Monday, December 14, 2020

"Market Fantasy Updates PM 12/14/20"

"Market Fantasy Updates PM 12/14/20"
Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/14/20:
"The US Dollar Is Cratering AGAIN! 
Plus Important Updates"
"The more I see of the monied classes, 
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Updated live.
Daily Update (Dec. 13th to 15th)
Insanity... 
And now... The End Game...

"Offstage Noises"

"Offstage Noises"
by Jim Kunstler

"Friday night, the US Supreme Court booted the Texas case against the swing state election janksters, the citation of “standing” likely a cover story for another reason that isn’t strictly legal doctrine but rather a sentiment, namely, that a presidential election dispute belongs more properly in the elected House of Representatives than in the unelected SCOTUS - at least for now, with more cases probably coming at them. The justices didn’t explain their decision.

This wasn’t so with Bush v. Gore in 2000, by the way, but we are a different country now, one mired in institutional paralysis and failure, thanks to the bureaucratic “resistance.” Anyway, the Supremes wouldn’t hear the evidence of ballot fraud, nor has any state court yet, so ignore the plaintive cries from the seditionist news media that claims of gross election irregularities are “baseless.”

Today, Dec 14, the fifty state electoral college slates meet to cast their votes. This used to be significant back when a discernable consensus about reality existed across this land. But now that E pluribus unum has been replaced by anything goes and nothing matters, the more consequential action will be shifting offstage and backstage.

For instance, President Trump’s 2018 Executive Order 13848 requires the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), John Ratcliffe, to report forty-five days after the election on foreign election interference. That’s this Friday. What might Mr. Ratcliffe know? Well, supposedly everything. Except both the CIA and the FBI must be considered undependable now, with RussiaGate prankster Gina Haspel in charge of the CIA, and Christopher Wray slow-walking every requested declassified FBI document for years. So, Mr. Ratcliffe must be receiving more dependable intelligence from others, most likely Defense Intelligence.

Many readers may have heard about a supposed raid on the CIA cyber-warfare station in Frankfurt, Germany, and the seizure there of the Dominion computer servers by US Army special ops personnel. Forty-five days was probably enough time for Defense Intelligence to run forensic analysis on those servers, if, in fact, they existed and the raid actually happened. Standing by on that. We just don’t know. But if so, then Mr. Ratcliffe must have some results by now.

What nobody has asked is: in the first place, what on earth would the Dominion servers be doing in Frankfurt, outside the USA, in possession of the CIA? Is the CIA monitoring the vote tabulation… or assisting in it? This raises another question no one has addressed: Servers serve computer networks, which operate via the Internet. If Dominion vote tabulation machines all over America are not allowed to be hooked up to the Internet, how can they be a network? And why would they need a server? If I’m missing something there, please discuss in the comments section.

Which raises another question: Is there not sufficient evidence to see that the use of computers has completely screwed up our election process? Is this not a classic Joseph Tainter style quandary of overinvestments in complexity producing diminishing returns — which, when enough of them pile up, gets you to the collapse of civilizations? Are we going to allow further screw-ups by letting the State of Georgia conduct their January 5 senate run-off election on the same Dominion machines that they used on November 3? Apparently, that’s exactly what Georgia intends to do.

All right, let’s return to next Friday’s report by DNI Ratcliffe. There’s a lot of talk of strange intersections between the Dominion company and foreign countries, starting with Dominion’s ownership being based in Canada (on the same floor of a Toronto office building as a George Soros-linked non-profit, the Make Way Foundation). Attorney Sidney Powell has current court cases alleging nefarious connections between Dominion, Venezuela, and China. (Note: nearly all of Venezuela’s oil exports go to China, and Iran has helped Venezuela develop capacity of its difficult-to-produce Orinoco oil sands.) Does Mr. Ratcliffe have the same information that Miz Powell has, and perhaps a whole lot more. Might China have any interest in favoring the election of Joe Biden over Donald Trump?

