"A Look to the Heavens"

“NGC 253 is not only one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, it is also one of the dustiest. Discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel in the constellation of Sculptor, NGC 253 lies only about ten million light-years distant.

NGC 253 is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest group to our own Local Group of Galaxies. The dense dark dust accompanies a high star formation rate, giving NGC 253 the designation of starburst galaxy. Visible in the above photograph is the active central nucleus, also known to be a bright source of X-rays and gamma rays.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111220.html

"Vitae Summa Brevis"

"Vitae Summa Brevis"

"They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,

Love and desire and hate:

I think they have no portion in us after

We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses;

Out of a misty dream

Our path emerges for a while, then closes

Within a dream."

- Ernest Dowson

○

“Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam”

 is a quotation from Horace’s “First Book of Odes”: 

“The shortness of life prevents us from entertaining far-off hopes.”

Jim Kunstler, "The Solemn Stillness Before Winter"

"The Solemn Stillness Before Winter"

by Jim Kunstler

“Ultimately, the Democratic Party is a criminal organization; and to support it is to be a criminal. And since it is the ruling party, unless you oppose it, you support it.” 

- Curtis Yarvin, "The Gray Mirror"

"Here in New England now, the landscape is putting itself to bed, preparing for winter’s long sleep. The grass in the cow pastures never looks greener than in contrast to the now barren trees, but that lingering color, too, will soon fade. We did not get smacked here by the deep snows of far-off Buffalo, not a flake, so a sweetly solemn stillness settles over these tender hills as we give vague thanks at Thursday’s gala of gluttony, certain to induce terrors of indigestion in the restless night to come.

I am thankful to still be here after all these years - more than that, grateful! And with the prospect of seeing what comes next: the beginning of a great correction for a country gone off the rails in greed, bad faith, and treachery. Everything rooted in lies and fakery is primed to blow down in the political storms ahead.

It’s fitting that the last straw on this beast’s back was the phoniest scam of all, and saturated with every known sort of millennial Woke posturing: the FTX swindle. Its avatar, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), proved to be a special species of villain, the idiot-savant slob, clever enough to somehow winkle a physics degree out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but not very good with the basic math of money - for instance, the equation that margin must equal collateral - and really really bad at covering his oafish tracks.

In the dramatic demise of FTX, the self-styled crypto-currency-exchange, all the nefarious connections between the great ills of our time stand out starkly in a sudden, glaring light, namely: the dubious Covid-19 pandemic and all the punitive measures cooked up by officialdom, with help from FTX’s money, to supposedly combat the virus, especially the deadly mRNA “vaccines” still being pushed on a credulous public; the sinister operations of so-called hedge funds and their role in magically levitating the financial markets of an economy foundering on necrotizing malinvestments and debt that can never be paid; and the Satanic endeavors of a political faction, the Democratic Party of Chaos, in subverting every institution from sea to shining sea from schools, to courts, to elections while shoving the US into a land war in Europe.

A few weeks after the FTX breakdown, and the extrinsic cascading failures around the crypto-currency netherworld, spreading wildly through pension funds, banks, and insurance companies, the great stillness of November also blankets the regulatory apparatus supposedly guarding the public from financial fraud - most conspicuously the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gary Gensler, a Dutch uncle in the Bankman-Fried extended clan.

The FBI is too busy chasing down evangelicals and Attorney General Merrick Garland remains fixated on nailing former president Trump on any kind of confected felony, despite six years of fervent investigations from the US Attorney’s Southern District of New York, to New York’s AG Letitia James - who ran for office promising to persecute citizen D.J. Trump - to Robert Mueller’s two-year intimidation campaign that came up with exactly nothing.

Now Mr. Garland has activated one particular federal attorney, Jack Smith, with a long record as a partisan attack dog, as special counsel to finally get the job done against Mr. Trump, the proverbial indictment-worthy ham sandwich awaiting a DC District grand jury. Any cockamamie charge will do as long as it’s a felony. Mr. Garland’s strategy is two-fold: 1) to negate Mr. Trump’s remaining political career; and 2) set up a situation that will permit all DOJ attorneys and FBI officers to demur from questioning before Republican majority congressional committees about everything-under-the-sun on the grounds that the questions are germane to “ongoing investigations” that can’t be compromised. That’s the game.

By the time that game kicks-off, early January 2023, the country is liable to be punch-drunk and stumbling from a financial market crash that signals the start of an economic depression more consequential than the calamity of the 1930s. Meanwhile, Russia’s cleanup of the US-instigated mess in Ukraine will be nearly complete, to the ignominy of “Joe Biden,” at the same time that the putative president’s crimes of bribery and treason - should he still be among the living - get aired in Congress without any help required from Mr. Garland’s Justice Department - the evidence from Hunter’s laptop having already been well-perused and catalogued by an army of outside independent investigators.

This will all occur against the background of the now-unraveled Covid-19 story. By early 2023 the evidence of excess all-causes deaths and disabilities resulting from Pfizer and Moderna shots will be overwhelming and the nation will know it got played by a scheme between the corrupt public health authorities, the pharma companies, and the corporate medical establishment, including its discredited journals. Nobody in America will ever trust a doctor again.

We’ll also probably know a good deal more about the dark and dirty deeds around the 2022 midterm election as the FTX scandal spools out and the probably hundreds of millions of FTX investor’s dollars that were express-delivered into Democratic Party coffers for ballot harvesting operations are revealed, along with the exact methods used to accomplish the mega-fraud.

