So, we rise from the rubble...
Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Tuesday, November 17, 2020
"COVID-19 Ushers In An Unconstitutional Hell For America"
"COVID-19 Ushers In An Unconstitutional Hell For America"
by Michael Walsh
"Thanks to the dreaded Covid-19, it’s good-bye Thanksgiving and, soon enough, farewell Christmas. And after that, who knows?
Having discovered that Americans have lost their spines and are now easily penned inside their homes like two-legged sheep, the petty potentates who rule - not govern, rule - far too many states and municipalities have concluded that we will never fight back, never resist, and never reject their latest whimsical edicts.
For proof, look no farther than California, where 41 of the state’s 58 counties have just been returned to most-restricted status, and a statewide curfew is now being bruited in Sacramento. California is “pulling an emergency brake,” as CCP virus “cases” rise, said Newsom, who recently attended a pricey private birthday party at the exclusive French Laundry restaurant in the Napa Valley, violating his own Caligulan guidelines.
There are vague promises that things might begin to open again next year, but don’t hold your breath. “Two weeks to slow the spread” and “fifteen days to flatten the curve” have long since morphed into a semi-permanent nanny state in which the very act of slowing and flattening ensures that the virus will go on indefinitely by guaranteeing a continuous stream of new “cases” with which to frighten the public and increase government power.
In defiance of all previous medical experience, the Covid “pandemic” has muzzled the population with bank-robber masks, driven families asunder, forced elderly couples to die apart, punished schoolchildren with the false promise of “remote learning,” made Americans eye each other with suspicion and sidle away, and created a near-Stasi level of rats and snitches only too happy to inform on their fellow citizens.
It’s also killed the hospitality industry, the airlines, and commercial real estate. And all in brazen violation of the Constitution’s explicit guarantees of freedom of speech, assembly, and religious observance.
It has been a monstrous disgrace, made even worse by its supine acceptance. But even more dire consequences have followed the arrival of the Chinese Communist Party on our shores. In short order:
Masks became normalized, even mandated, thus allowing the brutal, cowardly thugs of Antifa and Black Lives Matter “activists” to go about in public in ninja mufti, faces concealed in violation of innumerable local ordinances. Once, the wearing of a concealing mask was practically prima facie proof of criminal intent, but now, thanks to the irresponsible and self-aggrandizing Dr. Anthony Fauci and other “experts,” the lack of a mask signals an inability to accept authority and perhaps also a willingness to expel the phantom virus into the faces of the innocent.
With the public rise of the neo-fascist Left in the wake of the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, urban disorder became mainstreamed, justified as it was by calling it “mostly peaceful” protest against the United States of America and its form of government. Even as private gatherings were being banned, thousands gathered in the streets to demonstrate against the American constitution and celebrate Donald Trump’s apparent electoral defeat. Indeed, “Black Lives Plaza” on one of the most expensive blocks in Washington, D.C., violates private property and civil rights within sight of the White House.
Watching the videos of patriotic Americans who had gathered in Washington, D.C., over the weekend to show support for president Trump’s efforts to legally fight clear vote fraud in the recent election - as is his constitutional right - and who were then set upon, sucker-punched, and otherwise assaulted by the feral minions of Antifa and Black Lives Matter within sight of the White House, was sickening and enraging.
Once actual peaceful protest had become essentially forbidden, the red-diaper baby media was free to shed its skin-suit of journalistic “objectivity,” enthusiastically join the leftist cadres in its open loathing of Donald Trump and all that he symbolized, and renew its attack on the Constitution, including among other things, the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Bill of Rights. All in the name of a more “honest” journalism adhering to a “higher loyalty,” of course.
Indeed, the New York Times - Pravda West - in the run-up to the election informed the nation via Twitter that it would be the media that would call the winner of the 2020 election, even before the votes were counted, certified, and sent to the Electoral College. “The role of declaring the winner of a presidential election in the U.S. falls to the media,” the Democrat propaganda sheet masquerading as a newspaper proclaimed, falsely.
It later deleted the tweet and issued a sheepish “apology” for “referring imprecisely to the role of the news media. … It projects winners and reports results; it does not declare the winner of the election.” Of course, that was a bald-faced lie as well. In fact, insofar as the media is concerned, it does declare the winner - and its word goes. Why else is an often-masked Joe Biden now claiming the non-existent “Office of the President-Elect”? The media couldn’t wait to declare Biden over the top, even though the election is now in its constitutionally permitted disputation phase, and does not go to the Electoral College until Dec. 14.
Lastly, the Dreaded Covid occasioned a wholesale “emergency” rewriting of voting laws, removing essential safeguards in the name of “safety” and thus permitting a host of outcome-altering refinements, including a record-number of mail-in votes whose provenance is often unprovable, early voting, late voting, and last-minute registration and voting.
