So, we rise from the rubble...
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Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Dan, I Allegedly, "The Feds Are Watching You - New $200 Rule"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 3/19/25
"The Feds Are Watching You -
New $200 Rule"
"Big changes are here! In today’s video, I’m breaking down the new $200 cash transaction rule that’s making waves, especially in select Western counties. This isn’t just a small tweak—it’s a massive shift in financial oversight designed to crack down on suspicious activities. But what does this mean for everyday transactions, and are YOU being scrutinized? Let’s talk about how this impacts small businesses, rural communities, and even your personal finances. Plus, I’ll share some critical tips on avoiding scams, staying safe online, and even a cautionary tale involving Gmail and credit card fraud.
We’ll also dive into why experts are forecasting a stock market crash and what’s happening with small business sentiment, insurance chaos, and energy-saving strategies you can use to stay ahead. Whether it’s about watching your wallet, cutting unnecessary expenses, or preparing for the unexpected (like a power outage), this video is packed with information you need to hear."
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Judge Napolitano, "Col. Douglas Macgregor: Will US Attack Iran?"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 3/19/25
"Col. Douglas Macgregor: Will US Attack Iran?"
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Gregory Mannarino, "FED Day, And We Are Out Of Time. Expect Anything To Allow The System To Inflate - We Lose"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/19/25
"FED Day, And We Are Out Of Time.
Expect Anything To Allow The System To Inflate - We Lose"
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John Wilder, "Trump’s Recession: Aimed At The Left"
"Trump’s Recession: Aimed At The Left"
by John Wilder
"We are witnesses at the biggest collapse of a political movement since the fall of the Soviet Union. As then, it was a GloboLeftist organization bent on world domination. In this case, it’s the infestation of the GloboLeft mind virus in Western Civilization The collapse is not yet complete – the liberation of Europe and Australia/New Zealand is still in the future, but I have hopes that will happen for reasons I’ll outline below, as well as the hope that was rekindled in me when I heard Rosie O’Donnell had moved to Ireland.
First, why is the GloboLeft collapsing? They were winning and on the cusp of winning in a “forever” way. They had the institutions: colleges, the educational establishment, the foundations, congress, the military leadership, big business, and most of the court system. And yet it is all unravelling at a rapid pace. Again, why?
First and foremost, it’s because the GloboLeft want to lose. They have always placed themselves in the role of the “plucky resistance” to power. Note that when the latest "Star Wars"™ trilogy came out, the GloboLeftists at Disney© wrote it as if "The Return of the Jedi" never existed.
If there’s one thing that GloboLeftists love to do, it’s use either Star Wars® or Marvel™ movies as a metaphor. How many times did you see the GloboLeft flocking around some strained X® metaphor where Donald Trump was Thanos™? Yeah, a lot.
But while the behavior of the GloboLeft is based on pure hatred, however, that hatred is mainly a hatred of themselves. This hatred has made the GloboLeft the champions of everything that a Death Cult would want.
Want proof? Their actions speak more loudly than the reeeeeee of a feminist on a slut walk:
• Throwing themselves in front of traffic as a form of protest, daring drivers to run over them. This is not something that a person who has any desire for self-preservation does.
• Treating abortion as the highest of sacraments. Women have aborted more children since 1972 than every death ever in every war, and people march for it. Yay death!
• Wanting to have Zero Population Growth©, at least in white populations living in traditionally white countries.
• Wanting to destroy all of society so that it can be decarbonized. You know, because wanting to burn it all down is a healthy emotion.
• Welcoming invaders from the cultures in the world that are the most different and share the least with their own culture as if this is normal and good. This is because people who live in Somalian Sharia states and Colombian Cartel communities are just the same as the people from Modern Mayberry.
This is because GloboLeftists blame those people and things closest to themselves, first. This happens in roughly this order:
• Themselves, which is why nearly half of GloboLeftist women have a diagnosed mental disorder.
• Their family, which is why they so often have gone no-contact over the smallest of slights.
• Tradition, which makes them welcome anything alien and degenerate, and reject principles that have worked for humanity for thousands of years.
• Their country, which they want to watch be either destroyed or burned to the ground.
• Their race – how many white girls Xeet© “I hate all white people” or some variant phrase? By definition, does this mean that white girls hate white girls the most?
• Their species. Why else do they want to destroy us so the world can heal? What would solving Global Warming Climate Change matter if humanity wasn’t there to enjoy it?
Trump made this visible to the Normies. The silly positions of the GloboLeft are now on display for everyone to see. Men are women? Truth is a lie? Strength is weakness? Perhaps one of the most telling moments for the GloboLeft was a single line in Trump’s recent address to a joint session of congress: “We didn’t need new laws [to stop illegal aliens], all we just needed was a new president.”
The GloboLeft hasn’t figured this one out yet, either. They’re currently working on “messaging”. What is messaging? It’s an attempt to effectively package their positions so that they can be communicated to the voters, but it’s as useful to them as lipstick is useful to Rosie O’Donnell.
