"They Really Do Want Us To Be Weak Physically, Mentally, Emotionally, Financially, & Spiritually So That We Will Become Dependent On Them"

"They Really Do Want Us To Be Weak Physically, Mentally, Emotionally, 

Financially, & Spiritually So That We Will Become Dependent On Them"

by Michael Snyder

"It takes strength to be free. That is why they want us to be weak. When we are weak, we are much more likely to become dependent upon the system to survive, and that makes us much easier to control. So they give us junk to eat, they put poisons into our air and water, they “dumb us down” from a very early age, they feed us a steady stream of “programming” that makes us depressed and afraid, they get us hooked on legal and illegal drugs, and they constantly try to get us into as much debt as possible. Something that a rapper known as Zuby posted on Twitter sums this up perfectly…

He really nailed it. We were created to be independent beings, but the elite are constantly attempting to make us as dependent as possible. Here in the United States, we are supposed to be the most prosperous nation on the entire planet. And yet most of us are living like servants.

When I was growing up, $80,000 sounded like an enormous mountain of money. And it actually was a very significant amount of money in those days. But in 2025 it just doesn’t go that far. Today, the median household income in the U.S. is approximately $80,000 a year. Approximately half of all U.S. households make more than that, and approximately half of all U.S. households make less than that. So if your family earns $80,000 in 2025 that would put you about right in the middle.

So can a typical family of four survive on $80,000 in America today? The answer might surprise you. Over the past four years, the cost of living has been rising much faster than our paychecks have. As a result, our standard of living has been steadily going down. $80,000 breaks down to about $6,666 a month. So how far will $6,666 a month stretch for a family of four in today’s economy?….

First of all, our hypothetical family of four needs a place to live. As I discussed the other day, the household income required to purchase a typical home in the U.S. has more than tripled since January 2012. At this point, the average mortgage payment in the U.S. is about $2,200. So after paying the mortgage, we only have $4,466 left.

Next, our family of four has to pay for utilities for their home. According to Google AI, the average U.S. household spends $600 a month on their utilities bills. So now we only have $3,866 left.

Our family is also going to need phone and Internet service. Cell phone bills for a family of four can balloon to ridiculous proportions, but let’s assume that our family of four is extremely budget conscious and has found a package where they can get basic phone service for 50 dollars a month and Internet service for 50 dollars a month. Now we are down to $3,766.

In our hypothetical household, both parents are also going to need vehicles to get to work. Let’s assume that both vehicles were purchased used, so the payments will only total about $600 a month. If the vehicles were purchased new this number could potentially be much higher. Suddenly we only have $3,166 remaining. If our family has two vehicles that means that they will also be paying for automobile insurance. Let’s assume that they both have exemplary driving records and so they are only spending about $100 a month. Now our total is just $3,066.

Our hypothetical family of four is also going to need health insurance. According to Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, a typical family of four will spend $1,437 a month on health insurance. Ouch. Now we only have $1,629 left.

Our hypothetical family is also going to have to eat. Let’s assume that our family clips coupons and cuts corners any way that it can and only spends about $50 for each member of the family on food and toiletries each week. That works out to a total of $800 a month for the entire family. I know that number may seem way too low to many of you, but let’s go with it. That brings our remaining cash down to just $829.

Needless to say, our hypothetical family will also need to buy gasoline to get to and from work each week. Let’s assume that they don’t live too far from work and only need to fill up both vehicles about once per week. That would give them a gasoline bill of about $50 a week or $200 a month. Of course if either of them has a long commute to work or if a lot of extra driving is required for other reasons this expense could be far, far higher. After everything that we have gone through so far, we actually have $629 left.

That is a reason to celebrate, right? Wrong. We haven’t taken federal, state and local taxes out of the paycheck yet. Federal, state and local taxes will reduce your paycheck by about one-fourth. So after taxes, we are now $1,371 in the hole.

Up to this point we have assumed that our family does not have any credit card debt or student loan debt at all. If they do, those payments will have to be made as well.

In addition, the budget above includes no money for clothing, no money for dining out, no money for additional entertainment, no money for medications, no money for pets, no money for hobbies, no money for life insurance, no money for vacations, no money for vehicle repairs and maintenance, no money for child care, no money for birthday or holiday gifts, and no money for retirement.

On top of everything else, if our family of four has a catastrophic health expense that health insurance will not pay for, then our hypothetical family of four is suddenly facing a complete and utter financial catastrophe.