Well, plenty of evidence has already been made public that Joe Biden is a bought-and-paid-for asset of China - for example, a 2017 $5-milion unsecured, interest-free, forgivable loan from China’s intel service managed CEFC energy company advanced to son Hunter Biden’s Hudson West III front company, and emails stating how the split worked between Biden family members and a few outside partners. I would suppose that Mr. Ratcliffe knows a whole lot more detail about this and other Biden family business ventures in foreign lands, and that we may hear more about that on Friday - perhaps even a declaration that Joe Biden is a security threat to the USA and as such disqualified from holding high office. That would kind of throw a monkey wrench into America’s election proceedings, don’tcha think? I can’t imagine that investigators have not been tracing the money trail through the various shell companies and laundromat banks that lead to Joe Biden’s own accounts.

What if the news media refuses to report on DNI Ratcliffe’s Friday report? I have an idea: We have an asset called National Public Radio, NPR. Lately, it has been a hostage to Democratic Wokesters who refuse to report news that is unfavorable to the Woke Democratic cause of destroying the republic. In fact, when the Biden family crime story broke in late October, NPR’s managing editor, Terrance Samuels, tweeted out: “We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.” In a national emergency, perhaps President Trump might fire Terrance Samuels’s ass, along with the rest of NPRs top management, and use the network to bypass the seditious media and social networks to get actual news out to the American people? Just an idea."

"Time To Heel" (Excerpt)

"Time To Heel" (Excerpt)
by Jim Quinn

“Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.” – Letter from Aldous Huxley to George Orwell, 1949

Huxley’s vision of the future held sway for the next five decades, as generation after generation underwent government social indoctrination in public schools; medicating those who didn’t conform reduced dissent; incessant propaganda from government-controlled media convinced the masses to consume, obey and feel (no thinking allowed); and learned to love their debt servitude.

Orwell’s vision has taken precedence since September 11, 2001, slowly at first, but rapidly in the last year. A population drowning in cultural irrelevancy, ego enhancing distractions, and technological gadgetry making them dumber, are now being corralled using electronic surveillance, totalitarian dictates by government lackeys, the shredding of the Constitution, intense propaganda, Soviet style censorship of speech, and 3rd world style fraudulent elections to install the Deep State chosen puppet leader. The age of Huxley’s Brave New World has degenerated into Orwell’s 1984 and Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.

“Violence does not always and necessarily lunge straight for your throat; more often than not it demands of its subjects only that they pledge allegiance to lies, that they participate in falsehood.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

President – Select, Trojan dementia patient, Joe Biden, has been attempting to utter the words his handlers put on his teleprompter on the rare occasions when they let him out of the basement. “Time to Heal” has been the slogan his PR flunkies have told him to yammer about regarding their fake plan to reunite the country after surviving four years of bad orange man. The propaganda machine media gush with praise for all Biden’s Deep State apparatchik cabinet selections as Biden’s handlers attempt to engineer a 3rd Obama term.

Biden is the clueless “nice guy” dupe who mouths words of reconciliation, unity and healing, while his fabricating financier fascist controllers implement their Great Reset plan in conjunction with their global elite co-conspirators. CNN conducts an “interview” with 3rd grade level questions, designed to comfort the ignorant masses.

Not one challenging question about his bagman Hunter or how he got 80 million votes without campaigning, putting forth his agenda or leaving his basement. CNN and the rest of the propaganda corporate media are just a division of the Democrat party, along with Facebook, Twitter, Google, Soros, Bloomberg, CIA, FBI, and the rest of the Deep State empire.

Our descent into darkness is being built upon the lies of our government, lies of medical experts, lies of the media and journalists paid to perpetuate falsehoods, and a globalist manufactured hysteria over a flu – designed to initiate the Great Reset. The majority of Americans are fearfully following the dictatorial mandates of their authoritarian governors and mayors to lockdown harder and mask more because “science”, even though the current “surge” in cases is happening in states, counties, and cities that have been locked down and masked for months. The lack of independent thought being exhibited by the average American is a sickening display of willful ignorance."
Please view this complete, most highly recommended article here:

"How It Really Is"

 

Any questions?

