amnesty International USA: “It is devastating, and frankly shocking, that President Biden made such a consequential and dangerous decision just before his public service legacy is sealed for the history books.”

Added Hichem Khadhraoui, executive director of the Center for Civilians in Conflict advocacy group: “Anti-personnel landmines are indiscriminate weapons that kill and maim civilians, and especially children, for generations after wars end. These weapons cannot distinguish between civilians and combatants as required by international humanitarian law.”

Alas, Washington’s appetite for war at all (Ukrainian) costs comes precisely as Ukrainians themselves – you know, those warm, dismembered bodies bleeding out on the front lines – express their human, all too human desire for the war to end. This, from Responsible Statecraft: "A new Gallup study indicates that most Ukrainians want the war with Russia to end. After more than two years of fighting, 52% of those polled indicated that they would prefer a negotiated peace rather than continuing to fight. Throughout the country, Kyiv polled the highest in support of a continued fight with Russia at 47%, and the eastern regions of Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhya all polled just 27% in support. Every region in the country polled below 50%."

Never mind what the Ukrainians themselves want, Mr. Biden and his soulless ghouls howl. It’s ours to decide… and theirs to die! For when soldiers in far away lands and wailing mothers clenching brave sons’ hands dare ask, “How much should we give?” the answer from the beltway chickenhawks is always and forever the same: “More, more, more, more!”

Cui Bono? Of course, there’s always more to the story than meets the eye. The curious mind might be left to wonder, for example... Why would an outgoing US president, one who was obliged to withdraw his own candidacy for reelection owing to demonstrable cognitive impairment, seek to escalate a conflict in a far off land that poses zero security risk to his own nation?

Why would a man who can barely find his own mouth with a plastic spoon approve such ghastly weapons, which stand in direct contravention to international humanitarian laws, to do so? And perhaps above all, as the famous Roman judge Lucius Cassius was fond of asking, “Cui bono?” That is, “who benefits” from the protracted conflict... and from repeatedly dodging the negotiating table? Ah, now the saw draws closer to the bone.

In the days immediately following the US election earlier this month, news crept across the wires that must have chilled NATO’s blood-lusting desk warriors to their cold, dark hearts. Putin was (once again) ready to pursue peace talks, on the radically reasonable condition that US-led NATO withdraw its ballistic missiles from Moscow’s doorstep and allow the Ukraine to remain a neutral zone.

Reuters again: "MOSCOW, Nov 20 - Vladimir Putin is open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Donald Trump but rules out making any major territorial concessions and insists Kyiv abandon ambitions to join NATO, five sources with knowledge of Kremlin thinking told Reuters. The news came after Donald Trump pledged throughout his campaign to swiftly end the conflict “on day one” of his presidency, an outcome that must keep Biden’s Deep State puppeteers in cold sweats each and every night."

Nothing Else Matters: So here we are, 1,000 days into the gruesome war, with an estimated 600,000 Ukrainians dead, millions injured, and countless millions displaced, never to return to their razed homeland, and the rabid maw of America’s Military Industrial Complex is not yet sated.

But where, our dear readers might be asking, is the so-called “anti-war left” in all this? Where are the Forest Gump-like scenes of mass protests lining the National Mall in DC? Where are the peaceniks with their “No Nukes” signs, blasting Dylan and Creedence Clearwater Revival from the rattling speakers of dad’s smoke-filled station wagon?

It goes without saying that the Deep State goons and their invertebrate minions in the Legacy Media want nothing more than for Homo Credulous to remain distracted by divisive bread and circuses at home while they dig another million shallow graves in distant lands. As long as the Offense Contractors in Bethesda and McClean and Falls Church have order books to fill, government marionettes will always find villains in need of “shock and awe” campaigns afar.

But regardless of whether you voted Republican or Democrat (or not at all!) in the last election, whether you think boys should be allowed in girl’s locker rooms or whether Trump really is a fascist after all, just remember:

Gender neutral pronouns don’t matter...

Just Stop Oil doesn’t matter...

Kellogg's Froot Loops don’t matter...

Non-farm payrolls don’t matter...

Vaccine mandates don’t matter...

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) doesn’t matter...

Trade wars with China don’t matter...

Crypto “to the moon” doesn’t matter...

12 million illegal immigrants don’t matter...

My body, my choice doesn’t matter...

Dow 50,000 doesn’t matter...

Make America Great Again doesn’t matter...

Fed policy doesn’t matter...

The Greatest Political Experiment of Our Time doesn’t matter…

$36 trillion in national debt doesn’t matter...

Building a single new pediatric hospital anywhere on the planet doesn’t matter...

if we are all vaporized in a nuclear armageddon.

End the war. Stop the killing. Peace in our time. Now pass it on…"

 - https://joelbowman.substack.com/

CCR, "Fortunate Son"

The Daily "Near You?"

Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Thanks for stopping by!

Never Fair..."

"Life is never fair,

and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not."

