Month: April 2014

Coping: Diets and the Future of Liquid Food

Mr. Ure is seriously losing weight here lately.  I won’t be so dumb as to put up numbers but I will say that our recent visit here at Uretopia Ranch with my friend Howard Hill was instrumental.

How so?  Well, Howard recommended a book… The Gabriel Method: The Revolutionary DIET-FREE Way to Totally Transform Your Body…which I had loaded on my Kindle in no time at all.  I mean seriously…in like 4-minutes.

What makes Jon Gabriel’s book so cool is that it doesn’t start with calories, sitting around and being a slug, cutting our sugary drinks, or any of the “normal” starting points.  What he does that’s different is he starts with the psychological reasons why some people “turn on their fat storage systems.”

Sure enough, when I started doing some of the exercises in the book, what came through were some leftover mental thought fragments (the kind that can “program” you, if you don’t consciously dredge them up and smash them with full-bright thinking and dealing with them.

I won’t ruin the book for you, but let’s just say that a lower-middle class to middle-class upbringing in my youth included a lot of food-related programming.  Sitting around the dinner table was where a lot of family sharing/caring/learning took place.  And thus, sitting around associating (food with sharing/caring/learning) in a sense programs you to seek weight via food since it must be associated with what was going on at the dinner table, right?

And while there, eating (early on) involved serving portions that were laid out by adults.  Not wanting to shore-change their kids, got more than adequate portions of food.

But we also got two other things that worked into an eventual predisposition to being (how to say this?) less than featherweights.

Aha!  Gabriel’s book is all about the psychological stuff which – in my case – involved two of the most powerful/destructive (yet not intentionally so) commands from parents.

From dad there was “Be a clean plater, or no desert…:” and from mom  “No ice-cream unless you eat all your [fill in the blank].  Well, hell, turns out the answers are always in plain sight…just Gabriel has tons of good sense in his book about finding it.  My thanks to Howard, again, for recommending it.

Oh, and no harm/no foul on the parents…they were just doing what they wanted to guard against from their childhoods in the Great Depression – being hungry.  Many marvelous “D’oh!” moments reading Gabriel’s book.

The Liquid Food Connection

“OK, so how does this get to a discussion of liquid food?” you’re wondering about here.

I got to thinking about other “food programming” from childhood and one of the messages back when was “Don’t drink too much water with your meal or you will fill up on water, not food.”

But, in fact, because young boys don’t drink a lot of liquid during the day (play was hard work) they really needed more with meals.  And that’s where I got into reviewing the kinds of food that I really like.

Things like homemade clam chowder, a bowl of chili, or that lunchtime treat: cream of mushroom soup and a fried cheese sandwich.

In the early sixties, I think it was, my mother tried dieting (briefly) and there was a place up in Seattle called GovMart which was a kind of early-day Costco, except it was for government employees only.  Since dad worked for the city, we’d go there for bulk foods now and then.

It was from there that I had my first taste of a liquid diet called Metrecal which lives on in memory in the pages of Wikipedia:

Metrecal was a brand of diet foods introduced in the early 1960s. Though its products were criticized for their taste, which newer varieties of flavor tried to improve upon later, it attained a niche in the popular culture of the time. Created and marketed initially by C. Joseph Genster of Mead Johnson & Company, it was eventually replaced in the market by competitors such as Slim Fast.[1]

Mead Johnson had a long history of creating nutritional supplements for infants and invalids, and Metrecal was seen as a logical progression into weight loss for the general public. Genster was the group director for nutritional specialties at Mead Johnson, which launched the product in September 1959, though it was unclear who conceived the original concept.[1] Food innovator Sylvia Schur‘s company provided consulting work on the product’s development.[2] The name for the product was generated by an automated IBM computer system as a blend of the words “meter” and “calories”, referring to the measured caloric intake of the Metrecal diet.

Needless to say, Metrecal worked, but only so-so for mom. This was ‘61, now that I think about it.