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"

Liquid Mind, "Laguna Indigo"
Full screen mode recommended.

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. Centered on NGC 7814, the pretty field of view would almost be covered by a full moon. NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero for its resemblance to the brighter more famous M104, the Sombrero Galaxy. 

 
Both Sombrero and Little Sombrero are spiral galaxies seen edge-on, and both have extensive central bulges cut by a thinner disk with dust lanes in silhouette. In fact, NGC 7814 is some 40 million light-years away and an estimated 60,000 light-years across. That actually makes the Little Sombrero about the same physical size as its better known namesake, appearing to be smaller and fainter only because it is farther away. A very faint dwarf galaxy, potentially a satellite of NGC 7814, is revealed in the deep exposure just below the Little Sombrero.”

"It Is Our Time..."

"Well, it is our fate to live in a time of crisis. To live in a time when all forms and values are being challenged. In other and more easy times, it was not, perhaps, necessary for the individual to confront himself with a clear question: What is it that you really believe? What is it that you really cherish? What is it for which you might, actually, in a showdown, be willing to die? I say, with all the reticence which such large, pathetic words evoke, that one cannot exist today as a person – one cannot exist in full consciousness – without having to have a showdown with one’s self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in one’s mind what matters and what does not matter.” 
- Dorothy Thompson

"Fast Time and the Aging Mind"

"Fast Time and the Aging Mind"
By Richard A. Friedman

"Ah, the languorous days of endless summer! Who among us doesn't remember those days and wonder wistfully where they've gone? Why does time seem to speed up as we age? Even the summer solstice, the longest, sunniest day of the year, seems to have passed in a flash. No less than the great William James opined on the matter, thinking that the apparent speed of times passage was a result of adultsexperiencing fewer memorable events: Each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly note at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse. 

Don't despair. I am happy to tell you that the apparent velocity of time is a big fat cognitive illusion and happy to say there may be a way to slow the velocity of our later lives.

Although the sense that we perceive time as accelerating as we age is very common, it is hard to prove experimentally. In one of the largest studies to date, Dr. Marc Wittmann of the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health, in Germany, interviewed 499 German and Austrian subjects ranging in age from 14 to 94 years; he asked each subject how quickly time seemed to pass during the previous week, month, year and decade. Surprisingly, there were few differences related to age. With one exception: when researchers asked the subjects about the 10-year interval, older subjects were far more likely than the younger subjects to report that the last decade had passed quickly.

Other, non-age-related factors influence our perception of time. Recent research shows that emotions affect our perception of time. For example, Dr. Sylvie Droit-Volet, a psychology professor at Blaise Pascal University in France, manipulated subjectsemotional state by showing them movies that excited fear or sadness and then asked them to estimate the duration of the visual stimulus. She found that time appears to pass more slowly when we are afraid.

Attention and memory play a part in our perception of time. To accurately gauge the passage of time required to accomplish a given task, you have to be able to focus and remember a sequence of information. That's partly why someone with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder has trouble judging time intervals and grows impatient with what seems like the slow passage of time. The neurotransmitter dopamine is critically important to our ability to process time. Stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall, which increase dopamine function in the brain, have the effect of speeding up time perception; antipsychotic drugs, which block dopamine receptors, have the opposite effect.

On the whole, most of us perceive short intervals of time similarly, regardless of age. Why, then, do older people look back at long stretches of their lives and feel it's a race to the finish? Here's a possible answer: think about what it's like when you learn something for the first time, for example how, when you are young, you learn to ride a bike or navigate your way home from school. It takes time to learn new tasks and to encode them in your memory. And when you are learning about the world for the first time, you are forming a fairly steady stream of new memories of events, places and people.

When, as an adult, you look back at your childhood experiences, they appear to unfold in slow motion probably because the sheer number of them gives you the impression that they must have taken forever to acquire. So when you recall the summer vacation when you first learned to swim or row a boat, it feels endless. But this is merely an illusion, the way adults understand the past when they look through the telescope of lost time. This, though, is not an illusion: almost all of us faced far steeper learning curves when we were young. Most adults do not explore and learn about the world the way they did when they were young; adult life lacks the constant discovery and endless novelty of childhood.

