Thursday, January 7, 2021

"The Ideal Subject..."

"The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced 
Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the 
distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.” 
- Hannah Arendt 

"Questions About The Chaos At The Capitol That Desperately Need To Be Answered"

"Questions About The Chaos At The Capitol 
That Desperately Need To Be Answered"
by Michael Snyder

"Like most Americans, I was absolutely horrified by the violence that I watched at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. But I had a difficult time trying to understand what I was witnessing. Trump supporters are almost always extremely peaceful, but many of those that were storming the Capitol were being very violent. That didn’t make sense to me. And how in the world did protesters get into the U.S. Capitol in the first place?

Well, it turns out that police actually opened up the barricades that were surrounding the U.S. Capitol and purposely allowed protesters to storm the building. You can see this on video right here:
Police opened gates and offered them in ๐Ÿ˜ก
pic.twitter.com/cFJmIekwzR
— Still Vigilant Grandma ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ๐Ÿ—ฝ (@midlifewomanon1) January 6, 2021

I have never seen anything like that in my entire life. And once they were inside the building, they were herded toward particular areas. For example, you can watch one “guard” actually lead protesters up several flights of stairs right here

Psyop. Look at the photographers while going up the stairs and at the end. The officer is leading them where to go and gives the guy a little nudge and says “they’re here” when at the 2nd floor and officers just walk up and say “leave”. Paid crisis actors to look like agitators:
— Sage+Honey๐ŸŒฑ (@sageandhoney_) January 7, 2021

Either the U.S. Congress has the worst security personnel that any of us have ever seen, or this was allowed to happen on purpose. And there are multiple reports that Antifa activists were brought in by bus. In fact, one patriot actually recorded video of the Antifa buses that were brought into the heart of Washington D.C. with an escort:

Pantifa was bussed in. 
pic.twitter.com/lRL9vKYlRe
— Art TakingBack ๐Ÿ‡บ๐Ÿ‡ธ (@ArtValley818_) January 6, 2021

So who arranged for those Antifa buses to have that sort of an escort? It is almost as if someone was extremely determined to get those Antifa activists to their location so that they could do their job. Once they got inside the Capitol, the Antifa activists could have done a much better job of disguising themselves. In fact, one has already been positively identified as a member of Philly Antifa:
If he wanted to pass as a “Trump supporter”, he probably should have covered up the hammer and sickle that are tattooed on the back of his hand:
Perhaps the most famous “protester” from the chaos on Wednesday is “the guy with the Viking horns”. Well, it turns out that he was photographed at a BLM rally in Arizona wearing the exact same outfit back in June:

AZ BLM rally in June, DC Capital in January 
pic.twitter.com/YGxIj1DANK
— Cari Kelemen (@KelemenCari) January 6, 2021

And he was also photographed at a “climate activism” event in 2019; Trump supporters don't usually attend "climate activism" events. The guy is an actor. Who knows what side he's on? pic.twitter.com/jE1aXQgH4b
— Cari Kelemen (@KelemenCari) January 6, 2021

Apparently his name is Jake Angeli and he is a “shamanic practitioner”. But on Wednesday he was posing as a hardcore Trump supporter. So why can’t the mainstream media put any of these pieces together? It shouldn’t take too much detective work to identify a lot of these people. So why won’t they do it?

And did you notice that the police let the vast majority of the “protesters” go without arresting them once it was all over? The mainstream media is insisting that “they will be arrested later”, but a lot of people aren’t buying that. All of this just seems very odd to me.

Just as a debate about the evidence of election irregularities was about to begin in the halls of Congress, these riots conveniently broke out. Members of Congress were quickly evacuated, and the millions of Americans that were watching never got to see an honest debate about the 2020 election. When proceedings finally resumed, the entire atmosphere had completely changed, and all of a sudden hardly anyone was interested in debating whether the election results were legitimate or not.

So who actually benefitted from the riots? Also, it is important to note that these riots have dealt a severe blow to any political future that President Trump hoped to have.So with one stone, activists have neutered the debate over the legitimacy of the election and they have devastated the Trump movement as well. It appears that someone really was playing “3D chess”, and it wasn’t Trump and his supporters.

And this is just the beginning. As I keep warning, the radical left will never be satisfied until they accomplish all of their goals. Electing Joe Biden was just a way to get rid of Trump. The radical left actually doesn’t like Biden either, and they will fight him bitterly if Biden does not go along with their full agenda. In the end, what they want is a full-blown “revolution” in this country. And as we witnessed on Wednesday, they will go to extreme lengths in order to get what they want."

