Jim Kunstler, "First, Quit Pretending"

Drug Addicts on Kensington Avenue, Philadelphia

"First, Quit Pretending"

by Jim Kunstler

“The Republican party has plenty of things wrong with it, but the other 

side is so crazy they’re celebrating our assassinations and sharia law.”

 - DC_Draino on X (Rogan O’Handley)

"The leaves turn and the season quickens and, in a few weeks, comes an election more dreaded than all the slavering blood beasts of Halloween. Do you suppose, as I do, that America is tired of being insane? The pathetic part of this national nervous breakdown is how unnecessary it actually is. Our national problems are not that difficult to understand and correct. Here’s an inventory of them:

Making a living 1. So many blunders, starting with off-shoring our factories. So few well-paying working-class jobs. Some of the former working-class are now working three part-time gigs and still not making a living. Quite a few are just at home, on “disability,” smoking drugs, flirting with suicide on fentanyl, eating too much crap snack food, getting tattoos. We’ve quit pretending that’s all right.

Mr. Trump proposes to change that and is re-shoring industry. It takes time to build it, get it running. Meanwhile nobody can find a plumber, an electrician, because of the bad political decision to send everyone to college, including kids not really able to finish high school. Result: “elite overproduction” Translation: too many college graduates, with the situation made worse by bogus fields-of-study that were concocted to keep students busy without preparing them for the real world. Hence, they are “elite” only by certification, not superior knowledge or skills. Young people need to learn real skills. Mr. Trump issued EO 145278 (April 2025) “Preparing Americans for High-Paying Skilled Trade Jobs of the Future.” Pell grants for short-term vocational training. Grants for apprenticeship positions.

Making a living 2. Rewrite the immigration law. We don’t need 1-million-plus newcomers each year. How about none for a while? Give American citizens priority for any and all jobs. Keep the border closed and deport all illegal immigrants. They have no “right” to be here. We don’t need “the wretched refuse of your teeming shore” (Emma Lazarus, 1883). It’s not 1883 anymore. Quit pretending we have to be “the beacon of the world.” Let them make themselves free in their own lands.

Making a living 3. America needs household servants and poor people need work. The current work-around for the well-off is to hire illegal aliens for this kind of work. It allows them to believe that putting poor Americans on the dole (out of “empathy”) and allowing them to be useless is “progressive.” (That’s insane.) There’s plenty to do, even for people of limited ability. Make menial labor okay again. These days, many people of means live in chaotic households where nothing is taken care of. It reflects their chaotic lives. (No wonder wealthy liberals are crazy.) Get poor people off welfare and off making babies they can’t take care of. Give them a place to live in your 5,000 square-foot McMansion and a paycheck.

Nothing Works. Because we automated too many transactions. Spent $XX-Billions and fifty years computerizing the US Telephone system to improve communication. Result: it’s impossible to get a real human being on the phone. How is that an improvement? How is it better for Americans to get fucked around on “phone trees” for hours every week? Too many “help desks” located in foreign lands that employ people who barely speak English. Quit pretending that’s okay. Start by requiring doctors’ offices and hospitals to provide humans to the answer their phones.

The Horror That Is Medicine. Get this: the situation is too dire to fix at-scale. The complexity and opportunities for racketeering are now too vast. Since failure is already well underway, and trust in doctors is broken, allow medicine to reorganize at the local clinic scale on a pay-for-service basis. Streamline medical education and the entry positions to practice. Government should not take over medicine, but can subsidize medical education. It would comprise a tiny percentage of the annual budget. Accept that there’s a lot doctors will have to learn on-the-job. Forbid insurance companies from owning hospitals, clinics, and doctor practices. To restore trust, quit pretending that Covid-19 was anything but a nefarious exercise and prosecute the large number of pharma executives, hospital admins, doctors, bureaucrats, who enabled it to happen. Make personal responsibility for your body great again. Let RFKjr do his job.

Scam Education. It’s failing at-scale as medicine is. Kids are allowed to “graduate” from high school not knowing how to read or do basic arithmetic. How did that become okay? Answer: the teachers’ unions are corrupt and degenerate, dedicated to Marxist social disruption and maximizing their pensions. Manipulating kids into fake sexual crises is a criminal enterprise. Centralizing K-12 schools into gigantic buildings was as much a mistake as off-shoring industry. School’s primary mission should be to produce basically literate citizens in the language of the USA, which is English. If you can’t speak and read English, you’re unlikely to learn anything else and unlikely to thrive in this society.

Black/White race conflict. Failing to teach black ghetto kids to speak English correctly stigmatizes them for life. Quit pretending you can compensate for that with grievance politics. It’s only made race relations worse and driven whites and blacks into separate cultures that can barely communicate with each other. That is opposite of the direction America was going in two generations ago. How did it reverse? I will tell you: By the 1980s, liberal shame over the Civil Rights movement’s failure to produce perfect social “equity” inspired the “solution” of “multiculturalism,” which said, let’s just have different standards of language, manners, and behavior for different ethnic groups (and everybody will get along). It was a shuck and jive. To be a coherent nation requires a common culture, the same standards for all citizens. That was America’s strength when we were strong, not our “diversity.”

