The Poet: James Baldwin, "Amen"

"Amen" 

 "No, I don't feel death coming.

I feel death going:

having thrown up his hands,

for the moment.

I feel like I know him

better than I did.

Those arms held me,

for a while,

and, when we meet again,

there will be that secret knowledge

between us." 

- James Baldwin

The Daily "Near You?

Collinsville, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Ironic, The Tragic Thing..."

“One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless… I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in ways that would make animals blush. The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God’s blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side.”

“There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.”

- Henry Miller

"Doug Casey on America's Ideological Divide and What Comes Next"

"Doug Casey on America's Ideological Divide and What Comes Next"

by Internationalman.com

"International Man: Throughout his presidential campaign, Joe Biden said that this would be a "dark winter" in the US. What would a Biden/Harris administration do next?

Doug Casey: When Joe Biden was in his basement, he must’ve watched Game of Thrones again and again. Biden thinks he’s John Snow saying, "Winter is coming." He’s right about that. But he’s no John Snow.

The government can definitely make it into a dark winter, indeed, so it’s interesting that he said that. The government can create huge economic destruction just by continuing their foolish lockdowns. But, as they say, "we can do more!" Biden wants more regulations. He wants more money printing. He’s said that he wants much higher taxes.

We can expect the economy to get a lot worse. Joe’s prediction about a dark winter is absolutely right from an economic point of view. And, even more important, from a personal freedom point of view. We’re going to have a lot more State control and less personal freedom. The COVID hysteria is a godsend for them.

What will Biden do if and when he’s sworn in? In addition to the things I just mentioned, he’ll try to clamp down on gun ownership. That, however, would likely be the red line. It could really set things off. Especially since something like 75% of Republicans, and even 25% of Democrats, think the election was rigged. It would serve to delegitimize the whole political process.

What will happen if he tries to confiscate people’s guns? Will members of the police and military actually do as they’re told? Most of them will, for lots of reasons, but mainly because they’re paid to do what they’re told, whether they agree with it or not. The chain of command still exists. And no cop wants to lose his job in today’s economic environment.

What will the gun owners do? Will they resist violently? Some will. And then what happens? Gun confiscation could be the spark that lights the flame in this country. That’s especially the case if they make Beto O’Rourke the gun czar.

International Man: Ideologically, the US is split. Half of Americans believe exactly what the politicians, media, and the "experts" tell them. On the other hand, there is a growing number of Americans that are skeptical and distrustful of the mainstream COVID narrative and the restrictions. How do you see this playing out in the months ahead?

Doug Casey: The temperature is rising in the pressure cooker. I’ve said before; it makes no sense at all to have two or more groups with radically different views of ethics - what’s right and wrong, and what should or shouldn’t be done - in the same political entity. One group or another is going to get control of the central government and will use it to make the other group as mad as hell. This is why countries split up.

Ideally, the US will split up peacefully the way Czechoslovakia did into two countries, or Yugoslavia into six countries, or the Soviet Union into 15 countries. But the last time we had a serious secession movement in the US was from 1861 to 1865. It didn’t end well.

Click image for larger size.

"The 11 Nations Of The United States"

Let me repeat what I said since March about COVID. This virus is no more serious than the bird flu, swine flu, Asian flu, or the Hong Kong flu. It’s not even remotely as serious as the Spanish flu. It basically only affects people over 70 or those who have a major illness. And even then, the survival rate is very high. The average age of death from COVID is 78. Contracting it is no more than a trivial inconvenience for younger people. It’s perhaps the greatest mass hysteria in world history. There’s much more to say about this hysteria, and it all reflects badly on the authorities and the media. As well as the average American for acting like a sheep. The situation is accentuated by the fact that we have entered the Greater Depression. When the economic times get really tough, people feel they have little to lose, and, as Gerald Celente says, they "lose it."

A big near-term problem is that the forbearance of payment of rent and mortgage payments is slated to end about Jan 1. There will be a lot of people - about 12 million renters and four million homeowners - who aren't going to be able to make those payments. In addition to the fact that a lot of landlords and lenders are already under pressure because of the forbearance.

Although consequences will likely be pushed forward by another round of money from the Fed.

International Man: Is it possible that in an attempt to regulate and restrict the movement and lives of the population that the "masters of the universe" will overplay their hand?

Doug Casey: It’s very possible. They’re playing with a lit stick of dynamite. But when the "cadres" get control of the government, they’re extremely hard to dislodge. They’ll have not only the government’s moral force but its physical force - the army, the police, and the judicial system. 

Remember, the Bolsheviks were a tiny number of people, but once they captured the apparatus of the Russian State in 1917, it was all over. If the Marxist factions of the Democrat Party take over, they’ll prove very hard to evict from power. Here’s the question: is the average American who dislikes the collectivist Democrat Party willing to go into the streets the way BLM and Antifa did, and get violent?

I don't know. This is a witch's brew. It's much more serious than the average person thinks or even wants to think. The possibility isn’t mentioned in the media. I really don't see any way out of this, however. Serious violence is likely.

If there's going to be a confrontation, however, it's better that one occurs sooner rather than later from the point of view of the cultural conservatives. The longer it’s put off, the more people indoctrinated with every college and high school graduating class in what the Biden-Harris team are promoting.

And every year that goes by, there are more people recruited to work for the government who align against pro-freedom forces. Inevitably, the pot's going to boil over. It’s better to get it over with sooner rather than later. The only thing that can defuse the situation is a major war, probably with China, but that would be an even greater disaster."

- internationalman.com

"That's All We've Ever Had..."

 
- George Carlin

"Status Quo Ante"

"Status Quo Ante"

By Bill Bonner

“I f**king hate that guy.”

