Friday, January 8, 2021

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/8/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 1/8/21"
JAN 8, AT 7:50 AM: "Miami Doctor Dies After Receiving First Dose Of Pfizer Vaccine" "In my mind his death was 100 percent linked to the vaccine. There is no other explanation."

 Jan. 8, 2021 7:54 AM ET: 
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 88,201,100 
people, according to official counts, including 21,689,734 Americans.
Globally at least 1,900,100 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/

"COVID Tests Gone Wild - An Epidemic of COVID Positive Tests"

"COVID Tests Gone Wild - 
An Epidemic of COVID Positive Tests"

Editor’s Note: In the setting of COVID-19, almost every country in the world closed its borders, locked down its citizens, and forced businesses to close. Today, most governments still restrict travel, economic activity, and social gatherings. The justification for these unprecedented measures has been a growing number of COVID-19 cases. This has unleashed an epidemic of COVID testing—with PCR and rapid antigen tests as the means of identifying positive COVID cases. Our very own Dr. John Hunt examines the science behind COVID testing, whether the testing paradigms are effective, and the rationality behind government response to the virus.

"COVID Tests Gone Wild - 
An Epidemic of COVID Positive Tests"
by John Hunt, MD

"What COVID tests mean and don’t mean: RT-PCR tests can be designed to be highly sensitive to the presence of the original viral RNA in a clinical sample. But a highly sensitive test risks poor specificity for actual infectious disease.

Rapid antigen tests are different. They measure viral protein. They do so by reacting a clinical sample with one or two lab-created antibodies that are labeled with a measurable marker. These antigen tests are often poorly specific, meaning they can show as positive in the absence of any actual viral protein or any COVID disease.

For a lab test, what does it mean to be sensitive? What does it mean to be specific? I’ll use COVID to help explain these terms. In order to do this correctly, we need to avoid using the language of the media and government because those institutions tend to mislead us via language manipulation. For example, they’ve wrongly taught us that a COVID-positive test is synonymous with COVID- disease. It isn’t, as you will soon see.

So for this article, I will use the term "Relevant Infectious COVID Disease" to mean a condition, caused by COVID-19, in which a patient is sickened by the virus or has (in their airways) living replicating virus capable of being transmitted to others. This seems a fair definition of what we should be caring about in this disease. If the patient isn’t sick and isn’t capable of transmitting the disease, then any COVID RNA or protein that may appear in a test is not relevant, nor infectious, and therefore of little to no consequence.

You can think of a test’s sensitivity like this: In a group of 100 people who absolutely have Relevant Infectious COVID Disease, how many people does the test actually report as "positive?" For a test that is 95% sensitive, 95 of these 100 patients with the true disease will be reported by the test as COVID positive and 5 will be missed.

Specificity: In a group of 100 people who absolutely do not have Relevant Infectious COVID Disease, how many will be reported by the test as "negative?" For a test that is 95% specific, 95 of these healthy people will be reported as COVID-negative and 5 will be incorrectly reported as COVID-positive.

Sensitivity and Specificity are inherent characteristics of a test, not of a patient, not of a disease, and not of a population. These terms are very different than Positive Predictive Value (PPV) and Negative Predictive Value (NPV). PPV and NPV are affected not only by the test’s sensitivity and specificity but also by the characteristics of the people chosen to be tested and, particularly, the patients’ underlying likelihood of actually having true Relevant Infectious COVID Disease. The Positive Predictive Value - the chance a positive test actually indicates a true disease - is greatly improved if you test people who are likely to have COVID, and, importantly, avoid testing people unlikely to have COVID.

If you do a COVID test with 95% sensitivity and 95% specificity in 1,000 patients who are feverish, have snot pouring out of their noses, are coughing profusely, and are short of breath, then you are using that test as a diagnostic test in people who currently have a reasonable up-front chance of having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease. Let’s say 500 of them do actually have Relevant Infectious COVID Disease, and the others have a common cold. This 95% sensitive test will correctly identify 475 of these people who are truly ill with COVID as being COVID-positive, and it will miss 25 of them. This same test is also 95% specific, which means it will falsely label 25 of the 500 non-COVID patients as COVID-positive. Although the test isn’t perfect it has a Positive Predictive Value of 95% in this group of people, and is a pretty good test overall.

