Jeremiah Babe, 6/1/23
"Tipping Restaurant Cashier For Doing Nothing;
Grocery Stores Under Attack; Macy's Economic Red Flag"
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So, we rise from the rubble...
Thursday, June 1, 2023
Gerald Celente, "Trends Journal"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 6/1/23
"Trends Journal"
T'he Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current
events forming future trends. Find out more here: https://trendsjournal.com
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"A Look to the Heavens"
"This colorful cosmic skyscape features a peculiar system of galaxies cataloged as Arp 227 some 100 million light-years distant. Swimming within the boundaries of the constellation Pisces, Arp 227 consists of the two galaxies prominent on the left; the curious shell galaxy NGC 474 and its blue, spiral-armed neighbor NGC 470. The faint, wide arcs or shells of NGC 474 could have been formed by a gravitational encounter with neighbor NGC 470. Alternately the shells could be caused by a merger with a smaller galaxy producing an effect analogous to ripples across the surface of a pond.
Remarkably, the large galaxy on the right hand side of the deep image, NGC 467, appears to be surrounded by faint shells too, evidence of another interacting galaxy system. Intriguing background galaxies are scattered around the field that also includes spiky foreground stars. Of course, those stars lie well within our own Milky Way Galaxy. The field of view spans 25 arc minutes or about 1/2 degree on the sky."
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100211.html
"Know What's Weird?"
"Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change,
but pretty soon... everything's different."
- Calvin, from "Calvin and Hobbes"
"The Great Enemy Of Freedom..."
"In a society in which nearly everybody is dominated by somebody else's mind or by a disembodied mind, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn the truth about the activities of governments and corporations, about the quality or value of products, or about the health of one's own place and economy.
In such a society, also, our private economies will depend less and less upon the private ownership of real, usable property, and more and more upon property that is institutional and abstract, beyond individual control, such as money, insurance policies, certificates of deposit, stocks, and shares. And as our private economies become more abstract, the mutual, free helps and pleasures of family and community life will be supplanted by a kind of displaced or placeless citizenship and by commerce with impersonal and self-interested suppliers...
Thus, although we are not slaves in name, and cannot be carried to market and sold as somebody else's legal chattels, we are free only within narrow limits. For all our talk about liberation and personal autonomy, there are few choices that we are free to make. What would be the point, for example, if a majority of our people decided to be self-employed?
The great enemy of freedom is the alignment of political power with wealth. This alignment destroys the commonwealth - that is, the natural wealth of localities and the local economies of household, neighborhood, and community - and so destroys democracy, of which the commonwealth is the foundation and practical means."
- Wendell Berry,
"The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays"
"It Takes Considerable Knowledge..."
"The greater our knowledge increases,
the greater our ignorance unfolds."
- John F. Kennedy
o
"It takes considerable knowledge just to
realize the extent of your own ignorance."
- Thomas Sowell
o
The Poet: Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
- Dylan Thomas
"Good Or Bad..."
"Good or bad, everything we do is our best choice at that moment."
- William Glasser
o
“Life does not require us to be consistent, cruel, patient, helpful, angry, rational, thoughtless, loving, rash, open-minded, neurotic, careful, rigid, tolerant, wasteful, rich, downtrodden, gentle, sick, considerate, funny, stupid, healthy, greedy, beautiful, lazy, responsive, foolish, sharing, pressured, intimate, hedonistic, industrious, manipulative, insightful, capricious, wise, selfish, kind or sacrificed. Life does, however, require us to live with the consequences of our choices.”
- Richard Bach, “Running From Safety”
"Billions May Die in Mankind's Greatest War w/ Artificial Intelligence"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/1/23
"Billions May Die in Mankind's
Greatest War w/ Artificial Intelligence"
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"Who Wants This?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 6/1/23
"Who Wants This?"
"It sounds like some futuristic world where crime is running rampant. But it’s not a movie, it’s happening right here. Los Angeles is going to have no bail for most crimes."
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"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! It's Getting Unaffordable!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 6/1/23
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger!
It's Getting Unaffordable!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are noticing some huge price increases on groceries! This is getting very concerning as many families are struggling to put food on the table."
