""Remember, we all stumble, every one of us.
That's why it's a comfort to go hand in hand."
- Emily Kimbrough
So, we rise from the rubble...
Monday, May 16, 2022
"201 Mass Shootings In The U.S. This Year"
"201 Mass Shootings In The U.S. This Year"
5/16/22: "So far this year, there have been 201 mass shootings in the United States, and it's only May. CNN and the Gun Violence Archive define a mass shooting as one that injures or kills four or more people. As a reminder that gun violence spares no state, city or town, these are the places where they've happened in 2022."
So what happens when things get really bad, and they will... soon.
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Constitution of the United States, Second Amendment:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
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Related:
Bill Bonner, "Death at the Margin"
"Death at the Margin"
As food and energy prices soar, it's time to count
the real cost of the fed's heavy handed covid response...
by Bill Bonner
Youghal, Ireland - "Today, let’s turn to the question we left you with on Friday: How many people will die because of the feds’ efforts to ‘save lives’ during the Covid Panic? Trigger warning: we are coming dangerously close to earnest indignation.
In 2020, much of the economy was shut down and trillions in fake money (newly created by the Fed… neither earned nor saved) was distributed to offset the lost output. We are paying part of the tab now. GDP is going backward. Real wages are falling. And consumer prices are rising. On that front we got news last week that inflation was slowing down and speeding up at the same time. Last month, the official inflation rate (CPI) declined by 0.35%... from 8.54% to 8.26%. The very next day came the PPI, producer price index, telling us that coming our way is a 15.6% increase. This is the second highest reading since we were born (1948).
Counting The (Real) Cost: It gets worse. On MSNBC Friday morning was an economist (whose name we missed) arguing that the core prices for families are up 19%. Food, shelter, transportation – those are the ones that drain the family checking account. As for food, actual price increases are far above the BLS’s index. Beef is up 14%, chicken 15%, wheat flour 33%, orange juice 17%, coffee 70%.
Shelter, too, is much more pricey than the BLS says. Zillow computes the average rent people actually pay. It’s up 17% over a year ago, it says. The average price paid to buy a house is also 16% higher than a year ago. And fuel? A gallon a gas averaged $3.11 last May. Now, it’s up 40%. Inquirer/Business:
"WASHINGTON - US gas prices reached a record high Tuesday, as President Joe Biden said fighting inflation is his top domestic priority. The average price at the pump hit $4.37 per gallon, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), surpassing the last record of $4.33 set on March 11."
But wait… there’s more! A lot more. Inflation is not just a matter of money. “Everything happens at the margin,” say economists. And at the margin, people die. Most of us have a substantial margin of error. If beef is too expensive, we can switch to chicken. If fuel goes up in price, we can stop making unnecessary drives… ride a bicycle… and turn the thermostat down.
Millions Doomed? But what about people who live on $10,000… or $1,000? The World Health Organization says that 6.2 million people died from the Covid over the last two years. (Probably overcounted in some areas and undercounted in others). But there are said to be some 9 million who die each year from hunger-related problems. And now, thanks largely to the money printing, phony interest rates, stimulus programs, shutdowns, and social distancing… the price of food is rising all over the world. WSWS.org:
"The FAO Food Price Index (FFPI), which measures change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, reported in September that prices were 32.8 percent higher than they had been a year prior. The prices of the most basic staples rose even more sharply; wheat was up 41 percent and maize 38 percent from September 2020."
The numbers are all over the place. But the UN reports that the number of people facing a “critical” lack of food has grown by 60 million over the last two years… and now nearly 200 million are thought to be in danger.
WSWS.org continues: "Every day more than seven hundred million people, 8.8 percent of the world’s population, go to bed on an empty stomach, according to the UN World Food Programme (WFP). Hunger and malnutrition mean shortened life expectancies, stunted mental development, the premature death of loved ones; it means widows and orphans and childless parents."
What is the real cost… the final tab… for the feds’ ‘heavy touch’ failures? Did the feds save a few old, plump people by sacrificing young, skinny ones? Did they save no one… and doom millions? More tomorrow…. including another visit to the Incompetents Hall of Fame. Stay tuned..."
"Now We Are Being Told To Expect Food And Diesel Shortages For The Foreseeable Future"
"Now We Are Being Told To Expect Food And Diesel
Shortages For The Foreseeable Future"
by Michael Snyder
"If you think that the food and diesel shortages are bad now, then you will be absolutely horrified by what the globe (and us - CP) is experiencing by the end of the year. All over the planet, food production is being crippled by an unprecedented confluence of factors. The war in Ukraine, extremely bizarre weather patterns, nightmarish plagues and a historic fertilizer crisis have combined to create a “perfect storm” that isn’t going away any time soon. As a result, the food that won’t be grown in 2022 will become an extremely severe global problem by the end of this calendar year. Global wheat prices have already risen by more than 40 percent since the start of 2022, but this is just the beginning. Meanwhile, we are facing unthinkable diesel fuel shortages in the United States this summer, and as you will see below there are “no plans” to increase refining capacity in this country for the foreseeable future.
