Saturday, March 4, 2023

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Big, beautiful spiral galaxy NGC 1055 is a dominant member of a small galaxy group a mere 60 million light-years away toward the aquatically intimidating constellation Cetus. Seen edge-on, the island universe spans over 100,000 light-years, a little larger than our own Milky Way galaxy. The colorful, spiky stars decorating this cosmic portrait of NGC 1055 are in the foreground, well within the Milky Way. But the telltale pinkish star forming regions are scattered through winding dust lanes along the distant galaxy's thin disk.
Click image for larger size.
With a smattering of even more distant background galaxies, the deep image also reveals a boxy halo that extends far above and below the central bulge and disk of NGC 1055. The halo itself is laced with faint, narrow structures, and could represent the mixed and spread out debris from a satellite galaxy disrupted by the larger spiral some 10 billion years ago."

“The Bewildered Herd..."

“The bewildered herd is a problem. We've got to prevent their roar and trampling. We've got to distract them. They should be watching the Superbowl or sitcoms or violent movies. Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like "Support our troops!" You've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they're properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they're not competent to think. Therefore it's important to distract them and marginalize them.”
- Noam Chomsky
"Those who can make you believe absurdities
 can make you commit atrocities."
- Voltaire

The Poet: Charles Bukowski, "The Laughing Heart"

The Daily "Near You?"

West Coxsackie, New York, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Brace Yourself For Extreme Economic Turbulence"

"Brace Yourself For Extreme Economic Turbulence"
by Michael Snyder

"Why is the U.S. economy suddenly deteriorating so rapidly all around us? Well, the short answer is that this downturn is way overdue. For years, our leaders tried to cheat the laws of economics. The Federal Reserve pushed interest rates all the way to the floor, which is something that never would happen in a true free market economy, and they pumped trillions of fresh dollars that they literally created out of thin air into the financial system. Meanwhile, our politicians in Washington were engaging in the greatest debt binge that the world has ever seen.

All of this reckless manipulation seemed to work for a while, but many of us warned that it would inevitably create a major inflation crisis, and that is precisely what happened. So now the Fed is aggressively hiking interest rates in a desperate attempt to tame the inflation monster that they helped to create, and higher rates are absolutely crushing economic activity.

At this point, most Americans understand that something has seriously gone wrong, and this is pushing consumer confidence lower. On Tuesday, we learned that consumer confidence has now fallen for two straight months to start 2023…"U.S. consumer confidence unexpectedly fell for the second straight month in February as Americans’ outlook on the economy tumbled further, showing how persistent inflation is weighing on shoppers amid looming recession fears.

The Conference Board’s latest Consumer Confidence Index released Tuesday declined to 102.9 for this month, slipping from 106.0 in January - which was revised lower. Economists polled by Refinitiv had expected February’s index to tick up to 108.5."

Even more troubling is the fact that Americans seem to be bracing themselves for more economic turbulence as 2023 rolls along. The Conference Board’s senior director of economics, Ataman Ozyildirim, is warning that U.S. consumers are planning to do far less spending in the months ahead… “Expectations for where jobs, incomes, and business conditions are headed over the next six months all fell sharply in February,” Ozyildirim reported, noting that “consumers may be showing early signs of pulling back spending in the face of high prices and rising interest rates.

Fewer consumers are planning to purchase homes or autos and they also appear to be scaling back plans to buy major appliances,” the economist added. “Vacation intentions also declined in February.”

So home sales could go down even more? That is really bad news, because home sales in southern California have already fallen to the lowest level ever recorded…"When Christmas lights go up, home sales typically go down as buyers and sellers take a break. But this past Christmas, Santa delivered a giant lump of coal to Southern California’s housing market, as well as to real estate agents, lenders, escrow officers and anyone else who gets paid by the transaction.

Closed sales this past January - which reflect deals signed during the holiday season - fell to 9,938, the lowest number of transactions in records dating back 35 years, real estate data firm CoreLogic reported Tuesday, Feb. 28."

As I keep telling my readers, a new housing crash has begun. In fact, U.S. home prices have now declined for six months in a row…"US home prices fell for the sixth month in a row in December, as rising mortgage rates pushed prospective buyers out of the housing market, according to the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index, released Tuesday."

