Saint Charles, Illinois, USA. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, November 17, 2023
The Poet: Langston Hughes, "Mother To Son"
"Mother To Son"
"Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor -
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now-
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair."
- Langston Hughes
o
"You've seed how things goes in the world o' men. You've knowed men to be low-down and mean. You've seed ol' Death at his tricks... Ever' man wants life to be a fine thing, and a easy. 'Tis fine, boy, powerful fine, but 'tain't easy. Life knocks a man down and he gits up and it knocks him down agin. I've been uneasy all my life... I've wanted life to be easy for you. Easier'n 'twas for me. A man's heart aches, seein' his young uns face the world. Knowin' they got to get their guts tore out, the way his was tore. I wanted to spare you, long as I could. I wanted you to frolic with your yearlin'. I knowed the lonesomeness he eased for you. But ever' man's lonesome. What's he to do then? What's he to do when he gits knocked down? Why, take it for his share and go on.”
- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
"When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,'
I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'"
- Sydney J. Harris
Paulo Coelho, "Walking the Path"
"Walking the Path"
by Paulo Coelho
"I reckon that it takes about three minutes to read my text. Well, according to statistics, in that same short period of time 300 people will die and another 620 will be born. It takes me perhaps half an hour to write a text: here I sit, concentrating on my computer, books piled up beside me, ideas in my head, the scenery passing by outside my window. Everything seems perfectly normal all around me; and yet, during these thirty minutes, 3,000 people have died and 6,200 have just seen the light of the world for the first time.
Where are all those thousands of families who have just begun to weep over the loss of some dear one, or else laugh at the arrival of a son, grandson or brother? I stop and reflect for a while: perhaps many of these deaths are reaching the end of a long, painful sickness, and some persons are relieved that the Angel has come for them. Besides these, in all certainty hundreds of children who have just been born will be abandoned in a minute and transferred to the death statistics before I finish this text.
What a thought! A simple statistic that I came upon by chance – and all of a sudden I can feel all those losses and encounters, smiles and tears. How many are leaving this life, alone in their rooms, without anyone realizing what is going on? How many will be born in secret, only to be abandoned at the door of shelters or convents? And then I reflect that I was part of the birth statistics and one day I will be included in the toll of the dead. How good that is to be fully aware that I am going to die. Ever since I took the road to Santiago I have understood that although life goes on and we are eternal, one day this existence will come to an end.
People think very little about death. They spend their lives worried about really absurd things, putting things off and leaving important moments aside. They risk nothing because they believe that is dangerous. They grumble a lot, but act like cowards when it is time to take certain steps. They want everything to change, but they themselves refuse to change. If they thought a little more about death, they would never fail to make that telephone call that they have been putting off. They would be a little more crazy. They would not be afraid of the end of this incarnation – because you cannot be afraid of something that is going to happen anyway.
The Indians say: “Today is as good a day as any other to leave this world”. And a sorcerer once remarked: “May death be always sitting beside you. That way, when you have to do something important, it will give you the strength and courage you need.” I hope, reader, that you have accompanied me this far. It would be silly to let the subject scare you, because sooner or later we are all going to die. And only those who accept this are prepared for life."
"Our Best Choice..."
"Good or bad, everything we do is
our best choice at that moment."
- William Glasser
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up, 11/17/23"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up, 11/17/23"
Gaza Cease-Fire, Joe Out Gavin In,
US Treasury Bonds Not Safe.
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"The cries are getting louder for a so-called ceasefire with the Israeli/Gaza war that started October 7th. There is more proof coming out that Hamas is using hospitals and other civilian areas to conduct war while holding Israeli hostages. That does not seem to matter much to the people demanding the killing be stopped. Even the UN, which is notoriously against everything Israel, has passed a resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. Meanwhile, reports fighting on the Israel/Lebanon border with Hezbollah is at a point not seen in nearly two decades. Hezbollah is backed by Iran and is much better trained and equipped than Hamas in the south. Is this the calm before the WWIII storm or will the ceasefire put an end to the fighting?
It is really starting to look like the Democrat party is maneuvering to dump Joe Biden in 2024 and replace him with California Governor Gavin Newsom. New Dem rules established in 2022 say they can replace any presidential candidate they want under certain circumstances–without any primaries. Even Joe wants Gavin to have his job. Seriously, Biden said this. Greg Hunter will explain.
People do not realize just how weak the U.S. financial system really is. Moody’s just gave a big warning that it may downgrade the federal government’s AAA credit rating. Could that be a disaster for interest rates and Treasury Bond sales? One financial expert contends U.S. Treasury Bonds are not safe. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has just failed its 6th audit in a row, and there are trillions of dollars “missing.” Sound familiar? Dr. Mark Skidmore and Catherine Austin Fitts brought the problem of “Missing Money” up years ago, and now it’s hitting the mainstream. Is this the tip of the financial iceberg we are about to hit as the exploding federal debt goes out of control? There is much more in the 59-minute newscast."
