Full screen recommended.
2002, “Return To Freedom”
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, August 28, 2021
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe - a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way.
Along with a bright central core, this stunning galaxy portrait, a composite of image data from amateur and professional telescopes, highlights youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries tracing the galaxy's spiral arms. It also shows off remarkable reddish jets of glowing hydrogen gas. In addition to small companion galaxy NGC 4248 at bottom right, background galaxies can be found scattered throughout the frame. M106, also known as NGC 4258, is a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, seen across the spectrum from radio to X-rays. Active galaxies are powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.”
"I Would Rather Have..."
"When a bull is being lead to the slaughter, it still hopes to break loose and trample its butchers. Other bulls have not been able to pass on the knowledge that this never happens and that from the slaughterhouse there is no way back to the herd. But in human society there is a continuous exchange of experience. I have never heard of a man who broke away and fled while being led to his execution. It is even thought to be a special form of courage if a man about to be executed refuses to be blindfolded and dies with his eyes open. But I would rather have the bull with his blind rage, the stubborn beast who doesn't weigh his chances of survival with the prudent dull-wittedness of man, and doesn't know the despicable feeling of despair."
- Nadezhda Mandelstam
"The Most Deluded People..."
"There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded
people are those who choose to ignore what they already know.”
- John Heywood, 1546
"‘Ultra-Vaxxed’ Israel Sees Huge Surge in COVID as ‘Experts’ Avoid the Only Logical Conclusion"
"‘Ultra-Vaxxed’ Israel Sees Huge Surge in COVID
as ‘Experts’ Avoid the Only Logical Conclusion"
By J.D. Rucker
"Israel is one of the most vaccinated nations in the world. 80% of their eligible population is vaccinated, far beyond what was once being touted as a “herd immunity” level necessary for life to return to normal. Despite their success in getting their population to have experimental drugs injected into their bodies, the country is suffering through a huge spike in cases. Tuesday had nearly the highest new case total the nation has seen since the pandemic began.
There have been plenty of reasons given for this. Some point to Israel opening up and letting people take off their masks for a short time. Others say it’s normal for there to be occasional spikes following mass vaccinations, ignoring literally every successful vaccine in world history. Then, there are those who are trying to move the goalpost, blaming the Delta Variant for forcing us to accept that the vaccine are more of a deterrent than protection.
One particularly clueless news anchor compared the vaccines to watches, saying “Some watches are waterproof while others are water-resistant.” She seemed to feel smart after revealing her analogy.
What you won’t hear anyone in government, mainstream media, academia, or Big Tech tell us is the only logical conclusion: The “vaccines” aren’t working.
An article at The Daily Beast discussed the circumstances in Israel. As mandated by the powers-that-be, they swayed the sentiment of the article towards promoting the vaccines despite the facts on the ground. But, as Israel’s coronavirus czar Dr. Salman Zarka said, “Unfortunately, the numbers don’t lie.”
The massive surge of COVID-19 infections in Israel, one of the most vaccinated countries on earth, is pointing to a complicated path ahead for America. In June, there were several days with zero new COVID infections in Israel. The country launched its national vaccination campaign in December last year and has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with 80 percent of citizens above the age of 12 fully inoculated. COVID, most Israelis thought, had been defeated. All restrictions were lifted and Israelis went back to crowded partying and praying in mask-free venues.
Fast forward two months later: Israel reported 9,831 new diagnosed cases on Tuesday, a hairbreadth away from the worst daily figure ever recorded in the country - 10,000 - at the peak of the third wave. More than 350 people have died of the disease in the first three weeks of August. In a Sunday press conference, the directors of seven public hospitals announced that they could no longer admit any coronavirus patients. With 670 COVID-19 patients requiring critical care, their wards are overflowing and staff are at breaking point.
“I don’t want to frighten you,” coronavirus czar Dr. Salman Zarka told the Israeli parliament this week. “But this is the data. Unfortunately, the numbers don’t lie.”