If you had told me six months ago that we would be dealing with the worst baby formula shortage in U.S. history in the middle of 2022, I am not sure that I would have believed you. But that is precisely what we are now facing. One young couple in Florida searched stores in their area for four hours and couldn’t find anything…"When Erik and Kelly Schmidt, both 35, went into a Central Florida Target store this week to buy their usual baby formula, Up & Up Gentle, for their five-month-old twins, they found an empty shelf. The pair then embarked on a half-day journey in search of formula, any formula, and their quest didn’t end there. “We spent over four hours going to every Target, different Walmarts, different grocery stores, just finding absolutely nothing,” Erik Schmidt said."
Of course the Biden administration has made sure that there is enough baby formula for migrants that are illegally crossing the border, but for millions of ordinary American families this crisis has become a complete and utter nightmare. One father actually broke down in tears right in the middle of the baby formula aisle in Walmart because things have become so desperate for his family…"Sara Owens, of Florence County, said she was hunting for baby formula for his six-month-old daughter, Namoi, amid a nationwide shortage when she encountered a dad break into tears after driving from store to store looking for his daughter’s brand of formula. ‘As tears continued to stream down his face he said ‘I never thought I would be crying because I can’t find what my child has to have,” Owens wrote in the Facebook post that’s been shared more than 180,000 times. ‘My heart broke to 100 pieces on the formula aisle in Walmart.’
Sadly, we shouldn’t expect any improvement any time soon. As I discussed last week, the Biden administration shut down one of the most important baby formula manufacturing facilities in this country a while ago, and the CEO of Abbott Nutrition says that it will take a few months to get products back on the shelves once the FDA finally allows them to reopen the plant… Meanwhile, the plant remains closed as the company works to make upgrades to the facility to meet the FDA’s recommendations. Abbott says it can have products from the facility back on store shelves after a few months once the FDA signs off on them doing so.
Needless to say, baby formula is not the only thing in short supply right now. As shortages grow and prices spiral out of control, grocery stores are increasingly becoming prime targets for thieves. In fact, things have already gotten so bad in the Midwest that one major supermarket chain has decided to post armed guards in their stores…"The shoulder patches say, “A Helpful Smile in Every Aisle,” but the police-style uniforms, complete with belts with holstered taser and possibly handguns, may send a very different message as Hy-Vee deploys a new retail security team in its stores.
The West Des Moines-based supermarket chain will begin introducing its own security force “as part of its ongoing efforts to ensure the health and safety of both its customers and employees,” the company announced in a news release on Dec. 29. The program will roll out throughout 2022, but security teams are already present in some stores."
As I have warned for many years, eventually we will see armed guards in supermarkets and on food delivery trucks all over the nation. In the months ahead, food production is going to be way below expectations all over the globe. The following summary of what farmers are currently facing comes from Zero Hedge…"Across the world, top wheat-producing regions are experiencing adverse weather conditions that could threaten production. In places like Ukraine, a military invasion by Russia has slashed production significantly. All of this suggests the world is on the cusp of a food crisis. Droughts, floods, and heatwaves have plagued farmland in the U.S., Europe, India, and China. As for Ukraine, the world’s largest wheat producer, the war could slash production by upwards of a third."
As I have previously detailed, some countries have already decided to ban certain types of agricultural exports as they brace for the coming global food crisis. And we just learned that India has now decided to ban the export of all wheat…"India, the second-largest producer of wheat, has banned exports of the commodity, due to a risk to its food security. A Friday notice in the government gazette signed by Santosh Kumar Sarangi, the Director General of Foreign Trade, said that a “sudden spike” in the global prices of wheat was putting India, neighboring and other vulnerable countries at risk."
This is huge. Supplies of food are getting tighter with each passing week, and this is already starting to spark food riots all over the world. For example, we witnessed some very emotional protests in Iran last week…"Protests broke out in Iran Thursday after the government cut subsidies for food, sending prices through the roof as authorities brace for more unrest in the following weeks. In videos shared on social media, protesters can be seen marching through Dezful and Mahshahr in the southwestern province of Khezestan, chanting “Death to Khamenei! Death to Raisi!” referring to Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has promised to create jobs, lift sanctions, and rescue the economy."
