Jim Kunstler, "Swamp Fever"

"Swamp Fever"

by Jim Kunstler

“Don’t misunderstand me. I want Biden to get better and live many more years, 

so he can watch his family go broke from running out of influence to sell.”

- Oilfield Rando on X

"If the slithering denizens of Okefenokee-on-the-Potomac were nervous about their fates before Sunday — and I’d say they’ve been rather jumped-up since Nov. 4 - then Maria Bartiromo’s Sunday morning session with FBI top dawgs Patel and Bongino must have been a near-death experience for them. Something Roto-rooterish this way comes, officialdom must be thinking, if you can call utter hysteria “thinking.”

Washington is nervous because there have been zero leaks from the agency, a condition heretofore unknown in that haunted, pestiferous, reeking marsh. There’s plenty of the usual background noise, of course: the insectile hum, the croaking, trilling, buzzing, staccato peeps, chirps, and squeals of the squirming lesser creatures...the occasional roar of an ancient gator...the guttural cry of the night heron, the sharp yelp of some furry prey meeting its doom, the pulsating, primordial, chthonic cacophony of creatures suffering to mate in the frightful darkness. . . but that’s just the news media doing their thing.

We’ve remarked more than once here in recent weeks about the ominous silence emanating from the FBI leadership amidst all that other noise, and now you know: a mighty information dump is coming, bales of documents that Christopher Wray sat on for years will be publicly released un-redacted, spells will be broken, names will be named (with imputations of crimes committed), and abiding mysteries unraveled - like, what was the FBI actually doing around the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and much more.

Prepare for some disappointment. Alas, most non-capital federal crimes (acts short of treason and murder) have a five-year statute of limitations (18 U.S.C. § 3282), so the multitudinous felonious misdeeds of RussiaGate will go unpunished. Stzrok, McCabe, Rosenstein, Pientka, Ohr (and wife Nellie), Thibault, Baker, Atkinson, Halper, Horowitz, Lynch, Yates, et al., will skate off into the sunset, but not without lasting reputational damage. Mr. Obama’s presidential aura will surely lose a lot of its luster.

But there is plenty to keep the DOJ busy with more recent turpitudes carried out with the election of “Joe Biden,” including perhaps the 2020 election itself in the months before November, 2025, when the statute of limitations kicks in for that caper. Mainly, what looms is a reckoning over “Joe Biden’s” fake presidency and the momentous question as to who was really running the executive branch of the government, most particularly who was using the devious “auto-pen” to sign off on executive orders and perhaps even on legislation.

It is a wonder of modern times that this affront to the public trust somehow remains an abiding mystery. But it shows just how fake Jake Tapper’s new book is, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again." Jake blames the whole fiasco on “the White House” without ever stating who in that building was actually acting in “JB’s” place as shadow president. Tapper, allegedly a reporter, apparently never bothered to ask. But neither did anyone else at CNN, the other TV news networks, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and every other outpost of OG journalism.

Nor does Jake conclude the obvious: that his entire profession sold out the country to act as the Democratic Party’s damage control agency - rather than its traditional duty to act as a powerful check on corrupt, runaway government. Which is to say that the news media Jake represents is at least as corrupt as the government itself.

It’s for certain now, anyway, that we are going to find out exactly who was behind the fabled auto-pen, and it will probably turn out to be a cabal composed of Chiefs-of-Staff, Ron Klain and Jeffrey Zients, Dr. Jill, NSA Jake Sullivan, Deputy AG Lisa Monaco, Domestic Affairs advisor Susan Rice, and ultimately to some degree former President Obama, holed-up a few blocks away in his Kalorama mansion those four years of “Joe Biden’s” term in the oval office. Why wouldn’t Mr. Obama, now a private citizen, be called to some official forum, say a courtroom or a congressional committee, to answer questions about that? He’s not any sort of God with God-like privileges.

What we’re just beginning to see now is a furious divorce struggle between the OG news outfits and the Democratic Party, both fighting for their very lives. They are both already mortally wounded, even as they turn on each other, and liable to drop dead in the onslaught behind whatever Patel & Bongino fire at them in the weeks ahead. And even while all those RussiaGaters skate from out-of-date charges, plenty of other officials (and non-officials, like the lawfare ninjas, Eisen, Elias, and Weissmann) could go down for what went on since inauguration day, 2021.