So, enjoy the still moments of this Thanksgiving before the cacophony of mid-winter commences to roar and rage across this hapless land. Say a prayer for the heroes-in-waiting aiming to rescue the republic from the depredations of the vicious Woke-Jacobin Left. And, along with your other preps, lay in some sodium bicarbonate for the awful heartburn to follow."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"Real Church Sign..."

 

"Oh yeah, we're doing fine. Thanks for asking..."

"No Way Out for the USA"

"No Way Out for the USA"

by Jeff Thomas

"On the surface, it would appear that the US is in the catbird seat: Since Bretton Woods in 1944, the US has been able to dictate the economy to its trading partners and, to a lesser extent, the rest of the world. Those countries that got on board the Bretton Woods Choo-Choo would be the world’s leaders in commerce, and the rest would take second shrift.

This was possible because, at the end of the war, the US had been supplying the allies with most of their armaments and materiel and had insisted on being paid in gold. By 1944, they held the great majority of the world’s gold and had the most productive manufacturing facilities. They were in a position to call all the shots, and the countries that subsequently made up the First World went along for the ride.

But by the 1970s, the US went off the gold standard and was paying for imports with US Treasuries. This was seen to be a boon at the time, as the Treasuries could be created from thin air, and the demands by the US became boundless. The US became the biggest house on the block, but it was, in fact, a house of cards, which was only as good as the currency it was built upon – not true money but debt.

To paraphrase Norm Franz, "Gold is the money of kings… debt is the money of slaves." The US was, from 1971 on, in the business of enslaving its partners. Along the way, it became more economical to outsource manufacturing, and, over the ensuing decades, the production of most goods came from countries other than the US.

But a wrinkle occurred in recent decades: some of the overseas suppliers of goods, and in particular, energy were now building up their ability for world trade to the point that the US itself was no longer essential. Indeed, better business could often be created between countries without going through the US, and the US was becoming an obstacle to the economic advancement of other nations.

In recent decades, China and Russia have emerged as the most essential providers of goods and energy, respectively, precisely at the time that the US had planned to establish globalism – dominance over the entire world by the US, with the backup support of the other First World countries, most notably, Europe. As long as the other First World countries continued to endorse American diktat to the world, US hegemony would not only continue but expand.

But then, Russia threw a rather major wrench into the works: the Nord Steam pipeline already supplied much of the natural gas to Europe, allowing it to heat its homes and run its factories. With the addition of Nord Stream II, a tipping point was reached: the great majority of Europe’s essential energy, which it was unable to produce itself, could be gotten from Russia and at a price that no other supplier could match.

What’s often overlooked in the discussion of the importance of Nord Stream II is that, from the first day that the tap was to be turned on to supply Europe, US hegemony would end. Although the US had succeeded in dominating European policy over the last half-century, that situation had now reversed. In a choice between pleasing the US and pleasing the eastern suppliers of goods and energy, Europe’s default position would now be with Asia, not the US.

In this one seemingly minor change in supply, the hegemony of the US would cease. And, more troublingly, US power had been a house of cards for decades. It was no longer a manufacturing titan; in fact, it now produced little besides debt. It had once used its manufacturing capacity to bully its trading partners, but now this power had become a mere remnant.

In recent decades, the US has been operating on its past laurels and the assumption that it was the big boy on the block and must be obeyed, no matter how unreasonable its demands were. When US federal and corporate leaders realized their dilemma, they understood that they had only one last-ditch option: war. Historically, this is always the last play of a dying empire: when you’re about to lose everything, a major war must be created as a distraction to buy time.

A small war is only a temporary respite. A major war serves to upset the world as a whole. If the world can be turned upside down, perhaps there’s a chance that the dying empire can actually survive with some of its power intact. If not, the empire goes the way of the dodo. It slips away into insignificance or even extinction. And this is where the US now finds itself. The shift to the Asian century is well underway. Quietly, one nation after another is shifting its trade and its deference to the Asian leaders. Those countries like Saudi Arabia, that can make dramatic shifts and do so safely, will be bolder in their shift. Less powerful countries will be a bit more subtle, tiptoeing away from their former master. And that, too, is now underway.

But again, the key ally of the US – the one without which it could not be an empire - has been Europe. The EU is already on the ropes; it was a misconceived experiment from the start and has now begun to splinter. Although no major breakup has begun, the rot is already beyond any possible salvage, and the dictates of Brussels are encountering refusals by some member countries.

With the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, it has become quietly apparent in Germany and other EU countries that they will be facing extreme hardships as a result. They can no longer back out of their support for the US push to create warfare in Ukraine. Additionally, they face the US attempt to draw all the NATO countries into war with Russia – a suicidal prospect for Europe.

The US, in its desperation to escalate the war, has begun to suggest that a "limited nuclear war" might be advisable, but Europe understands that a limited nuclear war is akin to being "a little bit pregnant." Europe would not survive such a war. And so, Germany has begun the pull away from the US. President Olaf Scholz has personally gone to Beijing to broker peace. In doing so, he also makes a clear statement: Germany is acknowledging that it is moving over to a new master.

To be sure, the US will not take this lightly. There will be collective nail-biting in the First World countries as the average man wonders and worries whether the US will do the sane thing and back away from warfare. What the average man does not understand is that, whilst this may be the best choice for the average man and the world in general, it would be the end for those who rule the US. The US would slide inexorably into a lesser state, or even fragment, leaving the US elite with no empire to rule.

This, above all, cannot be tolerated. And, so, it’s important to understand that, to the rulers of the US empire, this is an all-or-nothing game. And to be clear, it’s a game that cannot be won. The US no longer produces much; it no longer has a meaningful balance of trade; it’s the most indebted nation in world history; it’s broke, and it can no longer win a protracted war.