Sadly, home prices will likely fall quite a bit more in many areas if the Federal Reserve keeps raising rates. Higher rates are also really hurting the auto industry, and Zero Hedge is reporting that one of the most prominent subprime auto lenders in the entire country has just collapsed…"Well, after a lengthy period in which nothing seemed to happen, suddenly the dominoes are starting to fall, and as Bloomberg reports, used car retailer and subprime auto loan lender, American Car Center, told employees the business was closing its doors, just one day after the company had hoped to pull off a funding Hail Mary by selling a $222 million bond (it failed).

According to Bloomberg, the used car retailer, which targets consumers regardless of their credit history (and thus targets almost entirely subprime borrowers who can’t get a loan elsewhere), said in an email to employees on Friday the firm was ceasing all operations, closing its headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, and that all employees would be terminated by the end of the business day, the people said. It employed about 288 people at its headquarters."

Yes, the dominoes are certainly starting to tumble. But at least things in the U.S. are still better than they are over in Europe. Right now, consumers in the UK are literally fighting over cucumbers as the nationwide rationing of fruits and vegetables starts to become extremely painful…"A supermarket shopper has described ‘customers fighting over the last box of cucumbers’ on the first day that Aldi and Tesco imposed rationing on some of its fresh produce. The two retailers announced limits on purchases of certain fruit and vegetables on Thursday.

It followed similar moves from Morrisons and Asda, with four major supermarkets now limiting the number of items people can buy across items such as peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes. The temporary measures are in response to a nationwide shortage of some fruit and veg."

And food prices in the UK continue to spiral completely out of control…"A measure of UK grocery price inflation soared to a record high this month - that’s more bad news for consumers already facing a shortage of fruit and vegetables that has led to rationing at major supermarkets.

Grocery prices rose 17.1% in the four weeks to February 19, compared with the same period a year ago, according to data published by Kantar Tuesday. That’s the highest rate of inflation since the data company started tracking it in 2008, and is equivalent to adding an extra £811 ($980) to a household’s average yearly grocery bill."

Unfortunately, what we are facing is a global crisis. Economic conditions all over the planet will deteriorate in the months ahead, and so I would encourage you to brace yourself for a tremendous amount of economic turbulence. Because it is coming, and at this point there is nothing that our leaders can do to stop it.

For such a long time, central banks and politicians all over the world tried to cheat the system. But in the process they made our long-term problems even worse. Now a moment of reckoning is here, and every man, woman and child on the entire planet will feel the pain."
o
And so, despite the many, many warnings most people wallowed in their willful and determined ignorance, exclaiming so loudly and self-righteously,"Oh that could never happen here!" Well, Pilgrims, guess what? Here it is, right now, and this is just the beginning. It will get incredibly worse, and you, and all of us, better brace for impact, because...
Robert Palmer, 
"You're Gonna Get What's Coming" 


"Russians Don't Bluff!"; "Everyone Should Be Afraid of War"

Full screen recommended.
Scott Ritter, 3/4/23:
"Russians Don't Bluff! 
They're Going To Do Exactly The Way They Said"
Comments here:
o
Douglas Macgregor, Straight Calls, 3/4/23:
"Michael Savage Calls Douglas Macgregor:
 Everyone Should Be Afraid of War"
"Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of
current geopolitical events in the United States and the world."
Comments here:
o
"We know that those attacks would never be possible in absence of a very deep & sophisticated assistance by the US to the Ukrainian military."

How It Really Is"

"Get Ready for Extreme Turbulence"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 3/4/23:
"Get Ready for Extreme Turbulence"
"We are seeing so many changes in the economy. We are seeing consumer sentiment drop to an all time low in February 2023. The real estate transactions are dropping to record low levels."
Comments here:

"Major Price Increases At Kroger! What Now? Not Good!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/4/23:
"Major Price Increases At Kroger!
 What Now? Not Good!"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases on groceries! We are here to look at some cheap options as SNAP Benefits have ended for millions of people. It's getting rough out here as stores grocery prices are at an all time high."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
St.Petersburg - Me, 3/4/23:
"So, it's a year of Russian sanctions, a year of SMO. How does a Russian shopping mall look like now? What has changed after a year? No people, empty shelves?"
Comments here:

And how's your local mall doing? Look like this one?

"Hang On! They're Finally Admitting This After 3 Years?"

Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 3/4/23:
"Hang On! They're Finally Admitting This After 3 Years?"
"A new study finds that having had Covid provides at least as much immunity as two doses of the Covid vaccine. This comes from the Lancet medical journal. The journal reviewed 65 prior studies that concluded that prior infection can be considered inoculation. Not only did natural exposure provide immunity as well as the vaccines, it also provided “protection against severe disease… for all variants.” This is something that the medical community has long-since known and yet experts still advised people who had Covid to get vaccinated without exception in the U.S. "
Comments here:

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up"
CV19 Bioweapon/Vax Bell Has Rung, 
CV19 Vax Dead Piling Up & Inflation Economy
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

The bell has rung on the fraud of the CV19 plandemic. From infection to injection, it was all a bioweapon used to kill and disable an unsuspecting global population. 13 billion doses were shot into people worldwide, and it did not help one single person—period. Woody Harrelson rang the bell that could not be unheard on Saturday Night Live when he said governments and media were bought off by Big Pharma. They locked us down, and the only way to get out was to take their drugs (CV19 Vax) over and over. People are waking up to the deadly and debilitating scam of Covid and the bioweapon/vax used to murder people.

The dead keep piling up from the CV19 bioweapon/vax. Wall Street analyst extraordinaire Ed Dowd says excess death numbers for group life insurance companies are up more than 40% over normal in 2022—and they are trending much higher in 2023. We are just getting started, and this evil debacle is nowhere near the peak. This does not account for the thousands every week who are left completely disabled and can no longer work. The one thing that could help people now is Ivermectin, but the medical community and the government are still trashing it and restricting it. Looks like Justin Bieber’s career is over as he has cancelled the remainder of his world tour because of health problems caused by the CV19 injections. Could Ivermectin help him? Vax injury expert Dr. Pierre Kory says he has helped many with Ivermectin.

We keep hearing that the Fed is going to pivot and start cutting interest rates. The market rallied on Thursday because of some dovish comments by one Fed President. Is anyone listening to the rest of the Fed? Nearly all, including Fed Head Jay Powell, say they are raising rates, and they are not going to stop raising them anytime soon. We have an inflation economy. Can it be brought under control without killing business?" There is much more in the 52-minute newscast.

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about 
these stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up.

Scott Ritter, "Russia is Mobilizing 300,000 Troops"

Scott Ritter, 3/3/23:
"Russia is Mobilizing 300,000 Troops"
Comments here:

Friday, March 3, 2023

"NATO Pushing Massive Escalation Against Putin By Using China As Excuse"

Redacted, 3/3/23:
"NATO Pushing Massive Escalation 
Against Putin By Using China As Excuse"
"Is the war in Ukraine all but over? Is that why the U.S. seems to be upping the rhetoric on China? We break down the odd timing of this war escalation that is costing Ukrainians their lives."
Comments here:

"Nord Stream: Seymour Hersh Discusses Explosive Report With Gerald Celente"

Gerald Celente, 3/3/23:
"Nord Stream: Seymour Hersh Discusses 
Explosive Report With Gerald Celente"
"Pulitzer Prize winning reporter gives an in-depth interview about his reportage into the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines that connect Russia to Germany and why he believes President Joe Biden approved the bombing."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Courting the Moon"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Courting the Moon"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"NGC 1333 is seen in visible light as a reflection nebula, dominated by bluish hues characteristic of starlight reflected by interstellar dust. A mere 1,000 light-years distant toward the heroic constellation Perseus, it lies at the edge of a large, star-forming molecular cloud. 
This telescopic close-up spans about two full moons on the sky or just over 15 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 1333. It shows details of the dusty region along with telltale hints of contrasty red emission from Herbig-Haro objects, jets and shocked glowing gas emanating from recently formed stars. In fact, NGC 1333 contains hundreds of stars less than a million years old, most still hidden from optical telescopes by the pervasive stardust. The chaotic environment may be similar to one in which our own Sun formed over 4.5 billion years ago."

Paulo Coelho, "Killing Our Dreams"

"Killing Our Dreams"
by Paulo Coelho

"The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time. The busiest people I have known in my life always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they are afraid to fight the Good Fight.

The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day-to-day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the Good Fight.

And, finally, the third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a Sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams – we have refused to fight the Good Fight.

When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illnesses and psychoses arise. What we sought to avoid in combat – disappointment and defeat – come upon us because of our cowardice. And one day, the dead, spoiled dreams make it difficult to breathe, and we actually seek death. It’s death that frees us from our certainties, from our work, and from that terrible peace of our Sunday afternoons."

"Never, Ever Forget..."

"Never, ever forget that nothing in this life is free. Life demands payment in some form for your "right" to express yourself, to condemn and abuse the evil surrounding us. Expect to pay... it will come for you, they will come for you, regardless. Knowing that, give them Hell itself every chance you can. Expect no mercy, and give none. That's how life works. Be ready to pay for what you do, or be a coward, pretend you don't see, don't know, and cry bitter tears over how terrible things are, over how you let them become."
- Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls "

"All The Money You Make..."