Then there is Ed Martin, lately tossed aside as US attorney for the DC district, doing an adroit lateral arabesque into Main Justice as (simultaneously) the US Pardons Attorney, Director of the Weaponization Working Group, and Associate Deputy Attorney General. We are going to find out whether any of those preemptive pardons signed with the auto-pen in the last hours of “Joe Biden’s” presidency have legal credence. They include the pardons issued for the whole House J-6 investigation committee. House members are not immune from prosecution for crimes committed in connection with their official duties. That means you, Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney, Jamie Raskin, and Bennie Thompson.

And so, also amidst all that deafening noise roaring across The Swamp, we get the sad news over the weekend that former president, now plain citizen Joe Biden, has got aggressive Stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer spreading into his very bones. Strange to relate, this is one of the very “turbo-cancers” said to be induced by the Covid-19 mRNA “vaccine” shots that “JB” exhorted Americans to take - and supposedly submitted to himself. What can you say, besides boo-hoo?"

- https://www.kunstler.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot 5/19/25"

"Economic Market Snapshot 5/19/25"

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

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

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Market Data Center, Live Updates:

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

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

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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."

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- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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

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And now... The End Game...

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Musical Interlude: A.I. Audio Experience, "Time To Go"

A.I. Audio Experience, "Time To Go"

"This song came to me during one of those quiet moments where you start thinking about life, loss, and how everything eventually comes to an end. "Time to Go" is a slow folk tune, written in the spirit of Woody Guthrie - simple, raw, and honest. I wanted it to feel like something you'd hear on an old radio in the background of a small-town kitchen, something that lets the silence in between the words do just as much talking as the lyrics themselves. It's about death - but not in a dramatic way. More like an old friend tapping you on the shoulder when the time comes. It's about saying goodbye without a fight, without regret. Just peace. Just quiet. Just the end of the road. If this song touches you, share it with someone who might need to hear it. Thanks for listening."

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The W-shaped ridge of emission featured in this vivid skyscape is known as the Cygnus Wall. Part of a larger emission nebula with a distinctive outline popularly called The North America Nebula, the cosmic ridge spans about 20 light-years. Constructed using narrowband data to highlight the telltale reddish glow from ionized hydrogen atoms recombining with electrons, the two frame mosaic image follows an ionization front with fine details of dark, dusty forms in silhouette. 

Click image for larger size.

Sculpted by energetic radiation from the region's young, hot, massive stars, the dark shapes inhabiting the view are clouds of cool gas and dust with stars likely forming within. The North America Nebula itself, NGC 7000, is about 1,500 light-years away.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150312.html

"Perhaps..."

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act,

 just once, with beauty and courage.

 Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, 

something helpless that wants our love.”

Freely download “Letters to a Young Poet” by Rainer Maria Rilke here:

- https://kbachuntitled.files.wordpress.com/

- http://www.carrothers.com/rilke8.htm

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “I Worried”

“I Worried”

“ I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, 

will the rivers flow in the right direction, 

will the earth turn as it was taught,

 and if not how shall I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well, hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism, lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning, and sang.”

- Mary Oliver

"Fast Time and the Aging Mind"

 

"Fast Time and the Aging Mind"
By Richard A. Friedman

"Ah, the languorous days of endless summer! Who among us doesn’t remember those days and wonder wistfully where they’ve gone? Why does time seem to speed up as we age? Even the summer solstice — the longest, sunniest day of the year — seems to have passed in a flash. No less than the great William James opined on the matter, thinking that the apparent speed of time’s passage was a result of adults’ experiencing fewer memorable events: “Each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.”

Don’t despair. I am happy to tell you that the apparent velocity of time is a big fat cognitive illusion and happy to say there may be a way to slow the velocity of our later lives.

Although the sense that we perceive time as accelerating as we age is very common, it is hard to prove experimentally. In one of the largest studies to date, Dr. Marc Wittmann of the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, in Germany, interviewed 499 German and Austrian subjects ranging in age from 14 to 94 years; he asked each subject how quickly time seemed to pass during the previous week, month, year and decade. Surprisingly, there were few differences related to age. With one exception: when researchers asked the subjects about the 10-year interval, older subjects were far more likely than the younger subjects to report that the last decade had passed quickly.