And, to reiterate, the US has no other option at this point. It has destroyed all its other options and has no way out of its dilemma – its modern-day Thucydides Trap. As such, it will not go quietly. Much like a cornered rat, it will make a last attempt to take down as many others as it can on its way out. That should give us pause. Those who wish to avoid becoming collateral damage as the behemoth falls would be advised to extricate themselves, economically and even geographically, from the dying empire."

- internationalman.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Wheat Ridge, Colorado, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

“Life Has No Victims..."

“Life has no victims. There are no victims in this life. No one has the right to point fingers at his/her past and blame it for what he/she is today. We do not have the right to point our finger at someone else and blame that person for how we treat others, today. Don’t hide in the corner, pointing fingers at your past. Don’t sit under the table, talking about someone who has hurt you. Instead, stand up and face your past! Face your fears! Face your pain! And stomach it all! You may have to do so kicking and screaming and throwing fits and crying – but by all means – face it! This life makes no room for cowards.”

- C. Joybell C.

"All Sins..."

"All sins, of course, deserve to be treated with mercy: we all do what we can, and life is too hard and too cruel for us to condemn anyone for failing in this area. Does anyone know what he himself would do if faced with the worst, and how much truth could he bear under such circumstances?" 

- Andre Comte-Sponville

○

Joe South, "Walk A Mile In My Shoes"

"The Truth Virus: The Most Dangerous Virus in the World"

"The Truth Virus:

The Most Dangerous Virus in the World"

by Dog Poet

"I’ve got a virus. It doesn’t have a common name because it isn’t a common virus. It’s difficult to catch this virus because there are only so many ways for it to enter your system. You can catch it as a result of extreme trauma which results in all of your defenses being shut down. This includes all subconscious resistance and all systemic defenses. You can catch it as a result of long term abuse. This includes abuse visited upon you or abuse you visit on yourself. Often this abuse comes about because the virus is already looking for a foothold and it will attract one of these two kinds of abuse. You can catch it through diligent and repeated efforts to catch it, in an environment of quietude, created by a relentless persistence of the mind to cease from the production of thought. There are a few other ways.

Once you’ve got this virus there’s no cure for it. Every cell in your body is going to be replaced and the world will gradually - and sometimes not so gradually - take on the appearance of an insane asylum, while also becoming remarkably predictable. People think insanity is unpredictable but that’s just one of the illusions that are part of the ordinary mindset of the collectively insane.

People who have this virus can understand one another without having to say anything at all and if they should speak they are also understood by people who are vulnerable to this virus. This is one of the ways that the virus spreads. The impact of the virus speaking induces trauma that naturally moves toward the extreme. People who do not have the virus- and who are not susceptible to catching it- will not understand a single word being said. It will make them uncomfortable and sometimes it will make them angry but at no time will it be understood.

There’s a lot of news, noise and argument about Howdy Doody’s comprehensive health plan for the Teletubbies. Most people think that some permutation of universal health care is going to be a major step up for American society. They seem to think that having it is somehow going to lead to a more general state of well being among the population. There are several reasons why this isn’t going to make the slightest difference no matter what kind of a program finally gets decided on.

It doesn’t really matter whether you can see a doctor of your choice or not and have some amount of it paid for. It isn’t going to have any positive effect on your health. Health is the result of a few basic things and one of them is youth. The other things are diet and ones mental and emotional state. An awareness of ones relationship to all of these leads to making the right decisions about how one lives their life. A conscious awareness of diet has a profound effect on one’s well being. One’s mental and emotional states also play significant roles. One needs only to study how many stress-related diseases there are to understand this. If you factor bad diet into unbalanced mental and emotional states you’ve got a problem no doctor can deal with, especially if your medical system is of the allopathic variety.

The people who decide what doctors can and cannot do and what doctors can and cannot tell you are permanent bed-partners with various corporations for whom good health is a bad thing. These are the pharmaceutical concerns; the AMA, the hospital equipment industry and related suppliers of related products. These corporations have another relationship with the various food industries in the sense that they will not write or permit policy that impinges on major enterprises that bring you processed foods, fast foods, mystery meats, candy and soft drinks and whatever else hides under that umbrella. What this means is that, according to the capitalist mentality that rules this society, it is possible; it has to be possible and it damn well will be possible to eat anything you want, avoid exercise and generally break any and every rule of intelligent behavior and if there’s a problem they will either cut it out of you or suppress the symptoms until they have to cut it out of you.

Because the will of corporations is the rule of the land, there will be no change in the profit line for participating corporations. What will change will be the language that the non-change is presented in. To see into the black heart of the system in charge of American life you have only to look into the prison industry where 5% of the American public and 25% of the world’s prison population are incarcerated in American prisons. Why is this? It’s a business. Is it coincidence that America uses 60% of the world’s resources as well?

The unstated objective of American society is that a small percentage of its members shall possess the greatest amount of wealth at the expense of everyone else and will then be lauded for their efforts to assist the less fortunate where no such efforts exist. Such a system cannot survive and will not survive and is presently at the state where a number of shell games are being used to give the impression that the system is doing fine (nicely recovering from a bad scare) and going to get better as it approaches the lip of a high cliff. As things begin to fall from the cliff, you will see charts and graphs appear that indicate the true state and direction of the culture and economy but they will probably be holding these charts and graphs upside down.

I see these things and many other things because I have this virus. Others have this virus too and many more are on the verge of infection. The biggest concern of the TPTB is the proliferation of this virus. Their concern about all other viruses, which they manufactured to begin with, is just Slim Shady dining at the Red Herring Restaurant.