Are you starting to get the picture? Most of us are just desperately trying to find a way to scrape by from month to month, and that is the way that the elite like it. Do you feel like you are a hamster on a wheel that is never really getting anywhere? Well, the truth is that what you are feeling is very real, because the entire system has been designed to keep us all trapped for as long as possible.

It is time to wake up, get strong, and realize what life is really all about. You were not designed to be a cog in their machine. If you don’t take control of your life, someone else will. I promise you that. If you don’t want to be a hamster on a wheel, stop listening to their lies and start living the way that you were designed to live. We were meant to be free, but the elite will happily keep you enslaved if you allow them to do so."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"Start living the way that you were designed to live."

And just how exactly are we supposed to do that, Michael?

"America Is Done Playing Games, Canada Crumbles, Mexico Taps Out"

Jeremiah Babe,2/3/25

"America Is Done Playing Games, 

Canada Crumbles, Mexico Taps Out"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Alert! Everyone's Wrong About Trade War, Trump Folds! Iran 'Building Nukes'"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 2/3/25

"Alert! Everyone's Wrong About Trade War, 

Trump Folds! Iran 'Building Nukes'"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Atmospheres"

Deuter, "Atmospheres"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“How many arches can you count in the below image? If you count both spans of the Double Arch in the Arches National Park in Utah, USA, then two. But since the below image was taken during a clear dark night, it caught a photogenic third arch far in the distance- that of the overreaching Milky Way Galaxy. Because we are situated in the midst of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, the band of the central disk appears all around us.

The sandstone arches of the Double Arch were formed from the erosion of falling water. The larger arch rises over 30 meters above the surrounding salt bed and spans close to 50 meters across. The dark silhouettes across the image bottom are sandstone monoliths left over from silt-filled crevices in an evaporated 300 million year old salty sea. A dim flow created by light pollution from Moab, Utah can also be seen in the distance.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110524.html

Chet Raymo, “Yet…”

“Yet…”

by Chet Raymo

“My suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose,

but queerer than we can suppose.”

- J. B. S. Haldane

“Legend has it that after reciting his official recantation, kneeling on the floor of the Holy Office in Rome before assembled officials of the Inquisition, Galileo whispered, “And yet it moves.” To save his life, or at least to avoid some dank dungeon and perhaps torture, the old man had publicly denied that he ever believed or taught that the Earth orbits the Sun, rather than the other way around. The public recantation was real enough. Whether Galileo whispered the private qualification we’ll never know. It makes a lovely story. In any case, he was allowed to go back to Florence under house arrest and in the final years of his life invented (I will dare to assert) mathematical physics.

And yet it moves. The Earth goes spinning around the Sun with its sister planets. The Sun whirls with its neighboring stars around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way drifts with its attendant galaxies toward the Andromeda cluster. The Milky Way Galaxy, the Great Andromeda Galaxy, and their lesser galactic companions, the so-called Local Group, dance somewhere near the outer edge of the Local Supercluster of galaxies. Which are but the tiniest swarm of galaxies in the whole outward-racing shebang.

It moves. Oh, yes, it moves, and Galileo didn’t know the half of it. His inquisitors didn’t know any of it, but they thought they knew all of it. And their descendants still claim infallibility. But let me not beat up on the dogmatists. We should all whisper to ourselves now and then, “And yet, and yet.” Our descendants may be surprised at our own naivety. Wholly new paradigms may be required before we understand the origin of the universe or the mysteries of biological development and consciousness. Such a little word, “yet.” Maybe the most significant word in our vocabulary.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Not Knowing..."

“Not knowing you can’t do something

is sometimes all it takes to do it.”

- Ally Carter

"Geopolitics: The Middle East 2/3/25"

Danny Haiphong, 2/3/25

"Mohammad Marandi: Israel in Tears As IDF Collapses

 as Gaza, Yemen, Iran & Lebanon Strike Back"

"Israeli troops exited Gaza in literal tears after suffering one of its biggest defeats in the history of Israel. Professor Mohammad Marandi explains how this disaster unfolded with the aid of Yemen, Lebanon, and Iran, and what it means for the future of West Asia."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

The Face Of War, 2/3/25

"Scott Ritter: Trump Shifts US Policy On Israel 

As Gaza Resistance Grows And Netanyahu Loses Control"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Hey, don't look away and pretend you don't know Good American! YOU paid for every goddamned bit of this, all of it, and the blood of 70,000 massacred Gazans, including 18,000 CHILDREN, is on YOUR hands the same as it drenches the hands of the psychopathically degenerate Zionist monsters.  You proud of yourself? - CP

o

Full screen recommended.