And in Sri Lanka the citizens are so angry that they are actually burning down the homes of politicians…"Protesters in Sri Lanka have burned down homes belonging to 38 politicians as the crisis-hit country plunged further into chaos, with the government ordering troops to “shoot on sight.” Police in the island nation said Tuesday that in addition to the destroyed homes, 75 others have been damaged as angry Sri Lankans continue to defy a nationwide curfew to protest against what they say is the government’s mishandling of the country’s worst economic crisis since 1948."
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Things will get really crazy in the months ahead as global food supples get a whole lot tighter. Meanwhile, we are being warned that there is likely to be a “diesel fuel shortage on the East Coast” during the months ahead…"The possibility of a diesel fuel shortage is being monitored as diesel fuel prices across the country and in Maryland continue to surpass all-time highs. According to fuel industry experts, all signs are pointing to a potential diesel fuel shortage on the East Coast that could cripple an already fragile supply chain. Last week, the price of diesel fuel in the U.S. rose to an all-time record high of $5.62 a gallon, and it is only going to go higher."
The biggest reason why we are facing such a supply crunch right now is because there are “simply too few refineries turning oil into usable fuels”…"From record gasoline prices to higher airfares to fears of diesel rationing ahead, America’s runaway energy market is disquieting both US travelers and the wider economy. But the chief driver isn’t high crude prices or even the rebound in demand: It’s simply too few refineries turning oil into usable fuels."
Surely more refineries are being built to meet the growing demand, right? Wrong. Mountains of regulations that have been instituted by our politicians make it extremely difficult to build and operate a new refinery in this country. As a result, we are being told that “the supply squeeze is only going to get worse” for the foreseeable future…
"More than 1 million barrels a day of the country’s oil refining capacity — or about 5% overall — has shut since the beginning of the pandemic. Elsewhere in the world, capacity has shrunk by 2.13 million additional barrels a day, energy consultancy Turner, Mason & Co. estimates. And with no plans to bring new US plants online, even though refiners are reaping record profits, the supply squeeze is only going to get worse."
To a very large degree, we have done this to ourselves. And as I keep telling my readers, decades of very foolish decisions are starting to catch up with us in a major way. Our trucks and our trains run on diesel, and so a shortage of diesel will only make our ongoing supply chain crisis even worse. This nightmare never seems to end, and there will be plenty of pain in the months ahead."
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Related:
"Permanent Adolescence: The Epidemic That Will Destroy America"
"Permanent Adolescence:
The Epidemic That Will Destroy America"
by Dr. Paul Kindlon
"As a Humanities professor I have had the opportunity to teach psychology and social psychology for more than 25 years. Occasionally the knowledge obtained in these areas allows me to analyze and understand social behavior and certain cultural trends. This is one those occasions.
If one is able to observe American society in an objective manner (granted no easy task) it becomes clear that the country is suffering from an epidemic of arrested emotional development (AED). This particular illness is characterized by some combination of: addiction, greed, immaturity, fear, blame, shame, resentments, anger, confusion and suffering. What it means is that the vast majority of Americans are stuck in adolescence exhibiting behavior like lying, negative attitudes, disobedience and disrespect, drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and issues of sexuality.
One has only to watch American movies or television shows to get a snapshot of juvenile, puerile, and base comedy characteristic of adolescent humor. It’s no accident that 48 year old Jimmy Fallon is essentially the “eternal teenager” performing comedy that mostly includes bathroom humor and gags that are based on and appeal to a silly sense of immaturity. The other darling of late-night shows in America is Stephen Colbert, age 58, who specializes in insulting public figues in an overtly adolescent display of negative attitude and disrespect.
Another hallmark of AED is to evade responsibility and blame others for failure. One had only to observe the millions of Hillary supporters to understand this phenomenon. Also common for AED sufferers is to show disrespect in sophomoric ways usually by damaging property as we see with monuments being defaced and destroyed.
Teenagers, of course, tend to have identity issues often involving sexuality which is another phenomenon all too apparent in contemporary America. It’s almost uncool not to be LGBT or confused about your gender nowadays. Soon there will be as many genders as ice-cream flavors for it’s all just a matter of taste!
In terms of cognitive activity AED is characterized by exaggeration and over-simplification. If you are angry with one of your parents you might refer to them as a Nazi or Fascist.
This negative attitude now is extended to anyone who disagrees with you and can be seen in slogans such as “No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA”. Adults are an endangered species. The cognitive effect of exaggeration and over-simplification leads to irrationality and confusion. Witness the millions of people who think they are being anti-racist by opposing “White Supremacy”. No anthropologist on earth would claim that “White” is a race (although a Neo- Nazi would) It’s not even a primary color. The Irish were discriminated against for more than a hundred years in America due to Anglo-Saxon racism yet the Irish are considered “white”. There are millions of Americans of German, Polish, and Scandinavian extraction who have been working-class and lower for a very long time. Are these “white people” guilty of supremacy? Against whom? Themselves?