During the counts in crucial swing states, tallies were suddenly halted for a couple of hours in the wee hours as the Democrat urban-machine apparatchiks calculated how many manufactured votes were needed to overtake Trump’s lead and then, two hours later… they appeared, courtesy of foreign-made voting machines with hidden algorithms.
And all because of the CCP virus. For unless something dramatic happens, the Left will never, ever, ever let us go. Thanks to the hysterical overreaction to the novel coronavirus, the weaponizing of it by the Democrat Party in order to change election laws and thus harvest millions of likely fraudulent mail-in votes in key swing states, and a leftist media that speaks with one voice as it gaslights the population with the party line, we are now all living in the unconstitutional hell of the neo-Marxists’ “new normal.”
"How do you like it, America?"
“Life, Explained To You”
“Life, Explained To You”
Author Unknown
“On the first day God created the dog. God said, “Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. I will give you a life span of twenty years.” The dog said, “That’s too long to be barking. Give me ten years and I’ll give you back the other ten.” So God agreed.
On the second day God created the monkey. God said, “Entertain people, do monkey tricks and make them laugh. I’ll give you a twenty-year life span.” The monkey said, “Monkey tricks for twenty years? I don’t think so. Dog gave you back ten, so that’s what I’ll do too, okay?” And God agreed.
On the third day God created the cow. “You must go to the field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves, and give milk to support the farmer. I will give you a life span of sixty years.” The cow said, “That’s kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. Let me have twenty and I’ll give back the other forty.” And God agreed again.
On the fourth day God created man. God said, “Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. I’ll give you twenty years.” Man said, “What? Only twenty years? Tell you what, I’ll take my twenty, and the forty the cow gave back, and the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back, that makes eighty, okay?” “Okay,” said God, “You’ve got a deal.”
So that is why the first twenty years we eat, sleep, play, and enjoy ourselves; the next forty years we slave in the sun to support our family; the next ten years we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren; and the last ten years we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.”
“Life has now been explained to you.”
"Fear..."
“I was as afraid as the next man in my time and maybe more so. But with the years, fear had come to be regarded as a form of stupidity to be classed with overdrafts, acquiring a venereal disease or eating candies. Fear is a child's vice and while I loved to feel it approach, as one does with any vice, it was not for grown men, and the only thing to be afraid of was the presence of true and imminent danger in a form that you should be aware of and not be a fool if you were responsible for others.”
- Ernest Hemingway, "True at First Light”
"The Power Of One"
"The Power Of One"
by Adam Taggart
"I’m hearing so many people express feelings of defeat and despair, that they feel they have no agency to make a difference in a world victimized by huge corporate cartels, government overreach or climate instability. To offer a candle of hope against that feeling of powerlessness, I want to remind folks that one person can indeed make a tremendous difference, even in the darkest of times:
"Never forget, no matter how overwhelming life’s challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person."
~ R. Buckminster Fuller
Few people embody being “that one person” better than Nicholas Winton. Never heard of him? Neither had I until a few years ago. But he’s now a hero of mine.
Winton was a British citizen who rescued nearly 670 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia during World War Two. He did this of his own accord, not as part of any state agency or organized movement. Initially on a skiing trip to Switzerland, he canceled his vacation after Kristallnacht and went to Prague to help a friend there who was working to support the local Jewish population. Having learned that Britain’s Parliament had recently voted to accept European war refugees provided they had a place to stay and could pay a £50 deposit, Winton began single-handly relocating Czech Jewish children to safety in his home country.
Before the Nazis tightened their control on Czechoslovakia, Winton managed to put 669 children on trains to the Netherlands, from where they were then sent to homes of foster families in Britain that he (and his mother) had found for them. Tragically, after their children departed to safety, many of the biological parents left behind ultimately ended up perishing at Auschwitz.
Winton sought no fanfare for his heroism. He spoke so rarely of it that the general public had no idea what he had done until nearly 50 years later. His own wife (whom he married after the war) didn’t even know until she one day came across the ledger he had used to keep track of the children during the evacuation.
Once she realized the magnitude of what this quiet hero had done, she worked with a television producer on a TV special to recognize him publicly for his humanitarian effort. By this time, Winton was an elderly man.
He agreed to attend, embarrassed by the attention. And unbeknownst to him, the producers had tracked down one of the children he had rescued, now an adult, and seated her next to him throughout the evening. It wasn’t until the end of the ceremony that they announced to him who she was. Watching Winton realize that the smiling woman next to him had been able to live a long, happy life because of his courageous action all those years ago is a very tender moment.
And if that doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, what happens next should. The host then asks the audience “Is there anyone else here who owes their life to this man?”… and EVERYONE stands up. Turns out, they had packed the theater with his former rescued children, now in their 50s and 60s, each of whom was saved by this kind, humble man.