Mahmood OD, 2/3/25

"Egyptian Tanks And Troops In Rafah; 

New Iranian Missiles And Underground 'Cities' Revealed"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Stuart, Florida, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"I Know..."

"I know the world seems terrifying right now and the future seems bleak. Just remember human beings have always managed to find the greatest strength within themselves during the darkest hours. When faced with the worst horrors the world has to offer, a person either cracks and succumbs to ugliness, or they salvage the inner core of who they are and fight to right wrongs. Never let hatred, fear, and ignorance get the best of you. Keep bettering yourself so you can make the world around you better, for nothing can improve without the brightest, bravest, kindest, and most imaginative individuals rising above the chaos.”

- Cat Winters

"The Cycle of Freedom"

"The Cycle of Freedom"

by Jeff Thomas

"Periodically, I offer up a statement by Scottish economist Alexander Tytler, who, in 1787, was reported to have commented on the then-new American Republic as follows: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been about 200 years. These nations always progressed through this sequence:

From Bondage to Moral Certitude;

from Moral Certitude to Great Courage;

from Great Courage to Liberty;

from Liberty to Abundance;

from Abundance to Selfishness;

from Selfishness to Complacency;

from Complacency to Apathy;

from Apathy to Dependency;

from Dependency to Bondage.

Tytler had it right. There is a Freedom Cycle. It’s not an accident. It’s based upon human nature, which is perennial. And it’s not something that can be manipulated to suddenly reverse itself, just because the citizens of a country are unhappy when they find themselves living in the declining stages. It has to play itself out. Tytler was quite a scholar and had come to his conclusion, based upon the rise and fall of many nations, over the ages, with particular emphasis on the Athenian Republic.

Since Tytler’s time, we’ve been able to witness many formerly free countries slide inexorably into their final stages of decline. For example, the countries in the EU are further gone than the countries in North America, and Venezuela is further gone, still. But, what this means is that the cycle is likely to stay in order in these countries over time and, at some point, years from now, Venezuela will be likely to climb out of its Bondage stage before Europe and certainly before North America. But, what very few people can wrap their heads around, is that this is indeed a cycle.

Cycles Never Reverse Themselves: The Freedom Cycle continues until it hits bottom (Bondage), then it stays there for a while. Historically, the generation that is in charge at the time of bondage is never responsible for the eventual rebirth. The bottom must continue long enough for a new generation of adults (who, all their lives have witnessed that "free stuff" is a lie) to create the rebirth. They understand, only too well, that their only hope to have more, is to develop a work ethic and stick to it. (Their still-whining parents continue to hope that a leader will come along and finally deliver on the free lunch.)

The cycle is a long one, as it requires that generations pass. Just as the depression-era people in the US and Europe were hard working and the baby boomers were their spoiled children who voted for those who promised free stuff, and millennials represent the complacency and apathy generation, so these generations must age and slide into the background before a new and productive generation can create a rebirth.

I was extraordinarily fortunate. In my own country, when I was young, we were a relatively poor, but hardworking people who understood that if we didn’t work, we didn’t eat. We didn’t get to build houses for ourselves and we didn’t buy a car. Therefore, everyone except the truly indigent worked. The truly indigent are always very few in any culture, and our entire community looked after them easily, without government support.

But, then came dramatic prosperity. One of the by-products of that prosperity was that a new generation of politicians rose up, hoping to cash in. They promised free stuff to the public, but insisted that they must be left alone to dominate. (Their dual slogans were, "The people may have their say, but Government must have its way," and, "We were elected to govern and govern, we shall.")

But small numbers of us challenged them, dug in our heels and, over time, we gained overwhelming support from our people. We had to rout two successive governments, but, eventually, those political hopefuls who remained, understood that, should they become too domineering, their careers would end. As Thomas Jefferson said, "When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

In Jefferson’s day, America had been a frontier. Those who went there to find freedom from the oppression in Europe understood that, if they were to survive there, they must have a strong work ethic and be entirely self-reliant. They were soon joined by others from Europe with a similar ethic. These were not people who would tolerate dominance. Although the colonists only paid King George a meagre 2% in tax, they revolted at the very principle of domination and, through their tenacity, prevailed. (Remember, the majority of them were self-reliant.)

