"A Look to the Heavens"

“While drifting through the cosmos, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud became sculpted by stellar winds and radiation to assume a recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is embedded in the vast and complex Orion Nebula (M42). A potentially rewarding but difficult object to view personally with a small telescope, the above gorgeously detailed image was recently taken in infrared light by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope in honor of the 23rd anniversary of Hubble's launch.

 

The dark molecular cloud, roughly 1,500 light years distant, is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is seen above primarily because it is backlit by the nearby massive star Sigma Orionis. The Horsehead Nebula will slowly shift its apparent shape over the next few million years and will eventually be destroyed by the high energy starlight.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130422.html

"Every Human Decision..."

"Except for totally impulsive or psychotic behavior, every human

decision comes down to the choice between two alternatives."

- Jeff Duntemann

"The Trick..."

“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable,

or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”

- Carlos Castaneda

Chet Raymo, “Try To Remember…”

“Try To Remember…”

by Chet Raymo

“In a sleepless hour of the night, I was trying to remember the last name of a person I have known well for more than forty years. When my spouse stirred in her sleep, I asked her. She couldn't remember either. One again I started mentally through the alphabet. "I think it starts with B," I said. Ten minutes later she rolled over and said, "The next letter is R." Bingo! The name popped into my head. Or I should say, "popped out of my head." Because it was in there somewhere, recorded in a tangle of neurons as materially as if it were written on a piece of paper.

There was a time, back when I was a young man, when some scientists thought memory might be molecular - stored as proteins or RNA molecules that have somehow been modified by experience. The molecule theory of memory rested on experiments with worms (I remember the cover illustration on Scientific American). The worms were taught to navigate a simple maze. Then they were ground up and fed to untrained worms, which seemed to navigate the maze without training. Only molecules, it was thought, could have survived the transfer. Those experiments have been discredited. Scientists now overwhelmingly believe that memories are stored as webs of connections between spider-shaped brain cells called neurons. Each neuron is connected through electrochemical connections to thousands of others. According to the current view, experience fine-tunes the connections, strengthening some, weakening others, creating a different "trace" of interconnected cells for each memory.

But truth be told, memory is still deeply mysterious. How exactly are a lifetime of memories stored and retrieved at will? We know how it works for computers, but how for the human brain? What is self-consciousness? What are dreams? This is the primary scientific agenda for the 21st century. In the middle of the night I go fishing, in that sea of potentiated synapses that are the human soul, for a name that becomes ever more difficult to extract as I get older. I troll the alphabet: A, B, C, D… The name is in there, along with a face and more that forty years of interactions. The Nobel Prizes are waiting.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

•

Graphic: Salvador Dali, "The Persistence of Memory"

"And In That Very Way..."

"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."

- Richard Ford

"Are There Any Questions?"

"Are There Any Questions?"

by Robert Fulghum

"Are there any questions?" An offer that comes at the end of college lectures and long meetings. Said when an audience is not only overdosed with information, but when there is no time left anyhow. At times like that you sure do have questions. Like, "Can we leave now?" and "What the hell was this meeting for?" and "Where can I get a drink?"

The gesture is supposed to indicate openness on the part of the speaker, I suppose, but if in fact you do ask a question, both the speaker and the audience will give you drop-dead looks. And some fool - some earnest idiot - always asks. And the speaker always answers. By repeating most of what he has already said. But if there is a little time left and there is a little silence left in response to the invitation, I usually ask the most important question of all: "What is the Meaning of Life?" You never know, somebody may have the answer, and I'd really hate to miss it because I was too socially inhibited to ask. But when I ask, it is usually taken as a kind of absurdist move - people laugh and nod and gather up their stuff and the meeting is dismissed on that ridiculous note. Once, and only once, I asked that question and got a serious answer…

Papaderos rose from his chair at the back of the room and walked to the front, where he stood in the bright Greek sunlight of an open window and looked out… he turned. And made the ritual gesture: "Are there any questions?" Quiet quilted the room. These two weeks had generated enough questions for a lifetime, but for now there was only silence.

"No questions?" Papaderos swept the room with his eyes.
So. I asked.
"Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?"

The usual laughter followed, and people stirred to go. Papaderos held up his hand and stilled the room and looked at me for a long time, asking with his eyes if I was serious and seeing from my eyes that I was.

