Full screen recommended.
Steven Van Metre, 5/30/25
"The Domino Effect Begins:
Why Markets May Never Bounce Back!"
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So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Friday, May 30, 2025
"A Look to the Heavens"
"In silhouette against a crowded star field along the tail of the arachnalogical constellation Scorpius, this dusty cosmic cloud evokes for some the image of an ominous dark tower.
In fact, clumps of dust and molecular gas collapsing to form stars may well lurk within the dark nebula, a structure that spans almost 40 light-years across this gorgeous telescopic portrait. Known as a cometary globule, the swept-back cloud, is shaped by intense ultraviolet radiation from the OB association of very hot stars in NGC 6231, off the upper edge of the scene. That energetic ultraviolet light also powers the globule's bordering reddish glow of hydrogen gas. Hot stars embedded in the dust can be seen as bluish reflection nebulae. This dark tower, NGC 6231, and associated nebulae are about 5,000 light-years away."
"The World..."
"The world is a comedy to those that think,
a tragedy to those who feel. "
- Horace Walpole, In a Letter, 1770
Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern: Weekly Wrap 30-May"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 5/30/25
"INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern:
Weekly Wrap 30-May"
Comments here:
"Larry C. Johnson: Iran Wipes Out Israeli Attack - Russia Prepares for The Worst"
Dialogue Works, 5/30/25
"Larry C. Johnson: Iran Wipes Out Israeli Attack -
Russia Prepares for The Worst"
Comments here:
"Alert: Russian Nuclear Base Historic Data Leak! 2 Million Documents Reveal WW3 Bunker Secrets!"
Prepper News, 5/30/25
"Alert: Russian Nuclear Base Historic Data Leak!
2 Million Documents Reveal WW3 Bunker Secrets!"
Comments here:
"There Are Simply No Answers..."
“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”
- Barry Lopez
“I Know How to Live… I Don’t Know How to Die”
“I Know How to Live… I Don’t Know How to Die”
by Bill Bonner
“I’ve never done this before…” The woman on the bed was almost a skeleton. The flesh had already gone from her. What was left was an 86-year-old empty tube – shriveled, bent, used up. “I know how to live,” she said. “I don’t know how to die. I don’t know what I’m supposed to think or what I’m supposed to do.”
“Don’t worry about it,” we advised. “It’ll come naturally. Do you need anything?” “Need anything? I need nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. I’m dying. And I have everything I need to do it.” “How about some more pain medication?” “No. I don’t want any. I am only going to do this once. I don’t want to get doped up. I don’t want to miss anything.”
Heaven with Tobacco Fields: People who are dying have a status somewhere between Nobel Prize winners and mobsters. We are reluctant to contradict them. We remember a scene from childhood: We had gone to visit a dying uncle, Edward. Like all our relatives, he was a tobacco farmer. But now the plant he had cared for all his life was killing him: he had lung cancer. Other relatives had gathered at the house to say goodbye. The mood was gloomy, dark… quiet. But the conversation, in early spring, ran in a familiar direction – toward the weather and soil conditions. “They won’t be planting tobacco where I’m going,” said Uncle Edward.
The group fell silent. Some looked down at the floor. Some shuffled toward the kitchen. But Agnes, a cousin, challenged him. “How do you know where you’re going or what they’re doing there?” This enlivened and emboldened the confrérie of tobacco growers. “Yeah, for all we know they’re pulling the plants already,” said one, glancing out the window to see if the rain had stopped. (The plants were “pulled” from the nursery beds for transplanting in the fields. We particularly disliked pulling them because black snakes enjoyed the warm of the gauze-like covering and slithered among the plants.)
The 12-year-old in the group – your editor – forever admired his cousin Agnes. She could see the truth and had the courage to speak it. None of us knew what happened after death. Why not tobacco farming? We tried to imagine Heaven with tobacco fields. It was so implausible that we had a hard time with it. But we persisted. Rows of the green plants, tended by generations of deceased farmers. The sun must not be so hot in Heaven, we concluded, for there was nothing heavenly about the scorching summer sun when you were cutting tobacco. The ghost farmers must hoe each row… and “top” the plants to remove the flower and force the growth to the leaves, just as we did in the Maryland fields. At the end of the day, sweat-stained and tired, they must gather around their pickup trucks – one foot up on the running board, an elbow on the raised knee, with a cigarette in the right hand.
An Unexplored Mystery: The other professions must have their quarters, too… Wheat farmers need broader fields. Cobblers could enjoy their trade, too. Why not? Heaven – immeasurably large – could have a place for everybody. Even bankers and lawyers might find a spot. For a moment, we imagined what it must be like, with mechanics tightening their bolts and dairymen milking their cows. But if everybody did in Heaven what he did on Earth, what was the point of it? The juvenile mind, like its adult successor, stalled.
