I am falling a little bit behind right now. I have a ton load on my plate. Do not freak out if I go quiet for a few days. Please continue to check out the MM You-Tube channel, and the MM Patreon channel, as I am making regular contributions there.
In the meantime, please enjoy this daily post.
Anyone Else Want To Bring Back Kitchen Phones With The 10 Ft Cord?
Russia Announces Civilian Drills for NUCLEAR ATTACK
Moscow is announcing to its citizens the city will be conducting NUCLEAR ATTACK CIVILIAN EVACUATION DRILLS, complete with Outdoor SIRENS, TV and Radio Interruption Warnings, instructing citizens to proceed to nuclear attack shelters.
The dates of these “Drills” are not yet known, but the citizenry is being told the Drills will be upcoming and there will be SEVERAL of them.
Citizens are also being advised to have an evacuation bag with some clothing, medicines, money, ID, and hygiene products in it, so they can grab-and-go.
Beef Stroganoff
The rich and creamy combo of beef and noodles packs so much savory flavor in every bite, one taste will send your tongue on a trip down memory lane and can please anyone looking for a hearty meal. Indulge in this dish that has come to represent the cultural melting pot of American cuisine.
Beef stroganoff may be Russian in name and origin, but it’s since become a global go-to, finding a home everywhere from Iran to Brazil to Australia. Only the best dishes inspire this type of universal love, and the ease and innate deliciousness of stroganoff is clearly why Americans have embraced it as their own. Though sour cream is normally stirred into the sauce at the last second, we tested this dish several different ways and found Greek yogurt tasted every bit as good for fewer calories. Just make sure to remove the pan from the heat before adding, as high temperatures can cause the yogurt to break, jeopardizing the smooth, velvety sauce you really want in this beef stroganoff recipe.
You’ll Need
1⁄2 Tbsp canola oil, plus more if needed
12 oz white or cremini mushrooms, stems removed, halved
1 lb. sirloin, cut into thin strips
Salt and black pepper to taste
1 yellow onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp flour
3⁄4 cup red wine
1⁄2 cup low-sodium beef stock
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1⁄4 cup 2% plain Greek yogurt
Chopped fresh parsley
How to Make It
- Heat the oil in large sauté pan over medium heat.
- Add the mushrooms and cook for about 5 minutes, until softened and caramelized.
- Remove and reserve.
- Season the beef with salt and pepper.
- In the same pan, adding more oil if necessary, cook the beef for about 5 minutes, until well-browned all over.
- Remove and reserve with the mushrooms.
- Add the onion and garlic to the pan and cook until the onion is translucent.
- Stir in the flour until it evenly coats the vegetables, then add the wine, stock, and tomato paste, scraping the pan to release any flavorful bits stuck to the bottom.
- Turn the heat down to low and simmer for about 12 minutes, until the liquid thickens and reduces by about half.
- Return the mushrooms and beef to the pan and heat through, then remove from the heat.
- After the liquid cools just slightly, stir in the yogurt. (If the heat is too high, the yogurt will separate.)
- Serve over buttered noodles or steamed rice and garnish with parsley.
A truly British story…
Not mine. -MM
My wife and I were walking with our youngest over the old bridge between Lichfield Cathedral and the market place. A lovely spring day. I’m British, my wife isn’t.
A young man came dashing past the end of the bridge, a police officer in hot pursuit. They both vanished from view rapidly.
We stopped to read the information board about the historic bridge. A few minutes later, the suspect and the copper came walking back, a little out of breath. We overheard their conversation.
Copper: “Sorry for running after you like that, mate. But you were running away.”
Suspect: “Yeah, sorry about that, mate. I shouldn’t have run, but I didn’t want to get caught.”
My wife stood open-jawed. I didn’t quite see why it was so unusual. I mean, just because they’re trying to arrest you doesn’t mean police officers should be rude or unsympathetic. Just because they may have done something the law may forbid doesn’t mean someone has to be abusive.
We continued to eavesdrop.
Copper, leading suspect to a park bench, where they both sat down, “Are you ready to give me your name and address, or do you want a bit of a breather first?”
Suspect, “You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”
Copper, pulling a packet of fags from his breast pocket and handing it to the suspect, “Here you go.”
As he lit the man’s cigarette, the police van arrived. Copper: “Just finish your smoke and we’ll finish the details at the station.”
I told my wife there was a good chance the cop didnt smoke, but kept a handy packet to help put people at ease.
She’s told friends and family in several countries about that. It is, she says, absolutely the most British thing she’s witnessed: a cop apologising for arresting someone who apologised for trying to run away.
If this story has failed to entertain or amuse, all I can say is sorry. And what could be more British than that?
Do you remember?
The very mysterious crash of a aircraft…
Strange.
It seems to be covered up and the entire story is just STRANGE. Looks like something really serious is going on. Everything about this is just ODD.
Satellite Image Reveals China Blew Up Mock Japan Warplane Amid Taiwan Invasion Fears
There’s increasing concern a possible Chinese annexation of Taiwan would fundamentally challenge Japan’s security and result in a broader conflict.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) understands an invasion of Taiwan would likely result in conflict with Japan because only 110 kilometers (68 miles) is Japan’s westernmost inhabited island of Yonaguni.
Japanese leaders have linked Taiwan’s security with Japan’s, enabling the country to play a role in Taiwan’s defense. As a result, the PLA launched a missile(s) at mock Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF) aircraft in a desert area in northwest China called Xinjiang, according to Nikkei, citing a report from Planet Labs.
Nikkei examined photos taken by Planet Labs, a U.S.-based satellite operator. Photographs of the same location in mid-May showed an object shaped like an E-767, an airborne warning and control system (AWACS) used by the SDF, a runway and buildings resembling a tarmac. A July 13 photo shows the destroyed object, along with debris and black burn marks.
Previous satellite photographs showed the object was still in place as of July 2. The precise timing is not clear because of weather conditions that prevented photography on some days, but it appears that the object was destroyed in early July. It is the first time that an object mimicking an SDF aircraft is known to have been destroyed. -Nikkei
“I think we can safely conclude this was a test of a ballistic missile of some sort,” said Jeffrey Lewis, professor at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and a specialist in the military analysis of satellite photos, referring to what appears to be a mock Boeing E-767 AWACS used by SDF.
Tom Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, also reviewed the images and concluded a missile might have been used:
"If the purpose of the mock target was to test the ability of a missile warhead to recognize and strike specific high-value aircraft, and that capability was in fact tested successfully, then deployment of such a weapon could improve the PLA's ability to strike key aircraft like the E-767."