The Law. The Woke judiciary is punking America thanks largely to appointments made by Barack Obama and “Joe Biden.” It’s extremely difficult to get rid of political “activist” judges with lifetime appointments. Or to wait for the SCOTUS to reverse their multitudinous noxious rulings. But it’s less difficult to put out-of-business the small cadre of lawfare ninjas who bring all the lawsuits that their chosen activist judges rule on - namely, Norm Eisen, Marc Elias and their many associates. They have engaged in manifold seditions from RussiaGate to the Mar-a-Lago raid and are liable for prosecution for the roles they played. Eisen and Elias run numerous NGOs that assist their shenanigans. The funding streams to them can be turned off, especially if any of the money comes from foreign entities, such as Arabella Advisors (and its pass-through orgs) or from foreign nationals like Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss and Shanghai-based Neville Roy Singham (currently under investigation by a New York federal grand jury). 

George Soros’s many Open Society affiliated NGOs have been busy for years pumping money into state attorney general and many county district attorney elections. In a 5–4 ruling on the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment bars the government from limiting independent spending on political speech by corporations, unions, and other associations. A later D.C. Circuit decision, SpeechNow.org v. FEC, led to the creation of “Super PACs” (political action committees) that can spend unlimited sums on activism as long as they do not give money directly to candidates or coordinate with them. Years later, there is a growing consensus that these decisions led to tremendous mischief in politics and the administration of law. They can be revisited.

Fraud and Grift. Artificial Intelligence (or “Super Intelligence,” if you like) is already pretty good. Good enough to trace money flows from the US Treasury through states such as Minnesota, New York, Illinois, and California, and further down the line into local orgs like the now-infamous Minneapolis “Learing” Center and the Feeding Our Future scam. AI can go over their books super-efficiently, too. Veep JD Vance is probably already using AI on his Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent estimated aggregate fraud in annual government spending at around half a trillion dollars a year.

Free and Fair Elections. It’s astounding that there’s any disagreement over the provisions in the SAVE ACT: only citizens can vote... ID required... One-day only election with results next day at the latest... Mail-in voting only for military, voters too ill to go to the polls, and persons out-of-the-country for a good reason. It’s a sign of epic dysfunction that we go into the midterms having failed to move this bill through a Republican-controlled Senate.

This is just a casual survey of a few things in our national life that need repair. You have to ask: who is behind all the pretending. What stands in the way of getting any of this done? I think you know.

I’ll be speaking at the Prospects for American Renewal Summit in Bozeman, Montana, November 13, 14. The theme of the meeting is: What has America lost? What remains worth preserving? And what must be rebuilt if a healthy common life is to endure?"

For info: https://www.arcata.live/2026-summit#register

- https://www.kunstler.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot 9/28/26"

"Economic Market Snapshot 9/28/26"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

o

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data 

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- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

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Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

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- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...

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And now... The End Game...

o

"Moscow Closes the Door: How Putin and Lavrov Hardened Russia’s Line on Ukraine in Ten Days"

"Moscow Closes the Door: How Putin and Lavrov 

Hardened Russia’s Line on Ukraine in Ten Days"

by Larry C. Johnson

"In mid-September, the Kremlin was signaling that negotiations could resume. Putin had said the trilateral talks with the United States and Ukraine would be unlikely before the State Duma elections, but that Russia would be ready to resume contacts after them. The elections ended on September 20. Within a week, both Putin and Lavrov had shifted from conditional openness to a set of positions that make a negotiated end to the war harder to reach than at any point this year.

The trigger: September 20: The turning point was Ukraine’s drone campaign on election day. Putin said more than 1,600 drones entered the Moscow area that night, with strikes on polling stations, including one in a school he said was virtually destroyed. The chair of a territorial election commission was killed when her home was hit. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the raid unprecedented. According to RT, two civilians were killed in the suburbs and an oil refinery was damaged. Whatever one makes of Russian accounts of the damage, the political effect in Moscow was plain.

Putin: from “ready after the elections” to “we will think twice”: At his press conference in St. Petersburg on September 25, Putin recast the whole negotiating track. He listed a series of Ukrainian escalations: the strike on St. Petersburg’s port during the June economic forum, a campaign against Russian refineries, an attempted blockade of Russia’s Black Sea coast that he said damaged more than 100 vessels, and strikes on commercial warehouses. He said Russia had answered each one, so effectively that Kyiv is now seeking partial ceasefires in the energy sector and the air.