– Neera Tanden, nominee for the role of director of the Office of

Management and Budget in the Biden administration

WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "When the reality TV star moved into the White House, we opined that the common narrative was phony. Mr. Trump pretended to represent “conservatives” against the “liberals.” But there was never anything conservative about The Donald. He spent the next four years proving it.

No Help to Give: Now, we have an equal and opposite scam. The Democrats no longer represent the working classes… the poor… the downtrodden… or the “victims” – women, minorities, cripples, half-wits, and so forth. Both political parties are controlled by two wings of the same group. They represent neither conservatives nor liberals. Instead, they represent themselves – a corrupt and degenerate American elite.

For proof… today, as promised, we take a look at the Biden team. Here’s MarketWatch: “Help is on the way,” says Biden as he introduces Yellen and more economic team members President-elect Joe Biden called times “tough” for millions of Americans as he introduced his economic team on Tuesday, but said its members would get to work to “create a recovery for all.”

We don’t have to remind our dear, long-suffering, readers that the feds have no help to give. Every penny they spend must come from the American people themselves. And since they know they will lose power if they raise taxes, all they can do is print more fake money – the very thing that is already destroying the real economy. So any “recovery” that happens will come in spite of the Biden team, not because of it.

Divisive Appointments: But real help is not on offer anyway. What is coming is another giant fraud… led by a team of hacks, has-beens, incompetents, know-nothings, and grifters.

Take Janet Yellen, for example. She is an academic economist with no apparent knowledge of how real economies or markets actually work. Here’s what Reuters reported on June 27, 2017: "U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said on Tuesday that she does not believe that there will be another financial crisis for at least as long as she lives, thanks largely to reforms of the banking system since the 2007-09 crash."

Ms. Yellen completely misunderstood the mortgage finance crisis. She believed it had nothing to do with the Federal Reserve’s fake money and fake interest rates. And she thought future crises could be avoided by changing bank regulations. Obviously, she has no idea what she is doing. But since she showed herself willing to go along with the elite’s flimflam… and finance it with printing-press money… she will have no trouble being approved by the Senate.

Assisting her (if approved) will be Neera Tanden at the Office of Management and Budget. Scheerpost’s Glenn Greenwald comments: "The announcement that Joe Biden intends to nominate Neera Tanden as his Director of the Office of Management and Budget – a critical position overseeing U.S. economic and regulatory policy – triggered a wide range of mockery, indignation and disgust from both the left and the right. That should not be surprising: though a thoroughly mediocre and ordinary D.C. swamp creature from the perspective of both ideology and competence, Tanden’s uniquely unhinged, venomous, corrupt and pathologically dishonest conduct as a Clinton Family and DNC apparatchik and President of the corporatist-and-despot-funded Center for American Progress (CAP) has earned her a list of enemies far longer and more impressive than her accomplishments."

But why appoint such a divisive person?

Diversity, Not Competence: Mr. Biden has pledged that his inner circle will be more “diverse.” “It will look,” he says, “like America itself.” There will be plenty of women, he assures us… and “people of color,” too. Ms. Tanden is a “two-fer”… Her parents are immigrants from India. She is also, by many accounts, not a very nice person. Perhaps that, too, should count as “diversity?” A diverse group inevitably includes a jerk or two. Ms. Tanden knows nothing about economics. That puts her squarely in the mainstream.

Besides, ignorance is a job requirement in a corrupt and hell-bent empire. Anyone with any real brains might try to turn the bus around… or, at least, slow it down.

Cecilia Rouse, Biden’s choice to head the Council of Economic Advisers, is another two-fer. Like Ms. Yellen, she is an academic economist well versed in school politics. And there’s Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, who will join Ms. Yellen as deputy Treasury Secretary. He intends to remake the economy so that it gives “people a shot when they need it most.” He said that was a “lesson I learned from my parents.”

What the heck that means, in terms of economic policy, we have no idea. Like Tanden, Adeyemo is a lawyer, as innocent about free market economics as a tree toad about the Theory of Evolution.

Diversity – not competence – is the name of the game now.

Foolish Goal: But wait… Is this really diverse? Not a chance. Nearly half the voters pulled the lever for Donald Trump, but there will be no red hats in the group. A third of the population is obese. But there will be no really fat people in the Biden team. According to a poll conducted this summer, 56% of Americans believe the country is “racist.” Who represents the racists in the Biden bunch? Half the American population has an IQ below 100. While there will be plenty of dumbbells in the executive line-up… few will have IQs below the 100 mark.

“Diversity” is a foolish goal. Would Japanese restaurants serve better sushi if they had more Italian chefs? Would the Supreme Court function better with more retarded, dyslexic, psychopathic, and insane members? Why should we care if the pastry chef is a man or a woman? It’s the croissants we care about. Would we really want a “diversity” dentist to drill our teeth? Do we want blind bus drivers… illiterate editors… or midget basketball players – just for diversity’s sake?

A Cabal of Insiders: But “diversity” is just part of the scam. That is, by choosing women and “people of color,” Joe Biden is able to pretend that he represents the “victim” classes… without actually giving a damn about them. The “of color” tag is especially helpful in this regard. It allows people who have spent their whole lives on the fast track – best schools, best jobs, best parties – to pass as underdogs! Tanden and Adeyemo, for example, both went to Yale Law School.

The whole thing is a fraud. Mr. Biden’s hand-picked henchmen are all cut from the same crooked lumber – the smart, slim, rich, conniving Deep State elite. They all think the same thing. They will all want the same things, too – power and money.

Let’s look again at Ms. Tanden. Here’s TIME: "The embodiment of a Washington insider and personification of its nerdocracy […] A player in Democratic politics for decades – she started out by volunteering for Mike Dukakis’ 1988 presidential bid – Tanden’s Rolodex rivals almost everyone else’s. Her steel-trap brain seldom forgets a footnote or a slight. When her critics have dismissed the 50-year-old insider as a lightweight, they have been proven wrong in short order."