It’s unclear precisely what the PLA used to target the mock AWACS or surrounding aircraft. Kiyofumi Iwata, former chief of staff of the Japan Ground SDF, said there are no impact craters, suggesting the “AWACS object may have been set ablaze, rather than hit by a missile.”
PLA forces also built a mock U.S. Navy aircraft carrier and two Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers last year in the same desert area for weapons testing. Nikkei said the “aircraft carrier was found to have marks that experts said were made by missile impacts.”
If an invasion of Taiwan is planned, it seems China recognizes that Japan and the U.S. could be drawn into the fight. That’s why China and Russia aligned and conducted a joint military exercise last month between the island of Yonaguni and Taiwan.
Pizza Hut…
Do you remember this cup?
Vintage Photos Of 12 Crazy Wooden Homes On Wheels From The Early 20th Century
There is no formal definition of a house car but in the early 1900s, Americans want to take to the roads and explore. Some creative Tin Can tourists decided that they’d rather bring their home with them rather than have the tent attachments on the sides of their Model T’s, so they built larger structures that resembled houses onto the frames and off they went. It really is the earliest example of what we commonly call a mobile home.
Mobile homes often look blocky and sterile, but these wooden houses look like gingerbread Victorian houses on wheels. Check out how people have hammered and sawed their own homes onto cars.
Do you remember this…
Paper Plate Holders.
The West is Experiencing a Contraction of its Power
The strategists of the hegemonic country of the West, the US, without realizing the flagrant contraction, show unlimited ambition.
What Westerners call the West or Western civilization is a geopolitical space that emerged in the 16th century and expanded continuously until the 20th century. On the eve of World War I, about 90 percent of the globe was Western or Western-dominated: Europe, Russia, the Americas, Africa, Oceania, and much of Asia (with the partial exceptions of Japan and China). From then on, the West began to contract: first with the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the emergence of the Soviet bloc, and then, from mid-century onward, with the decolonization movements. Terrestrial space, and soon after, extraterrestrial space, became fields of intense disputes.
Meanwhile, what Westerners understood by the West was changing. It began as Christianity and colonialism, then changed to capitalism and imperialism, and then metamorphosed into democracy, human rights, decolonization, self-determination, and “rules-based international relations”—it was made clear that the rules would be established by the West and would only be followed when they served its interests—and finally into globalization.
By the middle of the last century, the West had shrunk so much that several newly independent countries made the decision to align themselves neither with the West nor with the bloc that had emerged as its rival, the Soviet bloc. This led to the emergence, from 1955-1961, of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). With the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1991, the West seemed to go through a time of enthusiastic expansion. It was around this time that former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev expressed his desire for Russia to join the “common home” of Europe, with the support of then-US President George H. W. Bush, a desire reaffirmed by Vladimir Putin when he took power in 2000. It was a short historical period, and recent events show that the “size” of the West has since shrunk drastically. In the wake of the Ukraine war, the West decided, on its own initiative, that only those countries applying sanctions against Russia would be considered part of the pro-Western camp. These countries comprise about 21 percent of the UN member countries, which constitute only 16 percent of the world’s population.
Questions
Is contraction decline? One might think that the contraction of the West works in its favor because it allows it to focus on more realistic goals with greater intensity. A careful reading of the strategists of the hegemonic country of the West, the United States, shows, that on the contrary, without apparently realizing the flagrant contraction, they show unlimited ambition. With the same ease with which they foresee being able to reduce Russia (one of the largest nuclear powers in the world) to a vassal state or bring it to ruin, they foresee neutralizing China (which is on its way to becoming the first world economy) and soon provoking a war in Taiwan, (like the one in Ukraine) to achieve that purpose. On the other hand, the history of empires shows that contraction goes hand in hand with decline, and that decline is irreversible and entails much human suffering.
At the current stage, the manifestations of weakness are running parallel to those of strength, which makes analysis very difficult. Two contrasting examples help understand this point more clearly: The United States is the largest military power in the world (even though it has not won any wars since 1945) with military bases in at least 80 countries. An extreme case of domination is its presence in Ghana where, according to agreements made in 2018, the United States uses the Accra airport without any control or inspection, US soldiers do not even need a passport to enter the country, and enjoy extraterritorial immunity, meaning that if they commit any crime, no matter how serious, they cannot be tried by Ghana’s courts. On the other hand, the thousands of sanctions on Russia are, for now, doing more damage in the Western world than in the geopolitical space being defined by the West as the non-Western world. The currencies of those countries that seem to be winning the war are depreciating the most. The looming inflation and recession led JP Morgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon to say that a “hurricane” is approaching.
Is contraction a loss of internal cohesion? Contraction can mean more cohesion, and this is quite visible. The leadership of the European Union, i.e., the European Commission, has in the last 20 years been much more aligned with the US than the countries that make up the EU. We saw this with the neoliberal shift and with the enthusiastic support shown by former President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, for the invasion of Iraq, and we are seeing it now with the current commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who seems to be operating as the US undersecretary of defense. The truth is that this cohesion, if it is effective in producing policies, can be disastrous in managing their consequences. Europe is a geopolitical space that since the 16th century has lived off the resources of other countries that it directly or indirectly dominates and on whom it imposes unequal exchange. None of this is, however, possible when the United States or its allies are its partners. Moreover, cohesion is made up of inconsistencies, as seen in the conflicting narratives about Russia. After all, is Russia the country with a lower GDP than many countries in Europe? Or is it a force that wants to invade Europe, and serves as a global threat that can only be stopped with the help of investments provided by the United States for arms and security to Ukraine—already around $10 billion—a distant country of which little will remain if the war continues for a long time?
Does the contraction occur for internal or external reasons? The literature on the decline and end of empires shows that, besides a few exceptional cases in which empires were destroyed by external forces—such as the Aztec and Inca empires with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors—internal factors generally dominate in bringing about contraction, even though decline can be precipitated by external factors. It is difficult to distinguish the internal from the external, and the specific identification is always more ideological than anything else. For example, in 1964 the well-known American conservative philosopher James Burnham published a book titled Suicide of the West. According to him, liberalism, then dominant in the United States, was the ideology behind this decline. For the liberals of the time, liberalism was, on the contrary, an ideology that would enable a new, more peaceful, and just world hegemony for the West. Today, liberalism is dead in the United States (neoliberalism dominates, which is its opposite) and even the old-school conservatives have been totally overtaken by the neoconservatives. That is why former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (for many, a war criminal) upset the anti-Russia proselytes by calling for peace negotiations while talking about the Ukraine conflict during a conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos in May. Be that as it may, the Ukraine war is the great accelerator of the West’s contraction. While the West wants to use its power and influence to isolate China, a new generation of nonaligned countries is emerging. Organizations like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Eurasian Economic Forum are, among others, the new faces of the non-Western states.