- Oscar Wilde

"Simple Rules To Be Happy"

"Simple Rules To Be Happy"

by Insatiable Curiosity

"A 92-year-old man, small, very proud, dressed and clean-shaven, with his hair perfectly combed, moves into a nursing home one morning at 8:00. His 70-year-old wife has recently passed away, forcing him to leave his home. After several hours of waiting in the nursing home lobby, he smiles kindly when we tell him his room is ready.

As he walks to the elevator with his walker, I give him a description of his small room, including the drape hanging from his window as a curtain. "I like it a lot," he says with the enthusiasm of an 8-year-old boy who has just received a new puppy. "Mr. Vinto, you haven't seen the room yet, wait a minute."

"That has nothing to do with it," he says. "Happiness is something I choose in advance. Whether I like my room or not does not depend on the furniture or the decorations - it depends on how I perceive it. In my head it is already decided that I like my room. It is a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I can choose, I can spend the day in bed counting the difficulties I have with the parts of my body that do not work, or get up and thank the heavens for the ones that still work. Every day is a gift and as long as I can open my eyes, I will focus on the new day and on all the happy memories I have collected throughout my life. Old age is like a bank account. You withdraw from what you have accumulated."

So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in your bank account of memories. Thank you for participating in filling my bank account, where I continue to deposit. Remember these simple rules to be happy:

1. Free your heart from hate.

2. Free your head from worries.

3. Live simply.

4. Give more.

5. Expect less."

- https://insatiablecuriosityscorner.quora.com/

"The Trick..."

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable,

or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.

- Carlos Castaneda

Gregory Mannarino, "The US/World Economic Collapse Is Worsening Faster And There Is No Way To Stop It!"

Gregory Mannarino, 11/21/24

"The US/World Economic Collapse Is Worsening Faster 

And There Is No Way To Stop It!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

'How It Really Is"

"Dear Child II"

Full horrifying screen recommended.

Chris Hedges, "Dear Child II"

"Written as a letter to a child in Gaza, the film takes the audience on a haunting & realistic journey through Gaza today from a child’s perspective imbued with guilt of a foreign journalist. Stylish, artistic, horrifying, yet hopeful that we can do better. We must."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Mankind's Favorite Pastime..."

Full screen recommended.

Steve Cutts, "A Brief Disagreement"

"A visual journey into mankind's 

favorite pastime throughout the ages."

"Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare. According to Conway W. Henderson, "One source claims that 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace (Beer 1981: 20).] An unfavorable review of this estimate mentions the following regarding one of the proponents of this estimate: "In addition, perhaps feeling that the war casualties figure was improbably high, he changed 'approximately 3,640,000,000 human beings have been killed by war or the diseases produced by war' to 'approximately 1,240,000,000 human beings...'" The lower figure is more plausible but could still be on the high side considering that the 100 deadliest acts of mass violence between 480 BC and 2002 AD (wars and other man-made disasters with at least 300,000 and up to 66 million victims) claimed about 455 million human lives in total."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War

"It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human

 race proved to be nothing more than the story of an

ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump." 

- David Ormsby-Gore

Bill Bonner, "Gasoline and Matches"

"Gasoline and Matches"

War is not necessarily certain. And certainly not necessary.

 But like drugs and adultery, it never quite goes out of style. 

Instead, it goes around and comes around.

by Bill Bonner

"World War I... Wall Street called it the ‘war bride’ years, was the first time America got a taste for how profitable war could be. The worse it gets around the world, the more assets will seek safe harbor (US assets?) and the worse it gets the more likely politicians sign those long-term rearmament contracts (again US assets). So I don't think risk assets are ignoring the risks, I think they are ripping because of the risks... war is good for America. "

- Radigan Carter

"Say ‘goodnight’ Gracie."

- George Burns

Baltimore, Maryland - "And now we switch tempo from ‘lamentoso’ to ‘malinconico’... that is, from ‘worse case’ to the ‘worst case’ scenario... the biggest loss of all... up to and including the end of the world as we have known it. Agence France Presse: "Russian President Vladimir Putin formally lowered Moscow’s nuclear threshold on Tuesday in response to U.S. President Joe Biden authorizing Ukraine to use long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems (known as ATACMS) to strike limited targets inside Russia... Moscow “reserves the right” to use nuclear weapons to respond to a conventional weapons attack that threatens Russia’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov said on Tuesday. He affirmed that a Ukrainian attack using long-range U.S. missiles could trigger such a response, though the doctrine remains broad enough to allow Putin to avoid committing to nuclear engagement."

Garrett Baldwin adds: "As they head out the door, the Biden Administration and the rest of the Pro-War bureaucrats will attempt one last shock and awe. In addition to allowing Ukraine to use long-range U.S. missiles to fire into Russia, the Biden Administration reversed policies and will now allow land mines. Land mines!"

Geopolitical risk will be front and center for the next sixty days. War is not necessarily certain. And certainly not necessary. But like drugs and adultery, it never quite goes out of style. Instead, it goes around and comes around.

The Franco Prussian war of 1870 began - supposedly - because of a diplomatic slight. It only ended after a siege left Parisians so hungry they were eating the animals in the zoo. ‘La Terrine d’Antilope aux Truffes’ was said to be a favorite.

