So, we rise from the rubble...
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Monday, November 3, 2025
"Three Things..."
“To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special. I just got one last thing... I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have.”
- Jim Valvano
Free Download: Jiddu Krishnamurti, "The Book of Life "
"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it.
That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies,
that is why you must sing and dance,
and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti, "The Book of Life "
Freely download "The Book of Life " and many other works
by Jiddu Krishnamurti, here:
The Poet: Langston Hughes, "Mother To Son"
"Mother To Son"
"Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor -
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now-
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair."
- Langston Hughes
o
"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.”
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
"When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,'
I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'"
- Sydney J. Harris
"A New Type Of Dementia Plagues America"
"A New Type Of Dementia Plagues America"
by John Mac Ghlionn
"In the United States, it's estimated that at least 7 million people over the age of 65 have dementia. If current trends continue, by the end of the decade, more than 9 million Americans are expected to suffer from this loss of cognitive functioning - that's equivalent to the population of New York City.
Memory impairment isn't just affecting the elderly. By 2050, the number of U.S. adults over the age of 40 living with dementia is expected to more than double, from 5.2 million to 10.5 million. To compound matters, there’s a new type of dementia plaguing Americans, one that’s affecting people much younger than 40. It’s called digital dementia, and millions of unsuspecting, young Americans are at risk.
A major health epidemic, digital dementia occurs when one part of the brain is overstimulated and another part of the brain is understimulated. When we mindlessly use digital devices, the frontal lobe, which is responsible for higher-level executive functions, gets little, if any, use. Meanwhile, the occipital lobe, the visual processor located at the back of the brain, gets bombarded with sensory input. Slouched over and spaced out, people, both young and old, are abusing their brains, day in and day out. Preteens and teens are particularly at risk for two reasons:An American 8 to 12-year-old spends an average of 4.7 hours a day scrolling their lives away. That’s around 70 days in a given year. The prefrontal cortex (PFC), the brain region responsible for planning and decision-making, doesn’t fully develop until the age of 25.
Digital dementia impedes both short-term and long-term memory. Moreover, as research shows, excessive screen time during brain development increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, in adulthood. Not surprisingly, excessive screen time is intimately associated with digital addiction. This, in turn, fuels digital dementia, which results in the shrinking of the brain’s gray matter. White matter facilitates communication between gray matter areas. But without gray matter, which plays a critical role in emotions, memories, and movements, there’s really nothing to communicate. White matter helps the traffic get from A to B. Grey matter, on the other hand, is the traffic.
It gets worse. As Gurwinder Bhogal, an excellent British-Indian writer, recently noted, not only is “gray matter shrinkage in smartphone-addicted individuals” a growing problem, the Western average IQ is declining - rapidly, he added.
This has been the case for decades. The decline of brain power has been particularly notable in America. Lead exposure, and, more recently, the effects of draconian lockdowns, have had deleterious effects on Americans’ IQs. As technology continues to rise, IQ continues to decline. Is there an association? The answer appears to be yes. What we're witnessing is the Flynn effect in reverse. Named after James R. Flynn, the renowned intelligence researcher who passed away in 2020, the Flynn effect refers to a steady upward shift in IQ test scores across generations. In recent times, however, that steady upward shift has transformed into a spiraling nosedive. This isn't surprising. In fact, as our lives become more intertwined with technology, and as we outsource more of our thinking and doing to search engines and ChatGPT-like systems, we should expect this nosedive to increase in velocity.
As Mr. Bhogal noted, common sense suggests that the decline in IQ is “at least partly the result of technology making the attainment of satisfaction increasingly effortless, so that we spend ever more of our time in a passive, vegetative state.” “If you don’t use it," he added, “you lose it.” Indeed. By "it," of course, he means your brain. But brain function isn't the only thing being lost.
The rise of digital dementia, digital addiction, and lower IQ scores is a reflection of a much broader problem. The United States isn’t just struggling with demographic decline; it’s also wrestling with the unholy trinity of spiritual, psychological, and intellectual decline. The country is becoming fatter, sicker, older, and dumber. The movie "Idiocracy" wasn’t a parody; it was a prophecy.