Full screen recommended.
Steve Cutts, "Happiness"
“All the money you make will never buy back your soul. ”
- Bob Dylan

"It’s All Coming Apart"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 3/3/23:
"It’s All Coming Apart"
"So much is happening right now with the economy. We are seeing everything come apart with massive layoffs, retail, collapsing and interest-rate, destroying the real estate market we all need to look at getting ourselves in the physical metals."
Comments here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Bothell, Washington, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Markets Ignore Economic Armageddon; Californians Running Out Of Food And Water; Warrior Mindset"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/3/23:
"Markets Ignore Economic Armageddon; 
Californians Running Out Of Food And Water; Warrior Mindset"
Comments here:

"What In The World Has Happened To Our Society?"

"What In The World Has Happened To Our Society?"
By Michael Snyder

"Things weren’t always this horrible. Once upon a time, America’s shiny new cities were the envy of the entire world. Our citizens dressed sharply, they treated one another with respect, and they worked incredibly hard. But now our country is teeming with extremely slothful degenerates that want everything handed to them on a silver platter. Rampant greed is everywhere that you look, crime is completely out of control, we are facing the worst drug crisis in the entire history of our nation, millions of our fellow citizens are absolutely seething with hatred for one another, and those that attempt to stand up for what is right are considered to be the problem. We should be deeply grieved by what has happened to our society, because it truly is a great tragedy.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. On Wednesday, Matt Walsh published an excerpt from a letter that an infantryman sent to his family during the Civil War…"If you want to see how much the English language has deteriorated in modern times, go read the letters that random infantrymen wrote home to their families during the Civil War. These were young men often without much formal schooling who wrote naturally like poets. One example:"
Can you write like that? I certainly can’t. Those of us in this generation like to think of ourselves as the pinnacle of human history, but the truth is that we can’t even compare to those that have come before us.

Let me give you another example. More than a century ago, the streets of New York City were filled with extremely civilized people that dressed incredibly well when it was time to go out into the public arena…
Full screen recommended.
But now New York City is a crime-ridden, drug-infested hellhole. At this point, drug overdoses account for 80 to 85 percent of all accidental deaths in the Big Apple…
New York Times 3 days ago:
Is this “progress”? I don’t think so.

In Portland, conditions have gotten so bad that more than 2,600 businesses have left the downtown area over the past few years…"Business owners are fleeing Portland in droves amid a pronounced rise in crime and homelessness, officials in the Democratic stronghold have revealed. Public data shows that since the pandemic, more than 2,600 downtown businesses have filed changes of address with the U.S. Postal Service to leave their downtown ZIP codes. Several big-name employers, from Unitus Community Credit Union to Umpqua Bank, have been among the mass exodus, carried out by owners who have taken issue with the rising crime levels and homelessness – and the city’s failure to address it."

Apparently officials want even more businesses to leave, because now a bill that would give homeless individuals $1,000 a month “in no-strings-attached cash” is being seriously considered…"Oregon is considering giving its vast homeless and low-income population $1,000 in no-strings-attached cashThe bill was proposed last month by woke State Senator Wlnsvey Campos – who was among those calling to abolish the police in the summer of 2020 when the city of Portland was besieged by protesters – and Rep. Khanh Pham." If they actually do this, most of that money will go straight to the drug dealers.

Down in San Francisco, drug addicts are fueling a crime spree that is worse than anything that the city has ever experienced. When one woman recently went into the city for a yoga class, she was told that the building “had been broken into six times in two months”…"Yesterday I went to a yoga class in San Francisco for the first time in years. They had the front door locked (had to be buzzed in), a sign on it that said “no cash on premises,” and the woman at the front desk said they had been broken into six times in two months."

Over in Los Angeles, violent crime has become such a problem that extremely expensive “executive protection dogs” have become a very hot commodity…"The elite animals - typically German shepherds, Belgian Malinois, Dobermans, cane corsos or a mix of those breeds - are marketed under names such as “personal canine bodyguards” and “executive protection dogs.” Amid a spate of high-profile crimes in upscale parts of Los Angeles, they have become highly sought after among the rich, many of whom worry about being targeted.

Protection dogs, they say, provide an immediate layer of front-line defense, unlike security cameras (which merely show an intruder on the property, and only if the devices happen to be pointed in the right direction) and home alarm systems (which can be bypassed or ignored). Even if police are summoned, they can be slow to respond, if at all. So homeowners who can afford it are being more proactive."