And WWI got its start, according to historian Barbara Tuchman, as the combatants were ‘sleepwalking.’ No one knew then or now what the ‘reasons’ for the war actually were. Neither side stood to gain much of anything. And in the end, neither side did gain much of anything.

But the costs were high. By the end, there were forty million corpses spread all over Europe... with a few in Africa, and the Near East too. All the major combatants, save the US, suffered major damage. The Bolsheviks took over in Russia. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was dissolved. France and England were effectively bankrupt. And in Germany, people were so humiliated by the peace settlement that they signed on to the National Socialists’ (NAZI) program in an attempt to regain their pride.

Sometimes, good leaders are able to resist war. In 1956, Dwight Eisenhower, for example, was invited to join England and France in a glorious operation to retake control of the Suez canal from the Egyptians. He demurred. Within hours, the war was over.

President Kennedy in the Oval Office, talking with 

Air Force pilots who flew reconnaissance missions over Cuba.

John F. Kennedy also avoided a war with the Soviet Union. By-passing his own “intelligence” and “diplomatic” bureaucracies, he set up a back-channel conversation with Nikita Khruschev and agreed to remove US missiles from Italy and Turkey in exchange getting Soviet firepower out of Cuba. But Kennedy was assassinated sixty-one years ago tomorrow. Eisenhower died six years later.

Joe Biden could have followed Eisenhower and Kennedy. He could have stopped the war in the Ukraine and the massacres in Gaza, both with a phone call. Instead, he chose war. "Sometimes, people yearn for war... they search for meaning... for purpose... for someone to blame... for a victory they can feel good about... or just some way to kick someone else in the head. And war pays. Generals enjoy fat sinecures, suppliers get rich and politicians get re-elected with suppliers’ money. Veterans get special benefits. What agency has the biggest payroll in Washington? Veterans’ Affairs."

And so, from time to time, the world catches fire as the Primary Political Trend shifts from peace, freedom and fraud to war, politics and brute force. But it is not purely random. One follows the other. “The first panacea of a mismanaged nation,” wrote Hemingway, “is inflation. The second is war...” Most western governments are already hooked on inflation. Deep in debt... facing rising interest payments -- without some other source of funding, the political caste will be forced to cut back and lose power.

That is what makes the Musk/Ramaswamy initiative so fascinating. The two entrepreneurs believe they can save the system by making it act like more of a business. That is, they think they can provide a painless budgetary Ozempic, causing the political caste to voluntarily downsize... and reduce its own power. It won’t work. They are taking on the entire Elite Establishment…from the universities, to the press, to Wall Street, the firepower industry, Congress, the bureaucracy and the Deep State. Their cuts will be headline news…and insignificant.

Instead, explains John Dienner... the real solution..."Will be to further debase their currencies. Of course, doing so will devastate wage earners, savers and pensioners living on fixed incomes. But that is a price elite political insiders are willing for the working classes to pay in order to remain in power for a little longer."

Trump won the election by appealing to a deep undercurrent of dissatisfaction. But rising prices, tariffs, depressions, deportations and chaos will not make the frustration go away. The inflations and depressions of the 1920s and ‘30s provided the dry tinder for the ‘kinetic’ wars and mass murders of the 1940s. And now, looking into the haze of the future…more like a recurring nightmare than a prediction…Is that someone carrying a can of gasoline and a pack of matches? More... tomorrow..."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Very Shocking Holiday Prices At Kroger, This Is Unbelievable"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 11/21/24

"Very Shocking Holiday Prices At Kroger,

 This Is Unbelievable"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell, 11/21/24

"Russian Typical Food Market: Would You Shop There?"

"What is it like to shop in a typical Russian food market? Danilovsky Market is Moscow's oldest food market, dating back to 1262. What types of food can you buy inside a Russian Food Market? Join me to find out."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "You Can Work For Elon?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 11/21/24

"You Can Work For Elon?"

"Discover the shocking truth about Tesla's $270,000 remote work opportunities that don't require a college degree! While other tech giants demand return-to-office, Elon Musk is breaking the mold by offering high-paying remote positions at Tesla and SpaceX. From AI tester positions for humanoids to senior engineering roles, these jobs offer competitive compensation packages and flexible work arrangements. Unlike companies like Washington Post that are ending remote work, Tesla is embracing the future of work-from-home opportunities."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

"Emergency Alert! ICBMs Launched, Multiple Impacts; NATO Warning Systems Triggered; Nuclear Test"

Canadian Prepper, 11/21/24

"Emergency Alert! ICBMs Launched, Multiple Impacts; 

NATO Warning Systems Triggered; Nuclear Test"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Danny Haiphong, 11/21/24

'NATO Attacks Russia; 

Putin Fires Warning Shot At Ukraine - WW3 Next?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

CNN, 11/21/24

"‘Russia Is Furious’: Expert Explains Putin’s 

Military Response To Ukraine’s Attack inside Russia"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Red Alert! UK Attacks Russia! Nuclear Hotline Shutdown! Doomsday Plane In Air, Putin Missing!"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper,11/20/24

"Red Alert! UK Attacks Russia! Nuclear Hotline Shutdown! 

