Vineland, New Jersey, USA. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
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Friday, January 23, 2026
Joel Bowman, "WEF... RIP"
"WEF... RIP"
by Joel Bowman
“We have a better future ahead, but that better future exists only if we
return to the roots of the West, which means returning to the ideas of liberty.”
~ Javier Milei, World Economic Forum, Davos, 2026
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Yes, dear reader, it’s that time of year again... when the tsk-tsking world-improver class hops aboard its fleet of carbon-belching private jets and convenes in an exclusive Alpine hideaway in Davos, Switzerland, to direct world affairs from on high. There, in the rarefied air of smugness and hubris, the planet’s moral exemplars gather to look down their long noses at the flailing peasants of the flatlands, mired as we are in the filth and disgrace of our own wretched ignorance.
High on the mountain top, protected by a platoon of jackbooted Praetorian guards, do they plan and plot our future, deciding everything from what we will own (nothing) to how we’ll feel about it (grateful), from where we will live (in special “zones”) to how we will travel (barely at all and only with their permission), to how we will transact with our fellow chattel (via their Central Bank Digital Currencies) and of course, what temperature the planet should be half a century from now... and the sacrifices we peasants need to make in the meantime.
Globalist Ghouls: Such had been the déroulement of past proceedings, at least, when pompous grifters like US Climate Tsar, John Kerry, publicly congratulated themselves for “saving the world” (no small task!) and unflushable globalists like Tony Blair lectured the hoi polloi about the need for “national digital infrastructure,” in order to monitor everything from private financial transactions to vaccine compliance.
Fast-forward to this year’s event... and the tone has shifted somewhat. See if you can detect the subtle change...From the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz: “Germany and Europe have wasted incredible potential. We have become the world champion of over-regulation and zero growth.” And here’s Howard Lutnick, US Secretary of Commerce: “Globalism has failed the west. It has failed America.” And US President Donald Trump: “The United States avoided the catastrophic energy collapse which failed every European Nation that pursued the Green New Scam…perhaps the greatest hoax in History.”
Caveat Lector: And then there’s Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, who two years ago told the blood-sucking parasites gathered at the globalist gabfest, “The State is not the solution to our problems... the State is the problem.” Here’s a choice snippet from this year’s address. [Caveat lector: Trigger warning for incurable catastrophists and perennial doom mongers... the following message contains doses of optimism.]
"For some time now, and for some strange reason, the West began to turn its back on the ideas of liberty. That is why, in this same place in 2024, I stated that the West was in danger, as a result of having embraced increasing doses of socialism in its most hypocritical form, which is wokeism.
In turn, in 2025, I explained the mental parasites sown by the left in humanity. However, 2026 is the year in which I bring you good news. The world has begun to awaken. The best proof of this is what is happening in the Americas with the rebirth of the ideas of liberty. Therefore, the Americas will be the beacon of light that will once again illuminate the entire West, thereby repaying the civilizational debt with expressions of gratitude towards the foundations in Greek philosophy, Roman law and Judeo-Christian values.
We have a better future ahead, but that better future exists only if we return to the roots of the West, which means returning to the ideas of liberty. May God bless the West. May the forces of heaven be with us, and long live freedom, damn it!"
Constant Change: And yet, such an about face hardly comes as a surprise. Nothing lasts forever on this earth... no nation is so mighty, no currency so pure, no idea so stupid, that it can’t come undone. Such is the ancient concept of enantiodromia, which holds that all things, at all times, are in the process of becoming their opposite. It was Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher, who first noticed this universal phenomenon, observing that, when it comes to the natural world around us, “change is the only constant.”
A phoenix rises from the ashes... as a youthful body decays. Those who are first shall be last... as those who are last, shall be first. Powerful empires yield to decadence... as barbarians gather at the gates. (The clever ol’ Ephesian also reminded us, and for the same reason, that “a man cannot step in the same river twice.” Not only has the river changed, but so too has the man.)
And so it is not without a certain schadenfreude – it’s true, the Germans really do have a word for everything! – that we observe the WEF’s withering relevance on the world stage. Even with the platoon of Pavlovian presstitutes shuttled in to bullhorn “The Message,” the atmosphere must have been decidedly frigid on the mountainside. Like the funeral congregation of a disgraced congressman, mourners gathered around the open casket, unsure whether to weep... or to spit. “Lo, you coven of cackling elites, chanting ‘round your bubbling cauldron, stirring in your ESG, your DIE and your MMT... your time here on earth was oh so brief, we hardly knew ye!”
That Darth Schwab should soon take his place among the ghoulish cast of history’s villains, that his legions of world improvers and parasitic busybodies and psychopathic executives should collapse under the weight of their own hubris, that the world should one day be free of their rotting ilk, left alone to pursue life, liberty and happiness on their own terms, is a comforting thought in dark times. Ashes to ashes... dust to dust... W.E.F... R.I.P."
"Why Is Trump Administration Supporting Biden’s Orwellian Mandatory Kill Switches On All New Automobiles?"
"Why Is Trump Administration Supporting Biden’s
Orwellian Mandatory Kill Switches On All New Automobiles?"
by Leo Hohmann
"Yesterday, in an underreported story, 57 Republican members of Congress joined Democrats in voting down an amendment that would have repealed Joe Biden’s mandatory automobile kill switch. “Kill switch” you ask? What is that all about? In a back-page article Fox News casually reports: “Fifty-seven Republicans voted with the vast majority of Democrats on Thursday to keep a Biden-era mandate enabling government remote control of vehicles, drawing backlash from conservatives like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.” Government remote control of our vehicles? In America? This should be the biggest screaming headline of the day, and yet most Americans aren’t even aware of it.