"I will answer your question."

Taking his wallet out of his hip pocket, he fished into a leather billfold and brought out a very small round mirror, about the size of a quarter. And what he said went like this: "When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place. I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine - in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.

I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child's game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light - truth, understanding, knowledge - is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it. I am a fragment of a mirror whose design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world - into the black places in the hearts of men - and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of my life."

And then he took his small mirror and, holding it carefully, caught the bright rays of daylight streaming through the window and reflected them onto my face and onto my hands folded on the desk."

- Robert Fulghum, 

"It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It"

"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

The Poet: Robinson Jeffers, "Love That, Not Man Apart From That"

"Love That, Not Man Apart From That"

"Then what is the answer? Not to be deluded by dreams.

To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,

and their tyrants come, many times before.

When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose

the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.

To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted

and not wish for evil; and not be duped

By dreams of universal justice or happiness.

These dreams will not be fulfilled.

To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear

the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand

Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars

and his history... for contemplation or in fact...

Often appears atrociously ugly.

Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is

Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things,

the divine beauty of the universe.

Love that, not man apart from that,

or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions,

or drown in despair when his days darken."

- Robinson Jeffers

The Daily "Near You?"

Yorba Linda, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Lemons..."

"When life hands you a lemon, say

"Oh yeah, I like lemons. What else you got?"

- Henry Rollins

"The Financial Insanity Continues - Welcome to 2022"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly AM 1/4/22:

"The Financial Insanity Continues - Welcome to 2022"

"The hits just keep on coming. 2022 starts with reporting of simple transactions that total $600. You will get a 1099 from this. The retail theft continues and we’re supposed to act like everything is just perfect."

"The Truths We Dared Not Speak In 2021"

"The Truths We Dared Not Speak In 2021"

by Victor Davis Hanson

"As the long year of 2021 finally came to a close, there were a number of truths Americans on the Left found themselves privately acknowledging but unable to say in public for fear of doing damage to their political cause, their own reputations, or their sense of security. But as 2022 advances, it will become even more difficult to hide these truths.

Collusion, RIP: No one wishes to speak of the “dossier” anymore. Everyone knows why: it was never a dossier. It was always a mishmash concoction of half-baked fantasies and outright lies, sloppily thrown together by the grifter and has-been ex-British spy and Trump hater, Christopher Steele - all in the pay of Hillary Clinton, the original architect of the collusion hoax. Steele himself admitted that he had no sources or notes to substantiate his “research.” Most of those who had seeded the dossier around Washington now either agree it was fake, or “partially” false, or remain silent in embarrassment.

The perpetual NeverTrump revisionism is reduced to “The Russian Hoax Hoax,” in pathetic fashion suggesting Putin still colluded with Trump and such “collusion” is provable even without the dossier. The logic is Orwellian: in 2017-2020 we heard, “But the dossier shows that ….” In 2020-2021 we heard, “Whoever said the dossier had anything to do with Russian collusion?” The FBI - that in part used their paid informant Steele’s lies to birth FISA warrants - now disowns it. The entire 22-month, $40-million Mueller charade ended up in tragicomic style with Robert Mueller under oath denying he knew much of anything about either the purveyor of the dossier, Fusion GPS, or the dossier itself.

James Comey when asked about it and the investigations it spawned, on 245 occasions under oath claimed he lost his memory or had no knowledge of it. The Russian collusion hoax will go down in history as one of the most shameful examples of Washington, D.C. mass hysteria, and of a concentrated effort to destroy an elected president, in modern American political history. In the end, we always come back to where we started: Hillary Clinton.

She used the three firewalls of the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie legal firm, and Fusion GPS, to pay Steele, a foreign national, likely barred by law from providing such dirt to a U.S. presidential campaign.

Steele then grabbed Clinton and FBI money, and in lazy fashion made a few calls to the now indicted Igor Danchenko, a Russian working in Washington, D.C. at the left-wing Brookings Institution, along with a Clinton crony Charles Dolan doing business in Moscow. Presto, Steele typed up their myths, in scary intelligence white-paper fashion, and passed them off as top-secret “Russian sources.” The dossier became the “proof” needed to show that Trump, in the words of former CIA director John Brennan, was “treasonous” or, as former Director of National Intelligence General (ret.) James Clapper alleged, was a “Russian asset.”