Studies have shown that the greater the cognitive demands of a task, the longer its duration is perceived to be. Dr. David Eagleman at Baylor College of Medicine found that repeated stimuli appear briefer in duration than novel stimuli of equal duration. Is it possible that learning new things might slow down our internal sense of time?

The question and the possibility it presents put me in mind of my father, who died a few years ago at age 86. An engineer by training, he read constantly after he retired. His range was enormous; he read about everything from astronomy to natural history, travel and gardening. I remember once discovering dozens of magazines and journals in the house and was convinced that my parents had become the victims of a mail-order scam. Thinking I'd help with the clutter, I began to bundle up the magazines for recycling when my father angrily confronted me, demanding to know what the hell I was doing. I read all of these, he said.

And then it dawned on me. I cannot recall his ever having remarked on how fast or slow his life seemed to be going. He was constantly learning, always alive to new ideas and experience. Maybe that's why he never seemed to notice that time was passing.

So what, you might say, if we have an illusion about time speeding up? But it matters, I think, because the distortion signals that we might squeeze more out of life. It's simple: if you want time to slow down, become a student again. Learn something that requires sustained effort; do something novel. Put down the thriller when you're sitting on the beach and break out a book on evolutionary theory or Spanish for beginners or a how-to book on something you've always wanted to do. Take a new route to work; vacation at an unknown spot. And take your sweet time about it."
Richard A. Friedman is a professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psycho-pharmacology clinic at the Weill Cornell Medical College.

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/13/20"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/13/20"

Dec. 13, 2020 

 Dec. 13, 2020 2:09 PM ET: 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 71,196,400 
people, according to official counts, including 16,262,468 Americans.
At least 1,608,400 have died.

"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, 
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.

The Daily "Near You?"

Warrenton, Virginia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"I Am Part..."


"I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. There is not any part of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surfaces of the water." 
- D. H. Lawrence

The Poet: Paul Fisher, "The Boat"

"The Boat"

"Maybe the eyes of a dragon or goddess
glare from its prow.
More likely it leaks, loses an oar,
and reeks of rainbows awash on a sheen
of gutted salmon and gasoline.
If it's a liner, we lash ourselves
to whatever will float or sell.
No matter which. We choose. We're aboard,
icebergs or no, as we plow
through the songs of the siren stars -
one boat, black water, dark whispering below."

- Paul Fisher, 
"Rumors of Shore"

Chet Raymo, “The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics”

 
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics
by Chet Raymo

“Let me share these lines from John Updike's "Ode to Entropy":

“Death exists nowhere in nature, not
In the minds of birds or the consciousness of flowers,
Not even in the numb brain of the wildebeest calf
Gone under to the grinning crocodile, nowhere
In the mesh of woods or the tons of sea, only
In our forebodings, our formulae.”

Can that be true? That no other creature than ourselves anticipates non-existence? Surely, other animals experience danger. The wildebeest calf darts to avoid the lunging crocodile. The rabbit in my neighbor's yard watches warily as I pass. The fearful infant chimp clings in its mother's protective embrace. Is this a threat response without awareness of fatal consequence? Is obliviousness of death the default condition of non-human nature?

I suppose, in the absence of a common language, there is no way to know for certain what goes on in a chimpanzee's or gorilla's brain. Nor do we know when and how the idea of personal immortality arose in the minds of humans. Funerary evidence would seem to suggest that a belief in immortality was universal among our ancestors. It is, however, a belief that flies in the face of everything modern science has learned about the nature of a human self.

For the great majority of humans, faith in an afterlife remains firmly entrenched. For myself, I have no greater expectation than that - like Updike's tossed banana peel - I might nourish the roadside chicory.”

"We Like To Think..."