Fox further reports: “The group voted to defeat an amendment proposed by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., that would have rolled back government requirements for the development of a ‘kill switch’ to disable the cars of impaired drivers.” Massie’s amendment failed by a vote of 164-268. Ah, but it’s only for drunk drivers, the propagandists tell us. It’s for our safety! “The idea that the federal government would require auto manufacturers to equip cars with a ‘kill switch’ that can be controlled by the government is something you’d expect in Orwell’s "1984,” DeSantis said, referring to the fictional novel by George Orwell warning more than 75 years ago of a coming global totalitarianism that would include the Western “free” world.
Where did this Orwellian legislation originate from, you ask? You may recall that one of former President Joe Biden’s landmark pieces of legislation was his nearly $1 trillion infrastructure bill, passed by Congress in 2021. It was hundreds of pages long, and buried in that bill was a measure that requires automobile manufacturers to include a remote kill switch in all new vehicles made or imported into the United States starting in 2026. I’ve been waiting to see what the Trump administration was going to do with this provision calling for a mandatory kill switch. Yesterday, the answer was received, loud and clear. They’re totally for it.
The amendment to kill the “kill switch” was offered by Rep. Massie, a Kentucky Republican who Trump hates and is trying to defeat in this year’s primary election. Massie stated in a post to X: “Unfortunately, the amendment I offered to defund the federally mandated automobile kill switch did not pass. 57 Republicans joined 211 Democrats to defeat it.” Massie is one of a small handful of Republicans in Congress who actually cares about the people and preserving what’s left of our freedom. The others call themselves “conservatives,” but what, I have to ask, are they actually preserving?
Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was run out of office by Trump in the first week of this year, posted a blistering comment on X directed at Trump, writing: “And pretty much all 57 of those Republicans are endorsed by President Trump. ‘But Thomas Massie is baaaddddddd!!!!!’”
Here is the list of the 57 Republicans who support the government, insurance companies and God knows who else having a back door into your vehicle with the ability to shut it down without your permission or acknowledgement. All they have to do is claim that you’re “impaired” while offering no evidence in a court of law, just an AI algorithm that is “monitoring” your driving habits.
Click image for larger size.
Come to think of it, when have you ever heard Trump talk passionately about the importance of our Constitution, separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, or any checks and balances on federal power? When asked last week by a reporter, he said the only check on his power is what’s in his own mind.
If the federal government can claim for itself the authority to render your vehicle inoperable, then I would submit there is almost nothing it can’t claim as a power over we the people. Automobiles represent our freedom of movement, and the freedom of movement, along with the Bill of Rights, is what makes America different than most of the countries of the world. But that America is fading away, in warp speed. We are under assault from all angles by an unchecked, out of control federal government. And it doesn’t matter if we have a Republican or Democrat in the White House. The march toward a totalitarian society just keeps moving forward. Just like Biden’s Ukraine war has now become Trump’s war, Biden’s remote kill switch just became Trump’s remote kill switch. They’re all the same.
Below is a model resolution from Liberty in Action Texas calling for the repeal of this surveillance-state legislation now having the force of law, thanks to Trump and his GOP cronies in Congress."
"Whereas, the Biden Administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) directs the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) to issue a rule that requires new passenger vehicles to have ‘advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology’ by 2024; and
Whereas, this requirement amounts to a vehicle kill switch mandate as early as 2026 and Section 24220 of the IIJA requires all newly manufactured vehicles to be equipped with technology to passively monitor driver performance and to prevent vehicle operation including using eye movements, real-time breath detection, hands on steering wheel and lane position; and
Whereas, this technology’s stated aim is to detect ‘impaired’ drivers (which is not defined in statute), enabling the federal government to track every American’s vehicle (in order to know if a person is suspected of being impaired) whether or not the driver is actually drunk or impaired, this technology will allow surveillance of American citizens without a warrant, destroying our right to privacy, instituting unconstitutional tracking, and other civil rights violations; and
Whereas, a kill switch can pose frightening safety concerns cutting off power to a moving vehicle, posing grave risks to both the driver and other cars in order to get a vehicle safely parked on the side of a road, and could cause drivers to be stranded, alone, and vulnerable on the side of the road with a totally disabled vehicle among a host of other dangers,
Whereas, 31 states allow for court-mandated ignition interlock devices (IID) to prevent drivers from starting their car without first passing a self-administered breathalyzer test, there is no need for another federal mandate."
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Besides breathalyzer testing a remote control device could control speed, steering and brake control. Might accidentally drive into a tree at 120 mph or off a cliff, ya know? "Accidents" do happen, right? "Kill" switch indeed...
"Who Killed Michael Hastings?"
by Carl Gibson
Excerpt: "Early in the morning on June 18, a brand new Mercedes C250 coupe was driving through the Melrose intersection on Highland Avenue in Hollywood when suddenly, out of nowhere, it sped up. According to an eye-witness, the car accelerated rapidly, bounced several times then fishtailed out of control before it slammed into a palm tree and burst into flames, ejecting its engine some 200 feet away.
A witness, Jose Rubalcalva, whose house stood adjacent to the crash, told Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks news network that no one could approach the burning car because it kept exploding. In a simulated full-frontal crash of a 2013 C250 coupe, the car doesn’t explode on impact nor does it launch its engine 200 feet. In fact, said Nael Issa, a Mercedes Benz dealer in Long Beach, “The car has a crumble zone, so when it crashes it goes in like an accordion. And in some cases the engine drops down, so it doesn’t go into you.”
