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Thursday, November 27, 2025

Fred Reed, "Latinos and Life Without Milk"

"Latinos and Life Without Milk"
by Fred Reed

"Oh help. I am told that some still believe that diversity is our strength. These people are powerful believers and probably could believe a hole into a bank vault or believe an anvil into flying. The fact is that diversity has been the cause of unending hostility, bloodshed, misery and social malfunction since Nordic white men imported black Africans and began killing off the Indians. Without race we wouldn’t have had slavery, arguably the Civil War, Jim Crow, burning cities, affirmative action, the Floyd riots, or cities you can’t walk in without wearing an armored bathysphere. If that is strength, I would like to see what weakness looks like.

More recently the presence of Latinos has lots of people gnashing their hair and pulling their teeth and hollering for ethnic cleansing. They say things like America is a White European Country with a shared culture and genetic unity and other things it ain’t. When the country is nineteen percent Latino and thirteen percent lack and six per cent Asian, then as sure as nuttiness in a Democrat administration it ain’t a White European Nation. And, obviously isn’t going to be.

What now? Saying over and over that unrestricted immigration was a bad idea, as indeed it was, accomplishes exactly, precisely nothing, as does ranting about how Chinese, Latinos, and Iranians are terrible folk, which they are not. The problem is that different kinds of people don’t like each other. So, just for a moment, let’s break with all tradition and think in terms of raw practicality. I claim we need to deal with the world we live in, not the one we wantto live in and that things will go wrong if, as we usually do, we try to live in a desired world that doesn’t exist. A fantasy is a great place to live, but doesn’t hold up too good if it rains.

Consider Latinos. There are about sixty-five million of them in the US, along with fourteen million illegal aliens. Now, can we throw them all out, as many would like? I’m not asking whether it is a good idea, or patriotic, or moral, or whether Latinos are warm and fuzzy or rapists and narcos. I am asking whether it is possible. Thinking practically is a desperate measure, but strange times call for strange remedies.

Deporting sixty-five million in a century would mean over six hundred thousand a year, assuming they didn’t have children, which is a pretty robust assumption. In a decade, six million a year. This ignores impediments such as that most are citizens and can vote. No one who isn’t smoking Drano can believe this is going to happen. But if it is what the deportation lobby have in mind, they should say so. The public deserves to know what is being cooked up for it.

it might be worth looking at how Latinos got to America. In 1965 the United States–not Mexico–opened the border to encourage immigration. At least, that must have been the intention since it was obviously going to be the result. In essence, America was saying, “Now, Pedro, don’t you cross that river. If you do, we’ll give you a job, school for your children, medical care, and drivers licenses, and I don’t know what all, and your kids will be citizens. But don’t you cross the river, you hear?”” And who would have thought it….Pedro crossed the river. As a parent, offered such a deal, he would have been irresponsible not to.

America kept the border open for over sixty years when it could have closed it in six weeks, as Trump has just done. Liberals said, “All these poor people want is a better life.” Republican businessmen didn’t say, not out loud anyway, “All we want is cheap labor.” It is what they meant. Left and Right working together in bipartisan idiocy. It’s heartwarming.

Anyway, deporting a million would amount to less than two percent of the Latino population, which in practical terms means that they mostly aren’t going anywhere. A law of physics says that if something doesn’t go away, it stays where it is. (I didn’t go to school just tocarry my lunchbox.) So America is going to be pretty seriously multiracial whether we like it or not. Some will, some won’t. it don’t matter. We can like sunrise or gravitation or corruption in Washington. They’re going to happen anyway.

Now, some white folk just don’t much like people who are any shade of brown, and would probably dip then in Clorox is they could. These are usually called White Nationalists or WhyNats. They tend to be very English and Protestant and kind of solemn and remind me of American Gothic with better clothes. But while they can deport hundreds of thousands or maybe a million illegals, the difference wouldn’t be noticeable. So hear we come to the great big, thumping, motingator question for WhyNats:

What do they propose to do about the fifty million or so Latino citizens who can’t be deported? I mean what practically? Fizzing and fuming and talking about Andrew Jackson and George Washington are not practical measures. When you get through, everything is just like it was when you started. How does that help things?

One answer is to keep the border closed, do nothing, worry about something else, and wait for assimilation. Which is going to happen anyway. Another is to encourage racial hostility so as to keep the country divided and angry, and wait for assimilation to happen. Which it is going to anyway.

Other suggestions that I have heard from individual WhyNats, though not espoused formally as policy, are: break America into three racially pure countries, as is sometimes suggested? If this is the plan, say so. should we make intermarriage illegal? If so, say so. Revoke citizenship? Make employment of (increasingly Americanized) Latinos illegal? Reimpose racial segregation? If so, say so. Something else? What? Tell us.

All of the foregoing ideas would likely face “no” votes from fifty million Latinos, from all Democrats, constitutionally-minded Republicans, politicians eyeing the Latino vote, and dairy farmers who want their cows milked. Complicating things is that lots of Latinos have gone and married white Americans. How do you deport half of a child? I would rather that ICE not think about this. Add that Latino girls can be horribly pretty–the condition is endemic–and, when speaking unaccented American English and pecking at cell phones like everybody else, are not going to repel Willy Bill Jenkins who is all blue-eyed and Nordic. That’s just a practical fact. If you know anything about teenagers, you understand this.

Which brings us to birthright citizenship. The Supreme Court gets to tell us whether it is constitutional. If it ain’t constitutional now, then it never was. The Court doesn’t change the Constitution but just tells us what it means, this week anyway. So if Pedro and Maria came over illegally in 1900, their children were illegal because mom and dad were, so their children were illegal, and so on, and so most everybody Latino in the whole country is illegal.