Doomsday Plane In Air, Putin Missing!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "The Shocking Waste Of Your Hard Earned Tax Dollars"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/20/24

"The Shocking Waste Of Your Hard Earned Tax Dollars, 

Where Did All Your Money Go? Financing WW3"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Douglas Macgregor, 11/20/24

"Putin Issues Final Nuclear Warning,

 Ukraine At Risk Of Total Destruction"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

A Blues Musical Interlude: John Campbelljohn, "Knocked Down"

John Campbelljohn, "Knocked Down"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"This colorful cosmic skyscape features a peculiar system of galaxies cataloged as Arp 227 some 100 million light-years distant. Swimming within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, Arp 227 consists of the two galaxies prominent on the left; the curious shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue, spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470. The faint, wide arcs or shells of NGC 474 could have been formed by a gravitational encounter with neighbor NGC 470. Alternately the shells could be caused by a merger with a smaller galaxy producing an effect analogous to ripples across the surface of a pond.

Remarkably, the large galaxy on the right hand side of the deep image, NGC 467, appears to be surrounded by faint shells too, evidence of another interacting galaxy system. Intriguing background galaxies are scattered around the field that also includes spiky foreground stars. Of course, those stars lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. The field of view spans 25 arc minutes or about 1/2 degree on the sky."

                 - http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100211.html

"Write Your Worries On The Sand..."

“I walked slowly out on the beach.

A few yards below high-water mark I stopped and read the words again:

WRITE YOUR WORRIES ON THE SAND.

I let the paper blow away, reached down and picked up a fragment of shell.

Kneeling there under the vault of the sky,

I wrote several words, one above the other.

Then I walked away, and I did not look back.

I had written my troubles on the sand.

The tide was coming in.”

- Arthur Gordon

"Consider It..."

 

"15 Reasons Why You Should Be Prepping Like Crazy Right Now"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 11/20/24

"15 Reasons Why You Should Be 

Prepping Like Crazy Right Now"

"You should be feverishly preparing for the extremely turbulent times that are ahead of us. The November events are going to bring a lot of chaos to our streets, and what will happen next is anyone's guess. Stores can be looted, delivery trucks can be targeted, resulting in delays that might leave shelves empty for weeks. A lot can happen, and the challenges naturally brought on by fall and winter could further complicate matters.

Behind the scenes, forces are building to spark shortages, strain household budgets, and make essential supplies harder to come by. The food we eat, the energy we rely on, the products we need daily - all of these are becoming less secure as we move towards the final months of 2024.

At the moment, supply chains are faltering, resources are thinning, and the cost of essentials is ballooning. The question isn’t just about convenience; it’s about our preparedness to face a season unlike any we’ve seen before. Imagine reaching for pantry staples only to find prices that seem to climb daily, or checking in at your local pharmacy to find they’re out of basic medications. For some, it may mean cold nights due to rising energy costs or rationing essentials because stores can’t keep up with demand. If ever there were a time to prepare like never before, this is it.

In this video, we’ll walk through 15 pressing reasons why you should consider preparing for what lies ahead. We’ll break down the challenges, back them up with facts and insights, and show why a bit of planning today could make all the difference in the months to come. Let's get ready for a season that’s shaping up to be anything but ordinary. Without further ado, here are 15 Reasons Why You Should Be Prepping Like Crazy Right Now."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Adventures With Danno, 11/20/24

"Walmart Wants You To Know This 

& It's Very Disturbing"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "You Can’t Get a Loan"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, PM 11/20/24

"You Can’t Get a Loan"

"The shocking truth about loan denials in 2024 is here! Banks are tightening their belts, and it's getting harder to borrow money. I'll break down the latest stats on credit card, mortgage, and auto loan rejections. Plus, we'll dive into the green energy scheme causing headaches for UK homeowners and why UPS is facing a bleak holiday season. "

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Doug Casey On The Looming Debt Crisis and What Lies Ahead"

"Doug Casey On The Looming 

Debt Crisis and What Lies Ahead"

by International Man

"International Man: The financial position of the US government has been gradually deteriorating for decade. With annual interest expenses on the federal debt now exceeding the defense budget - and on pace to surpass Social Security - has the situation reached a tipping point?

Doug Casey: People have been observing this trend since the late 1960s; the idea of the federal debt getting irredeemably out of control isn’t new. But I think that we’ve finally reached a genuine tipping point. In other words, when you keep racking up debt at interest, with growing deficits every year, bankruptcy is inevitable. But now it’s also imminent.

90% of the US government’s spending is baked in the cake. It’s not just that the spending is mandated by law and enthusiastically promoted by the agencies that dispense it. Government spending has totally corrupted the country, from welfare moms to giant corporations. They’ll all squeal like stuck pigs if the spending stops. I expect the accumulated distortions it’s caused to come unglued in the next few years.