Remember, my Danish grandmother who came over on the Lusitania (last successful westbound trip) earned her keep in Denmark as a cook for some minor nobility in Odense.  As a result of this, deserts were one of the really great kitchen outputs at our house:  A twisted deep-friend cookie (Kliner from Klejner)  [recipe here] or the accompanying citronfromage ( a Danish lemon mousse) {yeah, try it sometime].  Lemon custard tarts, Danish pastries of all sorts.  Cinnamon rolls and bear claws and….oh, my, the joy of it all.

Not that the kitchen didn’t turn out low-calorie main dishes, either.  Danish frikadeller (with a rich gravy with dill) was not exactly weight-loss food, either.  Half a dozen red potatoes and here, more gravy?  [recipe here]  Pronounced: FRACK-a-dillah.  29 million calories per serving, plus or minus.

The taste was very similar to the Swedish meatballs you can get at some Ikea stores. except that it was patties, each big as your hand, and eating two was considered a compliment to the cook.  Eating only part of one?  Dissing the cook!  And you see how this programming stuff Gabriel talks about works, right?

Still, because mom wasn’t too thrilled with the early Metrecal, she shared it with us kids.  It was chocolate, and damn good, we thought.  Kind of like cocoa, but thicker.

Now to the point:  I have through about rotating through some cases of Ensure as a prepping food, but that one didn’t really grab me because I have always thought of it as “old or sick” people food.  I’m  not that guy.

So bingo:  A couple of weeks back, along comes a note from Amy at www.preparewise.com and guess what they have? 

MegaOne Meals are the ultimate in emergency meal replacement shakes.  Made from 100% All Natural Ingredients and 28 Super Foods, these tasty shakes are high in protein, daily vitamins and minerals, and are gluten, dairy, and soy free, as well as non-GMO. Just add water for the perfect addition to your survival supply

Total Servings: 15 Hearty / 30 Light Servings 

All Natural Ingredients Made from 28 super foods including Chia, Acai, Goji & more

Incredibly Delicious Long Shelf Life: 10+ Years 

Just Add Water and Shake to Prepare Perfect addition to emergency food storage

Raw 

Vegan 

Gluten Free 

Non-GMO 

Low Fat – Trans Fat Free

Complete Amino Acid Profile

Dairy & Soy Free

High Protein (30 grams per hearty serving) 

Low Sugar 

Complete Vitamin B Complex 

Good Source of Fiber

Immune Booster

Cholesterol Free

Great for breakfast, weight loss, nutritional supplement Great for hiking, camping, disaster supply & more – 

See more at: http://www.preparewise.com/food-storage/megaone-vegan-meal-replacement-shakes.html

Amy’s accompanying note was pretty encouraging, too:

On a personal note:  This really is an amazing product, I have never been one for protein drinks, but now I am drinking this daily, as the ingredients are pretty impressive.    

So, care to guess what goes on my prepping list? 

Total replacement for general prepping?  No.  I mean, as long as the garden is putting out, and my rocket stove is firing (a review of my new one of those maybe next week or the week after) there are still a specific set of uses (hikes, don’t want to start a fire, and things like that) having liquid meals around is a darn fine idea.  A dozen per person in the car makes sense, for example.

Read More

Flash Goggle Monday

No, I don’t joke about serious matters like WW III.  And I’ve been telling you for a good long time because it when when our “killing cycle” research suggests that we’ll be due for some truly gory headlines.

This idea of a cyclical “clock” to news events is hardly new:  The idea has been around since men were walking around without iPhones and the whole business of astrology was a well-established fact of life long before electricity.  And if figured into all the major “monumental projects of history” – things like Pyramids, and Machu Picchu.

Besides, Wednesday of this week is the anniversary of the birth of us Julius Caesar Scaliger (born April 23, 1484) who’s son (Joseph Justus Scaliger) was key in rewriting much of history into what is broadly accepted today as “how things were” since the Middle Ages scalawags destroyed as much source material as they could get their hands on.  No point leaving the evidence around, but I digress.

April 23 may be something of a turn date in human affairs, because remember the Russians?

They were planning to wrap up their “military exercises” by April 21.  At least, so went the storyline until this weekend.