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o
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 6/1/23
"Russian Typical (Close to Home)
Supermarket Tour: Pyaterochka"
"What does a Russian typical supermarket look like in Moscow, Russia. Take a look inside the most popular supermarket in Russia. With over 19,000 locations Pyaterochka is the best known Russian typical supermarket by a long way."
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Comments, Good Citizen? Yeah, what could you say?
"10 Big Retailers in US Collapsing Right in Front of Our Eyes"
Full screen recommended.
"10 Big Retailers in US Collapsing
Right in Front of Our Eyes"
by Finance Today
"Because of the most challenging economic climate that has been witnessed since the 1970s, the retail industry is going through widespread destruction. Even long-established enterprises that have been there for generations are suddenly going out of business because of the current climate. It has been reported by a number of different sources that customers' favorite stores, such as Starbucks and Disney, as well as clothing merchants and department stores, will close their doors this year. The sector as a whole is in a precarious position as a result of the widespread closures that have already taken place. This is due to the fact that retailers are currently grappling with falling sales, rising inflation, and enormous debt burdens during a period of heightened financial unpredictability and higher potential for catastrophe. This video presents a list that we have developed of the top ten retailers who will be fighting for their very existence in the year 2023. Only the most robust brands will make it through, so check out our list of companies to keep an eye out for if they are filing for bankruptcy."
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"Something Like Reverence..."
"When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair."
- Blaise Pascal
Ahh, but it does...
○
“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
Folks, I fear our time for such reverence is here.
God help us, God help us all...
"Ukraine Preparing to Engulf the Entire World in Death & Carnage"
Click image for larger size.
"Ukraine Preparing to Engulf
the Entire World in Death & Carnage"
By Martin Armstrong
"Some people have been sending hate mail claiming I am a Putin supporter. My advice to you is to grab a gun and go volunteer to fight for Zelensky. ALL my sources have been screaming from the beginning that this Ukrainian war has been instigated by the US which has been taken over by a silent coup of the Neocons. Then some just hate Trump and are so blinded by it that they are walking into their doom.
Ukraine is out to create World War III. Russia has NOT been using military aircraft in Ukraine. They have only used missiles and drones. Ukraine has no need for F16 jets other than to launch a war on Crimea to try to destroy the Russian fleet and they will use them to attack Moscow directly. They want the F16s from Biden but the long-range missiles from Germany. They are giving the Neocons cover so they can pretend that they did not supply those weapons to Moscow and when they attack a NATO country, then World War III will begin.
Get your head out of the sand. Wake up! Pull that COVID mask off of your eyes and get your head out of the sand. You are taking your family down a very dark path.
Russia will have NO CHOICE but to protect its own people and that will be through nuclear confrontation. UKRAINE is the enemy of the entire world – they only seek death & destruction. Had the Minsk Agreement been honored – there would have been NO war!"
"Fall Of American Empire And Descent Into A New Dark Ages" (Excerpt)
"Fall Of American Empire And Descent Into A New Dark Ages"
By Jim Quinn
Excerpt: “The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigor of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.” - Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 38 “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West”
“The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigor of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.” - Edward Gibbon. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 38 “General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West”
The moniker of my website originated from a quote by David Walker, then Comptroller General of the U.S., in 2007. I wholeheartedly endorsed Walker’s viewpoint and become politically active in trying to get Ron Paul elected as president in 2008 and 2012. It was a fruitless effort, as the uni-party in Washington DC, controlled by the dark forces of the Deep State, do not allow men and women who truly want to reduce the size and scope of government to ever get elected. His warning sixteen years ago is a perfect example of being right but being early. When talking about the decline of empires, you are really deliberating about a process, not an event. The Roman Empire did not fall on a specific day due to a specific cause. It collapsed in stages over hundreds of years due to numerous reasons, each triggering events which compounded upon each other and ultimately led to the final collapse.
Walker said, “The US government is on a “burning platform” of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon.” He believed we were resting on the laurels of being the sole superpower, as our empire built on debt was slowly and methodically crumbling. He cited three reasons for the fall of the Roman Republic that resonated in 2007 regarding the American Empire (formerly a republic):
• There has been a decline in moral values and political civility at home. Examples include the devaluation of life, greater self-centerdness by individuals and increased partisanship and ideological divides in Congress.