But what if you run this very same COVID test on everyone in the population? Let’s guesstimate that the up-front chance of having Relevant Infectious COVID in the US at this moment is about 0.5% (suggesting that 5 out of 1000 people currently have the actual transmittable disease right now, which is a high estimate). How does this same 95% sensitive/95% specific test work in this screening setting? The good news is that this test will likely identify the 5 people out of every 1000 with Relevant Infectious COVID! Yay! 

The bad news is that, out of every 1000 people, it will also falsely label 50 people as COVID-positive who don’t have Relevant Infectious COVID. Out of 55 people with positive tests in each group of 1000 people, 5 actually have the disease. 50 of the tests are false positives. With a Positive Predictive Value of only 9%, one could say that's a pretty lousy test. It’s far lousier if you test only people with no symptoms (such as screening a school, jobsite, or college), in whom the up-front likelihood of having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease is substantially lower.

The very same test that is pretty good when testing people who are actually ill or at risk is lousy when screening people who aren’t. In the first scenario (with symptoms), the test is being used correctly for diagnosis. In the second scenario (no symptoms), the test is being used wrongly for screening.

A diagnostic test is used to diagnose a patient the doctor thinks has a reasonable chance of having the disease (having symptoms like fever, cough, a snotty nose, and shortness of breath during a viral season).

A screening test is used to check for the presence of a disease in a person without symptoms and no heightened risk of having the disease. A screening test may be appropriate to use when it has very high specificity (99% or more), when the prevalence of the disease in the population is pretty high, and when there is something we can do about the disease if we identify it. However, if the prevalence of a disease is low (as is the case for Relevant Infectious COVID) and the test isn’t adequately specific (as is the case with PCR and rapid antigen tests for the COVID virus), then using such a test as a screening measure in healthy people is forcing the test to be lousy. The more it is used wrongly, the more misinformation ensues.

Our health authorities are recommending more testing of asymptomatic people. In other words, they are encouraging the wrong and lousy application of these tests. Our health officials are doing what a first-year medical student should know better than to do. It’s enough of a concerning error that it leaves two likely conclusions: 1) that our leading government health officials are truly incompetent and/or 2) that we, as a nation, are being intentionally gaslighted/manipulated. Or it could be both. (Another conclusion you should consider is that my analysis of these tests is incorrect. I’m open to a challenge.)

So what if you, as an individual, get a positive PCR test result (one that has 95% specificity) without having symptoms of COVID-19 or recent exposure to a true Relevant Infectious COVID Disease patient? What do you do? Well, with that positive test, your risk of having COVID has just increased from less than 5 in 1,000 (the general population risk) to about somewhere perhaps 5 in 55 (the risk of actual Relevant Infectious COVID Disease in asymptomatic people with a COVID-19-positive test). That’s an 18-fold increase in risk, amounting to a 9% risk of you having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease (or a 91% chance of you being totally healthy). That may be a relevant increase in risk in your mind, enough that you choose to avoid exposing your friends and family to your higher risk compared to the general population. But if the government spends resources to contact-trace you, then they are contact-tracing 91% of people uselessly. And they are deciding whether to lock us down based on the wrong notion that COVID-positive tests in healthy people are epidemiologically accurate when indeed they are mostly wrong.

For the 50 asymptomatic low-risk people falsely popping positive out of each group of 1,000, what makes them pop positive? For a rapid antigen test, it is because the test is never meant for use as a screening test in healthy asymptomatic people because it’s not specific enough. For a PCR test, positivity confidently means that there was COVID RNA in that sample, sure, but your nose or mouth very likely just filtered some dead bits of viral debris from the dust particles in the air as you walked through CVS to get the test before you learned you were supposed to use the drive-through. PCR can be way too sensitive.