As intelligence levels continue to plummet and test scores continue to fall in the likes of math and reading, the United States risks becoming a society of brainless, aimless individuals, a nation consisting of millions of obese zombies. Contrary to popular belief, societal collapse doesn’t occur overnight; it occurs in increments, a death by a thousand cuts. The biggest threat to the United States isn't necessarily external; it's posed by the numerous digital devices in our hands and homes. Technology has consumed both our minds and our souls; are we going to get either of them back?"
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"The Theater of Mass Illusion: How Dictatorship Disguised Itself as Democracy"
Full screen recommended.
Philosophical Vision, 11/3/25
"The Theater of Mass Illusion:
How Dictatorship Disguised Itself as Democracy"
"This Philosophical Vision video explores the illusion of choice in modern democracy. It examines how pre-selected options and manipulated narratives create a false sense of freedom. The video uses insightful philosophical analysis and striking visuals to present its argument."
Comments here:
"Control Is An Addiction"
"Control Is An Addiction"
by Paul Rosenberg
"Lord Acton wrote that power tends to corrupt, but I’m going to say flat out that it does corrupt. I’ll go further and say that it’s an addiction (probably every bit as bad as cocaine), and that the lust for control is one of its primary drivers. Right now, with big governments – governments with gigantic intelligence operations – trying to grab ever-more surveillance powers, I want everyone to be clear on this. And so I’m going to give you reasons to believe it. Yes, we all feel in our guts that this is true, but I’m going to give you further reasons, because we’ve also been conditioned to conform to power.
With the world on fire and with power freaks at the helm, we no longer have the luxury of doing it the easy way and imagining that power will be kind to us in the end. It’s clear enough that power isn’t our friend, and in truth it never really was. So, let’s get directly to it. Here’s a passage from a 2014 interview with Thomas Drake, formerly a top executive at the NSA, likening the control of surveillance to mainlining heroin:
"In the digital space, you’re “data drug” habit goes exponential, because there’s just so much. You can mainline this all day long. To me, there’s a psychology that’s not often written about: What happens when you have this much reach and power, and constraints of law and even policy simply fade into the woodwork… Which is made worse by the fact that you can’t get enough, there’s never enough, and there’s more coming… You’re high all the time. Because you’re plugged in. It’s now 24/7. There’s no relief from the addiction."
Heroine… addiction… mainlining. The images are all too clear. And it’s this way through the entire operation… through the many, many operations. Please understand that once surveillance gets going, it turns into a merciless war for ever-more data. This has overwhelmed not only governments, but Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and the rest. Here’s an industry expert named Jennifer Sims, writing in The Future of Counter-Intelligence: "If information is power, then those who master this digital chaos first, and derive meaning from it, will likely gain critical advantages. Intelligence professionals, whether in business or in service to the state, are therefore in a silent race to develop tools for mining and analyzing growing volumes of swiftly moving information and then to use it…"
And here’s Craig Mundie, Senior Adviser to the CEO of Microsoft, writing in Foreign Affairs March/April 2014: "“Big data” has rendered obsolete the current approach to protecting privacy and civil liberties."
If you’re still minded to believe that it isn’t that bad and that it’s still easiest to be quiet and go along with them, you can get the study I did on this with Jonathan Logan. It’s called "The New Age of Intelligence," and it’s available in our store.
More reading, however, isn’t what will turn the tide on this. What will is simply calling things by their real names, over and over and over. You can start with “control is slavery” and figure out what to add on your own. Oh… and Do Not Comply. Understand, this addiction has no end, and every time people get scared they just ramp it up… because they can, and because they’re addicts. Humans will agree to all sorts of horrific things if you can first get them afraid… and modern media is little more than a fear delivery system.
But we can’t fall for it any longer. This addiction has no end point, and what dies in the end isn’t the addict, but our souls. And if we don’t start taking this seriously, the control addicts of the world get a clear shot at proving Julian Assange right one final time: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine Washington-backed Google Glasses strapped onto a vacant human face - forever."
"I Hope I End Up..."