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 1/7/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 1/7/21"
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/7/21:
"Updates! ECONOMY IN FREE FALL. 
Bitcoin over $38K Stock Market Going Higher"
"The more I see of the monied classes, 
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

"Not Much Mental Distance..."

"A man who has blown all his options can't afford the luxury of changing his ways. He has to capitalize on whatever he has left, and he can't afford to admit - no matter how often he's reminded of it - that every day of his life takes him farther and farther down a blind alley. Very few toads in this world are Prince Charmings in disguise. Most are simply toads, and they are going to stay that way. Toads don't make laws or change any basic structures, but one or two rooty insights can work powerful changes in the way they get through life. A toad who believes he got a raw deal before he even knew who was dealing will usually be sympathetic to the mean, vindictive ignorance that colors the Hell's Angels' view of humanity. There is not much mental distance between a feeling of having been screwed and the ethic of total retaliation, or at least the random revenge that comes with outraging the public decency."
- Hunter S. Thompson

"How It Really Is"


"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/7/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/7/21"


 Jan. 7, 2021 12:11 AM ET: 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 87,249,200 
people, according to official counts, including 21,409,446 Americans.
Globally at least 1,882,300 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.
https://covidtracking.com/

"I Understand..."

  
"I understand that fear is my friend, but not always. Never turn your back on Fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed. My father taught me that, along with a few other things that have kept my life interesting." 
- Hunter S. Thompson

"The Coming War on Wealth and the Wealthy"

"The Coming War on Wealth and the Wealthy"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"The problem with pushing a pendulum to its maximum extreme on one end is that it will swing back to the other extreme minus a tiny bit of friction. America has pushed wealth/income inequality, unfairness and legalized looting to the maximum extreme. Now it will experience the swing back to the other extreme. This will manifest in a number of ways, one of which is a self-organizing populist war on wealth and the wealthy.

To say the system is rigged to benefit the already-wealthy and powerful is a gross understatement. Take the tax code as an example - thousands of pages of arcane tax breaks and giveaways passed by a thoroughly corrupted Congress and thousands more pages of arcane regulations and legal precedents.

How many pages apply to the bottom 95% of American taxpayers? Very few. There's the standard deductions for mortgage interest, healthcare costs, etc., but virtually no other tax breaks. Very few pages apply to even the 99% - go talk to a CPA and you'll find there are no more tax breaks for a sole proprietor making $500,000 in earned income than than there are for a sole proprietor making $50,000.

99.9% of the tax code benefits the top 0.1% and the corporations, LLCs and philanthro-capitalist foundations and trusts they own/control. Stripped of artifice and spin, America's tax code is nothing but legalized looting. This is only one small slice of the entire pie of legalized looting, of course, but it's one we can all understand.

A sole proprietor pays 15.3% in Social Security and Medicare taxes. Why don't America's billionaires pay 15.3% in Social Security and Medicare taxes? Aren't Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid the bedrock social safety net programs of the American people? Then why does a struggling sole proprietor pay 15.3% tax to support these essential programs and billionaires pay essentially zero?

There's a term for this disparity/injustice/unfairness: legalized looting. The super-wealthy pay essentially zero percent of their income and wealth to the programs that provide basic economic security for the disabled/elderly citizenry, while Jose the sole proprietor pays 15.3% of every dollar he earns.

So explain to us again why Mr. Buffett can't afford to pay 15.3% of every dollar of his income to help fund basic economic security for the disabled/elderly. In a system of even the most basic fairness, every dollar of income would be taxed at the same rate. In a system of even the most basic fairness, those with incomes of $100 million would pay the same 15.3% Social Security and Medicare tax as the sole proprietor earning $100,000. Needless to say, if this most basic fairness was applied to America's wealthy and powerful, these programs would not be facing insolvency.

If Joe the sole proprietor hits the bigtime, he pays 32% federal tax over $165,000, 35% over $210,000 and 37% over $524,000. If we add 15.3% to 37%, we get 52.3%. How many of America's super-wealthy / billionaires pay 52% in Social Security-Medicare and income taxes? Zero.

Could America's super-wealthy/billionaires afford to pay 52%? Of course they could - they own the majority of all financial assets and skim the majority of all income. But they won't, because the system is rigged to benefit the few at the expense of the many via legalized looting.

It isn't just the inequality of ownership of capital and power that enrages the oppressed; it's the blatant unfairness of our neofeudal/neocolonial system. As I explained in "Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model" (May 24, 2012) and "Welcome to Neocolonialism, Exploited Peasants!" (October 21, 2016), the Financial Nobility have "come home" and applied the same rapacious exploitation they perfected in colonialism to the domestic populace.