Of course, what the protestors should be focusing on is class and not race which is really an arbitrary term. Unfortunately. the progressive movement in America has gone from “Occupy Wall street” to “occupy the public bathroom”. Lenin would be turning over in his grave – if he had one. With regard to alcohol and drug addiction in America, the statistics are startling. Opiod addiction alone is becoming a national health issue as is depression. Alcohol abuse, of course, is also quite high. Lying is also becoming commonplace. It used to be just politicians and lawyers who were known to “play with the truth”. Nowadays the mainstream media is widely seen as a mainstream of lies with CNN now wearing the title of FAKE NEWS.
The teenage attempt to rebel and show disobedience is often manifested through the use of profanity intended to shock the older generation. Gratuitous profanity is pervasive in American culture and has replaced the imagination as a form of creativity. It is not an accident that Pussy Riot – a group of “performance artists” using profanity in a Cathedral considered sacred to “shock” the Russian public and “disobey” authorities – has found a home in the United States and been befriended by Madonna, another symbol of eternal adolescence. Her AED was on full display when she publicly offered all men fellatio if they voted for Hillary Clinton. And as any rebellious teenager attempting to shock the “older generation” she had to announce that she “swallows”. Stay classy, Madonna. Keep in mind we’re talking about a 63 year old mother of six.
You see…if everyone is a teenager there is no adult supervision. That is the problem. After an autopsy is conducted years from now to ascertain how and why the American Empire expired, the obituary will include multiple causes of death and AED will be listed prominently. Perhaps a precocious teenager will be allowed to write the epitaph that will read…”When extended, the bridge between adolescence and adulthood can take a heavy toll”.
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“Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up. Not really. They get older. But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It’s serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail. And maybe even more, to succeed."
- Maya Angelou
"If I Were Dropped Out Of A Plane..."
"If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was
a thousand miles away, I'd still swim. And I'd despise the one who gave up."
- Abraham Maslow
And don't you ever give up, no matter what...
The Grateful Dead, "Touch of Grey"
"We will survive..."
"WARNING: Global Food Riots Have Started..."
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 5/16/22:
"WARNING: Global Food Riots Have Started..."
"Countries have started restricting grain shipments
and halting exports of staple commodities.
Major riots have started in numerous countries over the price of food."
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Oh, I know, Good Citizen, as you've reminded me countless times...
"That could never happen here!" Well guess what, it is...
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Related:
"The Most Dangerous Man..."
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.”
- H.L. Mencken
Jim Kunstler, "Feeding the Narrative"
"Feeding the Narrative"
by Jim Kunstler
"There’s apparently no question that one Peyton Gendron, 18, went out hunting for black people in Buffalo, NY, carefully documenting his crime every step of the way, from penning a book-length manifesto, to running reconn on the Topps Supermarket scene-of-the-crime, to mounting a GoPro video cam on his forehead to record his wicked act, which resulted in 10 persons shot dead and three more wounded.
Gendron is a gift to the “Joe Biden” regime, which needed evidence for its claim that America is infested with “white supremacists,” who, “the president” has stated repeatedly, add up to the “greatest threat” the country faces. Will the dead of Buffalo serve as this year’s George Floyd, setting up a new summer of riots sanctioned tacitly by the party in charge? Who knows? For sure it will galvanize the likes of Alejandro Mayorkas (Dept. of Homeland Security) and Nina Jankowicz (Disinfo Governance Board chief) in their efforts to cancel anyone right-of-center on the political transect and normalize the suppression of speech.
As with most issues these days, though, the official narrative is out-of-synch with reality. What we have in America is mayhem and murder going every which way racially. The day after Gendron shot up the Topps, an as-yet-unnamed Asian man in his 60s shot up a Taiwanese church near the California Disneyland, killing one and critically wounding four, the victims all elderly Asians. And the same night as the Buffalo massacre, 23 people were wounded in three sequential shoot-outs around the Milwaukee Bucks basketball arena in that city. (Note poor marksmanship.) Just a few weeks ago, a black maniac named Frank James, 60, shot up a Brooklyn subway car, wounding ten people of various races. The shooter had posted many diatribes against whites, Hispanics, and even black people on Facebook. The news media stuffed that story down their memory holes inside of 48 hours.