“I don’t want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don’t want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, “Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case.” I will turn and say to them, “It is you who are the basket case! For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn’t even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times!” And maybe, the passersby will drop a coin into my cup.”
- Henry Rollins
"Something Just Broke – It Appears That A Liquidity Crisis Is Upon Us, And That Is Really Bad News For The Financial Markets"
"Something Just Broke – It Appears That A Liquidity Crisis
Is Upon Us, And That Is Really Bad News For The Financial Markets"
by Michael Snyder
"What is the Fed not telling us? The numbers clearly indicate that big trouble is brewing in the banking system. I wish that I could specifically tell you which banks are in the most trouble, but at this stage we simply aren’t being told anything. They probably figure that the best approach is to try to keep everyone as calm as possible. But they won’t be able to keep a lid on what is going on indefinitely, and when word finally gets out people could start to panic.
In recent weeks, bank reserves have fallen to alarmingly low levels. In fact, last week they fell to the lowest level that we have seen in more than four years…"US bank reserves have crashed to a four-year low, plunging to about $2.8 trillion, according to the latest Federal Reserve data, sending fresh warning signals across Wall Street and Washington. The steep decline marks the second straight week reserves have stayed below $3 trillion, a critical threshold analysts say could test the banking system’s liquidity strength."
By itself, this doesn’t necessarily signal that we are facing a major crisis. But everyone agrees that what we are witnessing is certainly unusual.
What is causing far more alarm is what occurred on Friday. All of a sudden, there was an insane amount of demand for overnight repo cash…Federal Reserve reportedly pumped about $29.4 billion into the markets via overnight repos. That’s a big number and it signals something I’m watching closely. According to the data for “Overnight Repurchase Agreements - Treasury Securities Purchased by the Fed” the figure for Oct 31, 2025 is $29.400 billion.
In other words: The Fed is quietly stepping in and stepping up. To me, this is clear evidence that something just broke. Who suddenly needed that much cash? And why did they need it?
The chart that I have posted below comes directly from the Federal Reserve, and it should chill you to the core…
But that wasn’t the end of it. By the end of the day on Friday, it was quite obvious that something extremely strange had just happened…"Federal Reserve liquidity facilities caught fire on Friday as month-end pressures pushed a key lending tool to a record level of usage. The Fed’s Standing Repo Facility lent a total of $50.35 billion on Friday to eligible financial firms in two separate availabilities, the highest-ever usage since the tool was put in place in 2021 to provide fast loans collateralized with Treasury or mortgage bonds. At the same time, financial firms also parked a considerable amount of cash on Fed books, with the reverse repo facility seeing inflows of $51.8 billion."
So what is the bottom line? The bottom line is that it very much smells like a major crisis is brewing. But let’s wait and see what happens. If we see figures on Monday that are fairly normal, perhaps we have more time before things start breaking loose in the markets. However, if we see even larger numbers on Monday, hold on tight.
In either case, the financial markets will not be able to stay disconnected from the real economy forever. Just like in 2008 and 2009, large employers all over the United States have been conducting mass layoffs. Sadly, this time around that includes some of our largest and most prosperous employers…"The Trump administration offered buyouts to the entire federal workforce this year, aiming to reduce it by as much as 10%. Roughly 75,000 workers accepted. More recently, Amazon, UPS and Target all announced private-sector layoffs."
Buyouts can sound tempting. A five-figure severance package might be the most money a worker has ever seen in one paycheck. But it’s also the last paycheck your employer will give you. We haven’t seen anything like this in many years. Bankruptcies are soaring, delinquency rates are spiking, thousands of stores and restaurants are permanently shutting their doors, and just about everything just keeps getting more expensive.
What we are now facing is being described as “Depression 2.0”.
Unfortunately, this is just the beginning and most of the population understands this. In fact, one recent survey discovered that 57 percent of Americans expect economic conditions to get even worse over the next year. Many of you are going to be facing some very hard decisions in the coming months.
If you currently have a job that you highly value, I would recommend holding on to it as tightly as you can. But if you feel that it is absolutely necessary to go somewhere else, you will just have to do what you have to do. Just understand that if you leave your current position it will not be easy to find a new one at all.