International Man: President Trump has appointed Elon Musk to run the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Do you think it will have any meaningful impact on the US government’s financial problems, or is it just a token gesture to distract and entertain the public?

Doug Casey: I think that Trump is sincere, as are Elon and Vivek. But what we’re dealing with are absolutely massive entrenched programs. What’s worse, Trump has promised that he would not alter Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and military spending. Those things alone add up to something like 80% of the federal budget. It’s very hard to get the number exactly, because the US government’s accounting is so complex. I’m reminded of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s comment on 9/10/01, saying that the Pentagon couldn’t track $2.3 trillion of spending.

On top of those things, you have to add the interest on the official national debt, which is over a trillion dollars a year. That debt is absolutely going higher as the debt burden grows, compounded by rising long-term interest rates. I’m not even counting another perhaps $150 trillion of contingent liabilities and off-balance sheet debt.

Can Elon and Vivek do anything about this trend? I suggest everybody visit https://www.usa.gov/agency-index. You’ll see hundreds of government agencies and departments listed - page through it. Few of them serve any useful purpose. In fact, almost all of them are wasteful and destructive. They’re bureaucracies employing drones (all of them with fat salaries, benefits, and pensions) to shuffle paper, basically to distribute tax dollars to favored entities. They should all be abolished.

Elon and Vivek should have a field day abolishing scores, even hundreds, of these departments and agencies. But will they be able to do it? I really question that, because individual Congress-critters have vested interests in their continuation - as do the other groups I mentioned earlier.

Can Trump do it by executive order? It’s highly questionable. Could he arm-twist the Senate and the House to abolish these agencies? Not much, especially since most of the Congress is not really ideologically aligned with Trump, even the Republicans. Forget about the Democrats.

International Man: Do you expect the debt crisis to erupt during Trump’s second term, and how do you think he will handle it?

Doug Casey: The government’s running a $2 trillion per year deficit right now. That’s ironic, in that Trump has always identified himself as the "king of debt." The only way out is to totally delete these agencies. Just replacing the personnel with "better people" is a mistake. Why? Because cutting costs means you’re just filling the piggy bank, so the next administration can gleefully empty it, and be heroes when they hire even more of the very same zombies that you fired. The only way to solve this problem is to abolish these agencies. Don’t reform them, but make sure they cease to exist. Pull them out by the roots and sow Agent Orange in the soil where they grew.

The US Constitution has mostly been interpreted out of existence. Or blatantly ignored, like the 9th and 10th Amendments. The government is force and should be limited in a civil society. The implies a military, to protect citizens from force from abroad. Police, to protect them from domestic crime. And a court system to adjudicate disputes without reverting to force.

All the other requirements of society should, could, and would be handled by entrepreneurs. In fact, a good argument can be made that the "essential" tasks of government are too important to be left to the type of people who are inevitably drawn to governments.

International Man: What do you think should be done about the US federal government’s growing debt problem?

Doug Casey: Let me make a radical proposal that will shock almost everybody reading this now. I suggest defaulting on the debt, for several reasons.

Number one, it’s immoral. It’s criminal to impose the repayment of that debt on the next generations of unborn Americans. The debt is so large that they’ll be turned into serfs or indentured servants to pay it back.

And the question is: Pay it back to who? We don’t "owe it to ourselves," which is what the liberals always used to say. It’s owed to particular people and institutions who have enabled the government to do all the destructive things that it does. They should be punished. I have no sympathy for the owners of government debt. In fact, these politically-wired people have enriched themselves at the expense of the average guy, who has few assets. It’s correct that they be punished.

There’s another reason. The debt the US government has is like a 100-story building that’s wobbling and is about to fall. There are two possibilities. You can wait for it to fall randomly and unpredictably. Or you can devise a controlled demolition. That’s the best alternative.

Of course, it can be "repaid" by printing. That’s the runaway inflation option, which would be as disastrous as a nuclear war for both the United States and the world at this point. However, there’s a very bright side to the default scenario: After a government default, all the real wealth - farms, factories, mines, buildings, technologies - would still exist. They’d just change ownership. Various government assets should be sold off. There’s obviously much more to be said about all this. I’m simply pointing out that the king has no clothes.

International Man: Given everything we’ve talked about, what is your outlook for US Treasuries and bonds in general? How should investors position themselves for the looming debt crisis?

Doug Casey: Bonds, in general, are a triple threat to your capital. First of all, interest rates are going up. Yes, it’s notoriously hard, if not impossible, to predict the direction of interest rates. They’ve been going up for the last two years, after a 40-year decline. With the dollar being debased as rapidly as it is, long-term bond buyers are going to insist on much higher rates. When interest rates go up, bond prices go down.

Number two is the currency risk. As I’ve often said, the US dollar itself is the unbacked liability of a manifestly bankrupt government, and it’s headed toward reaching its intrinsic value. The dollars the bonds are denominated in are rapidly losing value. From the government’s point of view, it’s "inflate, or die."