Here's looking at you, Federal Reserve - thanks for perfecting legalized looting and neofeudalism in America.

The gulf between the lavishly praised American ideals and the putrid, corrupt reality of America's neofeudal system is wider than the Grand Canyon. As the pendulum accelerates to an extreme equal but opposite to the current extremes of unfairness, exploitation and legalized looting, those who have suffered the consequences of this systemic inequality will find expression in whatever ways are available.

Since it's difficult to get to the protected compounds of the super-wealthy, the signifiers of the merely wealthy will offer readily available targets. The new Tesla won't just get keyed; it will be "reworked," to the great satisfaction of the "workers."

Please note that I am not promoting a war on wealth and the wealthy, I am merely pointing out that it is as inevitable as the gravity pulling the pendulum. The war on wealth and the wealthy will manifest politically, socially and economically. It won't be a tightly controlled, top-down movement. It will be spontaneous, self-organizing and unquenchable."

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

“Stock Market Going Into Hyperdrive; Assets Will Be Destroyed; Central Bank Has No Exit Strategy”

Jeremiah Babe, 1/6/21: 
“Stock Market Going Into Hyperdrive; 
Assets Will Be Destroyed; Central Bank Has No Exit Strategy”
Other updates:

"A Perfect Storm Is Brewing: Experts Are Warning That The Stock Market Could Crash Dramatically"

"A Perfect Storm Is Brewing: Experts Are Warning 
That The Stock Market Could Crash Dramatically"
by Epic Economist

"Experts have been warning that the stock market could be set for an extraordinary crash in case of a favorable result for Democrats, since it would probably scare investors away and prompt a major sell-off, which could then lead to another dramatic stock market crash , and put an end to the era of incredibly overvalued assets, finally popping the stock bubble. That's what we're going to examine in this video. 

The Georgia Senate runoff will be decisive for what happens next in both Main Street and Wall Street. Republican David Perdue is taking on Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, while Republican Kelly Loeffler faced Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock. Now, Democrats are counting on Ossoff to win, so that the Senate would have a 50-50 split, meaning that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris would have the crucial deciding vote that could push through Biden's priorities as soon as he takes office. 

The results are expected to have enormous impacts on the financial markets. If Democrats win both of the seats, they will effectively have control over the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House. That is to say, for the first time since the Obama's administration, the Democrats would have an opportunity to advance their agenda without compromising with the Republicans.

Yesterday, the day voters in Georgia headed to the polls, former Trump senior economic adviser Steve Moore argued in an interview that a Democratic sweep could drive the Dow Jones Industrial Average to decline by 1,000 points. According to Oppenheimer chief investment strategist John Stoltzfus, a blue win could trigger a stock market sell-off of up to 10%. He alerted that it could cause the U.S. broad equity market to experience a downdraft of anywhere between 6% and 10%. 

For the past four years, big corporations and large conglomerates were thrilled by Trump’s tax cuts, but Biden has repeatedly stated throughout his campaign that he had plans to roll back Trump’s Tax Cuts. A Democratic victory would also mean the incoming president would have more flexibility to implement other plans of his agenda, including the expansion of the payroll tax for Social Security, new tax credits, and fewer deductions, as well as another round of massive government spending. Needless to say, all of these changes won't be appreciated by investors.

At the moment, what we do know is that Democrat Raphael Warnock has already guaranteed his Senate seat after defeating incumbent Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler. With so much on the line, the level of spending on both runoffs has been unprecedented. Advertising Analytics data pointed out that nearly $404 million was spent on advertising in the Perdue-Ossoff race, making it the most expensive Senate race ever recorded. 

As for the stock market, at this point, the main concern surrounding a blue wave is that very soon more fiscal spending could be launched, therefore, Fed rates would surge faster than expected, which would resonate in the amount of easing and in the strength of the dollar. The election result could be the trigger event that would pop the enormously-inflated market bubble, but at this stage of the crisis, stock prices have been at such absurdly inflated levels for so long, that it wouldn't take much for us to be witnessing a catastrophic collapse. We have never experienced before a market that is so perfectly primed for a meltdown. It's just impossible to sustain the current valuations for much longer, and several market watchers have been signaling a sharp stock market crash in the coming weeks or months.

As the race remains close, and there are no evident odds of who is ultimately going to be the winner, our financial and economic future remains uncertain. For now, we keep on watching the next developments of the Georgia elections, as they can determine the destiny of our country. But we can't forget that many other pivotal events are about to be unfolded, and they are going to completely change the course of the United States history."