Right at Home: In years past, a new president brought a new team. With Reagan, for example, came his trusted Californians. Carter brought in new blood from the South. Even Donald Trump brought Scaramucci, Giuliani, and other reprobates from New York. But Mr. Biden’s team will need no U-Hauls. They’re already at home in Bethesda or McLean. And they’ve lived in The Swamp so long, they’ve developed webbed feet.

Today, we looked at Biden’s economic team. Tomorrow, we’ll look at his foreign policy team. Stay tuned…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

Musical Interlude: Two Steps From Hell, "Evergreen"

Two Steps From Hell, "Evergreen"

"How It REALLY Is"

 

This is no joke...

"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 12/2/20"

DEC 2, 2020 10:30 AM: "WHO Again Revises Mask Guidelines; Poland 14th Country To Top 1 Million Confirmed COVID Cases: Live Updates"

○

"COVID-19 Lockdowns: Liberty and Science" (Excerpt)

by ammo.com

"The Chinese Coronavirus (COVID-19) hit American shores - officially, anyway, there is significant evidence that it arrived earlier - in late January 2020. The American public was then told that a two-week shutdown of the economy would “flatten the curve,” relieving the pressure on hospital intensive care units and saving lives in the long run.

The average American, including conservatives, being people of good faith, complied, thinking that this was a common-sense measure that would save lives in the wake of a new and mysterious pandemic. But two things quickly happened: First, the goalposts moved. No longer was it enough to “flatten the curve.” Now we were to be locked down until there was a cure.  No longer was it enough to “flatten the curve.” Now we were to be locked down until there was a cure.

Even the cure was not enough for some figures like the lionized-by-liberals Dr. Anthony Fauci - we would continue to be locked down even after a vaccine had been rammed through the approvals process with limited testing. When would we be allowed out by our masters? No one could answer this. 

Second, there was an intensification of the authoritarian measures. Some states, aided by Big Tech, introduced “contact tracing” where people had to sign in with extensive personal information if they wanted to, for example, eat out at a restaurant. This was so that, in the event of infection with COVID-19, the state health department would be able to track and trace everyone you had contact with. 

We should add that a third thing didn’t so much “happen” but was discovered: As it turns out unless you are old (over the age of 65), morbidly obese or suffer from a complicating disorder (such as diabetes or asthma), COVID-19 was little more than a bad cold or the flu. 

What’s more, there was a financial incentive from the government to mark deaths as COVID-19 deaths when they were not. George Floyd, the man who died while being arrested by the Minneapolis Police Department, sparking riots over the summer of 2020, is officially a COVID-19 death because he died with COVID-19, despite not dying of COVID-19.

By the fall of 2020, the facts became clear: While COVID-19 was dangerous for select populations, it had an extremely low death rate among the young and healthy.  The generous or naive might say that the COVID-19 health measures are misguided attempts to protect the population. A more hard-nosed or cynical person likely thinks that these measures are a deliberate attempt to enact totalitarian measures leveraging public panic.

This, of course, would not be the first time the government and its toadies took advantage of such a panic, with the 9/11 attacks presenting a recent example of such.  We believe that COVID-19 measures are little more than a cynical power grab. We also believe that they have no basis in “the science” often breathlessly invoked by the toadies of this power grab." 

In this article, we will make a compelling case that there is nothing scientific about this attack on the individual civil liberties of Americans. As Canadian Dr. Roger Hodkinson, a top pathologist, virologist, and CEO of a biotech company manufacturing COVID tests said, “this (COVID-19) is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.”

Please view this complete and critically important article here:

- https://www.zerohedge.com/news/

"Market Fantasy Updates 12/2/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates 12/2/20"

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

○

- https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

Wed, 12/02/2020 - 08:15: "Greed Is Back"

○

Updated live.

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

○

- https://markets.businessinsider.com/

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

12/2/20 9:01 AM: “3.3 Million Small Businesses Have Closed” and “1.1 Million Local and State Employees Have Lost their Jobs” as a Result of Pandemic"

○

Daily Update (Dec.1st to Dec 4th)

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

○

Insanity... 

○

And now... The End Game...

"Two Ways To Be Fooled..."

"There are two ways to be fooled. 

One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." 

- Soren Kierkegaard

Gregory Mannarino, "Into The Abyss: The US Economy In FULL ON MELTDOWN"

Gregory Mannarino, 

"Into The Abyss: The US Economy In FULL ON MELTDOWN"

- https://traderschoice.net/

○

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Sea of Dreams"

2002, "Sea of Dreams"

"Positive Covid Test? Ask This Question!"

"Positive Covid Test? Ask This Question!"

by Dr. Chris Martenson

"The lockdowns are based on surging "cases" which are based on positive PCR test results. However, what exactly is a positive PCR test result? What does it mean? I'll answer that and give you the answer to the most important question you should ask if you or a loved one gets a positive PCR test result. "What's the Cycle Threshold (CT) value for that test?" Sounds wonky but it's actually really important to understand. A low CT value means someone is loaded with virus. A high value, oppositely, means less of a viral load. Beyond a certain level the load is insufficient to either infect someone else or be of any clinical or epidemiological relevance whatsoever. The problem? Governments all over the country and world are basing their decisions on CT values that are very high. Too high."

- https://www.peakprosperity.com/

"After This New Wave Of Lockdowns, Most People Will Accept Any Solution As They Will Be So Desperate"

"After This New Wave Of Lockdowns, Most People

Will Accept Any Solution As They Will Be So Desperate"

by Epic Economist

"We are about to have another round of lockdowns amid what many have already pointed out as a "very, very dark winter". Hospitals are crowded, people are afraid and the state of our economy is oscillating between being very bad and rolling to the edge of a cliff. So far, national and global leaders’ response to the crisis doesn’t appear to have effectively helped to control the number of cases. 