Number three is the default risk. That’s obvious to buyers of corporate and municipal debt. It’s why outfits like S&P rate their creditworthiness from AAA down to D. They apply the same ratings to national governments. In the past, people have bought US Treasuries, figuring there was no default risk. But at this point, with government debt and spending so out of control, I think some type of default is a real risk. FWIW, the US lost its AAA rating some years ago; it’s now only AA+. Government is not a magical entity - even the US government. You don’t want to own bonds at this point, other than as a way to speculate on interest rates.

How should investors position themselves for the looming debt crisis? There are two possibilities. One is a credit collapse, where the amount of debt in the world becomes unsustainable, and simply can’t be repaid. You’d have a credit collapse, where trillions of dollars are wiped out in a deflation. The other alternative is the government keeps printing dollars, leading to runaway inflation. Governments almost always choose the latter.

No one knows, for sure, which it’s going to be at this point. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has accumulated hundreds of billions in Treasury bills, apparently betting that short-term rates will keep up with currency debasement while protecting the company from a stock market collapse. Fair enough. But it doesn’t cover all the bases. And Buffet himself won’t always be there…

To preserve capital, I suggest looking at my old friend Harry Browne’s Permanent Portfolio plan. He divides your assets into four equal-sized baskets, essentially gold, stocks, T-bonds, and cash, rebalancing the portfolio every year to keep the percentage of each equal. It’s a good way of automatically buying low and selling high. I’ve always thought it was a smart way to preserve capital. My friend Porter Stansberry is resuscitating, modifying, and improving Harry’s original formula. I’ll explain how when he registers the fund to execute the plan.

Other than a permanent portfolio approach, the only thing that makes sense to me is learning to speculate, which presents risks if your intention is to preserve capital. Or to simply buy gold and Bitcoin, since they’re the only financial assets that aren’t simultaneously somebody else’s liability."

- https://internationalman.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Lawrenceville, Georgia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"This Is Why Nobody Will Do Anything Until It's Too Late"

"This Is Why Nobody Will 

Do Anything Until It's Too Late"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"OK, I get it: we all like Hollywood endings: the superhero saves the world, the evil conspiracy is uncovered and the villains get their just desserts and the impossible romance overcomes all the odds. This is why there are Hollywood endings: we are hard-wired to thrill to happy endings and a successful conclusion to the Hero's/Heroine's Journey. We will tolerate a Tragic Hero/Heroine or the occasional Anti-Hero/Heroine, but there is still a moral victory of some sort to cheer.

The real world doesn't follow a storyline, it operates according to the dictates of systems: inputs are taken up by processes which then generate outputs. If the outputs and processes don't change, the outputs don't change either.

One prevalent manifestation of human hubris is the idea that getting someone to agree with us about something or other is some sort of victory, as if human opinions matter. They don't, unless they change either inputs or processes in extremely consequential ways. Tweaking inputs or policies might make us feel warm and fuzzy ("I'm part of the solution!") but they are too modest to change the system's inputs and processes. The net result is the outputs remain the same.

Put another way: labeling something or other a hoax or an existential threat doesn't change anything in the systems that generate consequences. Whatever is going to happen as output is going to happen regardless of what humans label it or their opinions about it ("El Nino really sucks!").

Existing processes constrain our choices. This is why it's difficult to be an environmentally-sustainable saint. Let's say we're concerned about climate change and the destruction of the planet's biosphere. Let's say we want to lower our carbon footprint and "do the right things" to reduce the negative impact of our consumption and lifestyle.

This is where we substitute Hollywood endings for reality. We like to think that recycling matters. Sorry, it really doesn't change the inputs or processes enough to change the outputs in any consequential way. For example, the percentage of lithium batteries and electronic waste that are currently recycled is near-zero because the batteries and electronics aren't manufactured to be recycled in a cost-effective manner, and nobody in the system pays for costly recycling. So the really important recycling isn't being done.

I still recycle cardboard because that seems like a better choice than dumping it in the landfill, but in terms of total lifecycle costs and resource consumption of recycling versus landfill, I don't have any data. The system isn't set up to measure total lifecycle costs and resource consumption of goods, services and processes, and since we only manage what we measure, we're flying blind: the system is set up to measure "growth" (GDP) and profits, not total lifecycle costs and resource consumption.

Sorry, there's no Hollywood ending until we change the inputs (stop manufacturing lithium batteries) and/or the processes (require 99% recycling of all electronics, batteries, vehicles, etc.). This will require changing the entire manufacturing and resource supply chain systems from the ground up, globally. If we don't do that, the output can't possibly change in any consequential way.

The Hollywood ending is electric vehicles will "save the planet." Too bad this is Hollywood, not reality. Most of the consumption of resources and damage to the planet occur in the mining, smelting and manufacture of the vehicle, regardless of its fuel. Due to their massive consumption of minerals, electric vehicles consume far more of the planet's resources than an ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicle. All vehicles are manufactured (mining, smelting, transport, factories, etc.) with hydrocarbons. There's no difference between vehicles except electric vehicles use even more hydrocarbons in their fabrication.