We rarely get to witness such a moment of grace like this. It’s simply perfect. For me, it’s a reminder never to discount the impact our own individual acts can have. Winton certainly answered Fuller’s call to “be that one person” to make a difference in the world. Will each of us?"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Large galaxies grow by eating small ones. Even our own galaxy practices galactic cannibalism, absorbing small galaxies that get too close and are captured by the Milky Way's gravity. In fact, the practice is common in the universe and illustrated by this striking pair of interacting galaxies from the banks of the southern constellation Eridanus, The River.
Located over 50 million light years away, the large, distorted spiral NGC 1532 is seen locked in a gravitational struggle with dwarf galaxy NGC 1531 (right of center), a struggle the smaller galaxy will eventually lose. Seen edge-on, spiral NGC 1532 spans about 100,000 light-years. Nicely detailed in this sharp image, the NGC 1532/1531 pair is thought to be similar to the well-studied system of face-on spiral and small companion known as M51.”
Chet Raymo, "Know Thyself"
"Know Thyself"
by Chet Raymo
"The ancient Greek aphorism, attributed to Socrates and others. Good advice, I'm sure. If only we knew what it means. Is it the same as the "examination of conscience" we were asked to perform as young Catholics? "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned." Well, yes, it is good to ask ourselves if we have lived up to our highest moral aspirations. But surely "Know thyself" means more than that.
Does it mean to be aware of our self-awareness? That is to say, not to act impulsively, but reflectively. Thoreau's "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Or perhaps it means to apply the method of scientia to the problem of consciousness, treat the mind like a fish that can be dissected at the lab bench, watch the brain flickering on the display of a scanning machine as the subject is stimulated with love, sex, fear, music, pain. Neuroscience. Daniel Dennet's book audaciously titled "Consciousness Explained." There is a line from a poem by Jane Hirshfield, in which she questions herself: "A knife cannot cut itself open/ yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."
Is it hopeless then? Is there an essential absurdity in a thing knowing itself? Does knowing necessarily imply a knower more complex than the thing known? Is it possible that we might fully understand, say, the neurology of the sea slug Aplysia, that favorite subject of experimental neurobiologists with only 20,000 central nerve cells, big nerve cells, ten times bigger than human neurons, but not the workings of the human brain, with its 100 billion nerve cells, each one connected to thousands of others?
Hirshfield's poem is titled "Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant." Perhaps that is the best we can do. To know ourselves in those fleeting moments of recognition than come now and then, often unbidden, sometimes as the result of a chance encounter with beauty or with ugliness, sometimes bidden out of the silence and solitude of meditation - a flash upon one's inward eye that is, perhaps, all the ancients were asking for when they asked us to "know ourselves."
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"Instant Glimpsable Only For An Instant"
"Moment. Moment. Moment.
- equal inside you, moment,
the velocitous mountains and cities rising and falling,
songs of children, iridescence even of beetles.
It is not you the locust can strip of all leaf.
Untouchable green at the center,
the wolf too lopes past you and through you as he eats.
Insult to mourn you, you who mourn no one, unable.
Without transformation,
yours the role of the chorus, to whom nothing happens.
The living step forward: choosing to enter, to lose.
I, who am made of you only,
speak these words against your unmasterable instruction -
A knife cannot cut itself open,
yet you ask me both to be you and to know you."
~ Jane Hirshfield
"No Small Business And No Jobs; California Closing Down; Americans Starve; Auto Sales Fall; Retail"
Jeremiah Babe,
"No Small Business And No Jobs; California Closing Down;
Americans Starve; Auto Sales Fall; Retail"
"UN Warns Of Famines Of Biblical Proportions In 2021 As Some Americans Wait 12 Hours For Food"
"UN Warns Of Famines Of Biblical Proportions In 2021
As Some Americans Wait 12 Hours For Food"
by Epic Economist
"The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize has been warning global leaders that the world is about to experience a famine of biblical proportions. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the number of food-insecure households is fast expanding, the reliance on food banks keeps increasing and pantries are completely overwhelmed by demand. In some cities, people line up for over 12 hours to get enough for only a couple of meals.
In addition to this devastating hunger crisis, lockdowns are expected to get even more strict by January 2021, jeopardizing the survival of struggling businesses and prompting another wave of lay-offs. However, the worst part of it is that millions are on the brink of eviction and could become homeless. That's what we talk about in this video.
After lockdowns were enacted around the world, wealthy countries saw years of economic and social progress being wiped out in the time span of a few weeks. However, poorer countries have been tremendously affected by the total or partial shut down of their economies, and an alarming share of their populations are already dealing with a dire hunger crisis, and in the face of a second round of lockdowns, their situation could become much worse. This is what David Beasley, the head of the UN World Food Program and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has been alerting to global leaders.
He also pointed out that the health crisis has not only worsened but also generated multiple hunger crises worldwide, and with another wave of confirmed cases spreading across the globe, economies are continuing to deteriorate particularly in low- and middle-income countries. That is to say, due to the adverse effects of business shutdowns on the economy, it is likely that the money that was available in 2020 is not going to be available in 2021.