Other, non-age-related factors influence our perception of time. Recent research shows that emotions affect our perception of time. For example, Dr. Sylvie Droit-Volet, a psychology professor at Blaise Pascal University, in France, manipulated subjects’ emotional state by showing them movies that excited fear or sadness and then asked them to estimate the duration of the visual stimulus. She found that time appears to pass more slowly when we are afraid.

Attention and memory play a part in our perception of time. To accurately gauge the passage of time required to accomplish a given task, you have to be able to focus and remember a sequence of information. That’s partly why someone with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder has trouble judging time intervals and grows impatient with what seems like the slow passage of time. The neurotransmitter dopamine is critically important to our ability to process time. Stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall, which increase dopamine function in the brain, have the effect of speeding up time perception; antipsychotic drugs, which block dopamine receptors, have the opposite effect.

On the whole, most of us perceive short intervals of time similarly, regardless of age. Why, then, do older people look back at long stretches of their lives and feel it’s a race to the finish? Here’s a possible answer: think about what it’s like when you learn something for the first time — for example how, when you are young, you learn to ride a bike or navigate your way home from school. It takes time to learn new tasks and to encode them in your memory. And when you are learning about the world for the first time, you are forming a fairly steady stream of new memories of events, places and people.

When, as an adult, you look back at your childhood experiences, they appear to unfold in slow motion probably because the sheer number of them gives you the impression that they must have taken forever to acquire. So when you recall the summer vacation when you first learned to swim or row a boat, it feels endless. But this is merely an illusion, the way adults understand the past when they look through the telescope of lost time. This, though, is not an illusion: almost all of us faced far steeper learning curves when we were young. Most adults do not explore and learn about the world the way they did when they were young; adult life lacks the constant discovery and endless novelty of childhood.

Studies have shown that the greater the cognitive demands of a task, the longer its duration is perceived to be. Dr. David Eagleman at Baylor College of Medicine found that repeated stimuli appear briefer in duration than novel stimuli of equal duration. Is it possible that learning new things might slow down our internal sense of time?

The question and the possibility it presents put me in mind of my father, who died a few years ago at age 86. An engineer by training, he read constantly after he retired. His range was enormous; he read about everything from astronomy to natural history, travel and gardening. I remember once discovering dozens of magazines and journals in the house and was convinced that my parents had become the victims of a mail-order scam. Thinking I’d help with the clutter, I began to bundle up the magazines for recycling when my father angrily confronted me, demanding to know what the hell I was doing. “I read all of these,” he said.

And then it dawned on me. I cannot recall his ever having remarked on how fast or slow his life seemed to be going. He was constantly learning, always alive to new ideas and experience. Maybe that’s why he never seemed to notice that time was passing.

So what, you might say, if we have an illusion about time speeding up? But it matters, I think, because the distortion signals that we might squeeze more out of life.

It’s simple: if you want time to slow down, become a student again. Learn something that requires sustained effort; do something novel. Put down the thriller when you’re sitting on the beach and break out a book on evolutionary theory or Spanish for beginners or a how-to book on something you’ve always wanted to do. Take a new route to work; vacation at an unknown spot. And take your sweet time about it."

- http://www.nytimes.com/

•

Richard A. Friedman is a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psycho-pharmacology clinic at the Weill Cornell Medical College.

The Universe

"Friends are friends because they've discovered how much they have in common. Opponents, adversaries, and foes are friends too, who have not yet discovered this. It's as if a band of amazing angels got together, before time even began, to celebrate their common heritage, sense of adventure, creativity and savoir faire, and decided to meet in the distant future, amongst the jungles of time and space, upon a distant little blue planet, to see how long it would take for each and every one of them to discover who they really are. 8 billion angels, to be precise."

"Your friend,"
    The Universe

"Thoughts become things... choose the good ones!"
- www.tut.com

Tecumseh, "Live Your Life..."

"Live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.

Trouble no one about his religion.

Respect others in their views and demand that they respect yours.

Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.

Seek to make your life long and of service to your people.

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting

or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.

Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.

When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light,

for your life, for your strength.

Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living.

If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself.

Touch not the poisonous firewater that makes

wise ones turn to fools and robs their spirit of its vision.

When your time comes to die, be not like those

whose hearts are filled with fear of death,

so that when their time comes they weep and pray

for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way.

Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home."

- Tecumseh, Shawnee

The Daily "Near You?"

Susanville, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Moscow Street Nightlife 2025! Real Life of Russian People"

Meanwhile, in a sane, civilized society...

Full screen recommended.