Musical Interlude: The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For The Devil"

The Rolling Stones, "Sympathy For The Devil"
Full screen recommended!

As we slide into the Abyss...

"A Look to the Heavens"

"What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Just a few hundred million years ago, NGC 2936, the upper of the two large galaxies shown, was likely a normal spiral galaxy -- spinning, creating stars -- and minding its own business. But then it got too close to the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 2937 below and took a dive. Dubbed the Porpoise Galaxy for its iconic shape, NGC 2936 is not only being deflected but also being distorted by the close gravitational interaction. 
A burst of young blue stars forms the nose of the porpoise toward the right of the upper galaxy, while the center of the spiral appears as an eye. Alternatively, the galaxy pair, together known as Arp 142, look to some like a penguin protecting an egg. Either way, intricate dark dust lanes and bright blue star streams trail the troubled galaxy to the lower right. The featured re-processed image showing Arp 142 in unprecedented detail was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope last year. Arp 142 lies about 300 million light years away toward the constellation, coincidently, of the Water Snake (Hydra). In a billion years or so the two galaxies will likely merge into one larger galaxy."

"On Your Own Terms..."

“If the sun is shining, stand in it – yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass – they have to – because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centered. What you are pursuing is meaning – a meaningful life… There are times when it will go so wrong that you will be barely alive, and times when you realize that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else’s terms.”
- Jeanette Winterson

Must Watch! Gregory Mannarino, "SITUATION CRITICAL: The US Capital Has Fallen"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 1/6/21:
"SITUATION CRITICAL: The US Capital Has Fallen"

"Chaos!"

"Chaos!"
by Brian Maher

"Pictures talk infinitely louder than words. We hereby present today’s reckoning:

 “I fear all we have done is to awaken a 
sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
- Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
CCR, "Bad Moon Rising"
A very bad moon is rising for the Left...
And these are not the little girly-boys of ANTIFA...

"If I Am..."

 

The Daily "Near You?"

Collinsville, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “Evidence”

“Evidence”

“Where do I live?
 
If I had no address, as many people do not,
 
I could nevertheless say that I lived in the 
same town as the lilies of the field,
 
and the still waters.


Spring, and all through the neighborhood 
now there are
 strong men tending flowers.
Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue.

But all beautiful things, inherently, have this function -

to excite the viewers toward sublime thought.

Glory to the world, that good teacher.

Among the swans there is none 
called the least,
 or the greatest.
I believe in kindness. Also in mischief.
 
Also in singing, 
especially when singing is not necessarily prescribed.

As for the body, 
it is solid and strong and curious and full of detail;
 
it wants to polish itself; it wants to love another body;

it is the only vessel in the world that can hold,
 
in a mix of power and sweetness:

words, song, gesture, passion, ideas,
ingenuity, 
devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”

- Mary Oliver
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for! To quote from Whitman, ‘O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless - of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?’ Answer: That you are here - that life exists, and that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?”
- “Dead Poets Society”

"Nothing New..."

 

“Yes, the times change with the tides; yet the tales, like the surf, sound on in familiar perpetuity and with steady repetition. In the modern era, during the great clash of civilizations currently underway, there will be no new, great and ghastly crusades. Only resistance or surrender. In America, just as her tide recedes from the world, in the end it may become Man overboard, and every man for himself. The sun rises. The sun sets.

As sand through an hour-glass, or waves rolling over every shore, so too, do our journeys mark passageways through time; and, in the end, our navigation may, indeed, depend upon guidance, like stars, shining down from heaven upon what we know, over the decisions we make; on the destinies we choose. And, of course, there will be losses incurred during the storms.

So, we raise our sails and pray for the prosperous winds of Providence to guide our ways and guard our lives through uncharted seas. Perhaps it’s true that fortune finds and favors the faithful above all. Even still, those who believe, and those who doubt, and those who sleep, all do drift and blow by the same breeze. The winds of change are on us. They’ve always been here, steadfast and old as time itself. Like the earth. Nothing new under the sun.”

"A Trifecta of Catastrophic 'Mistakes'”

"A Trifecta of Catastrophic 'Mistakes'”
by Bill Bonner

"We had your f*****g back, but we ain’t got your back no more!"
– Trump supporter to D.C. police

WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "We’re spending this week in the morgue. That is, we’re cutting open the dead year – 2020 – to better understand the new, live one. So far, we’ve seen that the brain and heart were both diseased. In the brain, people were delusional… living in a fantasy world, where they thought they could shut down the wealth-producing economy and then make up for it by printing bits of paper, calling it “money.” And the rot appears to have spread to the heart, where the fake money was used to reward cronies, bail out mismanaged businesses, and pay off the elite.