According to WFP estimates, nearly $15 billion would be necessary to avoid a tragic hunger crisis next year, $5 billion just to avert famine, and $10 billion to continue executing the agency's global programs including for malnourished youngsters and school lunches, which are often the only meal many children can get.Although the hunger problem fortunately hasn't hit the same level compared to these countries, in the US, the number of food-insecure citizens, especially children, is escalating amid unemployment growth and the absence of federal aid.
For instance, in Maryland, local news reported that the state is indeed experiencing a hunger crisis, and schools have been trying to reach out to low-income children by providing school breakfast programs to at least help the kids to get food. The rise in Maryland's childhood hunger stressed how breakfast programs in schools are more needed now than ever before. For every 100 low-income students about 62 are reliant on school meals to be able to eat.
Low-income families are becoming increasingly dependent on government programs and food bank assistance to get the supplies they need to feed themselves for a week or two. Now that the holiday season is approaching, thousands of unemployed workers are waiting up to 12 hours at drive-thru food banks.
This is what has been happening in Texas, according to the Texas Workforce Commission, the state's unemployment rate in September was at 8.3 percent, marking an increase from 6.8 percent in August. Economists say that this surge is an example of how some industries that had hoped to overcome the health-crisis-induced economic recession have not yet been able to do so and have instead just have informed they will be letting go a large number of employees by the end of the year.
However, the recession disproportionately affected other states, such as Nevada, which has a strong emphasis on the service industry and tourism, and some of these jobs may never come back. Also known for its celebrated tourism New York City has 19 percent of its population facing food insecurity, and almost 300,000 New Yorkers have moved out of the city to avoid the coming eviction crisis.
Also, as of January 1, the CDC moratorium is lifted nationwide and those who have missed rent payments are at risk of eviction. The Center for Disease Control is warning that massive evictions will create a homelessness crisis of unprecedented proportions, that could put 10 percent of the American population at risk of losing their homes. The consequences of leaving its citizens unemployed, hungry, and without a home will certainly trigger a lot of turbulence in the U.S. streets in the coming months. 2020 was just the beginning of the collapse, and we will still be seeing the impacts of this catastrophic crisis for a long, long time."
"Beginning of the End?"
"Beginning of the End?"
by Bill Bonner
"Not Normal: Yesterday, America’s investors were sans souci. The Dow leapt to absurdity, coming to rest only 50 points shy of 30,000 – a new record. What is driving stocks higher? Two things…
First, there was more “good news” about a coronavirus vaccine. According to the popular narrative, the economy will soon get a shot in the arm and life will return to normal. But it is not normal for stocks to be so expensive. And it is not normal for an economy to depend on printing-press money. Businesses have had the life crushed out of them. Jobs have been permanently lost. Habits have changed. States are telling families not to get together for Thanksgiving. Santa is shopping for a face-protector.
The second reason is even more absurd. Now that Sleepy Joe Biden is packing up for his move into the White House, investors expect the fake money to flow as promiscuously as it did under Trump. There may even be more of it. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer announced last week that their last proposal – $3.4 trillion of additional fake money – was now just a “starting point.” Is this “normal?” And the Federal Reserve is “printing” new money – debasing its own currency – at the rate of $11 billion per day. Is that “normal?”
Grotesque and Unnatural: Far from it. The whole program – spend, borrow, print… boom, bubble, crash… pain, panic, bailout… spend, borrow, print… boom, bubble, crash… pain, panic, bailout… – is grotesque and unnatural. And the weak link in this freakish chain is the U.S. dollar. The feds can print ‘em. But they can’t control their value.
COVID-19, along with lockdowns and lockups, have caused people to be fearful. Savings rates have gone up. The velocity of money – a key to the value of the dollar – went down sharply… exaggerating a trend that has been going on for almost a quarter of a century.
Consumer spending, meanwhile, went up – thanks to the feds’ excessive giveaways. Economists, naturally, mistook this spending for “growth”… and a “recovery.” But it was nothing of the sort. It was as fake as the whole shebang. The recovery… the dollar… interest rates… stimulus – all phony baloney.
Faster Money: But wait… what’s this? The St. Louis Fed reports that the “velocity” of money – the rate at which money changes hands – has suddenly turned up. Is it a blip? Or a trend? Nothing worth mentioning? Or time to high-tail it out of town?
We don’t know. But the smart money is selling dollars. Here’s Zero Hedge: "In a Friday note from Goldman’s chief FX strategist Zach Pandal, he predicts that “depreciation in the broad Dollar can continue in 2021” and writes that his USD cross forecasts translate into a 6% decline in the broad trade-weighted Dollar index over the next 12 months, and a “sustained but orderly” 15% real depreciation from its 2020 peak to the end of 2024."
Is this the beginning of the end for the fake dollar… the fake interest rates… the fake stimulus… the fake bailouts… the fake recovery… the fake stock market boom… and all the rest of the fakiness? It is too early to tell."