Now, the country has been through all of this before. In the KKK Revival of the Twenties, the same people were all agitated over Italians, Catholics, the Irish, and other horrors. They mostly got over it, though I think they are still a little suspicious of Italians. The same thing is going to happen with Latinos who as a practical matter–that wretched word again–are mostly not going to go away.

So will Latinos destroy the US? Probably. Now they milk cows, which is what God wants them to do, but next thing you know they’ll all stop and go to college to be lawyers, which is enough to destroy any country, and we’ll have to drink sugary soft drinks and die of diabetes because we don’t have any milk. Of course another approach might be to go to Guadalajara and see what kind of folk Mexicans are but the ensuing shock would likely cause cardiac arrest. We’re doomed either way. There’s no hope."

Bill Bonner, "Alien Money"

"Alien Money"
by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "It’s Thanksgiving Day. And oh...are we grateful, or what? We have a roof over our heads...food, fire, family...we’re still able to drive a nail and a car (not at the same time!). We’re free to go where we want...do what we want...think what we want...But, today, we look beyond our own comfortable world!

By our reckoning, about $38 trillion of spending has happened since 1971 — with no offsetting output. No extra goods. No extra services. It was as if the money came from outer space. Like aliens pretending to be human...it walked like real money. It talked like real money. But there was that funny green tail...

A house today serves the same function today as it did when we were children. It is dry and warm...a place to sleep, to work, to entertain ourselves and others. The average house cost $28,000 in 1971. Today, it costs $420,000. The house may be bigger. It may have granite countertops and air-conditioning. But is it really worth 15 times as much? And who pays cash? With the proposed 50-year mortgage, it will cost $1.2 million, including interest payments.

These numbers tell us how much the alien money has taken control of our financial world. Many people still live happily in the houses they lived in 50 years ago. But nobody spends this new money the way he spent real money in 1971. Back then, if you wanted a car or a house, you had to earn money and save it. Yes, you could get a mortgage, but you were expected to pay it off. People bought the important components of their lives back then; they didn’t just depend on credit from extraterrestrials.

Our point is not just that prices have gone up...but that our material lives have been taken over...clandestinely subjugated to strange and unnatural money. And now, we all depend on it. Money Magazine: "Late Car Payments Are Piling Up at Record Levels as More Drivers Face Delinquency." Time was...people owned their cars. Interest rates could go up. Unemployment could go up. They still had wheels.

Even through the Great Depression...people generally held on to their cars...and their houses. Because they owned them. But now they belong to someone else. In the 2008 mortgage finance crisis, for example, some four million families had to give their houses back to the mortgage companies and move on.

And now...house prices are falling again. Newsweek: "More than half of U.S. homes are declining in value, according to a recent report from Zillow, the largest share since 2012. A study by the online real estate marketplace, released on Monday, found that 53 percent of all U.S. homes have seen their valuations drop compared to last year, with a nationwide average decline of 9.7 percent compared to their peak price."

The alien money is fed into the economy as credit. It may come ‘out of nowhere.’ It may have no value. And yet, Americans must pay for the privilege of using it. If they want a car or a house, they typically borrow this ersatz money, thank the lender and pay interest on it. But where did the lender get the money? It was never earned. Never saved. And it has no real value. And yet, the finance industry nevertheless lends it out at a profit.

Pity the poor borrowers. Fed and housed, they are kept like turkeys. They live in houses they will never fully pay for. They drive cars that don’t belong to them. They pay for food, streaming services, gas and entertainment with credit cards, not with cash. The result is: they don’t own anything. And come a crisis, their cars and houses go back whence they came.

The consumers’ challenge is to keep their incomes in line with their monthly expenses. The challenge for the financial authorities, meanwhile, is to get them to take more of this fake money...putting them deeper into debt and more under the thumbs of the Wall Street/Washington/alien money cabal.

Gobble. Gobble."

"The 2026 Crash: A Documentary Of Why Late 2026-2027 Will Be Worse Than 1929 & 2008"

Full screen recommended.
Economy Rewind, 11/26/25
"The 2026 Crash: A Documentary Of Why Late
 2026-2027 Will Be Worse Than 1929 & 2008"

"There's a pattern in economic history that repeats with mechanical precision. Not randomly. When specific conditions align: Extreme asset valuations. Record debt levels. Excessive leverage. Widespread belief "this time is different." Then a trigger event forces liquidation. These conditions existed in 1929. They existed in 2008. Right now in 2025, every single condition exists again. Not similar. IDENTICAL. The stage is set. If history is any guide, the crash comes late 2026 or early 2027. This isn't prophecy. This is pattern recognition. A documentary analysis of a crash that hasn't happened yet but follows a pattern that happened twice before with devastating accuracy.

Where We Are Now - The Setup: Stock market: S&P 6,000. Buffett Indicator (market cap to GDP) at 185%. Buffett said anything over 120% is dangerous. We're 54% above danger threshold. 2000 tech bubble peak: 145%. 2007 financial crisis: 135%. We're higher than both. Most overvalued stock market in American history.

•  Real estate: Median home $420K. Median income $75K. Ratio 5.6:1. Historical sustainable: 3:1. 
•  Housing 87% overvalued. 2006 pre-crash peak: 5.0:1. We're higher now.
• Corporate debt: $13.5T (72% of GDP). 2007: 43% of GDP. Corporations more leveraged than before last crisis.
• Government debt: $39T (120% of GDP). Interest payments approaching $1T annually.
• Consumer debt: $17T (credit cards, auto, student loans).
• Total US debt: Over $90T (320% of GDP). Every sector leveraged beyond historical norms simultaneously. This is the everything bubble.

The FED'S Trap: 15 years since 2009, Fed guaranteed markets. Every dip = Fed cuts rates or prints money (QE1, QE2, QE3, COVID stimulus). Fed printed $8T (2008-2022). Investors learned: Buy the dip. Fed will save you. But Fed used its ammunition. Rates were 0% for decade (can't go lower). Balance sheet $800B (2008) to $9T (2022). Limited room for expansion without inflation (which happened 2021-2022).