The Russian collusion hoax is now akin to Joe Biden’s cognitive decline; everyone knows it, but few bother to state the obvious - or rehash their now embarrassing earlier denials.

When the Musical Chairs Music Stops: Everyone knows the government cannot keep running up astronomical annual deficits. It is piling up a near $30 trillion national debt, printing trillions of dollars - and hoping to keep inflation down to 7 percent per year. Everyone knows that, and no one wishes to talk, much less do anything, about it. Instead, we simply will go on redistributing money, inflating the economy, and hoping that the middle classes are naïve enough to believe that their inflated paychecks outpace their greater inflationary costs that, in truth, have more than wiped out all their wage gains. When the interest rate hikes invariably come - the longer we wait, the worse will be the reckoning - we will again know the stagflation of the 1970s and 1980s.

The only calculus the Democrats weigh is whether they can print their way to a semblance of normality through 2022, in hopes the helium-over-inflated economy blows up only after the elections. Who knows, maybe then they can blame Joe Biden in 2023 for empowering them to wreck the economy and losing the Congress, as a way of arguing his clear cognitive decline suddenly warrants resignation.

Spiraling Crimes without Criminals: Almost every statistic related to violent crime is up. Smash-and-grab has reached tony places like Union Square in San Francisco, Walnut Creek, and Carmel by the Sea. Car-jackings are endemic. Gun sales are booming - among terrified upscale white liberals. An entire blame-the victim protocol emerges - drive your oldest car, dress down, hide your jewelry, hire security guards for your person and business - because mysteriously there are no victimizers, or at least none that can be mentioned.

The once popular, but now discredited BLM has been reduced to a caricature, arguing that such violent crimes are constructs created by white people to jail black people, that Jussie Smollett was innocent and a victim of racism, and that the Waukesha massacre was the apparent start of a needed “revolution.”

Everyone knows that defunding the police failed and dangerously so. The public accepts that the Soros DAs are both incompetent and sinister. People of all classes and races look at crime statistics. They watch internet videos. They compare firsthand experience with robbery, assault, and theft. And they surmise that young black males are disproportionately - in terms of their percentages in the population - responsible for much of the violent crime wave, from murders to car-jackings to smash-and-grab mass thefts.

The more the media fails to print descriptions of suspects in criminal assaults, the more universities cavalierly violate the federal Clery Act by failing to provide their campus communities needed information about criminal suspects’ descriptions, and the more big-city mayors and district attorneys deny an epidemic of violent assault, the more the public knows that crime is even worse than what they hear, see, feel, and experience first-hand.

The public also assumes that voicing the truth is deemed “racist” and thus will earn them a doxing or canceling - and so in Soviet-style keep quiet. We do not dare speak of disproportionate black perpetrators of hate crimes, rare interracial crimes, and the killing of police. Yet such silence does not hide the truth that cannot be quite smothered . In a recent op-ed, Heather Mac Donald estimated that “A police officer is about 400 times as likely to be killed by a black suspect as an unarmed black is to be killed by a police ­officer.” So, we have a crime wave without criminals in the manner we had a SUV on autopilot without a driver that killed six and injured 62 in Waukesha.

Unofficially, the paradox plays out with the upscale blue-city suburbanite still with the BLM sign on his lawn but with a new 12-gauge under the bed, with the BLM hierarchs and their loud enablers living like Patrisse Cullors, Colin Kaepernick, or LeBron James in rich, mostly white areas, with ample walls and security fences and gates. So, the year ended with a near record of black-on-black homicides, and a new record of lethal shootings - of police officers on duty.

Biden, A Robust 95? Everyone knows that Biden may be chronologically 78, but mentally and physically he is at best 95 or more. People sense that he is failing at a geometric rate that makes his ability to last even another year “problematic.” But no one says much because the nation has never removed a president or, other than Richard Nixon, had a president resign.

The Left knows that they were on record from 2017-2020 with incessant 25th Amendment coup talk and went so low as to wheel out a Yale psychiatrist to claim Trump was crazy and needed an intervention removal. Their constant haranguing forced Trump to take the Montreal Cognitive Assessment - which he aced and which Joe Biden most assuredly will not take, nor will be encouraged to take.