Join Greg Hunter as he talks about these stories
and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up for 11/17/23:
Jim Kunstler, "Leaving Blobtopia"
"Leaving Blobtopia"
by Jim Kunstler
"A nation can only take so much corruption, crime, and unreality. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” said Karl Rove, veteran blobster and advisor to George W. Bush, when he uttered those fateful words. Even political junkies forget the rest of what he said: "And while you’re studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Old Karl was being too polite, you understand. What he meant to say is: We’re gonna lay trip after trip on you, all of you smart-asses watching the political scene until your over-mis-educated Ivy League brains turn into something that resembles a patty-melt so that you’re lost in a fog of incoherent blabbery, parroting whatever nonsense we proffer as we asset-strip what’s left of Western Civ.
What they call “the cognitive infrastructure” of we-the-people has been twisted, crinkled, folded, looped, and twiddled until it’s nearer a state of criticality than the ten-thousand rusted-out bridges on our county roads. This week, the FCC board voted to adopt new rules to “prevent and eliminate digital discrimination.” Sounds great, huh? Reality check: I do not think that the words mean what you think they mean. They are, rather, an invitation to the rest of the US government - any malicious blob-driven agency - to meddle with the Internet, block content that they don’t like, and conduct mind-f**kery operations to their heart’s delight. Uh-oh, I think they just destroyed the Internet.
Empire is a cruel business, especially as it unwinds. But the sore-beset people of this land may be tiring of alternate realities as the absurdities mount and the immense friction of official bad faith heats up to the point of ignition. For instance, the “news” leaked late Thursday that Special Counsel Robert Hur expects to not charge anyone in connection with the “Joe Biden” documents case. How come? Reasons. Whew, that was swift justice, compared to the Chinese fire drill instigated by that same DOJ against Mr. Trump in the Mar-a-Lago document case.
The DC blob, once so sumptuously comfortable in the days of Karl Rove and Bush II, is actually fighting for its life now, hoping desperately to not be crushed under the rubble of the institutions it is so busy toppling, such as the Department of Justice. Note to blob: if you render the Internet useless, you will accelerate the trend to local autarky. Your diktats will be ignored as government-by-blob drowns in debt, chaos, and impotence. If necessary, we-the-people will return to the traditional printing press and report on what we can actually see and hear in the vicinity around us.
In the meantime, your ability to lay trips on us is losing its mojo. You couldn’t have conjured up a more preposterous front-man for your operation than “Joe Biden.” Imagine what it was like at that long table in San Francisco when the delegation led by President Xi of China sat across from this broken old grifter and his nervous minders. The look of anguish on Tony Blinken’s sagging puss told the whole story. The point of the “summit meeting” was (for our side) to pretend, for show, that we could negotiate anything with China; the point (for China) was to show the world that America is an old whipped dog.
From where they sat in Frisco, Xi’s point men could view California’s stupendously productive Central Valley and calculate how much better China could run the place. (Did Governor Newsom already sell it to Xi on his recent visit to Beijing?) Remember: North America’s civilization is about four thousand years younger than China’s - as if those conquistadors, pilgrims, and cavaliers got here virtually last night, threw the wildest party ever, trashed the joint, and then woke up after losing twenty percent of their brain cells on ketamine and vodka.
Surely you’ve noticed the two wars underway in the other hemisphere. Our special event in Ukraine is going so poorly that the very Director of the CIA, William Burns, paid a not-so-secret call on President Zelensky Wednesday. Usually, this sort of call from one polity to another is performed by diplomats. How many of you noticed that Mr. Burns is not a diplomat? Rather, he is the blob’s consigliere, the very guy you don’t want to show up at your door with a message. You might wake up tomorrow with a horse’s severed head under the sheets. Or maybe his message is, we’ve got a nice cozy villa for you down in sunny Tristan da Cunha….
That war is a lost cause, and the cause was extremely stupid in the first place. Do you even remember what it was? I’ll tell you: to prod Russia into destroying itself. Oh? But why? Because, you know...Russia (and Trump!). There is your blob logic. Cost us something like $150 billion, a large part of that distributed among Mr. Zelensky’s circle while he sacrificed a whole generation of his country’s young men to Russian artillery fire and leaves what’s left of his sad-ass land an economic basket-case.
America is also taking the heat for Israeli-Gaza war. The reality - for those of you interested in reality - is that Bibi is doing what Bibi needs to do whether America likes it or not: a large-scale root-canal on this troublesome region, going literally deep beneath the surface to clean the rot of Hamas out from that underground tunnel world they squandered their people’s capital building. Do you think Bibi and Company do not know that the whole world is watching how they go about this operation? And do you suppose they are trying as hard as possible to not harm Hamas’s human shields? Yes, Israel’s IDF is going about this methodically and carefully, and they are determined to get the job done, no matter how many undergraduate nose-rings scream their lungs out on the Champs Elysée.
So, at this juncture, various parties are gaming out World War Three and, let’s face it, that move just doesn’t really look good for anybody. All the clever moves - Hezbollah, Iran, Turkey - just end up in an ashtray, one way or another. This would have been true whether we sent those aircraft carrier groups or not.
Which brings us back to our land and our own troubles and our own despondent population watching everything in their lives go south. That’s the reality that can’t be switched out on command anymore. That’s the reality worth “studying.” Everybody sees something like force majeure coming at them. Bad money...lawlessness...breakdown...hunger. You can thank the blob for all of that. It’s possible to manage our affairs plainly, justly, fairly, honestly, prudently. We’ll get there. But you have to give reality the respect it deserves, just as you would if God came before you and asked if you’d behaved decently in this life. Would you try to bullshit God?"