Half a century later, it is still stopped where it was left – like a tractor abandoned on the edge of a field, with trees grown up between the wheels. Rust has covered the hood. The tires, cracked from the sun, have flattened and disintegrated. It has moved not an inch forward… leaving the mystery of Heaven completely unexplored. “Well, you’re not dead yet,” we replied. “How about a little apple juice?”
The death rattle began two days later. The goodbyes have all been said. Prayers have been offered. Undertakers contacted. A church put on alert. Remembrances shared. Toward the end there was no one there to share the remembrances with. The spirit seemed to have packed up and moved out before the body got the message. Life, like bull markets and credit expansions, always come to an end, sooner or later. New technology and newfangled monetary policies offer delays, unfounded hope, and stays of execution – but never a full pardon.”
- http://www.thedailyreckoning.com
○
Bread, "Everything I Own"
"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call
you could make, who would you call and what would you say?
And why are you waiting?"
- Stephen Levine
"The End of History"
"The End of History"
A somewhat exaggerated obituary...
by Joel Bowman
“History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.”
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
"Remember when history ended, dear reader? The year was 1992. "Under the Bridge" and "Tears in Heaven" were playing on the FM radio. The Cold War, which had promised such a “Bang!” had ended with barely a whimper. And American philosopher, Francis Fukuyama, had just published a daring book: "The End of History and the Last Man."
In light of the great Soviet collapse, Mr. Fukuyama was of the opinion that The West had not simply triumphed over The Rest, but that the world had finally reached “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
In other words, whatever was to be done in the fickle and turbulent realm of politics had, by the grand old year 1992, already been done. Here is Mr. Fukuyama, joining a long line of intellectuals (including Marx) to have become ensnared in the labyrinth of Hegel’s dialectical materialism: “Both Hegel and Marx believed that the evolution of human societies was not open-ended, but would end when mankind had achieved a form of society that satisfied its deepest and most fundamental longings. Both thinkers thus posited an "end of history": for Hegel this was the liberal state, while for Marx it was a communist society. This did not mean that the natural cycle of birth, life, and death would end, that important events would no longer happen, or that newspapers reporting them would cease to be published. It meant, rather, that there would be no further progress in the development of underlying principles and institutions, because all of the really big questions had been settled.” ~ Francis Fukuyama
But a curious thing happened on the way to the end of history; namely... history did not end. The political pendulum did not come to a full stop. Stubbornly, insolently, it kept right on a-swingin’...
Time and Again: Indeed, the ‘90s were a time of great political upheaval and experimentation, not all of it leading to the holy grail of western liberal democracy, as imagined by Mr. Fukuyama.
In the power vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet Empire, Gorbachev’s perestroika (a program of political and economic “restructuring”) delivered the Russian people from the brutality of communism… into the unloving embrace of a corrupted oligarchy…and then to a kind of faux democracy that has seen the same man at the helm for a quarter of a century. (After the last “election,” Vladimir Putin became the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953.)
As for the Americans, co-belligerents in the aforementioned ideological conflict, they continued their own long march…headlong toward a special brand of political circuses and economic madness. In a country where any boy, girl or two-spirit animal might grow up to be president, the nation that enthusiastically sent its soldiers abroad to “make the world safe for democracy” offered up a Bush, followed by a Clinton (twice), followed by another Bush (twice), then very nearly another Clinton. Two decades of political power, held in the hands of two dynastic families.
Meanwhile, beneath fierce power struggles at the executive level, America’s vast and menacing security state – about which General Eisenhower famously warned in his farewell address in ‘61, at the height of the Cold War – continued its inexorable mission creep into the lives and private affairs of the good citizens of The Republic.
The Scourge of War: Neither the defeated Soviets nor the victorious Americans appeared willing to take the path Fukuyama had so carefully laid out for them. The End of History would have to wait...
Ah, but what about Europe, some venture to ask? Indeed, Mr. Fukuyama himself preferred the transnational euro-model to the comparatively unipolar American offering. Might not the “post-historic” world manifest itself over on the continent, where a common “Esperanto” currency – in the form of the euro – would facilitate free trade and citizens of all backgrounds, creeds and cultures would walk arm in arm from the Seine to the Danube, the Bay of Biscay to the shores of the Black Sea?
“I believe that the European Union more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary United States,” declared Fukuyama at the time, in brave defense of his curious, end-of-days timeline. The EU’s attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a ‘post-historical’ world than the Americans’ continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military.”