A few strands of RNA are irrelevant. Even a few hundred fully intact viral particles are not likely to infect or cause disease. Humans aren’t that wimpy. But keep in mind that there is a very small chance that the test popped positive because you are about to get sick with COVID-19, and the test caught you, by pure luck, just before you are to become sick.

On top of this wrong use of diagnostic tests as screening tests, the government has been subsidizing hospitals for taking care of COVID-19-positive patients. Let’s say a hospital performs a COVID test 4 times during a hospital stay as a screening test in a patient who has no symptoms of COVID. If that test pops positive once and negative three times, the hospital will report that patient as having COVID-19, even though the one positive result is highly likely to have been a false positive. Why do hospitals do this testing so much? In part, because they’ll get $14,000 more from the government for each patient they declare has COVID-19.

When we see statistics of COVID-19 deaths, we should recognize that some substantial percentage of them should be called "Deaths with a COVID-19-positive test." When we see reports of case numbers rising, we should know that they are defining "case" as anyone with a COVID-19-positive test, which, as you might now realize, is really a garbage number.

Summary: 

1. We have an epidemic of COVID-positive tests that is substantially larger than the epidemic of identified Relevant Infectious COVID Disease. In contrast, people with actual, mild cases of COVID-disease aren’t all getting tested. So the data, on which lockdowns are supposedly justified, are lousy.

2. The data on COVID hospitalizations and deaths in the US are exaggerated by a government subsidization scheme that incentivizes the improper use of tests in people without particular risk of the disease.

3. Avoid getting tested for COVID unless you are symptomatic yourself, have had exposure to someone who was both symptomatic and tested positive for COVID, or have some other personal reason that makes sense.

4. Know that getting tested before traveling abroad puts you at a modest risk of getting a false-positive test result, which will assuredly screw up your trip. It’s a new political risk of travel.

5. There is a lot more to this viral testing game, and there are a lot of weird incentives. There are gray areas and room for debate.

Yes, the COVID disease can kill people. But a positive test won’t kill anybody. Sadly, every COVID-positive test empowers those politicians and bureaucrats who have a natural bent to control people - the sociopaths and their ilk."

John Hunt, MD is a pediatric pulmonologist/allergist/immunologist, a former tenured Associate Professor and academic medical researcher, who has extensive experience and publications involving PCR, antigen testing, and analysis of respiratory fluid. He is internationally recognized as an expert in aerosol/respiratory droplet collection and analysis.
Related:

Thursday, January 7, 2021

"New Great Depression Coming In 2021"

Full screen recommended.
"New Great Depression Coming In 2021"
by Epic Economist

"What to expect for 2021? According to economic analysts, financial experts, strategists, and researchers we're either headed to a new Great Depression, while civil mayhem, mass manipulation, political tyranny, and many more catastrophic events take over our country, or our reckoning day will finally arrive and we'll start to set a different course for our future by breaking the chains that tie us to the hypocrites who have been ruling us. In this video, we compiled the assessment of several specialists for what's next in the U.S. economic collapse. 

Differing from the opinion of other forecasters, best-selling financial author James Rickards defends that the extraordinary amount of printed money launched into the markets and the economy to ease the burden of the crisis won't immediately lead to inflation. However, that doesn't mean we will escape from it or that we'll be seeing brighter days in 2021. Rickards is anticipating tougher times for the U.S. economy. In his view, we're directed towards a much slower and weaker economy. 

He explains that low consumer spending is one of the factors that will slow down inflation at the initial stages of the collapse. Amid record unemployment rates, multiple financial setbacks, and increased amounts of debt, the tendency is that Americans will prefer to hold on to their money, aiming to put their finances in order before they resume engaging in new spending. So all of the “extra money” handed in the form of stimulus checks and unemployment benefits won’t be reinjected into the economy and trigger inflation right away. 

But for the United States to be able to cope with the huge national debt, there's no choice other than launching massive inflation into the system. That's to say, inflation won't naturally arise as a result of the trillion-dollar liquidity injections pumped into the system in 2020. Much worse than that, policymakers and the central bank will have to spark it, to produce it by doubling the current inflation target of 2%, and generating a lot more economic deterioration, so that they can wipe away the debt they created. 