Apparently, Biden’s handlers believe in the next three years he can imitate the last few months of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, where the inactive president was kept incommunicado in bed while the wall of his family and close associates deluded the country and lied about Wilson’s true health condition.

Kamala Harris plays a bad Spiro Agnew. True, she is so incompetent that calls to ask Biden to step down resemble the early voices who asked the same of Nixon but were met with, “So you want Agnew?” But unlike Agnew who resigned in disgrace after pleading nolo contendere to a single charge of tax evasion, Kamala Harris is in no legal jeopardy. And so, the idea of a “President Harris” who is not non compos mentis apparently is more frightening to the public than keeping Joe Biden who is non compos mentis. And thus, talk of Biden’s diminishing capacity always is interrupted by “So you want President Harris?”

In the end, we are left only with such ironies. The Left, which damned John McCain for selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate, is mute about the far less qualified Kamala Harris as an actual vice president. The matters of race and gender preferences that ensured the incompetent Harris her job are now transmogrified into matters of racism that supposedly explain the charges of her critics.

The Virus is Dead, But the Virus Will Never Die! We all know the administration has little clue how to deal with COVID-19. We nod that it does and meanwhile scramble in “everyman for himself” fashion. Who wishes to say or admit that his own government has no idea how to stop the virus, but has a great number of ideas about how to weaponize it for political purposes?

Now there are more dead from COVID-19 in Biden’s tenure than during Trump’s, despite well over 60 percent of the population being fully vaxxed and 2-years’ experience in treating the virus. A 2020-Biden would demand that 2021-Biden be charged with responsibility for well over 400,000 COVID-19 deaths on his watch and thus should resign.

Everyone knew Biden had no plan, at least not any different from what Trump was doing. His autopilot agenda was simply to claim ownership of the Warp Speed inoculations and assume that by March 2021 COVID was finally burning itself out as it bumped into too many people with prior natural or vaccinated immunity.

In Biden’s logic, nature and Trump had stopped COVID-19, but he would credit his own inaction and 90-day miracle leadership from Washington. Now Biden is a sanctimonious, Oedipus-like figure, the deliverer who cannot stop the plague that in an eerie way exposes his existential flaws.

So, Delta and then Omicron arrived. Breakthrough cases accompanied both. Suddenly Biden was calling for the states to step up, given “there is no federal solution” to the crisis. He meant that vaccinations do not guarantee immunity from COVID infections anymore. Masks and social distancing do not stop Omicron’s spread. There is no federal success in supplying easy testing and an array of therapeutics and medicines to the public.

Like the proverbial cranky “get off my grass” neighbor, an oblivious and irate Biden still ignores the shortage of tests, the value of therapeutics and natural immunity, and the reality of thousands of breakthrough infections - caught in his senility warp to croak on about “masks” and “vaccinations.”

In 2020, Biden was attacking Trump as if he were acting under “The Articles of Confederation” in outsourcing authority to governors to adopt and manage the crisis as they saw best. In 2021 Biden was praising such Trumpist federalism as he renounced his former much ballyhooed federal authority when blasting Trump as an anti-Federalist who followed the Articles of Confederation. In the end, Americans are in 2022 where they were at the beginning of the virus in March 2020: China has successfully hidden the origins of the COVID.

The WHO cannot be trusted. The CDC, NIH, and NIAID are incompetent and politically weaponized. The pharmaceutical industries see relief only in more multi-billion-dollar booster rollouts and $700-a-pill remedies.

Dr. “I am the science” Fauci in cyclical fashion is on TV all day. He claims on Tuesday that what he said on Monday needed updating, with the intention of saying on Wednesday that his correction on Tuesday was also wrong, while he awaits more bookings for Thursday’s clarifications - all the while damning the ignorant mob who disseminates supposedly false information.

The Year’s Ironies: At the end of this second terrible year, we are left only with ironies. Vaccinations are a must for soldiers and federal employees, but no barrier to entry for 2 million illegal aliens (is breaking the law a way to avoid the mandate?).

If you are vaxxed, you are safe; but if your antibody level is even higher from natural immunity, you are not? If you get COVID, you are on your own, given the government has no idea what affordable pill you should swallow or what protocol you should follow.

Social distancing and masks are vital - unless you go out on the street protesting in concert with BLM or are a California official dining at the French Laundry, or a liberal politician getting your hair done.