This weekend, that all (somewhat predictably, I’m afraid) started going to shit.  For one thing, the Russian foreign minister (the Lavrov dude) accused the Kiev government of violating the terms of last Thursday’s deal in Geneva.  The upshot of that was both sides would disarm the people who were shooting and taking buildings and so on.

Ding! Ding!  Ding!  Not happening.

Even more worrisome for the US/West/EU, which passed out doughnuts in December in Kiev and started tipping what was otherwise a semi-stable “front” between Russia and the West, is that just when the “massive exercise” in Russia was supposed to be ending, out pops a report from “The Voice of Russia” website that “Russian Eastern Military District getting ready for Strategic Exercise.”

The key quote in the article cites a big cheese in the rus.mil ranks:

“More attention is now paid in combat training to long-distance redeployments, to marches with heavy weapons and regroupings by combined methods, to training marines and paratroops for beach landing, to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles and long-range precision weapons, and to other tasks,” he said…”

Also this weekend, the Russians said in no-uncertain terms, that they would move their own troops around their own country however they damn-well pleased, and THAT might be construed by the borderline paranoid as bringing up the possibility that those Eastern District Troops might make a run toward the West (NATO/EU frontier) and that’s about when a week of leave for the just-exercised border troops would be up and suddenly you’d have a huge force sitting at Ukraine’s border. 

Which the Russians don’t recognize as having a government right now, so logically (to them) no legit border…

But the Russians are keeping up the pressure on the PR front too.  Announcing this morning that NATO dolphins will soon be “patrolling” the Black Sea, which is – in Russia’s mind – its back yard.

The Western response?

Well, there are some, like senator Bob Corker who are calling for even more sanctions on Gazprom and Russian banks.  Unfortunately, and with all due respect to the senator, the Russians are much better chess players and I would bet dollars to doughnuts that the Russian money has been gone for a week, or longer.

They’re not idiots, although that seems to be hard for the West to understand.  Try to remembers Tesla didn’t come from Tennessee, Bob.

As I pointed out previously, the Russians can also count.  Which is why scheduling a US military exercise with 150 soldiers is a joke.  The Russians have 766-thousand active in their military.  While it’s true that the USA has many more (1.37 million, in fact, so twice as many) the Russians are mainly in one country and ours are spread out all over the place: Africa, Asia, Europe, and the list was well over 100 countries when I looked.

We’re still wondering who cooks up the name for US exercises, like the ongoing US/South Korean exercise dubbed “Foal Eagle.”  One’s a bird of prey (that’d be us, I suppose) and the other (foal) is a newborn horse not yet able to fend for itself, if I remember my biology right.  And gotta love this: the US is off “exercising” in Cambodia with (the punchline): 139 US troops.

If I wasn’t such a straight-laced guy, I’d be lighting up a joint (in solidarity with Denverites this weekend) and wondering: “If the US is trying to scare Russia with troop exercises, do you think they will notice we have 11 more men scheduled to exercise in Poland than in Cambodia?  Who dreams this shit up?”

But the further point of this morning’s note is to suggest that Putin has a pair of firecrackers taped to his ass:

Firecracker #1 is the plan for elections in Ukraine.  Right now, there’s some question about whether Ukraine will be stable enough for those to be held next month.   We’re one month and four days from that one going off.

Firecracker #2: is the Chinese are holding military exercises with the Pakistanis.  This one (“Peace Angel”) would worry Putin sick because he’s worried about the long-term outlook for his whole Siberian region which is within walking distance of China.

Ure’s School for the Geographically Impaired:  Step over to the map for a second:  Russia’s best port on the Pacific is likely Vladivostok.  Do you have any idea how close that is to Beijing, capital of the people Putin fears?  Try 838 miles by air.  That’s a short ride for mechanized forces.

Now, by comparison, you see how far off Moscow is from Vladivostok? 4,020 miles.  That’s as far as getting on an airplane in Los Angeles, flying to Atlanta, and then without stopping, turning around flying all the way back to Los Angeles. 