This is the world that we live in now. But most Americans don’t seem to care. We are literally living in an “idiocracy” in which people are dropping dead all around us, but most Americans are so far gone that they can’t even understand what is happening.

Of course it isn’t just the United States that is facing such problems. Up in Canada, crime rates are absolutely exploding thanks to the reckless policies of the Trudeau regime…"The Toronto Police Service data portal shows that Toronto experienced a 17.2 per cent spike in overall major crimes in 2022, including a 9.8 per cent increase in assaults, a 44.2 per cent spike in auto thefts, 6.5 per cent growth in break and enters, a 28.5 per cent jump in robbery, an 11.3 per cent increase in sexual violence, and a 35.8 per cent gain in theft over cases."

And in many areas of South America crime has risen to levels that we have never seen before…"Countries across Latin America and the Caribbean continued to experience high murder rates in 2022, as cocaine production reached new heights, the fragmentation of gangs continued, and the flow of weapons across the region grew more acute.

For Ecuador, the situation was downright catastrophic. Historic amounts of cocaine entering the country fueled violence, with murders skyrocketing as gangs targeted judicial officials and killed police officers at record ratesThat cocaine came largely from Colombia, where recently inaugurated President Gustavo Petro has promised to shift away from the war on drugs in favor of efforts to achieve a “Total Peace” with the country’s rebel and criminal groups."

Our entire world is deeply sick. We have turned our backs on what is good, and we continue to run after evil as rapidly as we can. As a result, our society is a complete and total mess. We truly are living during one of the most critical times in all of human history, and we desperately need to change course. Unfortunately, most people seem to think that everything is just fine, and so they see no need for a new direction."

Stipendium peccati mors est...

"Bad Guy Theory (BGT)"

"Bad Guy Theory (BGT)"
"Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia..."
by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

San Martin, Argentina - "I finally watched "All Quiet on the Western Front" this past weekend. It was unrelentingly depressing and horrible. Not the quality of the film itself. Just the whole sad story of all those wasted lives. Not recommended for children or anyone under 18 really. Extremely graphic. I'm sure there have been a lot of useless, pointless wars in human history. But I've never read about one that was so wasteful of human life as World War One. And absolutely unnecessary in every way." ~ Dan Denning

“Over 100 Russian tanks destroyed in Vuhlehar,” says a headline. “Russian soldiers dying in large groups, pleading with Putin for help,” says CNN . And here’s one from Bloomberg: "Tycoon Deripaska Warns Russia May Run Out of Money in 2024."

But wait…who are the bad guys? And why do we care? Bad guy theory (BGT) was developed, by us, to make fun of those who think people can be so clearly divided, between good and bad. True or False. Us vs. Them.

Us vs…The Baddies: The ‘bad guys’ phrase became popular during America’s hapless wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. Military spokesmen couldn’t keep up with the pace of shifting sands. Was it ISIS we were fighting, or the Taliban? The Shiites…or the Houthis? Terrorists or freedom fighters? Recognizing that the ‘enemy du jour’ menu changed without notice, and that it didn’t really make much difference who we were killing anyway, they resorted to calling the corpses simply “the bad guys.”

In WWI, the Germans became the ‘bad guys.’ What had they done? France declared war on Germany…France was allied with Russia. This triggered the Schlieffen Plan, by which Germany hoped to prevent a dreaded ‘two-front war’ by knocking out the French quickly.

It began as a rather typical European war…in which the parties fought to the death for no apparent reason and with nothing much at stake. America had no business in it. But “war is the health of the state,” as Randolph Bourne put it. And the Wilson administration was determined to get in shape with a little European exercise. War didn’t do the media any harm either. The press ran lurid stories, claiming that the Huns were spearing Belgian babies on their bayonets…and raping French nuns by the dozens. None of it was true.

Then as now, the press also eagerly supported the fantasies – that the war would “make the world safe for democracy,” or that it was a “war to end all wars.” All you had to do was to kill the bad guys.

Mr. Wilson’s War: If only it were that simple. But that is the problem with Bad Guy Theory; it is dangerous nonsense that only appeals to simpletons. People are neither always good, nor always bad…but always subject to influence. And the greatest progress ever made in Western society was probably the abandonment of BGT.