The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "Sunset"
"Sunset"
"Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs –
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
"Courage..."
"Courage isn't having the strength to go on -
it is going on when you don't have strength."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 11/17/20"
NOV 17, 2020 1:00 PM: "'People Are Afraid' - 300,000 New Yorkers Flee City Due To COVID-19"
NOV 16, 2020 10:00 PM: "Why COVID-19 Testing Is A Tragic Waste"
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Nov. 17, 2020 4:19 PM ET:
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 55,403,700
people, according to official counts, including 11,387,763 Americans.
Updated 11/17/20, 3:25 PM ET
Click image for larger size.
"Market Fantasy Updates 11/17/20"
"Market Fantasy Updates 11/17/20"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
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"The more I see of the monied classes,
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/17/20:
"FReaKsHOw. The Stock Market FREE FOR
ALL Is Getting "JUICY," The Fed. Said So."
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Updated live.
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Daily Update (Nov. 17h to 18th)
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Insanity...
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And now... The End Game...
"Everybody Knows The Fight Was Fixed"
"Everybody Knows The Fight Was Fixed"
by Edward Curtin
“Yeah, like in a church. Church of the Good Hustler.”
- Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) in The Hustler
"At the end of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, "A Doll’s House" Nora, the aggrieved wife, leaves her husband’s house and all the illusions that sustained its marriage of lies. She chooses freedom over fantasy. She will no longer be played with like a doll but will try to become a free woman – a singular one. “There is another task I must undertake first. I must try and educate myself,” she tells her husband Torvald, a man completely incapable of understanding the social programming that has made him society’s slave.
When Nora closes the doll’s house door behind her, the sound is like a hammer blow of freedom. For anyone who has seen the play, even when knowing the outcome in advance, that sound is profound. It keeps echoing. It interrogates one’s conscience.
The echo asks: Do you live inside America’s doll house where a vast tapestry of lies, bad faith, and cheap grace keep you caged in comfort, as you repeat the habits that have been drilled into you? In this doll’s house of propaganda into which America has been converted, a great many of our basic assumptions are totally illusory.
Americans who voted for either Trump or Biden in the 2020 election are like Torvald clones. They refuse to open that door so they might close it behind them. They live in the doll’s house – all 146+ million of them. Like Torvald, they are comforted. They are programmed and propagandized, embracing the illusion that the electoral system is not structured and controlled to make sure no significant change can occur, no matter who is president. It is a sad reality promoted as democracy.
They will prattle on and give all sorts of reasons why they voted, and for whom, and how if you don’t vote you have no right to bitch, and how it’s this sacred right to vote that makes democracy great, blah blah blah. It’s all sheer nonsense. For the U.S.A. is not a democracy; it is an oligarchy run by the wealthy for the wealthy.
This is not a big secret. Everybody knows this is true; knows the electoral system is sheer show-business with the presidential extravaganza drawing the big money from corporate lobbyists, investment bankers, credit card companies, lawyers, business and hedge fund executives, Silicon Valley honchos, think tanks, Wall Street gamblers, millionaires, billionaires, et. al. Biden and Trump spent over 3 billion dollars on the election. They are owned by the money people.
Both are old men with long, shameful histories. A quick inquiry will show how the rich have profited immensely from their tenures in office. There is not one hint that they could change and have a miraculous conversion while in future office, like JFK. Neither has the guts or the intelligence. They are nowhere men who fear the fate that John Kennedy faced squarely when he turned against the CIA and the war machine. They join the craven company of Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan G.H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama. They all got the message that was sent from the streets of Dallas in 1963: You don’t want to die, do you?
Ask yourself: Has the power of the oligarchic, permanent warfare state with its propaganda and spy networks, its vast intelligence apparatus, increased or decreased in the past half century? Who is winning the battle, the people or the ruling elites? The answer is obvious.
It matters not at all whether the president has been Trump or Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, Barack Obama or George H. W. Bush, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, or Jimmy Carter. The power of the national security state has grown under them all and everyone is left to moan and groan and wonder why.
All the while, the doll’s house has become more and more sophisticated and powerful. It is now essentially an electronic prison that is being “Built Back Better.” The new Cold War now being waged against Russia and China is a bi-partisan affair, as is the confidence game played by the secret government intended to create a fractured consciousness in the population through their corporate mass-media stenographers. Trump and his followers on one side of the coin; liberal Democrats on the other.
Only those backed by the wealthy power brokers get elected in the U.S.A. Then when elected, it’s payback time. Palms are greased. Everybody knows this is true. It’s called corruption. So why would anyone, who opposes a corrupt political oligarchy, vote, unless they were casting a vote of conscience for a doomed third-party candidate?
Leonard Cohen told it true with “Everybody Knows”:
"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded,
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
Everybody knows that the war is over
,
Everybody knows the good guys lost
.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
,
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
That’s how it goes,
Everybody knows.
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
,
Everybody knows that the captain lied
.