Alas, not unlike the Ruskies and the Yankees before them, the Europeans would go on to disappoint Mr. Fukuyama, too. After a relatively sanguine start to the new millennium, the Eurozone spent most of the ensuing two decades descending gradually into first economic, then political, and now widespread cultural disaster. Today, protests from one end of the continent to the other – Finland to Greece, the Netherlands to France, Poland to Ireland and plenty more between – underscore real discord between neighbors in the great eurocrat utopia. Not to mention the scourge of war, which threatens to drag the entire continent, if not the whole western world, into yet another great conflagration.
Under the Bridge: And so, almost a quarter of a century after Mr. Fukuyama stopped the clock on History, it plods along regardless. Evidently, something about the political spirit of mankind just doesn’t want to sit still. In the year 2025 the world is faced with a plethora of political challenges, for which many of the seeds were sown in the dimming twilight of the last century.
That is to say, the ideological struggle continues against the backdrop of protests, uprisings, springs, occupations, revolutions and, over the weekend, here in the United States of America, attempted assassinations. (How close the Republic was to having its own Franz Ferdinand moment, we may never know...)
When Mr. Fukuyama stopped the clocks back in 1992, America’s debt clock was just ticking past $3 trillion. As we type these very words, that figure is fast approaching $37 trillion, a rather brassy 775 percent increase. According to the latest estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, it is set to top $56 trillion within the next decade. And the rate of increase is only accelerating…The CBO had revised its estimate of the budget deficit for 2024 from $1.6 trillion to $1.9 trillion - an increase of more than 20 percent.
As a proportion of annual GDP, the debt will rise from almost 100 percent this financial year to 122 percent in 2034, meaning that the debt is growing at a much faster rate than real economic output. Interest rate costs to service the debt, now approaching $1 trillion, will rise to $1.7 trillion by 2034, when it will become the single largest line item on the federal budget.
Which brings us back to the lessons of history…Will the United States have to go “Full Argentina” before the pendulum swings back the other way, to sanity, fiscal responsibility and limited government? Or is the die cast? We wait to see…Of course, Mr. Fukuyama is not alone in wondering how all this ends. Only, if history has taught us anything, it doesn’t. The show, as always, goes on."
"When One Cannot Be Sure..."
"When one cannot be sure that there are many days left, each single day becomes as important as a year, and one does not waste an hour in wishing that that hour were longer, but simply fills it, like a smaller cup, as high as it will go without spilling over."
- Natalie Kusz
John Wilder, "How Society Shapes Humanity"
"How Society Shapes Humanity"
by John Wilder
“Don’t worry, scrote. There are plenty of ‘tards out there living
really kick-ass lives. My first wife was ‘tarded. She’s a pilot now.”
– "Idiocracy"
"One constant theme of this blog is change. We live in a world that is defined by change, and the benchmarks we measure society are things like change in GDP, change in population, change in the availability of different PEZ™ flavors. Blue is a flavor, right?
The focus of humanity on change is not the norm, but rather an exception. The amount of novel situations and technology entering our lives is at an all-time high and is increasing year-over-year. Let’s backtrack a bit and put this in perspective.
Going back to food, 15,000 years ago we ate a lot of meat and fish, some rando fruits and vegetables that some cave-bro had been brave enough to taste and not die, and nuts.Nothing about society would change for 15,000-year-ago bro’s tribe for thousands of years.There are people who maintain that the human organism hasn’t changed enough so that our very different diet of sugar, grains, sugar, industrial chemicals, sugar, minerals from a mine in Bulgaria, sugar, beef jerky, and microplastics isn’t somehow normal and that our bodies haven’t adapted to it.Maybe they have a point?
Anyway, this isn’t so much about feeding your head as it is about feeding your mind with the change in the way we deal with information.How has that changed humanity? In the beginning was the Word. And, the word. If you couldn’t speak it, chances of getting your genes propagated were slim because if you can’t talk your grubby cave-gal out of her wolfskin jeans, your genes aren’t gonna be around for the next round. Thus, we became a society where language was important so her Tinderclub© didn’t swipe left.
Then we started writing stuff down. Most kings and leaders didn’t need this, but a growing segment of the population did – people like scribes and lawyers. Eventually, they made more money than people who couldn’t read. The ladies of the past weren’t so different than the ladies of today (except they couldn’t vote and were property pretty much) but the written language genes also showed up for the future. In lots of places, but not all. Some never jumped from talking to reading, so the segment of their population that couldn’t read never got flushed. This is evident in many sub-populations even today.
Generations of humans would live and die during this period with little change in technology or the basic factors that determine the shape of their lives. They would be born and die in a house that looked just like the house (and maybe was the same house) that their ancestors 100 years previous had lived in.
Writing and reading made society more complex, and allowed ideas to span continents, and I’ve written about this before. So far, so good. But more complex societies have more complex outcomes. Rather than sort for good eyesight or the ability to take down a mammoth, the selection process moved to selecting for people who got along well with strangers, and who could plan.