The same was true in my own country. People who have a strong work ethic and are self-reliant may be kind and sharing, but they don’t like being dictated to. Therefore, when we opposed the tyranny that had just begun in our country, we attracted tremendous support from the electorate. (Again, the majority were self-reliant.)

Cuba, today is just breaking out of the ground in its own rebirth. Although it is not yet understood by most of the world, a younger generation of free-marketers have grown to adulthood in a country where the "free stuff" has been an obvious lie. Their parents remain complacent and apathetic, whilst the new generation are transforming their country from the bottom up and their trajectory is unstoppable.

If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is that a Freedom Cycle exists and has always existed and it’s driven by human nature. Most people, when they find themselves in the downward swing of the cycle, become complacent and apathetic, as Tytler describes. Otherwise intelligent, educated people vainly hope for a Freedom Fairy who will appear on the scene and reverse the process (but will continue giving out the free stuff). Historically, this has never happened. No country reverses the cycle. Like a plant, it must die before renewal can occur.

So, the reader may wish to ponder where his own country is on Tytler’s list of stages. If it’s on the upward swing, wonderful - life will be good until it reaches the pivot point of "Abundance to Selfishness". But those whose countries are in the declining stages (especially if they are nearing the "Dependency to Bondage" stage) are in a more dangerous position. I do believe that 99.9% of them will act in accordance with apathy and do nothing. Only a few will choose freedom. But, to do so, they will need to understand that freedom will not find them where they live.

Those who seek freedom must go to one of the places where it’s presently rising up from the ground or has already gotten on a roll and is on the upward swing of the cycle. The political and economic climate is constantly changing... and not always for the better. It's clear the situation in the US, Europe, and other parts of the world will continue to deteriorate."

- https://internationalman.com/

"How It Really Is"

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were

a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

"All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots,and 

a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity."

"...the smallest minds and the selfishest souls

and the cowardliest hearts that God makes."

"The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a
thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether-
well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there."

"It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly
native American criminal class except Congress."

"Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can."
- Mark Twain

Too bad the jokes on us...

"Here We Are..."

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. 

There is no why."

- Kurt Vonnegut

○

But perhaps there's something that transcends "no why..."

"If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity - even under the most difficult circumstances - to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not."

- Viktor Frankl

Bill Bonner, "Lose-Lose Deals"

Statue of Adam Smith, author of "The Wealth of Nations"

"Lose-Lose Deals"

The idea of punishing trade is silly; specialization is the sine qua non

 of prosperity. One man grows tomatoes so another can focus 

on corn. One takes advantage of long summers to welcome tourists.

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "Investors sat on the edge of their chairs on Friday. Trump said he was going to impose tariffs on Mexico and Canada. Both countries promised to retaliate. The madness of it was just beginning to become clear. There are win-win deals. There are win-lose deals. And there are lose-lose deals. Mr. Trump has found one - a deal so bad that a poll of ‘39 of the nation’s leading economists’ found not a single one who approved of it. The Wall Street Journal called it ‘the dumbest trade war in history.’

Imagine a town that tries to protect itself from competitors. Rather than freely trade with the shoe shop in a nearby-town, it demands a pay-off; ‘if we buy your shoes,’ it says to the owner, ‘you’ll have to pay us a 25% tariff.’ It makes the same proposition to the car dealer in the next town over… and with the newspaper in the state capital. What do you think? Does this town get rich… or does it become a joke?

The idea of punishing trade is silly; specialization is the sine qua non of prosperity. One man grows tomatoes so another can focus on corn. One takes advantage of his long summers to welcome tourists… another drills for oil in the chilly north. But you can only benefit from specialization if you can trade. Trade with neighbors. Trade with different states. Trade with people in foreign countries. That is why real money was such a breakthough; it allowed people to trade, easily, with people they didn’t know and didn’t trust.

A fool might be able to make a pair of clumsy shoes for himself in a day’s worth of labor. The shoemaker, spending an entire career at it, can make more shoes… and better ones. Then, the world is a richer place; it has more shoes! Those who don’t participate go barefoot.

This is not a controversial idea. Everybody knows that at the very least, tariffs will raise prices and make Americans poorer. They will be stuck with inferior products at high prices made by bad industries with good lobbyists. That’s already happening in the auto sector.

In this regard, Trump is merely following the Biden administration, which imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese-made electric cars. Even with a 100% tariff, the Biden bunch worried that the cars might still be attractive to US consumers… so they added more restrictions, effectively banning the lower priced/higher quality cars from the US market. Now, Americans pay twice as much for a similar car.