Fed fought inflation by raising rates 0% to 5.5% in 18 months (fastest in 40 years). Higher rates make debt expensive. Corporate debt at 3% must refinance at 7%. Fed trapped: Rates too low = inflation returns. Rates too high = debt unpayable. No good option.

Historical Comparison:
• 1929: Stock market up 400% (1924-1929). Margin debt 10% of GDP. Everyone leveraged. "Permanently high plateau" = crashes impossible. October came. Market fell 89% over 3 years.
• 2008: Housing doubled (2000-2006). Mortgage debt 100% of GDP. Everyone leveraged with subprime. "Housing never falls nationally." Subprime defaulted. S&P fell 57%.
• 2026: Same setup. Bubble. Leverage. Belief Fed makes crashes impossible. Just need trigger."
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"The 'Stagflation Depression': Why 2026 Will Be 1929 and 1970 Combined"

Full screen recommended.
Financial Revelations, 11/27/25
"The 'Stagflation Depression':
 Why 2026 Will Be 1929 and 1970 Combined"
"Discover why economists are warning that 2026 could bring an unprecedented economic storm unlike anything we've seen in nearly a century. This deep dive reveals how the toxic combination of rising inflation, stagnant growth, and mounting unemployment mirrors two of America's darkest financial chapters happening at once. See how the same warning signs that preceded the 1929 crash and the 1970s stagflation crisis are quietly emerging today. You'll understand what happens when a depression-style market collapse meets decade-high inflation and why traditional financial advice may not protect your money this time. Learn the historical patterns that preceded both crises and what everyday people did to survive when the economy worked against them from every direction."
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"How It Really Is"

  

"Rush Tells the True Story of Thanksgiving"

RepublicHeritage, 11/27/25
"Rush Tells the True Story of Thanksgiving"
"Rush Limbaugh reads the true story of Thanksgiving
 from his second book, "See, I Told You So"
Comments here:

“How To Survive Thanksgiving?”

“How To Survive Thanksgiving?”
by Michael Snyder

"This year there have been more news articles than ever about “how to survive Thanksgiving”. If you have not noticed this, I will provide some examples for you in this article. Personally, the idea that Thanksgiving is an ordeal that must be endured is deeply offensive to me. If eating a feast while surrounded by people that love you is too much of a burden, please stay home. Thanksgiving is a day when we our not supposed to be focused on ourselves. Instead, it is a day when we are supposed to give thanks. In fact, according to the original Thanksgiving declaration that George Washington issued in 1789, there is someone in particular that we are supposed to give thanks to on this day. But in our “me-centered” society, that has been completely forgotten.

I love Thanksgiving. When I was a child, we would stop for one day to eat some turkey and give thanks for our blessings. But today the Thanksgiving holiday has become an entire season. The weekend before Thanksgiving is a travel weekend, many take the entire week off, and the weekend after Thanksgiving is the time when people travel home. I kind of like that. The more time that we can take to spend with the people that love us the better.

But many media outlets seem to think that spending time with family and friends is a problem. For example, here is one article about Thanksgiving that discusses “the stresses that a family get-together can create”…"Thanksgiving is an interesting holiday. Some celebrate it as an American tradition. Others look at it as simply an excuse to get together with family to watch some football. And still others just enjoy getting an extra day off from work or try to ignore it altogether. But however you regard it, there are often two areas in which many of us can use help: preparing the traditional Thanksgiving meal and dealing with the stresses that a family get-together can create - especially these days, when conversations around the dinner table may be even more fraught than usual."

Yes, human relationships are complicated. But that doesn’t mean that we should just isolate ourselves. A big part of life is learning how to love imperfect people. Because if you can’t love imperfect people, you aren’t going to love anyone, because nobody is perfect.

Many of the articles about “how to survive Thanksgiving” are focused on how to deal with family members. The following comes from an article entitled “How to Survive Thanksgiving with a Crazy Family”…"Every Thanksgiving, millions of Americans prepare for what just might be the most family time they’ve had in a while. For some this is great. It is a reunion full of hugs and catching up. For most, it’s a politically charged, possibly drunken, exchange of fighting words, news stories, and my favorite, family drama. While my family is, admittedly, crazy, we normally shy away from such emotionally charged topics. But there is always an instigator in each family who enjoys sparring with family, watching the flames come up from the ground and engulf their family until it’s time to eat so much they enter a comatose state, lie on the couch, and forget the pain they’ve inflicted."

Many of these articles suggest that we should just avoid talking about anything important during Thanksgiving. Really? What are we supposed to do? Talk about the weather for three hours?

Political talk at Thanksgiving is something that mainstream news outlets seem to particularly dislike. I found an ABC News article entitled “How to survive political talk at Thanksgiving dinner” to be particularly amusing…"It’s Thanksgiving, you’re enjoying your favorite foods at the dinner table, when a family member brings up who they voted for in the 2024 presidential election. Arguments ensue. The food doesn’t taste as good. And now everyone’s a politician. People have political opinions."

And that is okay. If we can’t learn how to peacefully interact with those that we disagree with, we are going to be in big trouble. If we had a society that actually valued the marketplace of ideas, we would relish the opportunity to chat with those that hold opposing views. But instead we are trained to cringe at the thought of having to do that. Here is an excerpt from a Vogue article entitled “How to Survive Politics-Talk at Thanksgiving (Without Losing Your Mind)”

"Thanksgiving is upon us, and given that we’re fresh off one of the most contentious and politically charged seasons of our time, it’s probably not realistic to expect a holiday to be totally free of drama. If you’re one of the lucky few whose family is united around political issues, treasure those peaceful conversations at the Thanksgiving table; for the rest of us, it can be challenging to know how best to talk to loved ones (or, to be real, tolerated-out-of-necessity ones) about anything substantive. Besides, for many of us, these issues aren’t “just politics;” they directly affect the way we live our lives and the safety and happiness of our families and friends."