Putin didn’t treat those requests as an opening. He treated them as proof that Russian pressure is working. His message to Kyiv was that no provocation or escalation will get it what it wants, and that it is only making its own situation worse. Then came the key passage. The proposals, he said, remain on the table, but after everything Ukraine has done, Russia “will think twice” about how to respond. Any decision, including whether to resume the negotiations, will be based on Russia’s interests.

That is a marked change from ten days earlier. Putin didn’t close the door to talks, but he removed the implied commitment to resume them after the elections, and made any resumption depend on Russia’s own assessment of what it has to gain.

Lavrov at the Security Council: no pause “in any format”: Lavrov made the position explicit in New York on September 23. Speaking to a Security Council meeting on Ukraine, he said: “Having learned from bitter experience, we will not pause the special military operation for the period of negotiations in any format.” He said European countries wanted a pause to buy time to replenish Ukraine’s depleted arsenals. He dismissed a pre-agreement ceasefire as not serious and insisted that the goal is a long-term settlement.

The timing made it a direct rebuff. That same day, Ukraine and 51 supporters released a statement demanding that Russia accept an immediate and unconditional ceasefire so talks could begin. Its signatories included the EU and its member states, the UK, Canada and Australia. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, noted that 14 of the 15 Security Council members had backed ceasefire proposals in one form or another, leaving Russia alone.

Lavrov went further than ceasefire mechanics. He said Ukraine would have kept its 1991 borders if the Europeans had not “engaged in their shenanigans.” That frames the loss of Ukrainian territory as permanent and places the blame on Europe. It is not the language of a government preparing to negotiate over the lines of control.

Lavrov at the General Assembly: Europe as the enemy: In his General Assembly speech on September 26, Lavrov made Europe the central threat. He said the EU is militarizing for war with Russia, and that a buildup on that scale could eventually lead to a conflict. He suggested Germany’s pursuit of military primacy could be seen as an attempt to create a “Fourth Reich.” At his press conference afterward, he argued that a European buildup must eventually be used, “because we are not planning to” attack. He called European war preparations a possible “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

The effect is to rule Europe out as a negotiating party. Lavrov has told the Europeans that they are the ones preparing a war, that their calls for a ceasefire are a device to rearm Ukraine, and that they destroyed the chance of a settlement on Ukraine’s 1991 borders. Moscow now treats only the United States as a legitimate interlocutor.

Even the U.S. channel produced nothing: After meeting Lavrov in New York, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said both Russia and Ukraine had shown interest in a limited ceasefire covering energy infrastructure and grain shipping, but admitted an agreement would not be easy. The Russian Foreign Ministry did not confirm any agreement, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there were currently no conditions for moving toward a peace track, although Russia remained open to talks.

Putin’s own assessment of the U.S. relationship was cool. He welcomed the Trump-Xi talks in Washington, but said Russia’s relations with the United States had been reduced almost to zero, contrasting that with $240 billion in annual trade with China.

Pressure at sea, in the air and on the ground: The diplomatic hardening is matched by rising military pressure on three fronts at once. Moscow is not waiting for talks. It is using the interval to raise the cost to Ukraine of refusing Russia’s terms.

At sea, Russia has reimposed a de facto blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. It has not brought its warships back to Ukraine’s coast as it did in 2022; it has used missiles and drones against ports and merchant ships instead. After strikes in mid-July, including the sinking of the bulk carrier Golden Leo, shipowners and insurers pulled back, and traffic through Odesa, Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi collapsed. On September 12, Russia hit the Odesa region with cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and 129 drones, and said it struck two cargo ships at Chornomorsk that it claimed were delivering weapons. Ukraine’s acting foreign minister has accused Moscow of trying to turn the Black Sea into a “second Strait of Hormuz.” In St. Petersburg, Putin listed the lifting of the blockade among the concessions Kyiv is seeking, and made clear he is in no hurry to grant it.

In the air, Russia has intensified strikes on Kyiv and other major cities, aimed at transport, production, power, water and communications. On September 23, the day Lavrov spoke at the Security Council, hours of drone attacks on Kyiv hit railway infrastructure, warehouses and fuel stations, killing at least two people and injuring more than 30. Zelensky said Russia used large numbers of drones, including faster jet-powered models. Strikes have also hit power, water and internet networks, partially suspending water service on Kyiv’s left bank. Earlier in September, Russia struck Kyiv and southern and eastern Ukraine six nights in a row. With winter approaching, the grid is becoming a front of its own. Zelensky raised an energy-infrastructure truce with Trump at the UN; Moscow has not accepted it.

On the ground, Russian forces are attacking along the entire line of contact, and Russia is advancing while Ukraine gives ground. Ukraine’s own General Staff reported 277 combat engagements on September 24, from the Sloviansk and Kramatorsk sectors in northern Donetsk to Huliaipole in the south, with the heaviest assaults around Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk. Russian forces took Shirokoe and Shevchenkovo in the Kharkiv region and Novoandreevka in the Zaporizhzhia region on September 14, and Olkhovatka in the Kharkiv region, within an encirclement, the next day. Every day of stalled diplomacy is another day of this pressure.

