Full screen recommended.
Prepper News, 11/20/25
"Alert! 'Secret Plan' To End War is a Psy-op,
Major Escalation Coming"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Thursday, November 20, 2025
Bill Bonner, "Mouth of the South"
Sam Ervin, former US Senator and head
of the Watergate Committee, 1973.
"Mouth of the South"
by Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "In June 1972, a comically inept group of bunglers and incompetents - led by ex-CIA agents - broke into the Watergate building to gain intel that would be helpful to Nixon’s presidential campaign. They picked the lock and then taped over it to keep it from latching shut, intending to come back the next night. But they put the tape on wrong, horizontally, so that it showed on the outside. A security guard noticed it almost immediately and removed it.
When the burglars returned, the door was again locked. They tried to pick the lock a second time. But they failed. They had to remove the door from it hinges. The break-in then was so obvious that when a student intern returned after an hour or so he immediately called the police. A police car arrived minutes later, but the criminals’ lookout failed to notice...and failed to alert them. The police entered the building and arrested the five men in the Democratic National Committee headquarters. What a mess.
The quality of America’s public and elected officials seems to have declined sharply over the last 50 years. But is it true? Today, we take a glance back at the Watergate scandal...and wonder: will the Epstein Saga go the same way?
Many scapegoats were proposed to explain the Watergate break-in. Many were the ‘conspiracy theories’ floated up like mists from the Potomac. Fidel Castro was behind it (several of the burglars were Cuban), said some. No, it was a CIA plot to ruin Nixon, said another. Nixon himself seemed to favor this explanation; he nearly fired Bill Colby...who later became a source for one of our newsletters. Another theory suggested that Democrats themselves had set up the burglary...to entrap Republican operatives.
Two Washington Post reporters got on the case. Then the Senate set up a committee to investigate...calling witnesses to televised hearings. John Dean, White House counsel, spilled the beans to Sam Ervin’s committee in June of 1973. The following month it was revealed that Nixon had secretly recorded his phone conversations. Naturally, the public wanted to hear them. ‘The Nixon tapes’ were roughly analogous to the Epstein files. They were subpoenaed.
Note that in the ‘70s there were still many people in Washington with what might be called an Eisenhower Era sense of right and wrong. And in the wrangling over the tapes, they were much needed; there were plenty of opportunities to derail the investigation.
Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson to fire special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Both Richardson and his deputy, William Ruckelshaus, resigned rather than carry out the order. Then when the tapes were delivered, some were missing. This led to further back and forth and foot-dragging. It wasn’t until July of 1974 that the ‘smoking gun’ tape - in which Nixon tried to stop the investigation, clearly obstructing justice - was released. He resigned the following month...more than two years after the original break-in.
Probably the funniest part of the whole farce was the kidnapping of Martha Mitchell. Ms. Mitchell was the wife of former Attorney General, who was then head of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (known pejoratively as CREEP). She was also known as the “Mouth of the South,” and had appeared on such popular TV shows as ‘Laugh-In.’
Martha Mitchell was, above all, a gossip. She would have a few drinks in the evening and then call reporters with what she had learned during the day. It was this that her husband tried to prevent after Ms. Mitchell found out about the Watergate break-in. One of the men arrested was none other than her daughter’s bodyguard, former CIA agent James McCord, who would connect the crime to the Mitchells and ultimately to the president’s re-election committee.
Mitchell was in a house in Newport Beach when she locked herself in her bedroom, picked up the phone to call UPI reporter, Helen Thomas. Steve King, however, had been hired by her husband to keep her from doing that. He broke down the door and pulled the phone from the wall. For the next few days, she was kept sedated and under control by FBI and Secret Service agents. And when she finally was able to contact Thomas, she reported that “I’m back and blue. I’m a political prisoner.” Now it was out in the open. John Mitchell then resigned. He later went to jail. Martha and he separated and never saw each other again. She died in 1975.
That is the closest parallel we have to today’s Epstein Files. But today’s circumstances...and today’s cast of characters...are very different. Will Pam Bondi do an imitation of Elliot Richardson? And who in the Senate has the stature of Sam Ervin to lead an investigative committee? And while Washington Post reporters have closely followed the tussle over how and when to release the Epstein Files, they have shown little interest in what is really in them. How will it turn out? We wait to find out."
PS: Sam Ervin’s recording “Senator Sam at Home,” with his version of ‘Bridge over troubled water,’ is a classic.