If you disagree with me, that is okay. And if I disagree with you, that is okay too. Today, many people are actually completely cutting themselves off from their families due to political differences. That is so wrong, but it is happening on a widespread basis.

Recently, Oprah Winfrey committed an entire podcast to people that have chosen to go “no contact” with their relatives…"When is it OK to go “no contact” with a family member? And what even is “no contact,” really? Oprah Winfrey explored these questions on “The Oprah Podcast,” in an episode released Tuesday, Nov. 25, ahead of Thanksgiving. In the episode, audience members opened up about cutting off all contact with close relatives − even their parents. “I know this is a tender, hot-button topic,” Winfrey said in the episode. “My hope is that we can open up the heart space and really listen. I’m not on anybody’s side. I just want to hear what everyone has to say.”

A USA Today article about that podcast explained precisely what it means to go “no contact” with someone…“No contact” is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: You cut off all communication with someone. This means no meet-ups, no phone calls, no texting and no interaction on social media. If you happen to run into each other, you either avoid them or keep the interactions short and emotionally neutral."

I know so many children that no longer have contact with their parents, and I know so many parents that no longer have contact with their children. It is a nationwide epidemic, and it is a great tragedy. But this is what our society has become. We have been trained to hate anyone that disagrees with us, and that even includes our own family members. One of these days so many people are going to look back and wish that they could have done things differently. If you find yourself wishing that you had done things differently, this Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to change direction.

In 1789, President George Washington issued the very first Thanksgiving proclamation. He designated the 26th day of November to be a day when Americans were to humble themselves and give thanks to God for the blessings that He had bestowed upon our young nation
"By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation"

"Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor– and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be – That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks – for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation – for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war–for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed – for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted – for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions – to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually – to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed–to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord – To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us – and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York
 the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789."

The vast majority of the population has totally forgotten what Thanksgiving is supposed to be all about. But it is not too late to reverse course. I would encourage everyone to humble themselves and give thanks at some point over the next few days. You will be amazed at how your perspective changes once you have done that."

"We All Get Plucked in the End"

"We All Get Plucked in the End"
by Bill Bonner

Paris, France – "As our friend Nassim Taleb reminds us, there’s a downside to being a turkey. It’s called Thanksgiving. Every day for 1,000 days, it gets its food. The turkey gets used to it. It feels pretty good about things. Around the feed trough, it is common knowledge that the food “always” comes. And there is no turkey alive who can contradict it.

The more intellectual turkeys spin out theories to explain their good fortune. One says it’s because of turkey exceptionalism: “The food always comes because we’re turkeys, not starlings or pigeons. We are special. We don’t have to peck around on the ground trying to find crumbs or scratch in the dirt to find worms. We’re a superior bird; we have access to unlimited food.”

Another has a different hypothesis – better leadership: “We always get fed because our president has figured out how to make the farmers feed us. He’s the best turkey president ever. If the farmer is a little late, he knows how to make turkey life great again. Didn’t you notice? He takes three steps backward and makes a loud gobbling noise. That usually does it. If it doesn’t, he just keeps gobbling until the food comes. Always works. Always.”

And yet another pipes up: “Oh, enough with your fancy theories. We always get fed because that’s just the way it is. It’s nature.” “No, it’s not nature,” offers another. “It’s because the fix is in. The farmer has to feed us, or he’ll be charged with animal abuse. He has to keep the food coming; he has no choice.”

Bad Feather Day: But then, as the fourth Thursday of November approaches, the theories are put to the test. All are proved incorrect. The food doesn’t come. Instead, the turkeys are ushered into a special part of the farm complex where they’ve never been before. There is something disquieting about it. The turkeys begin to whisper among themselves. One says he hears cries coming from the next room. All of them notice the sounds of machinery… heavy machinery… and a few soft feathers floating through the air. “What’s going on…?” they wonder, one to another. And then, they begin to panic, running helter-skelter, hoping to escape.

Up until that day, the food came every day. Day after day… the sun shone… and along came the farmer with more grain. And then, without warning, everything changed for the turkey. Worse than a bad feather day… it was the final scene. The curtain fell. The court adjourned. We see the turkey’s life from the farmer’s perspective. It is not all gravy and sweet potatoes. But it is very predictable, with a definite beginning and a certain end. And a purpose. Have a nice Thanksgiving."

"A Virgilian Thanksgiving"

Autumn sunset over the Tuscan hills.
"A Virgilian Thanksgiving"
The great Roman poet on love and loss,
 life and death, man and nature...
by Joel Bowman

"Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember.”
~ Virgil

“A happy life consists in tranquility of mind.”
~ Cicero

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon 
the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest 
satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.”
~ Seneca

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "With the holidays nigh upon us, we count the tasks outstanding against the year’s twilight hours and discover, without surprise, that the former far outnumber the latter. There are deadlines to meet... invitations to send... victuals to prepare... libations to sup... and of course, friends and family to gather near (such as geography and busy schedules permit). No doubt you’ve plenty on your own proverbial plate, too. Allow us, therefore, to relieve one item from your brimming to-do list. Or at least, to offer up a humble suggestion, on behalf of one of our favorite poets...

Publius Vergilius Maro, known more commonly as Virgil, was born in 70 BC in what the Romans knew as Cisalpine Gaul, today’s northern, alpine Italy. Before he passed into the realm of the shades, just half a century later, Virgil had composed three of the most important poems in Latin literature: the "Eclogues" (or "Bucolics"), the "Georgics," and of course the foundational epic, the "Aeneid."