With this virus I can see that the appetites and desires being milked by corporations in order to promote and sell their products leads directly to aberrant behavior which leads to the prison industry for those who are not making the laws that route the unfortunate toward the prison or the grave with that long interlude of enslavement at the looping track of life where they chase the uncatchable dream rabbit that is already steaming in the pot of their betters.

With this virus I can look directly at the lies of politicians and religious leaders and hear the truth that spotlights the pies around the corner and their relationship to the pies in the sky which are moving on conveyor belts behind unbreakable Plexiglas. I can see that there are no pies because the pies are only video projections of pies bounced off of a series of mirrors. I can see the people who do no have the virus and I can see the world they are looking at and it turns out that this world is also just a projection bouncing off of mirrors and one of those mirrors is their minds. These projections then activate the furnace in the visceral brain which causes those without the virus to dance like millions of chickens on a hot griddle that somehow got the impression that they are auditioning for American Idol.

It is not possible to create a society, based on the principles that some of us have read and most of us have heard about, when corporations are the ruling authority of the land, because the intent of a corporation is diametrically opposed to the principles that some of us have read and most of us have heard about. You can’t make Beef Stroganoff out of pork rinds and Velveeta but you can convince people that that is what they are eating and that is the point.

There’s a debate that has been going around since Cain brained Abel and that debate centers on whether it is better to have this virus or some form of all the other viruses. The awareness that comes with having this virus can lead to the rack, the auto da fe and other less pleasant locations. Having the other viruses can lead to being a hamster or some part of a compost pile and a fire burns there as well. They can lead to being cannon fodder and the merciless hands of those who practice a form of medicine that has little to do with the stated intentions of the art. The hands of these practitioners are often more dangerous than the problem that brought you there.

Most people spend more than ninety percent of everything they have saved in their lives in the last year of their life on an industry whose purpose is exactly for that reason.

This virus of mine - and perhaps you have it too - is not an easy burden to bear. You can never pull the covers over your head again. You know there’s no monster in the closet but you also know where the real monsters dwell. You are doomed to an unending quarantine even as you move among your fellows. One thing you do acquire as a result of this virus is compassion and, as Lao Tzu said long ago, “Compassion is a weapon from the sky against being dead.” Realization may not be all the things we imagine it to be, but it is preferable to the restless sleep of nightmares wielded by the whip hand of psychopaths."

- http://rockthetruth.blogspot.com/

"What is Closing Next?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, 11/21/22:

"What is Closing Next?"

"You’re going to see businesses that you never thought would close shut down. This is going to be a very poor Christmas season for retail and for all online sessions. What is next?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"What A Choice: A Tyrannical World Government Or A Nuclear War"

"What A Choice: A Tyrannical

 World Government Or A Nuclear War"

by Michael Snyder

"If you had to choose between living under an extremely oppressive world government or living through a nuclear war, which one would be your choice? Personally, I don’t like either of those two options, but in recent days western leaders have been trying to convince us that we will either have one or the other. According to them, either we can submit to a “global order” that is dominated by the values and the agenda of the western elite or we can accept a multipolar world which will eventually lead to widespread chaos and nuclear war. Needless to say, western politicians are going to try very hard to get us to choose the former.

On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Bangkok even though France is not actually a member. During that speech, Macron lamented the fact that rapidly deteriorating relations between the U.S. and China are tearing the world apart, and he boldly declared that what we really need is “a single world order”…"French President Emmanuel Macron called for world government in a speech Friday, claiming it would avoid conflicts between competing superpowers. “We need a single world order,” Macron told the audience at the ongoing Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bangkok, Thailand.

“Are you on the U.S. side or the China side?” Macron asked rhetorically. “Because now, progressively, a lot of people would like to see that there are two orders in this world.” “This is a huge mistake — even for both the U.S. and China,” he added after comparing the two superpowers to “big elephants” in the geopolitical “jungle.”

Of course when he says that we need a “single world order” he is not suggesting one in which nations such as China and Russia are equal partners. What Macron and other western leaders envision is a global system that is governed by western rules and western values. As he delivered his line about a “single global order”, Macron slowed down and pronounced each of the words with special emphasis.

In case you still think it’s a conspiracy theory that our elites want a world order, here’s French President @EmmanuelMacron yesterday at the APEC summit:

‘We need a single global order’. pic.twitter.com/CFTMXUPy1R

- Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) November 19, 2022

I have a feeling that Macron can picture himself leading a “single global order” someday. Such delusions of grandeur can be extremely dangerous. Meanwhile, other western leaders such as U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin are warning that a truly multipolar world would be one that would inevitably lead to nuclear confrontation and nuclear conflict…"U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Saturday Russia’s invasion of Ukraine offers a preview of a world where nuclear-armed countries could threaten other nations and said Beijing, like Moscow, seeks a world where might makes right. Austin made the remarks at the annual Halifax International Security Forum, which attracts defense and security officials from Western democracies."

Politicians all over the western world have been talking a lot about the threat of nuclear war lately. I think that they are trying to use the threat of nuclear war as a scare tactic in order to advance their agenda, because if they were truly concerned about nuclear war they would be working really hard to stop one from happening. But instead of pursuing peace with China and Russia through diplomatic means, western leaders seem to have decided that now is the time to get really tough with China and Russia.

Ultimately, our leaders would love to see both regimes collapse and be replaced by governments that are ready to embrace western values and a “single global order” that is led by the western nations. Western politicians keep hoping that the war in Ukraine will lead to such an outcome in Russia, and I am sure that they are trying to figure out how to use the coming Chinese invasion of Taiwan to bring about such an outcome in China.

