The Lesser of Two Evils Is Still Evil

At the extreme the methods of both the left and the right become increasingly similar, even though their nominal objectives may differ greatly. 

Through varying degrees of force and fraud, invoking necessity and 'the lesser of two evils', dissent is repressed, and discussion is silenced.  They no longer serve the public, or principles, or higher ideals. .

They are enthralled to power and money, and serve themselves, above all else. 

"Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty. Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand. As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers, with approving smiles."

Simone Weil

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Quad Witch Tomorrow, Comex Metals Option Expiry Next Week

Moloch, God of Wealth and Child Sacrifice

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

C. S. Lewis


"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning


“The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love.  And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”

Maximilian Kolbe

Stocks managed to close nearly unchanged today, although there was still a fairly impressive range from top to bottom in the futures markets.

Gold closed lower, while silver managed a little rally.

The Dollar DX Index rally is amazing, a clear example of a flight to safety continuing. At the close it was hovering around 102.78.

Surgical masks are of limited effectiveness, mostly to prevent someone who is already affected from spreading the coronavirus by coughing or sneezing.  N95 masks, however, are effective and are worn by healthcare professionals who are working with patients.  But they are in short supply, which is shameful.  And are not necessary for most people, if they are practicing physical distancing and hand and surface washing.

Keep in touch with each other, and encourage and help one another. And for those who are so inclined, pray for each other.

The Madness serves None but Itself

The usual suspects and con men are mocking peoples' efforts to protect themselves and their families, often because they are negatively affecting the stock market.  Really?

And there are those who would sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals, in order to maintain their own exorbitant worldly privileges.

You might use this as an opportunity to see the quality and character of people who are speaking to you, where they are standing, whether knowingly or foolishly or hysterically.   Be careful what you allow into your minds, or even worse, what you spread around to your friends and family.

People whose hearts are sickened and minds are disordered enjoy shocking and manipulating other people.  It gives them a feeling of worth, and power.  And some of these jokers thrive on sensationalism and panic, without caring what damage they may do, in order to obtain 'clicks' and thrills.

And dare we say it, there are those who traffic in fear and hatred and lies, in order to manipulate people to maintain their power over them.   This is the great lesson we have seen from the aftermath of the Crash of 1929.

There is no need to panic. We have seen worse than this, or at the least our parents and grandparents have. And we will endure.  Act sensibly and responsibly, and keep your eyes on the prize.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening, and stay safe.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As the Blood Flows - Madness for Your Minds and Hearts

Atë, Goddess of Delusion and Ruin, daughter of Strife and Zeus

"The mood among Germans is really bad.  There is a lot of frustration and verrohung. The common people work and can hardly make ends meet. Envy and resentment are widely spread in Germany.  When both the global financial crisis and the euro disaster come back with a vengeance, things will get pretty nasty.  You don't have to be a prophet to make that prediction. 

You just have to extrapolate the current mood in this relatively crisis-free period. Aside from the old and the dying, most Germans today have never experienced any real crisis."

Lars Schall, To Marshall Auerback on His Essay on German Voters


"Administration and Main Stream Media (MSM) say 'booming', much faster GDP and jobs growth than previous decade, but the reality is an occasional 1 or 2 quarter surge but baseline 2% growth rate trends remain unchanged.

Only growth in the stock market, other Fed inflated assets, and debt. Maybe we should ask MSM what is 'booming'. Official jobs numbers obscure 1/3 of labor force without jobs and not job seeking; job holders are a mix of full and part time; average hourly wages are rising because 'supervisors' (managers) wages are rising but flat for 90%.

Flawed startup jobs guesses (Birth Death Model) added to lift feeble  jobs created.  Payroll tax receipts are falling—  could the tax receipts decline be explained by tax cuts?

Tax cuts have primarily assisted corporations. They have had a negligible effect on payrolls taxes. Weak withholding receipts reflects continuing rise in part time workers and low wage substituting for full time workers.

And keep in mind the little growth that did take place was debt driven. Despite all the 'booming economy' cheerleading, the data shows a flat trajectory for growth at around 2% for the last decade, despite mountains of 'stimulus'.

A chart of the Dow looks rather different, suggesting all the stimulus went into the stock market instead.

The US economy is not booming. It has begun gradual slowdown. Housing and autos slump is just the most visible indicator of broad based downturn-"

Harold Malmgren

And into the pockets of the one percent.  QED

Trump was on the TV after the close, emphasizing that there is indeed a crisis on our border, even though the imminent threat of the caravan is laughable, and easily shown to be made up spin for the election.  They want to scare you into obedience for their own benefit.

He led off his speech this afternoon with the notion that unworthy immigrants are flooding into our country, and straining our resources, greedily and ungratefully taking things that should be used by honest hard-working and law-abiding people.   They are obviously parasites, bringing disease and crime and drugs.

This is the same argument, and similar imagery, that was widely used to prepare the German people for the detention and eventual holocaust of the disabled, and the different, and political opponents, and the Jews.   They were literally depicted as rats, overrunning the productive economy, and draining and poisoning it for those who are worthy.

Most will write this off as nonsense from unscrupulous politicians and their enablers ahead of the mid-term elections.   And that may very well be the case.  Trump is as changeable as the wind in his lying.  And a liar he is, from the beginning.

But like my German friend whom I quote above, there is concern that this penchant for unreasoned anger and accommodating retreat into the lies will lead to much worse things, and likely, blood in the streets, when the next crisis comes.