What happened? Here’s what happened. We were conned. We’re still being conned. The “vaccines,” which are nothing like any successful vaccines from the past, have failed miserably. For a nation to be as heavily vaccinated as Israel to be going through a spike in Covid cases cannot be categorized as anything other than proof that they do not work. Period. End of story.
Unfortunately, it’s not the end of the story. Logic has been tossed out the window. The article continues to try to explain away what’s happening: "The complex and sobering truth is that no single policy or event brought Israel to this crisis, Hagai Levine, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor of epidemiology, told The Daily Beast. A deadly set of circumstances came together to put Israel on the precipice, most of which can be summed up as: “We are still in the midst of a pandemic, and there is no silver bullet.” “All the vectors have influenced the rise in morbidity,” he said.
But the principal causes of Israel’s current predicament are the dominance of the extremely infectious Delta variant, which was carried into the country by Israelis returning from foreign vacations during the weeks in which Israel dropped all restrictive measures- along with the worrisome decrease in vaccine efficacy after about six months.
Israel vaccinated its population almost exclusively with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which received full FDA approval on Monday and remains the gold standard for the prevention of severe illness due to the coronavirus.
Notice how they try to throw lipstick on the pig by calling the Pfizer injections the “gold standard for the prevention of severe illness due to the coronavirus.” This is what we’re faced with, but there’s a silver lining to their new rhetoric. If the “vaccines” are good for preventing serious illness and not effective at preventing infection, shouldn’t that make vaccine mandates unnecessary? It comes down to personal choice if the vaccinated are just as contagious as the unvaccinated, which clearly seems to be the case.
Logic is unlikely to sway the vaccine pushers. They want mandates and it will take the combined efforts of those who love freedom to prevent America from becoming like Australia… or worse."
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Related:
"It’s What You Know For Sure..."
“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests,’ as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.“
- Nouriel Roubini
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
- Mark Twain
“There Is No Reality Anymore…”
“There Is No Reality Anymore…”
by Thad Beversdorf
“I‘d love to change the world, but I don‘t know what to do,
so I’ll leave it up to you…”
“What a great lyric that is from the late 60′s, early 70′s English band “10 Years After.”* I believe this describes that uneasy feeling of discontent that sits deep in the stomach, beneath the day to day exteriors, of so many people today. The world is like a black hole in that it seems to be getting smaller and smaller as the years go by but also heavier and heavier with each passing day.
When I was a teenager and my friends and I were taking reality obscuring substances, one of my buddies (this means you Nichol) would stop us at certain points throughout the night for a reality check. This was just a few moments where we ‘d all gather our senses to make sure the world was still right and then we’d venture back into obscurity. I feel that reality is an old world term. There is no reality anymore. With advances in technology came unending possibilities of if you can dream it they can make it so. The ubiquitous flow of information ensures that the truth is always available but never known with certainty. It means there is no such thing as a reality check. It’s like that dream inside a dream inside a dream. Which reality is real anymore? How deep does the rabbit hole go?
We are raised with pretty standard ideals of what the world is meant to be but these ideals seem to take place only in the movies. It must be incredibly difficult for our young people to reconcile the two worlds, I know it is for me. That which they learn as a child and that which they find has replaced it as a young adult. Our leaders are despicable, arrogant and egotistical fools who pretend we elect them because we don’t see them for what they are. But we elect them because we feel we have no choice. We know what we want the world to be. We know what it should look and feel like. And we know it is not the world in which we live today. I know I’d love to change the world but I don’t know how and so I’ll leave it up to you. And so we continue to move forward down this path, each step uneasy as though something ungood is lurking just around the next corner.