In this second work, which follows the tensions of the seasons and man’s struggle with, and eventual triumph over, the havoc and danger of the natural world, Virgil presents a masterpiece at turns didactic, elegiac, epic and even (as in the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice) epyllion. Loosely modeled on (the Greek poet) Hesiod’s famous "Works and Days" (composed around 700-650 BC), Virgil’s own poem muses on the classic, universal dichotomies of myth and reality, power and politics, cause and effect, heaven and earth, love and loss, life and death...

Under a Tuscan Sun: Many modern moons ago, having once again taken to wandering the world as a homeless peripatetic, your flâneuring correspondent found himself holed up in the ancient township of Città di Cortona, in Tuscany.
Tuscan room with a view. Cortona
The fortified hamlet sits atop a picturesque Italian hillside, which overlooks the same fertile plains as once viewed by the Etruscans... the Romans... perhaps even Virgil himself (who would have traveled south to Rome and onto the port city of Brundisium, modern day Brindisi, where he eventually gave up the ghost).

Perched on a fine little Juliette balcony, we lazed one afternoon under a late Tuscan sun, Sangiovese (literally: “blood of Jove”) within easy reach. Through the wrought iron we scanned the plains below, plowed through the ages by man and beast, tiny clumps and copses scattered between the fields, green and fallow. Virgil’s work lay open in our lap, Book I...
“Wait… where exactly did I leave Jupiter’s blood, again?”
It is from the first book of the Georgics, in part a supplication to the Gods (as well as Augustus himself), that we recite our yearly Thanksgiving toast, remembering always those who went before us... as well as the halcyon days in Virgil’s birth country... and the longed-for future, when we will venture there once more. Please enjoy the immortal poet’s words, below…"

"A Thanksgiving Toast, from Virgil’s Georgics, Book I"

"What makes a plenteous Harvest, when to turn
The fruitful Soil, and when to sowe the Corn;
The Care of Sheep, of Oxen, and of Kine;
And how to raise on Elms the teeming Vine:
The Birth and Genius of the frugal Bee,
I sing, Mecaenas, and I sing to thee.

Ye Deities! who Fields and Plains protect,
Who rule the Seasons, and the Year direct;
Bacchus and fost'ring Ceres, Pow'rs Divine,
Who gave us Corn for Mast, for Water Wine.

Ye Fawns, propitious to the Rural Swains,
Ye Nymphs that haunt the Mountains and the Plains,
Join in my Work, and to my Numbers bring
Your needful Succour, for your Gifts I sing."
(As translated by the English poet, John Dryden, 1631-1700)

Happy Thanksgiving 2025

 

May all the good things in Life be yours in the coming year.

Wednesday, November 26, 2025

"Alert! Troops Deployed In Washington, Martial Law And SHTF; Civil War And WW3"

Prepper News, 11/26/25
"Alert! Troops Deployed In Washington,
 Martial Law And SHTF; Civil War And WW3"
Comments here:

"People Can Sense Something Major Is Coming And Getting Ready"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 11/26/25
"People Can Sense Something Major
 Is Coming And Getting Ready"
"In this video we look at what's really happening beneath the surface of the economy and why so many Americans are starting to feel like something bigger is on the horizon. The job market is drying up, especially for young people. The dollar is losing value. Utility bills are doubling overnight. And the official numbers keep telling us everything is fine while regular families are drowning in costs that never came back down. We'll go through real clips and comments from people sharing what they're experiencing, what they're noticing in their communities, and why so many are quietly preparing for what might come next. If you've felt that growing tension between what we're being told and what you're actually living through, this video is for you. Stay aware, stay connected, because the warning signs are real and the choices you make today will matter in the months ahead."
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"Regular People Are Being Priced Out Of Life"

Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 11/26/25
"Regular People Are Being Priced Out Of Life"
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"1,000's Of Stores Warn Of Immediate Collapse"

Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 11/26/25
"1,000's Of Stores Warn Of Immediate Collapse"

"Trump's 'Tariff Dividend' and the New Fiscal Populism"

"Trump's 'Tariff Dividend' and the New Fiscal Populism"
by Doug Casey

"International Man: Trump is pitching a "tariff dividend" that would take revenue from new import tariffs and recycle it into $2,000 checks for Americans - framed not as welfare, but as a patriotic return on America's trade strength. What do you make of this?

Doug Casey: Frankly, it's ridiculous. Whenever Trump talks, it's clear that he knows nothing about either economics or history. Of course, knowledge isn't entirely necessary to steer the Ship of State. It's possible to get by with only luck, bluster, and coercion - but the results tend to be bad. Trump doesn't have any consistent thinking or philosophy, either; it's all seat-of-the-pants feelings. That's a characteristic of populists. They try to get ahead of popular whims, and they'll say or do almost anything that they think the mob wants to hear.

So far, the big reason for Trump's popularity is that he's a cultural conservative. Let's count ourselves lucky in that regard. He doesn't want to overturn the basis of America itself, as many of the Democrats clearly want to do. When it comes to economics, Trump is very comfortable with arbitrarily printing wild amounts of money. I suspect he rationalizes it by thinking it will forestall deflationary collapse in the short run and inflate away the otherwise unrepayable national debt in the long run.

He's mostly in favor of mild deregulation, which is good, of course. But most of what he does is flattery-driven. If he likes somebody and they want to suck up to him, he'll do what it takes to make himself more popular with that person and their constituency.

His tariffs are a tax on Americans who import things. Part of his philosophy with the tariffs is to encourage manufacturing in the US. But since over half of the imports are for further value-added manufacturing in the US, it turns out he's really hurting domestic manufacturing. And he's hurting exports too, because when you don't buy things from people, they're less likely to buy things from you.