Those Americans in 2020 who claimed their president was all too real, know now they voted in a president who is all too false. Those Americans who thought up every conceivable legal and illegal way of forcing the hated Trump out of office are racking their brains in vain to use those talents to find just one way of easing out their beloved Joe Biden.

Those Americans, who love the free cash for staying home, fear that the money they got might help to explain why it is now less valuable.

Those Americans, who claimed moral superiority for their masks and three shots - and still got COVID - cannot decide whether they were lied to by Donald Trump, lied to by Joe Biden—or simply lied to themselves.

Those Americans who praised defunding the police and excused looting, arson, and violence are pondering whether it is better to renounce their idiocy, or to stay quiet and take one more carjacking, one more assault, or one more break-in - for the cause.

Those Americans who applauded the disreputable efforts of Michael Avenatti, John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Robert Mueller, Adam Schiff, Christopher Steele, and Alexander Vindman to destroy Trump at all costs, got all they wanted - and thereby have all but destroyed the progressive cause, and likely made Donald Trump all the more powerful, the more so they sought to ruin him."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

- https://amgreatness.com/

"How It Really Is"

"Has The Mystery Been Solved? We Just Got Some New Numbers That Nobody Can Deny"

"Has The Mystery Been Solved? 

We Just Got Some New Numbers That Nobody Can Deny"

by Michael Snyder

"For months, I have been writing about one of the greatest mysteries that has emerged over the past year. Both in the United States and around the globe, millions of workers seem to have completely disappeared from the system. I wrote major articles about this in September, in October and in December. When this first started happening, it greatly puzzled me, but thanks to some deeply alarming new numbers things are starting to become a lot clearer. Unfortunately, the news is not good.

Just before the pandemic, 152 million Americans were employed, and we have never come close to returning to that level. In fact, despite the fact that companies all over America are absolutely desperate to hire anyone with a pulse, the number of Americans that are employed is sitting at just 148 million. There are literally “help wanted signs” everywhere that you look, and stores are starting to shut down all over the country due to a lack of staff.

We have never seen anything like this in all of U.S. history, but it isn’t just happening here. As I have documented in previous articles, we have also been witnessing simultaneous worker shortages in major industrialized nations all over the planet. So why is this happening? Well, it appears that at least part of the answer is that working-age people are dying at an unprecedented rate…

"The head of Indianapolis-based insurance company OneAmerica said the death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among working-age people. “We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”

When I first read that I was absolutely stunned. I knew that things were bad, but I didn’t know that they were that bad. According to Davison, the number of deaths that we are witnessing “is just unheard of”… "Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica. “And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said. “Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”

The pandemic is certainly a factor, but the article that I just quoted clearly states that “most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths”. Wow.

OneAmerica is not a minor player in the life insurance industry. It brings in about 2 billion dollars in revenue annually, and it has been around for more than 140 years… OneAmerica is a major insurance company located in Indianapolis with annual revenue of around $2 billion and total assets of around $74 billion. This is not a fly-by-night internet “insurance” company. OneAmerica is the real deal, selling both individual and group life insurance, and it has data and actuarial tables that go back 145 years. It’s also a progressive company that boasts about “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” right on its home page. In other words, it’s not some “scary” right-wing reactionary firm. So nobody can dispute the credibility of these numbers.

And the president of the Indiana Hospital Association has publicly stated that numbers from hospitals all over his state back up what Davison is saying… "At the same news conference where Davison spoke, Brian Tabor, the president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said that hospitals across the state are being flooded with patients “with many different conditions,” saying “unfortunately, the average Hoosiers’ health has declined during the pandemic.” In a follow-up call, he said he did not have a breakdown showing why so many people in the state are being hospitalized – for what conditions or ailments. But he said the extraordinarily high death rate quoted by Davison matched what hospitals in the state are seeing."

This isn’t just another news story. This is a complete and utter bombshell. If you don’t want to agree with me, perhaps you will agree with one of the most respected medical experts in the entire country. The following comes from his article about these shocking new numbers from Indiana… "AT A MINIMUM, based on my reading, one has to conclude that if this report holds and is confirmed by others in the dry world of life insurance actuaries, we have both a huge human tragedy and a profound public policy failure of the US Government and US HHS system to serve and protect the citizens that pay for this “service”.