And, of course, there was the event in late November 2021 starring felon and mental case Darrell Brooks, Jr., 39, deliberately plowing a Ford Escape SUV into Waukesha, Wisconsin’s, annual Christmas parade, killing six white people and injuring 62, including many children. Brooks had a police rap-sheet 50 pages long and had put up many posts on social media calling for violence against white people, even hailing Adolf Hitler for persecuting the Jews. He pleaded not guilty and his trial is scheduled for October. The newspapers and cable TV stations dropped the story after a couple days.
“Joe Biden” will travel to Buffalo Tuesday to offer his condolences to the families of the Topps shooting victims. (He did not travel to Waukesha last November, or New York in April.) It looks like the newspapers and cable news outfits will run with the Buffalo story a while longer, milking it to feed the narrative, which is that only the Democratic Party cares about black people and can save them from “white supremacy.” This time, though, the harder they push, the more minds may revolt.
This is not 2020. The public may be better inoculated now against government gaslighting and mind-f**kery than they are against Covid-19 viruses. As Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) noted last week in his colloquy with Secretary Mayorkas, “Do you know who the greatest propagator of disinformation in the history of the world is? The U.S. government.” Senator Paul is onto something. In the course of that hearing, he asked Mr. Mayorkas whether talk about Covid 19 on social media might be subject to official “disinformation” action by his agency.
“I’ve said a million times that cloth masks don’t work; YouTube takes me down,” Senator Paul said. “They’re a private company. I can have that beef with them. What about you? You’re going to look at that? I often say that natural immunity from having had the infection is equal to the vaccine or better. You’re going to take that down?” Rand Paul is a licensed physician, by the way, and Alejandro Mayorkas is not.
Mr. Mayorkas answered that someone might claim that vaccination centers “are actually peddling fentanyl. Now, should I sit back and take that, or should I actually disseminate accurate information?” he asked.
In reality, of course, this hypothetical fentanyl nonsense is not what is at issue regarding Covid-19 “vaccines.” What is actually at issue is the now-established fact that the mRNA products called “vaccines” do not prevent infection or transmission of Covid-19, and do provoke a broad array of harms to people that cause disability and death in, at least, tens of thousands of cases, which is a lot in terms of all prior medical standards.
The government has been lying about this consistently. And the news media have been obediently conveying those lies, in league with the pharmaceutical giants who produce the “vaccines.” The governor of my state, Kathy Hochul, still idiotically wants to mandate mRNA “vaccines” for children. Pfizer ran a commercial on CBS’s 60-Minutes Sunday night promising that further “vaccination” with their sketchy product will “open up the world” for people. In fact, it will do nothing to protect people, rather it will promote the evolution of new-and-different iterations of novel Coronaviruses, and it will surely kill and maim a lot more people, including little children.
Have you noticed something else pretty strange interesting these days? In all the reportage about Ukraine, there has been absolutely no mention of Covid-19 in connection with the disorders of war, where, you’d think, hunger, cold, injury, and filth would compromise many immune systems. Weird, a little bit, huh? Did it just cease to exist?
“White supremacy” is the “Joe Biden” regime’s all-purpose shield against the consequences of its insults to reality, including its role instigating that war in Ukraine, its creation of the entire Covid-19 fiasco from the Wuhan lab to present, its policies that induce reckless monetary inflation, its willful neglect of border enforcement, and its monumental corruption. Watch them try to run with it."
"I Hope I End Up..."
“I don’t want to pass through life like a smooth plane ride. All you do is get to breathe and copulate and finally die. I don’t want to go with the smooth skin and the calm brow. I hope I end up a blithering idiot cursing the sun - hallucinating, screaming, giving obscene and inane lectures on street corners and public parks. People will walk by and say, “Look at that drooling idiot. What a basket case.” I will turn and say to them, “It is you who are the basket case! For every moment you hated your job, cursed your wife and sold yourself to a dream that you didn’t even conceive. For the times your soul screamed yes and you said no. For all of that. For your self-torture, I see the glowing eyes of the sun! The air talks to me! I am at all times!” And maybe, the passersby will drop a coin into my cup.”
- Henry Rollins
"Why People are Angry About the Economy - This is Just the Beginning"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 5/16/22:
"Why People are Angry About the Economy -
This is Just the Beginning"
"So much is happening on a daily basis with the economy. It doesn’t matter
where you live, this is affecting everyone. People are angry about this economy."
"Empty Shelves Everywhere And Massive Price Increases! What's Next? - What's Coming?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 5/16/22:
"Empty Shelves Everywhere And Massive Price Increases!
What's Next? - What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are noticing massive price increases! We are here to explain skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products! "
Gregory Mannarino, "A Make Or Break Moment For The Stock Market..."
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, AM 5/16/22:
"A Make Or Break Moment For The Stock Market..."