Apart from generating revenue to distribute to the capita censi, his objective is to encourage domestic manufacturing by making imports expensive and forcing people to make things domestically. Very much like Argentina under the Peronists, whose similar hopes of self-sufficiency wound up destroying the Argentine economy. Building up domestic manufacturing can take many years, sometimes decades. But along the way, a closed, protectionist America will produce uncompetitive products. This results in a lower standard of living for Americans.

The only way to bring manufacturing back to the US - the only way - is to free the US economy: get rid of taxes, institute a sound currency so that capital can build, get rid of regulation so that producers aren't hamstrung, and remove government from all aspects of the economy. But Trump is doing the opposite. So not only is he not going to get the result that he's looking for, he's going to create a disaster.

It's amusing to see him bragging about cultivating foreign investment. For instance, he expects a trillion dollars from the Saudis, which is almost 100% of the Saudi GNP. Trump's hyperbole on almost everything he talks about is indistinguishable from lying. How can a sensible person take anything he says seriously? When he says something, it's just off the top of his head.

International Man: Do the so-called tariff dividends amount to a new form of money printing - QE without the Fed?

Doug Casey: You mean the $2000 he says he'll distribute to various Americans, with money gained from tariffs? As a giveaway, it's corrupting. But it won't add to the money supply because putting on tariffs doesn't create more money. How many will get this $2000 bonus? Who knows. If it goes to 100 million people, that's $200 billion. Where's the money going to come from? Not from the tariffs, which will greatly reduce trade and income, and be counterproductive in every way.

Trump loves spending. But how will Trump finance his spending? Taxes aren't popular, and Trump wants to be popular. Borrowing in the market is out; it would put upward pressure on interest rates. So essentially, more government debt will be sold to the Fed. They'll buy it with newly created dollars.

International Man: Do you see these tariff checks as a kind of Universal Basic Income for the Right?

Doug Casey: The concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) is being widely discussed. It's a disaster on every level possible. Elon Musk and others are saying that it's inevitable. When robots and AI do everything, they think mass unemployment is unavoidable. They seem to think that the plebs will have to be maintained like pets, to keep them from rioting. Others think that once UBI frees the plebs from the drudgery of work, they'll become thinkers, artists, and poets. That's a pipe dream.

More likely, UBI will create a population of dissipated layabouts, junkies, and neurotic consumers. Healthy humans have to feel productive. Apart from the fact that it's psychologically destructive, UBI is unnecessary. That's because it doesn't matter how much the AI and robots create, it won't be "free"; there are costs to everything. Besides, people have infinite desires. A person can work 24/7, catering to the unlimited amount of goods and services people want. The idea should be to totally eliminate welfare, aka UBI, not to put everyone on it.

Of course, ultimately, the elite would like to see AI and robotics reduce the population of the world by, they say, 90%. If only to save Mother Earth from hordes of useless eaters. I'm sure they're working in that direction.

International Man: Are these tariff dividends a sign of fiscal dominance - where government financing needs begin to dictate monetary policy - and what would the implications be?

Doug Casey: Trump thinks he's a genius. And as a world-changing genius, he wants to reform the world the way he thinks is best. So, for instance, he's actively replacing members of the Federal Reserve Board who share his ideas on money; no doubt he's very favorably inclined toward what's known as Modern Monetary Theory - the same for the Supreme Court and Congress. Basically, Trump doesn't believe in anything; he just has feelings and instincts.

The bottom line is that we're sure to see a lot more government involvement in the economy. Trump tries to make deals with every person and every group possible; he's opportunistic and very transactional. I think he sees himself as Louis XIV. But I'll wager that before his term is over, he winds up more like Louis XVI.

International Man: The last time the government handed out checks to the average person was during the Covid mass psychosis, and it triggered the worst inflation in 40 years. What are the implications for gold, the US dollar, and other investments if these tariff dividends continue?

Doug Casey: It's not just the proposed tariff dividends, it's his whole economic approach. Trump isn't a free-market believer; he's a narcissist, he thinks he's a genius, and he'll impose his will whenever he can. This adds a thick layer of uncertainty to a very shaky economy.

I don't, therefore, think there's any way around higher gold prices - despite its all-time highs. Since gold is the only financial asset that's not somebody else's liability, more and more people will move to gold. But also to commodities in general; relative to their production costs and historical prices, they are very cheap.

Pay attention to the government starting to invest in mining companies - including MP Materials (one of our picks), Lithium Americas, and Trilogy Metals. Not to mention Intel and US Steel. This is in the worst "state capitalist" tradition of picking favorites. Right now, Rare Earths are the flavor of the month. The result will be corruption and massive distortions. Speaking as an economist, I find it stupid and deplorable. But speaking as a speculator, this foolishness is likely to spark interest in mining companies, which makes me happy.

How about real estate? Commercial real estate prices are said to be off about 25% across the country. Even condominium prices are dropping, off 10 to 15%. Houses aren't selling because so many people locked in low-interest, 3% or 3.5% 30-year mortgages a few years ago. If they sell, they'll have to refinance at twice those levels, which many can't afford. With mortgages at 6.5%, a lot fewer people who want to buy can't buy - the property market's in trouble across the board.

In the stock market, all the gains have basically been in high-tech. We're in a multi-trillion-dollar AI super bubble. The financial world is very unstable. The only places that make sense are commodities, resources, and the companies that produce them. The good news is that though they've been moving up, they're still very cheap. And have a lot of upside from here. I remain very concentrated in the resource markets."

Musical Interlude: Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

Full screen recommended.
Vangelis, “Beautiful Planet Earth”

An Inspiringly Different Musical Interlude: The Jacksons, "Can You Feel It"

Full screen recommended.
The Jacksons, "Can You Feel It"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"These two mighty galaxies are pulling each other apart. Known as the "Mice" because they have such long tails, each spiral galaxy has likely already passed through the other. The long tails are created by the relative difference between gravitational pulls on the near and far parts of each galaxy. Because the distances are so large, the cosmic interaction takes place in slow motion - over hundreds of millions of years.
NGC 4676 lies about 300 million light-years away toward the constellation of Bernice's Hair (Coma Berenices) and are likely members of the Coma Cluster of Galaxies. The featured picture was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2002. These galactic mice will probably collide again and again over the next billion years so that, instead of continuing to pull each other apart, they coalesce to form a single galaxy."