What this adds up to; Taken together, the statements of the past ten days set out a harder Russian position: Talks resume only on Moscow’s timetable and on its judgment of its own interests, not as the promised follow-up to the elections. No ceasefire of any kind during negotiations, including the unconditional ceasefire backed by more than 50 countries. Ukraine’s requests for partial truces are treated as evidence that Russian pressure is working, not as openings. Europe is cast as the aggressor, excluded as a partner, and blamed for the loss of Ukraine’s territory.

Military pressure rising on every axis: a de facto blockade of Ukraine’s ports, intensified strikes on Kyiv’s infrastructure, and assaults along the entire front. The direction is clear. In mid-September, Moscow was talking about when negotiations would resume. By September 26, it was talking about whether it wanted them at all, and on what terms."

I discussed prospects for a Russia–NATO war with Lena Petrova:

- https://larrycjohnson.substack.com/

"Alert! Russia Building Massive Nuclear Complex. Iran Warns of "Doomsday War"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 9/27/26

"Alert! Russia Building Massive Nuclear Complex. 

Iran Warns of "Doomsday War"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

"Families Are Getting Sick From Recalled Food And The Warning Comes Too Late"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 9/27/26

"Families Are Getting Sick From Recalled Food 

And The Warning Comes Too Late"

"Food recalls are reaching American kitchens after the food is already on the table, and the recall notice often goes up on a website most shoppers skim past. By the time the shelf is cleared, the family that ate it is learning the name of the bacteria from an urgent care nurse. Eight Americans filmed what a food recall looked like inside their own homes, from a recalled peanut butter that put a diabetic woman in the hospital with DKA, a Trader Joe's salmonella scare and a lettuce recall that ended in urgent care to baby formula recalled twice for botulism, a pregnant woman who made herself throw up after eating a recalled meal, and a Boar's Head listeria poisoning that left a woman turned away by doctors. In this video, we look at what these families went through, what a recall notice misses, and why a dated, rotated pantry you can check in minutes matters when the grocery store pulls food off the shelf, for American families, their kitchens and their emergency food storage."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald Celente, "Severe Market Crash Soon"

Full screen recommended.

Gerald Celente, 9/27/26

"Severe Market Crash Soon"

"Celente explains why he believes the Iran conflict may not be over, why markets may be underestimating geopolitical risk, and how war, inflation, AI speculation, debt, and widening inequality could collide in the months ahead."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Cards Only No Cash; 15,000 Auto Repossessions Per Day; Banks Will Crash"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe, 9/27/26

"Cards Only No Cash; 15,000 Auto 

Repossessions Per Day; Banks Will Crash"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Everything is Going Up, Brace For Impact"

Adventures With Danno, 9/27/26

"Everything is Going Up, Brace For Impact"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Forest Whisper"

Full screen recommended.

Peder B. Helland, "Forest Whisper"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What will become of these galaxies? Spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427 are passing dangerously close to each other, but each is likely to survive this collision. Typically when galaxies collide, a large galaxy eats a much smaller galaxy. In this case, however, the two galaxies are quite similar, each being a sprawling spiral with expansive arms and a compact core. As the galaxies advance over the next tens of millions of years, their component stars are unlikely to collide, although new stars will form in the bunching of gas caused by gravitational tides.

Close inspection of the above image taken by the 8-meter Gemini-South Telescope in Chile shows a bridge of material momentarily connecting the two giants. Known collectively as Arp 271, the interacting pair spans about 130,000 light years and lies about 90 million light-years away toward the constellation of Virgo. Recent predictions hold that our Milky Way Galaxy will undergo a similar collision with the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy in a few billion years.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130825.html

"Inside the Most Beautiful Crystal Palace in Heaven"

Full screen recommended.

Crystal Heaven,

"Inside the Most Beautiful Crystal Palace in Heaven"

"Welcome to Crystal Heaven - a breathtaking world where celestial architecture, glowing crystal flowers, golden halls, enchanted gardens, peaceful pools, royal chambers, and magnificent fantasy spaces come together like a dream. In this cinematic 4K journey, explore an extraordinary crystal palace filled with sapphire-blue interiors, luxurious gold details, sparkling chandeliers, stained-glass windows, magical fountains, heavenly gardens, elegant royal rooms, and peaceful dreamlike spaces. Relax and enjoy the journey with soft ambient music, sweet piano, emotional violin, and gentle heavenly atmosphere."

Incredibly beautiful, a must view!

"Where Yesterday Still Draws Water"

Full screen recommended.

John AI Art,

"Where Yesterday Still Draws Water"

Native American Elder, "Truths Every Person Over 60 Needs to Hear'

Full screen recommended.