Glenn Greenwald just delivered a warning about this 'fire in men's minds' from Brazil.

Those who have been looting and rigging the economy for years are backing a campaign to create distractions and set up scapegoats.  Ask yourselves, who benefits from all this?  Who is ending up with most of the money and assets, and dishing out the lies and the pain and division for everyone else?

We in America are insular, and are accustomed to looking down our noses at the problems in the rest of the world, and thanking God for our exceptionalism and national virtue.

Let us be reminded that here, already, because of this filthy hate and these endless lies, we have just witnessed the worst incident of antisemitic murder in the history of this nation. 

And that it was perpetrated by a man who allowed his mind to be poisoned by this filthy rubbish from the alt-media, nurtured in a bed of lies, and stoked to a white hot fire of hate in online commentary.

Let that sink in.   The murders have begun.  Sociopaths may welcome this.   You will not.

This is not who we are.

Pray for the faith and the strength to shun the lies, and remain standing until the end.  And don't spend your time worrying about the speck in your neighbor's eye and their shortcomings;  tend to yourself, and you will have more than enough to do.

If you think you have already reached perfection, pray to God to show you your sins, so that you may repent of them here and now.  And that will keep you busy for the rest of your life.

And in this lies your hope, and a light worth following. 

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Dreaded Migrant Caravan - The Mobile 'Reichstag Fire' - Be Very Afraid

"Thousands of Honduran migrants hoping to reach the U.S. stretched out on rain-soaked sidewalks, benches and public plazas in the southern Mexico city of Tapachula, worn down by another day's march under a blazing sun.

The caravan’s numbers have continued to grow as they walk and hitch rides through hot and humid weather, and the United Nations estimated that it currently comprises some 7,200 people, “many of whom intend to continue the march north.”

However, they were still at least 1,140 miles (1,830 kilometers) from the nearest border crossing — McAllen, Texas — and the length of their journey could more than double if they go to Tijuana-San Diego, the destination of another caravan earlier this year. That one shrank significantly as it moved through Mexico, and only a tiny fraction — about 200 of the 1,200 in the group — reached the California border.

Some have questioned the timing so close to the vote and whether some political force was behind it, though by all appearances it began as a group of about 160 who decided to band together in Honduras for protection and snowballed as they moved north.

“No one is capable of organizing this many people,” Mujica said, adding that "there are only two forces driving them: hunger and death.”

Associated Press, October 23, 2018

These poor families are only over a thousand miles away, walking on foot, trying to escape the brutal oppression of a government we help to sustain in Honduras.

And they are coming for your freedom. And maybe to meddle in our elections.  See the usual clickbait and tinpot internet sites for details on this looming menace.

Be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Seriously, if they can make it to Texas in the next couple of weeks, over a thousand miles on foot at the most direct and punishing route, I say let them in.

They may be good prospects for our Olympic teams.  Especially the women and children.

And we could use some resourceful and self-reliant people, because we are obviously becoming a bunch of hysterical nincompoops who will believe just about anything.  And the bigger and more fearful and hate-filled the lie the better we like it.

The Word for This Week

Demagoguery refers to a strategy for gaining political power by appealing to the popular prejudices, emotions, fears and expectations of the public — typically via impassioned rhetoric and propaganda, and often using nationalist or populist themes, usually singling out a group or groups.

Also see Demagogue

The word for this week, and likely for this year, and the next.

No, not demagogue or demagogy. The Word for the Week is "them."

Why should we help them.

We are being dragged down by them.

Blaming them feels good. It makes one feel as if they were successful, not part of the problem.

It wasn't us, it was them.

They caused their own problems. They caused our problems. It is unfortunate but they would be better off somewhere else, out of sight, no longer an impairment or competition for scarce resources.

They are the scapegoats, usually singled out by the group or groups that caused the problems, and even those who benefited indirectly, made some money out of the bubble, less deservedly than they might like to imagine.

They are the weak, the poor, the defenseless, the different, the other.

And the circle of the ones that are considered them spreads wider and wider.

Because even those shouting and waving their fists in the crowds against them are also them to someone else higher in the power structure. Useless eaters is a relative objectification of the human.

And then someone will come and take them away, where they do not wish to go.

And then comes the descent into madness and destruction, for all.


One might ask, "But Jesse, you have inveighed against the Bankers on numerous occasions. How is that different? Aren't you a demagogue too, with just a different opinion?

No. All banks are not bad. All who work at banks, even the biggest Wall Street banks, are not bad. Even all those who turned a blind eye to what went on around them are not bad, just weak, distracted, overwhelmed.

But there were prime actors in this tragedy. The first objective is to stop it, to reform the system, to end the imbalances. And it would be disingenuous to not notice that the big Wall Street Banks, and the rating agencies and accounting firms, were at the epicenter of the financial crises for the past ten years. They were the lobbyists, the financial engineers, the architects of fraud, the enablers of many frauds going back to Enron and beyond.

Cui bono? Who benefited the most?

It was not so much the poor slob acting foolishly on bad advice. It was the joker taking millions off the table time after time by gaming the system, and actively promoting the bubble culture and deep capture that knocked out the regulatory process and the rule of law.

And then the law can deal with individual transgressions, and the emphasis here is "individual." Not a lynching of the bystanders. A serious investigation with individual accountability and equal protection.

That is not demagoguery. That is justice, because it is based on law and individual actions.