We have seen so many other governments get toppled over the decades, and now the western elite are going after the two biggest fish in the pond. But by being so aggressive, they are literally bringing us to the brink of nuclear conflict.

Earlier this year, a study was released that concluded that a full-blown nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia would result in billions of deaths. But only about 360 million people would be killed by the original nuclear exchange. That is the good news.

The bad news is that about 5 billion people would starve to death during the nuclear winter that would follow…"According to a peer-reviewed study published in the journal "Nature Food" in August 2022,[139] a full-scale nuclear war between the United States and Russia, which together hold more than 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, would kill 360 million people directly and more than 5 billion indirectly by starvation during a nuclear winter.[140][141]"

In the aftermath of a full-blown nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia, global temperatures would plunge dramatically because of all the soot that is injected into the atmosphere…“A war between the United States, its allies and Russia - who possess more than 90% of the global nuclear arsenal - could produce more than 150 teragrams of soot and a nuclear winter,” the study reads." A teragram is a unit of measurement equal to 1 trillion grams and models show that soot injections into the atmosphere larger than 5 teragrams would lead to mass food shortages in almost all countries.

In such an environment, very little would be able to be grown, and so global food production would soon fall to only a small fraction of what it is today…"In the scenario of a war between the United States and Russia, the global average calorie production from crops would decrease by around 90% within four years after the nuclear war. Nuclear war would also reduce the global fish supply. People in most nations would consume fewer calories than their bodies burn at rest and more than 5 billion people would die by the end of the second year."

Western leaders are trying to convince us that the way to avoid such a fate is to embrace their vision of a “single world order” that is led by them. And the truth is that there are a whole lot of people out there that would be more than willing to give up their freedoms for the security of a one world government.

Such people are just like the mindless sheep that were recently spotted “walking around in a circle for 12 days straight”…"Dozens of sheep have been eerily walking around in a circle for 12 days straight in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region. The bizarre behavior, captured on surveillance video, shows the large flock continuously marching clockwise in a nearly perfect circle on a farm."

My hope is that we can get more “sheeple” to wake up while there is still time to do so. We don’t want world government. And we don’t want nuclear war either. Unfortunately, we don’t always get what we want. The western elite are really making a mess of things, and we are all going to suffer the consequences of their incredibly reckless decisions."

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

"The Middle Class Delenda Est." Part IV

"The Middle Class Delenda Est." Part IV

Traditional common sense vs. the elite's uncommon nonsense...

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland -  “Look both ways before crossing the street.” The common man lives with ghosts. They are the ghosts of parents whose children didn’t look both ways. They whisper the lessons of the dead:

Don’t spend more than you earn.

Say please and thank you.

Mind your own business.

Never eat yellow snow.

The difference between the common man and the elite is that the former believes in following rules; the latter believes it can make them up as it goes along. We have been exploring a grim subject – the destruction of the middle class. So far, we’ve seen that the elites use inflation like a thief uses a crowbar – to get what belongs to someone else.

It’s not exactly ‘intentional.’ A wolf does not eat a lamb with malice aforethought; that’s just the way it works. Inflation wrecks the economy and ‘The People’ who depend on it. So much the better, say the elites; they prefer the poor, who are more easily manipulated…and their votes more cheaply bought. But there’s more to it than just money. The ruling class has ideas… programs… campaigns. ‘Middle class values’ often get in the way.

No Gains Without Pains: Yes, the drum to which the common man marches is beaten by the shades, not by the Establishment. The drumbeat of the dead rocks his soul and is imprinted – as common sense – on his instincts. He is a natural ‘conservative,’ reluctant to change.

He gets up early. (‘The early bird catches the worm,’ he says.)

He gets to work. (‘I learned the value of hard work by working hard,’ he explains.)

He saves his money. (‘A penny saved is a penny earned…’)

He is careful not to spend too much. (‘Waste not, want not.’)

He follows rules, but he can be a threat to the rulers. His ‘common sense’ is often at odds with the elite’s uncommon nonsense. It is common sense to him that ‘you can’t get something for nothing’ and ‘you have to work for what you get.’ And yet, the elites offer billions in ‘printing press money’ to tempt him onto the dole. In the Covid Hysteria, for example, millions of people earned more from not working than they did on the job.

The deciders believe that the painful lessons of the past no longer matter. Today, we are smarter, or…so they believe, better educated…and more “woke” to the challenges and realities of life in 2022. We know right from wrong…good from bad…Heaven from Hell. Nor do we doubt which side we’re on – we’re always on the side of the angels. No need to ask questions.

The Heaven of today’s ruling classes – for the common man, not for themselves – is a small, energy efficient apartment in a tight, modern community where you can walk or ride a bicycle to essential services…call each other ‘they’ or another personal pronoun of their choice…and go to great lengths to make sure everyone is equal to everyone else. The swift, for example, shoot themselves in the foot so they can hobble along with the cripples…the smart watch CNN and FOX news to lower their IQs…and pretty women put bags over their heads so no one gets the wrong idea. Everyone, of course, agrees with everyone else on everything; they call it ‘diversity.’

Modern Discomforts: The trouble with the common man is that he doesn’t ‘get it.’ He clings to his habits and customs… He looks both ways before crossing the street, but doesn’t like being told where to go. And that is what the elites do.