Native American Elder,

"Truths Every Person Over 60 Needs to Hear'

Blues Masterpiece, "I Ain't Ready for the Rockin' Chair"

Full screen recommended.

Blues Masterpiece, 

"I Ain't Ready for the Rockin' Chair"

“I Ain't Ready for the Rockin' Chair” is a spirited, humorous blues about a man who refuses to let age tell him what he can and can't do. His hair may be turning gray and his knees might complain, but he's still cutting grass, driving into town, fixing things around the house, and finding new reasons to get up every morning. Driven by gritty blues guitar, a lively harmonica, and a steady old-school shuffle, this song celebrates the stubborn spirit of a man who still has plenty of living left to do. The weathered voice is full of confidence and good humor, reminding us that growing older doesn't mean giving up the things that make life worth living. They can keep that rockin' chair waiting… I've still got places to go and stories to tell."

The Daily "Near You?"

Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"He Survived 78 Days in the Wilderness, This is His Warning to the World"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 9/27/26

"He Survived 78 Days in the Wilderness,

 This is His Warning to the World"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Universe"

 

"The Madman"

"The Madman"

by Kahlil Gibran

"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...”

The Poet: Grace Schulman, “Blessed Is The Light”

“Blessed Is The Light”

“Blessed is the light that turns to fire, and blessed the flames 

that fire makes of what is burns.

Blessed the inexhaustible sun, for it feeds the moon that 

shines but does not burn.

Praised be hot vapors in earth's crust, for they force up

mountains that explode as molten rock and cool like

love remembered.

Holy is the sun that strikes sea, for surely as water burns

life and death are one. Holy the sun, maker of change,

for it melts ice into water that bruises mountains, honing 

peaks and carving gullies.

Sacred is the mountain that promises permanence but

changes, planed by rockslides, cut by avalanche,

crushed, eroded, leeched for minerals. 

Sacred the rock that spins for centuries before it shines,

governed by gravity, burning into sight near earth's

orbit, for it rises falling, surviving night.

Behold the arcs your eyes make when you speak. Behold 

the hands, white fire. Branches of pine, holding votive

candles, they command, disturbed by wind, the fire that

sings in me.

Blessed is whatever alters, turns, revolves, just as the gods

move when the mind moves them.

Praised be the body, our bodies, that lie down and open 

and rise, falling in flame.”

~ Grace Schulman

"If You Treat An Individual..."

 

"Life Lessons From George S. Patton, Jr."

Full screen recommended.

"Patton Speech"

Patton speech in Los Angeles 1945 and death.

 Narrated by Ronald Reagan.

"Life Lessons From George S. Patton, Jr."

by John Wilder

"I have been a long-time fan of General George S. Patton, Jr. It started when I was a kid, and my history teacher even ordered a few extra Patton films for the World War II section of U.S. history because he knew I was a Patton fan. Probably the biggest accolade that he could have was from the Germans who he fought, one of whom said simply, “He is your best.”

For whatever reason, though, I had never read "The Patton Papers 1940-1945."  On a whim a week or so ago, I ordered a copy, and I cracked it open at lunch the day it arrived before I headed back to work. I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed a book more. I’m not sure The Mrs. feels the same way, since when I’m reading it, about every five minutes I’ll come up with a snippet to read to her. She keeps saying, “Thanks, but no tanks.”

The book itself is a compilation of diary entries, letters Patton wrote, and orders he gave in the period from 1940-1945. To have the ability to read through those are amazing, even when he just writes about the mundane aspects of his life or his son having trouble in math at school. I didn’t start at the beginning, I just picked it up and started reading at a more-or-less random spot, which coincided with his taking command of American troops in North Africa. And then I couldn’t put it down.

While many passages have resonated with me, I decided to write about one in particular today. It consists of his instructions that were provided to his officers prior to launching Operation Husky, where he and Montgomery launched a naval invasion of Sicily. Spoiler alert: he did pretty well. This is one passage I’ll make sure to share with Pugsley and The Boy because there is so much truth not only in a military sense, but in life to what Patton wrote on June 5, 1943. Stuff in italics is Patton’s (from page 261 and page 262). My comments are in plain text.

"Discipline is based on pride in the profession of arms, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence. Discipline must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of battle or the fear of death.

Discipline can only be obtained when all officers are imbued with the sense of their lawful obligation to their men and to their country that they cannot tolerate negligence. Officers who fail to correct errors or praise excellence are valueless in peace and dangerous misfits in war."

Discipline starts with a single individual. In my case, it doesn’t come from without, it must come from within. Getting up on time. Paying the bills. Having a sense of purpose in life. It has been my observation that people will do what you want when you’re looking if they fear punishment. If they are being judged, they might do it when others are around. When it becomes a value, however, they do it every time, all the time, even when no one is looking, and even when no one will ever know.