“Jesus taught that we should hate sin, but love the sinner,” says our brother-in-law, a Baptist preacher. Instead of looking at the person, as inherently bad or good, civilized people began to look at his acts. It was not ‘who’ you were that mattered; it was ‘what’ you did. You weren’t automatically guilty because you were a Jew or a Republican. And you weren’t automatically good because you were Black, or sleeping with a member of your own sex. The enlightened judge didn’t care. He didn’t ask himself if it was ‘ok to be white.’ He just wanted to know where you were on the night the girl was killed.

But Mr. Wilson called no witnesses. He convened no court. He presented no evidence, to no jury, and waited for no verdict. Instead, he sent US troops. Wilson believed US soldiers would come into the war like exterminating angels, smiting the bad guys in Germany and thereby saving civilization. Then, he – the Archangel Woodrow – would put things to right…with freedom, justice and democracy…and a League of Nations to guarantee that there would be no more war, ever again. (Historical note: The League of Nations charter – or at least a version of it – was said to be drafted in what is now our office in Baltimore.)

“Are we the Baddies?” Poor St. Woodrow. He arrived in Le Havre with his 14 Points. The Europeans ignored him. And mocked him. “Even God himself only had 10,” remarked Clemenceau, the French president. And after a few state dinners and diplomatic maneuvering, the Europeans were back to their familiar squabbling and backstabbing.

Wilson’s entry into the war brought fresh meat into the abattoir. It prolonged the killing for another two years…with an additional 10 million dead. This contribution to slaughter won Wilson a Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. Germany was not only beaten, but humiliated and starved. Then, rather than restore a healthy, honest economy, with a polite, peaceful government, the Germans sought a re-match.

Meanwhile, the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires both collapsed. The result was chaos, poverty…and an opportunity for world improvers – such as Kamenev, Trotsky and Lenin – to make an even bigger wreck of civilized society. By 1945 another 80 million had died, and not all of them were bad guys. Good work, Woodrow! Your legacy is alive and well!"
o
Joel’s Note: "Speaking of Bad Guy Theory (BGT), remember this classic sketch, from back when the BBC was still watchable?
“You haven’t been listening to allied propaganda again, have you? Of course they’re gonna say we’re the baddies…” Pure. Comedic. Genius.

And here, on a totally unrelated subject… China's Foreign Ministry recently published a lengthy report titled "US Hegemony and Its Perils" (Full Read). Here’s a little taster of what “the other side” is saying (umm, is “trigger warning” itself a trigger word these days?)…

"The history of the United States is characterized by violence and expansion. Since it gained independence in 1776, the United States has constantly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered Indians, invaded Canada, waged a war against Mexico, instigated the American-Spanish War, and annexed Hawaii. After World War II, the wars either provoked or launched by the United States included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Kosovo War, the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War, the Libyan War and the Syrian War, abusing its military hegemony to pave the way for expansionist objectives. In recent years, the US average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion US dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world's total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.
[…]
US military hegemony has caused humanitarian tragedies. Since 2001, the wars and military operations launched by the United States in the name of fighting terrorism have claimed over 900,000 lives with some 335,000 of them civilians, injured millions and displaced tens of millions. The 2003 Iraq War resulted in some 200,000 to 250,000 civilian deaths, including over 16,000 directly killed by the US military, and left more than a million homeless."

And on and on it goes, page after page after page…Adroit readers will notice the timing of the release… just as “baddie rhetoric” is ramping up on both sides of the Pacific… and the US Energy Department (finally) joined the FBI and Jon Stewart in telling the American public that the Wuhan Lab Leak theory is now not just for conspiracy theorists after all. Who woulda thunk? If all this is getting a bit complicated, just remember Orwell’s helpful words: 'The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.' ~ George Orwell, "1984"

"Overcrowded Dollar Tree As SNAP Benefits Come To An End! This Is Ridiculous!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/3/23:
"Overcrowded Dollar Tree As SNAP Benefits
 Come To An End! This Is Ridiculous!" 
"In today's vlog we are at Dollar Tree, and are noticing huge crowds amid the SNAP Benefits coming to an end. Everyone is looking for cheaper options as most grocery stores have gotten very expensive on groceries! We are also noticing more products that have shrunk in size at Dollar Tree!"
Comments here:

"Now It Really Is"

 

"Why Billions Swallowed the COVID Hoax"

"Why Billions Swallowed the COVID Hoax"
Propaganda Perpetuates the Pandemic and Censorship
by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Excerpt: "Story At-A-Glance:
COVID-19 is the largest, most sophisticated propaganda operation in history. Psychological techniques were extensively used during 2020 to incite fear and panic in the population.
Propaganda strategies were also used to get people to support and defend irrational COVID measures such as masking, isolation, social distancing, lockdowns and jab mandates.
What the COVID propaganda so much more effective than any previous propaganda operation is the fact that a virus is the perfect enemy. It’s invisible, could be carried by anyone, including those you love the most, and could “get” you anywhere.
Classical rhetoric is about persuasion through argument. It appeals to logic. Propaganda, on the other hand, is a kind of subrational manipulation that appeals to our most basic instincts, such as fear. An informal definition of propaganda is “an organized attempt to get people to think or do something - or not think or do something.”