I’ll give them this bit of political advice, for free: It’s not the message that’s wrong, it’s the ideas that are wrong. The people have rejected them, and are overwhelmingly rejecting them. The pretty little lies they tried to peddle:
• Men are no different than women,
• Chinese are no different than Indians who are no different than the French,
• Being a woman is something anyone can be,
• Spending ourselves to prosperity is a reality, and
• The United States should be the one paying to stop AIDS in Africa, rather than letting Africans figure what causes it.
This comes with change. One of those changes has and will be in economics. I believe that Trump is, right now, working to create a very selective recession, and that recession is among the GloboLeft. Will it ensnare folks on the TradRight? Certainly, it will. But I’d imagine that 96% plus of the employees at USAID™ were so GloboLeftist that they woke up in the morning mad that the communist famines haven’t started yet.
The cuts in the Education Department won’t actually impact education in the United States, but it will end up with thousands of people who were committed to getting that LGBT+ message out to the kindergartener set losing jobs and having to consider how they can positively impact society. Ha! Just kidding. They’ll try to figure out a new grift.
This recession will end up, I believe, breaking the back of inflation while gutting those jobs that the GloboLeft death cult infested. DEI is disappearing, and I, for one, can’t wait until I’m driving in a major city and see some blue-haired beast holding a sign that says, “Will make you hate the white race for food”.
Hmmm, who will pick those crops after the illegal aliens are sent to the El Salvadoran prisons?
I can only guess, but I think there is a chance that we’ll have a much brighter economic future with GloboLeft defanged. Is there a long, long way to go in the long hike toward our inevitable victory? There is. And it’s not time to set up camp just yet. I, for one, don’t want to stop until the very ideas that were at the heart of the GloboLeft have been so reviled that children cry when they hear about their excesses. Oh, and Ireland? You can keep Rosie O’Donnell as our gift. Unrelated: the last witch burning in Ireland was on March 15, 1895."
Bill Bonner, "The Landfill of History"
President Elect John F. Kennedy Jr. meets with Harvard history professor
Arthur Schlesinger on January 9th, 1961 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"The Landfill of History"
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "Yesterday came more evidence that you can’t protect your way to success. From the news wires: "China’s energy and auto giant BYD has announced an ultra fast EV charging system that it says is nearly as quick as a fill up at the pumps. BYD, China's largest EV maker, said Monday that its flash-chargers can provide a full charge for its latest EVs within five to eight minutes, similar to the amount of time needed to fill a fuel tank. It plans to build more than 4,000 of the new charging stations across China….Sales of battery powered and hybrid vehicles jumped 40% last year."
You can seal the borders…and tariff everything that crosses…but that won’t stop competitors from coming up with new and better products. WECB: "China Has Developed a Revolutionary Steel Production Method 3,600 Times Faster Without Using Coal." "A breakthrough in steel production is reshaping the industry and bringing hope for a greener future. After more than a decade of research, a team of Chinese scientists has developed a new process that’s not only 3,600 times faster than traditional methods but also eliminates the need for coal. This innovation could transform the global steel industry while significantly reducing carbon emissions."
And here’s more…AutoJosh: "Ford CEO Claims That China Is Ten Years Ahead Of The US In Battery Manufacture"
CoinTelegraph: "US tech exec warns China is ‘a decade ahead’ on quantum."
AI Upload: "Ex-Google CEO warns that China is a decade ahead on AI."
EV News: "[China’s] BYD dominates Brazilian EV auto market with 71.4% share."
Electrek: "BYD is ‘just getting started’ in Europe with plans to triple its EV market share."
Team Trump can erect a high wall to keep the foreigners and their products out. But trade and innovation will go on around it. The remarkable thing about Trump’s trade war is that there is no real enemy to have a war with. Trade barriers have been coming down for the last 50 years. Worldwide, the weighted average tariff imposed by our top 31 trading partners is just 1.85%. Take out India, and it goes down to 1.6%.
Donald Trump has regaled the nation with stories of the Canadians ‘ripping us off for years’ with tariffs of 300% on US dairy products. That is a provision of the trade agreement negotiated by the Trump administration itself in its last go-round in the White House. But the high tariffs are only triggered if US exports rise to a threshold level…that they have never reached. Instead, most of America’s exports to Canada arrive duty free. Not exactly something to get worked up about.
Trade is a win-win deal… voluntary and cooperative. The idea is to trade your output for products that are cheaper and higher quality than you can make on your own. You come out ahead. So does the seller. Tariffs are win-lose…they’re political, a way of taking something away from someone else. The goal is to make those better, cheaper products more expensive so local, crony enterprises can rip off consumers with inferior products at higher prices.
Trade wars make no sense for dynamic, growing, confident economies. But History has her own purposes....Late, degenerate empires must end up on the landfill of history. Wars – even trade wars -- help them get there."