In fact, we presented studies before showing that in countries where strict measures to bend the curb were adopted as opposed to countries that opted for more flexible measures similar rates in the number of cases, recoveries and casualties were observed. The idea of lockdowns might seem like a viable solution to protect people from contagion, but its effectiveness is being questioned by scientists and data analysts.

The side effects of widespread lockdowns only add to people's suffering. It all starts with the massive spread of fear. The mainstream media takes advantage of every possible loophole to explore this narrative and manipulate people to overreact to this situation. In this video, Epic Economist is going to do an epic analysis. We want to disclose how the effects of the crisis are driving millions to complete desperation - and yes, there is a very obscure reason behind it.

The elites continue to feed this catastrophe in order to make many of us hit our breaking points. Soon enough, millions will be unemployed, helpless, hungry, and homeless - in a state of complete despair. It is only when people have no more prospects that the real intentions of all marionettes of the establishment emerge and find the perfect cue to infiltrate our lives.

It's just sad to assume that all of this destruction is being caused in the name of money and power. They say all they want is to control the propagation of the virus. But why not do that through the use of efficient health safety instructions to workers? Is it just easier to shut down everything and lock everyone up? 

We have experienced the harsh collateral damages brought by business shutdowns before. In every wave of shutdowns, business activity is suddenly frozen, how are small business owners supposed to find ways to have enough revenue to pay for their staff, their rent, their operational costs? If it wasn't clear before, now it's pretty evident that this is the ultimate opportunity for big conglomerates to watch small business meltdown, and go bankrupt so that they can swallow them up while also annihilating the competition. 

The ones who absorb the impact of this chaotic freefall are us. 70 million unemployment claims were filed this year. According to Feeding America, 54 million people could go hungry by early next year. Food banks have witnessed a historic spike in demand. For every adult facing hunger, there are 4 food-insecure children.

On the other hand, with the memory of food shortages still fresh on their minds and moved by the anxiety of further supply chain disruptions, some have been wiping out store shelves in a phenomenon whose name couldn't be more appropriate - panic purchasing. Largely benefiting from this sudden hoarding behavior, major food retailers are readjusting prices for the growing demand. Knowing that they can soar prices by holding back inventory for a while, why wouldn't they do it?

In any case, these are the people who somehow can still afford food. At this stage of the crisis, millions can't. If they can't pay for their own food, how are they supposed to afford rent? With the expiration of federal assistance, those people have no source of income, thereby, in deep food and housing insecurity. 40 million are on the brink of eviction. 

They say we must stay at home, but at the same time, millions can lose their homes and no one is doing anything about it. Do you see the ambiguousness? This alarming economic suffering is a weapon on deviant hands. As Michael Snyder said “this is going to perfectly set the stage for the “solutions” that the elite plan to offer all of us in 2021. And once this “dark winter” finally ends, almost everybody will be absolutely desperate to return to their “normal” lives." So if you're wondering where this tortuous road will take us, maybe you should check one of our previous Great Reset videos, which expose the elite's dystopian quest for infinite money, and how they are willing to push us over the edge to get what they want. When we say things are about to get worse, it's because by now we can see that this is just the beginning."

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh7u9c1lSAs

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Related:

DEC 1, 2020 6:51 PM: "Texas, California See Record COVID Numbers, SF Mayor Hints At Another Lockdown: Live Updates"

“It’s Really Bad”

“It’s Really Bad”

by Brian Maher

"IT’S really bad"... “It” is the condition of small business in one populous American state - the garden state of New Jersey. 31% of its small businesses have remained shuttered since lockups began. In neighboring New York, the figure is 28%.

Combine the two thickly populated states...The lights are out, the machines are down and the cobwebs are up in nearly one-third of small businesses. That is, nearly one in three small businesses is dead - or in a deep coma. “It’s really bad,” laments Eileen Kean, New Jersey state director of the National Federation of Independent Businesses... “And without federal dollars coming into New Jersey, the Main Street stores and other establishments are not gonna make it through the winter.”

Meantime, New Jersey infections are ballooning. The state recently reported 4,669 cases in one day alone. Another lockdown is “on the table,” threatens the governor. Yet will food be on the table this winter… if the lockdown proceeds? Now swim the Hudson…

New York City May Not Recover Until 2025: In New York the outlook is grim; a winter of discontent is likely ahead... “It’s devastating how many restaurants have shuttered and jobs have been lost,” says Mr. Andrew Rigie, executive director of NYC Hospitality Alliances. “And with the infection rate rising and the looming threat of indoor dining closing again, many more will close unless the government provides adequate support to these small businesses.”

What will become of the owners? And the workers? Where will they turn? Mr. Mark Zandi is chief economist at Moody's Analytics. He hazards New York City may not recover until 2025. Why not? Because New York is not structurally designed for social distancing: "This is an event that struck right at the heart of New York's comparative advantages. Being globally oriented, being stacked up in skyscrapers and packed together in stadiums: the very thing that made New York the pandemic undermined New York, was upended by it." Meantime, Broadway remains dark.

Expect a New Recession Starting Now: Lest you think New York and New Jersey suffer exceptional casualty rates, please have another guess… About 30% of small businesses remain shut across the 50 states - on average. Can the next recession be far off as additional lockdowns menace? No, says Jim Rickards: "The economy was in a technical recession from February to July 2020. Then that recession ended and growth resumed from July to November 2020… Now, we’re heading into a second technical recession, which could become quite severe in the first quarter of 2021… The recessions are caused by the imposition of extreme lockdowns…" Most of the new Biden team favor lockdowns even though they don’t work. So, expect more lockdowns. And, expect a new recession starting now as the lockdowns are imposed.

