Category: Uncategorized

Back through the Doors of Perception?

Remember Huxley?

From Neuroscience News:

  • Psychedelic substances like “psilocybin, mescaline, LSD, and similar drugs may relieve symptoms of addiction, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The drugs appear to work faster and last longer than current medications—all with fewer side effects.”
  • Psychedelics have shown promise in alleviating major depression and anxiety disorders. ‘They induce profound effects in perception.’

Here’s the full article:

Psychedelics Show Promise in Treating Mental Illness

The Decision That Cost Hitler the War?

I don’t disagree that declaring war on the US was one of Hitler’s questionable decisions.  But as the linked piece points out — and by doing so, contradicts itself — did he really have a choice?

The Decision That Cost Hitler the War

Here are a number of his other decisions that strike me as equally bad and perhaps, in the moment, even worse.

  • Shifting from bombing airfields to population centers in the Battle of Britain which only strengthened British resolve
  • Deciding to attack the Soviet Union on the supposition that it would SIMPLY COLLAPSE
  • Delaying the attack — Operation Barbarossa — six weeks in order to salvage Italy’s abortive invasion of Greece, thereby keeping the Wehrmacht from reaching Moscow until December 1941
  • Not equipping the Wehrmacht with cold weather equipment and uniforms
  • Ignoring the advice of German industrialists, following the Wehrmacht’s failure to take Moscow, to sue for a negotiated peace
  • Refusing Paulus’s request to allow the Wehrmacht to withdraw from Stalingrad, thereby allowing the decimation and capture of the German 6th Army

Hitler made other DISASTROUS decisions, but these I consider the worst.

Who Says Antifa Isn’t an “Actual Organization?”

Check out these tweets:

Trump said there were GOOD PEOPLE on BOTH SIDES at Charlottesville. I’ve no way of knowing, but it’s not as relevant as there having been BAD PEOPLE on BOTH SIDES at Charlottesville.

And there are VIOLENT EXTREMISTS on BOTH SIDES NOW. PROUD BOYS, etc. on one side; Antifa, etc., on the other.

I sure hope Chris Ray, MSNBC and ALL OF WOKE NATION are paying attention. The time for PARTISAN OVER-SIMPLIFICATIONS ARE OVER.

That, of course, also applies to FOX NEWS, BREITBART, CNN, NEWSMAX, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE EPOCH TIMES and THE NEW YORK POST.

When it comes to PARTISAN CULTURAL ISSUES, ALL OF THEM FEED AT THE BOTTOM.

A Practice as Old as Gold

Woke folk and ye who support their groundless claims — CHEW ON THIS.

Actually, I had another “VERB” in mind for that previous sentence, but I don’t have to say it now, do I?

From ICE-9 at The Burning Platform:

A Brief History of West African Slavery for the Woke

Here’s a taste:

  • “The irony behind the etymology for the word slave, lost upon the woke and the allies of Critical Race Insanity, is that slave derives from ancient words describing Caucasian Slavic peoples.  If slavery were at the core of the “American Experience”, America long ago would have adopted a word for slave that describe African peoples just as the Romans employed Sclāvus to describe a Slav.  But in the 402 years since 1619, Americans have not made this linguistic transition because there is an older and deeper collective history of slavery that can be traced back millennia to Eastern Europeans who constitute a large proportion of the American population.”
  • “Slavery existed for millennia throughout the entirety of the Bantu populated African continent prior to the arrival of Europeans.  African slaves were captured, worked hard in the millet fields, scolded, beaten, sold multiple times, raped, and murdered well before the first European footprint was impressed on a West African beach.  Slavery was the natural African social condition, it continued as Europeans colonized the continent, and in some places it continues today after most Europeans have left.  Thus any conception of an ‘Original Sin’ borne by Americans through ancestry lies not with Caucasians, but with those of African ancestry as Africans themselves were the origination point for the West African slavery supply chain where they occupied the roles of contractor, planner, procurer, and transporter to distribution hubs.”

And, believe me, there’s MUCH, MUCH MORE here.  And it’s of PRIME HISTORICAL SIGNFICANCE AS WELL AS ACCURATE.

