"Surely, You Did Something..."

“It’s 3:23 A.M.

And I’m awake because my great great grandchildren won’t let me sleep.

They ask me in dreams,

‘What did you do while the planet was plundered?

What did you do when the earth was unraveling?

Surely you did something when the seasons started flailing?

As the mammals, reptiles and birds were all dying?

Did you fill the streets with protest?

When democracy was stolen, what did you do once you knew?

Surely, you did something…’”

- Drew Dellinger

"How It Really Is"

Good luck, Joe!

○

Jethro Tull, "Locomotive Breath"

"No way to slow down..."

"We Are Suffering Through The Most Painful Economic Collapse Since The Great Depression Of The 1930s"

"We Are Suffering Through The Most Painful 

Economic Collapse Since The Great Depression Of The 1930s"

by Epic Economist

"We cannot say that we haven't been warned that an economic collapse was coming, and now that it has arrived it's even worse than one could have imagined. From the burst of the sanitary outbreak last March up until now, over half of the American population has suffered acute financial setbacks, and roughly 12 million U.S. renters are at least $5,850 behind in rent and utilities payments, according to the latest projections. A recent study has signaled that up to 40 million people could face eviction as soon as moratoriums and the forbearance period finally ends, which puts the world's most powerful country on the verge of a homelessness crisis. 

Over 70 million claims for unemployment benefits have been filed so far, and numbers keep climbing as hundreds of thousands of businesses are closing their doors for good. Our economy is undergoing damages only comparable in size and extent to what was witnessed during the Great Depression of the 1930s and, unfortunately, there's no end in sight to the nightmare we're living in right now. That's what we discuss in this video

The latest data show that another 900,000 Americans filed new unemployment claims last week, a clear indication of the challenges ahead for the labor market. Before 2020 had started and the whole idea of an economic collapse was still just a possibility, the all-time record for new weekly unemployment claims was only 695,000, registered during the Early 1980s Recession. At this stage of the crisis, the number of new claims for jobless benefits has been surpassing 695,000 for almost 44 weeks in a row. That is to say, we're nearing a full-year of record-breaking unemployment rates, and the most worrying thing is that this is just the start. 

Low-wage workers have been particularly hard hit by the crisis, many of them used to be employed in the hospitality industry, whose segments were severely affected by the many rounds of restrictions. The restaurant industry, for its part, is facing the worst meltdown it has ever endured. According to an OpenTable study, the number of “seated diners,” a daily measure that tracks walk-ins and diners with reservations, was down on average by 57% all across the U.S. just this week compared to the same period last year. 

Likewise, according to STR, Inc, a hotel industry market data firm, 2020 was unquestionably the worst year on record for hotels as industrywide profits were down to zero, as a consequence of government-mandated social distancing measures that kept travelers at home. The STR report revealed that the industry has now one billion unsold room nights for the first time, exceeding the record of 786 million in 2009.

It's not possible to accurately foresee a timeline of when corporate travelers will start booking hotel rooms again, especially with the popularization of work-at-home arrangements and Zoom meetings, which could imply that there will be a permanent decline in traveling, possibly resulting in an unprecedented wave of hotel foreclosures. Numerous small business owners are also at the brink of seeing their business hit rock bottom, as the ramifications of the forced shutdowns have been absolutely devastating their prospects of a recovery. 

What our businesses desperately need is to resume the pace of economic activity, but instead, it seems that we're trapped in a never-ending stimulus path that doesn't effectively support owners, workers nor the economy. In fact, the new administration has already launched some questionable plans that will likely impair small truckers. Trucking industry experts have been debating over new laws on transportation that are about to be passed under the new presidency, which could seriously endanger many small American trucking companies. 

Ultimately, the results of this law will enable big corporations to seize even more of the trucking market share. It's important to keep in mind that truck drivers' work is essential to keep providing food and material necessities to the nation. But these workers have been feeling disrespected and ignored by the political elite, which could trigger another halt on transportation just as we've seen in November. Consequently, that could potentially lead to another supply chain disruption, and send prices of several goods remarkably up.