"Washington's Fiscal Doomsday Machine"
"Washington's Fiscal Doomsday Machine"
by David Stockman
"Here’s one that will make your hair stand on end: The US Treasury closed the books on FY 2023, bringing the four-year cumulative deficit to $9.0 trillion! That’s right. During the last 1,461 days (FY 2020 thru FY 2023), Uncle Sam has generated $6.2 billion of red ink each and every day including weekends, holidays and snow-days. For anyone keeping score at home, that’s $4.2 million of red ink per minute.
For the purpose of perspective, here’s how long it took to generate the first $9 trillion of US government debt: It took all of 43 presidents and 219 years to reach $9 trillion of public debt in July 2007. So the national debt clock has now accelerated to hyper-drive.
And, yes, we do mean accelerate. It turns out that when you remove the budgetary Mickey Mouse from the numbers, the federal deficit for FY 2023 clocked in at over $2.0 trillion, or double the comparable level in FY 2022. The reported numbers, of course, do not look quite as alarming, posting at $1.4 trillion last year and $1.7 trillion this year.
But as The Wall Street Journal cogently explained recently, that comparison is very misleading because it includes a $380 billion budgetary shuffle between the two years. It seems that Sleepy Joe’s student debt cancellation got recorded as a cost in September 2022, but then got canceled by the courts in FY 2023, turning it into a giant "savings"!
When the Biden administration announced its plan to forgive federal student debt held by 40 million Americans in September 2022, it logged the long-term cost of the program, $379 billion, on the budget all at once, even though effectively no money was spent on it that year… But in June 2023, the Supreme Court tossed the debt-cancellation program, meaning most of that money wouldn’t actually be spent. Rather than update last year’s deficit numbers, though, the Treasury recorded the changes as a $333 billion spending cut in August 2023.
We do not use the Mickey Mouse epithet lightly, but surely booking the next 50 years of student loan repayments during the single month of August 2023 amounts to exactly that. Still, the "Joe Biden" thing behind the teleprompter has the audacity to keep making the hideous claim that he has been slashing the federal deficit!
Actually, Biden is surrounded by the usual Keynesian suspects when it comes to fiscal policy, but even they did not historically recommend a dramatic increase in the deficit at a time of so-called full employment, when the official unemployment rate is just 3.8% and the economy is still straining under severe labor shortages. Indeed, the $2.0 trillion cash deficit for FY 2023 amounted to 7.5% of GDP - a level that was supposed to happen only at the very dark bottom of an unusually bad recession.
Needless to say, these dismal fiscal figures are just one more indictment of the baleful rule of Washington’s Uniparty. When they get done funding the nation’s $1.3 trillion Warfare State, ring-fencing $4.2 trillion per year of Social Security, Medicare and other sacrosanct entitlements, filling up the pork barrels of domestic discretionary spending to the brim, warding off any and all ideas about raising revenues and facing the music on the exploding cost of net interest on the public debt, you get a four-year $9 trillion warm-up for an even greater tsunami of red ink in the years just ahead.
Indeed, that’s now baked into the cake. The world is on the verge of breaking out into a hot war in the Middle East, and Ukraine is hanging by a thread, both owing to the neocon perfidy of the last several decades. So the $1.3 trillion comprehensive national security budget (Department of Defense, International security assistance and operations and Veterans) is going nowhere except up. Way up.
Likewise, Donald Trump has a virtual lock on the Republican nomination even if he ends up behind bars before November 2024. So, his new GOP 11th commandment will prevail. Namely, do not touch Social Security or Medicare, even though they will cost $34 trillion over the next decade, their trust funds will be insolvent by the early 2030s and trillions of those benefits represent pure transfer payments, not a return on payroll taxes contributed by beneficiaries over their working lifetimes.
As to the "pork" in the small (less than 15%) part of the budget called "non-defense discretionary spending," the Washington GOP has already signed its confession papers. Between FY 2017 (Obama’s last budget) and FY 2021 (Trump’s final budget), this fiscal component soared from $610 billion to $895 billion. That’s a 47% gain at a time when the GOP controlled the veto-pen in the White House and one or both houses of Congress.
And then you get to the real skunk in the woodpile - namely, the soaring cost of debt service owing to the long-delayed but not nearly finished normalization of interest rates. If there were ever any doubt that Washington was wandering about in financial la-la land thanks to the Fed’s drastic suppression of interest rates, the data for the weighted average cost of debt service should resolve the matter.
As it happened, on the eve of FY 2020 and the aforementioned $9 trillion public debt explosion that followed, the federal debt held by the public had already more than tripled, from $5 trillion in late 2007 to nearly $17 trillion at the end of FY 2019. Owing to the Fed’s heavy foot on interest rates, however, the weighted average interest rate on the federal debt was just 2.5% on September 30, 2019.
Then came the $9 trillion borrowing explosion, but mirabile dictu (wonderful to relate), the cost of servicing the federal debt just kept on sinking. By early March 2022, when the Fed finally pivoted to inflation fighting, the weighted average interest rate reached just 1.56%! That’s right. Washington was in the midst of the greatest spending and borrowing frenzy in recorded history, but thanks to the Fed, the average yield on the public debt had declined by 40%.