Prefer it bottom-lined?  Then CUT TO ICE-9’s SUMMARY:

  • “The woke will never mention the 800 years of an East African slave trade conducted by Arab merchants up and down the Indian Ocean coast.  The woke won’t utter a word regarding present day slavery across the Sahel countries of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Sudan.  One hears only silence from the woke when one mentions the ‘Systemic Ethniscism’ that permeates every Bantu nation where wealth and power are concentrated into the hands of a dominant ethnic group.”
  • “The woke ignore the 3,000+ freed African slaves who show up in the ante bellum US census who were granted manumission, inherited plantations from their former owners, and kept the slaves.  No woke person ever admits that American Indians owned African slaves nor will they/them accept that slavery permeated Nahuatl culture even as they/ them espouse the virtues of Greater Aztlán.  And the woke will never accept that it was Europeans who eventually stamped out slavery within the Bantu cultural world despite it being the natural human condition there for centuries.”
  • “And, most importantly, the woke will never acknowledge that all Americans are trapped in a nexus of corporate, bureaucratic, technological, and psychological control where the true ‘American Experience’ has devolved into one where everyone is a slave serving invisible Masters.“

THE WOKE ARE CRYBABIES WHO DON’T HAVE THEIR FACTS STRAIGHT.  THEY’RE TRYING TO PULL A REVERSE-TAKOVER HIJACKING OF AMERICAN SOCIETY USING MARXIST TACTICS BASED ON BASTARDIZED POSTMODERN NEOMARXIST THEORY.  FORTUNATELY, THERE ARE ENOUGH INTELLIGENT CENTRISTS — BOTH LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE — TO NOT LET THAT HAPPEN.

Deflation More Likely Long-Term

From Eric Basmajian at EBP Macro Research:

  • “All major economies are suffering from aging demographics.

  • “An economy gets a boost from the 25-54-year-old age cohort and suffers a drag from the 65+-year-old age cohort.

  • “Older populations are correlated to lower real growth and lower inflation.

  • “With major economies already stuck at the zero-bound, fiscal and monetary authorities will have to contemplate negative interest rates or continued debt-financed fiscal spending.

  • “Both options will not reverse economic gravity and erode the standard of living over time.”

All economies experience “a drag as older demographics (65+) comprise a larger share of the total population, particularly as modern economies are structured through heavy transfer payments in traditional retirement years. The older population rapidly slows consumption, downsizes home size, and is more able to leave the labor force, supported through Medicare and Social Security, at least in the United States.” 

The demographic drag will not impact economic growth month to month or even year to year. Still, if you are willing to take a longer view, demographics are the most reliable economic fundamental impacting real growth, inflation, and thus, central bank policy and interest rates across the entire Treasury curve.

The relationship below shows the old-age population on the X-axis and the 10-year annualized rate of real growth on the Y-axis. The 2030 demographic estimate highlights how we should very much expect real economic growth to converge to 0% by the end of the decade. 

And here’s something few know.  And those who DO KNOW IT are loathe to admit it.

Real “GDP per capita growth is already rapidly converging towards zero despite unlimited central bank support and fiscal transfers.” 

“The age-dependency ratio is a measure that relates the “dependents” in the population to the working-age population.”

If we take the 20-year rolling change in the age-dependency ratio and plot it against the long-term (10Y) rate of inflation, we can see that almost all of the long-term inflation trends can be explained through demographics and a widening or contracting share of the working-age population.

“Over the last ten years, sub-par economic growth and lackluster rates of inflation have confused policymakers and investors. A global demographic drag is at the heart of the problem. 

“The next decade will come with a global demographic drag that is far more intense than the last ten years across all major economies, not just Japan. 

“The rate of real economic growth will continue to slowly grind towards 0% and pull the long-term rate of inflation with it.”

IN SUCH AN ENVIRONMENT, CASH WILL BE KING AND WHILE THE PRICE OF GOLD WILL FALL, ITS VALUE VS. THE DEFLATED US DOLLAR WILL REMAIN CONSTANT.  SO, CONVERTING GOLD TO US DOLLARS WILL INVOLVE NO MATERIAL LOSS OF PURCHASING POWER. 

THIS IS THE CASE FOR GOLD IN A DEFLATIONARY ENVIRONMENT.  THE CASE FOR GOLD IN AN INFLATIONARY ENVIRONMENT WILL SOON BE APPARENT.