Adventures With Danno, "Kroger 'Holiday Week', Thanksgiving 2025"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 11/20/25
"Kroger 'Holiday Week', Thanksgiving 2025"
Comments here:
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
"It's All Going Down The Toilet: Stocks, Jobs, Housing, Small Businesses and America"
Jeremiah Babe, 11/19/25
"It's All Going Down The Toilet:
Stocks, Jobs, Housing, Small Businesses and America"
Comments here:
Judge Napolitano, "Col. Douglas Macgregor: War Is Coming Soon"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 11/19/25
"Col. Douglas Macgregor: War Is Coming Soon"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens, With Chet Raymo"
“The Journey”
by Chet Raymo
“Here’s a deep-deep sky map of the universe from the March 9, 2006 issue of "Nature". The horizontal scale is a 360 view right around the sky; the vertical gaps at 6 hours and 24 hours are the parts of the universe that are blocked to our view by the disk of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The vertical scale – distance from Earth – is logarithmic (10, 100, 1000, etc.) measured in megaparsecs (a parsec equals 3.26 light-years). Across the top is the Big Bang, and the oldest and most distant thing we can see, the cosmic microwave background, the radiation of the Big Bang itself. A few relatively nearby galaxies are designated at the bottom. All that stuff in the middle that looks like smoke or dusty cobwebs are quasars and galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
A smoke of galaxies! (2 trillion galaxies according to latest estimates. - CP) A universe cobwebbed with Milky Ways! Each galaxy itself a smoke of stars, hundreds of billions of stars, many or all of them with planets. My book, “Walking Zero,” is about the human journey from the omphalos of our birth into the world of the galaxies, a journey many of us are disinclined to make. Here is how the Prologue to the book begins:
“Each of us is born at the center of the world. For nine months our physical selves are assembled molecule by molecule, cell by cell, in the dark covert of our mother’s womb. A single fertilized egg cell splits into two. Then four. Eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Ultimately, 50 trillion cells or so. At first, our future self is a mere blob of protoplasm. But slowly, ever so slowly, the blob begins to differentiate under the direction of genes. A symmetry axis develops. A head, a tail, a spine. At this point, the embryo might be that of a human, or a chicken, or a marmoset. Limbs form. Digits, with tiny translucent nails. Eyes, with papery lids. Ears pressed like flowers against the head. Clearly now a human. A nose, nostrils. Downy hair. Genitals.
As the physical self develops, so too a mental self takes shape, not yet conscious, not yet self-aware, knitted together as webs of neurons in the brain, encapsulating in some respects the evolutionary experience of our species. Instincts impressed by the genes. The instinct to suck, for example. Already, in the womb, the fetus presses its tiny fist against its mouth in anticipation of the moment when the mouth will be offered the mother’s breast. The child will not have to be taught to suck. Other inborn behaviors will express themselves later. Laughing. Crying. Striking out in anger. Loving.
What, if anything, goes on in the mind of the developing fetus we may never know. But this much seems certain: To the extent that the emerging self has any awareness of its surroundings, its world is coterminous with itself. We are not born with knowledge of the antipodes, the plains of Mars, or the far-flung realm of the galaxies. We are not born with knowledge of Precambrian seas, the supercontinent of Pangea, or the Age of Dinosaurs. We are born into a world scarcely older than ourselves and scarcely larger than ourselves. And we are at its center.
A human life is a journey into the grandeur of a universe that may contain more galaxies than there are cells in the human body, a universe in which the whole of a human lifetime is but a single tick of the cosmic clock. The journey can be disorienting; our first instincts are towards coziness, comfort, our mother’s enclosing arms, her breast. The journey, therefore, requires courage – for each individual, and for our species.
Uniquely of all animals, humans have the capacity to let our minds expand into the space and time of the galaxies. No other creatures can number the cells in their bodies, as we can, or count the stars. No other creatures can imagine the explosive birth of the observable universe 14 billion years ago from an infinitely hot, infinitely small seed of energy. That we choose to make this journey – from the all-sustaining womb into the vertiginous spaces and abyss of time – is the glory of our species, and perhaps our most frightening challenge.”
"This I Believe..."
“This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual
human is the most valuable thing in the world.
And this I would fight for:
the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.
And this I must fight against:
any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.”
- John Steinbeck
"In Retrospect..."
“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.”
– "The Fourth Turning", Strauss & Howe
"I Can Choose..."
“Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have - life itself.”
- Walter Anderson
The Poet: Mary Oliver, "There Is Time Left"
"There Is Time Left"
"Well, there is time left –
fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life,
and not be afraid!
To set one's foot in the door of death,
and be overcome with amazement!”
~ Mary Oliver
"Viktor Frankl: When You Discover the Meaning of Suffering, Nothing Can Break You Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
The Psyche, 11/19/25
"Viktor Frankl: When You Discover the Meaning of Suffering,
Nothing Can Break You Anymore"
"What if your greatest pain hides your greatest strength? Inspired by Viktor Frankl’s "Man’s Search for Meaning," this video explores one of life’s deepest truths - that suffering itself does not destroy us; the lack of meaning does. Through Frankl’s journey from the darkness of the concentration camps to the light of spiritual freedom, discover how to transform pain into purpose and become truly unbreakable."