What comes next? We don’t know yet. It is as difficult to imagine the West occupying a subordinate space in the world context as it is to imagine it in an equal and peaceful relationship with other geopolitical spaces. We only know that for those leading the Western states, either of these hypotheses is either impossible or, if possible, apocalyptic. Therefore, the number of international meetings has multiplied in recent months—from the World Economic Forum meeting that took place in May in Davos to the most recent Bilderberg Meeting in June. Not surprisingly, in the latter meeting, of the 14 themes discussed, seven were directly related to the West’s rivals.
Do you remember?
Some words of advice from an older person…
- Loneliness doesn’t stop when we are surrounded by people. It stops when we are seen for who we truly are.
- Actions and words both have value, it’s when the two don’t align that the value is lost.
- Our partner cannot fulfill our needs, and it’s not their job to do so.
- If it doesn’t bring peace, profits, or purpose, then don’t give it your time, energy, or attention.
- A lot of conversations need to be had in person. Tones need to be heard, facial expressions need to be seen.
- Your greatest test will be how you handle people who mishandled you.
- You can mute people in real life too. It’s called boundaries.
- Never lose your self-respect for someone who doesn’t care about your feelings and emotions.
- Some people will always be important, with or without a conversation.
- When you care for someone more than they deserve, you get hurt more than you deserve.
- The people we choose to spend time with will shape who we become.
This Proxy War Has No Exit Strategy
Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,
The International Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America has released a statement opposing the US government’s ongoing proxy war in Ukraine, saying the billions being funneled into the military-industrial complex “at a time when ordinary Americans are struggling to pay for housing, groceries, and fuel” is “a slap in the face for working people.”
The statement advocates a negotiated settlement for peace, saying continuing to pour weapons into the country will “needlessly prolong the war, resulting in more civilian deaths” and that it “risks escalating and widening the war — up to and including nuclear war.”
In response to this entirely reasonable and moderate position, the DSA is currently being raked over the coals with accusations of Kremlin loyalty and facilitation of murder and bloodshed by blue-checkmarked narrative managers on Twitter. This is because the only acceptable positions for anyone of significant influence to have about this war range from supporting continuing current proxy warfare operations to initiating a direct hot war between NATO and Russia.
That’s how narrow the permissible spectrum of debate has been shrunk regarding this conflict: status quo hawkish to omnicidal hawkish. Anything outside that spectrum gets framed as radical extremism. As Noam Chomsky said: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum — even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”
This spectrum of debate has been shrunk on the one hand by imperial spinmeisters continually hammering home the message that any support for de-escalation and diplomatic solutions is “appeasement” and indicative of Russian sympathies, and on the other by hawkish pundits and politicians pushing for the most freakishly aggressive responses to this war possible. By forbidding the spectrum of acceptable debate to move toward peace while shoving it as hard as possible in the direction of warmongering extremism, imperial narrative managers have successfully created an Overton window wherein the only debate permitted is over how directly and forcefully Russia should be confronted, with calls for peace now falling far outside that window.
Which is a problem, because both direct NATO hot war with Russia and continuing along the empire’s current course of action in Ukraine are stupid. Direct conflict between nuclear powers likely means a very fast and very radioactive third world war, and the status quo proxy warfare approach isn’t stopping Russia as more and more territory is taken in the east in cool defiance of western claims that Ukraine is bravely vanquishing its evil invaders. Biden administration officials have told the press that they doubt Ukraine will even be able to reclaim the territory it has lost already. Unless and until something significant changes, Ukraine has no apparent path to victory in this war anytime soon.
In short, there is no exit strategy to this proxy war. There are no plans in place to deliver Putin a swift defeat, and the Biden administration remains steadfastly dismissive of even the slightest gestures toward diplomacy with Moscow. Boris Johnson has reportedly been buzzing around admonishing Ukraine’s President Zelensky, France’s President Macron and who knows who else not to work toward peace in Ukraine. The doors to ending this war quickly by either winning it or negotiating a peace settlement are both bolted shut, all but guaranteeing a long and bloody slog.
Which as it turns out suits Washington just fine. Biden administration officials have stated that the goal is to use the Ukraine war to “weaken” Russia, and the US already has an established pattern of working to draw Moscow into costly military quagmires as we saw in both Afghanistan and Syria. Continuing to pour weapons and military intelligence into Ukraine while working to cut Russia off from the world stands no chance of ending the war in a timely manner, but it does stand a pretty good chance of bleeding and weakening Moscow.
And since this is the course of action that has been taken by the empire, we can only assume that this is its desired outcome: not victory, not peace, but a long and gruelling war.
One of the major recurring criticisms of the Iraq invasion was that Bush rushed into it without an exit strategy, without a plan for ending the war once it had been started. This proxy war with Russia not only lacks a strategy for ending the war, it apparently only has strategies for not ending the war.
No exit strategy is the strategy.
Whenever you point out the insanity of this approach you’ll get useful idiots of the empire objecting that by criticizing US proxy warfare and supporting a negotiated settlement you are guilty of “appeasement” and exactly the same as Neville Chamberlain, because the only argument empire apologists ever have is to compare every US-targeted government to Nazi Germany.
According to these propaganda-addled empire automatons, having the story of not compromising with Putin-Hitler and not committing the sin of “appeasement” is worth sacrificing everyone in the entire nation of Ukraine for. They will happily throw every Ukrainian life into the gears of this war while they sit safe at home eating Funyuns and tweeting, just so they can have that “we didn’t compromise with Putin” story hanging on their mental mantlepiece.
How many more lives are such people prepared to feed into an unwinnable war which the west knowingly provoked? How many more of other people’s children are they prepared to sacrifice? How long does the bloodshed need to drag on before their “no appeasement” story loses value to them? How long until people wake up from their propaganda-induced comas and realize we’ve been manipulated into supporting a proxy war which benefits ordinary people in no real way, and in fact impoverishes us and threatens our very lives?
There is no morally consistent argument for continuing this proxy war in the way it has been going. If you actually value life and peace, the only way out is through negotiation and compromise. I point this out not because I believe it will happen, but to hopefully help a few more people open their eyes to the fact that we are being deceived.
Kim Ung-Yong
One of the smartest, perhaps the smartest person on the planet, Kim Ung-Yong, was doing calculus and speaking five languages before age five. By age eight he was doing math at NASA and finished his Ph.D. prior to age fifteen.
It’s all a bit over the top.
None of this was by his own decision. After the discovery of his genius, an I.Q. of over 200, he was placed on an ultra-fast track program for his life.