Apparently, it is going to be another dark year in U.S. history. The American dream has turned into an economic nightmare and it seems that every day it passes, we're only waiting to see what the next trigger event will be. So many people are suffering at this point, it is just gut-wrenching to watch our great nation's continual decay. Millions of citizens and hundreds of thousands of businesses keep hanging by a thread, and all we can do at this point is hoping for it not to break." 

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com

MUST Watch! “Your Wealth Is Being Stolen While You Play Video Games; Minimum Wage Danger; Real Estate Melt-up”

Jeremiah Babe,

“Your Wealth Is Being Stolen While You Play Video Games;

 Minimum Wage Danger; Real Estate Melt-up”

Gregory Mannarino, "Is The Stock Market Really About To Go Full Meltdown?"

Gregory Mannarino,

"Is The Stock Market Really About To Go Full Meltdown?"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Velvet Morning"

Liquid Mind, "Velvet Morning"

Liquid Mind ® is the name used by Los Angeles composer and producer

 Chuck Wild of the best-selling Liquid Mind relaxation music albums.

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax galaxy cluster.

This impressively sharp color image shows intense star forming regions at the ends of the bar and along the spiral arms, and details of dust lanes cutting across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the central black hole.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100820.html

The Poet: Rolf Jacobsen, "When They Sleep"

"When They Sleep"

"All people are children when they sleep.

There's no war in them then.

They open their hands and breathe

in that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.

They pucker their lips like small children

and open their hands halfway,

soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.

The stars stand guard

and a haze veils the sky,

a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.

If only we could speak to one another then

when our hearts are half-open flowers.

Words like golden bees

would drift in.

God, teach me the language of sleep."

- Rolf Jacobsen,

"The Roads Have Come to an End Now"

"It Is Inevitable..."

"We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and if it be delightful to us, we regret to see it pass away. We try to sustain it by the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching. Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so."

- Blaise Pascal

"You Know..."

“You know, we never see the world exactly as it is. We see it as we hope it will be or we fear it might be. And we spend our lives going through a sort of modified stages of grief about that realization. And we deny it, and then we argue with it, and we despair over it. But eventually - and this is my belief - that we come to see it, not as despairing, but as vitalizing. We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is.”

- Maria Popova

"Incompetent Morons"

"Incompetent Morons"

By Bill Bonner

"Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? 

Nothing else."

– Epictetus, the Greek philosopher

WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "Does a wolf know he’s a carnivore? Does a brown bear know when it is time to thicken his fur for winter? And did George W. Bush know he was making the biggest foreign policy blunder in U.S. history when he launched the “War on Terror”? Did he know he was preparing the nation for “domestic terrorism”? As we put it earlier this week, fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly. And late, degenerate emperors gotta be incompetent morons.

No-Win Situation: And here, we put today’s events in a simple, tight frame. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden are like the last leaders of the Roman Empire… Anthemius, Glycerius, Olybrius, and Nepos… no-accounts and imbeciles… playing their roles without really understanding what was going on. All faced a no-win situation. In 5th century Rome, tax revenues were falling while costs rose; the empire was failing. And now, so is America’s empire of fake money and unpayable debt.

At this stage in the degenerates’ progress, the U.S. elite have no choice. They must further foul the economy with more fake money… and suppress dissent. The only other choice would be to renounce the empire. Bring the troops home. Cut spending. Balance the budget. And stop printing money. Easy peasy. But that would require real courage, intelligence, and honesty… Not gonna happen.

Simpler Times: We went to Ronald Reagan’s first inauguration. What a grand time! The Gipper was later captured by Deep State hacks… but in 1980, his famous campaign theme, “Morning in America,” still had the dew on it. We were still young and naïve, too… and hoped for a better future with less government involvement. And even among those who disagreed with Reagan, there was no bitterness towards him.

It was a cold night, but hearts were warm and spirits were high. Washington was packed… with eight separate invitation-only Inaugural Balls. There was music, champagne, and dancing. No troops patrolled the streets. There were no crowd-control fences. No razor wire or armed personnel carriers. There were simply thousands of people celebrating an election victory and looking forward to better things to come.

The new president and his wife, Nancy, had to go from one party to the next… giving short words of encouragement and thanks… often including a joke or two. We only remember one of them… An American and a Russian are sitting in a bar, arguing over whose country is better. The American argues… “See, in America, I am free to do whatever I want. If I wanted to, I could walk right into the White House, slam my fist on the President’s desk, and say, ‘Mr. President, I don’t like the way you are running our country.’” The Russian then said, “I can do the same thing.” “Really? You can?” asks the American. “Yes,” continues the Russian. “If I wanted to, I could walk right into the Kremlin, slam my fist on the General Secretary’s desk, and say, ‘Mr. General Secretary, I don’t like the way President Reagan is running his country.’”

But those were happier days… America was still on the way up. You could still criticize the president without being de-platformed.

Power Grab: This year, however, marks two decades of America on the way down. For it was in 2001 that the feds began the misbegotten War on Terror and passed George W. Bush’s “Patriot Act.”  When the feds call something a Patriot Act, you can be sure they’re up to no good. Had advertising standards been enforced in the Capitol, they might have named it the “Ignore the Bill of Rights and Create a Police State” Act. But honesty was going out of fashion at the start of the 21st century.

The Patriot Act was a rascally, Deep State power grab. In it, the feds not only neglected their solemn duty to protect the delicate freedom of their citizens, they took a hammer to it themselves. It gave them tools to pry and eavesdrop on a scale never before seen in America. It expanded the meaning of “terrorism” and allowed them to beat down their “enemies” however they pleased.

Even then, 20 years ago, we saw it as a dress rehearsal for a “War on Terror” in the U.S. itself. People were being trained to stand in line (without protest!) while the TSA patted down grandmothers and Girl Scouts. Neither the grandmothers nor the Girl Scouts posed any real risk to commercial aviation… and everybody knew it. But hey… you can’t be too safe! Americans were also encouraged to rat each other out – “See something; Say something.” Most important, they got used to the government bossing them around in the name of public safety.

Unstoppable Patriotism: We don’t for a minute think George W. Bush intended to turn America into a police state. But perhaps there is some inchoate instinct in humans. When it is time for an empire to decline… they vote for Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden. Then, each plays his part – unconscious of his historical role in bringing the empire to its knees.

The Patriot Act created a whole industry – centered in Northern Virginia – with 17 different spook agencies, billion-dollar budgets, and no way to know what they are spending it on – it’s a secret!  The Act prefigured the rise of “insurgents” in the U.S. And now, razor wire, body armor, soldiers, armored vehicles, artillery, snooping, and data collection – all the dark arts once used for protecting the U.S. embassy in Baghdad from terrorists – can be recycled to protect the U.S. Capitol from the American people. 

The courts have found parts of the Patriot Act unconstitutional, but the bulk of it remains. And even if it were judged unconstitutional by the courts, it is almost impossible to stop. In 2005, for example, a Stanford Law graduate student was arrested. She was boarding an airplane when she was told she was on the “No Fly” list. How did she get on the list? What was going on? The feds wouldn’t say. “State secret,” they claimed. In fact, it was a mistake… But it took the young woman several years and $3 million in legal fees to get off the list.

Punishment Without Crime: And earlier this month, Senator Chuck Schumer said he wanted to expand the “No Fly” list by adding the names of all the people involved in the unlawful entry into the Capitol, whether they are ever convicted of a crime or not. That’s the beauty – from the Deep State’s point of view – of “terrorism.” It doesn’t require a crime. Anyone you don’t like can be designated a “terrorist.”

What about all those people who contributed to conservative causes? They doubted the accuracy of the election results and demanded a recount. Drawing on the marvelous precedent provided by the Bush team, can’t they now be charged with providing material support to terrorists? Can’t they be put on “No Fly” lists… locked away forever in Guantanamo… or sent to Saudi Arabia for waterboarding? Stay tuned…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"Good News – Stimulus Check & Executive Orders, AM 1/22/21"

Blind to Billionaire, AM 1/22/21"

"Good News – Stimulus Check & Executive Orders"

Our videos always do pertain to everybody including those individuals 

receiving Social Security, Social Security retirement,Social Security disability, 

SSDI, SSI, VA, our RV, low income and no income.

"We Are Suffering Through The Most Painful Economic Crisis Since The Great Depression Of The 1930s"

"We Are Suffering Through The Most Painful 

Economic Crisis Since The Great Depression Of The 1930s"

by Michael Snyder

"I warned that an economic collapse was coming, and an economic collapse is exactly what we got. 2020 was a “personal financial disaster” for 55 percent of all Americans, approximately 12 million U.S. renters are “at least $5,850 behind in rent and utilities payments”, the Aspen Institute is projecting that up to 40 million people could be facing eviction when the rent and mortgage moratoriums finally end, and more than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed since the COVID pandemic began.

Nobody can point to a time since the Great Depression of the 1930s when the U.S. economy was in worse shape than it is right now. Unfortunately, there are no indications that this nightmare is going to end. Last week, another 900,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits: "Another 900,000 people filed new unemployment claims last week, President Donald Trump’s last in office, a snapshot of the significant labor market challenges facing President Joe Biden. An additional 423,000 people in 47 states filed new claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, the program created to help gig and self-employed workers."

Prior to 2020, the all-time record for new unemployment claims in a single week was just 695,000, and that old record was set all the way back in 1982. We shattered that old record early in 2020, but the bigger story is what has happened since we broke it. At this point, the number of new claims for unemployment benefits has been above 695,000 for 44 weeks in a row. That is starting to come close to a full year.

If that does not qualify as a “collapse”, then you are probably using a completely different definition of the word than I am using. This unemployment crisis has hit low wage workers particularly hard. At this point, even Fed officials are being forced to admit that the unemployment rate for low wage workers “is above 20%”.

Many of those low wage workers used to be employed in the restaurant industry, but the restaurant industry continues to be mired in the worst stretch that it has ever encountered: "The number of “seated diners,” a daily measure with which OpenTable tracks walk-ins and diners with reservations, in the week through January 20 in the US was down on average by 57% from the same period last year."

The hospitality industry also typically employs large numbers of low wage workers, and we are being told that last year was the “worst year on record” for that industry: "According to STR, Inc, a hotel industry market data firm, 2020 was absolutely the worst year on record for hotels as industrywide profits fell to zero, as the virus pandemic and resulting government-enforced social distancing measures kept travelers at home.

STR’s latest report said the US hotel occupancy rate was 44% for the year, down from 66% in 2019. This was the lowest occupancy rate on record. In an earlier STR report, we noted weeks ago that the industry had one billion unsold room nights for the first time, surpassing the record of 786 million in 2009."

Countless numbers of small business owners have also been absolutely devastated by this economic downturn. Each month, thousands of small businesses die a permanent death, and the outlook for the months ahead is not good at all. The Epoch Times recently interviewed one small business owner in Minnesota who admitted that “the fallout by this time next year will be shocking”: "The ramifications of the forced shutdowns on thousands of small businesses in Minnesota is going to be huge, says Julie Schroeder, who owns two craft stores in the Minneapolis metro area. “The fallout by this time next year will be shocking,” she told The Epoch Times on Dec. 30, 2020."

Meanwhile, north of the border small businesses are being destroyed at a staggering rate as well: "The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is warning that more than 220,000 businesses across the country are at risk of permanently closing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The CFIB, a lobby group that represents small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in Canada, released a new report on Thursday that surveyed 4,129 members about business prospects through the pandemic. The survey found that 181,000 businesses – or one in six – are seriously contemplating permanently closing. That’s up from a similar survey conducted in July, which found that 158,000 businesses were at risk of closing."

In the end, if we can keep the amount of small businesses in the U.S. and Canada that go under to less than 20 percent that should be considered a major victory. Because I have a feeling that the final number is going to be well above that threshold.

And the Biden administration does not seem too sympathetic to the needs of small businesses at this point. For example, one new law that Biden is likely to sign would absolutely cripple small truckers: "Trucking industry experts expect Joe Biden’s presidency to seriously jeopardize many small American trucking companies, and the prospects of truck drivers who work as independent contractors. Biden is poised to sign a transportation law passed in the Democratic House and stalled in the then-Republican Senate in 2019. The Moving Forward Act had required commercial motor vehicles to maintain more than $2 million in insurance liability, more than doubling the existing $750,000."

Wouldn’t it be nice if our representatives in Washington were forced to take a basic course in economics before they were allowed to serve? The blind are leading the blind, and the economic nightmare that we are currently experiencing is eventually going to get a whole lot worse. But hopefully we can at least have a short period of time where things will plateau a bit before the next major trigger event happens.

So many people out there are really hurting right now, and it is not just financial pain that they are dealing with. The past several months have been excruciatingly painful for tens of millions of Americans, and the truth is that there are countless people out there that are emotionally shattered at this moment. If you are one of those people, just keep hanging in there. It will take some time, but you will get through this and you will recover. And I will continue to be here pumping out articles as I do my very best to try to help everyone make sense of a world that is going completely mad."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Grasse, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, France.

Thanks for stopping by!

"Life Is Truly A Ride..."

"Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no one can stop it. When the doctor slaps your behind, he's ripping your ticket and away you go. As you make each passage from youth to adulthood to maturity, sometimes you put your arms up and scream, sometimes you just hang on to that bar in front of you. But the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair's messed, you're out of breath, and you didn't throw up."

- Jerry Seinfeld

○

"Time, Life, and the Roller Coaster"

Remember when you were 10 years old, and summer felt like it lasted forever? Got a little older, not so bad, still plenty of time to do everything you wanted. Someone told me back then that time speeds up the older you get. Being young, and knowing everything as the young do, I of course ridiculed this idea. But guess what- it’s true. Now I view life, and time, as a roller coaster with just one enormous riser. As you climb the beginning towards the top time is slower to pass. At 30 or so you’re at the very top, then you start the fall towards the bottom. Faster and faster you go, as time goes by ever quicker. Weeks and months flash by, and you wonder where it all went, and as you descend ever faster you suddenly realize that somewhere on the tracks below there’s a solid brick wall or some other disaster awaiting your arrival. The only things you don’t know is where on the tracks ahead of you it is, or how soon you'll arrive. So, while you still can, you'd better appreciate even more the things you can enjoy, and the people whom you love and that love you, because the ride isn’t going to last forever... - CP

“Never Hate Your Enemies..."

“Never hate your enemies. It clouds your judgment.”

- "Michael Corleone"

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names." 

- John F. Kennedy

"Here We Are..."

"The human race is a herd. Here we are, unique, eternal aspects of consciousness with an infinity of potential, and we have allowed ourselves to become an unthinking, unquestioning blob of conformity and uniformity. A herd. Once we concede to the herd mentality, we can be controlled and directed by a tiny few. And we are."

- David Icke

“We Deserve To Be Eaten”

“We Deserve To Be Eaten”

by Karl Denninger

“Let's be clear about this folks: We deserve to be eaten. Yes, I said eaten. As in caused to assume room temperature. Then skinned. Then slathered in BBQ sauce (to cover the bad taste.) Then grilled. And consumed. And the people who should do it to you? Your children.

Now granted, that's harsh. And no, I'm not advocating it, I'm saying we deserve it. The people of this nation have no right to the love and respect of their offspring. None. Quite the contrary, we deserve to treated as food. We have managed to extract promises that cannot be kept and what's worse the attempt to do so is guaranteed to essentially enslave our younger generation.

I have for a long time lamented that the younger folks in our country seem to be very unmotivated, striving only to do what they have to in order to get by rather than being innovators and making a true effort to excel. I no longer hold this against them. I understand it. Their response to these abuses is non-violent and cannot be assailed - it is in fact logical. Let me ask you the obvious but damned uncomfortable question: Would you prefer the violent - yet still logical, considering what we've done to them - alternative?

We, the older people in this country who not only refused to act over the last four decades of financial fraud and abuse in both the private sector and government but in addition continue to refuse to act to stop it to this very day deserve it.

Even though this attitude and passive refusal by our youth has destroyed our nation's competitiveness, the root cause of it is our pig-headed acts and the demand to write checks we cannot cash, insisting that they cash them instead so we can feast while they starve.

We lose the fundamental right to do that with our offspring when our children reach 18 and no longer have a claim on our assets and earnings power in exchange for their sustenance and protection. Note that from birth to 18 while the relationship may have an essentially parasitic character to it there is a quid-pro-quo that we return to our kids. You can argue over whether this is just but not whether it's necessary, since an infant is physically incapable of survival and growth without outside assistance. That transition from a power relationship to one of equals, even friends, is one that is supposed to happen over time from birth to emancipation. It is in fact our jobs as parents - our only job - to execute on that.

But we've become pigs. We're not content to perform that task and discharge our responsibilities. When we discovered that we can't force our now-18 year olds to mow the lawn any more in exchange for an allowance, we then passed laws that tax them to cover our health care after we chose to be gluttonous jackasses, poisoning our bodies and then demanding the latest, most-expensive medical care that we cannot pay for ourselves. Worse, we let government and the "educational monopoly" design a system that is utterly rapacious and designed to screw our youth through uneconomic options sold to them as the "essential" educational background necessary for success.

Sure, there are exceptions. Some can claim those exceptions personally, but damn few can claim them socially. While you may claim you don't want to burden your children you still continue to vote for, support and allow government to continue to **** the next door neighbor's kid to get what you claim you deserve.

And don't tell me it matters if you're Democrat, Republican, Libertarian or otherwise. It does not. The fact of the matter is that no government can exist without the consent of the governed and no government can issue debt successfully if the people refuse to provide something that creditors can rely on for repayment.

We have the ability to stop all of this stupidity, from top to bottom. But we won't do it because we are afraid. And in response to that fear, instead of standing up to what we've done and accepting that we must take risk in order to right the wrongs we committed we instead choose to financially enslave those young adults we brought into this world, as if we bred them to be our slaves from the outset.

If you're wondering why I believe we deserve to be eaten - or our youth simply shut down and refuse to make their best effort - read the above paragraph as many times as you need to until it sinks in.

'Nuff said.”

- http://market-ticker.org

"All Of The Available Data..."

"All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has about 

as much interest in the life of the mind as does your average armadillo."

- Morris Berman

Apologies to armadillos for the comparison...

"Are We Still Allowed To Ask Questions?"

"Are We Still Allowed To Ask Questions?"

by Paul Rosenberg

"Aside from a breathless stream of headlines and a few random inputs, I haven’t seen many facts regarding the events of January 6th. Circumstances made things that way for me, and now I’m glad they did, because it set me up for the really important issue: Am I allowed to ask questions about this, or am I not?

Bear in mind that I haven’t voted for or otherwise championed Mr. Trump. (Nor did I support his opponents.) More than that, I really want to know the answers to these questions. Especially given the fallout from January 6th, honest answers to these questions matter a great deal. So, I’m going to stick my neck out and ask questions about this event that seem pertinent.

Question #1: What was the actual time line? As I was driving on the 6th, I flipped on the radio and heard Mr. Trump speaking. I was aware that there was going to be a rally in the capitol, and so I listened for a minute or so, just enough to get the tone of it; a rally on the same day electoral votes were counted concerned me. What I actually heard from Mr. Trump, however, was less than his strongest, and included something like, “I know you’re going to go down there…” combined with “patriotically and peacefully.” Hearing him mention “peacefully” comforted me. (Plus the fact that American conservatives take pride in being peaceful and courteous.)

And so I was rather shocked, not many minutes later, when a friend called and said something about the capitol. I responded along the lines of, “it sounds harmless enough”… whereupon I learned that protesters were already inside the building. Since then I’ve seen claims that Mr. Trump was a mile away, in the middle of his speech, when the capitol building was being broken into. So, between my own observations and the claims, I’d like to know what really happened when. Again, I honestly don’t know. What troubles me is that I haven’t seen the claim refuted, only ignored.