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "The Economic Time Bomb No One Is Talking About"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 11/19/25
"The Economic Time Bomb No One Is Talking About"
Comments here:
John Wilder, ""The Amusement Singularity""
"The Amusement Singularity"
by John Wilder
"After a meeting, a colleague and I sat down in my office. “Man, it has been a long year,” I said. “Yes, it’s like we haven’t had a moment to rest for months.” This really made me think. I chatted with several other people, and for them as well this year had been relentless as far as the pace of the year. It wasn’t necessarily bad, mind you, there was just something always going on. All the time.
I think, partially, is that we’re seeing the inevitable consequences of Wilder’s Law of Greatest Amusement – that principle that says that, given two likely outcomes, inevitably the most amusing outcome will occur. For whatever reason, I don’t think that this is an accident – I think it might be hard-coded into the fabric of the Universe by a Creator with more than a little sense of humor. I mean, propane, right?
I don’t know if amusement is hard-coded, but I do know that the amount of change, or “novelty” that we’re seeing on a regular basis is off the charts. If I were to make a comparison, many weeks during 2024 have contained more fundamental change than was seen in the lifetimes of most medieval peasants. Really.
I mean, many peasants were born and died in the same mud-hut with only change being repair on the thatched roof. Most peasants saw no meaningful changes at all to church, governance, demographics, or technology – in their entire lives. The most that they had to look forward to was to one day wear a hat made up of a very larger turnip. If they were lucky.
In the span of Pa Wilder’s lifetime, Pa went from his first rides being in a horsedrawn buggy to watching man set foot on the Moon before he was fifty. And let’s not forget that within one human lifespan Russia went from a Czarist empire to a communist hellhole to a, well, whatever it is today. I mean, they love ice dancing, right?
This change appears to be happening at a faster and faster rate. Alice Cooper (who I met, and he’s very chill) noted this back in the 1970s with the lyrics to Generation Landslide that I’ve referenced before: “Stop at full speed at 100 miles per hour, the Colgate® Invisible Shield™ finally got ‘em.” It seems like we’re on a treadmill of innovation and that treadmill keeps getting faster and faster.
Part of it, of course, is that more information is available now than at any time in history. I can look up, without leaving my writing chair, information on almost any topic and get results. This allows people to very quickly make use of the solutions that others have found to problems. I can’t count the number of times that an Internet search or a YouTube® video has provided enough information to solve a problem that only an expert could have solved even twenty years ago.
There are some problems with this – why innovate when there’s a good enough solution on the Internet? It might stifle some solutions that bright people faced with a problem and no Internet would have solved, perhaps in a better way, without the information. But, on balance, it probably has created a lot of wealth, having this information store solving problems daily. However, it certainly has sped up the world.
When I was learning how to play chess at more than a “move the pieces correctly” level, Pa Wilder took my impulsive nature and said, “Wait. Stop. Look at the board. Think.” It is probably no surprise that taking that advice made my play much, much better overnight. But it also forced me to be able to think about the game more systematically, and to find things that otherwise I would have missed.
Taking time to contemplate actually made me a better thinker. Now, I figure that (at work) I have between 700 and 1400 contact points a week, and probably 60 decisions (mostly minor) an hour. The time that I have to sit, contemplate, and plan is nearly zero due to the near-constant “urgent” stream of activity. Not only that, many people are required to be connected to their positions via cell phone nearly constantly.
Long term, I think this constant stream of connection is horrible for people and is making many of them miserable. I’ve wondered if the nearly constant stream of psychological problems and psych medications that plague kids today was related to an adversity-free upbringing where outrage was fostered by GloboLeft teachers. I think, in part, it is. But the information flow that they’re steeped into is at least an order of magnitude higher than when I was a kid, and probably two or three times that.
It turns our perception of time into an eternal now – with one novel event following another in rapid succession as we head to a singularity of amusement. An assassination attempt on a presidential candidate is rare, a presidential candidate “nominee in all but name” dropping out happening in the same month while a billionaire shitposts about it and X® posts and engagements reach an all-time high? As A.I. generated content is now likely surpassing human-created written content, and will likely soon surpass human illustration content. In a year or two? Maybe it surpasses human-generated video. Yeah. The amusement is accelerating. Until it can’t.
The solution is simple, unplug, turn it down, and relax in contemplation. The next time I have a problem? I’ll figure out how to do it myself and skip YouTube® and end up with another comical tale of how not to remove bodily hair with propane."