Window To Moscow, 5/18/25

"Moscow Street Nightlife 2025! Real Life of Russian People"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Reality Avoidance"

"Reality Avoidance"

by Morris Berman

"It’s quite amazing how the news is endlessly about nonsense. Filler, is what I call it. Very little of this has anything to do with reality, which the Mainstream Media and the American people avoid like the plague. What then is real?

1. The empire is in decline; every day, life here gets a little bit worse; all our institutions are corrupt to varying degrees; and there is no turning this situation around.

2. A crucial factor in this decline and irreversibility is the low level of intelligence of the American people. Americans are not only dumb; they are positively antagonistic toward the life of the mind.

3. Relations of power and money determine practically everything. The 3 wealthiest Americans own as much as the bottom 50% of the population, and this tendency will get worse over time.

4. The value system of the country, and its citizens, is fundamentally wrong-headed. It amounts to little more than hustling, selfishness, narcissism, and a blatant disregard for anyone but oneself. There is a kind of cruelty, or violence, deep in the American soul; many foreign observers and writers have commented on this. Americans are bitter, depressed, and angry, and the country offers very little by way of community or empathy.

5. Along with this is the support of meaningless wars and imperial adventures on the part of most of the population. That we drone-murder unarmed civilians on a weekly basis is barely on the radar screen of the American mind. In essence, the nation has evolved into a genocidal war machine run by a plutocracy and cheered on by mindless millions.

Most Americans hide from these depressing, even horrific, realities by what passes for ‘the news’, but also by means of alcohol, opioids, TV, cellphones, suicide, prescription drugs, workaholism, and spectator sports, to name but a few. This stuffing of the Void is probably our primary activity. In a word, we are eating ourselves alive, and only a tiny fraction of the population recognizes this."

- https://morrisberman.blogspot.com/

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"Morris Berman On A Dumbed-down America"

by RoryLitwin

Excerpt: "I am sharing a passage from Morris Berman’s book from a few years ago, "The Twilight of American Culture." Berman has generously agreed to let me share this passage, which is about the deplorable state of ignorance of the American people. The facts and data in this passage are a bit old, but all signs suggest that things have gotten worse since then, not better. "The Twilight of American Culture," pp. 33-40.

Turning to Item (c),The collapse of American intelligence, we find a picture that is unambiguously bleak. The following data are going to seem invented; please be assured, they are not.

-  Forty-two percent of American adults cannot locate Japan on a world map, and according to Garrison Keillor (National Public Radio, 22 March 1997,) another survey revealed that nearly 15 percent couldn’t locate the United States (!). Keillor remarked that this was like not being able to “grab your rear end with both hands,” and he suggested that we stop being so assiduous, on the eve of elections, about trying to get out the vote.

– A survey taken in October 1996 revealed that one in ten voters did not know who the Republican or Democratic nominees for president were. This is particularly sobering when one remembers that one of the questions traditionally asked in psychiatric wards as part of the test for sanity is “Who is the president of the United States?”

– Very few Americans understand the degree to which corporations have taken over their lives. But according to a poll taken by Time magazine, nearly 70 percent of them believe in the existence of angels; and another study turned up the fact that 50 percent believe in the presence of UFOs and space aliens on earth, while a Gallup poll (reported on CNN, 19 August 1997) revealed that 71 percent believe that the U.S. government is engaged in a cover-up about the subject. More than 30 percent believe they have made contact with the dead.

–  A 1995 article in the New York Times reported the results of a survey that revealed that 40 percent of American adults (this could be upward of 70 million people) did not know that Germany was our enemy in World War II. A Roper survey conducted in 1996 revealed that 84 percent of American college seniors cannot understand a newspaper editorial in any newspaper, and a U.S. Department of Education survey of 22,000 students in 1995 revealed that 50 percent were unaware of the Cold War, and that 60 percent had no idea of how the United States came into existence.

– At one point in 1996, Jay Leno invited a number of high school students to be on his television program and asked them to complete famous quotations from major American documents, such as the Gettysburg address and the Declaration of Independence. Their response in each case was to stare at him blankly. As a kind of follow-up, on his show of 3 June 1999, Leno screened a video of interviews he had conducted a few days before at a university graduation ceremony. He did not identify the institution in question; he told his TV audience only that the students he had interviewed included graduate students as well as undergraduates. The group included men, women, and people of color. Leno posed eight questions, as follows:

1. Who designed the first American flag? Answers included Susan B. Anthony (born in 1820,) and “Betsy Ford.”

2. What were the Thirteen Colonies free from, after the American Revolution? One student said, “The East Coast.”

3. What was the Gettysburg Address? One student replied, “An address to Getty;” another said, “I don’t know the exact address.”