"Officers must assert themselves by example and by voice."

People watch. And people listen. Letting things slide never creates excellence.

"There is no approved solution to any tactical situation."

There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is: “To so use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum of time.”

Obviously, war isn’t a game, but the lesson for life outside of attacking Sicily in 1943 still exists. And it’s not to use Claymores (FRONT TOWARD ENEMY) and a mortar barrage to open a business meeting. But I have been involved in business and life situations where time was of the essence, and being polite just had to go out the window.

"Never attack [enemy] strength, [but rather his weakness]..."

"You can never be too strong. Get every man and gun you can secure provided it does not delay your attack..."

"Casualties vary directly with the time you are exposed to effective fire... Rapidity of attack shortens the time of exposure..."

"If you cannot see the enemy, and you seldom can, shoot at the place he is most likely to be..."

"Our mortars and our artillery are superb weapons when they are firing. When silent, they are junk – see that they fire!"

One thread that runs through Patton’s writing and actions is his devotion to attacking. Defending wasn’t something that he was interested in. In life, I think that attitude is required. It’s easy to give up, it’s easy to fall into the trap that there’s nothing more to do, nothing more to gain. It’s similar to having all A’s on my eighth-grade report card and deciding to coast on that for the rest of my life.

Potential can only be realized if we push ourselves, and we can only push on the attack. So, attack life like a poodle going after a pork chop, up to the very last breath.

"Never take counsel of your fears. The enemy is more worried than you are. Numerical superiority, while useful, is not vital to successful offensive action. The fact that you are attacking induces the enemy to believe that you are stronger than he is..."

"A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution ten minutes later..."

"IN CASE OF DOUBT, ATTACK ..." "Again, attack. But the additional thought is added: don’t listen to your fears. Fear is something that will paralyze even a strong man. And from my experience, the best way to get over fears and avoid the paralysis that comes with them is to take action. What action? Any action that leads you toward your goal. Even the smallest action often sets off a cascade of following actions that lead to...success."

"Mine fields, while dangerous, are not impassable. They are far less of a hazard than artillery concentrations..."

"Speed and ruthless violence on the beaches is vital. There must be no hesitation in debarking. To linger on the beach is fatal."

We are going to run into problems. Some of them huge. Some of them of our own making. The idea is to push through. The Mrs. and I watched a kid on the local wrestling team that was just awful in terms of skills, experience, and well, brains. But, he’d get it in his head that he could win, and he would go out and win some very, very unlikely matches. Why? He didn’t hesitate. He jumped on the chances he made.

I’ll probably have a few more of these as I go through the book. And, as much fun as it is to read, I’m going to take my time to enjoy it. I’d best show a little bit of discipline... Patton might be watching."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

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Full screen recommended.

"Patton" (1970), 27:32 - 30:21, Reincarnation scene.

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Freely download "The Patton Papers 1940-1945" here:

- https://dn790001.ca.archive.org/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Starbucks Can’t Make It Anymore"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 9/27/26

"Starbucks Can’t Make It Anymore"

"Starbucks is closing another 250 locations, adding to hundreds of closures already happening as the company restructures and focuses on profitability. But Starbucks is only part of the story. Retail, restaurants, office space and other businesses are being forced to adapt as consumers pull back, costs rise and companies rethink locations that simply aren't making money. In this video, we look at what Starbucks' closures could say about the broader economy, changing retail, consumer spending, dynamic pricing, self-checkout, drone delivery and falling consumer sentiment. The economy is changing right in front of us, and businesses are responding by cutting costs, closing underperforming locations and changing how they operate.Things are getting so bad that even Starbucks is closing hundreds of locations."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Israel’s Iran Strategy Is Breaking Down - The Next Phase Looks Worse"

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, 9/27/26

"Israel’s Iran Strategy Is Breaking Down - 

The Next Phase Looks Worse"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"To All Americans: Trump Is About to Destroy Us!"

Douglas Macgregor, 9/27/26

"To All Americans: 

Trump Is About to Destroy Us!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Is Putin Caught In An 'Escalation Trap'? The Long War In Eastern Europe"

"Is Putin Caught In An 'Escalation Trap'?

The Long War In Eastern Europe"

by Larry C. Johnson

"Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism has flagged a recent interview that Professor Robert Pape did with Mario Nawfal. During the interview, Pape argued that Vladimir Putin is caught in an "escalation trap." In his telling, Russia launched a preventive war in February 2022 to seize Kyiv and roughly 60 percent of Ukraine. That plan collapsed, and the fallback, betting that NATO would break, is now producing the European counterbalancing coalition Moscow most feared. It is a tidy theory. It also rests on a premise about Russian intentions that the record does not support, and once that premise goes, the trap goes with it.

