"The 'COVID Coup'"

"The 'COVID Coup'"

 by Charles Hugh Smith 

"What we are experiencing is a COVID coup... While Joe Biden (apparently) won the election, the entire process was dominated by COVID precautions and distortions. Nearly 80% of Joe Biden’s vote - according to the exit polls - named COVID as the key issue. A similar 80% of Trump’s vote saw the economy as the key issue. In the name of COVID fears, election day was essentially cancelled and more than half the votes were cast by mail, many of them weeks before.

With the Democrats leading the push for early mail-in voting, people who feared to go to the polls (because of COVID) were overwhelmingly Biden voters. Republicans across the country allowed the Democrats to intimidate voters with COVID myths and then use the myths as a pretext for voting by mail from home. On the assumption that it was perilous to vote in person, mail-in ballots were authorized everywhere. More than 100 million votes were mailed-in.

Breaking the links between personal presence, IDs, signatures, ballots, and individual voters, the new procedures fostered a murky and error-prone system that should not be repeated. The mail-in operations prolonged the voting period and changed the electoral dynamic. We can only hope that the American future was not “lost in the mail.

The Myth and Mantra of COVID: The ruling theme of the campaign was the myth and mantra of 220,000 “COVID deaths.” This claim the media inculcated and propagated relentlessly and even Trump disastrously seemed to condone. The electoral campaigns pivoted on the myth of the 220,000 or more deaths. Actual COVID-caused deaths were less than 10% of this number and the average age of deaths was higher than the average age of all-cause deaths. Measured by years of lost life, COVID was insignificant compared to ordinary flu, pneumonia, TB or other diseases.

The chief significance of COVID were the political lockdowns, quarantines of the healthy, and neglect of the sick in the name of reserving healthcare resources for COVID. A probable majority of so-called “COVID deaths” occurred in nursing homes and “assisted living facilities,” where the average stay is around five months. Unlike the flu, measles, or other diseases, which kill millions of young people, COVID chiefly kills people already in the process of dying.

In reality, our bodily biomes are full of viruses, mostly innocuous or neutralized by the immune system and many of them are coronaviruses associated with the common cold. But the CDC classified anyone who died with a positive test as a “COVID death.” Depending on how many actual infections there were, false positives were frequent. A test that harbored 1% false positives — the lowest estimate — would produce 50% false results in the case of an infection rate of 2%.

You just can’t trust the numbers. But as Mark Twain wrote: “It is easier to fool the people than to convince them they have been fooled.”

This principle applies overwhelmingly to politicians. Once they have made a mistake, it is nearly impossible for them to admit error. It is far more popular to double-down on the error than to retract it.

American democracy is now fraught with pernicious myths. Under the Democrats, it suffers from an electoral process devoted both to a myth of pandemic and to an economic program devoted to a green religious cult. On the Republican side, the Administration has enlisted in a misguided campaign based on the myth of the “trade” gap. Democrats propose to replace this myth with the myth of CO2 pollution in a futile battle against climate change that voters rank near the bottom of their list of priorities.

For investors, the climate change paradigm means a massive national program of subsidies for a feckless transformation of our energy economy from a robust and functional system to a vulnerable, volatile, and vain apparatus marked by windmill totem poles and pervasive sunhenges. Our meager national savings will be dissipated, and our scarce resource of arable land will be wasted in a campaign against CO2, a benign elixir of life.

Intelligent investors understand that economic growth is real learning, based on falsifiable facts rather than on political fantasies. Against the overwhelming power of socialist government, learning is constantly thwarted.

Investors will increasingly tend to look overseas. There, the best opportunities reside in Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, and China. Although it is not good news for Americans to be forced to focus much of their investment abroad, Biden’s program of national lockdowns, confiscatory taxes, and energy suppression gives us little alternative.

The upside of a Biden Administration is a possible improvement of international trade and technology policy. The only serious blunder of the Trump years was his adoption of mercantilism based on the pursuit of the chimera of a trade surplus. The result was a retrograde effort to use U.S. technology assets to bully China. In international trade and technology policy, Biden offers some promise of improvement.

The Biden downside overseas is a catastrophic failure of his Israel Test. Based on a keen grasp of the centrality of Israel in the American prospect, Trump triumphantly passed his Israel test as no other President, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and supporting Israel’s outreach to the Arab world beyond the seething “Palestinians.”

Kamala Harris’s eagerness to reenter the Paris climate accord is exceeded only by her passion for the cause of a Palestinian state and its renewed intifada “Peace Process” that is devoted to the destruction of Israel. The pursuit of peace by negotiating with Jihadists always produces war in the Middle East."

- https://dailyreckoning.com/the-covid-coup/ 


"How It Really Is"

 

"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?"

- https://www.zerohedge.com/political/

“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?"

- https://www.peakprosperity.com/the-power-of-one/

Musical Interlude: Sting, "Fields of Gold"

Sting, "Fields of Gold"

"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.”

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

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."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

◆

"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."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

"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."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

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

The Daily "Near You?"

Homedale, Idaho, USA. Thanks for stopping by! 

"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"

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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"

◆

Nov. 17, 2020 4:19 PM ET:

 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 55,403,700 

people, according to official counts, including 11,387,763 Americans.

      Nov. 17, 2020 4:19 PM ET: 

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

◆

Updated 11/17/20, 3:25 PM ET

Click image for larger size.

- https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

"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!

○

"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/17/20:

"FReaKsHOw. The Stock Market FREE FOR 

ALL Is Getting "JUICY," The Fed. Said So."

 - https://traderschoice.net/

○

Updated live.

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

○

- https://markets.businessinsider.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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Daily Update (Nov. 17h to 18th)

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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Insanity... 

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And now... The End Game...

"How It Really Is"

 

"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."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "The Economic Collapse Is Getting Worse"

Gregory Mannarino, 

"The Economic Collapse Is Getting Worse"

- https://traderschoice.net/