The driver in the fatal crash was Michael Hastings, a 33-year-old crack investigative reporter for Rolling Stone magazine, whose June 2010 article, “The Runaway General,” exposed the behind-the-scenes failure of top U.S. General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan - and, even more damagingly, revealed McChrystal’s mocking attitude toward the Obama administration, which ultimately led to the general’s resignation.
Four months after Hastings’s so-called accident, and despite scant coverage in the mainstream media, new facts and evidence continue to emerge raising serious unanswered questions about whether the journalist was assassinated, the breadth of unconventional cyber-techniques that may have been used, and who might have been responsible."
Full article here:
"The Absurd Farce of Machine Guns, Maduro, and the Endless War on Drugs"
"The Absurd Farce of Machine Guns,
Maduro, and the Endless War on Drugs"
by David Stockman
"The Venezuela saga gets more cockamamie by the day. It turns out that the predicates for kidnapping the president of a country that poses no threat whatsoever to America’s Homeland security are about as threadbare (and even comical) as they come. For instance, did the DOJ writers of the superseding indictment of Maduro and his misses not turn bright red with embarrassment when penning this gem: "Possession of machine guns and destructive devices" and "conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices" in furtherance of the narco-terrorism and cocaine importation conspiracies.
WTF! For better or worse, the man was the president of a sovereign nation-state, and the very essence of such institutions is that they have all the guns or at least most of the big, really lethal ones such as military-style machine guns. So this amounts to an "excuse me for existing" charge, but also something even more to the point.
The definitions in section 924(c) on which this machine gun charge was based derive from the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). The latter was passed during Prohibition’s aftermath to combat armed gangsters like Al Capone, John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson—all of whom famously used Thompson sub-machine guns ("Tommy guns") in the conduct of their day jobs.
Of course, Prohibition was a disaster for endless reasons, but among them was surely the fact that the bonneted ladies of the temperance societies ended up causing more people to be killed by the machine guns of the booze-running gangsters than were being felled by excessive fondness for Demon Rum. Likewise, the reincarnation of Prohibition in today’s War on Drugs generates far more maimed and dead collateral victims–especially in the case of cocaine—than the contraband drugs themselves.
That is to say, on its own the annual fatality rate among the nation’s 5 million cocaine users is a tiny 0.1% or identical to the 0.1% fatality rate for the nation’s 178 million (now legal) alcohol users. Yet since the utterly misbegotten War on Drugs has forced cocaine dealers into the Al Capone-style criminal black markets and subjected them to massive law enforcement attacks and interdiction losses, it has driven the price of cocaine from $400 per pound in the coca fields to $54,000 per pound for customers on the retail streets in the USA.
In turn, these massively bloated prices make pure cocaine 500X more expensive than fentanyl compounded in backyard chem labs on a per dose ("high") basis. So, not surprisingly, coke dealers adulterate their high-cost cocaine out of the brick with practically zero cost-baking soda, which imitates its color and texture. They then add tiny pinches of high-potency (and deathly) fentanyl to their retail dime-bags in order to maintain its potency.
Needless to say, this kind of dangerous adulteration driven by government-created black market economics does sharply reduce dealers’ cost of goods sold and enhances their net profits. But it also generates upwards of 20,000 deaths per year in the US owing to fentanyl-adulterated coke. That’s actually more than four times more deaths than caused by pure cocaine overdoses alone.
However, if cocaine production, transit and distribution were legal, the street price would likely plunge by more than 95%, thereby removing any incentive for (legal) dealers to adulterate their product with pure poison. Indeed, in a legal market there would be no economic incentive at all to adulterate in this manner; and the deterrent of massive wrongful death suits would ensure that CVS, Walgreens etc. sold only safe (pure) product.
Yet the Donald and his band of MAGA fools domiciled on the Potomac cheered when the Navy blew-up the cocaine carrying speedboats and then virtually wet their pants with excitement when he perp-walked into Federal court the now ex-president of a country that is just a 8% bit player in the black market cocaine trade that would not even exist absent modern day Drug Prohibition.
And we do mean, not exist. Back in the day when the FBI and DEA didn’t exist, either, peaceful commerce handled the nation’s cocaine needs. And it did so with nary a machine gun fired or a Federal drug bust that resulted in over-crowding in the nation’s far smaller, more modest jails. And the price wasn’t sky high either.As shown in the 1885 ad depicted below, mothers needing to treat with their kids’ toothaches could get a whole bottle of the stuff for 15 cents!
That was peaceful commerce and productive capitalism. It also reflected the fact that 140 years ago Washington was still allowing the good people of Albany New York to decide for themselves what medicines, remedies and stimulants to consume in their daily lives.
The same governing class that turned Prohibition into bloodshed and the drug war into mass death is now presiding over the largest financial bubble in human history, armed with the same reflexes and fewer remaining tools."
"How It Really Is"
"As we all watch Virginia descend into an evil maelstrom of Marxist pro-criminality, please allow me to explain what happened and what the remedy is. Think back to 2024. One of the major reasons the American people elected Donald Trump was so he would fulfill his campaign promise of reducing the size, scope and power of the evil Leviathan housed in the federal administrative state that controls our daily lives in a grotesquely unconstitutional manner. This necessarily meant greatly reducing the number of federal civilian employees.