• We now have an overextended military around the world. While the US military is unmatched as to its capabilities, it is under stress and stretched very thin.
• There is fiscal irresponsibility by the central government. Our debt ratios are set to increase dramatically when the baby boomers retire.
It’s almost humorous Walker was issuing these dire warnings when the 2007 annual deficit was $160 billion. At our current rate of debt accumulation, it takes only one month to reach $160 billion. In 2020 and 2021 it only took 20 days to accumulate $160 billion. The national debt in 2007 was $9 trillion, up from $5.6 trillion in 2000. Today it stands at $31.8 trillion. Interest on the national debt will approach $900 billion this year, exceeding defense spending.
Walker warned about our debt ratios skyrocketing when the baby boomers retired. Well, the debt to GDP ratio has doubled from 62% in 2007 to 124% today, and most boomers can’t even afford to retire. U.S. unfunded liabilities total $188 trillion. Personal debts total $25 trillion, with $1.8 trillion of student loan debt and $1.3 trillion of credit card debt. The fiscal irresponsibility of our government and its citizens is breathtaking, unsustainable, and ultimately fatal to our empire. Walker may have been early, but he certainly was not wrong."
Full, most highly recommended article is here:
Wednesday, May 31, 2023
"War Alert Sent To Millions; Russian Doomsday Planes Sent To Siberia; STRATCOM Targeted"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 5/31/23
"War Alert Sent To Millions; Russian Doomsday
Planes Sent To Siberia; STRATCOM Targeted"
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o
Full screen recommended.
Douglas Macgregor, 5/31/23
"Orlan Drones - Ukraine Should Not Strike Inside Russia"
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"Middle Class Families Can't Afford Homes Anymore As Mortgage Rates Hit Record Levels"
"Middle Class Families Can't Afford Homes
Anymore As Mortgage Rates Hit Record Levels"
By Epic Economist
"90% of Americans say that owning a home is a key part of the American dream. But today, more than half of them believe they will never own their dream home, and about 70% of U.S. households can’t afford the average-priced home, especially when considering that mortgage rates have more than doubled since 2020. What’s even more alarming is that homeownership rates amongst middle-class families are rapidly shrinking. Month after month, more and more middle-income Americans are being priced out of the market entirely, and that is having a huge impact on their ability to build equity, save money, and actually have a middle-class lifestyle. Never before in history, middle-class families have been so close to financial insecurity and poverty. And the ongoing housing crisis has everything to do with it.
In the past decade, mortgage payments on homes sold at the median price in the United States have tripled. Over the past three years alone, mortgage rates shoot up by 131%, going from 3.15% in May 2020 to 7.29% in May 2023. It is safe to say that the growth of median salaries hasn’t approached that pace. There is a nationwide shortage of homes for sale right now, and those listed on the market are reaching record highs. No wonder why increasingly more middle-class Americans are finding themselves completely priced out of the housing market.
In fact, the National Association of Home Builders reports that the average new home price is $436,800 in 2023. That's a 32% increase from 2020 when that average was at $329,000. Moreover, at least 500 cities in the U.S. now have an average home price of $1 million. Over that same time span, middle-income earners have seen their salaries rise by 5.1%, U.S. Labor Department data shows. Adding the highest mortgage rates in two decades to the picture, the conditions look even grimmer for would-be buyers this year.
NAHB’s priced-out index estimates that for every 0.5% increase in mortgage rates, 1.3 million households are pushed out of the market. This means that since the third quarter of 2022, an additional 5.2 million families became unable to purchase a new median-priced home. To be fair, more than 70% of Americans don’t earn enough to buy a new home in 2023, according to NAHB’s housing affordability Pyramid. Their calculations revealed that out of 132.5 million American households, 96.5 million of them aren’t able to afford a $430,000 median home.
The combination of the current lack of affordability and weak wage growth, is putting middle-income earners in great danger. A separate report by Primerica reveals that Nearly three-quarters, or 72%, of middle-income families, say their earnings are falling behind the cost of living, up from 68% a year ago, making it harder to live the same
Almost 60% of middle-income Americans said it is very or somewhat unlikely that today’s young adults will have a better life than their parents. And one of the biggest contributors to that decay in their living standards is the lack of access to affordable housing.