In other words, as prices skyrocket, Americans will be increasingly less able to afford essential products and services. So, ultimately, we're the ones who are going to pay the price of this crisis. That’s the scenario of the New Great Depression. Now that Biden has been consolidated in the presidency, Rickards foresees that his policies "will impose major headwinds on an economy that is already struggling". Biden's plan for spending and tax raises will likely put the nation exactly on Rickard's forecasted path. 

Goldman and BofA strategists have been warning the same. Goldman projects more fiscal stimulus in the near-term of at least $600 billion, accounting for 2.7% of GDP. A more aggressive take of this scenario comes from the BofA, whose projections signal that an injection of $2 to 4 trillion in deficit spending might occur. That would create higher risks for the markets and compromise the bank's second-half 2021 outlook on GDP growth and inflation. BofA's latest forecasts suggest that this year the inflation target will be readjusted to 2.25%. 

So as our living standards are set to decline, authorities, politicians, policymakers, and the mainstream media will try to convince us that all of that was necessary to keep the health crisis under control. At this moment, our economy continues to be impaired by business shutdowns that not only prompt mass lay-offs, bankruptcies, and permanent closures as it undermines our prospects of recovery and growth.

The results of the lockdowns have been devastating for millions of lives. Consequently, hatred and civil turbulence have spiraled out of control. Our society has never been more angry or divided since we’ve lost confidence in most of what we used to trust and think was normal. Now, despair is taking over. All the elites want is to make the population desperate and powerless so most Americans can fail to see their real intentions: destabilize our social and economic juncture to make us more tamable and accept whatever they propose to keep unconsciously enabling them to expand their power and wealth at our own expense. 

Only when we acknowledge that truth, that we can forge our own path back to a world in which freedom means something again, or we’re going to be stuck in this wormhole of populist anger, petty politics and destruction that is pitting us one against the other. But all is not lost yet. Well, we could stay on the current catastrophic course or we could reverse it. Not Trump. Not Biden. And definitely not the architects and enablers of America's downfall. “We the people” are the hope for a better year."

Musical Interlude: Neil H, "Candlelight Dreams"

Neil H, "Candlelight Dreams"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Have you ever seen the Pleiades star cluster? Even if you have, you probably have never seen it as large and clear as this. Perhaps the most famous star cluster on the sky, the bright stars of the Pleiades can be seen without binoculars from even the depths of a light-polluted city. With a long exposure from a dark location, though, the dust cloud surrounding the Pleiades star cluster becomes very evident. 
Click image for larger size.
The featured exposure covers a sky area several times the size of the full moon. Also known as the Seven Sisters and M45, the Pleiades lies about 400 light years away toward the constellation of the Bull (Taurus). A common legend with a modern twist is that one of the brighter stars faded since the cluster was named, leaving only six of the sister stars visible to the unaided eye. The actual number of Pleiades stars visible, however, may be more or less than seven, depending on the darkness of the surrounding sky and the clarity of the observer's eyesight."

"And Maybe..."

“I don’t want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don’t want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun- hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, “Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case.” I will turn and say to them, “It is you who are the basket case! For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn’t even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times!” And maybe, the passers by will drop a coin into my cup.”
- Henry Rollins

“What Is Wrong With You People?”

“What Is Wrong With You People?”
by Brian Maher

"WE are denounced for complicity in yesterday’s atrocities. Reader Dave H: "Your endless images of brainwashed thugs, goons, mobs and boneheads without any commentary shows you and and your group are complicit and approve of what went on today. I couldn't be more disgusted. Don't send me this (expletive deleted) anymore..."

We were unable to express yesterday’s spectacle in words. We therefore expressed it in photographs. If one picture equals 1,000 words, yesterday’s issue ran to some 20,000. We hazarded you would prefer the pictures to the words.

Amy W. nonetheless laments: "I paid for financial content and all I get are ads for Jim Rickards and your political (expletive deleted). UGH...enough!"