That’s how former Federal Reserve chief Janet Yellen – now in the bullpen, warming up to be our next Treasury Secretary – came to earn $7 million in fees for delivering forgettable speeches. The $7 million was merely chump change. While Ms. Yellen was at the Federal Reserve, from 2010 to 2018, the money-printers added $2.2 trillion, doubling the Fed’s balance sheet… with almost all of it going to Wall Street. That’s a 31,000 times return, far more than the money spinners would get from honest capitalism.

Modest Reveal: Today, we continue our unkind cuts. What happened in 2020? What does it mean? And since this is Epiphany… today, we offer a modest “reveal.”

Last year, the feds completed a trifecta of major, catastrophic “mistakes.” We put the word mistakes in quotes, signaling that there is something fishy about them. Indeed there is. These “mistakes” cost the public dearly… But they served the elite well. In 2001, George W. Bush might have left the police to deal with the 9/11 miscreants. At trivial cost, those who were still alive might have been brought to justice. Instead, he made a federal case of it. Cost? $7 trillion and as many as a million lives. 

Consequence? Millions of refugees… a much more dangerous and unstable Middle East… more potential “terrorists” than ever before. And a much deeper Swamp… filled with lobbyists, lawyers, and apologists for the U.S. military/industrial/surveillance industry.

Huge Distortion: Then, after 2008, the Bush and Obama administrations – along with the Bernanke/Yellen Fed – might have let markets do their thing. Mortgage finance companies, big banks, and common households had over-bought the housing market. Many were on the brink of bankruptcy. But instead of letting the chips fall where they ought, the feds bailed out Wall Street – at a cost of $3.6 trillion.

Doing so, they distorted the whole ball of capitalism’s wax. American stocks, for example – as measured by the Dow Jones Industrial Average – rose from under 8,000 in 2009 to over 28,000 10 years later. These prices no longer tell us what the companies were worth; they just show how willing the Fed was to push their stock prices up.

Bad Situation Made Worse: And finally, in 2020, the attack of the COVID-19 bug might have been treated like a medical challenge. Again, at very little cost, those most likely to die – the sick, the old, and the medically vulnerable – might have been protected. Instead, the elite flexed its muscles. 60 million jobs were lost… thousands of businesses went bust… and the whole economy was transformed in ways no one anticipated.

In addition, according to epidemiologist Dr. Knut Wittkowski, locked-down populations were turned into slow-motion virus incubators, resulting in more deaths, not fewer. And then, to make a bad situation worse, the feds flooded the economy with fake money, as if that would offset the real damage.

These three “mistakes” – made over the course of the last 20 years – sealed America’s fate. The feds are condemned in their own cockamamie prison. For now, not just Wall Street, but Main Street, too, with its 300 million mouths to feed, look to the feds for their daily bread. They count on the feds’ fake money to pay rent and mortgages… to pay for holidays and autos… and even to put food on the table.

Today’s news reports tell us that Mitch McConnell’s refusal to allow $2,000 giveaways might have cost the GOP the Senate. Won’t the handouts soon become routine?

All-Round Failure: And so, the year 2020 ended in disgrace. Donald Trump didn’t make America great again. The Federal Reserve didn’t make it more prosperous. The Supreme Court didn’t make it honest. The news media didn’t make it better informed. The universities didn’t make it smarter. The medical industry didn’t make it healthier. The tech industry didn’t lead us into a glorious future.

Our elite institutions failed. Congress, for example, is a laughingstock. (Yesterday, it passed a new rule eliminating the use of gender-based terms such as “mother” or “aunt.” That should do it… we’re all equal now!)

The universities act as training camps for the elite, prohibiting free speech and closing minds. More and more, what they teach is politically correct propaganda, not free inquiry.

The press blissfully reports what the elite wants us all to believe, favoring more war, more government spending, and more official meddling.

Wall Street no longer allocates real capital to deserving businesses; it merely grabs the fake dollars for itself.

And poor Main Street, left behind by financialization, fake money, offshoring, and claptrap economics, now clamors for bread and circuses…

Someone who would never win a spelling bee scrawls “Weres my money” on Mitch McConnell’s door, blaming him for blocking the $2,000 giveaway.

And today, die-hard MAGA fans, left behind and betrayed by the elite, gather in Washington, fantasizing that Donald Trump will lead an uprising against them.

Yes, that’s just the way the empire’s cookie crumbled in 2020. Badly. But what’s ahead? Stay tuned…"