In 2008 and 2009, millions of Americans lost their jobs. Many of them didn’t have anything to fall back on, and so large numbers of them also lost their homes. This is one of the reasons why it is so critical to have a sizable emergency fund. At this point, even the mainstream media is stressing the importance of this…
Most people live paycheck to paycheck, and when the economy crashes, that leaves no room to breathe. Having three to six months of essential expenses tucked away can make all the difference when cash flow dries up or jobs disappear overnight. Keep your emergency savings in an easily accessible account, not tied up in volatile investments. It’s not about hoarding- it’s about buying time and peace of mind. When others panic, you’ll have the stability to make smart, calm decisions.
I expect things to start moving very quickly now. If the problems in our banking system bubble to the surface and start becoming highly visible, it will create a lot of fear. And it is just a matter of time before our absurdly overvalued stock market takes a dramatic tumble.
Of course all of this is happening at a time when so many other elements of “the Perfect Storm” are coming together. We are right on the brink of multiple major wars, global food supplies are rapidly getting tighter, we are being told that the next worldwide pandemic could break out at any moment, and on average the U.S. has been getting hit by a “billion dollar disaster” about every two weeks.
I expect so much chaos to be unleashed during the weeks ahead, and that means that we should expect the turmoil that we are currently witnessing on Wall Street to escalate quite a bit more."
Dan, I Allegedly, "Your Bank Has No Money! Shadow Banking Nightmare"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 11/3/25
"Your Bank Has No Money! Shadow Banking Nightmare"
"The banking crisis is here, and no one’s talking about it! Join me as I break down the serious issues plaguing the financial system right now, including shadow banking, dwindling reserves, and how it affects YOU. From private lenders to auto industry turmoil and even commercial real estate defaults - this is a wake-up call. Protect yourself and your family with smart decisions today. "
Comments here:
John Wilder, "Race, Culture, IQ, and Truth"
"Race, Culture, IQ, and Truth"
by John Wilder
“What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 60? Your Honor.”
– "Better Call Saul"
"Picture this: You’re at a family reunion, and Uncle Bob is still insisting in 2025 that the Vaxx is “safe and effective” and the only reason you don’t agree is that you don’t “trust the science”. Everyone chuckles, pats him on the back, and passes the stuffing wondering if Bob is going to eat through is mask. Harmless, right? Remember, Bob gets a vote even though his relationship with the Truth is probably pretty tenuous. The True, the Beautiful, and the Good are important. They’re foundational to finding out things that are beneficial to society and, if you’re me, also things that are in-tune with God’s plan.
For decades, at least, the GloboLeft has been attempting to control the Narrative on everything from climate Armageddon (remember, the Arctic will be ice free by 2015!) to gender as a spectrum that includes, somehow, people putting on suits and pretending to be animals. But the crown jewel of their obfuscation Olympics®? The ironclad link between race, intellect, outcomes and cultures. Why did they bury it under six feet of reinforced concrete?
Simple: because admitting this torpedoes their “all cultures are equal” fairy tale. Remember, the “Globo” in GloboLeft means that everything is the same, everywhere, right? If they admit there are differences, poof: there goes the vote farm. Even more, it gives the TradRight rationale to exclude endless hordes of foreigners whose languages, cultures, and norms are more alien to our nation than creatures from the planet Zantar.
Let’s start with the basics, because facts don’t care about pronouns or participation trophies. IQ, that dusty old metric the smart set loves to hate, is rocket fuel for a successful life. On the individual level, folks clocking above 115 rake in 20-30% more dough over a lifetime, snag better jobs, and even divorce less. Higher IQ means more planning.
But let’s zoom out to nations. There, we find that IQ is a GDP cheat code. Countries averaging 100+ IQ (think Japan at 106) boast per capita incomes north of $40,000, while those scraping 80 or below (hello, sub-Saharan squad) limp along at less than $2,000. A one-point bump in national IQ? That equates to a 7.8% GDP boost. Smart nations are wealthy nations.