At Davos – where the rich and famous go in their private jets to shame the common people for using too much fuel – the World Economic Forum has already made it clear where it is headed; in the future, says one of its key videos, “you will own nothing, and you will be happy.” Last week, Elizabeth Borne, France’s finance minister, let ‘The People’ know that they would “live better” once they said ‘au revoir’ to that awful fossil fuel. In Europe, too, politicians have already proposed to ban single family homes. They’re not ‘energy efficient;’ saving the planet has become a goal far surpassing the comfort of individual families.

But the common man – deplorable! – may not be on the same page. He may not bow his head to Gaia or get on his knees before the diversity gods. Follow him out to the parking lot, and you may find him getting into a big, diesel-gulping pick-up truck rather than a small electric car.

So, if you’re among the elites, you can’t let the common man vote without guidance. His candidates must be chosen for him – carefully nurturing one with money and favorable press…while starving another for funds and making him look like a dangerous moron. Then, just to be sure, make sure the candidates are all dumb rascals so the voter has no real choice. Turn the contest into an idea-free slap-fest. And watch out; he may still vote the ‘wrong’ way. Be careful taking him out in public, too. He may say the wrong thing!

Doers and Shakers: Words evolve with the fads and fantasies of the time. ‘Bum’ used to describe someone who lived on the streets. It suggested a moral failing – the man had not followed the rules. It was his own damned fault. Then, the term was replaced, in polite, elite society, by “homeless person.” It suggested a failing too – but it was not judgmental; he may have had some bad luck. But now, the proper term is “unhoused person” – which suggests that it’s someone else’s fault. Someone, somehow had failed to give the man a proper house.

The common man knows a bum when he sees him. And he smells a rat. He digs in his heels from time to time and refuses to go along with the elite’s program. His ‘common sense’ gets in the way of the great improvements the thinkers and do-gooders want to make. Without the media’s non-stop propaganda, would he want to send his money to keep the war going on in the Ukraine? Probably not. Would he approve of trillion-dollar US deficits and $31 trillion of debt? Nobody asks.

“The People” are easily bamboozled and readily suckered into foolishness. Wave the flag, and they march to murder with nary a doubt. But left alone, they stick to age-old rules. Theirs is a world guided by common civility, common decency, and common sense. You give so that you can take. You drive on the right side of the road. Each man follows the same ‘rules of the road’ but chooses his own destination.

The elite, on the other hand, think they know where he OUGHT to go. The doers and shakers of today have the Truth…the here-and-now, never-before-known Truth about what is important and what is not. They believe they have the right to write new rules…and they’re not going to let any old truths get in their way…or the people who cling to them.

The Middle Class Delenda Est."

- https://bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/

○

Related:

"Jeff Bezos Warns Americans to Brace for Imminent Crisis"

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! JP Morgan Warns: Millions Will Lose Their Jobs As 'Severe Recession' Hits"

Your guide...

Gregory Mannarino, 11/21/22:

"Alert! JP Morgan Warns: 

Millions Will Lose Their Jobs As 'Severe Recession' Hits"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How Much Diesel Is Left? 2 Weeks Left - December 5th. Inflation Alert!"

Full screen recommended.

Riverside Homestead Life, 11/20/22:

"How Much Diesel Is Left? 

2 Weeks Left - December 5th. Inflation Alert!"

"This is about to happen...SHTF INFLATION. This is getting really scary. How much diesel is left? Is there a diesel shortage? And is there a fuel shortage? If this is a diesel crisis, are you prepared for food shortages, and empty shelves, major inflation increasing to hyperinflation, because as this diesel crisis continues, it will automatically drive prices up. Truckers and cargo haulers will have to impose surcharges to be sure companies are making enough money to make a profit, this will drive inflation up with everything that we buy as everything is delivered by diesel and diesel fuels and fossil fuels, so if you’ve been watching us here at Riverside Homestead life, you will know that we’ve been giving you emergency preparedness tips  to use, and other channels do this as well, like Canadian Prepper, Prepared Homestead, Pinball, Preparedness Warning, we've warned you about diesel, shortages, and about inflation and about the fuel and gas prices. December 5 is when the new European embargo goes effect and the demand for US diesel products will go up, which means we will lose more diesel to the highest bidder, meaning inflation, and shortages of all kinds, including fuel shortage, diesel shortage, food shortage, and empty shelves will result, so be sure to be prepared for higher prices."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Massive Price Increases At Walmart! This Is Ridiculous! Not Good!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures with Danno, 11/21/22:

"Massive Price Increases At Walmart! 

This Is Ridiculous! Not Good!"

"In today's vlog we are at Walmart, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

○

Related:

"We Are Being Warned That Meat Prices 

Could Go Up Another 40 Or 50 Percent"

Canadian Prepper, "Alert: Major Cities Being Evacuated; Nuclear Test"

Canadian Prepper, 11/20/22:

"Alert: Major Cities Being Evacuated; Nuclear Test"

"Mass evacuations underway in Europe, 30 signs that point toward WW3 escalation and not negotiation."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"15 Food Items To Stock Up On For The Coming Shortages"

Full screen recommended.

"15 Food Items To Stock Up On For The Coming Shortages"

by Epic Economist

"If there's a place where we can see with our own eyes the challenges our country is facing that place is the grocery store. Inflation is pushing the prices of everyday goods to levels last seen when our grandparents had our age. Today, we're paying almost 40% more on a carton of eggs, 20% more for a pound of chicken, and 100% more for a pound of turkey compared to just one year ago. Supplies of several staples are disturbingly low, and food manufacturers are already doing everything they can to boost production. But there is only so much they can do in a year of poor harvests and extensive crop losses. The bare shelves and insane prices we're facing right now are a reflection of a food supply chain that has been broken and never recovered. At this point, pretty much everyone in the industry is telling the public that conditions will continue to deteriorate as we head into 2023 and beyond.