When it comes to war (with the exception of the push-button nuclear kind) size matters and so does the calendar. Oh, and (like our real estate friends insist) location, location, location…

So regardless of how the markets to today and tomorrow, it’s later this week that we’ll find out just how smart world leaders are.

My bet?  Not especially….

I enjoy the study of longwave economics.  But it’d be nice next month if we still had an economy to discuss and debate.  A global economy with a series of “glowing holes in it” just wouldn’t be the same.

Forever.  But then we’re half Fuk’ed already, douzo.

Climbing the “Wall of Worry”

I’m not the only one who is pessimistic in this period.  My friend Robin Handler over at the Options Signal Service sent me a note, that sounds about as glum for prospects this week as my own outlook:

Well, George, here we are facing the worst week I have ever seen from my spiral forecast. On top of that we have the astrological Cardinal Cross.  More earthquakes this last week, and another event that had to do with the sea (Korean Ferry). Situation in Ukraine will get worse.  Other aggression/war events may surface, and the chance of another mega quake like Japan in 2011 is very possible.  With “water” and “sea” being themes at the present, a tsunami has a strong chance of appearing.

I have decide to make the Spiral Forecast report available to the general public this week.  Read it, and share with you readers if you wish.  It can be found on the home page.  Look for the red text. Contains the Spiral Forecast for over 100 stocks.

Read More

Coping: Monday in the WoWW — Keys to the Future

Remember last week, we had that reader in India who had gone bike riding…and whose bike lock key had disappeared?  Looks all over the place, but it’s like the missing key dropped out of our reality?  Well, guess what’s back…

Hi George,

The missing bicycle key turned up, carefully disguised as a dust bunny under the desk in the room NEXT DOOR to where I had emptied my pockets.

Cheers,

Jean-Philipe

long-time reader in sunny south India

This “thing” about keys is really interesting.  It’s because they have HUGE significance down at the archetype level.  You know, the one Jung was all over?

Here’s the thing:  In about one-third of the reports that we get about “things disappearing and then reappearing where they weren’t” there is some obvious archetypical “gruel” (to borrow a Dickens term) that binds the person filing the report with the object that has “gone missing.”

And, as if to prove the point, check out this report from one of Southern California’s finest…

George,

I am an avid reader and enjoy your analysis of current events. I had an interesting WOWW incident recently.

I am a full time police officer and am in charge of a mounted police unit in southern California. I went to work, with my truck, trailer and horse.

I prepared the horse and placed my ‘work keys’ in my saddle bags. I used them off and on all night at a rave concert because the key ring had a handcuff key.

At the end of the shift, I reached into my saddle bag to retrieve the keys and they were gone. I returned home the next morning after working over 15 hours on horseback.

Read More

Is Putin Threatening OPEC?

Own energy, own the future: I was sitting around Friday, trying to noodle out what is likely to happen in Ukraine next week and how that would play through in global markets when a novel thought slapped me awake. I do some of my best thinking in semi-snooze mode, you see. Sure enough, when I looked back on a Peoplenomics report from 2001, the pieces began to click into place…how it all fits together:

Good Friday Notes

But what Friday isn’t good, if you’re on the five-day treadmill?  So with a semi-holiday this morning, and stock and bond markets closed, there’s little of economic data to prevent mind-rot, so we turn to the next best time:  Religion.

Not that there’s not plenty of dough to be made there.  I figure my odds of scoring a bizjet would have been significantly higher if I’d opted for theology over business administration.  Why, even if the base pay were the same, the church gig would still be a better deal just on a tax basis.

With these (seditious) thoughts swimming around, we begin by directing you to our “read of the day” which happens to be the Time Magazine article on the “Rapture of the Nerds” – a hugely entertaining Jessica Roy story about how ”A new religion has set out to store memories for centuries and deliver its believers into a world where our souls can outlive our selves “

And as if to prove, on this the weekend of ascending into heaven, and such, that God/Universe/the Dirac has a delightful sense of humor, the Time article  when I loaded it was accompanied by this delightful reminder about where people are ascending to right now:

I’m convinced, there’s at least a

…and so why not a third?  Well, ThirdLife is parked at GoDaddy now that you ask. 