Bill Bonner, "In Thrall To Foreign Gods"
Roman Emperor Elagabalus, reigned from 218-222, infamous for
attempting to place a Syrian Sun god above Jupiter in the Roman Pantheon,
was reportedly also Rome’s first ‘gender fluid’ Emperor
"In Thrall To Foreign Gods"
by Bill Bonner
"This is far more than a case of institutional betrayal. It is a vivid window into the decadence of a depraved American elite, a later Roman empire with dozens of tiny Caligulas committing dozens of heinous crimes. It is a story of money, and what it can buy, and power, and what it can conceal. As allies, they can make anything happen, or not happen, as the case may be."
- Esquire Magazine
Baltimore, Maryland - "Lighting up the wires is the Epstein Saga. AP: "House votes overwhelmingly to force release of Epstein files, sending bill to Senate."
The Hill: "Senate unanimously approves bill to force release of Epstein files."
Donald Trump has backed down from his earlier position; now he says he will sign it. And now we will see how far we have come since those days of the Watergate Scandal, when White House counsel John Dean told a Senate committee that there was “a cancer within, close to the presidency.”
We follow the story only to try to figure out where we are in the larger story - the degeneration of the US empire and the likely devaluation of US dollar assets. Where are we? At Caligula...Nero...or Elagabalus?
Already, the days of consensual democracy are clearly over. Now, we are in some kind of Banana Republic/Strongman phase. This was highlighted yesterday in a news item that showed the strongman signing yet another proclamation. "Trump has now signed 212 Executive Orders. In a signing ceremony, POTUS was surrounded by his smiling lackeys, congratulating him for signing so many. “This makes it twice as many as Biden signed in his whole four years in office,” said one sycophant. “It’s more than Obama signed in eight years,” said sycophant number two.
The crucial lesson of history - that ‘the government that governs best, governs least’ — has not reached the White House. Instead, the Trump Team has succumbed to the ‘fatal conceit;’ it thinks it knows what is best for everyone."
These EOs (executive orders) cover everything from...
EO 14357: "Modifying Duties Addressing the Synthetic Opioid Supply Chain in the People’s Republic of China."
to EO 14355: "Unlocking Cures for Pediatric Cancer With Artificial Intelligence."
But despite the weight and breadth of the issues before him, POTUS still has time to worry about the everyday problems we face:
EO 14264: "Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads."
Some people spend their entire careers designing, manufacturing and marketing shower heads. How come they didn’t think of the water pressure problem? Thank God for POTUS.
But how could one man have the intellectual juice to consider so many complex issues, a new one almost every day? The answer was on the videotape. As the president signed the EO, his flunkeys explained what he was signing; he hadn’t even read it. Congress is AWOL. POTUS rules by decree.
Most of these decrees are just blah blah...setting up committees and commissions or, such as EO 14276, ‘Restoring America’s Seafood Competitiveness.’ But some are loaded with explosives. EO 14353, for example, seems to obligate the US to defend Qatar (the country that gave Trump a Boeing 747). Another EO attempts to put a Democratic-leaning law firm out of business by denying it federal contracts.
Yes, the big man is large and in charge. No moth can singe its wings on a streetlight in Calcutta without drawing his concerned attention. Alas, into this happy fantasy barges the ghost of Jeff Epstein, dragging behind him approximately 20,000 documents, 1,608 of which mention none other than the man who is now president of the USA.
According to the New York Times: "In a series of emails with friends and associates - surfacing first in a few messages selected by House Democrats and then in full by Republicans on the House Oversight Committee - Mr. Epstein described Mr. Trump as a “dirty” businessman who was “borderline insane,” untrustworthy and worse in “real life and up close” than the image he sought to portray to the public." In other words...nothing new.
And now what? We’ll take a guess. More emails will come out...showing that the president is the person everyone knows he is. Many people would like to see Trump brought down by a salacious sex story. But the most important documents - the ones that show a foreign government manipulating both Democrat and Republican leaders - will be kept under wraps. At this point in the empire’s descent, any information the political class chooses to keep from voters is classified as a ‘national security risk.’"
o
"I Know Why You Did It..."
“Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance, and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well, certainly, there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. They were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic, you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.”
Full screen recommended.
"V For Vendetta Speech - Seeds of Revolution!"
"And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there?"
"Fighting For An America That Long Ago Ceased To Exist"
"Fighting For An America That
Long Ago Ceased To Exist"
by Hardscrabble Farmer
"My childhood was a series of toy soldiers, G.I.Joe’s, and child sized rifles, playing army with the rest of the kids in the neighborhood. I still have a photograph of my six-year-old self with my friend Butch Lewis, me dressed in my uncle’s paratrooper gear and him wearing his father’s Marine Corps helmet, smiling broadly on the driveway, miniature versions of our future selves. A little more than a decade later I was in the 82nd Airborne as an infantryman and Butchy was a jarhead.