Team Biden argued that China’s cars should be kept out for ‘national security’ reasons. The Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 apparently gave him the authority. But where’s the ‘emergency’ on the steppes of Saskatchewan? Where’s the national security risk in Ottawa?

And now, all over the world, people are wondering. Being an enemy of the US empire is dangerous. But being a friend is not much better. Trump is threatening to take Greenland from our Danish allies…and the Panama Canal from our Central American friends. Friends and enemies alike are now looking for alternatives to US consumers, US products and the US dollar. All have been politicized. Like tourists outfitted with explosive vests, who wants them?

In December the EU inked ‘the largest trade deal in history’ with the Mercosur nations of South America. Thailand did a deal with several European nations. Brussels is negotiating with Malaysia. China has done nine new trade deals since 2017. Even India, normally reluctant to enter trade agreements, is now in talks with the EU. Only in the Americas does the US still dominate trade. And now, that is in jeopardy, too.

On Friday morning, investors wondered if the president would really do such an imbecilic thing. Maybe it was a negotiating tactic, they asked. But negotiating for what? Nobody seemed to know. Did he really expect foreign nations to solve Americans’ drug addictions…or secure its borders? Then, when the White House revealed that it was serious about imposing tariffs on long-time friends, stocks sold off. The headlines this morning tell us that Wall Street is ‘bracing’ for more… but who knows?

What we do know is that with so much chaos and uncertainty sweeping the world, investors are looking for safety. Gold glitters, says Dan. The price per ounce went over $2,850 last week. Cryptopolitan: "Gold makes new all-time high as Trump’s actions weaken the US dollar. The Canadian dollar and Mexican peso tumbled almost instantly while the Oval [office] interview was still going on. US Treasury yields pulled back immediately, and West Texas Intermediate oil futures jumped to $73 a barrel. Peter Cardillo, a market economist, is betting gold will hit $3,000 an ounce soon. “We see the potential for much higher prices,” he said. More on gold… tomorrow…Until then..."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! Coup At The U.S. Treasury? Trump $ One Billion Package For Israel"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 2/3/25

"Alert! Coup At The U.S. Treasury? 

Trump $ One Billion Package For Israel"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Your Email Has Been Hacked - A Very Serious Warning"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 2/3/25

"Your Email Has Been Hacked - 

A Very Serious Warning"

"AI scams are getting smarter, and they're here to stay. In today's video, I’m sharing critical tips on how to safeguard your life and protect your personal and financial information from these dangerous schemes. From fake emails and spoofed phone numbers to the alarming misuse of AI, these scams are evolving fast. Learn how two-factor authentication, updated passwords, and staying vigilant can save you from falling victim. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this!

We’ll also dive into other key updates, including the latest on inflation, layoffs at Foster Farms, Toyota reclaiming the #1 automaker spot, and how AI is changing everything—even how we interact with local businesses. Plus, I share some thoughts on wage cuts, tariffs, and the ongoing economic challenges we’re facing."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Massive Sales At Meijer"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 2/3/25

"Massive Sales At Meijer"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell , 2/3/25

"I Went to Russia's Most Typical Supermarket"

"What does Russia's most typical supermarket look like in Moscow, Russia? Take a look inside the most popular supermarket in Russia. With over 20,000 locations, Pyaterochka is the best-known and most popular Russian typical Supermarket by a long way."

Comments here: 

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jim Kunstler, "Last Rites"

"Last Rites"

by Jim Kunstler

“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

 Could have gone to some great parties. Did that instead.” 

- Elon Musk

“In private meetings and at public events, elected Democrats appear leaderless, rudderless and divided. They disagree over how often and how stridently to oppose Mr. Trump. They have no shared understanding of why they lost the election, never mind how they can win in the future.” -The New York Times

Maybe that’s because the four years of “Joe Biden” was little more than a vaudeville show in front of the curtain, distracting you from what was going on backstage - the world’s biggest political racketeering operation as conducted by a vast bureaucracy gone wild and mad: the blob in florid, mature efflorescence, doing its blob-thing to the max, looting and punking the nation. Now it is all being uncovered, disclosed, unmasked.