Reality has interposed itself painfully ever since. By the end of August 2023, the weighted carry cost was up to 2.92%. Accordingly, the annualized run rate of federal interest expense soared from $578 billion in Q3 2019 to $910 billion in Q2 2023. That’s a 57% gain, but it is barely a warm-up for what’s coming down the pike.
Virtually every maturity of Treasury paper from 30-day bills to 30-year bonds is currently trading at +/- 5.0%, meaning that when current outstandings roll over, debt service will rise by a further $500 billion per year, even before new trillions are added to the total of Uncle Sam’s debt load.
And besides that, 5% is surely not the ultimate limit on Treasury yields. Given runaway public borrowing and the nation’s historically low savings rate, the average yield on the public debt is likely heading even higher. And there won’t be any rescue from the Fed this time, either, because inflation isn’t collapsing, meaning that a new cycle of "easy money" has only faded further down the horizon.
In this context, the core economic policy platform of the Washington GOP is a tale straight from fantasyland. That is to say, even as they want even more for the Warfare State and are loudly taking a powder on the Welfare State, they still feel compelled to demand that the Trump tax cuts be permanently extended when they expire in 2025. That would cost a cool $3.5 trillion in foregone revenue over the next decade, and that’s on top of the $25 trillion of new debt built in under current policy for the 10-year budget window ahead.
In short, the Uniparty has seconded the nation’s finances to a fiscal doomsday machine that is literally unstoppable. It’s an established trend in motion that is accelerating, and now approaching a breaking point."
Adventures With Danno, "Empty Shelves At Dollar Tree! Lots Of Missing Products!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 11/17/23
"Empty Shelves At Dollar Tree!
Lots Of Missing Products! This Is Not Good!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Dollar Tree and are noticing empty shelves everywhere. This is not good as we are finding many products missing. Cleaning products, some different foods, and no toilet paper whatsoever! We are finding more and more people having to shop at Dollar Tree due to very high prices in most grocery stores!"
Comments here:
Thursday, November 16, 2023
Scott Ritter, "Israel Kills Hundreds Of Families Every Day In Gaza, They Are Terrorists"
Scott Ritter, 11/16/23
"Israel Kills Hundreds Of Families Every
Day In Gaza, They Are Terrorists"
Comments here:
"Gerald Celente, Trends Journal 11/16/23"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, Trends Journal 11/16/23
"FED And ECB Pause Coming, The Ups And Downs"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
Jeremiah Babe, "Walmart Warning Sign: Consumer Is Broke And Hurting, Stock Crashes"
Jeremiah Babe, 11/16/23
"Walmart Warning Sign:
Consumer Is Broke And Hurting, Stock Crashes"
Comments here:
"15 Major Restaurant Chains Filed For Bankruptcy In 2023"
Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 11/16/23
"15 Major Restaurant Chains Filed For Bankruptcy In 2023"
"As the year winds to a close, we look back in retrospection at the many stormy winds that have raged in the economic scene, leaving in their wake several victims. One of the worst hit are restaurant chains, many of whom were forced to declare bankruptcy after facing dire economic hardships. These are 15 major restaurants that filed for bankruptcy in 2023."
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Galaxies of the Virgo Cluster are scattered across this deep telescopic field of view. The cosmic scene spans about three Full Moons, captured in dark skies near Jalisco, Mexico, planet Earth. About 50 million light-years distant, the Virgo Cluster is the closest large galaxy cluster to our own local galaxy group. Prominent here are Virgo's bright elliptical galaxies from the Messier catalog, M87 at the top left, and M84 and M86 seen (bottom to top) below and right of center.
M84 and M86 are recognized as part of Markarian's Chain, a visually striking line-up of galaxies vertically on the right side of this frame. Near the middle of the chain lies an intriguing interacting pair of galaxies, NGC 4438 and NGC 4435, known to some as Markarian's Eyes. Of course giant elliptical galaxy M87 dominates the Virgo cluster. It's the home of a super massive black hole, the first black hole ever imaged by planet Earth's Event Horizon Telescope."
Chet Raymo, "Starlight"
"Starlight"
by Chet Raymo
"Poor Calvin is overwhelmed with the vastness of the cosmos and no small dose of existential angst. He is not the first, of course. Most famously the 17th-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal wailed his own despair: "I feel engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing and which know nothing of me. I am terrified...The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me."
"The Worst Part..."
"People cry not because they are weak.
It's because they've been strong for too long."
- Johnny Depp
"The Point..."
"What is the point? We assume that every time we do anything we know what the consequences will be, i.e., more or less what we intend them to be. This is not only not always correct. It is wildly, crazily, stupidly, cross-eyed-blithering-insectly wrong!"
- Douglas Adams, “The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide”
"The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"
"In a Dark Time"
"In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood -
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks - is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is -
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind."
- Theodore Roethke
"The Swamp Wins Again"
"The Swamp Wins Again"
by Brian Maher
"The United States House of Representatives has assented to a resolution that will keep the government in funds through Jan. 19. More Democrats voted yay than Republicans voted yay - though the bill was Republican-proposed. The Senate will approve it. The president will sign it. And so Republicans will get their guns. Democrats will get their butter… Both will get their pork…And the American taxpayer will get the bill.