Adventures With Danno, "Major Price Increases At Walmart"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/19/25
"Major Price Increases At Walmart"
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Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Jeremiah Babe, "People Are Losers, It Will Only Get Worse"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/18/25
"People Are Losers, It Will Only Get Worse"
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"A Look to the Heavens"
"Sprawling emission nebulae IC 1396 and Sh2-129 mix glowing interstellar gas and dark dust clouds in this 10 degree wide field of view toward the northern constellation Cepheus the King. Energized by its bluish central star IC 1396 (left) is hundreds of light-years across and some 3,000 light-years distant.
The Poet: David Whyte, "Sometimes"
“‘Sometimes’: Poet and Philosopher David Whyte’s
Stunning Meditation on Walking into the Questions of Our Becoming”
by Maria Popova
“The role of the artist, James Baldwin believed, is “to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are.” This, too, is the role of the forest, it occurs to me as I walk the ferned, mossed woods daily to lose my self and find myself between the trees; to “live the questions,” in Rilke’s lovely phrase – to let the rustling of the leaves beckon forth the stirrings and murmurings on the edge of the psyche, which we so often brush away in order to go on being the smaller version of ourselves we have grown accustomed to being out of the unfaced fear that the grandeur of life, the grandeur of our own untrammeled nature, might require of us more than we are ready to give.
Those disquieting, transformative stirrings are what the poet and philosopher David Whyte explores with surefooted subtlety in his poem “Sometimes,” found in his altogether life-enlarging collection “Everything Is Waiting for You” (public library) and read here by the poet himself as part of a wonderful short course of poem-driven practices for neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris’s “Waking Up” meditation toolkit (which I can’t recommend enough and which operates under an inspired, honorable model of granting free subscriptions to those who need this invaluable mental health aid but don’t have the means).
“Sometimes”
“Sometimes
if you move carefully
through the forest,
breathing
like the ones
in the old stories,
who could cross
a shimmering bed of leaves
without a sound,
you come to a place
whose only task
is to trouble you
with tiny
but frightening requests,
conceived out of nowhere
but in this place
beginning to lead everywhere.
Requests to stop what
you are doing right now,
and
to stop what you
are becoming
while you do it,
questions
that can make
or unmake
a life,
questions
that have patiently
waited for you,
questions
that have no right
to go away.”
- David Whyte
"The Greater..."
"The greater our knowledge increases,
the greater our ignorance unfolds."
- John F. Kennedy
“Sigmund Wollman’s Reality Test”
“Sigmund Wollman’s Reality Test”
by
Robert Fulghum
“In the summer of 1959, at the Feather River Inn near the town of Blairsden in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of northern California. A resort environment. And I, just out of college, have a job that combines being the night desk clerk in the lodge and helping out with the horse-wrangling at the stables. The owner/manager is Italian-Swiss, with European notions about conditions of employment. He and I do not get along. I think he’s a fascist who wants pleasant employees who know their place, and he thinks I’m a good example of how democracy can be carried too far. I’m twenty-two and pretty free with my opinions, and he’s fifty-two and has a few opinions of his own. One week the employees had been served the same thing for lunch every single day. Two wieners, a mound of sauerkraut, and stale rolls. To compound insult with injury, the cost of meals was deducted from our check. I was outraged.
On Friday night of that awful week, I was at my desk job around 11:00 P.M., and the night auditor had just come on duty. I went into the kitchen to get a bite to eat and saw notes to the chef to the effect that wieners and sauerkraut are on the employee menu for two more days.
That tears it. I quit! For lack of a better audience, I unloaded on the night auditor, Sigmund Wollman.
I declared that I have had it up to here; that I am going to get a plate of wieners and sauerkraut and go and wake up the owner and throw it on him. I am sick and tired of this crap and insulted and nobody is going to make me eat wieners and sauerkraut for a whole week and make me pay for it and who does he think he is anyhow and how can life be sustained on wieners and sauerkraut and this is un-American and I don’t like wieners and sauerkraut enough to eat it one day for God’s sake and the whole hotel stinks anyhow and the horses are all nags and the guests are all idiots and I’m packing my bags and heading for Montana where they never even heard of wieners and sauerkraut and wouldn’t feed that stuff to the pigs. Something like that. I’m still mad about it.
I raved on this way for twenty minutes, and needn’t repeat it all here. You get the drift. My monologue was delivered at the top of my lungs, punctuated by blows on the front desk with a fly-swatter, the kicking of chairs, and much profanity. A call to arms, freedom, unions, uprisings, and the breaking of chains for the working masses.
As I pitched my fit, Sigmund Wollman, the night auditor, sat quietly on his stool, smoking a cigarette, watching me with sorrowful eyes. Put a bloodhound in a suit and tie and you have Sigmund Wollman. He’s got good reason to look sorrowful. Survivor of Auschwitz. Three years. German Jew. Thin, coughed a lot. He liked being alone at the night job – gave him intellectual space, gave him peace and quiet, and, even more, he could go into the kitchen and have a snack whenever he wanted to – all the wieners and sauerkraut he wanted. To him, a feast. More than that, there’s nobody around at night to tell him what to do. In Auschwitz he dreamed of such a time. The only person he sees at work is me, the nightly disturber of his dream. Our shifts overlap for an hour. And here I am again. A one-man war party at full cry.