After accumulating a mind numbing pile of academic accolades, he worked at NASA for years until he abruptly quit.
Here you have the smartest guy in the world, someone whose intelligence dwarfs most Harvard students’, and he walks away from it all.
Why?
He wasn’t happy.
It was all too much intensity for him. He felt like a machine and just wanted something normal.
He now works in a normal university faculty position as a professor. A prestigious job for most people. But for him? Not so. Kim is still periodically targeted by Korean news outlets for being a “failed genius”. With all of his gifts he was expected to change the world and innovate within several science fields.
It begs the question, who decided Kim was supposed to change the world? It certainly wasn’t him.
Mr. Kim might not be someone most of us can relate to. But he is analogous, ground zero even, for the problems intelligent people face with regards to “potential.” Just because someone is smart, strong, creative, doesn’t mean they want to be king of the world.
Some people are happy with a low key life. Happiness is the great equalizer. If they are happy, your expectations no longer matter.
Embassy: “All Americans Should LEAVE Ukraine Immediately” — U.S. Nuclear Bombs Being Moved! – GAZPROM Declares “Force Majeure”
The United States Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, has increased its Alert status and is now publicly advising all Americans to get out of Ukraine IMMEDIATELY. All Embassy functions will be transferred to Lviv, in western Ukraine.
This seems to coincide with a report issued yesterday (HERE – Subscribers Only!) which outlined that an ULTIMATUM had been given to Kiev by Moscow.
This also seems to coincide with intelligence reports saying Ukraine plans to use new HIMARS MLRS to attack Crimea.
Crimea is Russian territory now. Russia has previously stated that if U.S. long range weapons are used against “Russian territory” then Russia will declare the US an active combatant, and will take military action.
The US says that Crimea is “Ukrainian territory” and so the Ukrainians can use HIMARS against it.
Over the weekend, former President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev publicly spoke about possible Ukrainian attacks on Crimea, and said: “If something like this happens, Judgment Day will happen to all of them”
Overnight, the Russian Navy began moving several ships OUT of Crimea to their port at Novorossiysk. The Russian Black Sea fleet pulled anchor and left Sevastopol, for the Kuban. Clearly they suspect a missile attack on the port facilities. If this should happen, many observers think there will be war.
“FORCE MAJEURE”
This morning, Russian energy giant Gazprom declared force majeure on gas supplies to at least one major EU customer RETROACTOVE TO JUNE.
According to a document from inside the company, Gazprom tells a large client it cannot fulfil its supply obligations due to “extraordinary” circumstances outside its control.
REUTERS News Agency now reports that its sources are saying that the letter was referring to supplies to Germany via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. The letter makes clear that GAZPROM cannot supply __any__ natural gas via Nord Stream One pipeline, until further notice.
The route is currently undergoing planned annual maintenance which is due to be completed on Thursday, however many in Germany fear that the flow will not be resumed. Given today’s declaration of a “force majeure” it now appears certain that natural gas flows WILL NOT RESUME.
Without the flow of Russian natural gas, Germany and other European nations had to begin drawing-down on stored natural gas reserves in their countries as of July 11. Those reserves are finite, and will run out. Various countries in Europe have various amounts of gas in storage, but none of them have more than a few months worth.
As natural gas runs out, there won’t be gas to power the steam boilers in gas-fired electric generating plants. No boilers means no steam. IF there is no steam, that means nothing to turn the turbines. No turbines means no electricity.
| UPDATE 2:05 PM EDT — With regard to GAZPROM’s declaring a “force Majeure” this is now explicitly CONFIRMED. The company has thus decided to void itself from all contractual obligations. Gas will stop flowing to Germany through Nord Stream 1 indefinitely. |
So right now, July 18, 2022, many differing issues are all coming to a head at about the same time. If Ukraine attacks Crimea using U.S.-supplied HIMARS, then Russia may declare the US an active combatant and use military force against the US.
If Russia refuses to restore natural gas flows to Europe, then Europe will run out of natural gas, and its economy will utterly stop.
If Europe’s economy stops, then two weeks later, the US economy stops.
These are things that cause nations to go to actual war.
In that regard, Russia announced today it will be holding NUCLEAR ATTACK CIVILIAN EVACUATION DRILLS so its citizens can become accustomed to where they have to be in such a situation.
The Russia-China Polar Silk Road Speeds Ahead
While NATO’s geopolitical unipolarists obsess over global governance and militarization of the Arctic, Eurasian Arctic policy has taken a very different character with an emphasis on economic development and cooperation.
Of course Russia has not neglected the military component of its northern military policy, but unlike the west which has no economic vision, Russia’s Arctic military posture is definitively defensive and principally diplomatic. As Foreign Minister Lavrov said at the end of last year’s Arctic Summit in Alaska: “Russia is doing and will do a lot to make sure the Arctic develops as a territory of peace, stability and cooperation.”
This conjunction of Russia and China’s northern policies around the Polar Silk Road should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the close strategic friendship between both countries since the 2015 announcement of an alliance between the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union and Belt and Road Initiative. This northern extension of the Maritime Silk Road represents a powerful force to transform the last unexplored frontier on the Earth, converting the Arctic from a geopolitical zone of conflict towards a new paradigm of mutual cooperation and development.
Putin gave a speech at a recent BRI forum stating:
“the Great Eurasian Partnership and Belt and Road concepts are both rooted in the principles and values that everyone understands: the natural aspiration of nations to live in peace and harmony, benefit from free access to the latest scientific achievements and innovative development, while preserving their culture and unique spiritual identity. In other words, we are united by our strategic, long-term interests.”
Weeks before this speech Russia unveiled a bold plan for Arctic development during the conference Arctic: Territory of Dialogue which has since grown in leaps and bounds. This bold plan ties to the “Great Eurasian Partnership”, not only extending roads, rail and new cities into the Far East, but also extending science and civilization into a terrain long thought totally inhospitable. One of the keystone projects driving this program involves the completion of the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) launched as an Indian-Iranian-Russian program in 2002 and which has been given new life in the last several years.
While the west has not built any new cities in several generations, Russia has announced the construction of five major Arctic cities supporting up to 1 million people each in the coming years with Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu leading the plan. Reporting on this program Atle Staalesen wrote in Arctic Today:
“Shoigu sees his masterplan for Siberia as closely connected with the markets in nearby China. But the new cities will also be important for the development of the Arctic, he argues, and makes a reference to the famous 18th Century scientist and writer Mikhail Lomonosov who wrote that “Russian power will grow with Siberia and the Arctic Ocean, […]”. According to Shoigu, Lomonosov did not coincidently connect the Arctic and Siberia. “They should be developed together and not separately,” he underlines, and adds that “the focus on the development of the Siberian region is both timely and reasonable.”