Thus a government “shutdown” - scheduled to commence this Saturday in the absence of a resolution - is skirted. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer jubilated in response to its passage: "The proposal before the House does two things Democrats have pushed for: It will avert a shutdown, and do so without making any terrible hard-right cuts that the MAGA right-wing demands." Is it not the traditional purpose of Republicans to scissor spending - at least in theory? Why then would 127 Republicans get in back of “things Democrats have pushed for”?
Just You Wait Till Next Time! Freshly emplaced House Speaker Michael Johnson (R-Louisiana) explains his motivations: "I’ve been in the job less than three weeks. I can’t turn an aircraft carrier overnight, but this was a very important first step to get us to the next stage, so that we can change how Washington works."
Here is your translated version of the speaker’s mummeries: "On Jan. 19 we will locate the courage to impose spending cuts that we could not locate today. We won’t change how Washington works today - but tomorrow we will. Trust me."
Where this courage will be located… we do not know. For decade upon decade they have searched for it. And for decade upon decade it has eluded them. We bet high it will continue to elude them come Jan. 19. It is a wager we will not lose. We will munch every last word upon this page if mistaken - without salt to season them or liquid to help them down. We will devour them raw.
Who Thinks They’ll Cut Spending in an Election Year? And do not forget - next year is an election year. As the great Mencken said of elections: “Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” Next year’s elections will prove no exception.
Are Republicans willing to hack the budget in an election year… when so many stolen goods go upon the auction block? And when their opponents will denounce them as human ice chunks lacking all compassion for the poor and underprivileged? A nickel’s nick to the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts would be declared the slaughter of civilization.
These are the orders party bosses will issue prior to Jan. 19 - depend on it: “This is not a fight we can afford right now. It’s an election year and we need to get elected. We’re not going to get elected by cutting spending. We can talk about spending cuts after the election. But not now.” But then the 2026 midterm elections hover into view. The same general order will go issuing - and for the same precise reason. An election is upcoming and we cannot spend less.
It’s Never Time to Cut Spending: That is, it is never the proper time to spend less. The next election forever looms… and it simply cannot be done. We have heard it said that the Vietnam War was not a 13-year war but a one-year war fought 13 times. And so it is with American elections. They are two-year campaigns waged over and over, world without end.
The parties cannot look beyond them. They are incapable of it. Is this not the central reason why the nation wallows under $33.6 trillion - no, $33.7 trillion - of debt? And why it now confronts annual deficits exceeding $1 trillion? We are convinced that it is. And any man who proposes to change it is read a severe lesson in futility.
Banging Your Head Against a Wall: David Stockman directed the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan. David learned that the smallest budget item is sealed deep within fortress walls. It is ringed by armed guards. And they are ready to repel any invader.
For example: David proposed to shutter the national endowments for the arts and humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They weren’t proper functions of the federal government, David argued. And there was more than ample private philanthropy to make any shortages good. David says the combined budgets of these programs amounted to a mere six hours of federal spending annually. Six hours of spending - out of a 365-day calendar!
But closing out those six hours proved impossible. David was poor Sisyphus pushing his rock eternally uphill… only to have it roll eternally downhill on him. David says not even Reagan would cancel these draws upon the Treasury. David ultimately submitted a modest 25% trimming to Capitol Hill.
Would Capitol Hill accept this 25% trim? It would not. It ceded David “maybe an 8% reduction for a couple of years until the various K Street lobbies and assorted forces of high-toned culture completely restored the funding.” That is, no elimination. Not even a 25% trim - but an 8% nick - and a temporary nick at that.
Here is a question: If you can’t even put a sustained 8% nick in the national endowments for the arts and humanities or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting… how are you ever going to get true cuts anywhere else? Here is the short answer: You cannot. Here is the long answer: You cannot.
Who’s to Blame? Who do we hold responsible? Everyone - and no one. The entire business is surrounded by an air of inevitability. It is simply the life cycle of empire. And the United States is an empire… despite all denials to the contrary. Its business model may differ from the Roman Empire or the Mongol Empire or the British Empire or whatever empire you wish. It is an empire nonetheless. And it gives every indication it has entered the terminal phase of empire - decline.
A George Washington in the year 2023 can no more restore American splendor than an Augustus Caesar could have restored Roman splendor in the year 400. The rot has advanced too far. It has penetrated the foundations. As well expect Joe Biden to bench press 900 lbs., run a two-minute mile, scale Mt. Everest and swim the Pacific. He cannot do it. Nor can the American empire.
No One Follows a Loser: It is too old, too indebted, too calcified, too fractured. It will not go upon the shelf tomorrow. It may peg along for several more years to one degree or other. Yet we believe it has entered terminal phase. The world has at last begun to reject its imperial currency. And its grand imperial project - proxy war against Russia - fares poorly. Even its boosters begin to cough sadly behind their hands.
A sad, sad spectacle it has become. Rumors begin to swirl that Washington wants Kyiv to negotiate peace. The empire will almost certainly lose its war. The world will see it. And no one follows a loser…"
"A Revision Of Belief..."
“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests,’ as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.“
- Nassim Taleb
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
- Mark Twain
Dan, I Allegedly, "The US Is Bankrupt"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 11/16/23
"The US Is Bankrupt"
"First of all, I got invited with my daughter to the Aston Martin pavilion at the Las Vegas, Formula 1 Race. What an experience. I want to thank Kate from Aston Martin for her hospitality. The United States is bankrupt. Beef is through the roof and we are going down for the count."