“Fulchum, are you finished?” “No. Why?” "Lissen, Fulchum. Lissen me, lissen me. You know what’s wrong with you? It’s not wieners and kraut and it’s not the boss and it’s not the chef and it’s not this job.” “So what’s wrong with me?”
“Fulchum, you think you know everything, but you don’t know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems. You will live longer. And will not annoy people like me so much. Good night.” In a gesture combining dismissal and blessing, he waved me off to bed.
Seldom in my life have I been hit between the eyes with a truth so hard. Years later I heard a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest describe what the moment of enlightenment was like and I knew exactly what he meant. There in that late-night darkness of the Feather River Inn, Sigmund Wollman simultaneously kicked my butt and opened a window in my mind.
For 40 years now, in times of stress and strain, when something has me backed against the wall and I’m ready to do something really stupid with my anger, a sorrowful face appears in my mind and asks: “Fulchum. Problem or inconvenience?”
I think of this as the Wollman Test of Reality. Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference. Good night, Sig.”
"What Can We Know?"
"What can we know? What are we all?
Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,
with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Gregory Mannarino, "We Are Out Of Time! Expect More War. The Economy Just Got Worse"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/18/25
"We Are Out Of Time! Expect More War.
The Economy Just Got Worse"
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"Attritional Drone War"
"Attritional Drone War"
by The ZMan
"Prior to the start of the Ukraine war, it was assumed that the Russians, if they desired, could quickly smash the Ukrainian army. Russia is a big country with a big army and Ukraine is not as big, but few understood that it had a big army. At the start of the war, it had an army of 350,000, with a similar number in reserve. Fewer anticipated the hundreds of billions in NATO weapons and money. Everyone, including the Russians, expected a short war, but instead it is a long war.
One main reason for this is technology. The Russians badly miscalculated how the war would unfold, but they also failed to adapt to new technology, specifically the use of drones in frontline battles. Their first taste of drone warfare was the Bayraktar TB2 drones supplied by the Turks to the Ukrainians. This is a medium-altitude long-endurance vehicle that allowed the Ukrainians to precisely aim their artillery at Russian formations, as well as directly attack those formations.
The Russians have proven to be quick learners. They rushed to embrace the new technology and have now taken it in directions few anticipated. First person video drones are now the primary weapon in the Russian arsenal, used to not only attack Ukrainian men and material, but used to shape the battlefield. This new use of drones came to the fore in the Ukrainian Kursk offensive, which concluded last week with a stunning Ukrainian defeat.
The “Kursk incursion” as the Ukrainians called it, was an attack across the Russian border to gain control of the nuclear facilities in the Kursk region. There is a nuclear power plant there and a storage facility for nuclear weapons. It is unclear what weapons, if any, are stored there, but Ukraine wanted to gain control of it as well as the power plant for the purpose of nuclear blackmail. The Russians would either surrender or Ukraine creates another Chernobyl.
The Russians managed to stop the Ukrainian offensive, but instead of it becoming a stalemate or requiring the Russians to spend men and material to keep the Ukrainians bottled up, it became a killing field for Ukraine due to the Russian use of drones to police every square meter of the region. The air over the Ukrainian formations was full of drones twenty-four hours a day. Any effort to move men and material at any scale was detected and attacked by drones.
To understand how drones are now used by the Russian army and to a lesser extent the Ukrainian army, this Turkish YouTube channel provides video of drone attacks with a AI generated voice over. There are three things to notice. One is that the drone operators can fly these things into the tightest of spaces. This allows them to hunt for assets inside of buildings and hidden in wooded areas. These things are like a swarm of birds that have cameras and explosives.
The other thing is they can now operate at night. This is a Russian innovation that Ukraine has not matched. Russian FPV drones have night vision and infrared cameras, so they can spot men moving around at night. The “solution” to constant drone surveillance during the day was to move men and material around at night, but now there is no hiding from the drone swarms after dark. In Kursk, the Ukrainians were under twenty-four-hour surveillance and attack.
The third thing is the drones are essentially networked together either through the tether to the drone operators or through the over-the-air system. Fiber optic drones rely on a fiber optic cable to communicate with the operator. The operator is then connected to the Russian command and control system. The effect is that the drones in the sky have created a twenty-four-hour-a-day information space over the battlefield. This massive data collection system is then used to anticipate changes.
These parts of the evolving use of drones all came together in the stunning rout of the Ukrainians in the Kursk region last week. The Russians could accurately predict where Ukrainian men and material will be at all times, so they could plan the stunning move through the gas pipelines to put troops behind the Ukrainians in Sudzha. They could also be ready for when the Ukrainians reacted to hit them with drones and drone-controlled artillery and glide bombs.
Kursk has become a model for drone attritional war. Filling the sky with networked suicide and surveillance drones is the first step. This prevents the enemy from gathering their forces for an attack. Instead, they are required to spread out and hide everything from the ever-present drones. The next step is to use the drones to shape the activity of the enemy in order to create an opportunity. The final step is to use the drones as part of combined arms assault on the enemy.