Jon S. is an honorable Navy man. He says: "Predictable or no, [yesterday']s display of insurrection should be neither justified nor glorified. Last I checked, the established rule of law overrides any predicted 'reckoning' every time."

Peter M. - meantime - accuses us of an atrocious neutrality: "Yet another fence-sitting but interesting email from the DR. Are you cheering the protesters on or deprecating their behavior? Or just leaving us all with our own prejudices and assumptions?"

Let us now climb down from our fence. It is time to take our lashing from Sheila S: "You call the ‘democracy in action’? What is wrong with you people?"

Much… clearly.

Lastly, Arthur G. washes his hands of us and our "rediculous" site. We, like the president and his witless dupes, are deranged: "Remove me from your rediculous site. Trump is mentally deranged, and this proves the same about your site, and all Trump supporters."

Each reader defection represents a tiny death. Thus we mourn Arthur’s defection. Yet we wish to depart in peace… and on the pleasantest of terms. Thus we have mailed Arthur a parting gift in token of our good will... We trust he will wear his “Stop the Steal” shirt in the identical spirit of defiance we wear our own.

But to proceed…

The Shining City on the Hill: Have you ever believed you would witness scenes as yesterday’s? Is not the United States the democratic beacon to the admiring world? Is it not the “shining city on the hill?” Yet today its glow is vastly diminished. The gleam is off…

China labels yesterday’s deliriums a “beautiful sight to behold.” The reference traces to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She gushed in 2019 that Hong Kong’s anti-China protests were a beautiful sight to behold.
Now China turns her words against her: China is not the only foreign power to chuckle at yesterday’s spectacles…

A Sad, Sad Day: Here Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza gives us a good, hard razzing: "Venezuela expresses its concern over the acts of violence that are taking place in the city of Washington, USA; it condemns the political polarization and hopes that people in the USA can open a new path toward stability and social justice."

Your editor, like you, appreciates Venezuela’s tenderness. Yet it is a sad, sad day when basket case Venezuela must instruct the United States in democratic ways.

We hazard the United States president fails to appreciate the jest. His critics, meantime, are howling for his instant resignation. The nation cannot suffer under his evils for even two additional weeks... "He has incited riot, he has incited insurrection. His very hands are stained with blood." Even fellow Republicans are fleeing from him… rats off the sinking vessel.

Like Pearl Harbor? Charles Schumer is the Senate Majority Leader-in-waiting. This fellow even likens January 6, 2021 to December 7, 1941 - a “day that will live in infamy”: "It is very, very difficult to put into words what has transpired [yesterday]. I have never lived through or even imagined an experience like the one we have just witnessed in this Capitol. President Franklin Roosevelt set aside Dec. 7, 1941, as a day that will live in infamy. Unfortunately, we can now add Jan. 6, 2021, to that very short list of dates in American history that will live forever in infamy."

The aforesaid Nancy Pelosi labels the present situation “an emergency.” She is yelling for impeachment - a second impeachment. Should impeachment fail, and if the president digs in… she advises Vice President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution. Many others are with her. Our agents inform us Mr. Pence is sweating dreadfully under the heat… but that he will stay quiet. The president will serve his full four years. The show will run through January 20.

Yet some demand he be clapped into jail for his seditions - there is a vacant cell in Guantanamo Bay, they note. This we mention only in passing. A jailing is highly unlikely.

It’s Over: But today the president finally struck his colors… and in essence conceded the election. He pledged a peaceful power transfer - and on the date appointed: "Even though I totally disagree with the outcome of the election, and the facts bear me out, nevertheless there will be an orderly transition on January 20th."

As a patriotic American whose heart beats true ‘neath red, white and blue… we are pleased beyond description that peace will prevail. We are nonetheless disappointed the show is ending. It has been immensely entertaining. But the curtain drops on every show. The White House will be tremendously dull without his roars.

We next await the 2024 election between Kamala Harris... and Ivanka Trump..."

“Why Not Despair?”

“Why Not Despair?”