We are able to put that feeling out of our minds for the most part but our subconscious is always aware that things are off. We have all kinds of self help books and new age theories that attempt to make sense of it all and explain why we just aren t happy the way we envision happy should be. Perhaps the only reality is the reality that the world isn’t what we had hoped it would be and we don’t know how to make that right. I’d love to say that if we just stand up and do the right thing, act from our hearts and have good intentions that it could change the world. But quite honestly there are ill-intentioned people that are constructing this new world in which we sub-exist.It is them and us, but they’d never say it that way. Certainly though their intention is not for us to co-exist along side them.
But so we carry on and we, move forward, to the best of our abilities. We accept the good with the bad and acknowledge that everything is a trade off. We believe that if we go to college we stand a better chance in life and so we borrow our first 10 years of post college wages to get an edge over the next guy who is doing the same. When we get out of school we know that it is time to buckle down and get serious. We put our lives on hold in order to focus on the future with the idea that one day we will be sitting on the porch with the person we love, the one we put on hold for all those years, and we will then enjoy our life’s work then.
But then we get further in debt because we need a sleeker car and we need a bigger house but it’s ok because we can just work a little more. And then the kids come and as far as we got to know them they are great, I think. But it’s ok because they just finished college and now they’ve moved back in as the job market is tough out there and so we’re paying off their student loans. Eventually they get away and begin their life’s journey and they take their debt with them. And then we realize, god I’m almost 60. But it feels great because that means soon I’ll be there on the porch getting to know the one I love again and life will be grand at that point.
But then we turn 65 and we realize all those policies that were implemented by all those well-intentioned decision makers have actually left us with very little. And we say it’s ok because we’d be bored anyway just sitting on the porch. And so we take a job waving at people in Walmart but feel like OMG how did I get here. But the shift ends and we go home anxious to spend time with the one we love because, although it’s a terrible thought, we are aware we’re both getting long in the tooth. And so we arrive home only to realize the one we love is now sick and that it’s too late for our days sitting on the porch getting to know each other again. We do everything we can but we cannot afford to help that person who stood quietly behind us all those years as healthcare costs are unrealistically out of touch with reality. And then it hits us that despite taking all the right steps to ensure we have a great life we failed to ever really be happy, to really love and to really accept love. And then it really hits us, this world provides but one shot.
Well, then that feeling of uneasy discontent that shadowed us when we were young is now an intense pain in our heart. And we look out at the world and we ask ourselves how could this have happened? I did everything they told me I was supposed to do, I did everything right! And it becomes clear that life was a chance to change the world, but we didn’t know what to do, and so we left it up to…”
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*
“Sigmund Wollman’s Reality Test”
“Sigmund Wollman’s Reality Test”
by
Robert Fulghum
“In the summer of 1959, at the Feather River Inn near the town of Blairsden in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of northern California. A resort environment. And I, just out of college, have a job that combines being the night desk clerk in the lodge and helping out with the horse-wrangling at the stables. The owner/manager is Italian-Swiss, with European notions about conditions of employment. He and I do not get along. I think he’s a fascist who wants pleasant employees who know their place, and he thinks I’m a good example of how democracy can be carried too far. I’m twenty-two and pretty free with my opinions, and he’s fifty-two and has a few opinions of his own. One week the employees had been served the same thing for lunch every single day. Two wieners, a mound of sauerkraut, and stale rolls. To compound insult with injury, the cost of meals was deducted from our check. I was outraged.
On Friday night of that awful week, I was at my desk job around 11:00 P.M., and the night auditor had just come on duty. I went into the kitchen to get a bite to eat and saw notes to the chef to the effect that wieners and sauerkraut are on the employee menu for two more days.
That tears it. I quit! For lack of a better audience, I unloaded on the night auditor, Sigmund Wollman.
I declared that I have had it up to here; that I am going to get a plate of wieners and sauerkraut and go and wake up the owner and throw it on him. I am sick and tired of this crap and insulted and nobody is going to make me eat wieners and sauerkraut for a whole week and make me pay for it and who does he think he is anyhow and how can life be sustained on wieners and sauerkraut and this is un-American and I don’t like wieners and sauerkraut enough to eat it one day for God’s sake and the whole hotel stinks anyhow and the horses are all nags and the guests are all idiots and I’m packing my bags and heading for Montana where they never even heard of wieners and sauerkraut and wouldn’t feed that stuff to the pigs. Something like that. I’m still mad about it.