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Bill Bonner, "Chimerica Breakdown"
"Chimerica Breakdown"
Political rifts, tech battles, trade tariffs and currency wars...
by Bill Bonner
Paris, France - "Let’s turn to the money itself. There’s more to the story there, too. The ‘West’ may be failing politically…maybe even technologically…but when it comes to making money, nobody does it better, right? The stock market is booming. Unemployment is low. (Au contraire Monsieur Bonner: Reality-based ShadowStats said "May 2023 ShadowStats Alternate Unemployment increased to 24.7% from 24.6% on top of U.6 increasing to 6.7% from 6.6%" That rate has certainly gone higher since then. - CP) As for ‘inflate or die’…our hypothesis, that a system that thrives on more and more credit must continue ‘inflating’ or it will collapse…maybe we are wrong? Maybe inflation will come down with no need to pop the bubble?
First, the latest news, MarketsInsider: "Bonds go bonkers as the US government now pays more than Vietnam or Morocco to borrow." "The US is the world's biggest economy, with the biggest businesses, and is a magnet for global investors. Such unrivaled economic muscle would mean the American government can borrow money much more cheaply than other sovereign entities - especially, emerging-market nations with weaker credit ratings.
Today, the world’s strongest borrower – the US government – pays more for its loans than some of the world’s weakest borrowers. The US borrows money at 4.5% (the 10-year T-bond)…while Vietnam pays only 2.8%. This is just one of many contradictions and puzzles that bedevil the whole ‘western’ world. Nothing is quite what it pretends to be...or used to be."
Chimerica: But the ‘more to the story’ is that the US government has an almost unbroken chain of deficits going back to the Carter administration. The national debt now totals $33.5 trillion…and it’s still growing fast. America’s trade deficits, too, began in the 1970s…and haven’t let up since. It now owes the rest of the world $18 trillion in accumulated deficits (currently running at about $1 trillion/year.).
More to the story there, too. China invested way too much money (much of it borrowed) in order to develop output capacity for people who really couldn’t afford it. And as they put more and more peasants to work, fewer were left to be absorbed into their factories. It became harder and harder to keep wages (and prices) low. And then, too, when the US revealed that it was not above ‘sanctioning’ foreign nations and seizing their assets, the ‘world’s most successful joint venture,’ began to fall apart.
The New York Times is on the case: "Americans treated China like the mother of all outlet stores, purchasing staggering quantities of low-priced factory goods. Major brands exploited China as the ultimate means of cutting costs, manufacturing their products in a land where wages are low and unions are banned. As Chinese industry filled American homes with electronics and furniture, factory jobs lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese from poverty. China’s leaders used the proceeds of the export juggernaut to buy trillions of dollars of U.S. government bonds, keeping America’s borrowing costs low and allowing its spending bonanza to continue." Chimerica has yielded to a trade war, with both sides extending steep tariffs and curbs on critical exports - from advanced technology to minerals used to make electric vehicles.
Deficits, Debts…and Disaster: It was nice while it lasted. Now, the foreigners are no longer holding down prices for US consumers. So, the Fed had to stop buying bonds, and raise interest rates, in order to bring inflation down to its 2% target. The Chinese aren’t buying bonds either. Axios: :In China, the economy - and the currency - are weakening. It now may even be selling some of its Treasuries as it tries to support its slumping currency. Further, the worsening relationship between the U.S. and China - as well as America's sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine - might be giving Beijing a reason to reduce its exposure to the U.S. financial system."
The US still borrows huge amounts of money. The average interest rate on consumer credit card purchases is now over 21%. Bloomberg reports that some auto buyers are paying 29% on their car loans. Mortgage rates have come down, but are still twice what they were three years ago. Meanwhile, the largest borrower in the world – the US federal government – runs a deficit of $7 billion every day, Monday through Friday. And it has some $7.6 trillion in old loans that it must roll over in the next 12 months. Its two major lenders – China and the Fed – have both stopped buying. Shouldn’t the feds cut back…and stop borrowing so much money?
Improv Policy: But instead of even addressing the subject, Congress is doing a kind of ‘improv’ fiscal policy…making it up as it goes along. No budget. No balance. No long term plan. And no hope of getting excess spending under control. Business Insider has the latest: "Congress just found the dumbest way to avoid a shutdown." "Under a plan backed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, the federal government would be funded through the new year. After that, different agencies would face different deadlines for potential partial government shutdowns. For example, funding for the Pentagon and veterans would run out on January 19. Funds for the State, Justice, and Health and Human Services department would be extended until February 2."
"That's the craziest, stupidest thing I've ever heard of," [says] Democratic Sen. Patty Murray. “You'd have to go through the threat of shutdowns of part of [the] government over and over again," [senator Susan] Collins said. Under the circumstances, the wonder is not that US borrowing costs are so high…but that they are not higher. But it’s probably just a matter of time…before the real cost of borrowing goes up more. Stay tuned…"
Canadian Prepper, "Something Isn't Right Here..."
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, AM 11/16/23
"Something Isn't Right Here..."
"Something is going on in the world, and people want answers."