My whole family line was polluted with one legged men, battle scarred veterans and the walls of the houses hung with photographs of young, uniformed men who never came back at all. And still I joined.
Looking back as an old man now I can only hang my head in shame for having been so stupid, so gullible, so easily led to do things I can never make right because of a flag, or the dream of an America that has long ago ceased to exist. Whenever someone tells me thanks for your service, it stings.
There is a reason the system continues to run no matter how corrupt, how broken, how disreputable it becomes and that is the misapplied intentions of the young who want more than anything to simply be like the men in their own families and to defend the good lives their people made for them."
Please do view the comments here:
This is not the country I proudly enlisted to serve in the United State Marine Corps in 1968. We are a disgraceful socially, politically, economically and morally degenerate society in every possible way. I'm ashamed to call myself an American... And I earned the right to say that!
- CP
"12 Things That AI Says The Middle Class Won’t Be Able To Afford Soon"
"12 Things That AI Says The Middle Class
Won’t Be Able To Afford Soon"
by Michael Snyder
"The middle class in the United States is being systematically destroyed. I know that this may sound like an obvious statement to many of you, but when I first started writing about this more than a decade ago it wasn’t an obvious statement. For years, the middle class was slowly eroding, but now the decline of the middle class has become an avalanche. Even the mainstream media is talking about America’s “K-shaped economy” these days, and nobody can deny that the poor are steadily getting poorer.
Recently, a reader that has been following my work for many years sent me a very sobering email. I asked him if I could share some of the content of that email in one of my articles, and he gave me permission. He is one of the millions of Americans that is barely scraping by from month to month, and I think that his story will really resonate with most of you…
"My Pickup Insurance went up $17 this month.
My Real Estate Tax went up $187.
I had to get rid of my Landline Phone because I couldn’t afford it anymore.
I drive a 41 year old Pickup with 221,000 miles. I would love to buy a better used Pickup for $7,000 but just don’t have the cash.
Last month I had $17 in my Checking Account when I got my SS Check. The month before that it was $5.
Michael, you have been writing about the vanishing Middle Class. I don’t think there will be a Middle Class in 1 or 2 more years!!! Like I said in a previous email, I don’t know where else I can cut back. And I live a very, very frugal, less materialistic, simple lifestyle compared to the average American. If I didn’t inherit a small farm with a livable house, I would be homeless!!!"
I know that many of you can identify with this. For a very long time, the cost of living has been rising faster than paychecks. Now we have reached a stage where a very large proportion of the population is desperately trying to survive from month to month.
A lot of people out there have cut down to one or two meals a day because reducing food expenses is one of the easiest ways to save money. In fact, one study has found that 2.6 million people that live in New York City “reported facing food hardships this last year”…"According to an alarming study to be released on Tuesday, 2.6 million New Yorkers in the city reported facing food hardships this last year. “On the worst end, 550,000 New Yorkers actually said that they ran out of food before they had money to buy any more. And to put that in perspective, that’s as if the entire city of Baltimore ran out of food,” Jason Cone with Robin Hood said."
We are not “the land of plenty” anymore. I realize that this is not welcome news, but it is the truth. During a recent interview with Fox News, Jade Warshaw laid out some of the facts that show that we are in the midst of a very painful cost of living crisis…"We’re in a cost of living crisis, Dana. I think everybody knows it. We speak to more than 18 million Americans every single week on The Ramsey Show and I am hearing firsthand, yes, the price of housing, rent, mortgages, they’re a problem. Obviously, we know that health care has gone up 6%-7%. I spoke to a woman the other day, the price of her health care is going from $400 to $900. Of course, that’s more than 6%-7%. And then of course, we’re finding things like daycare, obviously food, it’s so expensive. The average American, as a result, is going into debt. And we’re seeing more debt on consumers than ever. $103,000 of consumer debt is what Americans are paying, because these big three are still continuing to eat at our wallets: credit cards, student loans, car payments, Dana. It really is a crisis."
So what is our country going to look like as this cost of living crisis continues to intensify? I asked Google AI to tell me some of the things that the middle class would be unable to afford soon, and this is what I was told…
1. Homeownership: The traditional cornerstone of middle-class wealth, owning a home, has become an elusive dream for many, especially in urban and high-demand areas. Skyrocketing home prices, high down payments, and increased mortgage rates have made it so that in many markets, fewer than one in five homes are within reach for typical middle-income households.
2. Higher Education: A college education is increasingly a financial burden, with tuition and expenses soaring. Middle-class families often earn too much to qualify for significant financial aid but not enough to pay out of pocket, leading to massive student debt that can delay other life goals for decades.