“To view our times as decadent and dangerous, to mistrust the government, to imagine that those in power as not concerned with our best interests is not paranoid but perceptive; to be depressed, angry or confused about such things is not delusional but a sign of consciousness. Yet our culture suggests otherwise. But if all this is true, then why not despair? The simple answer is this: despair is the suicide of imagination. Whatever reality presses upon us, there still remains the possibility of imagining something better, and in this dream remains the frontier of our humanity and its possibilities To despair is to voluntarily close a door that has not yet shut. The task is to bear knowledge without it destroying ourselves, to challenge the wrong without ending up on its casualty list. “You don’t have to change the world,” the writer Colman McCarthy has argued. “Just keep the world from changing you.”

Oddly, those who instinctively understand this best are often those who seem to have the least reason to do so – survivors of abuse, oppression, and isolation who somehow discover not so much how to beat the odds, but how to wriggle around them. They have, without formal instruction, learned two of the most fundamental lessons of psychiatry, philosophy, and religion:

You are not responsible for that into which you were born.
You are responsible for doing something about it.

These individuals move through life like a skilled mariner in a storm rather than as a victim at a sacrifice. Relatively unburdened by pointless and debilitating guilt about the past, uninterested in the endless regurgitation of the unalterable, they free themselves to concentrate upon the present and the future. They face the gale as a sturdy combatant rather than as cowering supplicant.”
- Sam Smith
"Ain't no man can avoid being born average, 
but there ain't no man got to be common."
- Satchel Paige

"Beginning of the End for the U.S. Empire?"

"Beginning of the End for the U.S. Empire?"
by Bill Bonner

WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "Lock your doors. Send your wives and daughters to safety in Paraguayan convents. And sell! The Barbarians are at the gates… No, they’ve crashed through! The forces of law and order seemed to take a holiday yesterday, allowing clownish “protesters” to run riot in the Capitol. But while the nation’s eyes were fixed on the mob scenes, more important news was coming in – from Georgia… and Wall Street.

Losing Control: In Georgia, Republicans lost control of the Senate. When they are in control, Republicans have proven to be just as bad – or worse than – Democrats. Ronald Reagan, George Bush II, and Donald Trump were the biggest spenders of recent history. But when they are out of power, Republicans go back to the ol’ time religion of small government, tight money, and balanced budgets. It was the Tea Party conservatives, for example, who were largely responsible for the spell of budget surpluses under Bill Clinton; they stopped him from spending money.

So the best outcome from the 2016 election may have been a Biden victory, along with solid Republican control of the Senate. The Democrats’ big-spending/big-taxing plans might have been blocked.

Turning Point: But now, losing two Georgia Republicans could cost the nation dearly. Yesterday, the bond market began to make out the handwriting scrawled on the walls of the Capitol: “As you sow; so shall ye reap,” it said. Here’s Bloomberg: "Treasuries Breaching 1% on Democratic Win May Just Be the Start". U.S. Treasury yields broke above 1% for the first time since the pandemic-driven turmoil in March, and the selloff may only have just begun should the Democrats secure control of the U.S. Senate."

U.S. Treasury bonds are the backbone of the whole global financial system. Rising yields could mean a greater appetite for borrowing money (signaling an expanding economy).More likely, in this context, they tell us that the world is losing faith in the U.S. dollar. And here’s more from Bloomberg earlier this week, which backs up our “inflate or die” theory: "Traders see U.S. inflation averaging at least 2% per year over the coming decade, the first time expectations have climbed that high since 2018."

Could it be? Are we really at a major turning point… when Treasury bond prices go down and yields go up? Was yesterday the key day… when everything we took for granted for the last 40 years – declining inflation, low-and-falling interest rates, and rising stock prices – suddenly turned around?

Slippery Slope: And for the U.S. empire… resting on a foundation of dollar strength – is this the beginning of the end? Will the Chinese, Iranians, Russians, etc. soon come up with a competing currency… perhaps more solidly tied to the real world?

For 224 years, America’s power and wealth grew. By our reckoning, it peaked around the turn of the century, 20 years ago. Since then, it’s been on a gentle downhill slide. But now, the slope has suddenly gotten much steeper and more slippery.