4. Who invented the lightbulb? Answers included Thomas Jefferson

5. What is three squared? One student said, “Twenty-seven;” another said, “Six.”

6. What is the boiling point of water? Answers included 115 degrees?

7. How long does it take the earth to rotate once on its axis? The two answers Leno received here were “Light years” (which is a measure of distance, not time,) and “Twenty-four axises [sic].”

8. How many moons does the earth have? The student questioned said she had taken astronomy a few years back and had gotten an A in the course but that she couldn’t remember the correct answer.

It is important to note that not a single student interviewed had the correct answer to any of these questions. Leno’s comment on this pathetic debacle says it all: “And the Chinese are stealing secrets from us?”

–  A 1998 survey by the National Constitution Center revealed that only 41 percent of American teenagers can name the three branches of government, but 59 percent can name the Three Stooges. Only 2 percent can name the chief justice of the Supreme Court; 26 percent were unable to identify the vice president. In the early 1990s, the National Assessment of Education Progress reported that 50 percent of seventeen year olds could not express 9/100 as a percentage, and nearly 50 percent couldn’t place the Civil War in the correct half century - data that the San Antonio Express News characterized as evidence of the “steady lobotomizing” of American culture. In another study of seventeen year olds, only 4 percent could read a bus schedule, and only 12% could arrange six common fractions in order of size.

– Ignorance of the most elementary scientific facts on the part of American adults is nothing less than breathtaking. In a survey conducted for the National Science Foundation in October 1995, 56 percent of those polled said that electrons were larger than atoms; 63 percent stated that the earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs (a chronological error of more than 60 million years;) 53 percent said that the earth revolved around the sun in either a day or a month (that is to say, only 47 percent understood that the correct answer is one year;) and 91 percent were unable to state what a molecule was. A random telephone survey of more than two thousand adults, conducted by Northern Illinois University, revealed that 21 percent believed that the sun revolved around the earth, with an additional 7 percent saying that they did not know which revolved around which.

– Of the 158 countries in the United Nations, the United States ranks forty-ninth in literacy. Roughly 60 percent of the adult population reads as much as one book a year, where book is defined to include Harlequin romances and self-help manuals. Something like 120 million adults are illiterate or read at no better than a fifth-grade level. Among readers age twenty-one to thirty-five, 67 percent regularly read a daily newspaper in 1965, as compared with 31 percent in 1998.

– In a telephone survey conducted in 1998, 12 percent of Americans, asked who the wife of the biblical Noah was, said “Joan of Arc” (reported on National Public Radio, 13 June 1998.)

– In 1997, as a hoax, the attorney general of the state of Missouri submitted a proposal to an international academic accrediting agency (not identified) to establish an institution he named Eastern Missouri Business College, which would grant Ph.D’s in marine biology and genetic engineering, as well as in business. The faculty would include, inter alia, Moe Howard, Jerome Howard, and Larry Fine - that is, The Three Stooges; and the proposed motto on the college seal, roughly translated from the Latin, was Education Is for the Birds. The response? Academic accreditation was granted."

Complete article is here. Read it and weep...

- https://litwinbooks.com/

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"The Twilight Of American Culture", by Morris Berman

"Morris Berman argues provocatively and engagingly that, like ancient Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries, the American culture has now seen the passage of its most triumphant years and is rapidly approaching a period of social chaos. This book paints one of the most damning portraits of American society to date. In examining the corruption at the heart of modern politics, the 'Rambification' of popular entertainment and the collapse of the educational system, Berman concludes that while there is little Americans can do as a society to arrest the onset of corporate culture ('McWorld'), individuals can still act to preserve cultural values, refusing to base their live son kitsch or consumerism, profit or self-promotion."

- https://bigthink.com/

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As the great Mogombo Guru proclaimed, "We're so freakin' doomed!"

He was right, and that's why...

Dan, I Allegedly, "Free Money Will Not Help You - A Blessing or a Curse?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 5/18/25

"Free Money Will Not Help You - 

A Blessing or a Curse?"