Everybody got this broken feeling
,
Like their father or their dog just died..."
And yet everybody who voted for the two men backed by the super-rich owners of the country knew what they were doing, unless they live under a rock and come out every four years to vote. Perhaps they were out buying stuffing for the Thanksgiving turkey, so they can give thanks for the farce (stuffing: Latin: farcire).
They have their reasons. Now the Biden people celebrate, just as Trump’s supporters did in 2016. I can hear fireworks going off as I write here in a town where 90% + voted for Biden and hate Trump with a passion more intense than what they ever could work up for a spurned lover or spouse. This is mass psychosis. It’s almost funny.
At least we have gotten rid of Trump, they say. No one can be worse. They think this is logic. Like Torvald, they cannot begin to understand why anyone would want to leave the doll’s house, how anyone could refuse to play a game in which the dice are loaded. They will deny they are in the doll’s house while knowing the dice are loaded and still roll the die, not caring that their choice – whether it’s Tweedledee or Tweedledum – will result in the death and impoverishment of so many, that being the end result of oligarchic rule at home and imperialism abroad.
Orwell called this Doublethink: "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies – all this is indispensably necessary."
And while in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" Doublethink is learned by all the Party members “and certainly by all who are intelligent as well as orthodox,” today in the USA, it has been mastered even by the so-called unintelligent.
To live in the USA is to live in the Church of the Good Hustler. People often ask: What can we do to make the country better? What is your alternative? A child could answer that one: Don’t vote if you know that both contenders are backed by the super-rich elites, what some call the Deep State. Which of course they are. Everybody knows.
The so-called left and right argue constantly about whom to support. It’s a pseudo-debate constructed to allow people to think their vote counts; that the game isn’t rigged. It’s hammered into kids’ heads from an early age. Be grateful, give thanks that you live in a democracy where voting is allowed and your choice is as important as a billionaire’s such as Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Charles Koch. In the voting booth we are all equal.
Myths die hard. This one never does:
"Your voice, your hopes, and your dreams, will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way.”
- Donald Trump, January 20, 2017
"With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation. It’s time for America to unite. And to heal.”
- Joe Biden, November 7, 2020
"Above all else, the time has come for us to renew our faith in ourselves and in America. In recent years, that faith has been challenged.”
- Richard Nixon, January 20, 1973
Your voice – our faith – it’s time to unite and heal. Ask the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the Syrians, the Afghanis, the Libyans, the Palestinians, et al. They sing a different tune, one not heard In the Church of the Good Hustler.
After campaigning hard for the losing presidential candidate in 1972, I nearly choked when I heard Richard Nixon’s inaugural address in January 1973. Clinging to the American myth the previous year, I had campaigned for a genuine anti-war Democrat, Senator George McGovern.
The war against Vietnam was still raging and Nixon, who had been first elected in 1968 as a “peace candidate,” succeeding the previous “peace candidate” Lyndon Baines Johnson, was nevertheless overwhelmingly elected, despite Watergate allegations appearing in the months preceding the election. Nixon won forty-nine states to McGovern’s one – Massachusetts, where I lived. It was a landslide. I felt sick, woke up, got up, and left the doll’s house.
“Propaganda is the true remedy for loneliness,” wrote the French sociologist Jacques Ellul in 1965 in Propaganda:
It corresponds to the need to share, to be a member of a community, to lose oneself in a group, to embrace a collective ideology that will end loneliness. It also corresponds to deep and constant needs, more developed today, perhaps, than ever before: the need to believe and obey, to create and hear fables, to communicate in the language of myths.
In a country where loneliness is widespread, the will to believe and the power of positive thinking are far more powerful than the will to truth. Unlike Nora, who knew that when she left the doll’s house she was choosing the loneliness of the solitary soul, Americans prefer myths that induce them to act out of habit so they can lose themselves in the group.
This is so despite the fact that In the Church of the Good Hustler, when you play the game, you lose. We are all Americans and your vote counts and George Washington never told a lie."
Monday, November 16, 2020
"Don't Blame Covid: The Economy is Imploding from Over-Capacity and Corrupt Cartels"
"Don't Blame Covid: The Economy is Imploding
from Over-Capacity and Corrupt Cartels"
by Charles Hugh Smiith
"Here's the fantasy: if we stop the shutdowns, the economy will naturally bounce back to its oh-so wunnerful perfection of Q3 2019. This is a double-dose of magical thinking and denial. The U.S. economy was unraveling in 2019 from 11 long years of Fed-induced over-capacity in almost everything (except integrity, competition, transparency and social cohesion) and the bone-crushing burden of corrupt, greedy cartels that have the nation by the throat.
The reality nobody dares mention is that thanks to 20 years of the Federal Reserve's easy money, there's rampant over-capacity everywhere you look: there's too many cafes, bistros, restaurants, fast-food outlets, hotels, resorts, AirBnBs, unprofitable Tech Unicorns, airline flights, Tech startups, office towers, retail space, malls, absurdly overpriced apartments for rent, storage facilities, delivery services, office sublets, colleges, attorneys, unemployed workers with multiple credentials--the list of too much, too many is endless.