Of course, the same rules apply to the attacker. Even though the Ukrainian drones are not as good and numerous as the Russian drones, they still have lots of them, which means the Russians must disperse their resources as well. The battle for Kursk quickly turned into two armies spread thin across a wide area in order to avoid becoming an easy target for drones. This is why it took seven months for the Russians to dislodge the Ukrainians from the area.
To understand how this changes war, imagine if two armies are only equipped with long bows and crossbows. One the one hand, the longbowman can attack any grouping of men on the other side and vice-versa. Everyone must hide in buildings and underground bunkers. On the other hand, small assault groups of crossbowmen go out to hunt the enemy in close quarter assaults. Once they secure an area, more men come into to take up positions.
This is the battlefield in the drone age. Tanks and armored personnel carriers still operate, but they are easily spotted by drones. Even those equipped with electronic warfare countermeasures are vulnerable. Often, they are simply used to transport men on a one-way trip. As soon as the vehicle is disabled by the drone, the men scatter before the drones finish off the machine. Armor is often just an expensive delivery mechanism for small groups of men.
This is why the Ukraine war drags on. On the one hand, the Russians are unwilling to lose men and machines on big assaults due to the threat of drones. On the other hand, they have adapted the new technology to slowly hunt small groups of Ukrainians and individual pieces of equipment. Since Ukraine is fixated on holding territory, this attritional drone war lumbers along at a snail’s pace. In Kursk, the Ukrainians lost about four hundred men a day to these small-scall attacks.
We are, of course, at the cusp of drone war, but it is not hard to imagine how this could change the nature of war. At the start of the technological revolution, technology was the great dis-equalizer. It gave America a massive edge over the rest of the world in terms of military power. Now, at the end of the technological revolution, technology is becoming a great equalizer. Cheap drones are turning expensive, high-tech weapons into liabilities and returning war to a battle of men and wits."
"The Good, The Bad... and The Ugly"
Following "A Fistful of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More," "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" was the third in the so-called Dollars Trilogy. It was released in Italy in 1965 and to US audiences the following year.
"The Good, The Bad... and The Ugly"
by Joel Bowman
“You see in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend.
Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.”
~ Blondie (Clint Eastwood) in the movie "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966)
"When we left you last week, we were noticing a diverging trend between the north and south, from one End of the Americas to the Other. Down here in our adopted sometimes home of Argentina, markets are opening up and trade barriers are coming down... growth is revised higher and inflation is returning to earth... as the people cast their weary eyes upon the future and discover, to their own astonishment, the hope of brighter days to come.
North of the Rio Grande, meanwhile, trade barriers are going up as tariffs take center stage... growth is revised lower and inflation expectations creep higher... and hardworking everyday citizens, having enjoyed their “exceptional” position at the top of the heap for as long as they can recall, turn their tired eyes toward the future and discover, to their own chagrin, debt, deficits and doubletalk deceit as far as the eye can see.
Of course, all is not quite as it seems. And our American friends need not despair entirely, for there is a third trend in motion... one lately accelerating on the other side of the Atlantic... which makes the republic’s prospects appear outright rosy.
Over the next few Notes, we’ll take a look at these diverging trajectories, roughly trifurcated into The Good, the Bad and The Ugly. And so, like a pimply teen at a high school dance, we shall begin with the former... and work our way to the latter.
Argentina, The Good: In what some are daring to call the “Milei Effect,” the OECD has revised higher its economic outlook for Argentina and estimates growth of 5.7% for this year, making it the world's second fastest-growing economy in 2025, after India. Projected growth for 2026, according to the crystal ballers, have Argentina in 3rd place, behind India and Indonesia, respectively. All the while, inflation is expected to end the year at ~23%... a fraction of the near ~300% annual rate seen in these parts just over a year ago.
Dear readers will be duly skeptical… and certainly the numbers don’t tell the whole story. As we mentioned in this space last week, GDP figures are easily goosed by government actors, who are only too willing to lard the expenditure side of the nation’s ledger with costly boondoggles and make-work scams, which they then pronounce (and count) as “progress.”
And yet, as anyone with an IQ above room temperature (celsius) knows, not all government programs are created equally, nor do their dubious blessings fall on the innocent and the guilty alike. Some programs are corrupt to the core, concocted around congressional cauldrons by crooks and conmen, designed from the outset to fail... and always in the politician’s favor. Such schemes look like acts of Congress and smell like acts of Congress, so are generally treated by the upstanding public with the disdain they so desperately deserve.
But here we refer only to what might be called “honest treachery,” which leaves out those myriad programs cynically smuggled past the public’s notice under the guise of do-goodery, like so many pretty little cherubs... with dynamite sticks stuffed inside their jackets.
Think of the hundreds of billions of dollars that go towards “making the world safe for democracy,” for example, a marketing slogan as demonstrably hollow as it is lethal, the modern iteration of Horace’s hoary old dulce et decorum est pro patria mori (“it is good and sweet to die for your country”).