Second-quarter GDP collapsed at an annualized 32% rate… in the dread depths of the pandemic. Can this economy endure another similar lacing? $4.8 Trillion of Lost GDP? The pandemic could steal between $3.2 trillion and $4.8 trillion from the economy over the course of two years. That is according to a freshly hatched USC study. This study likewise concluded that compulsory closings and partial reopenings could inflict a 22% GDP hemorrhaging in one year alone.

Here are additional findings: 54 million to 367 million workdays would be lost due to people getting sick or dying from COVID-19; 2 million to nearly 15 million workdays would be lost due to employees staying home to care for sick loved ones; Job losses could range from 14.7% to 23.8%, and in the worst-case, affect an estimated 36.5 million workers.

The angels and saints tremble at the prospect.Yet fear not - the cavalry is mounting up…

A Bipartisan Spending Bill: Senate “moderates” proposed a bipartisan $908 billion spending bill this morning. Our minions inform us that small businesses would receive some $300 billion of relief. $240 billion would go funneling to state and local governments. $180 billion would sustain the jobless. The remainder would wend its way into the coffers of the airlines and other segments of the transportation industry. At writing, neither party’s kingpins have blessed the plan.

Democrats are bucking for a $2 trillion package. Republicans, meantime, are out for a more modest $500 billion bill. But does the Treasury Department have $500 billion, $908 billion, or $2 trillion stowed away in its strongbox? It does not. The container is empty. The federal government must therefore go upon the borrow… again.

Spending and Debt: As we have written before: Governments incline naturally to spending, as governments incline naturally to roguery, crookery and rascality. Since taxation alone will not fund their sprees, governments incline naturally to debt. The United States government was dreadfully indebted before the pandemic. Now it is plunging deeper and deeper into debt... without the GDP gains to brunt the cost.

Meantime, present yields on its 10-year Treasury bond scrape along at a vanishing 0.93%. Yields on its 30-year Treasury - at 1.58% - run scarcely higher. That is, debt is nearly free. Given these rates…

The United States government can no more resist debt’s seductions than a cat can resist catnip, a bee can resist honey… or a moth can resist flame. The flame is drawing the United States in, surely, inexorably, relentlessly.

Total federal debt presently rises to a record $27 trillion... or 143% of GDP. Never has the ratio been higher. Today’s ratio outdoes the previous record of 121% from 1946 - after the United States emptied its pockets to scotch the Axis. Today it is emptying its pockets to scotch the virus. What is the fracturing point? We do not know. Yet do we wish to find out?

Unproductive Debt: As we have also argued before, here is the greatest defect of United States government de‌bt: It is largely unproductive. It is a millstone about the neck. The lion’s take of federal government borrowings goes to “social welfare” and to service existing de‌bt. That is, it goes largely to non-productive uses. It sedates and depresses - it does not stimulate. We must recall that today’s borrowing represents a claim upon the future, a theft of the future. The more we borrow to consume today… the less we will be able to consume tomorrow.

The Citizen Pays One Way or Another: Government claims no resources of its own. It collects them in one of two ways. It presses a pistol against the citizen’s ribs… and plunders his wallet. That is, it taxes him. Or it takes to the credit markets, empty cup in hand. But even if the government borrows, the pistol goes against the ribs. That is because the citizen must pay taxes to service the debt. And how - again - does the government haul in taxes?

Either way… the citizen pays. Here is our darkest fear: One day, soon or late, we will all be paying - and royally."

- dailyreckoning.com

"Here Come the Hacks"

"Here Come the Hacks"

By Bill Bonner

"I’m working my a** off with the Christmas stuff that, you know, who gives

a f*** about Christmas stuff and decorations, but I need to do it, right?"

– Melania Trump

WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "Continuing our “notes from a foreign country”… Driving from Miami to Maryland last week, we noticed the billboards. There were two major themes – God and Mammon. As for God, many were those that urged passers-by to get with the program. Some offered a simple, time-tested formula – “Jesus Saves.” Others were more specific: “Stop the Pain. Follow Christ.”

Multilingual Mammon: But for those who lacked faith in God, there were other saviors on offer. Hardly had we left the airport when a billboard announced, in Spanish: “Injured? Get the aggressive lawyer on your side.” A little further on, another Spanish language billboard suggested that America’s bosses might not be playing fair and square with their wetback employees: “They didn’t pay you? Fight back. Call Juan.”

After leaving the Miami area, the language changed to English. But the pitch was the same. “Injured? I got $795,000 for my client.” “Accident? Call Shimer & Partners. No check for you; you pay us nothing.” One billboard told victims to call “the sevens” – 777-7777. Across the road, they were advertising the nines – 999-9999.

You could get any kind of law firm you wanted. One was clearly Jewish. Another was WASPish. One was Hispanic. Another featured Black lawyers. One claimed to have scored $1.2 million for a client. Another featured an injury victim holding a check for $1.9 million. All the way up the east coast, the signs continued.

Holiday Humbug: What to make of it? In no other country in the world have we ever seen anything like it. But now, we are back at home… only a mile from where we were born. It is autumn. The leaves have almost all fallen to the ground. And this is not the season for pitbull lawyers. Yes, it’s December already. The holiday spirit is upon us.

And yet, many Americans – like the first lady – may be in a sour mood. There are still some 20 million people collecting unemployment benefits. The gap between rich and poor has widened; the stock market has soared while the economy has gone limp. The office parties have been canceled. We even dropped our own annual Christmas party – nobody would come. The CDC is telling people to stay home. And people go around with the holy rag on their faces… not so much to ward off evil spirits (the evidence, such as it is, is mixed) as to show their solidarity with the bien pensant mob.