The Great Lie is possible because the more divorced a lie is from reality, the more likely it is to succeed, as most people are reluctant to think that authority figures would lie and completely ignore reality."
Full article here:
o
Comment: "Most people are reluctant to think that authority figures would lie and completely ignore reality." No one wants to hear or believe an unpleasant fact, but this truth is so mind boggling, so horrifyingly incomprehensible in it's scope and intent, so incredibly unbelievable, it's truly astonishingly mind-numbing when confronted as the truth and fact that it is. But we've all seen athletes and celebrities suddenly collapse, and many thousands do so every day we hear nothing about, but this is just the beginning, and this is why. Of course, believe what you want, but make it an informed, objective decision. If you've been vaccinated may God have mercy on you...- CP
o
"Put simply, it means the vaccines were designed 
to contain the very element that’s killing people."

"Everyone Vaccinated For Covid Will DIE, Warns French Virologist"
"There is no chance of long-term survival for anyone who received a Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) injection, according to leading French virologist Luc Montagnier. Everyone who is getting jabbed for the Chinese Virus will die, he reportedly stated during a recent interview, which you can watch at Brighteon.com. “There is no hope and no possible treatment for those who have already been vaccinated,” Montagnier stated plainly during the segment. “We must be prepared to cremate the bodies.” After studying at length the ingredients contained in the injections and what they do, Montagnier came to the conclusion that every single person who gets the shot will eventually die from antibody-dependent enhancement, or ADE. “That is all that can be said,” he added."
I suggest you read the full article here:

Jim Kunstler, "We’ll Soon Find Out"

"We’ll Soon Find Out"
by Jim Kunstler

"The crown of America sits in a gutter begging 
someone to pick it up before the nation collapses."
- Auron MacIntyre, "The Blaze"

"In an interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier last Tuesday, FBI Director Chris Wray said, “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan.” Like so much else in America’s tortured, distractable life these days, the meaning larded into that that utterance went clear over the collective heads of just about everybody.

What was the key part of that statement? “For quite some time now….” Gee, really? Like, how long? One year? More than that? Maybe since March 2020? And you didn’t say anything, Mr. FBI Director? You didn’t do a thing to dispel the Covid-19 miasma that swaddled Washington DC like a smallpox blanket of yore? The question of where the novel coronavirus came from has been a ferocious national controversy since late 2019, you understand. Several government agencies, including the CIA and all the offices under the gigantic National Institutes of Health (NIH) - including the NIAID run for decades by Dr. Anthony Fauci - plus the FDA and CDC, tucked into the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)… all of these outfits have pretended to not know the true origin of Covid-19 for over three years. And the FBI Director, who could have shed some authoritative light on the matter by stepping up to a podium and weighing in, just let all that chaos roll?

And by-the-by, let’s not forget that the whole time Chris Wray knew with moderate certainty that Covid-19 came from the Wuhan virology lab, he was in charge of a batallion of FBI agents assigned to managing Twitter, Facebook, and Google - that is, the apps that comprise the digital Public Square - to make sure that anyone who opined about Covid coming from the Wuhan lab got censored, banished, cancelled, reputationally destroyed.

So, why did Mr. Wray make this statement on Tuesday… “The FBI has for quite some time now assessed…” Probably we’re hearing the old Modified Limited Hangout strategy, a venerable ruse, which is when a criminally culpable government throws the public a bone of admission about something that is common knowledge anyway — the thing everybody knows — while pretending that they were in on the common knowledge all along — which just adds another layer of perfidy to the giant matrix of lies laid down by US agency officials in this disgraceful episode of US history.

What Mr. Wray left out of his statement this week is any hint that a gang of US scientists and doctors under Dr. Fauci were directly and intimately involved in the activities at Wuhan that produced the virus that killed millions around the world, and led to the warp speed production of a “vaccine” mere weeks after the organism appeared — which will probably end up killing and maiming more people than the disease itself.