In other words, the middle class is literally being excluded from the American dream. If we can’t afford homes, how can we become financially independent? Younger generations are doomed to a future of economic uncertainty and declining quality of life all thanks to the asset bubbles created by reckless monetary policies, inflation, and now the highest mortgage rates in years. We’ve been warned that a great reckoning would come. Now it is clear that the countdown has begun."
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"American Will Struggle To Pay their Bills; Debt Ceiling Will Be Catastrophic To Middle Class"
Jeremiah Babe, 5/31/23
"American Will Struggle To Pay their Bills;
Debt Ceiling Will Be Catastrophic To Middle Class"
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Musical Intelude: Peder B. Helland, "Sunny Mornings"
Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation,
"Sunny Mornings"
"I am a composer from Norway and I started this channel with a simple vision: to create a place that you can visit whenever you want to sit down and relax. I compose music that can be labeled as for example: sleep music, calm music, yoga music, study music, peaceful music, beautiful music and relaxing music. I love to compose music and I put a lot of work into it.
Thank you very much for listening and for leaving feedback. Every single day I am completely astonished by all your warm support and it really inspires me to work even harder on my music. If you enjoy my work, I would be very happy if you decided to subscribe and join our community. Have a wonderful day or evening!"
- Peder B. Helland, composer for Soothing Relaxation
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue vdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are interstellar dust clouds, blocking the light from background stars in the case of Barnard's dark nebulae. For vdB 31, the dust preferentially reflects the bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae.
Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about four light-years.”
"I Promise You This..."
"One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am- a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards."
- Edward Abbey
Chet Raymo, “Singing Beside Me In The Wilderness”
“Singing Beside Me In The Wilderness”
by Chet Raymo
by Chet Raymo
“In one of those infuriating lapses that go with being a certain age, we could not remember the other evening the name of the poet who wrote "A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou..." After scraping the tip of my tongue for a few minutes, I turned to the computer (Google is my browser's home page) and by typing "jug thou" brought Omar Khayyam back into consciousness. (Another click and I could have had the entire Rubaiyat.) (Freely download the entire "Rubaiyat" at that link. - CP)
And so it is that the Googlized internet arrives just in time to compensate for our withering brain cells. Everything I ever remembered is there to be Googled, plus everything I never remembered. Ten billions pages. The searchable memory of the human race. With more yet to come.
My great-great-grandchildren will no doubt have tiny video cameras implanted in the middle of their foreheads, like Hindu beauty marks, recording everything that passes before their eyes 24-7, with a sound track too. All of which will be stored digitally, ready for instant playback, and searchable by date, time, GPS coordinates, or keywords- the whole of a life, not only available to the subjects themselves in their memory-lapsed dotage, but to future generations. "Here's great-great-grandpa on his ninety-first birthday, back in 2027. Look how he dribbles soup on his shirt. Ha, ha."
I think nature knew what it was doing when it allows our memory to fade with age. It is particularly notable that the more unpleasant memories go first, so that every summer past was golden with sunshine, and every child was a model of respectful propriety. And no one, not even grandpa himself, remembers the time he... “
"In These Downbeat Times..."
"In these downbeat times, we need as much hope and courage as we do vision and analysis; we must accent the best of each other even as we point out the vicious effects of our racial divide and pernicious consequences of our maldistribution of wealth and power. We simply cannot live in the twenty-first century at each other s throats, even as we acknowledge the weighty forces of racism, economic inequality, homophobia, and ecological abuse on our necks. We are at a crucial crossroad in the history of this nation - and we either hang together by combating these forces that divide and degrade us or we hang separately. Do we have the intelligence, humor, imagination, courage, tolerance, love, respect, and will to meet the challenge? Time will tell. None of us alone can save the nation or world. But each of us can make a positive difference if we commit ourselves to do so."
- Cornel West
"Economic Death Spiral, Be Ready Because The Worst Is Yet To Come!"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/31/23
"Economic Death Spiral,
Be Ready Because The Worst Is Yet To Come!"
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'Every Human Decision..."
"Except for totally impulsive or psychotic behavior, every human
decision comes down to the choice between two alternatives."
- Jeff Duntemann
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