"Free money for businesses sounds great, right? But what if it’s not enough to save struggling Oakland businesses? In today’s video, I break down why grants, even ones up to $25,000, may not be the solution when deeper issues like crime, economic struggles, and urban challenges persist. Oakland has seen major businesses leave, from Target to Nordstrom, and even iconic teams like the Raiders and the A’s have moved on. These grants, while helpful, won’t fix broken systems or bring lasting change. Let’s talk about what businesses really need to thrive.

From universal basic income to the realities of welfare fraud, I also share eye-opening stories that show how accountability and responsibility matter more than ever in tackling economic challenges. Whether it’s navigating skyrocketing auto insurance costs or dealing with personal debt, there are lessons for all of us to learn. And yes, I even had time to chat with Cheri from “mom yoga” about her inspiring business model."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

Over 60,000 homeless veterans,

22 of whom kill themselves every day...

Thank you for your service!

- CP, veteran, USMC

"The Moral Injury Of War..."

"At the outset of every war we hastily transform our enemy into the image of the demonic; and then, since it is the devil we are fighting, we can shift onto a war footing without asking ourselves all the troublesome and spiritual questions that the war arouses. We no longer have to face the realization that those we are killing are persons like ourselves. The killing and torture, the more they endure, contaminate the perpetrators and the society that condones their actions. They sever the professional inquisitors and killers from the capacity to feel. They feed the death instinct. They expand the moral injury of war."

- Rollo May

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Freely download "The Art Of War", by Sun Tzu, here:

- https://sites.ualberta.ca/

“Before the Leaves Fall From the Trees”

“Before the Leaves Fall From the Trees”

by Simon Black

"The morning of June 28, 1914 began like any other normal day. It was a Sunday, so a lot of people went to church. Others prepared large meals for family gatherings, played with their children, or thumbed through the Sunday papers.

At that point, tensions had been high in Europe for several years; the continent was bitterly divided by a series of complex diplomatic and military alliances, and small wars had recently broken out. Italy and the Ottoman Empire went to war in 1912 in a limited, 13-month conflict. And the First Balkan War was waged in early 1913. Overall, though, the continent clung to a delicate peace. And hardly anyone expected that most of the next three decades would be filled with chaos, poverty, and destruction. And then it happened.

That Sunday afternoon, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated during an official visit to Sarajevo. And the world changed forever. Five weeks later the entire continent was at war with itself. But even still, most of the ‘experts’ thought it would be a simple, speedy conflict. Germany’s emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, famously told his troops who were being shipped off to the front line in August 1914, “You will be home before the leaves fall from the trees...” It took four years and an estimated 68 million casualties to bring the war to a close. But that was only the prelude.

Following (and even during) World War I, a series of bloody revolutionary movements took hold in Europe, including in Russia, Greece, Spain, Turkey, and Ireland. Then came the Spanish flu, which claimed the lives of tens of millions of people. Later, Germany sunk into one of the worst episodes of hyperinflation in human history.

Communism began rapidly spreading across the world almost as quickly as the Spanish flu, often through violent fanatics who engaged in murder and arson in order to intimidate their opponents; this became known as the ‘Red Scare’ in the United States.

Of course there were some good years during the 1920s when people generally felt prosperous and happy; but it all came crashing down at the end of the decade when a severe economic depression strangled the entire world. It lasted for more than ten years, during which time the world was once again brought to an even more destructive war that didn’t end until atomic weapons obliterated the civilian populations of two Japanese cities.

Again – go back to June 1914. Who would have thought that the next 30+ years would play out so destructively? Even for the people who did predict that Europe would go to war in 1914, most leaders thought it would be over quickly. And almost no one expected it would spawn decades of chaos.

Today we’re obviously living in different times and under different circumstances. But we may be standing at a similar precipice as in 1914, staring at enormous trends that could shape our lives for years to come. Covid only scratched the surface.

We now know without a doubt, for example, how governments will respond the next time they feel there’s a threat to public health. They’ll say, “We’re listening to the scientists.” Really? The same scientists who told people they couldn’t go to work, school, or church, but it was perfectly fine for peaceful protesters to pack together like sardines without wearing masks because they’re apparently protected from the virus by their own righteousness? The same scientists who wanted to lock everyone down to prevent Covid, but were happy to accept skyrocketing rates of cancer, depression, suicide, heart disease, and domestic abuse as a result of those very lockdowns and so-called "vaccines'?