With food supply chains profoundly disrupted, the best strategy in such a scenario is to do our best with the products we can still find and afford. Just a few years ago, if anyone said the vast majority of the U.S. population would be scrambling to afford food and other basic necessities, we wouldn't have believed them. But within a little over 24 months, the damage that has been done to our economy was so severe that many lives were turned upside down. Things have become much more uncertain and unpredictable.

And considering that grocers are announcing that more price hikes are on the horizon and also that food banks are already overwhelmed and struggling to meet demand, it's safe to say that we won't have much relief this winter.

Global leaders are explicity saying that the era of abundance is over, and that food shortages are about to get real. The truth is that we're entering times when food shortages will become far more widespread than most people realize. And before we notice, empty shelves will become far more than just an incovenience, but a painful reminder that scarcity is the new norm.

That's why, in today's video, we decide to step out of the obvious and list some foods we often overlook when we're thinking about stocking up for food shortages. It is important to highlight that some of these items are already or will soon be in short supply, so you might want to start searching for them the next time you go grocery shopping. Don't be surprised if in the next couple of months some of these products are nowhere to be found. Given the pace at which this crisis is accelerating, the best advice we can give is to start acting before it's too late."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude 2002, "Deep Still Blue"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Deep Still Blue"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant.

The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid.”

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

•

"When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged

in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams,

to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where

he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars."

- Walt Whitman

The Poet: Stephen Levine, "Half Life"

"Half Life" 

 "We walk through half our life

as if it were a fever dream,

barely touching the ground,

our eyes half open,

our heart half closed.

Not half knowing who we are,

we watch the ghost of us drift

from room to room,

through friends and lovers

never quite as real as advertised.

Not saying half we mean

or meaning half we say,

we dream ourselves

from birth to birth

seeking some true self.

Until the fever breaks

and the heart can not abide

a moment longer

as the rest of us awakens,

summoned from the dream,

not half caring for anything but love." 

~ Stephen Levine

"As Humans..."

“It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we’ve been endowed with. But what’s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours - arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don’t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment’s additional existence. Life, in short just wants to be.”

- Bill Bryson

"Stand Up Straight..."

 

"I Can't Wait For the Day When Life Finally Makes Sense"

"I Can't Wait For the Day When Life Finally Makes Sense"

by Rania Naim

"I can't wait for the day when life finally makes sense, when we find the silver lining in every tragedy, when we learn the lesson from each mistake and when we understand why our hearts needed to get broken a few times to let love in.

I can't wait for the day that we understand why we met the right people at the wrong time or the wrong people at the right time and why our lives didn't align to bring us together. I wonder if it's because they're the wrong ones for us or because we still have a lot of growing up to do and we're meant to be with someone who understands who weare becoming not who we were.

I can't wait for the day that we understand the lesson behind every struggle. Why we struggled to be successful, why we struggled to find love, why we struggled to reach our dreams and why we lost people who meant the world to us. I wonder if we needed these lessons to learn how to appreciate life and feel the pain of others or we just needed to learn that there is no living without suffering.

I can't wait for the day that we understand why we had to hate ourselves to love ourselves, why we had to destroy ourselves to build ourselves up again and why we had to start over just before we got to the finish line. I wonder who saved us or who inspired us to save ourselves.

I wonder if we are meant to be reborn a few times so we can learn how to truly live. I want to know what triggered us to change and how we can no longer recognize who we used to be.

I can't wait for the day that we understand why we keep falling for the wrong ones over and over again, why we can't forget those who hurt us and why we sometimes can still forgive them and take them back. I want to understand how our hearts operate, how they function, how they move us to do things we would never do and lead us to places that we know we shouldn't go to. I'm curious to know why we listen to it, why we follow it blindly like it never got us lost before, why we trust it even though it left us broken and why do we always go back to it for questions when it keeps giving us the wrong answers. I wonder if there will come a day when we stop listening to it and if we'll ever be truly alive without it.

They say everything happens for a reason and I truly believe that, but I also want to know what this reason is and why it chose us. Why some reasons keep recurring and why some reasons leave us even more perplexed. I want to understand why we go through certain things, what's the message behind it and what if we never respond to this message, what if we just ignore it and keep living, what will happen then? Will our lives get lost in translation?

I can't wait for the day that life makes sense. Some days I understand why certain things happened and others I'm not so sure, but all I know is that somehow we'll connect the dots and someday we'll complete the puzzle, until then, we have to learn how to live our lives without trying to understand it and we have to learn how to be comfortable with the irony and uncertainty of life; otherwise we'll lose our common sense trying to make sense of the life we are living."

- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/

"You Must Think..."

"How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that needs our help. So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"They Can’t Buy It All"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly 11/20/22:

"They Can’t Buy It All"

"As the real estate market starts to collapse we are hearing that there are institutional investors that are swooping in and buying entire neighborhoods. Do not be alarmed by this because this is just the beginning of the shenanigans. There will be massive amount of foreclosures there will be massive amounts of short sales and other bank owned properties."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Dearborn, Michigan, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Defeat? Never"

"Defeat? Never"

by John Wilder

"Back when I was in high school, I started a quest. It would probably be a trivial quest in today’s world with the Internet, and tens of millions of songs available all from a single search. However, back when I was in high school, the only people using the Internet were computer nerds at colleges or places like Los Alamos sharing nuclear bomb design info and ASCII porn.