As someone who has spent many years in military uniform supervising civilian federal employees, I can assure you that 95% of those civil service employees completely and utterly disregard the fact that their boss is the American electorate. So when the American electorate says “We think your job equals tyranny and we don’t want you employed in that job anymore,” instead of recognizing that the only people entitled to make this decision are the American voters, they resist, thinking that they are somehow more important than the Constitution and the electorate.
It just so happens that the great majority of these unrepentant federal workers reside in Northern Virginia. So when Trump did what the American people wanted him to do and he fired so many of these unneeded leeches, those unionized leeches decided to vote Democrat at all costs, as a matter of preserving their wholly unnecessary jobs and cushy livelihoods.
Another key fact is that the suburban areas of Northern Virginia like Fairfax and Loudon Counties control state-wide elections, and federal workers control those counties. So the inevitable happened and those unneeded, rent-seeking federal workers swung control of Virginia to Democrats.
And guess what? Those elected Democrats took opposition to reducing the size of the federal government as a mandate to rapidly enact an Orwellian set of laws that would make Karl Marx and Che Guevara blush: outrageous taxation; elimination of basic human rights like those embodied in the Second Amendment; pro-illegal alien policies; refusal to enforce federal immigration laws; draconian rules mandating that confused children can destroy their genitals without parental consent; laws supporting criminality; and a host of other insane laws and policies designed to turn Virginia into a modern version of Ingsoc.
Who is to blame for this evil? Federal workers. Their refusal to acknowledge the will of their boss (i.e., YOU, the American voter) has tossed an entire state into Marxist despair. The ability of federal civil “servants” to cling to their cushy, unneeded jobs is why Virginia has become an un-American hellscape overnight. They simply DO NOT CARE that their fellow Americans are condemned to live in crime and tyranny, because that preserves their cushy sinecures. They are not civil “servants.” They are civil MASTERS, and they don’t care what you think.
Place the blame where it belongs. Federal workers did this to you, Virginia. THEY are to blame. But there are two ways Trump can remedy this dire state of affairs:
1. Keep on cutting the bloated federal Leviathan.
2. Move federal agencies out of DC and spread them across the rest of the country, depriving this unionized cabal of unelected bureaucratic tyrants of the nefarious power of concentration.
I have a message for Virginia (less Fairfax and Loudon Counties): the rest of America is here to save you. Hold fast, don’t give up, and we WILL eventually save you from this tyranny."
- MAGA. MVGA.
"States Declare Emergencies As Massive Storm Intensifies"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 1/23/26"
"States Declare Emergencies As Massive Storm Intensifies"
Comments here:
"This Winter Storm Forecast Just Changed A Lot"
Full screen recommended.
Max Velocity - Severe Weather Center, 1/23/26"
"This Winter Storm Forecast Just Changed A Lot"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Shocking Prices At Aldi"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 1/23/26
"Shocking Prices At Aldi"
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "Up in Smoke"
"Up in Smoke"
by Jim Kunstler
“This is how tyranny looks in the modern world. It arrives dressed
as dialogue, consensus, and expertise. It is imposed by
people who sincerely believe they are doing nothing at all.”
- DataRepublican
"Davos - The World Economic Forum (WEF) - is toast. Trump, Bessant, and Luttnick exposed the wretched org of overcompensated squishes to too much light and heat and it flared into such a pathetic little smoldering cinder that its spoxpersons said the meeting might get moved out of Davos altogether next year to Dublin or Detroit. Closer to the people, you understand (except there are hardly any people left in Detroit, thanks to the fifty years of WEF influence on manufacturing policy and the people of Dublin are now Nigerians, Somalis, and Congolese, thanks to the WEF’s retarded migration doctrine.)
All of which means that its trademark, WEF Globalism, is dead, too. No more aspirations of One World Government (as if Earth was the Planet Krypton)... no more You will have nothing, be happy, and eat bugs. . . no more green energy gaslight. . . no more all women are women, including men pretending to be women... no more wide-open borders... no more of their preposterous elitist armchair totalitarianism. In fact, if anything, the WEF had terminal boundary problems, much like the Cluster-B personalities that infest the upper echelons of the NGO alternative universe that carried out the WEF’s dastardly programming for them. They didn’t know when to stop.
Before he got washed-up in a slop of sexual accusation and embezzlement, WEF-Fuhrer Klaus Schwab used to brag about plugging his Young Global Leaders into top government jobs all over the place (e.g., the disastrous Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland in Canada.) That’s over. Western Civ has suffered enough. One by one, the Big Dawgs of the EU are quietly backing-off of their insane migrant importation policies. Border control is nature’s way of fixing boundary problems of-the-mind.
No one personifies the problem more than Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, the archetypal Cluster-B “devouring mother” costumed as a harmless finishing school headmistress. She is the unelected (appointed by committee) President of the European Commission who has been telling the elected squish leaders of France, Germany and elsewhere what to do — and, remarkably, they did exactly what they were told! Invite the Third World for an overnight and see what happens. . . ditch your nuclear power plants. . . ruin your farmers. . . laugh and clap when the Nord Stream pipeline blows up and your citizens must freeze in the dark.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission
“Europe stood firm and united in full solidarity with Greenland & the Kingdom of Denmark,” Ursula tweeted the other day. That’s rich. (And fake.) What really happened at Davos this week is uproariously simple. Mr. Trump just notified the parties involved that an agreement dating from 1951 gives the USA “unrestricted access” to Greenland, for the excellent reason that the US military prevented the Nazis from seizing it during World War Two, with all that implies. Fait accompli. The USA will now do what it requires in Greenland - with all that implies about updated geo-realpolitik of 2026.