Everything Is Cyclical: The credit cycle, from top to bottom and back, lasts about 70 years. That’s long enough for one generation to learn and the next to forget. The last bottom in Treasury yields came after World War II. Whether yesterday marked another historic bottom in yields, we won’t know for sure for several years.

The stock market, too, moves in big, long cycles… from boom to bust and back to boom again… over many decades. We see it most clearly when we filter out the noise caused by an unreliable U.S. dollar. In 1980, stocks hit an all-time low. Then, you could get the entire Dow – all 30 stocks in the index – for barely more than a single ounce of gold. From there, stocks rose until 2000, peaking 42 times higher (it took 42 ounces of gold to buy the Dow stocks in January 2000). Since then, stocks have been working their way down again, in terms of gold… with the Dow currently worth about 16 ounces of gold. (Just a guess: We expect stock prices to rise in the future – floating on the Federal Reserve’s paper money flood. But in terms of gold, they are likely to continue their downward trend.)

And neither is “paper” money itself immune to cycles. It goes from creation to cremation… never surviving a complete credit cycle. Like a delicate flower, it blooms bright… but fades fast. Because, when money gets “tight” – with rising real interest rates – the authorities can’t resist the temptation to print more.

Reap What Ye Sow: What was sown in 2020 was financial, political, and social chaos… And now, 2021 promises a fulsome harvest… of bitterness… financial losses… and economic disruption. Democrats will blame Republicans. Conservatives will blame liberals. But who really is to blame for a setting sun? More to come…"

The Daily "Near You?"

Billings, Montana, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The American Restoration"

"The American Restoration"
by Tim “xrugger” Stebbins

"Let us assume for a moment that the war is over. Let us further assume that the Restoration has begun. The bloated corpses of erstwhile plutocrats, communists, and other leftist rabble festoon the lampposts of the nation. The deep state has been unearthed. The leadership imprisoned, shot, or on the run. Vast swaths of urban American lie in smoking ruins, including large parts of Washington D.C. The flotsam and jetsam of war,  the bloody detritus of internecine conflict, sloshes across the continent. The political landscape is irrevocably altered.

Should such a horrific vision come to pass, we would do well to be certain of the reasons we chose to fight. That brings us back to the here and now. The purpose of this essay is to lay out, as I see it, the broader vision of why we must fight. Perhaps a second part will serve to explore the details of what comes after. Make of these words what you will. I have finished my gut check and await now, with calm spirit, the coming storm.

Why We Must Fight: For what will we fight? Will we shed blood to maintain a status quo that has become intolerable? Is that the extent of our vision? Will we fight simply to maintain and uphold a system of government that is orders of magnitude more intrusive, overbearing, and dangerous than the monarchical irritations of George III? The revolutionaries of 1776 found sufficient cause to fight an eight year war over offences to human liberty that seem quaint compared to the egregious usurpations perpetrated by that festering pustule of tyranny astride the Potomac. That city, whose existence has become an affront to the character of the man for which it is named, is merely the brick and mortar manifestation of a twisted political ethos that has brought this once great nation to the abyss.

If we would make this fight, it is incumbent upon us to make known, both to ourselves and to our enemies, why we freely choose to enter into the chaos that lies before us. Patrick Henry urged the fight upon his compatriots because, as he made clear, “Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”

With all its uncertainties, vicissitudes, and potential for utter disaster, the fight is as squarely before us as it was before them. My friends, it is not our brethren who are already in the field. It is our enemies. The ground must be contested now, lest the martinets now ascendant bury themselves like ticks in the necks of every free man and woman left in the nation, and like ticks, they will suck the lifeblood from every productive person and enterprise in this land. It is already being done.

Questions: A Rubicon of blood lies before us. Let us be clear then, why we choose to set foot in such a torrent. We cannot flee to some distant horizon as our ancestors could. The cancer of despotism metastasizes all around us. There is nowhere left to run. The days when one could live a lifetime barely aware of the existence of the central power are long behind us.