Stick to the Script: And now, to make things worse – here come the hacks! Here at the Diary, we have no information you don’t have. Nor do we have any insights that you couldn’t find on your own. All we do is try to connect the dots. Dear readers write to tell us that we’ve missed this dot or that one… And surely, we have. Like the stars in the night sky, there are billions of them. What we try to do is take them in… as if they were a Seurat painting… not looking at the individual points of light, but at the pattern. We squint… and what we see, faintly, is a remarkable scene.

Yes, Dear Reader… you’ve probably caught on to our amor fati (love of fate) view of things. Nature has her patterns, her cycles, her birth announcements and eulogies… her buds and her dead leaves… And over the year, even the stars move.

Great empires must stick to the script, too. In our view, America’s time to take her bow was at the end of the 20th century. The American Empire should have been gracefully dismantled… with America re-entering the community of civilized nations. Instead, Mother Nature, with her magnificent sense of mischief, gave her the leaders she needed to make a fool of herself.

George W. Bush with his airhead “War Against Terror”… Barack Obama with his unaffordable medical care plan… Donald J. Trump with his trade wars… assassinations… tax cuts… and the biggest spending increases – and deficits – in history.

Downward Slide: But wait… What would you have to do to keep the empire on its downward track? Keep the foreign wars going – with a total empire spending bill of more than $1 trillion per year… Keep the gravy train rolling at home, too – bailouts, giveaways, “stimulus”… and add (if you’re able) fuller medical care coverage…Continue spending more than you collect in taxes… And keep printing fake money to pay for it all.

The Congressional Budget Office says we’re already headed for $100 trillion in deficits – it’s baked in the cake – over the next 30 years. What kind of a moronic leader would want to add to that? What kind of a fool would Americans elect to guide them into their final disaster? What does history need to carry on the work of Bush, Obama, and Trump?

Lifelong Deep Stater: You already have the answer: Joseph Biden! He’s been a Swamp critter… and card-carrying member of the Deep State… for nearly half a century, having signed on to every piece of crackpot legislation to come along. And soon, he’s bringing a whole team of some of Washington’s worst sleazeballs, hacks, has-beens, never-weres, and should-never-bes back into the White House. Let’s look at them more closely – tomorrow."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

Gregory Mannarino, "New Record High For Stocks In The Middle Of A Full Blown Currency/Debt Crisis"

Gregory Mannarino,

"New Record High For Stocks In The Middle 

Of A Full Blown Currency/Debt Crisis"

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, “Zero Degrees Zero”

Liquid Mind, “Zero Degrees Zero”

"A Look to the Heavens"

 "The most distant object easily visible to the eye is M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy some two and a half million light-years away. But without a telescope, even this immense spiral galaxy - spanning over 200,000 light years - appears as a faint, nebulous cloud in the constellation Andromeda. In contrast, details of a bright yellow nucleus and dark winding dust lanes, are revealed in this digital telescopic image. 

Narrow band image data recording emission from hydrogen atoms, shows off the reddish star-forming regions dotting gorgeous blue spiral arms and young star clusters. While even casual skygazers are now inspired by the knowledge that there are many distant galaxies like M31, astronomers seriously debated this fundamental concept in the 20th century. Were these "spiral nebulae" simply outlying components of our own Milky Way Galaxy or were they instead "island universes" - distant systems of stars comparable to the Milky Way itself? This question was central to the famous Shapley-Curtis debate of 1920, which was later resolved by observations of M31 in favor of Andromeda, island universe.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100109.html

Chet Raymo, “Try To Remember…”

“Try To Remember…”

by Chet Raymo

“In a sleepless hour of the night, I was trying to remember the last name of a person I have known well for more than forty years. When my spouse stirred in her sleep, I asked her. She couldn't remember either. One again I started mentally through the alphabet. "I think it starts with B," I said. Ten minutes later she rolled over and said, "The next letter is R." Bingo! The name popped into my head. Or I should say, "popped out of my head." Because it was in there somewhere, recorded in a tangle of neurons as materially as if it were written on a piece of paper.

There was a time, back when I was a young man, when some scientists thought memory might be molecular - stored as proteins or RNA molecules that have somehow been modified by experience. The molecule theory of memory rested on experiments with worms (I remember the cover illustration on Scientific American). The worms were taught to navigate a simple maze. Then they were ground up and fed to untrained worms, which seemed to navigate the maze without training. Only molecules, it was thought, could have survived the transfer. Those experiments have been discredited. Scientists now overwhelmingly believe that memories are stored as webs of connections between spider-shaped brain cells called neurons. Each neuron is connected through electrochemical connections to thousands of others. According to the current view, experience fine-tunes the connections, strengthening some, weakening others, creating a different "trace" of interconnected cells for each memory.

But truth be told, memory is still deeply mysterious. How exactly are a lifetime of memories stored and retrieved at will? We know how it works for computers, but how for the human brain? What is self-consciousness? What are dreams? This is the primary scientific agenda for the 21st century. In the middle of the night I go fishing, in that sea of potentiated synapses that are the human soul, for a name that becomes ever more difficult to extract as I get older. I troll the alphabet: A, B, C, D… The name is in there, along with a face and more that forty years of interactions. The Nobel Prizes are waiting.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

•

Graphic: Salvador Dali, "The Persistence of Memory"

"Only Barbarians..."

“Only barbarians are not curious about where they come from, 

how they came to be where they are, where they appear to be going, 

whether they wish to go there, and if so, why, and if not, why not.”

- Isaiah Berlin

"When the Sky Is No More Than Remembered Light: Mark Strand Reads His Poignant Poem 'The End'”

"When the Sky Is No More Than Remembered Light: 

Mark Strand Reads His Poignant Poem 'The End'”

“Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing, 

when the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.”