The dirty secret about political reality in Europe now is that the masterplan to bankrupt, ruin, and break up Russia has completely backfired. Europe is now ruined. Voila! Ironically, it has been the UK (a.k.a. Great Britain) that led the way in this quixotic fiasco - you might recall that they actually quit the EU in 2016. And yet, the UK has managed to engineer NATO’s idiotic program to keep the War in Ukraine going as long as possible. Recall, also, PM Boris Johnson’s 2022 mission to scuttle the Istanbul Communiqué involving Ukrainian neutrality that might have prevented the war from getting out-of-hand.
The payoff for Great Britain: Keir Starmer becomes the actual Big Brother depicted by George Orwell with all the trappings of despotism and economic decline that goes with that. Britain is left destitute, cultureless, and raped at will by its own houseguests. Meanwhile, France is dissolving in an acid bath of Islamic turbo-birthrates, and Germany under the feckless Olaf Scholz and now Friedrich Merz gets a one-way ticket to the Palookaville of neo-medievalism. Good show, boys!
And meanwhile, as I have informed you previously, Mr. Putin is methodically rolling up the unfortunate business in Ukraine as Mr. Zelenskyy’s long-running NATO-subsidized misadventure dwindles to its ignominious close. Yes, you are seeing boundaries reestablished. Mr. Putin is not one of your junior high school mean-girls or a deluded finishing school headmistress. He’s an able, masculine manager of his own sovereign polity and he is reestablishing Russia’s age-old sphere of influence in the ambiguous frontier region of Ukraine. The world will be better off when this is settled.
And Mr. Trump emerges from the Davos miasma with geopolitical plan to defend Western Civ and to re-prioritize business in the USA so that Americans can once again make a living and lead purposeful lives. The Cluster-B mean-girls hate this. They want the men of America to fail better, as they had been failing until Mr. Trump came back on the scene. Anyway, it was minus-20 degrees in Minneapolis this morning - not very good weather for blowing your whistle at US immigration agents —-so don’t expect a whole lot of excitement out of that place for at least another week. Do keep an eye on Virginia, where new Governor Abigail Spanberger, meanest of all mean-girls, is fixing to wreck the state. Prediction: Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will shortly be all over that deranged bitch like white on rice. Wait for it."
Bill Bonner, "Bubble Dollar Danger"
A 100 million Hungarian Pengo note from 1946. The final months of
Hungary’s hyperinflation from May to July were so chaotic that the Hungarian
National Bank no longer bothered putting serial numbers on new notes.
"Bubble Dollar Danger"
by Bill Bonner
Rancho Santana, Nicaragua - "All that sturm and drang...the roar of the greasepaint...the smell of the crowd - for nothing! No military takeover of Greenland. No extra tariffs on Europe. Greenland stays where it was, as it was...where, thanks to a 1951 treaty, the US can build bases as necessary. The US gets nothing new out of it. Bloomberg: "Rutte says Trump Greenland plan involved no sovereignty talk."
But that was the point, wasn’t it? Sturm and drang for its own sake - to show the US as a bellicose, unreliable partner and drive away allies. America is ‘fastened to a dying animal’...or maybe to a whole herd of them. A president who will be 82 years old when he leaves office (and may be a little off his rocker already)...a constitution that is 239 years old...and a bubble dollar that is 55 years old; that’s already twice as long as the typical ‘fiat’ money system. The ‘paper’ German mark, for example, only lasted two years. The Hungarian Pengo lasted only one year. And the Zimbabwe dollar held on for three years, with an inflation rate of 230 million percent.
Each time, savers - especially foreigners —-begin to worry about their money as a ‘store of value.’ They dump the currency, prices soar, and the money becomes useless. Dead. Mort. Tot. With its toes up. The trick for investors and savers is to avoid the rush. The doors welcoming you into the bubble country may be wide. But the door out the back squeezes tight as soon as you try to get out.
And it looks like the smart money is already headed for the exits. Reuters reports on the ‘Sell America’ trade: "Just hours before President Donald Trump was set to speak in Davos, Switzerland, one of Sweden’s top pension funds, Alecta, cut its investments in U.S. Treasuries. “Since the beginning of 2025, we have reduced our holdings in U.S. government bonds in several rounds, and together the reductions account for the majority of our holdings,” Alecta’s Chief Investment Officer Pablo Bernengo told Reuters."
For the international stock market, too, last year saw a reversal of the trend of the last 22 years. Year after year, US stocks outperformed. But not last year. US stocks rose 17%. But European stocks went up twice as much - at 36%. Emerging market stocks did almost as well, at 34%. And that trend continues. So far this year, America’s bubbly Mag 7 are down 4.6%. Emerging market stocks, meanwhile, are up 4.6%.
Back in America, the all-time champion for buying solid US companies is Warren Buffett. A single dollar invested in Berkshire in 1964 is now worth more than $60,000. “Never sell America,” he said. But over the last year, he’s had trouble finding US stocks he wanted to own. The ‘values’ just aren’t there, he explained. In effect, he ‘sold’ America’s premier capital industries...and his investment firm, Berkshire, was left with the biggest cash hoard ever seen - at $382 billion.
Another feature of the Sell America trade is that the most bubbly assets, like a glass of champagne left on the table overnight, are now going flat. Nvidia lost 17% of its value last year. MicroStrategy lost 71%. Fartcoin lost a lot of gas too - down 89%. The only things to lose more than Fartcoin were the Trump Coin and the Melania Coin, down 94% and 99% respectively.
