"Readers of this column know that President Joe Biden’s drift into blankness has been ongoing for months, as he and his foreign policy aides have been urging a ceasefire that will not happen in Gaza while continuing to supply the weapons that make a ceasefire less likely. There’s a similar paradox in Ukraine, where Biden has been financing a war that cannot be won and refusing to participate in negotiations that could end the slaughter.
The reality behind all of this, as I’ve been told for months, is that the president is simply no longer there, in terms of understanding the contradictions of the policies he and his foreign policy advisers have been carrying out. America should not have a president who does not know what he has signed off on. People in power have to be responsible for what they do, and last night showed America and the world that we have a president who clearly is not in that position today...
Whatever happens, we have a president—now fully unveiled—who just may not be responsible for what he does in the coming campaign, not to mention his actions in the Middle East and Ukraine."
Seymour Hersh, Who Is Running the Country?, June 28.2024
“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 selves?”
Maximilian Kolbe
"No warning will suffice to powerful fools who, driven mad by hubris and lust for power, weave the hangman's ropes of their own destruction. They preach the necessity of hardness, and practice the circumvention of the law for themselves and their associates in injustice.
But when the reckoning comes for them, as it eventually does, they always seem astonished, but unfortunately never to the point of speechlessness. They will harangue fortune, and all those imaginary enemies who conspired to their downfall, to the bitter end. The Western elite are in denial, and a bubble of delusion, so profound that I am concerned that when reality intrudes their reaction will be mishandled, provocative, and likely to hasten a generational change that is already occurring and being fiercely resisted, slowly."
Jesse, Complicity of the Advantaged in the Nakedness of Kings, 19 February 2015
"Thus the elements are in place: a weak legislative body, a legal system that is both compliant and repressive, a party system in which one party, whether in opposition or in the majority, is bent upon reconstituting the existing system so as to permanently favor a ruling class of the wealthy, the well-connected and the corporate, while leaving the poorer citizens with a sense of helplessness and political despair, and, at the same time, keeping the middle classes dangling between fear of unemployment and expectations of fantastic rewards once the new economy recovers.
That scheme is abetted by a sycophantic and increasingly concentrated media; by the integration of universities with their corporate benefactors; by a propaganda machine institutionalized in well-funded think tanks and conservative foundations; by the increasingly closer cooperation between local police and national law enforcement agencies aimed at identifying terrorists, suspicious aliens and domestic dissidents."
Sheldon Wolin, Inverted Totalitarianism, The Nation, May 1, 2003
"And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"
Micah 6:8
"I know nothing that I may say can influence you. You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House. You are lick-spittles and panderers, the creatures of the plutocracy.”
Jack London, The Iron Heel
Stocks rallied higher to new record highs, based on a seemingly benign Non-Farm Payrolls report.
Economist Danielle DiMartino Booth reminds us that recessions tend to be marked from the first Fed rate cut.
The Dollar fell.
Gold and silver rocketed higher.
Daisy and I abide, counting our blessings.
The pundit class and their
spokemodels are misrepresenting what is happening geopolitically, and the risks which are involved.
Madness.
"For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children, unwilling to listen to the commandments of the Lord. They say to their seers,‘Do not see!’, and to the prophets,‘Say nothing of what is right. Tell us only the things that please us — prophesy illusions.'"
Isaiah 30:8-10
Their pride blinds them. They close their eyes and ears to truth. They never see it coming.
I remember you all in my prayers.
Have a pleasant weekend.