"We like to think that we are rational beings; humane, conscientious, civilized, thoughtful. But when things fall apart, even just a little, it becomes clear we are not better than animals. We have opposable thumbs, we think, we walk erect, we speak, we dream, but deep down we are still routing around in the primordial ooze; biting, clawing, scratching out an existence in the cold, dark world like the rest of the tree-toads and sloths."
- "Grey's Anatomy"

"Will San Francisco or Los Angles Become Detroit, Michigan 2.0 & Become Largest City Bankruptcy Ever?"

Michael Zuber, 
"Will San Francisco or Los Angles Become Detroit, 
Michigan 2.0 & Become Largest City Bankruptcy Ever?"

How It Really Is"

Click image for larger size.

"The Traitor..."

 

"There Comes A Time..."

"I make no bones about being partisan for my country. I also feel no shame whatever because of it. I absolutely disagree that "great thinkers don't let that affect the thoughts". I would say exactly the opposite: someone who refuses to let love-of-country affect their thoughts is a moral cripple irrespective of their intellectual prowess. I can look dispassionately at the situation, and I have done so repeatedly. But I will never forget which nation I love and support.

We Americans have a saying: “It’s more important what you stand for than who you stand with.” I do not rely upon peer opinion to decide what is right and what is wrong. I make those decisions for myself, and even if I discover that every other human alive chose differently, that doesn’t mean I was wrong.

There comes a time in every man’s life when he has to choose sides. I have chosen my side. I am comfortable with my decision. I do not think everyone on my side is a saint, but I know that those on the other side are much, much worse.

Sometimes a man with too broad a perspective reveals himself as having no real perspective at all. A man who tries too hard to see every side may be a man who is trying to avoid choosing any side. A man who tries too hard to seek a deeper truth may be trying to hide from the truth he already knows. That is not a sign of intellectual sophistication and “great thinking”. It is a demonstration of moral degeneracy and cowardice.”
- Steven Den Beste
“Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.”
- Mark Twain
Soon, YOU may be forced to choose a side. Choose wisely…

"Democrats Push DEMAND For Arresting Trump Risking Igniting All Out Civil War, Texas GOP Says ENOUGH"

"Democrats Push DEMAND For Arresting Trump 
Risking Igniting All Out Civil War, Texas GOP Says ENOUGH"
This seems inevitable, and very soon...

"Gut Check"

"Gut Check"
By Tim “xrugger” Stebbins

"What does it mean to be a free man anymore? Am I truly free when the money I pay in taxes goes to support the excesses of a profligate, overreaching, and immoral government? Am I truly free when the scum that make the rules do not abide by them? Am I not free then to ignore the rules?  Am I truly free when some cowardly dimwit at the grocery store looks askance at me for not wearing a filthy rag over my face? I know he is having an internal debate about whether he should confront me.

My hope is always that he decides in the negative, as I have had just about enough of this crap. Now, the highest court in the land has turned a blind eye to the egregious theft of the Presidency itself. Marxists across the nation are celebrating the final nail in the coffin of the American Republic. Democrats held it. “Conservatives” have hammered it home. The outward forms of ordered liberty are dead and there is no recourse for the redress of grievances. It is time for every patriot to face the situation, without illusion or reservation.

If we would recover our liberty, then we must look inward and assess our own desires, motives, and abilities. A time of choosing is upon each and every one of us. What do we owe and to whom do we owe it. What follows is an attempt to answer those questions for myself and myself alone. Others of a similar spirit may take what they wish from it and leave the rest.

The Indefensible Nation: What do I owe to my country? Its central government is thoroughly and irredeemably corrupt. It is bankrupt both fiscally and morally. As of this writing, its judiciary has shown itself incapable of defending the Republic against the depredations of leftist rabble. The tentacles of its bureaucracy reach into the lives and wallets of the productive class “eating out the substance of the people” exactly as Jefferson warned. Yet still, with the stench of corruption and theft pervading the country, this government  assumes my loyalty.

What, pray tell, has it done to deserve it? Mobs of the indoctrinated expect that we should all just “get over it” and “come together to heal” as if the gangrenous clot of necrotic tissue that is the political culture of this nation will ever heal. Our rulers, our media, and half our “countrymen” piss down our backs and still insist it’s raining. The fealty of helots is what the Lords of Washington expect. They will not get it from me.