Probably the most telling form of the Sell America trade, though, comes from China. It began ‘de-dollarizing’ back in 2013. Now, it has about half the dollar assets it used to have. Barron’s: "Others have followed suit. The share of U.S. Treasury debt held by non-U.S. investors has fallen from around 50% during the global financial crisis of 2008-09 to around 30% today, according to J.P. Morgan."
That’s a massive shift, particularly when you consider that overall U.S. Treasury issuance has increased by more than $20 trillion since China began its de-dollarization strategy. That is the trap that Mr. Saravelos sees coming. And we, way ahead of our time, wrote about it in our now-forgotten ‘Empire of Debt,’ book. The unique thing about the rich US empire, we wrote, was that it was financed by borrowing money from poorer countries. And now, the US needs to borrow even more - to pay for a huge increase in the ‘war’ budget, warrior dividends, tariff dividends, ICE...not to mention sending a whole team of jackasses over to Davos, where they seem to have made a big fuss over nothing.
But while the US needs to borrow more, the world seems to want to lend less. Serious people all over the world are working out their own de-dollarization’ strategies. More to come..."
Thursday, January 22, 2026
"People Are Burning Out While Nothing Feels Real Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 1/22/26
"People Are Burning Out
While Nothing Feels Real Anymore"
"Everyone's burnt out. Nothing feels real anymore. Something's broken. People aren't just tired, they're trapped, burned out, and starting to question if any of this is even worth it anymore. In this video, I'm sharing raw, unfiltered moments from real people going through what so many of us are feeling right now. From corporate burnout that keeps you stuck in a job you can't leave… to nurses who went from "healthcare heroes" to the bottom of the barrel… to the 55-year-old who's too old to start over but too young to retire, this is the reality millions are facing. When health insurance costs MORE than having no insurance. When you did everything right, got the degree, showed up every day and it still wasn't enough. When people are choosing between medication and their energy bill. This is the America no one's talking about. If you're struggling, you're not alone. I'd love to hear from you, what's helping you get through? Drop your thoughts in the comments below."
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Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"
Full screen recommended.
Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The southern Milky Way appears spectacular in this composite image taken from Mangaia, the most southerly of the Cook Islands. Few sources of light pollution exist here, home to only 500 people.
The two bright stars at the Milky Way’s center are Alpha (left) and Beta Centauri. They point to Crux the Southern Cross. Near the horizon, two of the satellite galaxies of our Milky Way, the Small (left) and Large Magellanic Clouds are easy to spot.”
"Live: Major Winter Storm Pre-Coverage, Forecast Model Breakdown"
Full screen recommended.
Ryan Hall, 1/22/26
"Live: Major Winter Storm Pre-Coverage,
Forecast Model Breakdown"
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Free WeatherWise App:
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Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports 1/22/26
"30 Million People Could Lose Power For Days,
Widespread Outages"
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Adventures With Danno, "Storm Panic: I Can't Believe This Is Happening"
Adventures With Danno, 1/22/26
"Storm Panic: I Can't Believe This Is Happening"
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"Americans Are Furious As Food Prices Keep Climbing"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 1/22/26
"Americans Are Furious
As Food Prices Keep Climbing"
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Full screen recommended.
Jay Reed, 1/22/26
"Grocery Store Shelves Are Empty
After People Panic About Winter Storm"
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“A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus on Our Search for Meaning and Why Happiness Is Our Moral Obligation”
“A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus on Our Search for
Meaning and Why Happiness Is Our Moral Obligation”
by Maria Popova
“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) wrote in his 119-page philosophical essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” in 1942. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect. Everything else… is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.”
One of the most famous opening lines of the twentieth century captures one of humanity’s most enduring philosophical challenges – the impulse at the heart of Seneca’s meditations on life and Montaigne’s timeless essays and Maya Angelou’s reflections, and a wealth of human inquiry in between. But Camus, the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature after Rudyard Kipling, addressed it with unparalleled courage of conviction and insight into the irreconcilable longings of the human spirit.
One of the most famous opening lines of the twentieth century captures one of humanity’s most enduring philosophical challenges – the impulse at the heart of Seneca’s meditations on life and Montaigne’s timeless essays and Maya Angelou’s reflections, and a wealth of human inquiry in between. But Camus, the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature after Rudyard Kipling, addressed it with unparalleled courage of conviction and insight into the irreconcilable longings of the human spirit.
In the beautifully titled and beautifully written “A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning” (public library), historian Robert Zaretsky considers Camus’s lifelong quest to shed light on the absurd condition, his “yearning for a meaning or a unity to our lives,” and its timeless yet increasingly timely legacy: If the question abides, it is because it is more than a matter of historical or biographical interest. Our pursuit of meaning, and the consequences should we come up empty-handed, are matters of eternal immediacy.
Camus pursues the perennial prey of philosophy – the questions of who we are, where and whether we can find meaning, and what we can truly know about ourselves and the world – less with the intention of capturing them than continuing the chase.”
Reflecting on the parallels between Camus and Montaigne, Zaretsky finds in this ongoing chase one crucial difference of dispositions: “Camus achieves with the Myth what the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty claimed for Montaigne’s Essays: it places “a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.”
For Camus, however, this astonishment results from our confrontation with a world that refuses to surrender meaning. It occurs when our need for meaning shatters against the indifference, immovable and absolute, of the world. As a result, absurdity is not an autonomous state; it does not exist in the world, but is instead exhaled from the abyss that divides us from a mute world.”
Camus himself captured this with extraordinary elegance when he wrote in “The Myth of Sisyphus”: “This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together.”