Think of the Democratic Party as the entertainment arm of the overall operation. Its aim has basically been to induce you to doubt your sanity. You were asked to swallow one fabulous absurdity after another - lockdowns, vaccines that don’t prevent illness, mostly-peaceful arson, US soldiers in puppy masks, pronoun police, shoplifting-is-reparations, the wide-open border - an epic acting-out of manifold mental illness in living color. The climax was drag-queens in the primary schools, obese men in fright-wigs presenting nightmare varieties of Mom-as-monster, often with some exposure of their male junk as part of the act. Suburban mothers watched approvingly, insisting on video that this was all wholesome, edifying fun for the kiddies (while some of the more insane moms went even further at home, coaxing their little kids toward medical “transitioning”).

Can you grok how insane all this was? So, if you were a Democratic Party strategist, perhaps the first thing you’d consider these days is to stop being insane. Second, at this particular juncture, you might consider apologizing to the people of this land for your heinous antics of recent years - like an alcoholic parent who has acted very badly against the family - and promise to make the effort to get your shit together. This is obviously the part that Democrats are struggling with now, and it explains why they pretend to be at such a loss to make course corrections. Of course, any further failure to come to grips with all this will lead to the death of the Democratic Party. Never in history has a political faction gone out in such pathetic ignominy.

Yet it is not just this feckless party that needs to expiate its shame, it is also America’s thinking class as a whole, its “experts,” its managers, its educated elites, its doctors and lawyers, its curators of “news” and opinion, and most of the denizens of showbiz. For the moment, they are all cowering and shuddering before the juggernaut of Mr. Trump, who they so grievously underestimated.

They know - they can see in plain view - that he is coming for them, and many might find themselves called to account in a rebalanced justice system. Many of them committed crimes against the nation and its citizens. The raft of lawyers fired out of the DC federal district this weekend for cause - namely, for conducing overtly malicious prosecutions under dubious predication - are an early sign. Ditto, the warning issued to Chuck Schumer concerning his 2020 incitement of violence against Supreme Court justices. Imagine, too, how many officials in the public health agencies need to answer for their roles in Covid-19 - the creation of it in their labs, the worthless vaccines, and the deadly treatment protocols they insisted on.

Now, the fate of the blob itself is a thing somewhat apart from the fate of this evil vaudevillian Democratic Party fronting for it. A purge of the blob is pretty clearly underway. USAID was shot dead like a rabid dog over the weekend. The agency had gone completely rogue, serving (Mike Benz explains) as the pivot between every nefarious operation coming out of the CIA, the DOD, and the State Department’s many black box units. The billions of dollars laundered out of USAID went to support hundreds of NGOs, many of them dedicated to harming the life of this nation, such as the orgs that handed out money to illegal aliens and advice on evading detection in-country. And these many NGOs represented an employment racket for the “elite overproduction” of grads coming out of universities with useless degrees and Maoist political training. There was, of course, a giant revolving door between these NGOs and the activist ranks of the Democratic Party.

The country needs a functioning, sane, opposition party to whomever is in power, since power inevitably corrupts. Like any other powerful office-holder, Mr. Trump needs a governor and guard-rails on his actions. Something will have to take the Democratic Party’s place, maybe even a group that uses the same name for convenience and the sake of tradition. But it will have to jettison just about everything the party stands for in its current incarnation, its insane ideas and policies. It might also consider the value of not lying about everything it does."

- https://www.kunstler.com/

John Wilder, "Actually Draining The Swamp: The Lamentation Of Their Women"

"Actually Draining The Swamp: 

The Lamentation Of Their Women"

by John Wilder

“All that matters is that today, two stood against many. That is what is important! 

 Valor pleases you, Crom; so, grant me one request. Grant me revenge! 

 And if you do not listen, then to hell with you!” 

– Conan The Barbarian

"A bog, a marsh, and a fen go into a bar. The bartender: “Guess I’m swamped.” He’s doing it. Or, at least he’s trying to. The more I see Trump in action in this second term, the more I’m glad he didn’t have a contiguous second term. This time, he’s focused. Being shot, I’ve heard, does that to a man. He knows he has a limited number of days, and he has goals and is surrounded by competent people who share his desire for vengeance.

I’d say his timeframe to get stuff done really consists of the next two years. Beyond that, the intervening congressional election will have occurred, and he’ll probably lose one or both houses of congress, which is what usually happens, though with Trump, there is no such thing as “usual”. But let’s outline at least part of the Swamp:

Above, tantum outlines at least part of the contours of the Swamp. In a bit more detail, only about 2% of the people that work for “the government” work directly for the Federal government. The rest of that 13.4% are state, county, and local government. Are all of them productive? Certainly not. I’ve met several ROAD warriors when dealing with .gov people. ROAD? Retired On Active Duty. They avoid doing work and find places to hide.