Then there's the source of the fuel. An electric vehicle manufactured by burning coal and charged with electricity generated by burning coal is in fact a coal-burning vehicle. Calling it "electric" fits the happy story, but it's not actually factual: a coal-burning vehicle is an environmental disaster, regardless of labels, our opinions or the happy-ending PR. In the real world, the least destructive choice of vehicle is a small, light, old ICE vehicle that is well-maintained to conserve fuel and driven only rarely. Hey, look at me, I only drove my old 40-mile-per-gallon Civic 3,000 miles last year - I'm a saint!

Unfortunately, the real world isn't a Hollywood (or Bollywood) movie, and so I don't get to be a saint once we look at the world as a system rather than a movie. The fertilizers I use to grow food in my yard come from afar, and even the organic ones consume huge quantities of hydrocarbons in their processing, bagging and shipping. The "organic" fruit or vegetable shipped from afar is an environmental disaster compared to the organic fruit or vegetable from your own yard, but even those require inputs that are part of the system.

I stepped on airliners a few times in the past year, one long-haul and two short flights, and there is really nothing environmentally saintly about consuming immense resources by jetting around the world. Electric aircraft won't "save the world," either. They're resource-hungry, small, slow, their range is modest and their batteries are no more recyclable or long-lasting than all the vehicle batteries destined for the landfill. And alternative fuels for jet aircraft are incapable of being produced at the scale necessary to replace jet fuel. Sorry, no Hollywood ending.

To really reduce one's consumption of the planet's resources, we would have to grow our own food, get around on our own feet or zero-fuel transport (motorless bicycle or skateboard or boat) and not buy / own / use large resource-consuming devices such as vehicles, aircraft, etc. The system as currently configured makes it nearly impossible to do this. Even growing much of your own food requires delivery of fertilizers (organic or chemical, they still weight a lot). Very few places are bike-skateboard friendly. The world is set up for large, mass-produced fueled vehicles. Outside of a few cities, public transport is incapable of getting people where they need to go in any sort of time-efficient manner.

Consider the foundation of our lifestyle, the financial system. The story is "debt doesn't matter," because we can outgrow rising debt forever. Our bag of financial engineering tricks is bottomless, and there will always be another financial rabbit we can pull out of the hat. This is of course a fantasy. Debt eventually eats the system alive. So do fixed costs, entitlements, demographics and declining productivity. The inputs and processes can't be changed in any material way because they have to remain in their current scale and configuration or the financial system collapses under its own weight.

This brings us to the incentives to keep the inputs and processes exactly as they are, with minor tweaks for PR purposes. The system is set up such that elites and self-serving interests have most of the wealth and political power, and if even the tiniest bit of their skim is diminished, they will instantly devote the entirety of their resources to reversing this outrage, for they all know how power works: if others manage to cut 1% from your skim, they'll sense weakness and come back for 10%.

The only incentive that counts in our stripmined world is maximizing profits and the private gains of the entrenched and powerful. To cloak this reality, the Powers That Be promote public-relations propaganda that depicts their pillage, looting, fraud and destruction as a Hollywood story we can all consume and love, just as we love our servitude once it's been properly packaged into a Hero/Heroine's Journey or a Love Story.

This is why nobody will do anything until it's too late. It's only when we run out of essential inputs and/or essential processes decay and collapse that we'll awaken to the fact that since the global system's inputs and processes materially changed, the outputs we need and love all went away.

By the time inputs and processes have materially changed, it's too late to reverse the process and go back in time. Once resource extraction processes break down, inputs are no longer available in the needed quantities to feed all the processes of globalized, industrialized production and transport. Since all these processes are tightly bound systems, that is, interconnected, the breakdown of any one supply chain or process quickly topples dominoes throughout the system.

In addition to confusing happy stories with systems, human hubris manifests in another way: we like to think that minor tweaks here and there that don't inconvenience us will magically change the negative outputs (resource depletion, environmental ruin, etc.). This is why we love the Hollywood stories about electric aircraft (our very own electric helicopter - yowza!), electric vehicles, recycling the carboard boxes from FedEx, UPS and Amazon, and so on: we get all the comforts and conveniences we're accustomed to, and we get to be environmentally-sustainable saints, too: it's all sustainable and ecological and warm and fuzzy. Except it isn't. That's a fairy tale, not a system. If you question the Hollywood ending, you're dismissed as a doom and gloomer, a discontent who grumbles about happy endings and techno-marvels.

I see this as confusing a story with a system. The story operates by its own rules: here are the obstacles and powerful villains, here are the Hero and Heroine, outmatched and under pressure, but then, against all odds, the villains lose their grip, justice is served and love triumphs.

Systems work by their own implacable rules. There are inputs and processes that generate outputs. The only way to change the outputs in a consequential fashion is to change the inputs and/or processes in a consequential fashion. Little face-saving PR tweaks are too small in scale to materially change either inputs or processes, and so the outputs won't change and indeed, can't possibly change, because that's how systems work.