I raved on this way for twenty minutes, and needn’t repeat it all here. You get the drift. My monologue was delivered at the top of my lungs, punctuated by blows on the front desk with a fly-swatter, the kicking of chairs, and much profanity. A call to arms, freedom, unions, uprisings, and the breaking of chains for the working masses.
As I pitched my fit, Sigmund Wollman, the night auditor, sat quietly on his stool, smoking a cigarette, watching me with sorrowful eyes. Put a bloodhound in a suit and tie and you have Sigmund Wollman. He’s got good reason to look sorrowful. Survivor of Auschwitz. Three years. German Jew. Thin, coughed a lot. He liked being alone at the night job – gave him intellectual space, gave him peace and quiet, and, even more, he could go into the kitchen and have a snack whenever he wanted to – all the wieners and sauerkraut he wanted. To him, a feast. More than that, there’s nobody around at night to tell him what to do. In Auschwitz he dreamed of such a time. The only person he sees at work is me, the nightly disturber of his dream. Our shifts overlap for an hour. And here I am again. A one-man war party at full cry.
“Fulchum, are you finished?”
“No. Why?”
Lissen, Fulchum. Lissen me, lissen me. You know what’s wrong with you? It’s not wieners and kraut and it’s not the boss and it’s not the chef and it’s not this job.”
“So what’s wrong with me?”
“Fulchum, you think you know everything, but you don’t know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire – then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems. You will live longer. And will not annoy people like me so much. Good night.” In a gesture combining dismissal and blessing, he waved me off to bed.
Seldom in my life have I been hit between the eyes with a truth so hard. Years later I heard a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest describe what the moment of enlightenment was like and I knew exactly what he meant. There in that late-night darkness of the Feather River Inn, Sigmund Wollman simultaneously kicked my butt and opened a window in my mind.
For thirty years now, in times of stress and strain, when something has me backed against the wall and I’m ready to do something really stupid with my anger, a sorrowful face appears in my mind and asks: “Fulchum. Problem or inconvenience?”
I think of this as the Wollman Test of Reality. Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in the breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference. Good night, Sig.”
The Poet: Maya Angelou, “Alone”
“Alone”
“Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home,
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone.
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong,
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use,
Their wives run round like banshees,
Their children sing the blues.
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone,
But nobody,
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I’ll tell you what I know…
Storm clouds are gathering,
The wind is gonna blow.
The race of man is suffering,
And I can hear the moan,
‘Cause nobody,
But nobody,
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone,
Nobody, but nobody,
Can make it out here alone.”
- Maya Angelou
Friday, August 27, 2021
“Prepare For The End Game; Knowing The Bubbles; Incomes Compromised; Banks Have Conditioned Us”
Jeremiah Babe, PM 8/27/21:
“Prepare For The End Game; Knowing The Bubbles;
Incomes Compromised; Banks Have Conditioned Us”
"Commercial Real Estate Collapse Triggers 70% Property Value Drop Due To Bankruptcies & Foreclosures"
Full screen recommended.
"Commercial Real Estate Collapse Triggers 70%
Property Value Drop Due To Bankruptcies & Foreclosures"
by Epic Economist
"The US economy is almost fully reopened at this point. However, several big retailers and shopping malls are either still struggling or shuttering stores and locations at alarming rates. Consumers are just now realizing how ravaging was the carnage. Over the past 12 months, the nationwide drop in retail sales for brick-and-mortar stores was simply unprecedented. It marked the biggest decline in over a decade. Only in 2020, tens of thousands of retail brands filed for bankruptcy, and at least 25,000 stores were permanently closed. But the truth is that the entire brick-and-mortar sector of retail has been suffering from low sales and plummeting foot traffic for years. In 2019, about 9,300 stores closed, and an additional 80,000 stores - which represent 9 percent of all stores in the country - will close in the next two years as a part of the phenomenon known as "retail apocalypse," predicts a report from financial services company UBS.