What the force tells you about the objective

Start with arithmetic, the kind any planner of military operations does before anything else. Russia invaded with roughly 150,000 to 190,000 troops, including separatist forces. The standard rule of thumb for occupying a hostile population, from James Quinlivan’s RAND work, is about 20 troops per 1,000 inhabitants. For a country of more than 40 million, even occupying 60 percent of the territory would require several hundred thousand troops, several times what Russia sent. Moscow’s General Staff can do this arithmetic. A force that size is a coercive instrument, not an occupation army.

The pattern of the operation fits coercion. Russian forces approached Kyiv from the north but never attempted to assault or encircle a city of three million. The pressure was aimed at the government, not at taking the capital block by block. Talks began within days, in Belarus on February 28, and moved to Istanbul in March. Pape's supporters point to the airborne assault on Hostomel as proof of a plan to seize the capital. But a failed coup de main against an airfield is not evidence of an intent to occupy 60 percent of a country.

Istanbul: the objective was achieved

The strongest evidence against Pape is that the coercion worked. By the end of March 2022, meetings in Belarus and Turkey, together with video conferences, had produced the Istanbul Communiqué, a framework for a settlement. Ukraine accepted permanent neutrality in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and its allies, with Russia also as a guarantor. Russia, for its part, agreed to a process to settle the Crimea dispute diplomatically.via IISS

That was the core of what Moscow wanted, and the Ukrainian side confirmed it. David Arakhamia, who led Ukraine’s delegation, later said Russia was prepared to end the war if Ukraine accepted Finland-style neutrality and committed not to join NATO. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed to me, Judge Napolitano and Mario Nawfal directly that the talks produced a tentative agreement, and that its terms were brought to the table by the Ukrainian delegation, not imposed by Moscow.

As a gesture of goodwill, Moscow withdrew its forces from north of Kyiv. Western commentary treats that as a retreat forced by battlefield failure. It is at least as consistent with the claim that the pressure had served its purpose.

How the deal died: Then the politics changed. Boris Johnson arrived unannounced in Kyiv on April 9, 2022, and according to Arakhamia told the Ukrainians not to sign anything with Russia and to “just fight.” Two days earlier, Lavrov had already complained publicly that Ukraine’s new draft departed sharply from the key provisions agreed at Istanbul on March 29. Washington and London had decided Russia was weaker than they had thought and that it could be bled. Ukraine walked away.

This is the point Pape’s framework cannot absorb. If Russia’s goal was a neutral Ukraine obtained through negotiation, the war did not go on because Moscow’s plan failed. It went on because Russia’s adversaries rejected the settlement.

No plan B, but a fast pivot and a new army: With hindsight, Russia clearly had not prepared a plan B for Ukraine walking away. That was a real planning failure. But the Russian military adjusted quickly. It concentrated on the Donbas and the land bridge to Crimea, and the fall of Mariupol in May gave it the first major result of that phase.

The bigger adjustment came in September 2022. After a large number of contract soldiers left the army in August and the Kharkiv counteroffensive exposed how thin Russian lines were, Putin ordered the mobilization of 300,000 reservists. That was the start, not the end, of Russia’s response. From that point Moscow set about building a much larger army, as the Russian officers I have interviewed have described in detail, including Gen. Apti Alaudinov, Gen. Evgeny Buzhinsky, Gen. Andrei Gurulev and Col. Eduard Basurin.

The mobilization was followed by a sustained recruitment campaign and an expanded annual draft. By Medvedev’s count, more than 452,000 men signed military contracts in 2023. Roughly 450,000 followed in 2024, and more than 422,000 in 2025. Year after year, Russia has added at least 350,000 new soldiers. Putin’s decrees tell the same story: authorized military strength rose from about 1.15 million in 2022 to 1.32 million in December 2023, then to 1.5 million effective December 2024. By 2026, according to my sources, Russia’s army had reached that 1.5 million active-duty figure.

That is not the behavior of a state that expected a quick war and is now improvising its way out of a trap. It is the behavior of a state that decided in the autumn of 2022 to fight a long war, and built the force to do it.

Why the timeline matters: The goals never changed. Putin announced them on February 24, 2022: the demilitarization and “denazification” of Ukraine. What changed after Istanbul was the method, from coercion toward a negotiated settlement to attrition. Moscow has never attached a timeline to that effort.

Pape’s trap depends on the assumption that Russia needed a quick victory and is now stuck with worse and worse options. An attrition strategy with no deadline, backed by an army that has grown every year since 2022, is not a trap. It is a choice. Moscow's theory of victory since late 2022 has been to exhaust Ukraine’s manpower and the West’s willingness to supply it, not to break NATO by a specific date. Four and a half years later, Russian forces are still advancing, and Ukraine’s reserve and mobilization problems are structural, not temporary.