We have gotten to a point where there is no excuse for not seeing the truth. Policymakers all over the world need to immediately reverse course, but of course they aren’t going to do that. There is way too much money at stake. Any doubt about how evil our system has become has been completely removed, and anyone that continues to support such a deeply corrupt system is willingly choosing to side with evil.

Before I end this article, I want to remind everyone that the leading cause of death worldwide actually has nothing to do with the pandemic at all…

Abortion was the leading cause of death globally in 2021, with nearly 43 million unborn babies killed in the womb, according to data provided by Worldometer. As of noon on December 31, 2021, there were 42.6 million abortions performed in the course of the year, Worldometer revealed, while 8.2 million people died from cancer, 5 million from smoking, 1.7 million of HIV/AIDS, 1.3 million from traffic fatalities, and 1 million from suicide.

According to Worldometer, 5.4 million people have died from COVID since the pandemic first began. But since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1971, more than 1,500,000,000 babies have been murdered in the womb all over the planet.

Our culture has truly become “a culture of death”, and in the end we are going to reap what we have sown. I know that my articles can seem “harsh”, but nobody can deny the harsh reality that vast numbers of people are dying all around us. 2020 was a nightmarish year, 2021 was really bad too, and now the stage is set for “2020 too”. The year ahead is really going to be horrifying, but most of you already knew that."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "The System Is Illiquid, There Is Not Enough Debt To Sustain It! Expect THIS to Happen"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 1/4/22:

"The System Is Illiquid, There Is Not Enough Debt To Sustain It!

Expect THIS to Happen"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"This Is Not Good!"

Full screen recommended.

Get Ready Stay Ready, "This Is Not Good!"

"The Scariest Economy Is Being Ignored; Retirement Crisis; Dollar Alternatives; Restaurants In Debt"

Jeremiah Babe, 1/3/22:

"The Scariest Economy Is Being Ignored; 

Retirement Crisis; Dollar Alternatives; Restaurants In Debt"

"2022: The Year of Breakdown"

"2022: The Year of Breakdown"

by Brian Maher

Annapolis, Maryland - "2021 is in the dustbin. 2022 is freshly hatched. As a financial newsletter, we are duty-bound to give our annual market forecast - such as it is. So today we fetch our crystal ball from storage… blow away the dust... and gaze for images of the year ahead. How long will the virus continue to menace us? Will the economy find its bounce? Where will the stock market end the year? Where will gold end the year? Where will Bitcoin end the year? The answers - carved in granite - anon. But before we glimpse how markets will end 2022, let us glimpse how they began 2022…

Stocks Open 2022 in the Green: The new year opened with a swing. The Dow Jones gained 246 hopeful points. The S&P 500 added 30; the Nasdaq, 187 points of its own. Here is CNBC and its pair of pennies: "Stocks edged higher on Monday as investors began the new year by betting the economy could overcome the latest surge in COVID cases and lifted two of their favorite stocks to significant milestones."

These stocks are Apple and Tesla. Today Apple became the first U.S. corporation to eclipse $3 trillion in valuation. Tesla sprang 13.5% in today’s trading, a fantastic leap. Gold, meantime, took a good harpooning... down a dreadful $26.48 on the day. At writing, Bitcoin goes at $45,975 — down $1,323 today — and down some $19,000 since Nov. 8.

But we are far less concerned with where we are… than where we are going. What about the way ahead? What prizes, what treasures, what traps, what buried mines await us in 2022?

Welcome to the Banquet of Consequences: Daily Reckoning contributor James Howard Kunstler has peered into his own crystal. It presents a scene of horror, of dismal portents: "If 2021 was the year of maximum corruption, political decadence and [lunacy] in U.S. history, 2022 is looking like a convulsive snapback to the harrowing rigors of reality, spiked with shocking losses, reckonings and not a little retribution for the rogues and reprobates who drove our country into a ditch… Welcome to the banquet of consequences."