The harsher the climate, the more the pressure for these selections. Did we still need people who could kill, kill, kill? Sure we did. They came along, too because their mating opportunities are high. There’s a reason that 1/8 of Asia is related to Genghis Khan. I think his go-to pickup line was “I’ll conquer your steppe, baby.”
At some point around the Renaissance, Western civilization decided to get rid of the members who had impulse control issues. England, for example, started executing criminals who couldn’t control themselves, and kept it up for hundreds of years. This was pretty good at weeding out the undesirables. China had gone through this process hundreds of years in the past, which may explain why so many Chinese have a bit of Khan in their respective woodpiles.
Societies back then also let stupid people die. There wasn’t a welfare system to keep stupid people alive, so there were selection pressures for smart. Some folks call it “social Darwinism”, but I call it the universal penalty for being stupid.
Essentially, this is a society-enforced soft eugenics program, culling out a portion of the population just because they never make enough money to breed. And, let’s be honest: everyone feels bad for the kids on the short bus, but nobody really thinks they should be having kids of their own in an attempt to see how many more chromosome pairs than 23 that you can fit.
Society has changed now. Besides subsidizing poverty, which ensures we’ll have more of it, we’ve also changed in a fundamental way how we take in information. The media we consume has been decreasing in complexity for over 100 years. My guess at the high-water mark for complexity in media and the most intelligent era in human history (in Western Civilization) would be around the time of Dickens. Go back and read the language of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, a series of debates meant to appeal to the common voter of the time, and tell me what would be made of the breadth of language and the depth of argument today? Could an average eight grader keep up with it? Could an average Harvard™ freshman without having ChatGPT® or Grok© summarize it?
Since current political debates look much more (in many cases) like the wrestlers of the WWE™ before a steel-cage match, I think most people would get bored and wander off. That’s the media that we’re trained with today. We went from books, to magazines, to television, to 10-minute YouTube™ clips, to 20-second TikTok™ videos. Trump? His 2016 election was based on 140-character Tweets™.
The building of complex arguments has largely been abandoned in the public sphere and decisions of vast chunks of the population are made on what emotions are stirred by looking at a photograph. Certainly, many of those are now staged, and in a decade half of them will be the propaganda products of A.I.
The selection and sorting still exist, but now it has (like in the film "Idiocracy") selected for people who are the opposite of the groups society selected for in 1820: someone seems to want low-impulse control, and non-productive populations that are incapable of planning. Sure, it could be a coincidence that major policy initiatives all remove incentives for stupid people not to have dozens of babies.
This process, thankfully, is self-limiting. A technological society depends on a stream of competent people to plan and run society. And, no, not like Soviet Central Planning, but rather, “Hey, we need more lettuce in the Modern Mayberry Walmart©, so since we’re Walmart™ and want to make money, we should ship them some” planning.
It’s always quicker to burn down a house than to build one, so it’s really no surprise that making things worse is a lot easier than making them better. Paraphrasing what Thomas Sowell (I think) said, “We shouldn’t look at poor places and ask why they’re poor, we should look at rich places and ask why they’re rich.” Nah, there aren’t any votes in that. And it sounds like hard work, right? Besides, stupid is growing faster than TikTok™ dance challenge videos.
Have we reached the point where we’ve made a society so complex it allows devolution to the point it can no longer be maintained? If so, congratulations! You’ve been alive during the period of peak novelty in human history. The good news is that you can get blue-flavored PEZ™ here at the peak."
Adventures With Danno, "Aldi Saver Deals You Should Be Buying"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 5/30/25
"Aldi Saver Deals You Should Be Buying"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell , 5/30/25
"Typical Moscow Food Market:
Where Russians Really Shop for Food"
"Where do Russians typically go food shopping? Join me on a tour of a typical Russian underground food market, built into the basement of a shopping centre in Moscow, Russia. This market offers shoppers a limitless array of food options."
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Bill Bonner, "It's Over"
"It's Over"
by Bill Bonner
‘A bill can be big. Or it can be beautiful. I don’t know if it can be both.’
- Elon Musk
Amsterdam, Holland - "News Flash: the whole Trump program is falling apart. Over the course of the last fourteen days, federal judges have made it clear that the US still has a constitution, and nowhere in it does it give Elon Musk’s DOGE the power to cut federal programs without Congressional action...Or give Donald Trump the right to set taxes and trade policies as he pleases. More on Monday...
But these developments leave poor Elon out. What was he doing? For whom? Why? And is he now personally responsible for the billions in losses the states say they have suffered? And now it’s official. The Trump/Musk duo has broken up. The Washington Post: "Elon Musk is leaving his role in the Trump administration. A day earlier, in a major break with the president and Republicans, Musk said he did not approve of Trump’s spending bill - officially known as the One Big Beautiful Bill - with its massive tax cuts. “I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in an interview with CBS News."
And this from Bloomberg: "Musk leaves Washington pretty much as he found it." Poor Elon. He never understood what government is all about...or his role in it. There he was...out on the front lines...exposed to ridicule, widely reviled, the target of the feds, the media...the enemy of the ‘casta politica’ and all of the freeloaders and parasites who want to live at others’ expense. Musk took the lead - as an unpaid volunteer. It was he who put together a team and revealed billions in ‘waste, fraud and inefficiency’ in federal spending.
In business cutting the ‘fat’ can be key to making a profit. Companies struggle to provide the best products and services at the lowest cost. ‘Fat’ is an enemy. But in politics, the ‘fat’ is the juiciest part...it’s what the politicians most want. If you take money from taxpayers to conduct a war, for example, and you spend the money efficiently, what do you get? Dead bodies. Piles of rubble. Flattened buildings. Just look at what the US gets for its money in Gaza. If the money were ‘wasted,’ on the other hand, it would do less damage. Plus, more of it would go where it was really intended to go - into the pockets of politicians, cronies, and favored clients.
Elon’s lieutenants found billions that could be cut. There were ‘foreign aid’ programs, for example, where the money never left the Washington DC area. This was, from the feds’ point of view, an ideal program. Some of the money was supposed to go to train ‘African circus performers.’ Again, a perfect swindle. Those clowns weren’t going to complain! Elon’s team even found $4.7 trillion in payments that were practically untraceable.
But after Elon busted his hump and endured so many slings and arrows, did the nation say ‘thank you for your service?’ Did the Republicans incorporate even one penny of the many money-saving examples he uncovered in their ‘big, beautiful bill?’ No, they did not. Charlie Bilello: ‘What about the DOGE spending cuts? None of them were codified in the bill, meaning that any savings announced over the past few months could just be temporary.’
The Republicans’ ‘big, beautiful bill’ extends the 2017 tax cuts...adds new cuts (for tips, etc)...increases spending...and ends up with bigger deficits than ever. And now, they are now going to hang Musk out to dry. The Independent: "Judge spares Trump from massive DOGE lawsuit - leaving Elon Musk holding the bag for ‘unauthorized role’
Musk - tapped by the president to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency - is facing a lawsuit from a group of 14 states arguing that the world’s wealthiest person lacks any legal authority to carry out mass firings, terminate grants and access sensitive government information and taxpayer data.
Musk thought he was doing the country a favor; he thought the MAGA folks really wanted to curb US debt. As it turned out, they didn’t. And now, in addition to his other problems, Musk faces a lawsuit charging that he ‘lacked any authority’ to do what they asked him to do. And the White House has pulled the rug out from under his defense, specifically stipulating that he had “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions.” For all his trouble, despite all his money, and all his expensive lawyers...and all his success in business...Musk is just another casualty of politics."
Dan, I Allegedly, "Why Stores Are Closing Everywhere - Retail is Dead"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 5/30/25
"Why Stores Are Closing Everywhere -
Retail is Dead"
"Retail Apocalypse is here, and stores are closing everywhere! From CVS shutting down hundreds of locations to At Home gearing up for bankruptcy, the retail landscape is crumbling. In this video, we’ll explore why these closures are happening, the impact of mismanagement, and how economic challenges are reshaping businesses. We'll also take a firsthand look at an At Home store and discuss how industries like entertainment and retail are adapting - or failing to adapt - to the changing times."
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Jim Kunstler, "Trump's Parlous Gambit"
"Trump's Parlous Gambit"
by Jim Kunstler
“The modern politics of division have become a banally hectoring faux
morality play put on by the theater kids for the other theater kids.”
- El Gato Malo on X
"While Jake Tapper leads the Mea Culpa Chorus singing 'Kumbaya' in a minor key, absolutely nobody is fooled that the grotesque psychotic deformities of US politics can be reduced to a few White House factotums lying to the news media about “Joe Biden’s” cognitive abilities. For one thing, the news media was not lied to. The news media (including Jake) lied to the nation, consistently, flagrantly, mendaciously, for years, and most of all they lied about the gigantic racketeering operation that government had become in the age of Anything Goes and Nothing Matters.
Cases-in-point, as reported by Alex Krainer, the $93-billion barfed out of the Department of Energy between the November election and January 20 to scores of hastily-formed NGO gangs with no business model or record of competency... and the staggering $375 billion spread around similarly out of the EPA from a slush fund run by John Podesta (as Senior Adviser to the President for International Climate Policy and Clean Energy Innovation).
That was pure grift, you understand, and it was how the Democratic Party kept its activist troops of the so-called “marginalized” paid and happy. As it happened, the “marginalized” who dwell on the edge of society - and also just beyond the set of agreements that define reality - are out-numbered by the rest of us, who voted against the tyranny of the margin and their hallucinations. And so now, the country goes through a convulsion attempting to readjust to reality - for instance, the unhappy fact that all that money was unreal, mere bookkeeping entries by dishonest accountants.
One reality we struggle with is the doleful fact that there is no work-around for the nation’s monumental debt. Since it can’t possibly be paid off, there are two stark paths for it: default and ruinous deflation (that is, money vanishes and the nation goes broke); or a futile attempt to inflate it away with more fake money creation (you’ll have money, but it’s increasingly worthless, so you’re effectively broke). Either way, you’re broke. In the meantime, the remorseless interest that has to be paid on $36.2-trillion squeezes out everything else we’re supposed to care for as relates to the common good.
Every broke-ass family or individual person knows how debilitating money-worries can be. And since unpayable debt is the common denominator across all of Western Civ, this perhaps explains the gross, suicidal mental disorder displayed lately by leadership all across Europe, North America and Anglo-Oceania. Europe, especially, exhibits behavior that is completely cuckoo - inciting war with Russia, inviting in murderous hostiles from foreign lands, and sadistically policing their own citizens.
The exception is Mr. Trump, a businessman-outsider to government trying to pull off an escape from the deadly debt quandary. It’s probably impossible, but he is trying nonetheless. It has three main features: 1) to readjust trade relations that, in theory, would restore industrial production across the land - a bootstrapping operation to kick off “growth.” 2) to engineer a severe re-set of the money system that would effectively amount to defaulting on debt but somehow without the feature of disappearing money. At best, this would induce some kind of fall in living standards, but mostly among the small sector of financial buccaneers who thrive on swindles and the Boomers living on investment accounts (figment wealth), who are now dying off anyway - which is to say, Great Depression Lite. And 3) the least understood feature of Trumpism: to decouple the USA from the resource scarcity in the rest of the world, and the consequent strife it’s inducing, and withdraw into a sort of Fortress North America that can somehow carry-on self-sufficiently while everybody else collapses.
As big pictures go, this is a pretty wild one, stupendously ambitious, risky, and perhaps improbable. But what do Mr. Trump’s domestic opponents have to offer? To go back to their asset-stripping operation with its insane sideshow of race-and-sexual hoaxes and hustles? Let’s face it, the Democratic Party has utterly shot its wad. If it tries to start another civil war, it will have its ass handed to it. Despite all the desperate, rear-guard lawfare underway now, the party is already withdrawing into the political thickets to hide while it considers some drastic reorganization of its purpose and personnel. It may skulk there for many years, just as it did between James Buchanan (1857) and Grover Cleveland (1885).
And despite his daunting agenda, Mr. Trump at least presents a sense of confident determination to get the country righted in some fashion, to recover a sense of purpose and enterprise after years of feckless, dissipative drift into the hallucinatory madness of the Left. You must give him a chance. There is no one else right now with no other way."
Thursday, May 29, 2025
"Iranian Insiders Warning: "This War Will Cause A Global Meltdown"
Full screen recommended.
Prepper News, 5/29/25
"Iranian Insiders Warning:
"This War Will Cause A Global Meltdown"
"Today we are joined by an Iranian expert to discuss a possible
war with the United States, Israel and Iran, Dr. Mohammad Marandi."
Comments here:
"Where Can You Actually Afford To Live In 2025?"
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 5/29/25
"Where Can You Actually Afford To Live In 2025?"
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"We're so freakin' doomed!"
- The Mogambo Guru
Steven Van Metre, "Forget Tariffs - This Just Sparked a Financial Nightmare!"
Full screen recommended.
Steven Van Metre, 5/29/25
"Forget Tariffs -
This Just Sparked a Financial Nightmare!"
Comments here:
Jeremiah Babe, "Home Sellers Begin To Panic, Sales Are On Life Support"
Jeremiah Babe, 5/29/25
"Home Sellers Begin To Panic,
Sales Are On Life Support"
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"A Look to the Heavens"
"Light-years across, this suggestive shape known as the Seahorse Nebula appears in silhouette against a rich, luminous background of stars. Seen toward the royal northern constellation of Cepheus, the dusty, obscuring clouds are part of a Milky Way molecular cloud some 1,200 light-years distant.
Click image for larger size.
It is also listed as Barnard 150 (B150), one of 182 dark markings of the sky cataloged in the early 20th century by astronomer E. E. Barnard. Packs of low mass stars are forming within, but their collapsing cores are only visible at long infrared wavelengths. Still, the colorful stars of Cepheus add to this pretty, galactic skyscape."