So by all means, ignore all warnings and run the ship at full speed through an ice field. All too predictably, the ship collides with an iceberg and only then does anyone respond: OK, where's the Hollywood story of brave engineers saving the ship and noble passengers helping each other onto lifeboats? What do you mean, the ship will sink regardless of what's done?

Doesn't our happy-ending story map reality? Unfortunately, no. The current system is sinking and nobody will do anything other than more of what's failed until it's too late. I like a rousing story as much as anyone else, but systems aren't stories, and confusing the two won't actually fix what's not sustainable in the current system's configuration.

This confusion of story with system will generate consequences and opportunities which I discuss in my books "Global Crisis, National Renewal" and "Self-Reliance in the 21st Century."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Just Look At Us..."

"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality"

- Michael Ellner

○

"Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"; but there isn't one. It is like betting on the future of the human race - I might wish to lay a bet that the human race would destroy itself by the year 3000, but there is nowhere to place the bet. On the contrary, I am involved in the world and must try to see that it does not blow itself to pieces. I once had a terrible argument with Margaret Mead. She was holding forth one evening on the absolute horror of the atomic bomb, and how everybody should spring into action and abolish it, but she was getting so furious about it that I said to her: "You scare me because I think you are the kind of person who will push the button in order to get rid of the other people who were going to push it first." So she told me that I had no love for my future generations, that I had no responsibility for my children, and that I was a phony swami who believed in retreating from facts. But I maintained my position.

As Robert Oppenheimer said a short while before he died, "It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so." You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. Maybe that is the way it has got to be. Maybe I should not say anything at all about the folly of trying to put things to right but simply, on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise."

- Alan Watts

The Poet: Robinson Jeffers, "We Are Those People"

"We Are Those People"

"I have abhorred the wars and despised the liars,

laughed at the frightened

And forecast victory; never one moment's doubt.

But now not far, over the backs of some crawling years, the next

Great war's column of dust and fire writhes

Up the sides of the sky: it becomes clear that we too may suffer

What others have, the brutal horror of defeat -

Or if not in the next, then in the next - therefore watch Germany

And read the future. We wish, of course, that our women

Would die like biting rats in the cellars,

our men like wolves on the mountain:

It will not be so. Our men will curse, cringe, obey;

Our women uncover themselves to the grinning victors

for bits of chocolate."

- Robinson Jeffers

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Jeffers

"How It Really Is"

 

Wendell Berry, "The Great Enemy"

"The Great Enemy" 

by Wendell Berry

"In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy.

In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers...

Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make. What would be the point, for example, if a majority of our people decided to be self-employed?

The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means."

 - Wendell Berry 

Freely download

"The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays"

- https://www.pdfdrive.com/

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"Pentagon Missing $824 Billion"

"Pentagon Missing $824 Billion"

By Martin Armstrong

"The Pentagon, funded by you - the taxpayer - has truthfully NEVER passed an audit. Washington uses the Pentagon and Department of Defense as perhaps its favorite money laundering tool. Countless funds and supplies vanish year after year, and no one is ever investigated or punished. The corruption is blatantly in our faces. The most recent gimmick of an audit revealed that the Pentagon is unable to account for an astounding $824 billion missing from its budget. This is the seventh consecutive time that the Department of Defense has at least admitted that the agency “misplaced” hundreds of billions of dollars. Where are the funds?

There are twenty-eight separate reporting agencies, also funded by the taxpayer. Fifteen of those agencies received disclaimers, nine received an unmodified audit opinion, and one received a qualified opinion, while the remaining three agencies have pending opinions. Last November, the Pentagon funneled about $187 million to the public sector to conduct these dishonorable audits. The corruption never ends. They knew ahead of the audits that the agency would not come close to passing. There is zero remorse.

The DoD has no concern for their failed audit as they have never felt repercussions for failing one. Michael McCord, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Chief Financial Officer, dared to say that he wouldn’t necessarily call $824 billion in missing funds a “failed audit.” McCord also said not to worry since the Pentagon should be able to alter its audits to pass by 2028. The government can misuse our funds, but we’d be imprisoned for failing to give them their money through taxation.

“So if someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that you call the student or the report card a failure,” McCord said. Actually, that student would be held back and forced to complete the requirements for his or her grade level. Could you steal the money from someone’s wallet and call it an act of kindness for returning the change? This severely indebted nation provided the $824 billion to this slush fund of a department. Where is our money? Why has this agency never been held accountable? I presume the pockets run deep and the number of players involved would smear a portion of the establishment domestically and internationally.

Do not forget that when a whistleblower admitted the Pentagon has $2.3 trillion in unaccounted funds, a few major buildings in New York fell and started a contagion of events. The agency has never explained the whereabouts of those funds nor has it explained the trillions that have gone missing since then. The WTC7 demolition on 9/11 destroyed the room where the Pentagon audit was taking place and also happened to be the location of my computer system. I received an explanation from the SEC that everything had simply been destroyed and no further questions were permitted.

I do hope that Donald Trump’s administration drains the swamp and holds EVERY federally funded department accountable for passing audits. This is truly a disgrace and a slap in the face to Americans who have been funding government mismanagement for generations."

- https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/