The loyalty of free men is reserved for a government of equals, not an aristocracy of reptiles. The latter is what we suffer now. The former we once possessed, but it lies now in the dust of history. The outward form and function remain, but the spirit of liberty, which animated it, has gone. The ties by which free men bind themselves voluntarily to any form of government have long since been sundered by the actions of those who have chosen to rule rather than govern. I will not suffer those ties to become shackles.

Since my forbears bequeathed to me a form of government that no longer exists, I am released from further obligation to the abomination that has replaced it. My loyalty, like my liberty, belongs to me and me alone. It is mine to give or to withdraw as I see fit. I owe the rulers of this land nothing: not life, not liberty, not the pursuit of my own happiness. These things are mine from my first breath to my last gasp. They cannot be abrogated, regulated, or terminated by the denizens of a distant city who presume to know what is best for me. These…people (I do not have the words for the contempt I feel for them) have polluted our forms of government, destroying what they can, dismantling what they cannot.

Everywhere is grift and graft. They have taken nearly everything, yet they still want more. They want my body shackled, my spirit humbled, and my mind enslaved. They try to steal the very breath from my body with their filthy rags. They have trampled upon my God-given rights, indoctrinated my children, accused me, threatened me, and silenced me. Now they have stolen even my choice from me. This government and its leftist appendages have betrayed my trust and half my fellow citizens treat me and mine with undisguised contempt. My loyalty to them and to their government is at an end.

The Shenandoah Syndrome: What then, am I to do personally in the face of this betrayal?  My mind often comes back to the old Jimmy Stewart movie “Shenandoah.” In it, Stewart plays the patriarch of a family trying to stay out of Lincoln’s War. He hopes to keep his family intact and neutral in the conflict. He wants no part of it and sees no reason why he, or his sons, should choose sides in a war that is, in his view, peripheral to the concerns of his family and the life they have built. It is only when rape, murder, plunder and the other accouterments of war destroy the precarious balance he has maintained, that Stewart realizes that the choice has been made for him.

I know that, in the end, what is happening in this nation will come to blood. I know too, that I and mine cannot hope to be left untouched while the nation tears itself apart. My one hope is that, by virtue of where we call home, we will see the tenor and scope of the destruction before it touches our lives directly. Perhaps that small grace will allow us additional time to prepare, though I believe I have done all that common sense demands and limited resources allow in that regard.

What remains to be done is the taking an intensely personal inventory. Will I fight, run, or hide? Will I be able to lead and defend my family when the crunch comes? Would I be willing to leave them behind to engage in some broader defense of my own and other’s liberty? Do I wait for the storm or go to meet it? At 60 years of age, am I even mentally or physically capable of such an effort? My fervent wish is to be left alone to live a peaceful life. I know many like me wish the same, but Jimmy Stewart was just an actor, and my “Shenandoah” a bucolic dream. The fight will be forced upon us all. The choices we make will define us. In Lincoln’s words, “No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”

The Refining Fire: I am a peacetime veteran. I served a three-year hitch in the eighties, half that time with the 2nd Ranger Bn. in Ft. Lewis, Washington and half with a line infantry company. I do not count myself among the many chest-thumpers who are overly certain of their own intestinal fortitude and are not afraid to expound upon their warrior attributes in any number of internet outlets. In my limited experience, those who talk the most usually run the fastest. I do not include in that company those who have seen war and its desolation first hand and who now seek to educate and guide those of us who have not. I’m talking about the posers who crow about “taking back the country,” and explain in detail their future exploits in the battle for freedom.

Personally, I am certain of only a few things:  I know what it is like to exit an aircraft more door bundle than man and land in a heap in the Alaskan snow. I know how dark it gets in an equatorial jungle and what it’s like to sit in the rain for days on end. I know what trench foot looks and feels like. To my everlasting embarrassment, I know the feeling of waking up with my own .45 (in the hands of a very angry platoon sergeant) staring me in the face because I fell asleep guarding a pallet of live ammo.