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Very strong language alert! And absolutely true...
George Carlin, "The Big Club"
"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it.
You and I are not in the Big Club."
Sunday, May 15, 2022
"25 Reasons To Be Absolutely Disgusted With The U.S. Economy"
Full screen recommended.
"25 Reasons To Be Absolutely Disgusted With The U.S. Economy"
by Epic Economist
"It seems like wherever we look there is more bad news for the U.S. economy. While the cost of virtually everything continues to soar, American families are getting poorer and poorer. Most people are now stuck in low-wage jobs, and their salaries simply can't keep up with the rising cost of living. For that reason, American consumers are absolutely overwhelmed with massive levels of credit card debt, student loan debt, mortgage debt, and health care debt. With each passing year, the consumer debt crisis only gets worse. For millions of American families, financial problems, uncertainty, and stress never seem to end.
Meanwhile, our leaders are doing next to nothing to fix our horrific national debt problem. With all things considered, there are a whole lot of reasons to be absolutely disgusted with the U.S. economy right now. We are all witnessing the greatest debt bubble in the history of America, and people are finally waking up to the fact that we are heading for a complete and total disaster. Our entire financial and economic systems are rapidly falling apart. The signs are everywhere.
The Social Progress Index has shown that the quality of life in America has steadily declined over the past decade. The index, which is considered “the most comprehensive measure of a country's social and environmental performance independent of economic factors," determined that out of 163 countries, the U.S. saw the largest reduction in terms of the overall score. In 2012, the U.S. ranked No. 16 in terms of quality of life. Right now, the U.S. is in the 28th position, marking a 12-spot drop over the past 10 years. "Most countries tend to move forward," says Michael Green, chief executive officer of the Social Progress Imperative. "To move backwards is a remarkably bad thing to do. The fact that the U.S. is in the negative space is deeply worrying."
Our politicians have done a great job in destroying our future. They have let millions of middle-class jobs get shipped overseas, and now most of the U.S. population has been left with low-paying jobs that don't allow workers to make ends meet. They have enabled inflation growth while our buying power continued to shrink. They pushed the U.S. national debt over the 30 trillion dollar mark. They have inflated bubbles in financial markets and all across the economy. They took the greatest economy in the history of the world and completely wrecked it. How in the world are we going to explain this to our children and our grandchildren? Given the dire state of our nation, it's understandable why so many Americans are absolutely disgusted with the U.S. economy right now.
That’s why, today we compiled new numbers that illustrate the financial pain millions of Americans have been suffering."
“The Collapse Will Destroy Your Family; Neighbors Beg For Food; California Limits Water; Survival”
Jeremiah Babe, 5/15/22:
“The Collapse Will Destroy Your Family;
Neighbors Beg For Food; California Limits Water; Survival”
"Are Putin And Xi Gray Champions?" (Part 2) Excerpt
"Are Putin And Xi Gray Champions?" (Part 2) Excerpt
by Jim Quinn
Excerpt: "In Part 1 of this article I examined previous Fourth Turnings and the Gray Champions who won and lost, but made a difference in the course of history. Now I will try to peer through the fog of disinformation, lies, and false narratives to try and determine which Gray Champions will make a difference in this Fourth Turning.
The U.S. and NATO are playing with fire by poking the bear. This is no longer a limited conflict between Russia and the Ukraine. In the early days of the conflict, there were constant talks between both sides, with the possibility of a negotiated resolution. The American Empire nixed those talks. The neo-cons, representing the interests of the military industrial complex uni-party, see an opportunity to further enrich themselves, while believing they can bleed and weaken Putin. But who is really being weakened in the long run?
Putin’s military operation began on February 24. Oil was $93 a barrel. It is up 13% and despite economic sanctions, Russian oil revenue is higher, and the ruble is at a two year high versus the USD and Euro. Natural gas prices are up 69%. Diesel prices are up 89%. Gasoline prices are up 29%. Wheat prices are up 31%. The stock market is down 5% and at a one year low. As an exporter of oil, natural gas, and wheat, is Russia really suffering from these price increases, or are the citizens of the EU and U.S. bearing the brunt of the pain? Russians are paying $2.80 a gallon for gasoline, while Americans are paying $4.65 per gallon. Who’s winning this proxy war?
Russian oil exports are up 50% in 2022. The Biden administration is amateur hour on steroids. The State Department and Defense Department are led by inept woke lightweights who are stumbling and bumbling our country into World War 3. They keep pushing Putin, attempting to instigate him into an action they can use as a basis for officially declaring war against Russia.