Typically framed as an “anti-BRI” megaproject by small-minded geopoliticians, the INSTC and BRI are really two sides of the same program and should much rather be seen as a sister program for Eurasian, Southwest Asian and even African industrial growth. The INSTC currently enjoys the cooperation of 12 participating nations and has recently seen its northern extension moved from St Petersburg further north to the port of Lavna in Murmansk, Russia. China’s western “middle corridor” branch of the east-west BRI stretching through Xinjiang also features several rail and road corridors that tie directly into the INSTC not to mention the obvious Arctic far east connections.
When fully completed, the INSTC will not only circumvent the NATO-controlled zone of the mediteranean zone via the overly congested Suez canal but will cut approximately 10 days and 40% of the transportation costs off the current Suez route.
In 2019 China and Russia signed the first scientific cooperation agreement together setting up the “China-Russia Arctic Research Center” as a part of the Polar Silk Road.
The BRI’s Success So Far
The Belt and Road Initiative has already won over much of Africa as BRI-connected rail, ports, and other infrastructure are providing a breath of fresh air to nations long held hostage by IMF/World Bank conditionalities.
Pakistan and much of Southwest Asia are also increasingly on board the BRI through the growing China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Twenty Arab states have signed onto the BRI and much of Latin America has also joined with hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure projects.
The Eurasian Economic Union is now in the final stages of a long planned economic treaty between China and the Russian-led economic block recently outlined by Putin advisor Sergey Glazyev.
Although both the USA and Canada have been invited to the BRI on many occasions since its 2013 inception, no positive response has been permitted by the NATO-Deep State power structures manipulating the west.
While China’s activity in the Arctic is only manifesting now, its Arctic Strategy began many years ago.
While western states race to shut down all hydrocarbon-based fuels in a suicidal race to de-carbonize, Russia and China have signed off on a 2600km Power of Siberia 2 which will not only satisfy China’s growth needs for the coming decades, but will easily compensate for the loss of gas sales to Europe as the iron curtain is erected once more. The Yamal Peninsula gas fields which supply the Power of Siberia 2 to China currently only service European needs which will soon change drastically.
Where the Belt Goes, the Road Follows
1990s McDonald’s Floor…
The importance of the Arctic Silk Road for China
The Dancing Man Story
“Spotted this specimen trying to dance the other week. He stopped when he saw us laughing.”
Worth the Share! #DancingManStory
Source : Man Fat-Shamed Online Gets VIP Dance Party in L.A.
He stopped dancing. was ashamed with everyone laughing, and went home sullen.
This was then published…
The girls get organized.
A hunt is on!!!
Action is taken!
Support pours in from all over the internet…
Big names get involved. Such as “Moby”…
And, you know what?
He got the message!
Then it actually happens!
Go ahead enjoy yourself.
Dance, dance, dance!
Satellite Imagery Shows Global Crop Declines – Except For Russia And China
Infrared satellite imagery designed to measure moisture levels and the health of farmlands suggests that staple crops such as wheat are in poor condition and in sharp decline among major exporters including the Ukraine, the US and India. Two countries do have bumper crops so far though; namely Russia and China.
It is hard to say which governments and institutions monitor this data, but a few months ago a multitude of political leaders and global banks issued simultaneous warnings of a “global food shortage” and an impending crisis. Such institutions included the IMF, World Bank, the BIS and even the White House. So far, a perfect storm of stagflation, supply chain disruptions and poor weather conditions have combined to disrupt food production around the world.
Price inflation due to central bank stimulus measures has been enough to do incredible damage to the many national economies, but a single bad year for crops on top of this could spell disaster.
Russia and China, on the other hand, are enjoying a strategic advantage.
As we entered spring of this year, the mainstream media heralded the end of the Russian economy and the swift collapse of their war efforts in Ukraine.
Today, Russia is selling more oil and exporting more commodities than ever before, and both Russia and China now have the most healthy staple crops in the world.
It’s almost as if the public in the west has been deliberately misled about our economic strength.
Sadly, many people in the west have forgotten the importance of commodities, industry and energy in terms of geopolitical leverage. Without dominance of these three arenas there is no chance for a nation or group of nations to dictate terms to a country that has such advantages. Economic warfare is about independent production and adaptability; these are two things the US and Europe do not have right now.
With declines in crop exports, food prices will rise even further this year and there is also the possibility that Russia could cut off the EU and other nations from access to their agricultural market. Though the Kremlin says this will not happen, given the right trigger event it remains a legitimate threat. Already this month Europe is on the edge of an economic cliff as they wait to see if the Russian “maintenance shutdown” of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline is actually temporary, or the beginning of a full bore energy crisis that will last for years.
In other words, the temptation for the eastern nations to use food as a weapon against NATO countries will be just as high on their list as oil and gas. With food and energy stability in doubt there is also a considerable danger of civil unrest. Third world nations are likely to see the worst of the shortages, but price inflation in necessities is here to stay for first world countries as well. And along with that comes all the associated economic problems, including rising crime, rising unemployment and rising poverty.
A cat story
Not mine, but adorable anyways. -MM
Found my cat as a little kitten (about 6 weeks old) left to die in a box near a container. I warmed her up with my own body temperature on the way home, she was almost half dead. When I got her home and dry (because it was rainy October and I live in cold Scandinavia), she had a stable and semi-strong pulse.
I took her to the acute vet, I’m a student and I didn’t have much money, but I would rather eat oats for two-three weeks than let another living creature die. I ended up bottle feeding her every 2 hour every night and rushing home to bottle feed her in my school breaks.
That little thing is my child, all that bonding in the night when I bottle fed her. I have PTSD, and because of her, I don’t suffer from nightmares anymore.
When it was bad, she would panic and wake me up so I didn’t have to suffer through them. Even a year after I had my last nightmare, she still sleeps with her nose on my neck or cuddles with my hand and keeps her nose on my wrist to check my pulse so she can wake me up the instant she detects any distress.
The Only Real Solution Is Default
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
The destruction of ‘phantom wealth’ via default has always been the only way to clear the financial system of unpayable debt burdens and extremes of rentier / wealth dominance.
The notion that the world could always borrow more money as long as interest rates were near-zero was never sustainable. It was always an unsustainable artifice that we could keep borrowing ever larger sums from the future as long as the interest payments kept dropping.
The only real solution to over-indebtedness since the beginning of finance is default. There are pretty names for variations on default that sound much less gut-wrenching–debt jubilees, refinancing, etc.– but the bottom line is the debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid and whomever owns the debt as an asset absorbs the loss.