I know what it is like to catch multiple fragments of a 7.62 mm ricochet in the face due to the negligence of a range safety officer and the stupidity of a member of my M60 crew. I know that face and scalp wounds bleed a lot. These are some of the things I know, but they are the experiences of long ago and comparing them to the trials of actual combat would be like comparing regular roulette to the Russian variety.

I do not think I lack personal courage, but the simple fact is that I know what I do not know, and anyone who has not been in a fight like the one coming can say no different. Any man who claims a virtue not yet tested by the fight we face is a liar and a fool. As a young man, I would have welcomed the test. Now, decades on, I ponder the depth of my commitment, the strength of my arm, and the clearness of my mind. Is the man I am now fit for the fight? Only the fight itself will reveal the truth of it. I simply do not know how I will behave when the shooting starts and to claim otherwise is the height of hubris. At the least, I hope that this old man will give good account for blessings received while on this good earth.

Hope: No good thing ever achieved by man remains unsullied by the grasping hands of those who seek to exploit it. So it is with these United States. Time, trials, the certainties of fallen human nature, and the machinations of the unprincipled have accomplished what they always accomplish. This nation will crumble and the ensuing chaos will engulf us all to one degree or another. Something good, either a restoration of the old or the institution of the new, will rise from the blood and ashes. I pray that I do not love this life so much that I would live it as a slave or be unwilling to expend it for the sake of those to come. That, at least, is my hope."
A MUST View:
Click image for larger size.
 "A man who does not have something for 
which he is willing to die is not fit to live."
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Hat tip to The Burning Platform
The corrupt establishment will do anything to suppress sites like the Burning Platform from revealing the truth. The corporate media does this by demonetizing sites like mine by blackballing the site from advertising revenue. If you get value from this site, please keep it running with a donation. [Jim Quinn - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal at the website:

Saturday, December 12, 2020

Greg Hunter, "Second Great Depression Starts in 2021"

"Second Great Depression Starts in 2021"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Analyst, professional trader and financial writer Rick Ackerman likes gold and silver too, but not because he sees explosive price rises. He likes precious metals because they are solid core investments. They work well in inflation or deflation. They are rugged and will work no matter what comes. Ackerman thinks what is coming will be far worse than the Great Depression, “I call it the ‘Second Great Depression.’ What are we going to have? A zombie apocalypse? I use the example of somebody riding to the soup kitchen on an $8,000 graphite trail bike. We are going to find out how many of the jobs are completely unnecessary, like 95% of people who work for government. That’s coming. It’s coming sooner or later, and we are going to have a time or day of reckoning. How long can this con go on? We are in a very unstable position and, financially speaking, we have stimulus not stimulating anymore in a meaningful way.”

Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes 
One-on-One with analyst and financial writer Rick Ackerman.

Musical Interlude: Hilary Stagg, "Pleasant Dreams"

Hilary Stagg, "Pleasant Dreams"
Full screen highly recommended.

"A Look to the Heavens"

Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue vdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are interstellar dust clouds, blocking the light from background stars in the case of Barnard's dark nebulae. For vdB 31, the dust preferentially reflects the bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae. 


Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about four light-years.”

"Do You Want..."

"Do you want to live life, or do you want to escape life?"
- Macklemore

"It's True Object..."; "Benedicto"

"The summit is believed to be the object of the climb. But its true object - the joy of living - is not in the peak itself, but in the adversities encountered on the way up. There are valleys, cliffs, streams, precipices, and slides, and as he walks these steep paths, the climber may think he cannot go any farther, or even that dying would be better than going on. But then he resumes fighting the difficulties directly in front of him, and when he is finally able to turn and look back at what he has overcome, he finds he has truly experienced the joy of living while on life's very road."
- Eiji Yoshikawa
"Benedicto"

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you - beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.”
- Edward Abbey

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/12/20"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 12/12/20"

Dec. 12, 2020 

 Dec. 12, 2020 2:05 PM ET: 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 70,427,600 
people, according to official counts, including 16,067,449 Americans.
At least 1,595,300 have died.

"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, 
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.