It happened also this past week that a team of distinguished medical warriors including Drs. Martin Makary of Johns Hopkins, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, and Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford testified before the opening session of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. Dr. Makary began his remarks stating boldly: “The greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government…”

Misinformation that…
 Covid was spread through surface transmission.
 That vaccinated immunity was far greater than natural immunity.
 That masks were effective. Now we have the definitive Cochrane review. What do you do with that review? Cochrane is the most authoritative evidence body in all of medicine and has been for decades. Do you just ignore it and not talk about it?
 That myocarditis was more common after the infection than after the vaccine. Not true, it is 4-28 times more common after the vaccine.
That young people benefit from a booster, misinformation. Our two top experts on vaccines quit the FDA in protest over this particular issue, pushing boosters in young, healthy people. The data was never there. That’s why the CDC never disclosed hospitalization rates among boosted Americans under the age of 50.
That vaccine mandates would increase vaccination rates. A George Mason University study shows that it didn’t. It did one thing, it created “Never-Vaxxers” who are now not getting the childhood vaccines they need to get.

Over and over again, we’ve seen something that goes far beyond using your best judgment with the information at hand. We’ve seen something that is unforgivable, and that is the weaponization of medical research itself. The CDC putting out their own shoddy studies, like their own study on natural immunity looking at one state for two months, when they had data for years on all 50 states. Why did they only report that one sliver of data? Why did the salami slice the entire database? Because it gave them the result they wanted.

The same with the masking studies. The data has now caught up in giant systematic reviews, and public health officials were intellectually dishonest. They lied to the American people.”

This week, Edward Dowd, the former BlackRock trader-turned-Covid-statistician - and author of the new book "Cause Unknown" - released preliminary fourth quarter 2022 “excess deaths” numbers for group life insurance death claims compiled by the International Society of Actuaries (SOA).

For the age group up to age 44 excess deaths rose above the baseline (normal): 13 percent in October, 21 percent in November, and 43 percent in December. For the age group 45 to 64, the death rate above baseline rose 4 percent in October, 16 percent in November, and 35 percent in December. Mr. Dowd says that he is told the rates moving into the first quarter of 2023 are higher still. This is a what’s known as a trend, and a pretty ominous one.

It boils down to an awful lot of people in the prime of life dying off, and more every month. Nobody in any of the US public health agencies is talking about this. One very prominent official, Rochelle Wallensky, head of the CDC, is still busy arranging to dispense more Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines to America’s school-children - the “vaccines” being the prime suspects causing those stunning excess death rates among the young and employed demographic. Nice work, Rochelle!

How do the approximately 70 percent of vaxxed-up Americans deal with this reality? Many, of course, are noticing vaxxed family members, friends, colleagues, sports figures, acquaintances getting sick and dying of sudden heart failure, strokes, aggressive cancers, strange neurological problems, and other mystifying syndromes. The aggregate reaction so far seems to be a numb despair. But then, the still-living vaxxed also have to contend with the anxiety over what is going on in their own bodies. Perhaps they’ve heard whispers from the more extreme voices on the margins of this discussion that every single person who got vaxxed might be subject to an early death on way or another. That’d be a reason to withdraw into the first stage of the Kübler-Ross Transect of Grief, which is denial… and just hunker down there… for now. It’s an awful lot to contend with.

What’s next then? Consider that around 30 percent of Americans are not vaxxed, and are free of the anxiety that they are designated goners - notwithstanding the basic limits of the human condition. That 30 percent of Americans, and perhaps even some of the 70 percent vaxxed, will possibly be concerned with the other enormous threats to our national life: the insane Ukraine project, which looks like the overture to World War Three (no thank you); and the collapsing US economy, with features such as unaffordable food and fuel, scarcity of parts for fixing anything that’s broken, and a pretty good chance that retirement accounts will be wiped out in a coming equity-and-bond market “correction.”

All of which is to ask: when will the people of this land finally get pissed-off at the managers who are running everything? And when will the people start to express their new-found rage? I’ll make a wild-hair guess. By May, when the weather really starts lightening up, the people will be out in the streets looking to smash anything that appears to represent authority. Welcome to the season of real chaos and crisis, possibly many seasons, maybe years. Take great care of yourselves and your situations. Prepare if you can. How does it feel…to be on your own? The bard sang sixty years ago. We’ll soon find out."
o
"The data suggests that we may currently be witnessing
 the greatest organized mass murder in the history of our world."
Freely download "The Vaccine Death Report" here: