StatCounter

Monday, June 30, 2025

Jim Kunstler, "Stay Sane"

"Stay Sane"
by Jim Kunstler

"Betting against Donald Trump is usually a bad idea."
- Insurrection Barbie on "X"

"What apparently riles the credentialed political Left - the “gay/race communists” in the apt new phrase - more than anything, is that most of the country has opted to not be insane. This follows a decade-long attempt to drive the country insane, of course, to believe in things that are patently untrue and absurd, and to utilize falsehood and absurdity to garishly destroy the nation.

So, it fits that Donald Trump, the uber-realist of political game-playing, pushes what remains of the Democratic Party into a rapture of impotent rage. They’ve got nothing left but the empty acting-out of lunatics in an asylum of their own making. The wrathful grass-widows choking on their chardonnay in Martha’s Vineyard, the furious nose-rings steaming under their keffiyehs in the summer heat, the “Transtifas” storming police lines with their ridiculous umbrellas, the doddering Boomer-hippies reenacting the festive protest marches of 1968, minus a single coherent principle, the wigged-out congresspersons storming the ICE detention centers, the Covid vaccine victims duped into multiple organ failure (their hearts and brains especially), the “allies” of every loser group from Bangor to Brentwood in a frenzy of baffled grievance - these poor, lost wretches so far gone that even the likes of David Axelrod, James Carville, and Frank Luntz can’t stand to be associated with them anymore, is all the Democrats have left in their manure-stuffed donkey stable.

The abiding mystery remains: what exactly set in motion this fantastic cascade of political madness, especially among the highly educated demographic. The seemingly obvious answer is higher education itself, infested since the 1960s with Marxist zealots, sexual malcontents, and resentment-filled diversity hires. And while that has surely played its part, it doesn’t sufficiently explain the ugly dynamic.

Another explanation runs toward a plot by international “oligarchical” corruptniks to corner all the goodies of the world and either turn the rest of us into their slaves, or just kill us off - and to do it in such a way as to rub it in our faces, so as to provide the corruptniks with some mirthful entertainment as they go about their dastardly business. For instance, the recent weekend wedding of Huma Abedin and Alex Soros on the very day that the moiling minions whom they sponsor held their nationwide “No Kings” rallies inn the streets.

Huma, the bride, you recall, was Hillary Clinton’s sidekick back in Hillary’s glory days, especially the time of her glorious and inevitable rise (her regal “turn”) to occupy the White House, thwarted inconceivably by the preposterous showman, Mr. Trump. Hillary, you also might recall, left the White House broke-ass-broke in 2001 only to agglomerate a stupendous multi-hundred-million-dollar fortune working as a US Senator and then Secretary of State (salaries $170,000 and $260,600 respectively). That is, Hillary acquired her great fortune in about the same way that the royalty-of-old acquired theirs - by grift and theft.

And Huma, former wife of disgraced congressman and convicted Internet pervert Anthony Weiner, is now wed to decade-younger financial royalist Alex Soros, son of George, who made the bulk of his fortune (estimated $7.2-billion) shorting the British pound sterling in 1992 and went on to found a vast array of NGOs and so-called philanthropies (the Open Society Foundations) that specialize in influencing elections worldwide, conducting regime-change campaigns, and lately financing seditious movements within the United States. Heir-apparent Alex is reported to have taken over the day-to-day operations of that network - but, we must have no kings, you understand.

Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has actually tried, against all odds and endless threats, to represent the interests of common US citizens, that is, most of us, the non-royal, and to navigate the collective consciousness of this human mass away from the long-creeping, imposed insanity. He was blind-sided and sandbagged by enemies in his naïve first term. But Trump has returned - after an astonishing exhibition of spiteful incompetence by his adversaries - much-chastened by previous failure and injury with a far-better crew, much better-prepared with a program for redeeming a spavined economy, reinstating common sense in the daily life of the nation (i.e., resistance to absurd propositions), and reform of a dangerous rogue bureaucracy.

The remnant Left is reeling now, most recently from last week’s SCOTUS decision foreclosing the universal injunction nonsense sponsored by Norm Eisen and Mary McCord’s lawfare corps. That campaign, which raged for five months, might prove to be their last gasp. You know, though, that they are plotting another round of election fraud for the 2026 midterms. But it looks like their previous frauds are on the verge of being uncovered - finally, after years of evasion and no help from a treasonous news media - and there’s a fair chance that they can’t pull off more fraud next time. Passage of a proof-of-citizenship law for national elections could seal that deal.

But first, the massive hurdle of the “Big Beautiful Bill.” Whatever its virtues and defects, it must be gotten over for this larger effort of a journey back to civilizational sanity to continue. Hazards lurk at every turn. The awesome national debt hangs ominously over the whole enterprise and might sink it yet. Certain players in Europe steer deeper into their own insanity and look more and more like true enemies of the USA - far more than Russia does now - and then there is China: powerful, still rising, plotting cunningly. Plenty of travail awaits, but we’ll be better able to get through it with our minds right and our aim true. Aim to stay sane."

Adventures With Danno, "Massive Changes at Dollar Tree"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 6/30/25
"Massive Changes at Dollar Tree"
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "The Four Cracks Of Collapse"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/30/25
"The Four Cracks Of Collapse"
Comments here:

"Economic Market Snapshot 6/30/25"

"Economic Market Snapshot 6/30/25"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
o
Market Data Center, Live Updates:
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: creditequity valuationfunding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United Statesother advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Job cuts and much more.
Commentary, highly recommended:
"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...
And now... The End Game...
o

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Jeremiah Babe, "Looking At New Houses Today, Wow, This Is Bad"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 6/29/25
"Looking At New Houses Today, Wow, This Is Bad"
Comments here:

"Wars And Rumors Of War: The Middle East"

Full screen recommended.
Mahmood OD, 6/29/25
"The Final Meeting Secrets, 
One Week Left, Trump's Ultimatum"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Danny Haiphong, 6/29/25
"Israel is Destroying Itself: 
Alastair Crooke Predicts US-Iran War Before It Happens"
"Even before Israel fired the first shot on Iran, diplomat Alastair Crooke was warning that Israel's desperation would lead to a forever war in the region that will shape geopolitics forever. Watch this video to learn the context for the events that have unfolded in the last several weeks, you don't want to miss it."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Danny Haiphong, 6/29/25
"Israel's Stunning Defeat to Iran Just Got Worse"
"The truth is coming out about Israel's defeat to Iran and its only getting worse. Join Danny Haiphong, Mohammad Marandi, and Dr. Elham Kadkhodaee for a mega livestream on the fallout of the 12-day war and why US/Israeli threats are not scaring Iran." 
Comments here:

"Life, Despite It All"

"Life, Despite It All"
It wasn't the End of the World after all...
by Joel Bowman

“I looked on, I thought, I reflected, I admired, in a state
 of stupefaction not altogether unmingled with fear!”
~ Jules Verne, "Journey to the Center of the Earth" (1864)

Reykholt, Iceland - "When wandering Norse settlers landed on these frigid polar shores sometime in the second half of the 9th century, located on an active rift between tectonic plates and brimming with sulphuric geysers and volcanic eruptions, they must have thought they’d at least have the place to themself.

Imagine their surprise, then, when they encountered their first papar, a mysterious sect of Gaelic monks who had taken up eremitic residence on the frostbitten island, in what appears to have been an early and, until then, successful attempt at Medieval social distancing.

Whether despite, or because of, the land’s remoteness and extreme conditions, the Norsemen must have fancied the place; they spent the next few centuries cultivating the land here and transporting Gaelic serfs, known as “thralls,” to help them with the heavy lifting of early settlement. (Hence the idiom, to be in thrall, or under the control, of something or someone.)

According to the Landnámabók, the Icelandic “book of settlements,” it was a sturdy Norseman by the name of Ingólfr Arnarson who fist built his homestead here in 874, giving name to Reykjavík, the western province that would become the island’s capital.

Ingólfr Arnarson, the first settler of Iceland and newly arrived in Reykjavík, 
directs his thralls to erect pillars for the island’s first permanent homestead. 
Painting by Johan Peter Raadsig, 1806 - 1882.

On the Brink: What must life have been like, we wonder, for these intrepid frontiersmen? How did they survive in such extreme conditions, all without planes… petroleum… penicillin, etc. Turns out, many didn’t. Between early settlement and the mid-19th Century, the hard-scrapple population, numbering between just 40,000-60,000, was beset by bitterly cold winters, carpeted with poisonous ash fall from volcanic eruptions and, despite its remoteness, cut low by ravenous diseases and bubonic plagues.

When the Black Death visited the island at the beginning of the 15th Century, it wiped out between 50-60% of the population (church records suggest as little as 20% of the clergy survived…) It returned again toward the end of the century, presumably to finish the job. Then came the smallpox outbreaks, which killed a third of the population at the outset of the 18th Century… plus measles, influenza and livestock plagues. There were also frequent crop failures, and the resulting bouts of starvation. All told, Iceland experienced 37 famine years between 1500 and 1804… one every eight years.

And yet somehow, someway, by hook or by crook… the people pressed on, eking out what meagre living they could, braving the merciless conditions, and each other, to soldier on through the seasons and the centuries.

From 930 through to this very moment, the island has been governed as an independent commonwealth, albeit one that has found itself under the control of Norway, Sweden and Denmark over the years. Its governing body, the Althing, remains the oldest surviving parliament in the world.

The economy, a mixed market capitalist system with private enterprise and free trade and at its core, thrives. As of last year, Iceland boasted the eighth-highest Gross Domestic Product per capita in the world (US$78,837). Today, 390,000 Icelanders enjoy a level of comfort and wealth Arnarson and his early arrivals could not have imagined.

They harness vast quantities of geothermal energy from the ground… grow fresh crops in glasshouses pumped full of carbon dioxide (a.k.a. plant food)… and charge wide-eyed tourists like your editor US$26 a bowl for gourmet, farm-to-table tomato soup, which they gladly and gratefully pay. (It did have king prawns and cognac, to be fair…) Staring down unimaginably tough odds, the best in mankind survives another day. In Man vs Nature, we’ve all but tamed even our severest surroundings."

Musical Interlude: Mike Oldfield, "Tubular Bells Finale"

Mike Oldfield, "Tubular Bells Finale"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the above gorgeously detailed image was recently taken in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in honor of the 23rd anniversary of Hubble's launch. 
The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis. The Horsehead Nebula will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years and will eventually be destroyed by the high energy starlight.”

Chet Raymo, "Exile "

"Exile"
by Chet Raymo

 "Are we truly alone
With our physics and myths,
The stars no more
Than glittering dust,
With no one there
To hear our choral odes?"

"This is the ultimate question, the only question, asked here by the Northern Irish poet Derek Mahon. It is a poem of exile, from the ancient familiar, from the sustaining myth of rootedness, of centrality. A poem that the naturalist can relate to, we pilgrims of infinite spaces, of the overarching blank pages on which we write our own stories, our own scriptures, having none of divine pedigree.

Yes, we feel the ache of exile, we who grew up with the sustaining myths of immortality only to see them stripped away by the needy hands of fact. We scribble our choral odes. Who listens? We speak to each other. Is that enough? Having left the home we grew up in, we make do with where we find ourselves, gathering to ourselves the glittering dust of the here and now. Are we truly alone? Mahon again:

 "If so, we can start
To ignore the silence
Of infinite space
And concentrate instead
on the infinity
Under our very noses -
The cry at the heart
Of the artichoke,
The gaiety of atoms."

Better to leave the blank page blank than fill it with sentimental hankerings for home, with those prayers of our childhood we repeated over and over until they became a hard, fast crust on the page. Incline our ear instead to the faint cry that issues from the world under our very noses, from there, the tomato plant on the window sill, the ink-dark crow that paces the grass beyond the panes, the clouds that heap on the horizon - the dizzy, ditzy dance of atoms and the glitterings of stars."
"I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here I can pretend... I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come and Gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend..."
- Olethros, in "Sandman"

"We Do Choose..."

"All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live."
- Joseph Epstein

"Only One Basic Human Right..."

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as 
you damn well please.  And with it comes the only basic 
human duty, the duty to take the consequences."
- P. J. O'Rourke

"There And Here..."

In a sane, civilized society...
Full screen recommended.
Lisa With Love, 6/29/25
"Summer in Moscow: 
Crazy Cars Festival Live from Russia"
Comments here:
o
Meanwhile, in somewhere else entirely...
Full, horrifying screen if you can stomach it.
Narcotropolis, 6/29/25
"Rino Tranq? Reptile Tranq?
 WTF Is This World Coming To?!"
Comments here:
"'Speechless disgust' describes a state where one is so overcome with revulsion that they are unable to speak, their feelings expressed only through their silence and physical reactions. It combines the intense emotional response of disgust with the physical inability to articulate it. This could be due to the sheer intensity of the feeling, or perhaps a sense of shock or horror that paralyzes the ability to speak."
- AI Overwiew

"Trouble..."

“We’ve all heard the warnings and we’ve ignored them. We push our luck. We roll the dice. It’s human nature. When we’re told not to touch something we usually do even if we know better. Maybe because deep down, we’re just asking for trouble.”
- “Meredith Grey”, “Gray’s Anatomy”

"The Invitation"

"The Invitation"

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking
like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know
if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by
life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain!
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance
with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember
the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. 
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
 if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul;
 if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it's not pretty, every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand
on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to
know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like
the company you keep in the empty moments."

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

The Daily "Near You?"

Rhododendron, Oregon, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Once Upon A Time..."

"We should all be absolutely horrified by what has happened to our society. Everywhere you look, people seem to be going completely and utterly nuts. Once upon a time, the crazy people were a very small segment of the population that could be easily ignored. But now the lunatics are literally running the asylum. If you doubt this, just look at our statehouses around the nation and the current crop of politicians that we have in Washington. Sadly, the truth is that the people that are representing us are a very accurate reflection of what we have become as a nation. We truly have become a raging “idiocracy”, and the rest of the world is literally laughing at us."
- Michael Snyder

"In The End..."

"What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end,
of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do."
- John Ruskin

"The Magician's Sheep"

"The Magician's Sheep"
GI Gurdjieff

"There is an Eastern tale that speaks about a very rich magician who had a great many sheep. But at the same time this magician was very mean. He did not want to hire shepherds, nor did he want to erect a fence about the pasture where the sheep were grazing. The sheep consequently often wandered into the forest, fell into ravines and so on, and above all, they ran away, for they knew that the magician wanted their flesh and their skins, and this they did not like.

At last the magician found a remedy. He hypnotized his sheep and suggested to them, first of all, that they were immortal and that no harm was being done to them when they were skinned; that on the contrary, it would be very good for them and even pleasant; secondly he suggested that the magician was a good master who loved his flock so much that he was ready to do anything in the world for them; and in the third place, he suggested that if anything at all were going to happen to them, it was not going to happen just then, at any rate not that day, and therefore they had no need to think about it. Further, the magician suggested to his sheep that they were not sheep at all; to some of them he suggested that they were lions, to some that they were eagles, to some that they were men, to others that they were magicians. After this all his cares and worries about the sheep came to an end. They never ran away again, but quietly awaited the time when the magician would require their flesh and skins."

"How It Really Is"

 

"I Am Done"

"I Am Done"
by OHMama

"I was born at the end of Gen X and the beginning of the Millennial Generation, and grew up in a middle class town. Life was good. Our home was modest but birthdays and Christmas were always generous, we went on yearly vacations, had 2 cars, and there was enough money for me to take dance classes and art lessons and be in Girl Scouts.

My 1940s born Dad raised me to be patriotic and proud, to love the war bird airplanes of his era as much as he does, and to respect our flag and our country as a sacred thing. I grew up thinking that being an American was the greatest gift a person could have. I grew up thinking that our country was as strong, and honest and true as my Dad. I grew up thinking I was free.

As an adult, I have witnessed the world I grew up in fall to ruin. I have watched as our currency and our economy have been shamelessly corrupted beyond redemption. Since we’ve been married, my husband and I TWICE had our meager investment savings gutted by the market that we were told to invest in, now that pensions no longer exist and we working stiffs are on our own. We will be working until we die, because the Social Security we’ve been forced to pay into has also been robbed from under us.

I have watched as our elected officials enter Congress as ordinary folks and leaves as multi millionaires. I have watched my blue collar husband get up at an ungodly hour every day and come home with an aching back that we pray will hold out long enough to get him to old age in one piece. Outside of shoes, socks and underwear, almost everything my family wears was bought used. We’ve been on one vacation in 12 years.

We don’t have cell phones, or cable, or any sort of streaming services, just a landline and internet. We hardly ever eat out. Our house is 1400 square feet, no air conditioning. I cook from scratch and I can and I garden and I raise chickens for eggs and meat and I moonlight selling things on Etsy. Still it is barely enough to pay the bills that go up every year while service quality and the longevity of goods goes down. What I just described is the life you can live on 60K a year without going into debt.

At last calculation, when you consider all of the federal, state and local taxes plus registration and user fees, Medicare and SS payroll taxes, almost a third of what my family earns is stolen by the govt each year. What’s left doesn’t go far, just enough to cover the basics and save a little for when the wolf howls at the door.

I watched as my family’s health insurance was gutted and destroyed. Our private market insurance, which we had to have because my husband’s employer is too small to have a group plan, was made illegal. We were left with the option of either buying an Obamacare plan with unaffordable deductibles and insanely ridiculous out of pocket maxes, or paying the very gov’t that destroyed our healthcare a fine for not buying the gov’t mandated plan that we cannot afford. We now have short term insurance that isn’t really insurance at all, and I live in fear of one of us getting injured or sick with anything I can’t fix from the medicine cabinet.

I have watched as education, which was already sketchy when I was a kid, became an all out joke of wholly unmathematical math, gold stars for all, and self-loathing anti-Americanism. My family has taken an enormous financial hit as I stay home to home school our child. At least she’ll be able to do old-fashioned math well enough to see how much they are screwing her. A silver lining to every cloud, I guess.

I’ve sat by and held my tongue as I was called deplorable and a bitter clinger and told that I didn’t build that. I’ve been called a racist and a xenophobe and a chump and even an “ugly folk.” I’ve been told that I have privilege, and that I have inherent bias because of my skin color, and that my beloved husband and father are part of a horrible patriarchy. Not one goddamn bit of that is true, but if I dare say anything about it, it will be used as evidence of my racism and white fragility.

Raised to be a Republican, I held my nose and voted for Bush, the Texas-talking blue blood from Connecticut who lied us into 2 wars and gave us the unpatriotic Patriot Act. I voted for McCain, the sociopathic neocon songbird “hero” that torpedoed the attempt to kill the Obamacare that’s killing my family financially. I held it again and voted for Romney, the vulture capitalist skunk that masquerades as a Republican while slithering over to the Democrat camp as often as they’ll tolerate his oily, loathsome presence.

And I voted for Trump, who, if he did nothing else, at least gave a resounding Bronx cheer to the richly deserving smug hypocrites of DC. Thank you for that Mr. President, on behalf of all of us nobodies. God bless you for it.

And now I have watched as people who hate me and mine and call for our destruction blatantly and openly stole the election and then gaslighted us and told us that it was honest and fair. I am watching as the GOP does NOTHING about it. I am watching as the media, in a manner that would make Stalin blush, is silencing anyone who dares question the legitimacy of this farce they call democracy. I know, it’s a republic, but I am so tired of explaining that to people I might as well give in and join them in ignorance.

I will not vote again; they’ve made it abundantly clear that my voice doesn’t matter. Whatever irrational, suicidal lunacy the nanny states thinks is best is what I’ll get. What it decided I need is a geriatric pedophile who shouldn’t be charged with anything more rigorous than choosing between tapioca and rice pudding at the old folks home, and a casting couch skank who rails against racism while being a descendant of slave owners.

I’m free to dismember a baby in my womb and kill it because “my body my choice”, but God help me if I won’t cover my face with a germ laden Linus-worthy security blanket or refuse let them inject genetically altering chemicals into my body or my child’s. I can be doxed, fired, shunned and destroyed for daring to venture that there are only 2 genders as proven by DNA, but a disease with a 99+% survival rate for most humans is a deadly pandemic worth murdering an economy over. Because science. Idiocracy is real, and we are living it. Dr. Lexus would be an improvement over Fauci.

I am done. Don’t ask me to pledge to the flag, or salute the troops, or shoot fireworks on the 4th. It’s a sick, twisted, heartbreaking joke, this bloated, unrecognizable corpse of a republic that once was ours.

I am not alone. Not sure how things continue to function when millions of citizens no longer feel any loyalty to or from the society they live in.

I was raised to be a lady, and ladies don’t curse, but f**k these motherf**kers to hell and back for what they’ve done to me, and mine, and my country. All we Joe Blow Americans ever wanted was a little patch of land to raise a family, a job to pay the bills, and at least some illusion of freedom, and even that was too much for these human parasites. They want it all,  mind, body and soul. Damn them. Damn them all."

"Another Bank Failure Nobody Noticed - Shocking Bank News"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 6/29/25
"Another Bank Failure Nobody Noticed - 
Shocking Bank News"

"Another bank failure nobody noticed - Santa Ana National Bank in Texas was shut down quietly on a Friday night, raising major concerns about the banking system's stability in 2025. With $63M in assets, $54M in cash, and $3M uninsured deposits, this small bank’s fraud allegations and regulator scrutiny showcase a growing trend of financial uncertainty. I’ll break it all down in today’s video, plus dive into the shocking state of the United States Postal Service. From mail theft to unprocessed mail piling up, there’s a lot to unpack about USPS's ongoing struggles. Is your money or your mail safe? Let’s talk about it.

Protect yourself and your finances - ask the tough questions about your bank’s stability. And if you rely on USPS, stay vigilant against scams and inefficiencies. I also share real stories, like a man in Kentucky whose license was suspended due to lost mail, and a couple in Pennsylvania whose check was hacked for $7,500. These are issues hitting close to home for many of us."
Comments here:

"Gaza's Hunger Games"

"Gaza's Hunger Games"
by Chris Hedges

"Israel’s weaponization of starvation is how genocides always end. I covered the insidious effects of orchestrated starvation in the Guatemalan Highlands during the genocidal campaign of Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, the famine in southern Sudan that left a quarter of a million dead - I walked past the frail and skeletal corpses of families lining roadsides - and later during the war in Bosnia when Serbs cut off food supplies to enclaves such as Srebrencia and Goražde.