Every default is a debt jubilee for the borrower. Whether the default is informal or formalized in bankruptcy, the debt payments are no longer being paid to the lender / owner of the debt.
Every debt jubilee is a default that forces the owner of the debt to write the value down to zero and absorb the loss. The jubilation of the owner of the debt is rather muted unless the state swoops in and passes the losses onto the taxpayers via bailouts / transferring the losses to the public’s balance sheet.
Every default is a refinancing–to zero. We’ve refinanced the debt so the borrower pays zero and the value of the loan / debt is now zero.
Very few ordinary households own other people’s debts as assets. It’s the wealthy few who own most of the student loans, vehicle loans, mortgages, government and corporation bonds, etc.
Yes, ordinary households may own other people’s debts through pension plans or ownership of mutual funds, but by and large debt is a favored asset of the rentier class, i.e. the wealthiest few.
We’re constantly told that mass defaults would destroy the economy, but this is flim-flam: mass defaults would destroy much of the wealth of the rentier class which has been greatly enriched by the global expansion of debt, while freeing the debtors of their obligations.
Recall that debt is the transfer of income from the borrower to the owner of the debt. Borrowing money is like every other form of consumption: when it’s cheap and abundant, we over-indulge. The costs are only apparent after the banquet has been cleared.
The illusion that the global economy could effortlessly add trillions in debt to fund living large forever was based on a brief historical anomaly of zero interest rates enabled by low inflation. There’s a long lag between the vast expansion of debt / consumption and the eventual consequences on supply, demand, risk and price discovery.
The lag time is up and now the consequences are finally visible: the tide of rapid growth in consumption and income required to fund ever-greater burdens of debt has ebbed, and so the global burden of debt–$300 trillion or so– is no longer sustainable / payable.
The favored solutions of the state–printing money or transferring the losses to the public–are no longer viable. Now that inflation has emerged from its slumber, printing trillions to bail out the wealthy is no longer an option. The public, so easily conned into accepting the bailout of the wealthy in 2008, has wised up and so that particular con won’t work again. (“Bail out the super-wealthy now or your ATM machine will stop working!” Uh, right.)
The state is the protector of the wealthy, and so defaults that actually impact the wealthy are anathema. The wealthy will demand the state absorb their losses (recall that profits are private, losses are socialized) The only equitable solution is to force the losses on those who bought the debt as a rentier income stream.
I’ve been exploring the Core-Periphery dynamic for a decade. ( The E.U., Neofeudalism and the Neocolonial-Financialization Model May 24, 2012). This dynamic plays out in a number of ways on a number of levels.
Defaults will play out along the lines of Core-Periphery asymmetries. Some states will be able to “print their way out of default” but most will not, as unrestrained printing of money on such a vast scale would devalue the currency, triggering an even more destructive systemic default.
Debt is a double-edged form of power. Being able to borrow and spend huge sums is an absolutely fabulous way to expand corruption, bribes, exploitation of the powerless, bridges to nowhere and mindless over-consumption, but the habits formed by mindless expansion of debt to fund soaring wealth inequality don’t serve the indebted entities very well when default removes borrowing as a way to pay and play.
Living within one’s means–i.e. net income–is the only solution there has ever been to the end-game of over-indebtedness, i.e. default. Those with relatively secure, diversified net incomes (i.e. the Core) will do much better than those with unstable, limited income.
The destruction of phantom wealth via default has always been the only way to clear the financial system of unpayable debt burdens and extremes of rentier / wealth dominance. Let’s guess that a bare minimum of $100 trillion of the $300 trillion mountain of global debt will default far sooner than most expect. The only question is who will absorb the $100 trillion in losses. Choose wisely, as defaults of debt that are transferred to the public end up bringing down the entire system via political overthrow or currency collapse.
A bad father story
By Jessika Halitski
Not my parents just my father. The only thing i will never forgive is that when I was 13 I was just released from a psyche hospital for troubled kids.
I told my mother (sole guardian) I wanted to leave and be with my dad.
So she emailed him and they worked out a plan.
One weekend right before summer break was over my mother and grandparents drove out to my dads. It was like 14 hours or something, We get to my dads house, I am outside saying good bye to my grand parents and my mother.
I am nervous I can feel my heart racing.
I was so excited.
So my mom was helping me grab my stuff out of the trunk.
While trying to call my dad, he wont answer, so she tells me to go knock on the door. I listen and go knock.
I can hear whispering but not what they are saying.
I keep knocking and nothing. A short time later, im still knocking and I hear a car pull up behind me, I just keep knocking.
My mom calls me over and I see two cops standing with her.
She looks mad. I walk over, slowly.
The cops ask me why I am TRESPASSING and that the property owner called me in for harassment.
I was so mad I just started to cry.
My mother begins to explain why we are at this house.
The one officer goes to the door and asks for my father.
He comes out I breathed a sigh of relief thinking that he would sort this whole mess out, the cop in front of my mother is still looking over the emails my mother had printed the other officer called me over and asked my father ‘is this your child did you agree to take her from the mother’ my fathers reply broke me ‘shes not mine I have never seen her before’ .
I was floored.
My mom heard it and I could feel the anger coming off her but she breathed and called me back to the car told me to get in and she shut the door.
I saw her arguing and yelling at him and the police.
Then she gets in and tells my grandfather to drive.
I did not speak to anyone for about a week.
Following this I had 15 failed suicide attempts.
It wasn’t till a while later that I realized that I had done nothing wrong that I slowly started to cope with it.
It still hurts to this day he calls and will try to pretend this never happened but, every time I hear his voice I can hear him saying those same words over and over again…
Is A US-Russia War Becoming Inevitable?
At the NATO summit in Madrid, Finland was invited to join the alliance. What does this mean for Finland?
If Russian President Vladimir Putin breaches the 830-mile Finnish border, the United States will rise to Helsinki’s defense and fight Russia on Finland’s side.
What does Finland’s membership in NATO mean for America?
If Putin makes a military move into Finland, the U.S. will go to war against the world’s largest nation with an arsenal of between 4,500 and 6,000 battlefield and strategic nuclear weapons.
No Cold War president would have dreamed of making such a commitment — to risk the survival of our nation to defend territory of a country thousands of miles away that has never been a U.S. vital interest.
To go to war with the Soviet Union over the preservation of Finnish territory would have been seen as madness during the Cold War.
Recall: Harry Truman refused to use force to break Joseph Stalin’s blockade of Berlin. Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. troops to save the Hungarian freedom fighters being run down by Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956.