The public health consequences from this pandemic and "vaccine" will reverberate for years to come. And that doesn’t even begin to take the economic consequences into consideration. Western governments have taken on trillions of dollars in new debt this year and central banks have printed trillions more. Even with all that stimulus, however, there are still hundreds of millions of people worldwide who lost their jobs, and countless businesses that have closed.

Future generations who haven’t even been born yet will spend their entire working lives paying interest on the debts that are being accumulated today. The long-term consequences of all this are incalculable.

And then there are the social trends – the rise of neo-Marxism that’s sweeping the world so fast. It’s the Red Scare of the 21st century. They despise talented, successful people. They believe it’s greedy for you to keep a healthy portion of what you earn, but it’s not greedy for them to take it from you and spend it on themselves.

Many of the people in this movement, of course, are violent fanatics who routinely engage in arson, assault, and vandalism. Same for the social justice warriors who are just as quick to violence and intimidation; plus they’ve already commandeered the decision-making of some of the largest, most powerful companies in the world. You can’t even watch a football game or a TV commercial anymore without some commentary on oppression and victimization. And any intellectual dissent is met with intimidation or censorship.

In fact the largest consumer technology companies in the world have become our censors. We’re not allowed to share scientific information that doesn’t conform to the Chinese-controlled World Health Organization’s guidance. And news articles that don’t match their ideology are blocked.

Let’s not kid ourselves – these trends are not going away any time soon. It’s great to be optimistic, hope for the best, and enjoy the good years as they come. But it makes sense to at least be prepared for the possibility that we could be at the very beginning of a period of enormous instability that may last a very long time."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

"The Guns of August" 

"In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize–winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players."

Freely download here:

- https://epdf.pub/

○

“It is history that teaches us to hope. It is well that war is 

so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”

- Robert E. Lee

But we've learned nothing from history, nothing at all, 

and our fondness, no, love of war, has only improved the weapons...

Greg Hunter, "Every European Country Reinstituting Drafts, They Want War"

"Every European Country Reinstituting Drafts, 

They Want War"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is back with an update on his big turn toward war in Ukraine with Russia. Two weeks ago on USAW, Armstrong predicted, “After May 15, war is turning up (in Ukraine) and it will be turning up into 2026.” That prediction paid off to the exact day as peace talks between Russia and Ukraine ended on May 15 after just two hours, and neither side agreed to meet again. War is already here, and there is no stopping it with peace talks. Armstrong says, “Putin knows and understands this is not a just a war with Ukraine, this is a war with NATO. If Putin agrees to a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine, what’s that going to do? Absolutely nothing. You have every European country reinstituting drafts. In Germany, even people 60 years old have been told to report. Poland has ordered every able-bodied man to show up for military training. They want war. Their economy is collapsing. You hear about this de-dollarization, and it’s not happening. The capitalization of just the New York Stock Exchange is worth more than all of Europe combined. That’s just the New York Stock Exchange. You’ve got Macron in France, they call him the ‘Petite Napoleon.’ Without war, Europe is going to collapse. It’s in a sovereign debt crisis. They have done everything against the economy.”

Armstong thinks Russia will finish off Ukraine sometime in 2027 and Europe a year or two after that. And, yes, Armstrong still thinks Ukraine will disappear from the map.

Armstrong urged his contacts in Washington to “Get the hell out of NATO.” It seems some in the US government are considering this warning as this headline breaks today: “US to Begin European Troop Withdrawal Talks, NATO Ambassador Says.” Armstrong says, “I have been told by some very influential people on Capitol Hill ‘you’re right, we agree.’ That’s what I have been told. I have been complaining about this for months, and my view is Europe is committing suicide, and let’s not be part of it this time.” Is President Trump getting this message? Armstrong says, “Yes, I believe so. Trump also said a peace deal does not seem likely, the hatred is too great on both sides.”

The neocons back home also want war with Russia and have wanted it for a very long time. Trump is either going to make peace or walk away and not participate. Maybe this is why former FBI Director James Comey put out his not-so-cryptic call to assassinate President Trump with his “86 47” now deleted Instagram post. Comey was the man who held Armstrong in prison illegally for contempt for 7 years. Armstrong says, “Comey has always been part of it. Just for the record, he was the US Attorney in New York. He’s the one who kept me in contempt until the Supreme Court said what the hell is going on? Then, they had to release me.”