You Dig? All the more impressive, then, that the “Milei Effect” – collapsing inflation and world-beating growth – has been achieved while cutting government programs, from top to bottom, bad to worse. Rather than juicing the economy with fiat-powered economic steroids, in other words, Argentina’s pro-market president has instead focused on slaying the Leviathan and returning voluntary trade back to its rightful owners: free markets, free minds and free people.
As Milei remarked earlier this month, in that “other” State of the Union address...“The chainsaw today is the symbol of a change of era, the beginning of a new golden age for humanity, but this time, instead of going against the world, Argentina is at the forefront.” “The eyes of the world are now on Argentina,” Milei continued, noting that many other countries were beginning to adopt his administration’s approach and were applying it to their own economies. He mentioned a certain centibillionaire and legacy media whipping boy, one who rescues stranded astronauts in his spare time, as one instance where real cuts to “waste, fraud and abuse” were being made.
And this was only the beginning... “The chainsaw is not simply a government program, it is a state policy that will last for years,” he promised. To the cheers of the working many... and the horror of the grifting few... Milei publicly celebrated the fact that 40,000 public non-workers had been laid off during his first year, citing in particular the closure of whole public institutions, including the state media propaganda arm, formerly known as Télam, the national film industry (INCAA), and the so-called Women’s Ministry (founded by ex-president Alberto Fernández, who has since been charged with... wait for it... “gender-based violence” for beating his then-pregnant wife).
Describing these and other corrupted agencies as a “giant political scam,” Milei announced he had “eradicated the lie that public works generate jobs,” stating only that they really just “generate taxes.”
Unlike so-called pro-business leaders elsewhere, who merely shuffle the deck in their own favor, President Milei is decidedly pro-market, letting the chips (to switch casino metaphor) fall where they may. But as things continue to look good down at this End of the World, what about the Bad and the Ugly elsewhere? Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World..."
Dan, I Allegedly, "Cash is Here to Stay"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 3/18/25
"Cash is Here to Stay"
"Cash is king, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon! In today’s video, I dive into why cash remains essential despite the growing push for a cashless society. From Sweden and Norway’s struggles with cyberattacks to the importance of keeping cash on hand for emergencies, let’s break down the reality behind going digital. Plus, we’ll explore how debanking, risky loans, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s shutdown are shaping the financial world as we know it. We also touch on how credit card usage is changing in surprising ways and why central bank digital currencies may not be the solution everyone expects. Whether you’re concerned about financial stability, digital currency, or just the practicality of cash, this video covers it all."
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Bill Bonner, "Let's Not Make a Deal"
"Let's Not Make a Deal"
by Bill Bonner
“To all Houthi terrorists, YOUR TIME IS UP, AND YOUR ATTACKS
MUST STOP, STARTING TODAY. IF THEY DON’T, HELL WILL
RAIN DOWN UPON YOU LIKE NOTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN BEFORE!”
- Donald Trump
Baltimore, Maryland - "The Houthis have seen a lot. Whether they will be cowed as easily as America’s university students, we don’t know. But when it comes to foreign policy, the less you know about a place, its history, its people…the easier it is to offer a solution to its problems. In this respect too, Mr. Trump is perhaps uniquely equipped to lead the empire.
Trump has brought ‘Big Man’ government to the US. That might be a good thing…the Big Man can do what more conventional leaders cannot. He could use his remarkable power to clean house, for example. Or he could just make a mess messier, with more chaos and corruption.
Many are the interpretations of the Trump phenomenon. He is ‘setting things right.’ He is ‘destroying our democracy.’ He’s ‘saving America from the lib-tards.’ He’s creating ‘an oligarchy.’ He’s a ‘Russian asset.’ He’s a ‘populist.’ He’s an ‘authoritarian.’ Etc. We prefer our own: That Mr. Trump has an historic mission of which he is unaware.
Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. And late, degenerate empires gotta act like late, degenerate empires. A wise and sensible leader would insist that the budget be balanced…and unnecessary wars brought to a swift close. But that’s not what a late, degenerate empire does. Typically, it relies more and more on brute force and less on gentle commerce. And it finds a leader who is up the challenge. He has to keep the empire on course…to its own denouement.
The invincible Spanish Armada proved very vincible. Napoleon had to retreat from Moscow. The sun set on the British Empire. The Blitzkrieg bogged down in Stalingrad. Almost all great empires meet their Waterloo in a combination of debt and foreign policy. The Austro-Hungarians invaded Serbia, and set off WWI. By 1918 the Austro-Hungarian army was still in the field, but without ammunition or food…fighting for a starving empire that soon disappeared.
The original United States were famously not interested in foreign policies. They generally eschewed ‘foreign entanglements,’ treaties, international organizations, coalitions of the willing, nation building, defending democracy and all the other claptrap of today’s empire. Besides, they were fully occupied by dispossessing the Indian tribes who stood in their way, from sea to shining sea.