Question #2: Were agents provocateur involved? One of the random things I came across was a report from Michael Yon, perhaps the most experienced war reporter in the world, claiming BLM and Antifa agents provocateur led the break-in. This is a guy who should be able to tell. I’ve further seen reports that someone named Sullivan was a known BLM leader, and was at the vanguard of people entering the building. So, I don’t actually know that BLM and Antifa were involved with this, but I’d very much like to know. And once again, I haven’t seen this question addressed. Perhaps I’ve missed something conclusive on this, but the question deserves to be addressed with facts.

Question #3: Is thinking an election was rigged considered insane? This is the impression I get from about half of my headline stream: That anyone believing the recent election was rigged is flat-out insane. But for me, that’s a real problem, because I’ve experienced election rigging, personally. On top of that, I’ve known a lot of inside players in my home state, giving me many more reasons to believe in election rigging. That’s not proof that the November election was rigged, of course, but it’s clearly a reason for me to take seriously the possibility. And if I’m not allowed to ask, I have to wonder why.

As best I can tell, none of the loud voices (news networks, etc.) have analyzed what has been claimed as evidence. Again, I may have missed something, but I simply haven’t seen it. So far as I know, the courts have never examined it (they got rid of the cases on procedural grounds in every case I recall), nor did congress: the “insurrection” interrupted that, after which it was ignored. That sounds very convenient to me, but again, I could have missed a lot. So again I’d like to know: Is such a question permissible, or will I be punished for asking it?

Question #4: Aside from trespassing and a few broken windows, what harm was done?So far as I know, the answer is “not much,” though I may have missed something. A lady named Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed, but she was killed by the police, not the protesters. And details about other reported deaths are spotty. So, I think my question is valid.

Several hundred politicians were inconvenienced, of course, but that’s hardly a major issue. A congressional baseball team being murderously shot up not too long ago was a big deal, but that came and went with almost none of the fanfare and fallout we’ve seen since January 6th. So again I ask, precisely what harm was done? And I ask especially because I’ve seen words like “sacred” applied to this, and to me that reeks of idolatry and dogma, the opposites of reason and proportion.

Question #5: Where are the civil libertarians? I’ll admit that this one rather ticks me off. Tens of thousands of people have been ejected from the public square, not because they caused actual harm, but because someone thinks they’re part of an “insurrection.” Bear in mind that almost none of these people were anywhere near Washington, DC on the 6th. All they did was to fall within some algorithm produced by a surveillance capitalism company. (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

I’ve further heard that people have lost jobs and financing in precisely the same manner: They had nothing to do with the event, but were somehow associated with it. Either that’s a witch hunt or there’s massive and direct evidence against all those people… and it sure doesn’t seem like that’s the case. Since when do we impose penalties for insurrection without a serious finding of fact? And Ron Paul, for goodness sake? He’s a congenitally polite doctor, now old and retired. Disagree with him all you like, but to eject him from the public square is naked thuggery.

So again, I ask: Where are all the civil libertarians? They’re absent without leave, as best I can tell. Either that or it was always a charade, and their high-sounding rhetoric was just sucker-bait for the rubes.

If These Things Can’t Be Asked… Here’s where the rubber meets the road: If we cannot ask these questions, confident that we’ll be met with reason and proportion, we’re living in a tyranny.

What appears to be happening is an illogical statement being writ very large. This is the statement: Some people broke into the capitol and a few windows were broken, therefore our lives are in danger and we must stomp out all evildoers. Any connection between the first part of that sentence and the second is uncertain and (as best I can tell) unproven. And yet, the responses to January 6th treat it as completely verified.

And so, if these questions are not permissible, we are living in tyranny, and particularly under the tyranny of those who punish the asking. So many times we see the true importance of things only once we lose them, and this moment has been revelatory in just that way: We can now see why free speech must be held sacrosanct. Free speech is inherently oppositional to tyranny. It’s the canary in our coal mine. When we see free speech abandoned and punished, we can be certain that tyranny is upon us."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

So, if this blog suddenly disappears, as many have,

as the previous one did, you'll know why...