3. Retirement Savings: Due to other financial pressures and the shift from pension plans to 401(k)s, many families struggle to save enough for a comfortable retirement. The inability to put away sufficient funds for the future means many may face the prospect of working longer or a reduced standard of living later in life.
4. Healthcare: Even with insurance, the costs of premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses for medical care and prescriptions can lead to substantial financial strain, making specialized medical treatments unaffordable for some.
5. Childcare: Quality childcare expenses can rival or exceed college tuition in many areas, forcing many parents (often mothers) to leave the workforce because the cost effectively erases the benefit of a second income.
6. New Cars: The average price of a new car has surged, partly due to advanced technology features becoming standard. This, combined with higher insurance and maintenance costs, means many families are holding onto older vehicles longer or forgoing car ownership altogether.
7. Groceries and Everyday Essentials: Persistent inflation means essentials like food, utilities, and gas are significantly more expensive, stretching paychecks and leading many families to worry about affording daily needs.
8. Comprehensive Insurance Plans: The rising cost of maintaining adequate health, home, and auto insurance coverage is becoming a major concern, potentially leading families to opt for limited coverage and increased financial risk.
9. Leisure and Vacations: Rising costs of living mean that family vacations and leisure activities, considered essential for a balanced life, are becoming luxuries many cannot afford.
10. Personal Fitness and Wellness Services: Personalized services like personal trainers or boutique fitness classes are increasingly seen as luxuries for only the upper class.
11. Organic and Specialty Foods: The higher price tag associated with organic and specialty foods may put these healthier options out of reach for average middle-class budgets.
12. New Technology and Eco-Friendly Upgrades: Keeping up with the latest tech gadgets or investing in eco-friendly home improvements (like solar panels or energy-efficient appliances) often requires a substantial initial investment that can be prohibitive.
I want to say a little bit more about the first item in that list. Soaring prices and high mortgage rates are not the only reasons why home ownership has become so expensive. Insurance rates have been steadily escalating for years, and property taxes have risen to insane levels in many parts of the country…"The hidden costs of homeownership are reaching nearly $16,000 per year nationwide, underscoring the ongoing affordability crisis crippling potential buyers.
A new analysis from real estate marketplace Zillow and Thumbtack, an online marketplace for local services, found that insurance, maintenance and property tax can cost the average homeowner $15,979 per year. Maintenance costs account for $10,946 of that, while about $2,003 goes toward homeowners insurance and $3,030 toward property taxes, according to the November analysis."
I have a confession to make. I really detest property taxes. In fact, if I could permanently ban property taxes on a nationwide basis, I would do it. All over America, elderly people are being forced out of homes that have been completely paid for because they can no longer afford the property taxes. Do we really own our homes if we have to keep shelling out thousands of dollars a year just for the privilege of continuing to live in them?
Home maintenance has also become an increasingly burdensome expense, but many homeowners are trying to cut corners wherever they can in this very challenging economic environment, and that is having a direct impact on Home Depot’s bottom line…"The Home Depot is a bellwether for the US economy and housing market. It’s latest quarter isn’t sparking much confidence. On Tuesday morning, the home improvement chain said it served fewer customers in the past three months than expected. Its earnings come as Wall Street hits a concerning stretch of losses. In the past week, all three major stock indexes are in the red as investor confidence in AI begins to slide."
I know that things seem bad now, but what is coming in 2026 and beyond will be even worse. The employment market is really tightening up, and mass layoffs are happening from coast to coast. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the number of WARN notices filed during the month of October was one of the highest ever recorded…"Impending layoff notices across much of the U.S. surged in October, highlighting signs of stress in the job market. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland shows that 39,006 Americans last month in 21 states received a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN, notice informing them of an upcoming layoff. U.S. labor law requires employers to provide these written warnings 60 days ahead of plant closings or mass layoffs.
It represents one of the highest numbers of WARN notices since Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland researchers started tracking the data in January 2006, although the tally remains below the spikes recorded during the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic."
Over the last several years, we have witnessed a steady deterioration of the U.S. economy. But curling up into a fetal position and crying about it isn’t going to help anything. If you understand what is happening, that will help you to make wise decisions. And wise decisions lead to wise actions. The road ahead is going to require all of us to be strong and courageous, because things are starting to move very rapidly now."
Prepper News, "Alert! Global Internet Outage; Massive Explosions Across Russia"
Full screen recommended.