Lyndon B. Johnson did nothing to assist the Czech patriots crushed by Warsaw Pact armies in 1968. When Lech Walesa’s Solidarity was smashed on Moscow’s order in Poland in 1981, Ronald Reagan made brave statements and sent Xerox machines.
While the U.S. issued annual declarations of support during the Cold War for the “captive nations” of Central and Eastern Europe, the liberation of these nations from Soviet control was never deemed so vital to the West as to justify a war with the USSR.
Indeed, in the 40 years of the Cold War, NATO, which had begun in 1949 with 12 member nations, added only four more — Greece, Turkey, Spain and West Germany.
Yet, with the invitation to Sweden and Finland to join as the 31st and 32nd nations to receive an Article 5 war guarantee, NATO will have doubled its membership since what was thought — certainly by the Russians — to have been the end of the Cold War.
All the nations once part of Moscow’s Warsaw Pact — East Germany, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria — are now members of a U.S.-led NATO — directed against Russia.
Three former republics of the USSR — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — are now also members of NATO, a military alliance formed to corral and contain the nation to which they had belonged during the Cold War.
Lithuania, with 2% of Russia’s population, has just declared a partial blockade of goods moving across its territory to Kaliningrad, Russia’s enclave on the Baltic Sea.
To Putin’s protest, Vilnius has reminded Moscow that Lithuania is a member of NATO.
It is a dictum of geostrategic politics that a great power ought never cede to a lesser power the ability to draw it into a great war.
In 1914, the kaiser’s Germany gave its Austrian ally a “blank check” to punish Serbia for its role in the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. Vienna cashed the kaiser’s check and attacked Serbia, and the Great War of 1914-1918 was on.
In March 1939, Neville Chamberlain issued a war guarantee to Poland. If Germany attacked Poland, Britain would fight on Poland’s side.
Fortified with this war guarantee from the British Empire, the Poles stonewalled Hitler, refusing to talk to Berlin over German claims to the city of Danzig, taken from her at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.
On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler attacked and Britain declared war, a war that lasted six years and mortally wounded the British Empire.
And Poland? At Yalta in 1945, Winston Churchill agreed that a Soviet-occupied Poland should remain in Stalin’s custody.
Putin is a Russian nationalist who regards the breakup of the USSR as the greatest calamity of the 20th century, but he is not alone responsible for the wretched relations between our countries.
We Americans have played a leading role in what is shaping up as a Second Cold War, more dangerous than the first.
Over the last quarter-century, after Russia dissolved the Warsaw Pact and let the USSR break apart into 15 nations, we pushed NATO, created to corral and contain Russia, into Central and Eastern Europe.
In 2008, neocons goaded Georgia into attacking South Ossetia, provoking Russian intervention and the rout of the Georgian army.
In 2014, neocons goaded Ukrainians into overthrowing the elected pro-Russian regime in Kyiv. When they succeeded, Putin seized Crimea and Sevastopol, for centuries the home base of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
In 2022, Moscow asked the U.S. to pledge not to bring Ukraine into NATO. We refused. And Putin attacked. If Russians believe their country has been pushed against a wall by the West, can we blame them?
Americans appear dismissive of dark Russian warnings that rather than accept defeat in Ukraine, the humiliation of their nation, and their encirclement and isolation, they will resort to tactical nuclear weapons.
Is it really wisdom to dismiss these warnings as “saber-rattling”?
Poverty is not measured by the amount of money you have.
I thought we were well off when I was young. We had a house, 2 older but functional cars, and we always had food. I did not understand why my dad was always away, or why my mom was always nervous and irritable. I did not notice that it was always the same food, and there were no pictures on the peanut butter, vegetables, or cheese. I didn’t know other people didn’t drink powdered milk. I didn’t realize a lot of things.
One day, in school, I noticed that my lunch tickets were a different color than the ones the kids around me had. I asked why the office gave them that color, and why they did not have to initial theirs. They said they got their tickets from their parents every week. They had no idea what I was talking about. My mom deflected the question when I asked. I got curious. I noticed we did not go to the store to get clothes. I always got boxes of clothes I tried on at home. Whatever didn’t fit just wandered off. My shoes didn’t have the same logos, and my coats had none. My dad always wore the exact same pair of boots to work, and I had happily chiseled the crusted blacktop off of them so they looked nice over the years. I began to see that our cars were rustier than most, and little losses were devastating to my mom. I saw the overall quality of what we had was shabbier than my classmates’ things. It all began to make sense.
There was no “aha” moment. It was a slow dawning realization. We were poor. Not absolutely, but relative to our community. I would guess we were one automotive breakdown, one major home repair, or one medical catastrophe from being homeless at any point in time. My mom figured out I knew before my dad did. My demeanor didn’t change, but my behavior did. I asked for less. I didn’t ask for anything for Christmas that year. Or any year after. I asked to have small birthday parties at home. I was never big on clothing trends, but wore clothes until they fell apart or I had completely outgrown them. I stopped asking for money for a donut and milk at the bakery across from the school (they were day olds the manager kept for me without me knowing.) I walked to school more and asked for rides less. I paid attention to prices when we went grocery shopping, and asked for less big ticket items. I did not tell my brother. I shared more with him. I accepted more invitations when my friends parents offered dinner or to stay over. I asked my friends to stay over less often. I learned to repair my bike, to sew, and to garden. I seldom turned on my lights, took short showers, bundled up in the winter, and avoided the TV aside from a few shows.
I understood that which my parents had hidden from me. I adjusted. They accepted that I was helping in my own way. To their credit, they would offer to buy clothes, try to tempt me with the Toys’r’us catalog, and would pay attention to everything I would eyeball at the mall and Farm&Fleet. They would not let me avoid the school book fair, since they knew my great love was reading. I still have that love. What they fostered grew. I am still frugal, weigh the cost of items against their value, buy mostly from thrift stores, and live simply. I cherish experiences and people more than objects. I try to constantly keep learning and growing. I learned I was never truly poor. I just lacked money.
Grandma’s “Afghan”
We Are About To Experience An Absolutely Epic Housing Crash The Likes Of Which America Has Never Seen Before
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You may not want to buy a house right now. What goes up must eventually come down, and we have just entered the “down” side of that equation. Over the past two years, home prices in the United States have gone up nearly 40 percent. Now mortgage rates are rising at a pace that is truly frightening, and they are likely to go even higher in the months ahead as the Federal Reserve continues to fight a relentless war against inflation. Needless to say, higher mortgage rates mean higher potential mortgage payments for prospective home buyers, and so millions of Americans are being priced out of the marketplace right now. The only thing that is going to bring those buyers back into the marketplace is for home prices to go down, and that is already starting to happen in some areas of the nation.