Thanks to the Fed, the most profitable venture was borrowing to increase capacity, then borrow some more to extract the phantom value created by the greater capacity. Nobody cared if the office tower remained mostly empty; the money was made in building it and extracting its "value" via debt, not operating a legitimate enterprise.
This Fed-created house of cards was never sustainable, or healthy, as all the incentives to add capacity were perverse. The illusion that every mall, office tower, retail space, college, apartment building, etc. would be filled was only plausible as long as consumers and zombie corporations were borrowing and spending more than they earned.
That was never sustainable, but rather than look at the systemic set-up of an insanely predatory, fragile debt bubble resting precariously on over-capacity, the status quo is blaming Covid and lockdowns. The problem isn't the pin, it's the bubble that was begging to be popped by something, anything. Recall that bubbles pop on their own, even without a pin. Japan's debt / stock / real estate bubble popped in 1989 without a pin; prices just stopped going up and then started falling, all by themselves.
The other reality no one dares mention is the stranglehold of corrupt cartels that have long outlived their purpose, and now exist solely to enrich insiders and lenders and the wealthy few who own the student loan debt, mortgages, etc.
The entire higher-education cartel was an unaffordable, unsustainable racket eight years ago when I wrote my book "The Nearly Free University." Now the racket is finally unraveling, and the insane over-capacity, insanely high costs and lack of value in the credentials are coming home to roost.
The healthcare system is another example of a sprawling system of cartels that's long overdue for a reckoning/unraveling. The fortunes being minted bought more than enough political power to keep the corrupt, predatory machine well-greased with federal money, but that doesn't mean the system is actually providing healthcare effectively or efficiently or in a sustainable fashion.
Now we have multiple Big Tech monopolies bleeding the nation dry, and Big Tech is rushing to flood Washington D.C. with lobbyists and campaign contributions so nobody messes with its parasitic, destructive layers of monopoly.
The entire American economy was a gigantic bubble of corrupt Fed-funded skims, scams, rackets, monopolies and cartels, and it was finally bursting in 2019. The Fed, oh-so protective of its ever-greater and more destructive bubbles, rushed to mask the rot by inflating the greatest bubble of all time: "Forget GOAT, Look at GBOAT: The Greatest Bubble Of All Time" (November 6, 2020).
Now that the bubble has burst, the hope is that removing the pin will magically restore the burst bubble. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. The bubble has already burst and cannot be magically made whole and re-inflated. It was never sustainable or healthy, and its collapse was inevitable. The way forward is obvious: stop the Fed from blowing ever-larger bubbles and eliminate cartels and monopolies. But that will require ending the absurd farce of pay-to-play "democracy" that enables the debt / asset bubbles and cartels/monopolies."
"The Great Reset Already Happened: No Escape From
Digital Cash & New World Monetary Order
by Epic Economist
"For some, The Great Reset may sound like a conspiracy, for others as a very distant reality. But when it comes to money, the time-loop works differently: the reset has already happened, it is still happening right now and it will continue to develop whether people decide to see it or not.
All along we've been inevitably and unconsciously marching towards the elite's dystopian delirium of infinite money. For that reason, experts have been repeatedly warning that the shift to digital cash is merely the final strike for their ultimate plan to take over the world. In this video, we explain how the whole monetary system has been built for this moment - when the perfect crisis is creating the leverage they long-wished to finally impose the New World Monetary Order - one of which no one will be able to escape.
The 1929 market crash broke through the financial system, transforming what had been a roaring boom into a massive collapse. Governments used to fear that in the absence of a strong financial anchor like gold, the public wouldn't trust in a piece of worthless colorful paper as a trade currency. In those days, the price of gold was at $20/ounce. However, everything changed when President Nixon closed the gold window in August 1971, ending the convertibility of the dollar to gold, and prompting all currencies to become fiat.
It didn't take long for sellers and buyers to trade gold at whatever prices they saw fit. By 1980 gold prices hit a high of $875/ounce. Today, gold trades at $1,889/ounce. While hard-money advocates argue that the abandonment of the gold standard was the Original Sin that triggered a perpetual downfall for the dollar and the U.S. economy, others defend that it was necessary to maintain hegemony on the markets.
The event of the broad adoption of fiat currencies has marked the beginning of a new era, in which several dynamics have changed in many different segments. However, economically, the main catalyst for this new monetary era was the decline of labor's share of the economy in favor of capital. In other words, those who had only their labor to sell lost their purchasing power, while those who could borrow or access capital had benefited enormously.
This "capital-friendly era" was boosted by financialization in the 1980s, technology in the 1990s, and globalization in the early 21st century. The polarity between financialization and globalization has generated and continuously inflated the 2008 bubble, and its burst almost took down the entire global capital house of cards.