And, no. Not all black people are low IQ murderers. Thomas Sowell exists. But the Truth is that there is a substantive and real distance when viewed in aggregate. And it causes huge difficulties: low IQ correlates with impulsivity, poor planning, and a higher “screw the consequences” factor.
Bring this up, thought, and the responses are, “You’re racist!” even though the facts are stubborn and won’t go away. When confronted that these are persistent facts, the GloboLeft throws their Hail Mary: “But muh root causes! Poverty! Systemic racism! Colonialism’s ghost! 1619!”
It’s empathy porn, a verbal defibrillator to flatline any talk about the real facts. Sure, environment nips at the edges. Malnutrition might ding 5-10 IQ points, but when was the last time you saw a skinny poor person? Malnutrition isn’t a factor. Adopted black kids in white homes lag by a similar amount, the SAT scores from black kids from families at the highest income levels are lower than the SAT scores from white kids at the poorest levels.
This ain’t excusing; it’s enabling. Treating 30-year-olds like toddlers with excuses robs them of agency. If we’re gonna nanny them via EBT (Entitled Belly Timers) or Section 8 (Subsidized Shackles for the Aimless), fine. But adults get adult rules and toddlers get toddler rules. How about: no voting if you’re on the dole? SNAP’s 41.7 million users are 37% White, 26% Black, 16% Hispanic. Why let chronic takers tank the makers? This isn’t cruelty; it’s consistency. Benefit takers will always vote for people who promise more benefits. And, it’s a voluntary condition. Want to vote? Get off the benefits for two years.
The next lie, though is that all cultures are interchangeable widgets. We can swap them all like IKEA parts, and voila: Utopia! Spoiler: Nope. Cultures aren’t blank slates; they’re downstream from the people who make them. Those people are downstream from their genes. India’s a case study in spicy chaos: 1.4 billion souls with an average IQ ~82. The result? A subcontinent of smog-choked streets, bribe-fueled bureaucracy, and a GDP per capita scraping $2,500. No one’s fleeing Toronto for Mumbai. Now, Trudeau set Canada on a curry bender: they imported 500,000 Indians yearly, turning Tim Hortons® into Pooh Hut™.
The point was missed. If you replace every Canuck with a subcontinental clone you don’t get Canada 2.0 that’s short, brown, and with no upper body strength, you get a frozen New New Delhi. A society of polite hockey lovers? Nah, just more potholes, poop in the streets, Singhs driving trucks into innocent families, and power cuts.
And bringing their best? The top IQ in the United States (everyone above 130) is about 4.8 million people. But India? India has an average IQ of 82? Their 130+ IQ club shrinks to 0.02% a population of only 299,000 Indians. The United States outproduces India 16-to-1 in geniuses, despite the headcount handicap. Why import mediocrity when we’ve got homegrown innovation? The world already has an India, why clone it in Cleveland?
Same script for Somalia’s sequel in St. Paul or Haiti’s remix in Springfield. Flood Minnesota with 100,000 East Africans (IQ ~68-70 nationally), and watch lutefisk disappear to some sort of piracy and theft – oh, wait, they’re already running scams? Politics is downstream of culture, culture is downstream from race. The latter is a taboo subject, but it’s True. Shoehorning Somalis into the Land of 10,000 Lakes doesn’t Americanize them, it Somali-fies the lakes.
Truth demands we say the unsayable: America’s not a global hostel. Those 8 billion “Americans who haven’t arrived yet”? If America is an idea, they can have their ideas over there. We’re a nation of pioneers, not parasites; inventors, not importers. The GloboLeft’s borderless fever dream erodes that, swapping high-trust hardware stores for low-IQ hawala bazaars. Result? Balkanized basket cases, where “diversity” means dialing 911 in five languages.
I’m advocating adulthood: face facts, fix what’s fixable, and quit pretending that we can make a hot dog bark because it has the word “dog” in its name. “Why” simply doesn’t matter. Fighting the root cause has proven to be a lost cause. At our stage we have to deal with the symptoms. The stakes are high. If we don’t embrace Truth, the United States will end up exactly like those low-IQ nations: begging for scraps while the elites jet around the globe. I mean, it won’t be jets because they won’t have enough people smart enough to make jets. But you get the point. And Bob still gets to vote."