We were already in a historic housing bubble heading into 2020, and over the past two years we have witnessed another housing bubble develop on top of the previous housing bubble.
Overall, home prices in the U.S. rose 37 percent between March 2020 and March 2022.
That is insane.
Of course our incomes have not been going up as fast as home prices have. In fact, it is being reported that “home prices have gone up four times faster than incomes” over the past year…
Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas put the real estate industry on edge this spring after they published a paper titled Real-Time Market Monitoring Finds Signs of Brewing U.S. Housing Bubble. Why the renewed concern? Over the past year alone, home prices have gone up four times faster than incomes. Simple economic theory, which dictates that neither home prices nor incomes can outgrow the other for very long, tells us that isn’t sustainable.
There is no way that this could continue for long, and we have reached a point where home prices in the United States are “overvalued” by almost 25 percent…
The analysis conducted by Moody’s Analytics aimed to find out whether economic fundamentals, including local income levels, could support local home prices. On a national level, Moody’s Analytics finds U.S. home prices are “overvalued” by 24.7%. In other words, U.S. home prices are 24.7% higher than they would historically trade at given current income levels.
Does this mean that home prices will come down by 25 percent?
Well, it all depends on what the Federal Reserve chooses to do.
If the Fed decides to stop raising interest rates by the end of this year, the damage could potentially be minimized.
But if the Fed continues to raise interest rates throughout 2023, we are likely to see carnage that is unlike anything we have ever seen before.
Personally, I have been stunned by how rapidly mortgage rates have risen. According to Peter Schiff, the last time that average 30 year mortgage rates crossed the 6 percent threshold was just before the last housing crash…
Average 30-year mortgage rates have pushed to nearly 6.4%. The last time we saw mortgage rates over 6% was right before the housing crash of 2008. Until mid-April, mortgage rates were in the 4% to 5% range. Just one month ago, rates were 5.49%. Lower-income homebuyers have already been priced out of the market by spiking mortgage rates. The houses that are selling tend to be in higher price ranges.
Officials at the Federal Reserve can see what is happening, but they consider taming inflation to be a much higher priority right now.
So the housing bubble will inevitably continue to implode, and the numbers for the industry will just get even uglier. Here is more from Peter Schiff…
Air is hissing out of the housing bubble faster and faster every week. Pending sales plunged in June and the inventory of homes on the market jumped as mortgage rates continue to rapidly rise. Pending home sales plunged by 16% year-over-year in June. This follows on the heels of a 12% drop in May and a 9% dip in April. June marked the 10th straight month of year-on-year declines in pending sales.
Some of the hottest markets in the country have started to cool off really fast.
For example, just look at what is happening in California…
The pace of California home sales plunged 21% in June from a year earlier as soaring mortgage rates took a bite out of buyer interest, the state Realtors group reported Monday.
And what we are witnessing in Boise is really alarming.
Boise was once one of the hottest markets in the entire nation, but now sales are dropping faster than Joe Biden’s approval rating…
Before governors relaxed stay-at-home orders two years ago, white-collar professionals were already fleeing their exorbitantly priced apartments in cities like San Francisco and Seattle. The biggest beneficiary of that WFH homebuying wave was undoubtedly Boise—where home prices skyrocketed 53%. You could even call it the poster child of the pandemic housing boom. But that Boise honeymoon is over. While spiking mortgage rates have pushed the overall U.S. housing market into a slowdown, it has delivered a particularly hard blow to the Boise housing market. That has seen both Boise home sales plummet—down 28% on a year-over-year basis—and inventory levels surge—up 161% this year. It’s also chipping away at home values. According to Zillow, the median Boise home sales price fell 3.5% in June.
This downturn is going to have enormous implications for home builders as well.
Sales are falling, and a key measure of home builder confidence just declined for the seventh month in a row…
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, which measures the pulse of the single-family housing market, fell for the seventh consecutive month to 55, the lowest level since May 2020. It is the second-biggest, one-month decline in the survey’s 37-year history.
The only time that the index has fallen more in a single month was during the very early stages of the COVID pandemic.
National Association of Home Builders CEO Jerry Howard fears that things will continue to get worse in the months ahead, and he is warning that “we’re going to go into a recession” unless something dramatic happens…
“For the last seven straight months it has been going down and this is a huge drop – and I think all it says is, ‘Somebody do something or we’re going to go into a recession,’” Howard said.
I am sorry to tell you this Jerry, but we are already in a recession right now, and it is going to get really bad.
Our leaders have been making decisions that have been mind-numbingly bad for a long time, and now we are all going to suffer the consequences.
If you are searching for an easy way out of this mess, you can stop looking, because there isn’t one.
What we are heading for is going to make 2008 and 2009 look like a Sunday picnic, and it will shake our nation to the core.
Memories
Television memories…
Boston Cream Pie
The Parker House Hotel in downtown Boston has bragging rights as the place where Boston cream pie was invented in 1856. It’s technically not a pie, but a yellow butter cake or sponge cake with a sweet rich custard and thick chocolate glaze.
According to Historic Hotels of America, the popular dessert was known as Chocolate Cream Pie, and became a Betty Crocker boxed mix in 1958. It is still a sought-out fave on menus in Boston and throughout New England. In fact, in 1996 the Boston cream pie was declared the official state dessert of Massachusetts.
Check out this you-tube video…
Do you want more?
You can find more articles related to this in my latest index; A New Beginning. And in it are elements of the old, some elements regarding the transition, and some elements that look towards the future.
New Beginnings 4.
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There’s no exit strategy from Ukraine and there’s no exit strategy from inflation. The point is to create as much pain as possible so people beg for a solution – which will come in the form of a currency reset.
The US is toast. Democrats have started world war 3, but do you think the average American cares? People are so fat now they are wearing their apathy as a second skin. If they don’t care about their health, their childrens health (there are fat kids everywhere , too), or their basic quality of life – like being able to walk up a flight of stairs – do you seriously think they can be bothered to care about an imminent nuclear exchange?
Personally I’m not even worried about it. I’m in the Midwest, and I have a premonition about how it goes down. Russia nukes the sodomite population centers and jams our nuclear response, meaning they won’t even bomb our nuclear weapons. They’ll just stop them from leaving the silos. There may be a risk of nuclear fallout, but I doubt it. This will be a targeted nuclear attack, they’ll kill a few million, and the US will be done… but the US is already done when people have stopped caring about themselves or their children.
Here’s a novel idea, how about people individually focus on fixing themselves and their families? Stands to reason that if we fix ourselves, we’ll fix the country in the process. But that requires something called personal responsibility.
Did you say “personal responsibility”? You can’t say that in America. It will get you arrested.