The Fed's response to the dotcom collapse was to finance central banks to the tune of $29 trillion. Evidently, they justified their decision under the typical pretext that it would be an "emergency measure", but such reckless policies have become permanent a long time ago. This is why several analysts have been arguing that the global elites' techno-fantasy of a completely centralized future isn't actually a future plan. The Great Reset already happened in 2008-09.
When central banks joined efforts to issue unprecedented amounts of printed money and created policies to induce financial repression, including zero-interest-rate policies to avert the debt-bubble from popping, the global elites had confirmation that their hyper-centralization plan to control the global economy's money was quietly and smoothly running.
The unsustainable demand for more liquidity has exhausted the economy, in a way that can only be fixed through the optimal solution they've thoroughly manufactured over decades: digital currencies. With virtual money, the potential to expand their wealth is infinite. But that of course, that wouldn't happen without controlling everyone's access to these currencies by an enhanced use of surveillance, as well as stimulating mistrust amongst the population in relation to the fiat currency. In a nutshell, the paper dollar collapse is a crucial part of this scheme.
Now, they have rebranded The Great Reset as the ultimate opportunity for the masses to have a Universal Basic Income, some of their debt wiped out, and receive some other foolish perks in exchange for their financial freedom. The timing couldn't be more appropriate: the dollar is continuously losing its purchasing power, millions keep falling into poverty due to the inherent effects of the current health and economic crisis, the wave of American businesses bankruptcies and foreclosures never ceases to crash, and the nation has accumulated a trillion-dollar debt-burden. This was the final blow to our collective notion of money as something real. This is the establishment's supreme power-hungry hysteria, and apparently, that's what we have to fight against. Are you ready for this epic battle?
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Here is one of the largest objects that anyone will ever see on the sky. Each of these fuzzy blobs is a galaxy, together making up the Perseus Cluster, one of the closest clusters of galaxies. The cluster is seen through a foreground of faint stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Click image for larger size.
Near the cluster center, roughly 250 million light-years away, is the cluster's dominant galaxy NGC 1275, seen above as a large galaxy on the image left. A prodigious source of x-rays and radio emission, NGC 1275 accretes matter as gas and galaxies fall into it. The Perseus Cluster of Galaxies, also cataloged as Abell 426, is part of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster spanning over 15 degrees and containing over 1,000 galaxies. At the distance of NGC 1275, this view covers about 15 million light-years.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110712.html
"What If..."
"What if when you die they ask, "How was Heaven?"
~ Author Unknown
A truly terrifying thought...
"To Others And To Ourselves: Obligations"
"To Others And To Ourselves: Obligations"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM
"When we schedule too much in our lives trying to meet our obligations, we only end up draining our energy. We all encounter obligations in life, from spending time with family and friends to being present at important functions in the lives of the people who form our community. Many times, the obligations are actually fun and fulfilling, and we want to be there. At the same time, we all sometimes experience resistance to meeting these obligations, especially when they pile up all at once and we begin to feel exhausted, longing for nothing so much as a quiet evening at home. At times like these, we may want to say no but feel too guilty at the idea of not being there. Still, our primary obligation is to take care of ourselves, and if saying no to someone else is what we have to do, then we do not need to feel bad about it.
There is a skill to balancing our obligations, and it starts with simply becoming aware of our schedule. We may notice that three invitations have arisen in one weekend, and we know that we will pay energetically if we attempt to fulfill all three. At this point, we can take the time to weigh the repercussions of not going to each event, considering how we will feel if we miss it and how our absence might affect other people. Most of the time, it will be clear which obligation we can most easily let go and which one we simply can’t miss. Sometimes we have to miss something really important to us, and that can be painful for everyone concerned. At times like this, reaching out with a phone call, a thoughtful card, or a gift lets people know that you are there in spirit and that your absence is by no means a result of you not caring.
Meeting our obligations to others is an important part of being human and not one to take lightly. At the same time, we cannot meet every obligation without neglecting our primary duty to take care of ourselves. We can navigate this quandary by being conscious of what we choose to do and not do and by finding concrete ways to extend our caring when we are not able to be there in person."
"Is Not What You Know..."
"Place yourself among those who carry on their lives with passion, and true learning will take place, no matter how humble or exalted the setting. But no matter what path you follow, do not be ashamed of your learning. In some corner of your life, you know more about something than anyone else on earth. The true measure of your education is not what you know, but how you share what you know with others."
- Kent Nerburn
The Poet: Robert Bly, "Things to Think"
"Things to Think"
"Think in ways you've never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you've ever heard,
Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.
Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he's carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you've never seen.
When someone knocks on the door,
Think that he's about
To give you something large: tell you you're forgiven,
Or that it's not necessary to work all the time,
Or that it's been decided that if you lie down no one will die."
- Robert Bly, “Morning Poems”
"For The Most Part..."
"Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told- and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion."
- Michael Crichton, "The Lost World"
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