"Items at Sam's Club Everyone Should Be Buying Right Now!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 11/3/25
"Items at Sam's Club Everyone
Should Be Buying Right Now!"
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Retire Global, 11/3/25
"SNAP Updates: Millions Are Preparing
For The Grocery Store Crime Wave"
"Across the country, retirees and families who rely on SNAP benefits are facing growing concerns about safety while shopping. Reports of grocery store thefts, rising tensions, and price spikes have left millions wondering how to protect their benefits and stay safe. In this video, we break down what’s really happening and what every senior should know before heading to the store.
You’ll learn practical, step-by-step strategies to safeguard your SNAP card, stretch your benefits further, and plan smarter grocery trips. We also highlight what states are doing to increase protection for older shoppers and how communities are coming together to keep seniors safe. Whether you live in a small town or a big city, this information could help you stay one step ahead. If you or someone you love depends on SNAP, don’t skip this update. We’ll show you how to respond calmly, take advantage of new programs, and shop safely without fear. Stay informed, stay prepared, and share this video with friends or neighbors who might need this guidance. Your safety and peace of mind matter most."
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "In Praise of Hypocrisy"
Vice Presidential candidate Richard Nixon
and his cocker spaniel Checkers
"In Praise of Hypocrisy"
by Bill Bonner
"No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the truth."
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
"We write today in praise of hypocrisy. As Hawthorne suggests, it occasionally confuses us into a life of virtue. But today, public life seems to be becoming less hypocritical...and more coarse. When we were young, we rarely heard the ‘F-word,’ for example. On television and in print, it was verboten. Now, it is one of Americans’ most popular verbs. Even so, until this year, our leaders never said the F-word in public. They were held to a ‘higher standard.’ No more. Donald Trump: ‘Iran, Israel don’t know what the f— they’re doing.’
It is not our business at BPR to rake muck. But we’ve never before seen so much muck to rake. Things that used to be sources of embarrassment or social stigma are now right out in the open. So watch out. The US dollar derives its value not just from our laws and our economy, but from the trust that people have in our leaders’ good faith, prudence, and rectitude. But with no hypocrisy to point the way...does that mean that bankruptcy, default...inflation...seizures...devaluations...and rip-offs are more and more likely?
Maybe. Let’s look first at how much public integrity has already given way. Politicians used to be reluctant to ‘cash in’ on their powerful positions, for example. It was ‘unseemly’ if not completely illegal. Not that they didn’t take a bribe from time to time...or peddle a little influence...but they did it on the sly. And on a small scale.
Richard Nixon’s famous ‘Checkers’ speech, in 1952, set the standard. He was not accused of breaking the law...but of getting (improperly?) reimbursed for some of his expenses and accepting ‘gifts’ from big donors. Nixon was on the Republican ticket to become Vice President; there was some doubt that he would continue as long as this cloud hung over him. So, he went on TV...and the skies cleared. He told the audience that, yes, he had accepted a gift — a cocker spaniel named ‘Checkers’...and that he wasn’t giving it back. The public was reassured and Nixon remained on the ticket.
But that was then. This is now...Reuters: "The U.S. president’s family raked in more than $800 million from sales of crypto assets in the first half of 2025 alone, a Reuters examination found, on top of potentially billions more in unrealized “on paper” gains. Much of that cash has come from foreign sources as Donald Trump’s sons have touted their business on an international investor roadshow."
The pitch: "Buy at least $20 million of “governance tokens” in the Trump family’s crypto business, World Liberty Financial, and become part of a venture that Eric Trump predicted would soon embody the future of finance in America, according to a person familiar with the meeting.
...In the first half of this year, the Trump Organization’s income soared 17-fold to $864 million from $51 million a year earlier, according to Reuters calculations based on the president’s official disclosures, property records, financial records released in court cases, crypto trade information and other sources. Of the first-half total, $802 million – more than 90% – came from Trump crypto ventures, including sales of World Liberty tokens."