The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, “Sunset”
“Sunset”
“Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs -
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke
Freely Download: "The Essential Rumi"
"All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there. Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul? I cannot stop asking. If I could taste one sip of an answer, I could break out of this prison for drunks. I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way. Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home."
- Rumi, "The Tavern," Ch. 1:, p. 2, from "The Essential Rumi"
"Be Like the Bird"
"Be Like the Bird"
"What matter if this base, unjust life
Cast you naked and disarmed?
If the ground breaks beneath your step,
Have you not your soul?
Your soul! You fly away,
Escape to realms refined,
Beyond all sadness and whimpering.
Be like the bird which on frail branches balanced
A moment sits and sings;
He feels them tremble, but he sings unshaken,
Knowing he has wings."
- Victor Hugo
"The Essence Of Life..."
"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."
- Philip Jose Farmer
Gerald Celente, "War Ramping Under Rule Of Fools"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 5/29/25
"War Ramping Under Rule Of Fools"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."
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Travelling with Russell, "I Went to Russia's Largest Cycling Festival"
Meanwhile, elsewhere...
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 5/28/25
"I Went to Russia's Largest Cycling Festival"
"What is it like to attend the largest cycling festival in Russia? Join me as I enjoy the festivities of the Moscow Cycling Festival, held annually in the center of Moscow, Russia, with more than 60,000 riders taking part."
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"Homeless Population Explodes in Arizona – It’s Worse Than You Think!"
Full screen recommended, if you dare.
Raw World, 5/28/25
"Homeless Population Explodes in Arizona –
It’s Worse Than You Think!"
"Arizona is facing a devastating surge in homelessness that’s capturing national attention and igniting urgent conversations across the country. In this eye-opening installment of Homeless In America, we dive deep into the harsh and unforgiving streets of Phoenix, Tucson, and other Arizona cities to expose the alarming truth about what’s really happening. From the blistering summer heat to the growing encampments lining highways and alleyways, life in Arizona has become increasingly unbearable for thousands of people who have nowhere else to go.
This documentary sheds light on the raw and often heartbreaking realities of the homeless crisis gripping the state. Driven by a perfect storm of rising rent, economic instability, untreated mental illness, and widespread addiction, homelessness in Arizona has become a ticking time bomb. The fentanyl epidemic has taken hold, but it’s not just fentanyl anymore. The rise of tranq, also known as xylazine, is leaving drug addicts in a zombified state—fueling even greater levels of despair and hopelessness among the most vulnerable.
Through unfiltered stories, powerful interviews, and real street footage, Homeless In America captures the human face of poverty, addiction, and neglect. These are not just statistics. These are people—veterans, single mothers, former professionals—who’ve been swept away by a broken system. The documentary explores how drugs, mental health, and the rising cost of living all intersect in this complex web of suffering.
This episode isn’t just about the homeless in Arizona. It’s about homelessness in America as a whole. What’s happening in Arizona is a mirror for what’s unfolding in cities nationwide. From tent cities to shelters stretched beyond their limits, the homeless crisis is a growing emergency we can no longer afford to ignore. The film presents hard-hitting homeless news backed by real-life experiences and on-the-ground reporting.
Homeless In America is more than just a documentary—it’s a wake-up call. It demands attention, action, and compassion. As the homeless population explodes and the drug crisis deepens, the question isn’t just how we got here—but what we’re going to do next. Watch this unforgettable chapter of Homeless In America to witness the truth behind the headlines, the pain behind the statistics, and the lives behind the label of "homeless."
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700,000 homeless Americans, including 60,000 veterans, 22 of whom kill themselves every single day. Oh, but we can find $1 TRILLION for "Defense", right? We can send Ukraine $180 BILLION, which we've done. We can send a documented 800 huge cargo planes full of weapons, as well as who knows how many secret $BILLIONS to the psychopathically degenerate genocidal Israeli monsters, right? And we have. WTF is wrong with this country?!
WTF IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY?!
o
"The Middle Class Is Collapsing: Nearly 1 Out Of Every 4 Americans Is Now 'Functionally Unemployed'”
"The Middle Class Is Collapsing: Nearly 1 Out
Of Every 4 Americans Is Now 'Functionally Unemployed'”
by Michael Snyder
"Do you ever feel like you are “functionally unemployed”? If so, you are definitely not alone. There are lots of people out there that cannot pay the bills each month even though they have jobs. In fact, there are lots of people out there that literally cannot afford to put a roof over their heads even though they are employed. Yes, there are many hard working Americans that are now living in their vehicles or in “tent communities” because that is all they can afford. In recent years, the cost of living has been rising much faster than paychecks have, and so now a substantial percentage of the population is living in a state of constant financial stress. The middle class has been collapsing all around us, and we are witnessing an extraordinary amount of economic suffering all over the country right now.