Pape’s answer is European counterbalancing, backed by an EU economy he puts at about eight times Russia’s. That ratio only holds at market exchange rates, which badly understate what Russia’s economy can actually produce. On purchasing power parity, the measure that matters in a war of production, Russia is the fourth largest economy in the world: about $6.9 trillion in 2024 by the World Bank’s count, behind only China, the United States and India, and ahead of Japan and Germany. The EU as a bloc is still larger, but on that basis the gap is roughly half of Pape’s figure.

GDP understates Russia’s position in another way. Russia has a resource base that Europe cannot match, from oil, gas and coal to metals and fertilizer, and a defense-industrial base that Europe has let wither for thirty years.

Artillery shells, the basic currency of this war, show what that means in practice. Russia produced an estimated 400,000 122mm and 152mm artillery rounds in 2022. By 2025, estimates put its annual output at about 4.2 million. A 2026 Estonian intelligence report goes further, estimating that Russian factories produced about seven million artillery, mortar, tank and rocket rounds in 2025. On top of that, Russia has received millions of rounds from North Korea.

Europe started from almost nothing. At the beginning of 2024, according to Rheinmetall’s own internal estimate, all Western European manufacturers together could produce about 550,000 shells a year. NATO's own assessment was that Russia produced as much ammunition in the first three months of 2024 as the entire alliance did in a year. The EU pledged to reach a capacity of two million 155mm shells a year by the end of 2025, a target, not proven output. Even adding US production, which is aiming for about 100,000 rounds a month in 2026, allied programs might yield about three million shells this year, still less than Russia’s estimated output in 2025.

That is the real measure of the balance Pape is counting on. A bloc whose economy is several times Russia’s is still being outproduced in the one commodity that decides an attrition war. Balance-of-power theory may be right that Europe will eventually arm itself. It says nothing about whether that happens in time to change the outcome in Ukraine.

Russia sent a force too small to occupy most of Ukraine, negotiated within days, and reached a framework agreement within five weeks. When the West persuaded Kyiv to walk away, Russia shifted to an open-ended war of attrition and spent four years building an army to fight it. That is not a state trapped by the failure of a plan to conquer 60 percent of a country. It is a state that tried coercion first, adapted when it failed, and is fighting on its own timeline."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"The Siege Accelerates"

"The Siege Accelerates"

by Lamentor

Excerpt: "Last Saturday: The diesel pumps ran dry in Florida and Texas. The Joliet refinery remained offline. The Houthis struck Riyadh airport. The Kursk nuclear plant cooling tower burned. The PJM grid emergency covered thirteen states. The banks faced $326.7 billion in unrealized losses. The heating oil crack spread hit the highest level in history. The truckers pressed the decline button ten thousand times a day. The G7 met to discuss the Hormuz closure. Macron convened an emergency session. The Saudi exports to Europe sat at zero. The Colombian earthquake swarm passed 1,200 tremors. The Kilauea pattern broke. The war remained contained to the periphery. The narrative remained controlled. The agenda proceeded.

Today: I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord. The frogs in the pot are hot and unable to feel the heat. They sit in the pot as the temperature rises degree by degree, unaware that the comfort they feel is actually the threshold of death. They have been told the water is fine. They have been told to trust the chefs. They have been told that anyone who suggests the water is boiling is a conspiracy theorist, a doomer, a threat to the social order. So they sit. And they wait. And they do not jump.

I have been watching for this moment for all my life, oh Lord. Not waiting. Not wanting. Not romanticizing. I have wished it would go away. I have prayed it would not arrive. I have warned in the hope that warning might prevent. But the moment has come regardless. The drum beat that signals the revelation is sounding now. The pack of lies is exposing itself. The grin cannot be wiped off because the grin is frozen in place, a rictus of denial, as the water approaches the boiling point.

The rain has come here and there and in one instant can be everywhere. It is accelerating. How fast can she go? When the night comes, no man knows. The hour is late.

The frogs are beginning to cook as the temperature rises slow. Some are beginning to notice the steam. Some are beginning to feel the pain that has been growing all along, the hurt that does not show but the pain still grows. It is no stranger to you and me. We have seen this before. We know where this leads. The first time was the warning. This time is the reality.

The final target is USA. The siege is not against some distant nation. It is against the heartland. It is against the infrastructure. It is against the currency. It is against the people. The chefs prepare the next course. The Clergy Response Team stands ready with scripture in hand to quote Romans 13 as the lid clamps down. The evacuation centers wait with beds made and barcodes ready. The bureaucratic blade is sharpened. The pneumatic guillotine is perfumed.

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh Lord. Not because I wanted it. Because I have been watching. Because the signs have been there all along. Because the water has been heating since August 28th, since the dollar reset began, since the first vent opened at Kilauea, since the first drone struck the refinery, since the first bank reported losses they could not hide. The moment is fast arriving. The drum beats are sounding in the distance. The revelation is now. The rain will become the flood. The night approaches. Maranatha."

Full, most highly recommended article is here:

- https://lamentor.substack.com/