Starvation was weaponized by the Ottoman Empire to decimate the Armenians. It was used to kill millions of Ukrainians in the Holodomor in 1932 and 1933. It was employed by the Nazis against the Jews in the ghettos in World War II. German soldiers used food, as Israel does, like bait. They offered three kilograms of bread and one kilogram of marmalade to lure desperate families in the Warsaw Ghetto onto transports to the death camps. “There were times when hundreds of people had to wait in line for several days to be ‘deported,’” Marek Edelman writes in “The Ghetto Fights.” “The number of people anxious to obtain the three kilograms of bread was such that the transports, now leaving twice daily with 12,000 people, could not accommodate them all.” And when crowds became unruly, as in Gaza, the German troops fired deadly volleys that ripped through emaciated husks of women, children and the elderly.

This tactic is as old as warfare itself. The report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, that Israeli soldiers are ordered to shoot into crowds of Palestinians at aid hubs, with 580 killed and 4,216 wounded, is not a surprise. It is the predictable denouement of the genocide, the inevitable conclusion to a campaign of mass extermination.

Israel, with its targeted assassinations of at least 1,400 health care workers, hundreds of United Nations (U.N.) workers, journalists, police and even poets and academics, its obliteration of multi-story apartment blocks wiping out dozens of families, its shelling of designated “humanitarian zones” where Palestinians huddle under tents, tarps or in the open air, its systematic targeting of U.N. food distribution centers, bakeries and aid convoys or its sadistic sniper fire that guns down children, long ago illustrated that Palestinians are regarded as vermin worthy only of annihilation.

The blockade of food and humanitarian aid, imposed on Gaza since March 2, is reducing Palestinians to abject dependence. To eat, they must crawl towards their killers and beg. Humiliated, terrified, desperate for a few scraps of food, they are stripped of dignity, autonomy and agency. This is by intent.

Yousef al-Ajouri, 40, explained to Middle East Eye his nightmarish journey to one of four aid hubs set up by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The hubs are not designed to meet the needs of the Palestinians, who once relied on 400 aid distribution sites, but to lure them from northern Gaza to the south. Israel, which on Sunday again ordered Palestinians to leave northern Gaza, is steadily expanding its annexation of the coastal strip. Palestinians are corralled like livestock into narrow metal chutes at distribution points which are overseen by heavily armed mercenaries. They receive, if they are one of the fortunate few, a small box of food.

Al-Ajouri, who before the genocide was a taxi driver, lives with his wife, seven children and his mother and father in a tent in al-Saraya, near the middle of Gaza City. He set out to an aid hub at Salah al-Din Road near the Netzarim corridor, to find some food for his children, who he said cry constantly “because of how hungry they are.” On the advice of his neighbor in the tent next to him, he dressed in loose clothing “so that I could run and be agile.” He carried a bag for canned and packaged goods because the crush of the crowds meant “no one was able to carry the boxes the aid came in.”

He left at about 9 p.m. with five other men “including an engineer and a teacher,” and “children aged 10 and 12.” They did not take the official route designated by the Israeli army. The massive crowds converging on the aid point along the official route ensure that most never get close enough to receive food. Instead, they walked in the darkness in areas exposed to Israeli gunfire, often having to crawl to avoid being seen.

“As I crawled, I looked over, and to my surprise, saw several women and elderly people taking the same treacherous route as us,” he explained. “At one point, there was a barrage of live gunfire all around me. We hid behind a destroyed building. Anyone who moved or made a noticeable motion was immediately shot by snipers. Next to me was a tall, light-haired young man using the flashlight on his phone to guide him. The others yelled at him to turn it off. Seconds later, he was shot. He collapsed to the ground and lay there bleeding, but no one could help or move him. He died within minutes.” He passed six bodies along the route who had been shot dead by Israeli soldiers.

Al-Ajouri reached the hub at 2 a.m., the designated time for aid distribution. He saw a green light turned on ahead of him which signaled that aid was about to be distributed. Thousands began to run towards the light, pushing, shoving and trampling each other. He fought his way through the crowd until he reached the aid.