The first major break with the live-and-let-live tradition was the War Between the States in which the North insisted that the South do as it was told. A generation later, by the 1880s, the US had the world’s biggest economy. The temptation to empire was irresistible, led by Teddy Roosevelt, William McKinley and Woodrow Wilson. And today, the US has more foreign entanglements than you can shake a stick at, with some 800 bases around the world ready to exert ‘full spectrum dominance’ over whatever hapless locals get in the way.
But nothing lasts forever. And already at the edges of the spectrum, the deep reds and violets are beginning to fade. The Financial Times: "Since 2017, Trump’s first year in office, trade has held more or less steady at just under 60 per cent of global GDP. But there’s been a decline in the US share of trade flows offset by an increase in other regions, particularly the nations of Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Trump 2.0 seems likely to bring more of the same: trade without America."
Nations get rich like individuals, by offering goods and services to others. As you’d expect, most developed and developing nations have increased the importance of trade over the last ten years. The one big exception is the US, where trade as a percentage of GDP has dipped to around 25%. The Financial Times: "America may be increasingly dominant as a financial and economic superpower but not so much as a trading power. Its share of global equity indices has exploded to almost 70 per cent. Its share of global GDP has inched up to more than 25 per cent. Yet its share of global trade is under 15 per cent, and has declined significantly in the last eight years."
A timber company executive in British Columbia described the light in his neck of the woods: “It is impossible to replace the US in the short-term, but in the long-term, we are building up our contacts with China and Japan.”
And what about America’s leading industry - high tech? Fortune: "The U.S. may have the brains in leading AI chip development globally, but China will continue to have the brawn to manufacture applications for those chips, and that won’t change anytime soon, billionaire investor Ray Dalio says. “We do not have manufacturing, and we're not going to go back and be competitive in manufacturing with China in our lifetimes, I don’t believe.”
As a trading partner, the US lost ground over the last ten years. Now it is an aim of US foreign policy - to reduce its trade with the rest of the world, making it less dependent on foreign imports. The Big Man threatens, bullies, sanctions, tariffs, bombs - whatever it takes to make a deal. Trade slows. And the empire shuffles to its fate."
"Democrats Panic as Biden's Pardons Get Overturned"
"Democrats Panic as Biden's Pardons Get Overturned"
MattMorseTV, 3/18/25
It's game over for the Democrats.
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This could get very interesting...
"Here Are 7 Astonishing Economic Charts That Will Absolutely Blow Your Mind"
"Here Are 7 Astonishing Economic Charts
That Will Absolutely Blow Your Mind"
by Michael Snyder
"As a nation, we have literally been in the process of committing financial suicide for decades. Sadly, some people have responded to the new administration’s efforts to get debt levels under control by committing acts of extreme violence. Our society is deeply addicted to debt and that must stop. The 7 economic charts that you are about to see are incredibly shocking. If you know anyone that still does not believe that the United States is in the midst of a long-term economic decline, just show them these charts. Sometimes you can quote economic statistics to people until you are blue in the face and it won’t do any good, but when those same people see charts and pictures suddenly it all sinks in. What is great about charts is that you can very easily demonstrate what has been happening to the economy over an extended period of time. As you examine the economic charts below, pay special attention to what has been happening to the U.S. economy over the last 30 or 40 years.
The truth is that what is wrong with the U.S. economy is not a great mystery. All of the economic problems that we are experiencing now have taken decades to develop. Hopefully the charts in this article will help people realize just how nightmarish our economic problems have become, because until people start realizing how incredibly bad things have gotten they will never be willing to accept the dramatic solutions that are necessary to fix our financial system.
The sad fact of the matter is that we are living in the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world. All of this debt has made the present more pleasant, but it has also destroyed the bright economic future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to enjoy. If they have the opportunity, future generations of Americans will look back on what we have done to them in absolute horror.
The 7 economic charts posted below are meant to shock you. Most Americans today need to be shocked before they will be motivated to take action. Please share these charts with as many people as you can. If we can wake enough people up, hopefully something will be done about all of these problems while there is still time.