Already, big household names such as Brooks Brothers, J. Crew, Guitar Center, and Pier 1 have filed for bankruptcy. The most recent bankruptcy filings include Sears, Lucky Brand, Forever 21, and Circuit City. In total, more than 60 major retailers filed for bankruptcy in 2020. Department stores have been particularly hard-hit by the movement restrictions and lockdowns imposed last year as well as the exponential growth in online commerce. There's is no end in sight for the retail apocalypse: Given that consumer patterns won't turn back, nearly half of all remaining mall-based department stores will be shuttered by the end of 2021, according to the real estate research firm Green Street Advisors. And the collapse in brick-and-mortar sales, as well as the massive wave of bankruptcies, are already dramatically impacting shopping malls all across the nation. Industry executives say that there's a huge number of malls that are either facing a financial abyss or already down the abyss and currently on life support.
The past decade has seen hundreds of malls close doors for good, and according to Coresight Research estimates at least a quarter of the roughly 1,000 still remaining will be shuttered in the next three to five years. The alarmingly low revenue has left mall owners unable to keep up with mortgage and loan payments. In recent months, mall delinquency rates have soared, and many properties have seen their value face a painful crash. This chapter of the commercial real estate collapse is being called by industry analysts as the "Mallmageddon". Even though some of the debt-burdened properties are still open and doing business, they still cannot meet all the back loan payments and have defaulted on their debts. Consequently, their value has been slashed over the past couple of months as mall lenders are expiring to face huge collateral, while landlords are either walking away or filing for bankruptcy.
The one million square feet Westfield Palm Desert Mall, which is owned by commercial property giant Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield - a company that recently revealed a $32 billion debt and announced that it would get rid of all its US malls - is now facing a steep decline in its value. After all anchor stores began closing down, the Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield defaulted on the loan payment, and in June 2020, the $125 million loan was transferred to special servicing for payment default. The lenders have taken huge losses. The property, whose collateral was at $212 million is being sold to $55.2 million, amounting to a loss of 74% in value.
Now, one of the biggest worries for the sector is the giant New Jersey landmark: the American Dream mall located at the Meadowlands. The property is in extremely dire financial conditions. Since its opening, the megamall has faced a series of disruptions and it has been struggling to keep up with loan payments as the health crisis delayed its official opening for customers several times and the mall suffered from the extremely unfortunate timing of the worsening of the retail apocalypse. Some of the lenders of the project include J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Soros Fund Management, which are bracing to face losses on about $1.7 billion in construction loans if the mall's poor financial condition doesn't show any improvements soon enough.
Unfortunately, it seems that for both retailers and mall owners, the situation is about to get much worse as several companies are reporting severe supply chain issues, with manufacturers lacking capacity or materials, and distribution networks increasingly backlogged, just as we started to move closer to the busy holiday season. Mass bankruptcies, closures, and foreclosures are still imminent, with the total commercial real estate debt now nearing $21 billion. It's safe to say that things will never come back to normal, and the commercial real estate collapse has just begun."
"Another President Bites the Dust"
"Another President Bites the Dust"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"We’re seeing the end of trust in American institutions. The war machine and the public-health machine have faced brutal discrediting due to their long records of obfuscation, duplicity, and deception. It’s a reality that the mainstream press tried desperately to prevent. And they are still not reporting it. According to the aggregated polls on Biden’s job approval as accumulated by RealClearPolitics, Biden suddenly finds himself underwater. This is the point at which job disapproval is higher than job approval. It’s a tremendously bad sign for any president.
You probably saw it coming. I did too. It seems inevitable in retrospect. The failings of the present administration have come fast and furious, more so than with any president in living memory. The Biden-Harris administration came to power in a time of national exhaustion from division, bitterness, lockdowns, and unrelenting political frenzy. It was a perfect setup for him. Open the economy, open travel, dial back the insane restrictions, clean up the budget, and just let the country heal on its own.
In the early days of the administration, I gave several interviews in which I advised the new administration to this effect. Ever optimistic (yes I’ve been mostly wrong), I did imagine that it would be more-or-less rational. I suggested three easy steps: 1) stop the trade wars with China and Europe, 2) open up all international travel, and 3) cut it out with all the Covid restrictions that have proven to be so pointless.
It’s like the Biden administration heard my interview and did the opposite. It retained both the tariffs and travel restrictions and tightened restrictions with crazy new mask and vaccine mandates, while blowing up the federal budget and cheering more money printing. Somehow, that obvious path to success eluded this gang of fanatics. They came to power consumed by ideology taught to them in high-end colleges. They burned with a passion for getting it done right away, wiping out any public stain of the Trump administration and putting the socialist stamp on every aspect of American life, mostly by means of the executive order.
The Future of this President: To be sure, there is a problem. The last thing Republicans want right now is the impeachment of Biden for any reason, simply due to his replacement. Kamala Harris would be the worst of all possible worlds, though certainly even more unpopular than Biden himself.
What then is the result of a president who lives in the red zone of approval? He continues to serve, but goes from crisis to crisis. He loses political credibility with his own party. He is unable to muster votes in the House and Senate for his insane policies (this is already starting to happen). His hands are tied.
It’s a tragic feature of any political system that they are all relatively immune from the forces of market discipline. In private markets, consumers and investors are always in a position to punish inefficiency or wrongdoing, however imperfectly they perform at this task. But in public institutions of government, there is no real mechanism to control their operations apart from voting, which is set by the calendar in the American system. That leaves only polls, which themselves are subject to tremendous inaccuracies and exigencies of poll takers. It’s taken too long but finally the decline and fall of the Biden administration are in play.
The Wheel of Justice: Let’s examine some of the huge issues that could prove to cause a full discrediting of this administration, and, along with it, the entire media apparatus that has worked to cover up its misdeeds. I will list them in the order of seriousness.
Inflation. Everything you hear from the Fed amounts to “calm down, it’s transitory.” At some point, it’s no longer believable. The price pressure is affecting every sector of American life, and it is spreading like a cancer. It’s at the grocery store, the gas pump, in housing and rents, in travel and hospitality, and pretty much everything that people buy. It’s also affecting financials in ways that delight the people who check their IRA apps on their phone daily.
Even though these increases delight people, they represent inflation in a different form. They are also unsustainable. The whole mess could amount to a true political disaster waiting to happen. People despise inflation, as we know from the political revolution it caused 40 years ago. Biden will get the blame. If financials eventually turn South and keep going, there will be no saving this administration.
Vaccine Mandates. A bit of blunt talk here I hope you don’t mind: I was never a huge fan of the Covid vaccine, simply because I watched the rush to get it and figured that natural immunity is far safer for almost everyone. Also, I know from cell biology that unstable viruses like this one are not easy against which to vaccine. I was also surrounded by genuine vaccine experts who worried that this whole enterprise could discredit vaccines for several generations. It was hard enough to inspire people to take the jab for medicines that have gone through many years of trials, but it is taking a gigantic risk to impose this thing on a whole population, much less do it by force.
Now the data is in, we are discovering that the whole thing was wildly oversold, mainly so that the manufacturers could earn authorization. Forget the claims of 96% effectiveness; it is now admitted widely that the jab does not stop infection or transmission, and it is still unclear about the extent to which it can actually be credited with curbing severity (that was never even tested at the outset). I can’t prove this but my spider sense on this, speaking as a very close observer of the scene, is that this whole thing is unraveling quickly.
Afghanistan Scandals. This enormous mess is going nowhere. Twenty years of blood and treasure and the entire mess was revealed as pointless in the course of just a few days. If the American military and political class believe that they can just sweep this under the rug, they are mistaken. Too many families have suffered egregious harm, sons and daughters having their lives wrecked supposedly to build freedom in this country, when it just went away like the illusion it always was.
Shortages in Housing and Goods. So many people are on the move right now and discovering that they can no longer count on housing markets and rental markets to work like they once did. Housing is in shortage where people are moving to and in surplus in places where people are moving from. The moratorium on evictions – will they ever end? – has wrecked the rental market at the same time. Any marginal credit risks are being refused for obvious reasons. The poor or those with unstable job situations can forget it. This is going to lead to a genuine crisis and widespread disgruntlement.
Welfarism. The truth is that there is nothing genuinely American about welfare. As a short-term boost, perhaps it passes political muster but as a long-term way of life, as the Biden administration imagines it? No way. In fact, it is not just in America. In most places in the world, particularly with heterogeneous populations, welfare generates political instability. When you have perhaps 15% of the population living off the labors of the other 85% you have a serious basis for building resentment that will make the 80’s and 90’s anti-welfare movements look polite by comparison.
China Aggression. The discrediting of the American empire has caused nothing but delight in Beijing and now we have a regime eyeing its neighbors for a burning desire for more control. The main target is Taiwan but there are others. U.S. influence in that part of the world isn’t entirely evaporated but it is dramatically diminished. And think of this: there is zero chance that the Biden administration could ever consider a war option insofar as China is involved. That fact alone means that every bit of warning to China from the U.S. will be completely ignored.
A Wild Ride Ahead: Yes, all these trends could change but I doubt it. So far this administration has proven itself to be economically ignorant, uncomprehending in terms of understanding the American spirit, and politically unwise, putting ideology ahead of all concerns of viability and even popularity.
Now we see Biden himself slipping into negative territory. In economics and foreign policy, it is even worse. None of this do I welcome; it cannot be good for any country to live through economic and political upheaval all at once. The means exist to avoid both, but the will to do so is not."
Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 8/27/21"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/27/21:
"Must Know Now:
Today In This Market Be Ready For Anything! Here's Why"
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/27/21:
"Beyond The Hyper-Bubble: Expect Market Distortions
To Get MONUMENTALLY WORSE From Here"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Like delicate cosmic petals, these clouds of interstellar dust and gas have blossomed 1,300 light-years away in the fertile star fields of the constellation Cepheus. Sometimes called the Iris Nebula and dutifully cataloged as NGC 7023 this is not the only nebula in the sky to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this remarkable image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries in impressive detail. Within the Iris, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star.
The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the dusty clouds glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula may contain complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The bright blue portion of the Iris Nebula is about six light-years across.”
The Poet: JoaquÃn Arcadio Pagaza, “Twilight”
“Twilight”
“Slowly the sun descends at fall of night,
And rests on clouds of amber, rose and red;
The mist upon the distant mountains shed
Turns to a rain of gold and silver light.
The evening star shines tremulous and bright
Through wreaths of vapor, and the clouds o'erhead
Are mirrored in the lake, where soft they spread,
And break the blue of heaven's azure height.
Bright grows the whole horizon in the west
Like a devouring fire; a golden hue
Spreads o'er the sky, the trees, the plains that shine.
The bird is singing near its hidden nest
Its latest song, amid the falling dew,
Enraptured by the sunset's charm divine.”
- JoaquÃn Arcadio Pagaza (1839-1918)
"Too Often..."
"The majority of us lead quiet, unheralded lives as we pass through this world. There will most likely be no ticker-tape parades for us, no monuments created in our honor. But that does not lessen our possible impact, for there are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give. Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have a potential to turn a life around. It’s overwhelming to consider the continuous opportunities there are to make our love felt."
- Leo Buscaglia
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