Prepper News, 11/19/25
"Alert! Global Internet Outage;
Massive Explosions Across Russia"
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Tuesday, November 18, 2025
"Americans Safety Net Just Collapsed, Panic Setting In"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 11/18/25
"Americans Safety Net Just Collapsed,
Panic Setting In"
Comments here:
"Gold Set To Skyrocket, Dollar Collapses, Crypto Crushed; Home Depot Sees Big Trouble"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 11/18/25
"Gold Set To Skyrocket, Dollar Collapses,
Crypto Crushed; Home Depot Sees Big Trouble"
Comments here:
Gerald Celente, "As Forecast: Dot-Com Bust 2.0, The Worst Is Yet To Come"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 11/18/25
"As Forecast: Dot-Com Bust 2.0,
The Worst Is Yet To Come"
"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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Musical Interlude: Medwyn Goodall, “Eyes of Heaven”
Full screen recommended.
Medwyn Goodall, “Eyes of Heaven”
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Separated by about 14 degrees (28 Full Moons) in planet Earth's sky, spiral galaxies M31 at left, and M33 are both large members of the Local Group, along with our own Milky Way galaxy. This narrow- and wide-angle, multi-camera composite finds details of spiral structure in both, while the massive neighboring galaxies seem to be balanced in starry fields either side of bright Mirach, beta star in the constellation Andromeda. Mirach is just 200 light-years from the Sun. But M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, is really 2.5 million light-years distant and M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, is also about 3 million light years away.
Click image for larger size.
Although they look far apart, M31 and M33 are engaged in a gravitational struggle. In fact, radio astronomers have found indications of a bridge of neutral hydrogen gas that could connect the two, evidence of a closer encounter in the past. Based on measurements, gravitational simulations currently predict that the Milky Way, M31, and M33 will all undergo mutual close encounters and potentially mergers, billions of years in the future.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150926.html
o
"Everything passes away- suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes towards the stars? Why?"
- Mikhail Bulgakov, "The White Guard"
The Poet: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "What If?"
"What If?"
"What if you slept?
And what if,
In your sleep
You dreamed?
And what if,
In your dream,
You went to heaven
And there plucked
A strange and
Beautiful flower?
And what if,
When you awoke,
You had the flower
In your hand?
... Ah, what then?"
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"What if you slept?
And what if,
In your sleep
You dreamed?
And what if,
In your dream,
You went to heaven
And there plucked
A strange and
Beautiful flower?
And what if,
When you awoke,
You had the flower
In your hand?
... Ah, what then?"
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"Splendid!"
"Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States.
Ask any Indian."
- Robert Orben
Ask any Indian."
- Robert Orben
"Be That Guy"
- Kenneth Ead
"Be That Guy"
by Scott Faith
"We’re frequently told “don’t be that guy,” often with good reason. Drunk and stupid at a party? Don’t be that guy. Park in a spot someone else shoveled out of the snow? Don’t be that guy. Chow thief at Ranger School? Definitely don’t be that guy. But sometimes situations arise where you DO need to be that guy.
Sometimes going along with the crowd is the absolute wrong thing to do. It takes guts to swim against the current, and sometimes it might cost you more than you intended. I was reminded of this when I saw a picture of a 1930s-era Nazi rally contained in a Buzzfeed article I read recently. All of the men and women of the crowd were enthusiastically giving the Nazi salute… except for “that guy.” One lone man stood, arms folded, with a look of contempt on his face. He alone was willing to buck the system and not acquiesce to something he knew was deeply flawed.
Unfortunately, as happens in many similar cases, the lone dissenter paid the price. Already on the outs with the Nazi Party for committing the cardinal sin of daring to love a Jewish woman, August Landmesser was later jailed and eventually sent to a military penal battalion, and was reportedly killed in action. Landmesser joined the Nazi Party in 1931 in hopes of gaining employment and was a member until 1935, when he was expelled for marrying a Jewish woman named Irma Eckler. Landmesser had two daughters with Eckler and it cost him jail time for Rassenschande (dishonoring the race). Landmesser is believed to have served prison time from 1938–1941, after which he was discharged to serve in the military. Landmesser, however, quickly went missing and was presumed dead. His wife, Irma, suffered a similar fate. She was jailed by the Gestapo and died during the war. The children of Irma and Landmesser were separated.
While many of us won’t face death for our beliefs, there are often negative consequences for doing or saying the right thing. We might face social ostracization, the loss of friends or even a job. We might get attacked physically, verbally, or virtually. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t stand up for what’s right. You can read the original Buzzfeed article for yourself here. Sometimes all it takes is a spark to ignite a revolution. Do you have what it takes to “be that guy?”
Chet Raymo, "Know Thyself"
"Know Thyself"
by Chet Raymo
"The ancient Greek aphorism, attributed to Socrates and others. Good advice, I'm sure. If only we knew what it means. Is it the same as the "examination of conscience" we were asked to perform as young Catholics? "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." Well, yes, it is good to ask ourselves if we have lived up to our highest moral aspirations. But surely "Know thyself" means more than that.