“I started feeling around for the aid boxes and grabbed a bag that felt like rice,” he said. “But just as I did, someone else snatched it from my hands. I tried to hold on, but he threatened to stab me with his knife. Most people there were carrying knives, either to defend themselves or to steal from others. Eventually, I managed to grab four cans of beans, a kilogram of bulgur, and half a kilogram of pasta. Within moments, the boxes were empty. Most of the people there, including women, children and the elderly, got nothing. Some begged others to share. But no one could afford to give up what they managed to get.” The U.S. contractors and Israeli soldiers overseeing the mayhem laughed and pointed their weapons at the crowd. Some filmed with their phones.

“Minutes later, red smoke grenades were thrown into the air,” he remembered. “Someone told me that it was the signal to evacuate the area. After that, heavy gunfire began. Me, Khalil and a few others headed to al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat because our friend Wael had injured his hand during the journey. I was shocked by what I saw at the hospital. There were at least 35 martyrs lying dead on the ground in one of the rooms. A doctor told me they had all been brought in that same day. They were each shot in the head or chest while queuing near the aid center. Their families were waiting for them to come home with food and ingredients. Now, they were corpses.”

GHF is a Mossad-funded creation of Israel’s Defense Ministry that contracts with UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions, run by former members of the CIA and U.S. Special Forces. GHF is headed by Rev. Johnnie Moore, a far-right Christian Zionist with close ties to Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. The organization has also contracted anti-Hamas drug-smuggling gangs to provide security at aid sites.

As Chris Gunness, a former spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Work Agency (UNRWA) told Al Jazeera, GHF is “aid washing,” a way to mask the reality that “people are being starved into submission.”

Israel, along with the U.S. and European countries that provide weapons to sustain the genocide, have chosen to disregard the January 2024 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which demanded immediate protection for civilians in Gaza and widespread provision of humanitarian assistance.

Haaretz, in its article headlined “‘It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid” reported that Israeli commanders order soldiers to open fire on crowds to keep them away from aid sites or disperse them.

“The distribution centers typically open for just one hour each morning,” Haaretz writes. “According to officers and soldiers who served in their areas, the IDF fires at people who arrive before opening hours to prevent them from approaching, or again after the centers close, to disperse them. Since some of the shooting incidents occurred at night - ahead of the opening - it’s possible that some civilians couldn't see the boundaries of the designated area.”

“It's a killing field,” one soldier told Haaretz. “Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day. They're treated like a hostile force - no crowd-control measures, no tear gas - just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

“We open fire early in the morning if someone tries to get in line from a few hundred meters away, and sometimes we just charge at them from close range. But there’s no danger to the forces,” the soldier explained, “I’m not aware of a single instance of return fire. There’s no enemy, no weapons.”

He said the deployment at the aid sites is known as “Operation Salted Fish,” a reference to the Israeli name for the children’s game “Red light, green light.” The game was featured in the first episode of the South Korean dystopian thriller Squid Game, in which financially desperate people are killed as they battle each other for money.

Israel has obliterated the civilian and humanitarian infrastructure in Gaza. It has reduced Palestinians, half a million of whom face starvation, into desperate herds. The goal is to break Palestinians, to make them malleable and entice them to leave Gaza, never to return.

There is talk from the Trump White House about a ceasefire. But don’t be fooled. Israel has nothing left to destroy. Its saturation bombing over 20 months has reduced Gaza to a moonscape. Gaza is uninhabitable, a toxic wilderness where Palestinians, living amid broken slabs of concrete and pools of raw sewage, lack food and clean water, fuel, shelter, electricity, medicine and an infrastructure to survive. The final impediment to the annexation of Gaza are the Palestinians themselves. They are the primary target. Starvation is the weapon of choice."

"Israel is Evil embodied" Israel is Evil personified."
- Scott Ritter

And ya know, America, we've sold our souls, and so are we...
- CP