Make no mistake about it, the U.S. is already at war with Russia and Putin knows it. Economic sanctions, even though they have backfired and hurt Europe and the U.S. far more than Russia, are an act of war. Providing the Ukraine with tactical information so they can target generals and naval ships is an act of war. Shipping high tech military weaponry, in addition to enriching U.S. arms makers, to the Ukraine is an act of war.
Sending $54 billion, printed out of thin air by Powell and his cronies and exacerbating our already 40-year high inflation, to the corrupt Zelensky so he can buy U.S. arms, is an act of war. I wonder if the “Big Guy” will get his 10%. Calling for the overthrow of a world leader, who has 6,000 nuclear weapons at his disposal, is a reckless act of war. This isn’t a video game, where you get to start over if you make the wrong move. This game of Risk could end life on this planet as we know it if someone makes the wrong move."
Please view this complete, most highly recommended, article here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Over 400,000 light years across NGC 6872 is an enormous spiral galaxy, at least 4 times the size of our own very large Milky Way. About 200 million light-years distant, toward the southern constellation Pavo, the Peacock, the remarkable galaxy’s stretched out shape is due to its ongoing gravitational interaction, likely leading to an eventual merger, with the nearby smaller galaxy IC 4970. IC 4970 is seen just below and right of the giant galaxy’s core in this cosmic color portrait from the 8 meter Gemini South telescope in Chile.
The idea to image this titanic galaxy collision comes from a winning contest essay submitted last year to the Gemini Observatory by the Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club. In addition to inspirational aspects and aesthetics, club members argued that a color image would be more than just a pretty picture. In their winning essay they noted that “If enough color data is obtained in the image it may reveal easily accessible information about the different populations of stars, star formation, relative rate of star formation due to the interaction, and the extent of dust and gas present in these galaxies.”
"What Foolish Forgetfulness..."
“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals… What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained.”
- Denis Diderot
Chet Raymo, "As Time Goes By"
"As Time Goes By"
by Chet Raymo
"Is time something that is defined by the ticking of a cosmic clock, God's wristwatch say? Time doesn't exist except for the current tick. The past is irretrievably gone. The future does not yet exist. Consciousness is awareness of a moment. Or is time a dimension like space? We move through time as we move through space. The past is still there; we're just not there anymore. The future exists; we'll get there. We experience time as we experience space, say, by looking out the window of a moving train. Or is time…
Physicists and philosophers have been debating these questions since the pre-Socratics. Plato. Newton. Einstein. Most recently, Lee Smolin. Without resolution. What makes the question so difficult, it seems to me, is that time is inextricably tied up with consciousness. We won't understand time until we understand consciousness, and vice versa. So far, consciousness is a mystery, in spite of books with titles like "Consciousness Explained". Will consciousness be explained? Can consciousness be explained? If so, will it require a conceptual breakthrough of revolutionary proportions? Or is the Darwinian/material paradigm enough? Are we in for an insight, or for a surprise?
As I sit here at my desk under the hill, looking out at a vast panorama of earth, sea and sky, filled, it would seem, infinitely full of detail, so full that my awareness can only skim the surface, I have that uneasy sense that it's going to be damnably difficult to extract consciousness, as a thing, from the universe in its totality. I think of that word "entanglement," from quantum theory, and I wonder to what extent consciousness is entangled, perhaps even with past and future.
Who knows? Perhaps consciousness, or what I think of as my consciousness, is just a slice of cosmic consciousness, in the same way that the present is a slice of cosmic time. As a good Ockhamist, I am loathe to needlessly multiply hypotheses. But time will tell. Or consciousness will tell. Or something.”
As I sit here at my desk under the hill, looking out at a vast panorama of earth, sea and sky, filled, it would seem, infinitely full of detail, so full that my awareness can only skim the surface, I have that uneasy sense that it's going to be damnably difficult to extract consciousness, as a thing, from the universe in its totality. I think of that word "entanglement," from quantum theory, and I wonder to what extent consciousness is entangled, perhaps even with past and future.
Who knows? Perhaps consciousness, or what I think of as my consciousness, is just a slice of cosmic consciousness, in the same way that the present is a slice of cosmic time. As a good Ockhamist, I am loathe to needlessly multiply hypotheses. But time will tell. Or consciousness will tell. Or something.”
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"Casablanca, As Time Goes By",
Original Song by Sam (Dooley Wilson)
I couldn't resist... ;-)
“Incidit In Scyllam Cupiens Vitare Charybdim”
“Incidit In Scyllam Cupiens Vitare Charybdim”
by Steve Candidus
“One of the great things about ancient Greek Mythology is that the stories all teach a lesson. They don’t end with – and the moral of the story is – though. They leave it to the reader to figure them out. So in addition to being just plain fun to read they are wonderful teachers about life. Perhaps the best thing about this one is that we still use the expression it contains exactly the same way that the ancient Greeks intended it almost 3,000 years ago. That almost never happens. Language is fluid and the meanings of words and expressions changes from one generation to another, but this one is an exception. The everyday expression it contains is one that we often refer to without really knowing where it came from.