"Do You Want..."

"Do you want to live life, or do you want to escape life?"
- Macklemore

The Poet: Wendell Berry, “Leavings”

“Leavings”

“In time a man disappears
from his lifelong fields, from
the streams he has walked beside,
from the woods where he sat and waited.
Thinking of this, he seems to
miss himself in those places
as if always he has been there.
But first he must disappear,
and this he foresees with hope,
with thanks. Let others come.”

- Wendell Berry
“Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before him – his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining years, and his present helpless condition – no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had had the better of him -neither name nor money to bequeath – a spent-out, bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here! Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, “Tomorrow, success or failure won’t matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.”
- William Makepeace Thackeray, “Vanity Fair”

“Rescreening Dr. Strangelove”

“Rescreening Dr. Strangelove”
By Hugh Iglarsh

"A friend of mine saw Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” when it first opened in Paris in 1964. He and his American army friends were rolling on the floor throughout. The French audience, however, sat in stony silence. It wasn’t a comedy to them; it was a documentary. What is it now? In general, Hollywood is America dreaming – but Strangelove is something different, a “nightmare comedy,” in Kubrick’s words. It is prophecy disguised as farce – the finest dramatic analysis we have of the paradoxes of deterrence, that strange world of interpenetrated enmity and overriding common interest. What follows is a look at Kubrick’s masterpiece as satire, history and cultural critique.

Watching the film today, one realizes that Kubrick was exaggerating only the details and personality quirks, not the fundamentals. Peter George’s somber novel "Red Alert", upon which the film is based, evolved into a comic script of its own deeper nature, almost without intervention. As Kubrick said, “The most realistic things are the funniest.” In the Strangelove universe, the serious constantly morphs into the humorous, which then reveals itself as deadly serious.

Historian Margot Henriksen, author of "Dr. Strangelove’s America," describes the movie as a kind of expose – a frontal assault on “the cherished seriousness and rationality of America’s nuclear ethos and establishment Strangelove showed the previously disguised cold war reality for what it was: immoral, insane, deadly – and ridiculous. Distinguished critic Lewis Mumford defended the film’s blackly humorous take on nuclear holocaust as an example of deadpan Swiftian wit: “It is not this film that is sick: What is sick is our supposedly moral, democratic country which allowed this policy to be formulated and implemented without even the pretense of public debate.”

Strangelove’s literary antecedents go back even further, to the Old Comedy of Aristophanes – the comedy of Periclean Athens, which was ribald and irreverent and deeply political. It’s a theater of living, participatory democracy, of a citizenry involved in every matter of state. Also, it’s a comedy grounded in the body and nature, as for instance in Lysistrata, in which the women of Athens bring the bloody and stupid Peloponnesian War to an end through a brilliantly organized sex strike, or in other plays, where the chorus of frogs or wasps or birds comments on human affairs from an ironic inter-species distance. The film’s insistent “strange love” sexual subtext places it firmly in the Aristophanic tradition.

The characters in Strangelove embody social hierarchies; they are flattened, if highly compelling, and command a very different kind of response than does the typical Hollywood character – a critical reaction, rather than an emotional identification. It is similar to what Bertolt Brecht describes as the alienation effect, forcing the viewer to see characters in terms of what they represent, coloring the subjective perception of objective reality, and creating the psychological conditions for both detachment and enlightened re-engagement.

Historically, 1963 was a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis and a couple of years after the Berlin Wall crisis. It was the last moment that some Pentagon brass and nuclear strategists believed that the USA would have a significantly superior strategic position vis-à-vis the Soviets, allowing the possibility of a first strike. President Kennedy was surrounded by such thinking. From the book "JFK and the Unspeakable," by James Douglass, regarding events in 1961: “His military advisors continued to ride hard toward the apocalypse. Kennedy was appalled by Generals Lemnitzer and LeMay’s insistence at two summer meetings that they wanted his authorization to use nuclear weapons in both Berlin and Southeast Asia. His response was to walk out of the meetings. After one such walkout, he threw his hands in the air, glanced back at the generals and admirals left in the Cabinet Room, and said, ‘These people are crazy.’ ”

Only one month after the terrifying Cuban Missile crisis, the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested a buildup of strategic forces to the level of a disarming first-strike capability. On November 20, 1962, they sent a memorandum to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara stating, “The Joint Chiefs of Staff consider that a first-strike capability is both feasible and desirable.” Their studies showed that a first strike would kill at least 140 million Russians – but that American casualties could be kept down to a “manageable” 10 or 12 million. This is almost exactly what General Turgidson says in the movie. (“Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say… no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh… depending on the breaks.”) In September 1963, Air Force General Leon Johnson said to Kennedy, “I have concluded from the calculations that we could fight a limited war using nuclear weapons without fear that the Soviets would reply by going to all-out war.”

Kennedy understood the real but unstated objective. Knowing that the Pentagon was gaming him, he responded, “I have been told that if I ever released a nuclear weapon on the battlefield, I should start a pre-emptive attack on the Soviet Union, as the use of nuclear weapons was bound to escalate and we might as well get the advantage by going first.” Again, it’s precisely the gambit attempted by General Turgidson in the War Room regarding the “unpublished study” about the correct (i.e., murderous) response to a nuclear “accident” – a study apparently not shared with the president.