To discern these echoes amid the silence of the world, Zaretsky suggests, was at the heart of Camus’s tussle with the absurd: “We must not cease in our exploration, Camus affirms, if only to hear more sharply the silence of the world. In effect, silence sounds out when human beings enter the equation. If “silences must make themselves heard,” it is because those who can hear inevitably demand it. And if the silence persists, where are we to find meaning?”
This search for meaning was not only the lens through which Camus examined every dimension of life, from the existential to the immediate, but also what he saw as our greatest source of agency. In one particularly prescient diary entry from November of 1940, as WWII was gathering momentum, he writes: “Understand this: we can despair of the meaning of life in general, but not of the particular forms that it takes; we can despair of existence, for we have no power over it, but not of history, where the individual can do everything. It is individuals who are killing us today. Why should not individuals manage to give the world peace? We must simply begin without thinking of such grandiose aims.”
For Camus, the question of meaning was closely related to that of happiness - something he explored with great insight in his notebooks. Zaretsky writes: “Camus observed that absurdity might ambush us on a street corner or a sun-blasted beach. But so, too, do beauty and the happiness that attends it. All too often, we know we are happy only when we no longer are.”
Perhaps most importantly, Camus issued a clarion call of dissent in a culture that often conflates happiness with laziness and championed the idea that happiness is nothing less than a moral obligation. A few months before his death, Camus appeared on the TV show Gros Plan. Dressed in a trench coat, he flashed his mischievous boyish smile and proclaimed into the camera: “Today, happiness has become an eccentric activity. The proof is that we tend to hide from others when we practice it. As far as I’m concerned, I tend to think that one needs to be strong and happy in order to help those who are unfortunate.”
This wasn’t a case of Camus arriving at some mythic epiphany in his old age – the cultivation of happiness and the eradication of its obstacles was his most persistent lens on meaning. More than two decades earlier, he had contemplated “the demand for happiness and the patient quest for it” in his journal, capturing with elegant simplicity the essence of the meaningful life – an ability to live with presence despite the knowledge that we are impermanent: ”We must” be happy with our friends, in harmony with the world, and earn our happiness by following a path which nevertheless leads to death.”
But his most piercing point integrates the questions of happiness and meaning into the eternal quest to find ourselves and live our truth: ”It is not so easy to become what one is, to rediscover one’s deepest measure.”
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Freely download “The Myth of Sisyphus,” by Albert Camus, here:
“The Inevitability of Snollygosters”
“The Inevitability of Snollygosters”
by Jeff Thomas
“Snollygoster is an archaic term for, “A fellow who wants office, regardless of party, platform or principles, and who, whenever he wins, gets there by the sheer force monumental talknophical assumnancy.” All right, that’s a rather antiquated definition, but then, “snollygoster” is a very antiquated term. It hasn’t been in use since the mid-1800’s. Another definition is, “A shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician.”
So, of what interest is this bygone nomenclature to us today? Well, the definitions are exactly in keeping with our present-day politicians. When we look at our senators, parliamentarians, presidents and prime ministers, we see that, even with the passage of considerable time, the term snollygoster is applicable today.
And, we, the constituents, could be referred to as “grumbletonians,” a word common in England in the 1600’s for those who are angry or unhappy with their government. And we’re just as likely to be so exasperated with our political leaders that we resort to a “whipmegmorum” – a Scottish word from the 1700’s for a noisy quarrel about politics.
These ancient and forgotten terms may be entertaining, but they may additionally raise a question in modern minds. We may ask ourselves, “Do you mean that it isn’t just that our present leaders are virtual cartoons – and destructive ones at that? Do you mean that (gulp) it’s always been this way?
’Fraid so. But, how is this possible? How is it that, regardless of the times we’re in, and regardless of whether we have literally hundreds of millions of citizens to choose from (in the larger countries), we end up with literal cartoon characters as leaders? Is it that we’re so bad at making a selection that we always choose the worst person?
Well, actually, there, the answer would be, “No.” Voters don’t actively seek out the worst. The problem is that they’re presented with the worst. In the US, Americans cannot help but laugh at their president as being an arrogant and petulant buffoon. (For the record, those of us outside the US also regard him as a source of perverse entertainment).
So, the problem is not that the voters “get the leader they deserve.” The problem is that the game is rigged – that there are no good choices. In a small country, it’s easy to introduce a candidate whom the electorate actually believe in, then to push him forward to victory. But, the larger the country, the more impossible it is for anyone who deserves a leadership position, to actually achieve it. (The system promotes its own kind.) But, this notion presupposes that the majority of people within the political structure are already “contaminated,” that they, too are, for all practical purposes, undesirable. Can this actually be the case?
Again…‘fraid so…But how is this possible? Well, as long as we’re discussing definitions, there are two more that we might want to investigate. Let’s look at this one: “A long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of understanding of others’ feelings. People affected by it often spend a lot of time thinking about achieving power or success.”
Well, that certainly fits virtually all political leaders and political hopefuls. This definition is used to describe “narcissistic personality disorder.” A fuller description is: “Persistent grandiosity, excessive need for admiration, and a personal disdain for, and lack of empathy for other people; Arrogance, a sense of superiority; actively seeks to establish abusive power and control over other people; openly disregards the feelings and wishes of others, and expects to be treated as superior, regardless of their actual status or achievements; usually exhibits a fragile ego, an inability to tolerate criticism, and a tendency to belittle others in order to validate their own superiority.” Take a moment and ask yourself whether the above describes a leader near you.