A really good salesman might sell sand in the Sahara. But the Trump boys do even better. They sell ‘tokens’ of nothing at all...for billions. They must be really good at business! But wait. What business is it? What does all this money buy? Well, it bought Chinese billionaire Justin Sun relief from an SEC investigation. The SEC backed off after Sun bought $30 million of WFL tokens. And it bought the government of the UAE security-sensitive computer chips; the sale was approved following a $2 billion investment.
Protection from tariffs? A pardon? Advance warning of POTUS’s next moves? Law professor, Kathleen Clark, explains the obvious: “These people are not pouring money into coffers of the Trump family business because of the brothers’ acumen. They are doing it because they want freedom from legal constraints and impunity that only the president can deliver.” But it is not just financial chicanery and hucksterism that are there for all to see. The perps do not slink around in the shadows. They go on X and boast. More to come..."
Economic Market Snapshot 11/3/25
"Economic Market Snapshot 11/3/25"
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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:
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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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Job cuts and much more.
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Commentary, highly recommended:
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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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Jim Kunstler, "Last Ditch?"
"Last Ditch?"
by Jim Kunstler
“Never since Jesus has one man drawn out so many demons.”
- Spock’s Love Child (@vulcanmindtrap) on “X”
“The question is, can communist subversion be defeated without using ‘authoritarian’ measures? Is a constitutional republic equipped to deal with this kind of threat? When someone wages war on your society internally, is there a way to fight them while being civic minded? Probably not.” - Brandon Smith
Doesn’t it kind of look like the Nov. 5 “Trump Must Go Now” action in Washington is designed to be our time’s Fort Sumter moment, to kick off Civil War 2.0? The organizers behind it are the usual suspects: George & Alex Soros’s Open Society Foundation at the hub and spin-offs such as the Tides Foundation, Revolutionary Communist Party, and Refuse Fascism doing the logistical grunt work... buses... snacks... signs.... brickbats... frog costumes. . .
The idea is to entice a million Wokesters to surround the White House and literally exorcise the president, get Donald Trump teleported out through the roof into the cosmic ethers, to be seen no more. We’ll have to stand by to see how it works. Something like it was tried in October, 1967, when anti-(Vietnam)-war celebrities - poet Alan Ginsberg, The Fugs’ Ed Sanders, hippie rabblerousers Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin - led incantations to “levitate” the Pentagon. (Failed.)
You might have noticed by now that the most hysterical voices crying about “fascism” are exactly the people who yearn to push everybody else around, tell them what to think, run your life, wreck every institution and relationship in society, and take all your stuff. The Left never notices how all that resembles their notion of what fascism is. Self-awareness is not the Wokesters’ strong suit.
The Nov. 5 event is predicated on - and coordinated with - the Democratic Party’s government shut-down, especially the suspension of SNAP benefits (free food), in hopes that famished mobs will rise up, loot the supermarkets, and force the president to forcefully put down food riots: Look, Fascist! But over the weekend Judge John J. McConnell Jr. (Rhode Island) foiled that ploy, commanding the president to use “contingency funds” out of the US Department of Agriculture to keep SNAP running. The president coyly replied, “If we are given the appropriate legal direction by the Court, it will BE MY HONOR to provide the funding.”
Seeing as how the contingency fund contains only $5.25-billion, and the actual cost of running SNAP through November is $8.5-billion, we have a math problem. So, stand by on Judge McConnell spelling-out what appropriate legal direction can get that done. The president might have demonstrated how federal judges are not competent to carry out his Article II executive duties, and why the Constitution was written as it is. Of course, all this will be moot if the Democrats fold, as expected, by mid-month and vote to re-open the government.
The Lefty federal judges have been uniformly humiliated as one temporary restraining order (TRO) after another gets tossed by the SCOTUS. Judge James Boasberg of the DC District, the very model of a judicial “Resistance” activist, is about to get his ass impeached after ten-years of dabbling in malicious abuse of judicial process (28 U.S.C. § 2680-h under the Federal Tort Claims Act), plus 18 U.S.C. § 1001 (false statements or concealment in federal matters, potentially covering abusive filings), and 8 U.S.C. § 1503/1512 (obstruction of justice via tampering or corrupt persuasion, applicable to malicious process abuse), Stand by on that. Might be a caution to the rest of the federal judge gang to back off their Resistance shenanigans.
In case you haven’t followed the story - since The New York Times and network news won’t report on it - we are in the midst of the “Arctic Frost Investigation” scandal when, in 2022, “Joe Biden” induced AG Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray to go mad-dog on Donald Trump and hundreds of political conservatives, including nine US Senators, whose phone records were seized, with gag orders (from Judge Boasberg) to prevent notification of the seize-ees, which has raised accusations of violating their First Amendment rights, and grand jury secrecy. Arctic Frost is still unspooling, with reverberations to come, including insights on the Jack Smith / Norm Eisen lawfare spree in 2023-24 against Donald Trump that followed it.
Altogether, how successful has the Resistance movement to defy, thwart, and overthrow President Trump been going since January 20? Looks a little lame, so far. The summer of “No Kings” was entertaining enough, with the Boomer-geezers wetting their Depends every Saturday morning to stay out past noon, and the mentally-ill Antifas roistering as inflatable dinosaurs and Teletubbies to mask their homicidal tendencies. Don’t be so sure they will get the Second Civil War they yearn for. What it actually looks like is the Left has turned the Democratic Party into a suicide cult. And ask yourself: what is the end point of that, exactly?"
"The Inevitable Collapse of Modern Day Society"
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 11/3/25
"The Inevitable Collapse of Modern Day Society"
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Sunday, November 2, 2025
A ROUSING Shake-Off-All-The-Bad-News Musical Interlude: Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
Full screen recommended.
Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
Turn it UP! lol
"Food Shopping Could Be Hazardous This Week - $4 Billion November Shortfall For SNAP Recipients"
Jeremiah Babe, 11/2/25
"Food Shopping Could Be Hazardous This Week -
$4 Billion November Shortfall For SNAP Recipients"
Comments here:
"The Paradox of Virtue: The Reign of Evil in Society"
Full screen recommended.
The Psyche, 11/2/25
"The Paradox of Virtue: The Reign of Evil in Society"
"Why does evil seem to dominate a world that claims to be moral? Why do manipulation and deceit often triumph while honesty and virtue struggle to survive? In this video, we explore The Paradox of Virtue - a journey through the minds of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, two philosophers who dared to expose the hidden machinery behind morality, compassion, and power. You’ll discover: Schopenhauer’s idea of the Will to Live - and how ego disguises itself as virtue. Nietzsche’s challenge to traditional morality - and why he saw “goodness” as the mask of weakness. How both thinkers reveal that evil is not an external force but a reflection of the unconscious human soul. And the ultimate truth: that real virtue is not purity, but the integration of both light and shadow. This is not a video about right and wrong - it’s about awakening. Because the highest form of goodness is not innocence… it’s understanding."
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"We work in the dark. We do what we can to battle the evil that would otherwise destroy us. But if a man's character is his fate, it's not a choice but a calling. Sometimes the weight of this burden causes us to falter from the fragile fortress of our mind, allowing the monster without to turn within. We are left alone staring into the abyss, into the laughing face of madness."
- Fox Mulder, "X-Files"
“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself
does not become a monster, when you gaze long
into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”
- Nietzsche
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Freely download “Beyond Good And Evil”, by Friedrich Nietzsche, here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Messier's famous catalog, but definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed by Lord Rosse's large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. Assembled from 51 exposures recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 20th and 21st centuries, with additional data from ground based telescopes, this mosaic spans about 40,000 light-years across the central region of M101 in one of the highest definition spiral galaxy portraits ever released from Hubble.
The sharp image shows stunning features of the galaxy's face-on disk of stars and dust along with background galaxies, some visible right through M101 itself. Also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101 lies within the boundaries of the northern constellation Ursa Major, about 25 million light-years away.”
"Food Stamps & Section 8 Are Cut Off as People Go Crazy"
Full screen recommended.
Market Gains, 11/2/25
"Food Stamps & Section 8
Are Cut Off as People Go Crazy"
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