For years, the federal government has been telling us that the unemployment rate in the U.S. is very low. Everyone knows that is a bunch of hogwash. According to a report that was recently released by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, the true rate of unemployment in the U.S. was 24.3 percent last month…"But another indicator suggests those pieces of government data may be painting an overly rosy picture of the economy, with a recent report from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) finding the “true rate” of unemployment stood at 24.3% in April, up slightly from 24% in March, while the official Bureau of Labor Statistics rate remained unchanged at 4.2% over the same period.
LISEP’s measure encompasses not only unemployed workers, but also people who are looking for work but can’t find full-time employment, as well as those stuck in poverty-wage jobs. By tracking functionally unemployed workers, the measure seeks to capture labor market nuances that other economic indicators miss, such as Americans who are left behind during periods of economic expansion."
Today, there are millions upon millions of Americans that are “functionally unemployed”. According to Gene Ludwig, you can literally “be homeless and in a tent community and have worked one hour” and be counted as “employed” by the federal government…“The unemployment data, as it’s put out, has some flaws,” LISEP chairman Gene Ludwig told CBS MoneyWatch. “For example, it counts you as employed if you’ve worked as little as one hour over the prior two weeks. So you can be homeless and in a tent community and have worked one hour and be counted, irrespective of how poorly-paid that hour may be.”
I know that a lot of you can really identify with what I am talking about in this article, because you are experiencing deep economic pain on a daily basis. Earlier this month, I heard from a reader that is essentially “functionally unemployed” at this point. I asked him if I could share an excerpt from his email to me with all of you, and he gave me permission. If you are suffering too, hopefully his story will help you to realize that you aren’t alone…"Last year my income was $19,000. If I didn’t have a mortgage/rent free house to live in, I would be homeless!!! I try to stock up on food when ever my local Grocery Store puts items on sale. I shop at Thrift Stores and only on the half price days. In 8 years my Real Estate Taxes have gone from $1,400 to $2,000. In 8 years my Real Estate Insurance has gone from $1,500 to $2,200.
I haven’t had a Vacation in DECADES!!! I seldom eat out. I drive a 40 year old Pickup with 220,000 miles on it. I try to combine errands and shopping in one trip to conserve on gasoline and not put as many miles on my old Pickup. During the hot summer months I take a shower out of the end of a garden hose to cut my water bill. I wear my clothes day after day until they get so dirty I can’t stand it or they start to stink. I can only dream about living a normal American middle class lifestyle. I hear of people making $100,000 a year and how they cannot pay their bills. MY GOODNESS MAN, I WOULD CONSIDER MYSELF RICH IF I COULD MAKE $100K A YEAR!!!!!!"
Countless others are living a similar lifestyle. As I discussed earlier this month, one survey discovered that 70 percent of Americans are the most financially stressed that they have ever been in their entire lives. And the cost of living just continues to soar. In fact, the average price of a pound of ground beef just surged to another brand new record high…"The average cost of one pound of ground beef reached a record-high of $5.80 in April, according to numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is up nearly 50% from five years ago."
Ouch. Our cost of living crisis never seems to end. Inflation is one of the primary reasons why consumer sentiment in the U.S. just hit the second lowest level ever recorded…"The index of consumer sentiment dropped to 50.8, down from 52.2 in April, in the preliminary reading for May. That is the second-lowest reading on record, behind June 2022. The outlook for price changes also moved in the wrong direction. Year-ahead inflation expectations rose to 7.3% from 6.5% last month, while long-term inflation expectations ticked up to 4.6% from 4.4%."
And the outlook for the months ahead is not promising at all. Last month, the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators fell for a fifth month in a row…"The short-term outlook for the U.S. economy worsened significantly in April, according to the Conference Board’s latest Leading Economic Index (LEI). On Monday, the D.C.-based research said that the index—a closely monitored composite of several economic indicators—had fallen by 1.0 percent to 99.4 in April, registering the fifth consecutive monthly decline and the steepest drop since March 2023. Over the six months ending in April 2025, the LEI fell by two percent, matching the pace of decline posted over the previous six months."
Let me try to end this article on a positive note. If you are “functionally unemployed”, I know that it is tough right now. In this difficult economic environment, we are all just going to have to get lean and mean. Do your best to try to earn as much money as you can, and once you have got it hold on to it very tightly. The middle class has been getting eviscerated for years, but we must never give up. It won’t be easy, but if you are willing to fight you can survive in this economy. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other every day, and just keep looking for more opportunities to make things better for you and your family."
Adventures With Danno, "Shocking Prices At Kroger"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 5/29/25
"Shocking Prices At Kroger"
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