Does it mean to be aware of our self-awareness? That is to say, not to act impulsively, but reflectively. Thoreau's "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Or perhaps it means to apply the method of scientia to the problem of consciousness, treat the mind like a fish that can be dissected at the lab bench, watch the brain flickering on the display of a scanning machine as the subject is stimulated with love, sex, fear, music, pain. Neuroscience. Daniel Dennet's book audaciously titled "Consciousness Explained." There is a line from a poem by Jane Hirshfield, in which she questions herself: "A knife cannot cut itself open/ yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."
Is it hopeless then? Is there an essential absurdity in a thing knowing itself? Does knowing necessarily imply a knower more complex than the thing known? Is it possible that we might fully understand, say, the neurology of the sea slug Aplysia, that favorite subject of experimental neurobiologists with only 20,000 central nerve cells, big nerve cells, ten times bigger than human neurons, but not the workings of the human brain, with its 100 billion nerve cells, each one connected to thousands of others?
Hirshfield's poem is titled "Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant." Perhaps that is the best we can do. To know ourselves in those fleeting moments of recognition than come now and then, often unbidden, sometimes as the result of a chance encounter with beauty or with ugliness, sometimes bidden out of the silence and solitude of meditation - a flash upon one's inward eye that is, perhaps, all the ancients were asking for when they asked us to "know ourselves."
Or perhaps it means to apply the method of scientia to the problem of consciousness, treat the mind like a fish that can be dissected at the lab bench, watch the brain flickering on the display of a scanning machine as the subject is stimulated with love, sex, fear, music, pain. Neuroscience. Daniel Dennet's book audaciously titled "Consciousness Explained." There is a line from a poem by Jane Hirshfield, in which she questions herself: "A knife cannot cut itself open/ yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."
Is it hopeless then? Is there an essential absurdity in a thing knowing itself? Does knowing necessarily imply a knower more complex than the thing known? Is it possible that we might fully understand, say, the neurology of the sea slug Aplysia, that favorite subject of experimental neurobiologists with only 20,000 central nerve cells, big nerve cells, ten times bigger than human neurons, but not the workings of the human brain, with its 100 billion nerve cells, each one connected to thousands of others?
Hirshfield's poem is titled "Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant." Perhaps that is the best we can do. To know ourselves in those fleeting moments of recognition than come now and then, often unbidden, sometimes as the result of a chance encounter with beauty or with ugliness, sometimes bidden out of the silence and solitude of meditation - a flash upon one's inward eye that is, perhaps, all the ancients were asking for when they asked us to "know ourselves."
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
o
"Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant"
"Moment. Moment. Moment.
- equal inside you, moment,
the velocitous mountains and cities rising and falling,
songs of children, iridescence even of beetles.
It is not you the locust can strip of all leaf.
Untouchable green at the center,
the wolf too lopes past you and through you as he eats.
Insult to mourn you, you who mourn no one, unable.
Without transformation,
yours the role of the chorus, to whom nothing happens.
The living step forward: choosing to enter, to lose.
I, who am made of you only,
speak these words against your unmasterable instruction -
A knife cannot cut itself open,
yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."
~ Jane Hirshfield
"The Middle Class Is Being Completely Destroyed By The Cost Of Living Crisis"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 11/18/25
"The Middle Class Is Being Completely
Destroyed By The Cost Of Living Crisis"
"The economy isn't just struggling, it's actively crushing regular working people. And I think we all feel it, even if we don't always talk about it. In this video, we're looking at what's really happening to average Americans right now. People are working multiple jobs and still can't afford groceries. Small businesses that survived for years are shutting down because their customers simply ran out of money. And the middle class? It's disappearing in real time while the wealthy keep getting richer. This isn't about politics or pointing fingers at one party. This is about regular people sharing their real experiences and those experiences paint a terrifying picture of where we're headed. We'll hear from folks struggling with basic necessities, business owners watching their dreams collapse, and people who are finally waking up to how rigged this system really is against them."
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"In Human Society..."
"When a bull is being lead to the slaughter, it still hopes to break loose and trample its butchers. Other bulls have not been able to pass on the knowledge that this never happens and that from the slaughterhouse there is no way back to the herd. But in human society there is a continuous exchange of experience. I have never heard of a man who broke away and fled while being led to his execution. It is even thought to be a special form of courage if a man about to be executed refuses to be blindfolded and dies with his eyes open. But I would rather have the bull with his blind rage, the stubborn beast who doesn't weigh his chances of survival with the prudent dull-wittedness of man, and doesn't know the despicable feeling of despair."
- Nadezhda Mandelstam
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