What new edifice will we erect on the rubble of what will, most assuredly, be destroyed? To what purpose will we commit our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor? Further, since the purpose of war is to make the other fellow die for his cause, for what purpose are we willing to destroy the lives and property of our enemies? To what end will we starve and dispossess his children and his wife? What will we build upon the ruins of his home? As deluded as they may be, our enemies are still human beings. They will bleed and die, as we will. Their homes will burn, as will ours. Make no mistake, a choice for war entails the full use of all its tools and will manifest all the ugly attributes of which fallen human nature is capable. There will be wanton cruelty and wholesale destruction on a scale barely imaginable to modern American sensibilities. Nevertheless, the alternative is worse.

What We Face: The central power now seeks to combine (in fact is already combining) with corporate technocracy, financial oligarchy, and scientific tyranny. It now reaches into every corner of the nation. It has thrown down every barrier erected against it. It now turns its malignant gaze on what remains of our liberties. It is not Yeats’ “rough beast” that now “slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.” It is a gleaming artifice of techno-tyranny, a gross parody of the human form now gliding silently, with deadly intent, toward the Cradle of Liberty.

The issues at stake are more than existential. They are profound beyond the reach of human language to describe. They are elements of the eternal struggle of men to wring from the world and its would-be masters that degree of freedom, without which, man remains little more than a beast of burden. The scales of human history weigh heavily on the side of tyranny over the lives and fortunes of men. The American Revolution gave our forebears the chance to balance those scales and so they did, at least for a time. An American Restoration can recover what has been lost and redress the imbalance being forced upon us by the perennial and unrelenting enemies of ordered liberty.

What Must Be Done: Half measures will not suffice. Large parts of the central power require thorough dismantling. The body politic of this nation will return to health and vigor only when the accretions of a century of “progressive” policy are scraped away, and the suppurating boils of leftist ideology are lanced and their noisome infection drained. As for the droves of government drones left jobless in the wake of the Restoration…well, they have lived off the creative energies of others long enough. Let them find their own way in the world as every other self-respecting American does.

The paramount purpose of this fight must not be to simply reign in the excesses of despotism, or tinker at the edges of tyranny. The federal power is not simply an unruly bush to be pruned and shaped. It is a monster that must be permanently disarticulated. Leviathan must be thrown down, disemboweled, castrated, decapitated, and hurled into the abyss.

The organs of authority in a restored America must be made to understand that their position is, and ever will be, one of subservience to the natural rights and liberties of the American people. I care not a whit for what the rest of the world may choose to do in this degenerate age, but within the borders of this land, liberty must be reborn and all that would inhibit its flowering must be extirpated forever from its governance. Such a weight of chains should be loaded onto any new government that it will never again be a threat to the life, liberty, or happiness of the American people. Let the rest of the world know that on the American continent, if in no other place, the proper place of the state is not riding the backs of free men. Its proper position is prostrate at their feet.

A Promise and a Warning: Perhaps one day, when Yeats’  “blood-dimmed tide” has receded, and the Restoration is accomplished, a wiser nation might give some thought to an endeavor of a different sort. In my mind’s eye, I see a new Lady Liberty in the harbor. In her right hand, she holds aloft the familiar light of liberty, a promise to all those seeking freedom with stout heart and generous spirit.

But there is something new. On her head, no crown rests, and her left arm cradles no book. Instead, upon her brow, she wears the helmet of a Spartan hoplite. She grips in her left hand a spear inclined toward the sea. On its point is fixed the head of tyranny: vanquished, slack-jawed, and blank-eyed. Upon its forehead are carved, in jagged script, words of warning to all those who would come to these shores seeking to enfetter the spirit of liberty and trample upon the God-given rights of free men…”Thus Always to Tyrants.”
"Civil War In America- Who Would Win?"
Highest recommendation!
This seems tragically inevitable. 
Look at us! You just know we''ll do it, too...
"Battle Cry of Freedom"
From "The Civil War", by Ken Burns

"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 😡
pic.twitter.com/cFJmIekwzR
— Still Vigilant Grandma 🇺🇸🗽 (@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+Honey🌱 (@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 🇺🇸 (@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