These and other ghoulish visions parade before his disbelieving eyes: "After two decades of papering over our inability to pay for running our society, the Federal Reserve has finally achieved old-school inflation - the destruction of money itself - not just the pumping up of share prices, their specialty for so many years…

What I predict for 2022 is that the Federal Reserve will embark on a much-heralded tightening program - and then abandon it at the first sign of trouble, the inevitable stock market downturn. Then the Fed will be back to buying our own debt paper and attempting to stuff interest rates back down, if they can, which may not be possible anymore. The Fed soon loses all control over American money. They may try to retire “old” dollars and replace them with “new” dollars backed by something, gold and silver being the obvious candidates. That will lead to a severe upward repricing of both metals. Let’s predict gold at $5,000 and silver at $200 by the end of 2022."

What of Bitcoin? "I kind of doubt Bitcoin and its imitators will survive a whole lot longer after the financial system is forced to recalibrate to reality. They have thrived solely as targets of speculation. The blockchain is very clever, but ultimately Bitcoin and its ilk represent… nothing… no-thing(s). They attracted a lot of money that was just sloshing around the system during the years of artificial pseudo-prosperity, and that’s over. Anyway, they depend utterly on a stable internet and electric grid to function and you’d be surprised at the fragility lurking in both those systems. Early 2022 may be your last chance to get out of Bitcoin with anything to show for your adventures in it."

How many of James’ projections will manifest this year? All of them? None of them? One of them?

The Year of Breakdown: Another Daily Reckoning contributor - Charles Hugh Smith - divines that 2022 will be the “Year of Breakdown”: "Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but let's look at what we already know about 2022. Viewed from Earth orbit, 2022 is Year 14 of extend and pretend and too big to fail, too big to jail and Year 2 of global supply chains break and energy shortages…

I often refer to first-order and second-order effects, and that's the story that will be told in 2022 with explosive results. First-order effects: Actions have consequences. Second-order effects: Those consequences have consequences…

2022 is the year that the second-order effects come home to roost: All the risk that has been transferred to the financial system as a whole will generate consequences the Fed and other central banks are unable to control. The stupendously toxic incentives to speculate will generate consequences the Fed and other central banks are unable to control. The stupendously toxic wealth inequality will generate consequences the Fed and other central banks are unable to control… If we look at the fragility and instability of essential systems, it's clear that 2022 will be the year of breakdown."

Last Year’s Scorecard: We now come to our own rafter-raising forecast for 2022 - a forecast guaranteed to knock you down. Let us first grade our soothsaying for 2021. Last Jan. 4 we divined that: "The virus will cease to be a menace by summer. The economy will expand 2.3% this year. The budget deficit will come in at $2.41 trillion. Interest rates will remain at zero. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet will near $9.77 trillion. The Dow Jones will close the year at 28,617. Gold will close the year at $3,893.51. Bitcoin will close 2021 at $47,588.26."

How did we grade? We will award ourself a gentleman’s C - on a very generous curve of course. The United States budget deficit scaled $2.77 trillion in 2021. We hazarded $2.41 trillion… close enough… as is said… for government work. Interest rates did remain at zero. Though in fairness, tomorrow’s sunrise represents a greater uncertainty. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet closed the year at $8.57 trillion, marginally less than our $9.77 trillion divination. We prophesied that Bitcoin would end 2021 at $47,588.26. Bitcoin in fact ended 2021 at $46,350.63 - near bull’s-eye.

We are awarded F’s on all remaining items. Yet let us proceed with three stunning predictions for 2022…

Three Stunning Predictions for 2022:

Prediction No. 1: In 2022 the stock market will rise. Or fall. Or - or - it will end the year precisely where it began.

Prediction No. 2: Bitcoin, gold, oil, United States Treasury notes and all remaining assets will rise, fall... or hold steady.

Prediction No. 3: The economy will expand in 2022 - unless it contracts. Bear in mind: The economy may do neither.

There you are - three thundering predictions for 2022. And recall, fortune favors the bold.

Sure Bets: But you are dissatisfied with our cowardly shirking of the prognosticating responsibilities required of a newsletter man. You want specific predictions. Then specific predictions you will have...

The virus will cease to be a menace by summer. The economy will expand 2.3% this year. The budget deficit will come in at $2.41 trillion. Interest rates will remain at zero. The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet will near $9.77 trillion. The Dow Jones will close the year at 28,617. Gold will close the year at $3,893.51. Bitcoin will close 2022 at $47,588.26.

There is 2022 for you - down to the final jot, down to the final tittle - down to the final decimal point.