And, here’s another interesting definition: “A pervasive and persistent disregard for morals, social norms, and the rights and feelings of others. Individuals with this personality disorder will typically have no compunction in exploiting others in harmful ways for their own gain or pleasure and frequently manipulate and deceive other people, achieving this through wit and a facade of superficial charm.”
This is a definition for sociopathy, or “antisocial personality disorder.” To expand, sociopaths demonstrate a “Disregard for right and wrong, persistent lying or deceit to exploit others, callous, cynical and disrespectful of others, using charm or wit to manipulate others for personal gain or personal pleasure, arrogance, a sense of superiority and being extremely opinionated… repeatedly violating the rights of others through intimidation and dishonesty, impulsiveness or failure to plan ahead, hostility, significant irritability, agitation…lack of empathy for others and lack of remorse about harming others, unnecessary risk-taking or dangerous behavior with no regard for the safety of self or others… failure to consider the negative consequences of behavior or learn from them.”
Initially, we may be tempted to say to ourselves, “Surely, it’s not as bad as all that.” But, if we really want to get an accurate picture, a useful exercise might be to picture a specific leader whose behavior we’ve witnessed repeatedly and then read the above descriptions once again, whilst picturing his face. The surprising truth is that many political leaders and political hopefuls display these characteristics exactly. Many are clearly narcissists, sociopaths, or both.
But, why should this be? Well, the easy answer is “obsessive behavior.” Those who have the above disorders will literally do anything to achieve superiority over others and will have no remorse or regret whatever. Therefore, it’s perfectly predictable that, over time, any government will become populated by pathological individuals.
This is not a new occurrence. ‘Twas ever thus. The snollygosters have been a chronic dominant presence in governments for millennia. And they’ll continue to be dominant. However, there is a positive takeaway here. If we recognize that this syndrome is in fact the norm, in any age, in any country, we can stop hoping for a hero to arise and save us from the parasitical dominance of governments. We can accept that, if we’re to thrive, this may only be accomplished through our own independence of mind and action, not through the empty promises of pathological leaders.”
- https://www.theburningplatform.com/
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“The barbarian hopes, and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles. “
- Hilaire Belloco
"Lift Up Your Eyes"
"Lift Up Your Eyes"
by Paul Rosenberg
"When was the last time you tasted the sublime? When did you last feel wonder? Can you remember feeling awed by something? These are things we need, if we are to thrive. They are fuel for the higher human abilities. If we lack them, as is currently endemic throughout the West, our higher abilities will lag. For lack of better terms we can call these feelings “upward movements of the heart,” and we are diminished when there is a lack of them. Without them we fail to develop our higher capacities and insights. We slide more and more toward becoming, in one critic’s words, “mere trousered apes.”
I am certainly not the first person to notice this. Here, for example, is something Albert Einstein wrote on the subject: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
Here’s a comment from Mozart: "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence, nor imagination, nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius." And here’s a poem from Richard Feynman:
"Out of the cradle
onto the dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.
Stands at the sea
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the universe."
We need these things.
Currents to the Contrary: Sadly, the modern West has become a mad scramble to distract as many sets of eyes as possible, and to keep them – to own them – for as long as possible. And so long as professional distractors own your imagination, you won't experience much in the way of awe.
Think of Google and Facebook; these outfits bring in billions of dollars per month, based almost entirely on how much human attention they can capture. Likewise the many news networks; they get paid according to how many people watch their images for how many minutes. These people are serious about owning your brain cycles; they employ armies of employees to count, gather, plan, and improve their ownership of your eyes. Please understand the content they deliver serves only to grasp your attention.
Certainly websites like Freeman’s Perspective also want your attention but not for its own sake. I want your attention because I think we have something worthwhile to communicate, not to own your brain. Facebook and Google want to own you… the inner you.
Likewise the lords of academia; they want your mind to bear their impress... permanently. Consider, for example, the many academics who espouse cold, rationalist, materialistic philosophies: that we are no more than preprogrammed machines, that words can never really communicate anything, that humanity is ignorant and dangerous. Have you noticed that they reek of “smarter than thou”? Then if you have the opportunity, examine their lives for beautiful acts, for loving passions, for kindness and deep benevolence. If your experience is anything like mine, you’ll notice a striking lack of those things.
The Contrasts: Among the greatest of all contrasts to the upward movements of the heart are those pertaining to dominance, status, and rulership. They are natural antagonists.
Think of drinking in the wonders of the universe, the beauty of nature, the glorious love between a good parent and their child… and then contrast those things with the blight of the dominator “protecting” you at the point of a sword… of the politician cultivating your fears like a gardener cultivates a garden… of the lover of status who feels pleasure when seeing you beneath her.
Dominance, status, and rulership are the drives of the people who abuse us. And they are primary causes for our elevated experiences being diminished.
Moving Past the Blockage: We need to get away from these people and beyond these foul concepts. And once we do, life will expand. Here to make that point is a final quote, this one from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: "The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom…"
The things that contribute to our higher nature have been driven away from the Western world, and often systematically. Humans who are denuded of the higher things are far less trouble to rule, and they are far easier to manipulate… to own without their noticing. But don’t let yourself by driven away from the higher and better things:
Lay under the stars and wonder.
Look into the face of a child and experience his or her awe of the world.
Sit in the wilderness and imagine benevolence and beauty and goodness unchained.
Lie in bed and imagine yourself with a conscious sense of righteousness.
Imagine yourself with no embedded fear.
Ruminate over good things you could do in the future, over beautiful things you’d do in the right circumstances.
Politics poisons this, dominators wish to subdue it, sociopaths cannot experience it. Get as much of it as you can. Go out of your way to cultivate it.”
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