The Poet: Carl Sandburg, "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

"Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"

“The past is a bucket of ashes.”

1
"The woman named Tomorrow 
sits with a hairpin in her teeth 
and takes her time 
and does her hair the way she wants it 
and fastens at last the last braid and coil 
and puts the hairpin where it belongs 
and turns and drawls: Well, what of it? 
My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone. 
What of it? Let the dead be dead. 

2
The doors were cedar
and the panels strips of gold 
and the girls were golden girls 
and the panels read and the girls chanted: 
We are the greatest city, 
the greatest nation: 
nothing like us ever was. 

The doors are twisted on broken hinges. 
Sheets of rain swish through on the wind 
where the golden girls ran and the panels read: 
We are the greatest city, 
the greatest nation, 
nothing like us ever was. 

3
It has happened before. 
Strong men put up a city and got 
a nation together,
And paid singers to sing and women 
to warble: We are the greatest city, 
the greatest nation, 
nothing like us ever was. 

And while the singers sang
and the strong men listened 
and paid the singers well 
and felt good about it all, 
there were rats and lizards who listened 
…and the only listeners left now 
…are…the rats…and the lizards. 

And there are black crows 
crying, “Caw, caw,” 
bringing mud and sticks 
building a nest 
over the words carved 
on the doors where the panels were cedar 
and the strips on the panels were gold 
and the golden girls came singing: 
We are the greatest city, 
the greatest nation: 
nothing like us ever was. 

The only singers now are crows crying, “Caw, caw,” 
And the sheets of rain whine in the wind and doorways. 
And the only listeners now are…the rats…and the lizards. 

4
The feet of the rats 
scribble on the door sills; 
the hieroglyphs of the rat footprints 
chatter the pedigrees of the rats 
and babble of the blood 
and gabble of the breed 
of the grandfathers and the great-grandfathers 
of the rats. 

And the wind shifts 
and the dust on a door sill shifts 
and even the writing of the rat footprints 
tells us nothing, nothing at all 
about the greatest city, the greatest nation 
where the strong men listened 
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was."

- Carl Sandburg

The Daily "Near You?"

Los Angeles, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Oh! Had I The Ability..."

"Oh! Had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced."

“I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued.”
- Frederick Douglass

"Secession? Texas GOP Calls For New 'Union Of States That Will Abide By Constitution' In Wake Of Supreme Court Defeat"

"Secession? Texas GOP Calls For New 'Union Of States 
That Will Abide By Constitution' In Wake Of Supreme Court Defeat"
by Tyler Durden

"Texas Republican Party Chairman Allen West is fuming after the Supreme Court denied the state's bid to challenge Joe Biden's wins in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Washington and Michigan - and has suggested what sounds a lot like secession.

In a Friday night statement, West - a former Congressman and Iraq war veteran - said: "The Supreme Court, in tossing the Texas lawsuit that was joined by seventeen states and 106 US congressmen, have decreed that a state can take unconstitutional actions and violate its own election law. Resulting in damaging effects on other states that abide by the law, while the guilty state suffers no consequences. This decision establishes a precedent that says states can violate the US constitution and not be held accountable."

West then added: "This decision will have far reaching ramifications for the future of our constitutional republic. Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution."

In a further statement, West repeated his suggestion - writing "If we are living in Texas, and we were joined with, you know, some 20-some-odd other states, the 1065 different members of Congress that say, 'we do not want to stand by and allow four states to have unconstitutional practices,' and when we see states such as ourselves following the law, but yet the Supreme Court says that's perfectly fine, then maybe we should have a union of states that believe in the Constitution  and will abide by that rule of law, and let these other states go out on their own separate way and let them, not be supported by these other states such as ourselves."

More from @AllenWest tonight - this time less 'we're outta here' and more 'actually, they're the ones who should secede.' "...let these other states go out their own separate way and let them not be supported by these other states such as ourselves." - December 12, 2020

Friday's decision marked the second time Republicans were denied this week by the Supreme Court, and has largely been considered the 'end of the road' for overturning the results of the election."
Secession? YES