Kubrick’s mind was legendarily omnivorous and retentive. He subscribed to the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" and had read just about every book ever written on deterrence and thermonuclear war. His imagination is so rooted in hard fact that he could intuit what was taking place behind closed doors. Lyman Lemnitzer, Curtis LeMay, Edwin Walker, Herman Kahn, Henry Kissinger, so many others – like Kennedy, Kubrick realized it was a cast of maniacs that kept the nuclear show going. Kubrick and co-screenwriter Terry Southern encapsulate that insanity in the characters of Ripper, Turgidson and Strangelove – an alliance of the psychotic, the narcissistic and the psychopathic, each bizarre in his own way, but all ultimately collaborating in a genocidal groupthink.

Good satire goes directly for the insoluble contradictions, and Kubrick hits so many of them – for instance:

    * Only those with a superhumanly developed self-restraint and sanity could be trusted to be in control of nuclear weapons – but only a madman could create and support the logic of mutual assured destruction and its associated concepts of “overkill” and “megadeath.”

    * Also: The effectiveness of nuclear deterrence depends on a hair-trigger response to attack – so a system ostensibly intended for preventing war is constantly provoking fear, creating a spiral of suspicion in which defense and aggression become indistinguishable.

    * Also: To deter, the system must be rigid and flexible at the same time, robotic and humanly controllable. An engineer will tell you that any system designed around fundamentally opposed qualities is an accident waiting to happen. It is a doomsday machine, an idiot system of world-destroying power.

    * Also: While the rhetoric is that of war avoidance – “Peace is our profession” – the underlying mentality is that of total victory over an evil enemy. So “accidents” are programmed in, as the pretext for a first strike with “acceptable” American losses. But the extent to which the possibility of a first strike is countenanced gives the lie to any ethical superiority over the other side. The system is morally bankrupt.

    * And finally: The bomb supposedly exists to protect freedom and democracy, but at moments of crisis (which in a balance of terror means every moment), we see how the system actually functions – as the ultimate expression of elitism, accepting the very real possibility of human annihilation as the cost of dominance and control. It is the apotheosis of what C. Wright Mills, writing a bit earlier, described as “crackpot realism,” the thought process of a paranoiac. The system is politically self-deconstructing, reducing itself to rubble here before our eyes, in 90 real-time minutes.

All of these contradictions are embodied in the character of Dr. Strangelove, the crippled, fragmented machine-man who hovers like a dark angel in the corner of the War Room and our consciousness. He is the ultimate accomplishment of the film: a rich and open-ended symbol – a key to understanding both an aspect of human nature and a specific moment in time. He has become a permanent part of our culture, graphically revealing the surreal, fascistic energy that permeates the inner workings of the military-industrial complex.

In the end, Strangelove walks – he regains his potency – because this Nazi technocrat has finally become the voice of authority in the putative democracy that helped defeat his first fuhrer. He no longer needs to conceal his nature and desires. These boil down to a sadomasochistic scenario of female sexual slavery, in which the sickest members of the military-industrial patriarchy are given exclusive right to the most nubile women. It is a eugenics-inspired rape fantasy, out-Hitlering Hitler. And the gathered War Room crowd salivates over the prospect.

We realize that the narrative arc of the movie is that of coitus interruptus, which begins with Turgidson’s painfully suspended tryst with his secretary and is consummated with the final orgasm of destruction. At last, with the end of the world, the sexual suspense is broken and we can breathe; the relief is palpable. The only kind of sexual satisfaction that can exist within the mechanized and disembodied world portrayed in the film involves violence and the projection of power, which compensates for the inner emptiness and lack of feeling in a militarist wasteland.

This is the crux of Kubrick’s and Southern’s irony in Dr. Strangelove: that the higher the stakes, the greater the megatons and megadeaths wielded by these nuclear warriors, the more diminished and enfeebled and grotesque they become. A system that grants godlike powers simultaneously denies real humanity. In the end, loving the bomb means losing the soul.

Strangelove reveals the nuclear standoff as more than a political problem – it is also a symptom of self-alienation, of an imbalance between life and death, Eros and Thanatos. Underneath the antic surface – for instance, in the close-ups of General Ripper’s lined face and haunted eyes – there’s a tragic half-awareness of something terribly wrong. Something that may have to do with communists or fluoride or precious bodily fluids, or maybe something deeper that we no longer have the spiritual or emotional capability to understand or confront. The film is an attempt to regain that capability by seeing the situation as a whole, from a comically human perspective. The belly laughs that the movie elicits come from our core and bring us back into our full, social selves, away from the isolated, phobic, hyper-rationalized world of General Ripper and his compatriots.

Dr. Strangelove offers no solutions to the nuclear quandary. It just shows us where the logic of the system points, in terms of both origins and outcomes. By casting the nightmarish absurdity of the system in a comical light, he strips it of its metaphysical terror. Once we have seen Dr. Strangelove – the ghost in the war-making machine – as he is, we can begin the process of freeing ourselves from him."
Bomb run sequence...

Major Kong rides the bomb...

The Daily "Near You?"

Brighton, Colorado, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Kahlil Gibran, "The Madman"

 

"The Madman"
"It was in the garden of a madhouse that I met a youth with a face pale and lovely and full of wonder. And I sat beside him upon the bench, and I said, “Why are you here?” And he looked at me in astonishment, and he said, “It is an unseemly question, yet I will answer you. My father would make of me a reproduction of himself; so also would my uncle. My mother would have me the image of her seafaring husband as the perfect example for me to follow. My brother thinks I should be like him, a fine athlete. And my teachers also, the doctor of philosophy, and the music-master, and the logician, they too were determined, and each would have me but a reflection of his own face in a mirror. Therefore I came to this place. I find it more sane here. At least, I can be myself.” Then of a sudden he turned to me and he said, “But tell me, were you also driven to this place by education and good counsel?”
And I answered, “No, I am a visitor.”
And he answered, “Oh, you are one of those who live in the madhouse on the other side of the wall...”
- Kahlil Gibran