Others, however, are doing the things that people simply couldn’t do without, like building and plowing roads, or making and transporting safe drinking water. To be clear, places like Flint and Jackson show how DEI can ruin basic functions and allow the system to be filled with parasites: human parasites.

But even if you neglect those people, the real danger are the 12.8 million non-profit workers that are parasitically leaching off of the government. They are overwhelmingly members of the GloboLeft, and follow the tune of the GloboLeftElite. George Soros has a “Center For Things George Soros Likes” which gets funding and grants to hire people George Soros likes to do things like make foreign government more GloboLeftist so George can make more money.

Never Trumpers like Bill Kristol are leaches on the system. He has his own non-profit foundation, Defending Democracy Together Institute, which got almost $10.5 million in donations. Yup, Bill Kristol gets money from the Swamp, or Deep State, or whatever. I’d bet he’s paid for his time. You can look up nonprofit organizations here (LINK) thanks to datarepublican’s work. The link will take you to the page where Kristol’s grift is shown. I’m thinking Ricky will find some very interesting things here.

12.8 million people in the United States, or almost 7.5% of the workforce of the United States is employed by these leaches. Where do the (Insert Aggrieved Racial Or Sexual Group Here) Women’s Studies or Gender Studies or (Insert Aggrieved Racial Or Sexual Group Here) majors get jobs? Well, Starbucks®. But if their daddy is connected, they get on at places like Defending Democracy Together where they have the opportunity to launder funds back to places the GloboLeftistElite want them to go.

If you’re not mad yet, you’re not paying attention.

Tens of billions of dollars are given to the major aid groups to make the United States more attractive to illegal and legal aliens. Those aliens in turn consume (generally, there are exceptions) much, much more in services than they provide. A strawberry picker working off the books contributes next to nothing, but it costs tens of thousands in welfare to feed his family, and his children consume tens of thousands of dollars in education funding. I could go on, but they are a net economic and cultural drag.

And we’re paying for it. What money? I’d say our tax money, but we all know that’s a joke. We’re printing money and inflating our dollar to nothing to import people who don’t want to be a part of our country. Look at the recent shut down of the 101 in Los Angeles to protest ICE raids: of the hundreds of flags, most were Mexican. I believe in all the pictures I saw exactly one American flag. One American flag, among hundreds. And your currency is being made worthless to import even more people who feel little to no allegiance to this country and culture.

Trump and DOGE appear to be on this, though. They’ve fired all the top people at the USAID offices. When DOGE team members appeared wanting to gain access to the offices, they were not admitted. USAID will soon find that the Executive Branch can shut them down.

I expect a lot of this funding to be exposed. Trump was unprepared for the Swamp (or Deep State, if you prefer) his first term. Not now. He’s gutting them, and soon enough we might see 5% of workforce, the pampered GloboLeft, wondering how they’re going to pay for their next fancy coffee. Maybe they’ll get an employee discount? Nah, we probably don’t need that many baristas. We want, however, to get them out of government, cut their funding, and bathe in the ashes of their lives.

But I want to say: This. This is what I voted for. This is what I’ve always been voting for. To crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and to hear the lamentation of their women!"

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot 2/3/25"

"Economic Market Snapshot 2/3/25"

○

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

○

"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

o

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data 

○

- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

○

Comprehensive, essential truth.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

○

Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

○

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

○

- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

○

Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...

○

And now... The End Game...

o

"Warning! 17 Million Layoffs In The United States"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 2/2/25

"Warning! 17 Million Layoffs In The United States"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Alert! Canadian Economy About To Crash, U.S. Markets About To Get Rocked"

Jeremiah Babe, 2/2/25

"Alert! Canadian Economy About To Crash, 

U.S. Markets About To Get Rocked"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Alert! Canadian Dollar Crashing, Panic Buying! WW3 With China, Iran War Soon!"

Canadian Prepper, 2/2/25

"Alert! Canadian Dollar Crashing, Panic Buying! 

WW3 With China, Iran War Soon!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Breathing Light"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Breathing Light"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Sharp telescopic views of NGC 3628 show a puffy galactic disk divided by dark dust lanes. Of course, this deep portrait of the magnificent, edge-on spiral galaxy puts some astronomers in mind of its popular moniker, the Hamburger Galaxy. It also reveals a small galaxy nearby, likely a satellite of NGC 3628, and a faint but extensive tidal tail. The drawn out tail stretches for about 300,000 light-years, even beyond the right edge of the wide frame. 