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MUST VIEW! "Inhuman! Scott Ritter Spits In The Face Of Israeli Soldiers Placing A Flag On Al-Sharif Hospital"
Full screen recommended.
Gacha Gaming 11/16/23
"Inhuman! Scott Ritter Spits In The Face Of
Israeli Soldiers Placing A Flag On Al-Sharif Hospital"
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o
Full screen recommended.
Notify, AM 11/16/23
"Pakistan Warns Israel With New Secret Nuke!?
Pakistan's Military Ready for Full-Scale War"
"Uncover the latest developments in 'New Tensions Arise: Pakistan's Secret Nuke Warning to Israel.' This video delves into the escalating tensions between Pakistan and Israel, with Pakistan reportedly readying its military for full-scale war and hinting at a secret nuclear capability."
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Adventures With Danno, "Stock Up Now At Kroger!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 11/16/23
"Stock Up Now At Kroger!
Great Coffee Sales! Holiday Deals and Prices!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and urging everyone to stock up on these items. They are having a massive holiday sale on groceries. We take you with us showing every great deal they have to offer. Stock up now as we may never see these kinds of sales again!"
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Gregory Mannarino, "The FED Is Literally Buying It All"
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the Big Club."
- George Carlin
o
Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/16/23
"The FED Is Literally Buying It All,
And They Are Not Done"
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Wednesday, November 15, 2023
Jeremiah Babe, "Alert: Great Depression 2.0 Coming Fast"
Jeremiah Babe, 11/15/23
"Alert: Great Depression 2.0 Coming Fast;
Christmas Credit Card Debt Crisis"
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Scott Ritter, "Israel Is The Most Immoral Military"
Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 11/15/23
"Israel Is The Most Immoral Military,
They Used Term 'Human Shield' To Bomb Hospitals"
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o
Full screen recommended.
Democracy Now! 11/15/23
"Worse Than Hell: Dr. Mads Gilbert Decries
Israeli Military Raid on Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza"
"The Israel military raid on Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering, is an "unprecedented attack on civilian society" in the "darkest time in modern history," that is being justified in the West by "a deep-rooted and frightening racism," says Dr. Mads Gilbert, who worked at Al-Shifa. "You don't do these things to people you consider equal." Dr. Gilbert is a Norwegian physician who just spent weeks in Cairo trying to enter Gaza to help his colleagues and has worked extensively in Palestine since 1981. "The civilian population of Gaza [have] done nothing wrong other than being born Palestinians in Gaza," he says. "Israeli impunity has reached a new level, and we are all sinking into that abyss of disregard for human life.”
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"15 Retailers Amazon Is Destroying Right Now"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 11/15/23
"15 Retailers Amazon Is Destroying Right Now"
"Industry after industry, Amazon has been taking down traditional retailers without any mercy. The e-commece giant is becoming the biggest market player the world has ever seen. Its impressive growth has allowed the company to expand its business to multiple sectors and offer the widest variety of products in the entire market. From consumer electronics to clothing, groceries, medications, toys, and much more, Amazon offers its customers the convenience of purchasing whatever they want and need with just a few clicks. The online retailer is expanding its business so fast that many brands that used to rule in their product categories are now being dwarfed by Amazon's empire.
For example, Best Buy once was the largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S. But that changed in 2017 when Amazon finally took the first spot. Today, the e-commerce behemoth is not only the industry leader, but it's also six times bigger than Best Buy. Data provided by Statista shows that last year, Amazon's consumer electronic sales rose to an impressive $44 billion, compared to Best Buy's $7 billion annual revenue. The tech-savvy rival has successfully leveraged the convenience of online shopping and captured a significant portion of the market share that was once dominated by the brick-and-mortar chain. Considering its free delivery services and higher discounts, today it is impossible to surpass Amazon in the sector. The competition isn't leveled at all. The online company isn't just denting Best Buy's business, but beating Apple, Dell, and HP at their own game. Other retailers like Walmart, Target, and Costco are also eating dirt. No wonder why Best Buy stores continue to disappear from the U.S. retail landscape. Over the past five years, almost 300 stores were shuttered as the chain faces slower sales and rising real estate, labor, and supply costs.
On top of that, It's been over a decade since Barnes & Noble is losing customers to Amazon. The bookstore chain is one of the few that has managed to stay in business after the online retailer entered the market. From 2016 to 2021, Barnes & Noble's earnings slumped an astonishing 63%. After Amazon launched Kindle, the chain decided to release its own e-reader, Nook. Despite having a better file system than Kindle, Nook sales have been a total disappointment, and the company's e-book division faced more than $200 million in losses. On the other hand, Amazon's physical bookstores were also a huge fail, and nearly all of them have been shuttered since 2019. Still, Amazon offers more than 33 million titles, and its bookstore segment generates an annual revenue of $469.8 billion, while Barnes & Noble's revenue is at $3.6 billion.
Amazon has changed the retail industry forever. Some say for the worse, others say for the better. But one thing is certain - it made the market more competitive than it already was and forced retailers to come up with new ways to stay relevant and adapt faster to market trends. The impact is noticeable, and is going to continue to shape the future of retail for many years to come. Today, we compiled a few companies that are being absolutely smashed by Amazon in 2023."
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Musical Interlude: Justin Hayward, "The Way of the World"
Full screen recommended.