How did Armstrong land in jail? Armstrong says, “They asked me to put in 10 billion dollars to take over Russia, and I refused. It was Comey that was the US Attorney for New York, and he kept me in civil contempt, which has a maximum sentence of 18 months, and he kept me in for 7 years. He kept rolling it and rolling it and rolling it. I was told if I put in $10 billion, I would get $100 billion back. They intended to have all the assets of Russia going through the trading desk of New York. All the oil, gold, diamonds, platinum, you name it, they would have it all. And I said, no, I’m out. I am not into regime change.”

Fast forward to today, and the powers in Europe still think they can take Russia and steal their assets to fix the extreme financial problems in Europe. Pensions, banks and bonds are in deep financial trouble in Europe. Stealing from Russia and gaining control of $75 trillion in natural resources is why they want and need war. Armstrong says, “They went to negative interest rates in 2014. I warned them. I said listen; you are out of your minds. You are syphoning money out of the bank reserves and pension finds. It’s a basket case. It really is. They have no appreciable economy, it’s shrinking, the number of actual businesses has shrunk in Germany. (Germany is 25% of the EU economy.) This is why they need war.”

Armstrong says Europe is going to lose and lose badly in a war with Russia. Armstrong says if Trump gets out of NATO, the US will thrive and do much better financially than Europe. Let’s all hope President Trump gets us out of NATO before it’s too late." There is much more in the 60-minute interview.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with Martin Armstrong as he gives his analysis on war, default, depression and unpayable debt that will make a huge mess for the world. 

- https://rumble.com/

"How Russia Could Destroy the Entire World"

"How Russia Could Destroy the Entire World"

"In today’s world, the threat of global annihilation is a very real possibility. Among the nations with the power to end all civilization in a matter of minutes, Russia stands out as number 1. With advanced weapons systems capable of unparalleled destruction, Russia could trigger the end of the world in just five minutes and bring humanity to its knees."

Full screen recommended.

"This Is What a Nuclear War Would 

Look Like Minute by Minute"

o

"Russia Puts Advanced Sarmat 

Nuclear Missile System On ‘Combat Duty’"

"Moscow has put into service an advanced intercontinental ballistic missile that Russian President Vladimir Putin has said would make Russia’s enemies “think twice” about their threats, according to reported comments by the head of the country’s space agency. Yuri Borisov, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said Sarmat missiles have “assumed combat duty”, according to Russian news agency reports.

“The Sarmat strategic system has assumed combat alert posture,” the state-run TASS news agency quoted the Roscosmos chief as saying. “Based on experts’ estimates, the RS-28 Sarmat is capable of delivering a MIRVed warhead weighing up to 10 tons to any location worldwide, both over the North and South Poles,” TASS said in its report.

Putin said in February that the Sarmat – one of several advanced weapons in Russia’s arsenal, is deployed now. In 2022, some two months after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Putin said the Sarmat would “reliably ensure the security of Russia from external threats and make those, who in the heat of aggressive rhetoric try to threaten our country, think twice”.

The Sarmat is an underground silo-based missile that Russian officials say can carry up to 15 nuclear warheads, though the United States military estimates its capacity to be 10 warheads. Known to NATO military allies by the codename “Satan”, the missile reportedly has a short initial launch phase, which gives little time for surveillance systems to track its takeoff.

Weighing more than 200 tons, the Sarmat has a range of some 18,000km (11,000 miles) and was developed to replace Russia’s older generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICMBs) that dated from the 1980s. Russia test-fired the Sarmat missile in April 2022 in the Plesetsk region of the country, located some 800km (almost 500 miles) north of Moscow, and the launched missiles hit targets on the Kamchatka peninsula, in Russia’s far east region."

- https://www.aljazeera.com/

o

RS-28 Sarmat

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-28_Sarmat

15 warheads per missile, 11,000 mile range, hypersonic speed of 15,880 mph.

One Sarmat can destroy an area the size of Texas or France.

A hypersonic nuclear missile launched from Russia will hit Washington, DC in 23 minutes.

o

The Poseidon Torperdo

Full screen recommended.

Fully operational and deployed, the Poseidon torpedo with a 100 megaton warhead explodes deep underwater, causing a 1,600 foot high tidal wave which destroys everything on the U.S. East Coast as far inland as West Virginia. England would simply disappear beneath the waves...

It would look exactly like this, only twice as high...

Do we really want to do this? Pray to God we don't...