- by Maria Popova

“It’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention,” the Pulitzer-winning poet Mark Strand (April 11, 1934–November 29, 2014) observed in contemplating the artist’s task to bear witness to the universe. And yet this universe in which we live is predicated on impermanence, and the lucky accident of our existence is crowned with the certitude of its end from the start. Why, then, are we always so shocked by the finitude of all we hold dear and, above all, by our own mortality? Few are those who can say with sincerity, like Rilke did an exquisite 1923 letter, that “death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.” Instead, we spend our lives shuddering at any reminder of our inevitable end, unsalved by the miracle of having lived at all.

Montaigne articulated the central paradox of being perfectly in 16th-century meditation on death and the art of living: “To lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago.” Still, lament we do, and some of our greatest art gives voice to that lamentation.

That paradox is what Strand explores with transcendent courage and curiosity in his poem “The End,” found in his "Collected Poems" (public library) - the trove of truth and beauty that gave us Strand’s love letter to dreams.

In this hauntingly beautiful recording, courtesy of The New York Public Library, an aged Strand reads his poignant poem shortly before he repaid his own debt to mortality:

"The End"

by Mark Strand

"Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,

Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like

When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,

Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,

When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down

No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.

When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus

And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,

Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing

When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end."

Complement with the lyrical "Duck, Death and the Tulip", Marcus Aurelius on mortality and the key to living fully, and the great Zen master Seung Sahn Soen-sa’s explanation of death and the life-force to a child, then revisit Strand’s celebration of clouds and everything they mean."

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"The Worst Thing..."

 

"Not Sorry..."

"Who is more responsible than a gull who finds and follows meaning, a higher purpose for life? For a thousand years we have scrabbled after fish heads, but now we have a reason to live - to learn, to discover, to be free! How much more there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there’s reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!"

"What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himself alone;

he learned to fly, and was not sorry for the price that he had paid...”

- Richard Bach, 

“Jonathan Livingston Seagull”

The Daily "Near You?"

Walnut Creek, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Strange 'Coincidences' That Should Deeply Bother Everyone Trying To Put The Puzzle Pieces Together"

"Strange 'Coincidences' That Should Deeply Bother

 Everyone Trying To Put The Puzzle Pieces Together"

by Michael Snyder 

"Whether you are a Republican, a Democrat or someone that doesn’t identify with either major party, you should care deeply about the integrity of our elections. Because if we don’t have elections that are free and fair, our system of government simply will not work. If we come out of the 2020 elections with about half the country believing that the race for president was rigged, that is a major problem. Once faith in our elections is gone, it will be nearly impossible to restore, and that is why it is absolutely imperative that we try to figure out how this election went so haywire.

In recent days, I have seen so many people point out some of the numbers from the election that should be deeply bothering all of us. In this article, I am going to try to summarize some of the most important points.

In 2012, Barack Obama cruised to re-election even though he received 3.5 million less votes than he got in 2008.

In 2020, President Trump was supposedly soundly defeated even though he received 11 million more votes than he did in 2016.

They are telling us that Trump was defeated because of a historic turnout by Biden voters. But the number of counties that Biden actually won was a record low for a “winning candidate” by a very wide margin. It is being reported that Trump won 83 percent of all U.S. counties, and Biden only won 17 percent: We are told that Biden won more votes nationally than any presidential candidate in history. But he won a record low of 17 percent of counties; he only won 524 counties, as opposed to the 873 counties Obama won in 2008. Yet, Biden somehow outdid Obama in total votes.

How in the world can you win the presidency by losing more than 80 percent of the counties in the entire country? Yes, I understand that the major population centers are where the votes are. But when Obama won his two elections, at least he was victorious in more than 20 percent of all U.S. counties both times: "Former President Obama ushered in the previous low in 2012, winning re-election with just 689 counties, or 22 percent – breaking his own record set in 2008, where he won with 875 counties, or 28 percent.

Biden underperformed Obama almost everywhere except in the urban population centers that were absolutely critical to Biden’s victory. In those urban population centers, Biden supposedly piled up obscene vote totals that are very difficult to believe.

And it just so happens that those heavily blue urban population centers all seemed to stop counting votes at about the same time on the night of the election. All of a sudden, voting came to a standstill in Milwaukee, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Atlanta. As many have pointed out, if you stop and wait to see how all of the other areas of your state have voted, you can figure out exactly how many votes you need to put your candidate over the top.

When counting finally resumed, there were four massive vote dumps in the middle of the night which proved decisive in some of the most critical swing states:

1. An update in Michigan listed as of 6:31AM Eastern Time on November 4th, 2020, which shows 141,258 votes for Joe Biden and 5,968 votes for Donald Trump

2. An update in Wisconsin listed as 3:42AM Central Time on November 4th, 2020, which shows 143,379 votes for Joe Biden and 25,163 votes for Donald Trump

3. A vote update in Georgia listed at 1:34AM Eastern Time on November 4th, 2020, which shows 136,155 votes for Joe Biden and 29,115 votes for Donald Trump

4. An update in Michigan listed as of 3:50 AM Eastern Time on November 4th, 2020, which shows 54,497 votes for Joe Biden and 4,718 votes for Donald Trump

In the end, Biden won Wisconsin by less than one percent, he won Pennsylvania by just over one percent, he won Georgia by less than one percent and he won Arizona by less than one percent. If you reverse the results in those four states, President Trump would be the winner of the race.

The voting behavior in the key midwestern states was particularly suspicious. The following comes from Patrick Basham: "Midwestern states Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin always swing in the same direction as Ohio and Iowa, their regional peers. Ohio likewise swings with Florida. Current tallies show that, outside of a few cities, the Rust Belt swung in Trump’s direction. Yet, Biden leads in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin because of an apparent avalanche of black votes in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee. Biden’s ‘winning’ margin was derived almost entirely from such voters in these cities, as coincidentally his black vote spiked only in exactly the locations necessary to secure victory. He did not receive comparable levels of support among comparable demographic groups in comparable states, which is highly unusual for the presidential victor."