NGC 3628 shares its neighborhood in the local universe with two other large spirals M65 and M66 in a grouping otherwise known as the Leo Triplet. Gravitational interactions with its cosmic neighbors are likely responsible for creating the tidal tail, as well as the extended flare and warp of this spiral's disk. The tantalizing island universe itself is about 100,000 light-years across and 35 million light-years away in the northern springtime constellation Leo."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200604.html

Chet Raymo, “Into The Night”

“Into The Night”

by Chet Raymo

“I first became intimate with the night sky on the sleeping porch of my grandmother’s house on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the early 1940s. A screened sleeping porch might be found attached to any southern home of a certain vintage and substance, usually on the second story at the back. On sultry summer nights you could move a cot or daybed onto the porch and take advantage of whatever breezes stirred the air. I slept there when I visited because it was the only place to find a spare bed. I was usually alone in that big spooky space, with only a thin wire mesh separating me from the many mysteries of the night.

Far off in the house I could hear the muffled voice of the big Stromberg-Carlson radio in the parlor, where grown-ups listened to news of the war or the boogie-woogie tunes of the Hit Parade. Outside was another kind of music, nearer, louder, pressing against the screen, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a million scratchy fiddles, out-of-key woodwinds, discordant timpani. These were the cicadas, crickets and tree frogs of the southern summer night, but to me at that time they were the sounds of the night itself, as if darkness had an audible element.

Some nights the distant horizon would be lit with a silent, winking illumination called “heat lightnin’.” And closer, against the dark grass of the badminton court, the scintillations of fireflies- “lightnin’ bugs”- splashed into brightness.

The constellations of fireflies were answered in the sky by stars, which on those evenings when the city’s lights were blacked out for air-raid drills, multiplied alarmingly. I would lie in my cot, eyes glued to the spangled darkness, waiting to hear the drone of enemy aircraft or see the flash of ack-ack. No aircraft appeared, no ack-ack tracers pierced the night, but soon the stars took on their own fierce reality, like vast squadrons of alien rocket ships moving against the inky dark of Flash Gordon space.

In time I came to recognize patterns, although I did not yet know their names: the Scorpion creeping westward, dragging its stinger along the horizon; the teapot of Sagittarius afloat in the white river of the Milky Way; Vega at the zenith; the kite of Cygnus. As the hours passed, the Big Dipper clocked around the Pole. And sometimes, in late summer, I would wake in the predawn hour to find Orion sneaking into the eastern sky, pursuing the teacup of the Pleiades.

One memorable Christmas of my childhood, my father received a star book as a gift: “A Primer for Star-Gazers” by Henry Neely. As he used the book to learn the stars and constellations, he included me in his activities. The book was Santa’s gift to him. The night sky was his gift to me.

That book, now long out of print, is still in my possession. A glance takes me back half a century to evenings on the badminton court in the back yard of our own new home in the Chattanooga suburbs, gazing upwards with my father to a drapery of brilliant stars flung across the gap between tall dark pines. He told me stories of the constellations as he learned them. Of Orion and the Scorpion. Of the lovers Andromeda and Perseus, and the monster Cetus. Of the wood nymph Callisto and her son Arcas, placed by Zeus in the heavens as the Big and Little Bears. No child ever had a better storybook than the ever-changing page of night above our badminton court. My father also taught me the names of stars: Sirius, Arcturus, Polaris, Betelgeuse, and other, stranger names, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, the claws of the Scorpion. The words on his tongue were like incantations that opened the enchanted cave of night.

He was a man of insatiable curiosity. His stories of the stars were more than “connect the dots.” He wove into his lessons what he knew of history, science, poetry and myth. And, of course, religion. For my father, the stars were infused with unfathomable mystery, their contemplation a sort of prayer.

That Christmas book of long ago was a satisfactory guide to star lore, but as I look at it today I see that it conveyed little of the intimacy I felt as I stood with my father under the bright canopy of stars. Nor do any of the other more recent star guides that I have seen quite capture the feeling I had as a child of standing at the door of an enchanted universe, speaking incantations. What made the childhood experience so memorable was a total immersion in the mystery of the night- the singing of cicadas, the whisper of the wind in the pines, and, of course, my father’s storehouse of knowledge with which he embellished the stars. He taught me what to see; he also taught me what to imagine.”

- http://www.sciencemusings.com/

"The World..."

"The world is a comedy to those that think,

a tragedy to those who feel. "

- Horace Walpole, In a Letter, 1770