Justin Hayward, "The Way of the World"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Can the night sky appear both serene and surreal? Perhaps classifiable as serene in the below panoramic image taken last Friday are the faint lights of small towns glowing across a dark foreground landscape of Doi Inthanon National Park in Thailand, as well as the numerous stars glowing across a dark background starscape. Also visible are the planet Venus and a band of zodiacal light on the image left.
Click image for larger size.
Unusual events are also captured, however. First, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, while usually a common site, appears here to hover surreally above the ground. Next, a fortuitous streak of a meteor was captured on the image right. Perhaps the most unusual component is the bright spot just to the left of the meteor. That spot is the plume of a rising Ariane 5 rocket, launched a few minutes before from Kourou, French Guiana. How lucky was the astrophotographer to capture the rocket launch in his image? Not lucky at all- the image was timed to capture the rocket. What was lucky was how photogenic - and perhaps surreal - the rest of the sky turned out to be.”
The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "A Walk"
"A Walk"
"My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance -
and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces."
- Rainer Maria Rilke
"Conditions Are 'Drier Than The Dust Bowl Years In The Heartland Of America"
"Conditions Are 'Drier Than The Dust Bowl
Years In The Heartland Of America"
by Michael Snyder
"The seemingly endless drought in the heartland of America is not going to be good for food production. For years, I have been relentlessly warning my readers that Dust Bowl conditions would return to the middle of the country. And now, Dust Bowl conditions have returned to the middle of the country. In fact, as you will see below, it is being reported that conditions are “drier than the Dust Bowl years” in some parts of Iowa. If the heartland of America doesn’t start getting more precipitation, we are going to be facing some enormous problems in the years ahead.
According to drought. gov, half of the Midwest is experiencing drought right now, and things are particularly dire in the state of Iowa…"94% of Iowa is currently in drought, with 24% in extreme drought (D3). Despite decent improvement over the last month, drought is still impacting 68% of Wisconsin and 58% of Minnesota."
Needless to say, the heartland of America produces much of our food. So it should deeply concern all of us that communities all over the Midwest are starting to run out of water…"The southeast Kansas city of Caney will run out of water by March 1 without rain, officials said. Its school district has moved to a four-day week to conserve water. Four wells in Belle Plaine, Iowa, are producing 40% as much water as usual. Residents of Osceola, near Des Moines, can be fined $65 or more if they defy water restrictions.
Residents in many towns aren’t allowed to wash their cars. Port-a-potties have replaced some public bathrooms. “We’re hoping it just rains,” said James Rainbolt, manager of a wholesale water plant that supplies parts of four counties in southern Kansas. “We’re at the mercy of the weather.”
Ultimately, we are all at the mercy of the weather. Despite all of our advanced technology, we remain highly vulnerable to shifting weather patterns. And at this moment we are being told that some parts of Iowa are literally “drier than the Dust Bowl years”…"Two counties in Iowa have had the driest three-year period on record, going back at least to the 1890s, he said. “Drier than the Dust Bowl years,” he said. Dozens of other communities are “carefully watching well levels and streams,” Hall said, “trying to make sure they don’t end up in the same situation as Belle Plaine or Osceola,” which are experiencing water shortages."
As a result of the extremely dry conditions, major dust storms are becoming increasingly common in the Midwest. Earlier this year, a colossal dust storm in Illinois actually caused a vehicle pileup that involved dozens of motorists…"Gusting winds in the Midwestern United States have kicked up a fatal dust storm, reducing visibility to zero and triggering a major vehicle pileup that killed at least six people on an Illinois highway. More than 30 additional motorists, from ages 2 to 80, were hurt in the crash as a result of Monday’s storm, according to Illinois state police. Their injuries ranged from minor to life-threatening."
The lack of precipitation is also causing enormous headaches all along the Mississippi River, and authorities are warning that this is not likely to change any time soon…"Lack of rain brought drought to much of the Mississippi River basin early this summer, and it’s likely going to linger into winter, Army Corps of Engineers leadership said during a press conference on Nov. 8 in Memphis, while a dredge was working nonstop to keep the river channel open a few miles south. It’s the second year in a row that extreme drought has caused a shrinking channel, forcing the Corps to dredge later in the season than normal. Last year, low river levels lingered into the winter, and dredging continued until January."
It’s shaping up to be the same this year. Welcome to the “new normal” along the Mississippi River. And considering the fact that so much of our food is transported on vessels that use the Mississippi River, this is a big problem for all of us.
Of course drought is just one of the factors that has been depressing food production in this nation. Overall, natural disasters “caused $21.5 billion in agricultural losses” in the United States last year…"Research from the American Farm Bureau Federation suggests that nationwide, natural disasters caused $21.5 billion in agricultural losses last year. Only about half of those were protected by insurance, the majority of which is sold through federally-backed programs. Their payouts to farmers have increased over 500 percent in the last two decades."
That number is almost certainly going to be even larger this year. And this is one of the reasons why food prices are going to continue to go up no matter what our leaders choose to do. Food production is being hammered from one direction after another, and this is happening at a time when global supplies of food are becoming tighter and tighter. So I hope that you decided to stock up on food while prices were still relatively low. Because they are a lot higher now, and it won’t be too long before they reach exceedingly painful levels."
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