There are countless people that have been looking into how vote totals in the most critical swing states may have been manipulated, but the big tech companies have been doing their best to keep such information from spreading widely.

In fact, it is being reported that Facebook applied an “emergency change” to its news feed algorithm right after the election: "In the aftermath of the contentious presidential election, Facebook reportedly made an “emergency change” to its algorithm, which resulted in the suppression of content from “hyperpartisan” outlets. Employees at Facebook are now asking if the “nicer news feed” can stay in place long term, according to a Tuesday report from The New York Times." This “nicer news feed” greatly favors mainstream news outlets such as CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The big tech companies are absolutely determined to shape how we think, and the power that they now possess is colossal. They will determine what “truth” is allowed to be told in the years ahead, and they will continue to push our culture down a dystopian path that only leads to complete oblivion.

This election was a major turning point, and those that directed events behind the scenes are on the verge of totally getting away with it. But this isn’t just a loss for the Republican Party. This is a loss for all Americans, because our entire system of government is crumbling right in front of our eyes."

- http://themostimportantnews.com/

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"LA County Supervisor Eats At Restaurant Hours After Voting To Ban Outdoor Dining"

"LA County Supervisor Eats At Restaurant 

Hours After Voting To Ban Outdoor Dining"

by Andrea Widburg 

"In the early days of television, Sheila Kuehl had a role in a now forgotten show, "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis", which ended in 1963. She then became a leftist, a lawyer, and a politician. Despite the long interval between her Hollywood years and today, Kuehl still clings to that lampooned Hollywood notion about stars versus "the little people." How else can one explain that, after railing against restaurants and voting to shut them down, Kuehl promptly went to a nice restaurant for dinner?

During the lockdown, politicians continued to draw their taxpayer-funded paychecks and telecommute from the comfort of their homes. Meanwhile, they targeted small businesses that depend on dealings with the public. More than any other business, restaurants were in Democrat politicians' crosshairs.

As of mid-September, more than 100,000 restaurants had closed across America. In the two months since then, it's certain that several thousand more have closed. The San Francisco Chronicle, for example, runs a regular column identifying restaurants that are gone.

Every closed restaurant represents several people's lives going down the drain. The owner who sank all of his money in the restaurant, the employees who worked there, the suppliers who were dependent on its custom, and the surrounding stores who counted on the foot traffic it brought — all of it's gone. And I might add, there's no reason to believe that these horrific losses made a damned bit of difference to the course of a virus that is relentlessly working its way through the population.

While the people have suffered, the politicians imposing this suffering, like European royalty of old, have flaunted their special status.

Denver's mayor, Michael Hancock, flew to his family within 30 minutes of telling Denver citizens to stay home for Thanksgiving.

Andrew Cuomo, having reinstated the lockdown across New York, boasted about his family coming home for Thanksgiving.

Illinois's Governor J.B. Pritzker, another Democrat millionaire, was happy to see his family travel during the height of the spring lockdown.

Pennsylvania's health secretary, "Rachel" Levine, who leftists pretend is not a mentally ill man telling people he's a woman, forced sick people into nursing homes in May, even as he secretly removed his own mother. Levine, incidentally, is being floated as a possible surgeon general. That's just what America needs: a hypocritical, self-entitled, mentally ill surgeon general.

And in California, Governor Gavin Newsom started by making headlines for imposing ridiculously stringent lockdown rules on people's Thanksgiving celebrations, including requiring outdoor dining only, suggesting masks throughout the meal, giving people limited permission to use the bathroom, and cracking down on singing.

Then, just before Thanksgiving, photos emerged of Newsom and his wife having an indoor dinner with a large crowd of lobbyists at the über-expensive French Laundry in Napa Valley. None of the guests was masked. Afterward, Newsom gave a fake apology because Democrats are so certain that they've achieved perpetual power that they don't even bother anymore to go through the motions of political humility.

The latest politician who can't be bothered with the rules she imposes on little people is former Hollywood actress Sheila Kuehl: the Los Angeles County Supervisor, a Democrat, ate outdoors at Il Forno Trattoria in Santa Monica, just hours after casting the deciding vote to ban all outdoor dining in the county last week.

"You can watch my 7pm live report on this in the link above. Tonight at 10pm I'll have a full story about this, including reaction from local restaurant owners, and fellow L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, who did not support the decision to ban outdoor dining." @FOXLA

- Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) December 1, 2020

Kuehl said during a recent Board of Supervisors meeting that outdoor dining is “a most dangerous situation,” saying she felt there was a risk of transmission of the virus from unmasked customers to their masked waiters and waitresses. “This is a serious health emergency and we must take it seriously,” Kuehl said. “The servers are not protected from us, and they’re not protected from their other tables that they’re serving at that particular time, plus all the hours in which they’re working.”

According to Kuehl, she ate there one last time before she destroyed it. Okay, I made up the part about destroying it, but her spokesperson said the meal was a fond farewell. “She did dine al fresco at Il Forno on the very last day it was permissible,” a spokesperson for Kuehl told Fox 11 after the broadcaster received tips about what happened. “She loves Il Forno, has been saddened to see it, like so many restaurants, suffer from a decline in revenue. She ate there, taking appropriate precautions, and sadly will not dine there again until our Public Health Orders permit.” But what about Kuehl's claim that such dining was "a most dangerous situation"? Apparently, it's dangerous only for the little people.

These people are disgusting. I used to think voters were fools who kept voting them in. I now suspect that voters were naïve and credulous for believing that elections are fair. In California, at least, a lot of people probably got into office "the Dominion way." We need to clean up elections and throw these people to the curb."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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Related:

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