There was exactly one rock and roll radio station that reached the lofty heights of Wilder Mountain, and it was a good three-hour drive from where I lived. Heck, the nearest record store was a 45-minute drive. But I heard a song...and loved it. I had no idea who the artist was. All I knew was that it had guitars that sounded like jet fighters coming in for an attack (metaphorically) and a heavy metal singer with pipes to growl low and also hit the high notes.

This was not helpful. My bumbling attempts to hum the song to the record store clerk probably sounded like a toddler attempting to instruct an Albanian goat herder on how to repair a Junkers Jumo-004 on an ME 262. My incoherent rambling eventually convinced the store owner that I could probably be sold a lot of records on my quest to find the goofy song.

She was right. On one particular winter day, I bought two cassettes. Memo to the young: a cassette was an attempt to put a part of the Internet on a skinny magnetic tape and take it with you. Sort of like WIFI but with a really, really low transfer rate that cost over $7 for 42 megabytes. I listened to one of the cassettes on my forty-minute drive to Stately Wilder Manor. I don’t recall what the first cassette was. It was okay. The song I was looking for, however, wasn’t on it.

When I got to Wilder Mountain, I decided to listen to the other cassette. Pa Wilder wasn’t home. It was November, and snow was falling gently across the valley, as I looked toward the volcanic cone that dominated the view above the mountains that surrounded the valley. I put in the cassette. I hit play.

A single guitar hit an E note that crunched and then was followed by 41 seconds of guitar solo that made my brain implode. The first second was enough, the next 40? Pure passion. My father’s stereo, which before that day was primarily concerned with playing Dean Martin and Johnny Cash, must have been surprised.

I know I was. Then? Another driving song, this time about a sentient A.I. encased in an orbiting surveillance satellite. What? I was in heaven. The cassette was Judas Priest, the album? "Screaming for Vengeance". The theme of the music was unabashedly masculine. It was fueled by testosterone and optimism and defiance. It was, in short, everything I loved in life.

What was my ethos at that time? Full speed. Every moment in life. When I played football, I played football. Every ounce of my being was focused on the next play. The cleats digging into the turf, the snap as the center delivered the ball to the quarterback, my sudden sprint, and the exquisite feeling of my shoulder pads digging into that quarterback's belly as I impacted him at full speed. Life was a game to be played at full speed. When a football game was over, win or lose, the idea that I would have left anything of myself or held back an ounce of myself? I never felt that after a single game.

Win or lose. Everything I had. And that was the ethos. My focus was on doing everything that I could humanly do during the game. If we won? Excellent. If we lost? There was no room for regret since I had done every single thing I could for the team. Amazingly, here that was, in music.

This music and most of the music I have loved since then was fueled by one concept – it was fueled by the idea that, in this life, there are winners, and there are losers. But there are no victims. I was responsible for my preparation. I was responsible for my effort. I was responsible for me. If I won? Wonderful. If I lost? Yeah, it stung. But if I gave it my best, and lived up to my own values, I still won.

Again, winning was and is important. But a loss of a single day was nothing. Winning could and would come. And I would live my life, on my terms. Have I been cheated? Yes. Have I been wronged? Yes. Did I stand toe to toe with my boss and tell him that I wouldn’t sell my honor and principles to him for any reason? Yes. And did I pay a price? Duh. Do I regret it? Not for a minute. Not for a second.

There are moments in life, where honor and values will be tested. Heck, that was in this music, too.

"In this world we’re living’ in, 

we have our share of sorrow.

Answer now is don’t give in, 

aim for a new tomorrow."

Also in the music? Questions of deep philosophy. The eternal battle between Good and Evil. Oh, yeah, and hot chicks. Eventually, this changed and fell out of fashion. I think it was Bush. Or maybe raising the drinking age to 21. Or maybe drugging generations with lithium and Adderall®. Or maybe the new “zero tolerance” lifestyle, where fighting for Good and being right still resulted in a suspension. Or maybe all of that.

Music based on honor and testosterone and optimism eventually fell out of favor. I can even give you the date: September 21, 1991, when Nirvana launched "Nevermind":

"With the lights out, it's less dangerous,

Here we are now, entertain us.

I feel stupid and contagious,

Here we are now, entertain us."

That abomination of learned helplessness replaced this from Judas Priest:

"Thousand of cars and a million guitars

Screaming with power in the air.

We've found the place where the decibels race,

This army of rock will be there

To ram it down, ram it down.

Straight through the heart of this town

Ram it down, ram it down,

Razing the place to the ground.

Ram it down..."

One of these makes me feel like slitting my wrists. The other? Fills me with the idea that none of us are alone. We have power. We are...going to win, no matter what the damn odds are. Judas Priest is still touring. Kurt Cobain? Not so much. I guess it proves that one person can handle only so much Courtney Love:

"Fast and furious, we ride the universe

To carve a road for us, that slices every curve in sight.

We accelerate, no time to hesitate

This load will detonate, whoever would contend its right."

I refuse to accept defeat. The idea is against every fiber of being in my body. I realize that I will not win every battle. And I am going to listen to music, and I am going to take in media that tells me the truth, but I shall never, ever, despair no matter how dire the situation. My family? They come from heroes. So does yours. Never, ever, give up. I’m not going to stop until I stop breathing. And I won’t relinquish my honor to any man. And I am responsible for every aspect of my life and my situation.

Oh, I did find the song I was looking for, a year later:

"The hammer of the gods

Will drive our ships to new lands,

To fight the horde, sing and cry

Valhalla, I am coming..."

But that’s another story, though the song remains the same."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/