Getting Your Money’s Worth: But you raise a thunderous objection: This year’s forecast is last year’s forecast. You are taking me for a sleigh ride. You are razzing me. You are quite correct. Yet last year’s forecast and this year’s forecast will likewise be next year’s forecast.

As the dead clock gives correct time on occasion, we hazard our crystal-gazing will eventually give a true reading. Of course, The Daily Reckoning is a free publication. We charge nothing for the (mis)information posted above. And this you must admit: At least you are receiving your money’s worth…"

- dailyreckoning.com

"China Paralyzes By Panic As Millions Struggle To Buy Groceries"

Full screen recommended.

"China Paralyzes By Panic As Millions Struggle To Buy Groceries"

by Epic Economist

"Over 13 million people are under strict stay-at-home orders in China as the country struggles to contain the spread of new virus infections ahead of the Winter Olympics. The city of Xi'an, in northwest China, is entering its second week of lockdown, and millions of residents are running out of food, medicine, and other essential supplies. The chaotic situation looks a lot like the 70-day Wuhan lockdown back in the spring of 2020, when millions of Chinese citizens were prohibited to leave their homes and were left without access to basic resources for weeks.

Authorities have enacted sweeping measures with an intensity and on a scale rarely seen since Wuhan, as Beijing sticks to its zero-tolerance policy and prepares for the international sporting event that starts in February. The city has been on total lockdown ever since, and its 13 million residents are only allowed to leave once every few days to buy essential goods and get tested. But conditions have been exceedingly painful for many locals, who haven't received any sort of aid to get food and medical supplies as the city life grinds to a halt.

The government said that local officials would deliver free food to residents in sealed areas, but a large number of people still face difficulties getting daily necessities. Many other desperate Xi'an residents have resorted to Weibo social media platform to complain about order delays and to call for help with getting other medical care. Hundreds of thousands of online food orders have reportedly gone undelivered, and some people exposed on the social media platform that in the few grocery stores that are still open, there has been a panic buying of food staples and household products, despite the government saying new supplies would be brought in soon.

The Chinese government admitted that due to "low staff attendance and difficulties in logistics and distribution" there have been significant problems in providing essential supplies to several areas of the city. Meanwhile, Xi'an citizens are also being affected by disruptions in health services. Since all resources have been diverted to deal with the new wave of infections, many have completely lost access to medical care. Several facilities have stopped accepting new or transferred patients, resulting in a worrying backlog of untreated patients. Many kidney disease patients, who urgently need treatment, are now in an extremely delicate situation. Others, who also suffer from chronic illnesses, have been "begging for help online".

To make things even worse, the new measures are raising the specter of further disruptions to an already stressed global supply chain. Several factories are being shut down and two of the world's biggest chipmakers are warning that the new restrictions and strict lockdowns are hampering their operations and aggravating supply chain problems. On Wednesday, Samsung said that it was forced to temporarily shut down operations in Xi'an, which is also a major industrial hub of the country. "Any slowdown in the production risks worsening the global chip shortage, an ongoing crisis that has limited the supply of everything from iPhones to new cars," it said in a note. Similarly, the American chipmaker Micron also said that Xi'an's lockdown is impacting the production of its DRAM memory chips, which are used in computers, as the company has had to reduce its workforce at the site.

If restrictions start being introduced at ports again, American consumers are going to be particularly hard hit. “The rising infections may lead to shutdowns at Ningbo and some other ports in China, adding to congestion and cargo backlogs,” a source from a logistics company told S&P Global Platts, an analytics firm. “This is only the beginning -- the first quarter of 2022 is going to be a complete wreck.” “The global supply chain recovery relies on China,” explained Atul Vashistha, CEO of Supply Wisdom, a New York-based risk intelligence company. “That’s an alarming and troubling truth considering China’s centricity to the supply chain. While it may be a sound public health policy, China’s zero-tolerance covid policy makes supply chain matters worse.”

As China termed the new virus surge as "the biggest national threat" at the moment, more restrictions may soon be imposed all over the country. We're effectively starting 2022 with the threat of further disruptions to our supply chains, more empty shelves, rising prices, and widespread panic on global markets. This is going to be another exceedingly challenging year, and the problems we faced in 2020 and 2021 will be nothing compared to what we are about to witness."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

Musical Interlude: 2002, "A Gift of Life"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "A Gift of Life"