1 – Government spending is expanding at an exponential rate. As you can see from the chart below, federal spending is now roughly 14 times higher than it was back in 1980. And federal spending is about three trillion dollars higher per year than it was during the last full year before the pandemic. Once the pandemic subsided, federal spending went down a bit, but now it is starting to rise at an exponential rate once again…
2 – U.S. government debt is absolutely exploding. The United States government is 36 trillion dollars in debt. How insane is that? Our national debt is approximately 36 times larger than it was when Ronald Reagan first entered the White House. Unfortunately, it continues to grow at breathtaking speed. Even with the budget cuts we are witnessing, we will add trillions more to the debt this year. Can we afford to continue to accumulate debt at this rate?…
3 – The growth of our money supply is a horror show. Just look at how rapidly M1 has been skyrocketing over the last couple of years. During the pandemic, M1 went from about 4 trillion dollars to more than 20 trillion dollars. The Federal Reserve is clearly guilty of economic malpractice. Is there any way that we are going to be able to avoid paying a very serious price for all of this reckless money printing?…
4 – Household debt has soared to almost unbelievable levels over the last 30 years. The sad truth is that it is not just the U.S. government that has a massive debt problem. U.S. households have also been accumulating debt at a staggering rate. Total household and nonprofit organization debt did not pass the 2 trillion dollar mark until the mid-1980s, but now total U.S. household and nonprofit organization debt has surpassed the 20 trillion dollar mark. Household debt alone accounts for approximately 18 trillion dollars of this total…
5 – The total of all debt (government, business and consumer) in the United States is now well over 100 trillion dollars. If anyone doubts that our society is addicted to debt, just show them this chart. This is a debt bubble that is absolutely unprecedented in U.S. history…
6 – More than 100 million U.S. adults that do not have jobs are considered to be “not in the labor force”. When a U.S. adult is not working, they are put into one of two buckets. For years, government bureaucrats have kept the number of Americans that are “officially unemployed” at a very low level, while the number of Americans that are dumped into the bucket labeled “not in the labor force” has just kept going up and up. During the Great Recession, the number of Americans that were considered to be “officially unemployed” plus the number of Americans that were considered to be “not in the labor force” never exceeded 100 million. Today, the number of Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force” alone exceeds 102 million…
7 – The price of gold has gone absolutely nuts, and that is not a good sign. When instability hits the financial markets, many investors flock to gold. This is especially true in inflationary times. Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by close to 99 percent. One of the reasons given for the creation of the Federal Reserve was that the Fed was supposed to help control inflation. But that didn’t exactly work out too well. The truth is that the United States never had consistently rampant inflation until the Federal Reserve took control. In particular, once the U.S. totally went off the gold standard in the 1970s inflation really started escalating out of control. When the gold standard ended, an ounce of gold was worth 35 dollars. Today, an ounce of gold is worth more than 3,000 dollars…
Needless to say, if the economic trends documented by the charts above continue to persist, we will have an enormous nightmare on our hands. The U.S. economy as it currently exists is unsustainable by definition. It is only a matter of time before we slam into an economic brick wall.
We have developed an economy that cannot function without massive amounts of debt, and at this point it seems like almost everyone is drowning in red ink. The federal government is massively overextended, most of our state and local governments are massively overextended, most of our major corporations are massively overextended, and the majority of U.S. consumers are massively overextended.
The only way that the game can continue is for our leaders to continue to borrow and spend increasingly larger mountains of money. But no debt spiral can go on forever. At some point this entire house of cards is going to collapse. When that happens, there is going to be economic pain that is greater than anything that this country has ever seen before. Everything that I have been warning about for more than a decade is playing out right in front of our eyes.
We can’t keep piling up debt like this. We just can’t. But look at what has happened as a result of Elon Musk and his team making some modest cuts to government spending. A significant portion of the population is losing their minds. Our society cannot handle large spending cuts, and our society cannot handle what will come after a financial crash either. We are in far more trouble than most people realize."
Adventures With Danno, "Great Sales at Meijer"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 3/18/25
"Great Sales at Meijer"
"I take you shopping with me at Meijer to find the best grocery deals
of the week. Grab your notepad as these are some really good sale prices!"
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Monday, March 17, 2025
Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Iran War Imminent, Iranian Ship Sunk?"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/17/25
"Alert! Iran War Imminent, Iranian Ship Sunk?
US Warplane Near Nuke Plant; Yemen In Flames"
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"Living In A Backyard Tiny Home, The New American Dream, You Will Own Nothing"
Jeremiah Babe, 3/17/25
"Living In A Backyard Tiny Home,
The New American Dream, You Will Own Nothing"
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"A Look to the Heavens"
"Is this one galaxy or two? The jumble of stars, gas, and dust that is NGC 520 is now thought to incorporate the remains of two separate disk galaxies. A defining component of NGC 520 - as seen in great detail in the featured image from the Hubble Space Telescope - is its band of intricately interlaced dust running vertically down the spine of the colliding galaxies. A similar looking collision might be expected in a few billion years when our disk Milky Way Galaxy to collides with our large-disk galactic neighbor Andromeda (M31).
The collision that defines NGC 520 started about 300 million years ago. Also known as Arp 157, NGC 520 lies about 100 million light years distant, spans about 100 thousand light years, and can be seen with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Fish (Pisces). Although the speeds of stars in NGC 520 are fast, the distances are so vast that the battling pair will surely not change its shape noticeably during our lifetimes."
The Poet: W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"
"September 1, 1939"
"Defenseless
under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out
wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame."
- W.H. Auden
○
"On September 1, 1939, the German army under Adolf Hitler launched an invasion of Poland that triggered the start of World War II (though by 1939 Japan and China were already at war). The battle for Poland only lasted about a month before a Nazi victory. But the invasion plunged the world into a war that would continue for almost six years and claim the lives of tens of millions of people."
○
And here we are, on the brink of a nuclear World War III,
having learned... nothing...
Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/17/25
"War, Millions Could Potentially Die;
Apocalyptic Extremism Has Taken Over America"
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