This is one of the tales of Odysseus who was the heroic king of Ithaca and of whose ten-year journey back to Greece after the Trojan War was immortalized in Homer’s ‘Odyssey’. There was a point in his journey when his ship had to enter a narrow straight. It was a passage so narrow that it could only be made under special conditions. They had to have both the wind at their backs and the current in their direction. However, once committed it was impossible to turn back.
Unknown to the sailors the straight was guarded by two deadly perils. On the one side, it was guarded by Scylla. Scylla was a six-headed monster that disguised itself as a rock. On the other side, it was guarded by Charybdis, a terrible deadly whirlpool born of the sea god Poseidon.
In olden times, it was common to refer to any place that a ship came to rest on land as being in a hard place. It didn’t matter if it was blown on shore by a storm, grounded on a reef or brought up intentionally for repair. If it was on shore, it was on a hard place as opposed to the soft place – water.
It also applied to a ship that had foundered. A ship that sinks will eventually rest on the bottom. The land at the bottom of the ocean is therefore called a hard place. It used to be a common term, but it has since pretty much fallen out of practice in common language today. A deadly whirlpool such as Charybdis could take a ship and send it straight to the bottom – a hard place.
So, now as we return to the story of Odysseus we see that their ship had entered a narrow straight and that straight was guarded by two evil perils with hardly enough room for a ship to pass between them. They were forced to choose between the six headed monster ‘Scylla’ disguised as a rock or the dreaded whirlpool ‘Charybdis’ that would surely send them to a hard place and they could not turn back.
There is a Latin proverb from this story, “Incidit in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim” which translates to, “He runs on Scylla, wishing to avoid Charybdis.” In modern day English, we simply say, “They were between a rock and a hard place”. And now you know…”
"If We Have No Idea..."
“If we have no idea what we believe in, we’ll go along with anything.
Truth takes courage. Courage to stand up for what we believe in.
Not necessarily in a confrontational way, but in a gentle yet firm way.
Like an oak tree, able to sway gently in the wind,
but strongly rooted to the ground.”
- A.C. Ping
Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: Will The Stock Market Pop? Or Drop?"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 5/15/22:
"Markets, A Look Ahead:
Will The Stock Market Pop? Or Drop?"
"Baby Formula Empty At Target! This Is Ridiculous! What Now?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 5/15/22:
"Baby Formula Empty At Target! This Is Ridiculous! What Now?"
"In today's vlog we are at Target, and are noticing a massive baby formula shortage, and a lot of empty shelves! We also are seeing some skyrocketing prices on grocery items. It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
"Running Out of Tears" (Excerpt)
"Running Out of Tears"
by Dr. Mark Sircus
Excerpt: "The world is staggering towards multiple crises. There is “A huge riptide in global events that will carry many people and whole societies out to sea,” writes James Howard Kunstler. Because we cannot apply intelligence and make significant changes, our institutions, political systems, and societies will collapse, so be ready to survive all that will come.
Gerald Celente predicts, “We are headed for an economic calamity the likes of which we have never seen in our lifetime.” We’ll soon see financial chaos, which will lead to economic chaos, political chaos, and social chaos.
The International Rice Research Institute warns that harvests could plunge as much as 10% in the next season, equating to about 36 million tons of rice, or enough food to feed a half billion people, according to Bloomberg.
We the people of earth are under full scale attack. Unfortunately, there seem to be far too few who recognize what is happening because the powers that be have taken total control of information. They have been infecting almost everyone’s brains with lies; thus, few realize how serious things are. It’s all shaping up to be a massacre for a good part of the human race. The existing order is in meltdown on multiple fronts...
The mess is everywhere. The war in Ukraine undoubtedly clarifies that large parts of the world depend on Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus for necessities such as food, energy, and other commodities. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has closed sea ports in the Black Sea, shut down food production in Ukraine and closed supply routes to Europe. Western countermeasures in the form of sanctions could turn out to be more self-destructive than they are helpful in curbing Putin’s attack. The world will pay big time for all the mistakes and misdeeds, provocations and inexcusable overreactions and verbal escalations made by all sides, which means we will all suffer."
Please view this complete article here:
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"How It Really Is"
As a country - politically, socially and economically -
we are an absolute disgrace...
and these psychopaths could very easily get us all killed...
"Oh! Had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced."
- Frederick Douglass
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