But FourthLife is under construction. 

And so  it is.  One life after another…virtually, and perhaps beyond…

Tiny Economic Note

The Dry Ships Baltic Index this morning is at 930…and those are levels that generally precede a major economic decline.  Even if Ukraine/Europe hold together over the weekend, the markets could be hard down next week on a generally developing sense that this week’s rally may be all there was to the circus.

Ask me next Friday if there’s anything to it…

Robot Uprising?

With the movie Transcendence opening today, the Defense One story about “Why there will be a Robot Uprising” is worth a scan.  It’s about the recent paper by Steven Omohundro  “Autonomous technology and the greater human good.” From the abstract:

“Military and economic pressures are driving the rapid development of autonomous systems. We show that these systems are likely to behave in anti-social and harmful ways unless they are very carefully designed.”

Leaving a few jobs around, might be a nice start, yah think?

Arrested Development

The cops of Korea are looking for the captain and two crew members of the sunken ferry that went down this week.

All Fall Down

And 12 guides died along with 3 missing in an avalanche this morning on Mt. Everest.

Clintonista Readings

A whole batch of documents from the Clinton administration era are set to be released by the National Archives today. 

Just a damn shame government doesn’t have to confess and report all on a near real-time basis like we the plebes do on our tax filings, huh?  But who said anything about equality?

Read More

Coping: Calm Before the Weekend

One of the more confusing holidays of the year is before us this morning:  Good Friday. 

Stock and bond markets are closed in the US, but elsewhere around the world, it’s a different deal since not everyone buys in to the Christian-Judeo view of things.  Still, this weekend’s  confluence of Easter happening in mid Passover has left folks confused.

On the federal side, the ultimate arbiter is the federal office of personnel management which has their list here.  Feds get 10-scheduled and some personal time, if I recall.  Comp time, if memory serves, too.

Most of American industry – in order to squeeze out more work has dropped to about six holidays – and in many cases, not even that.  Particularly in retail.

The Miami Herald run down over here demonstrates the complexity of navigating today:  Federal, state, and county offices are open, unless you are a lawyer, in which case the courts are closed  in Miami Dade.

In a way this makes sense; , lawyers needing more forgiveness, perhaps.

But they’re not a forgiving lot themselves; the post office is open today so bills (including ones from lawyers) will be delivered in a timely fashion. Is this a great country, or what?

Around the country, some libraries are closed on Easter, others open.

As far as I know, most of the Big Box stores will be open.  Parking meters?:  Another hit and miss area.  Most will take money, though.

All of which gets me down to Ure’s Holiday Planning Decree.  I figure that everyone in the country ought to have at least one three day weekend a month.  Two would be nicer.

Part of the growing sense of “us versus them” we have comes from inequality in things like holidays; it’s more than just money.  Time off and serious relaxification is way up the list.

Personally, I think we ought to have one three day weekend every month (12 holidays per year) and half a dozen “floaters” for a total of perhaps 18.

This way, if you’re one minority, you might take a day off early in the year, while another might opt to take off Cinco de Mayo.  Everyone’s happy.  Well, except the quadrilingual teachers who would have to work through all holidays.  But welcome to public service in the melting pot.

I’m only partly joking here:   At some point, I’m looking for a Hispanic holiday to be added out of political correctness….seriously! (or nearly so)  Perhaps Cesar Chavez Day?  Just as Dr. King fought against injustice against Blacks, did not Chavez lead and work against injustice toward Hispanics?  So how about a holiday?

The Black population of America is 12.6% or 38.9 million.  The Hispanic population of America (legal or otherwise) is up around 16.4% and 50.5 million.   I’m not sure if that counts the 11-20 million illegals, or not.  Where’s the holiday?

The reason  such “common sense” as my “six floaters” isn’t here yet is simple:  If Cesar Chavez Day appeared, then we’d doubtlessly see a  parade of other population subgroups and chaos would ensue. What about a National Taxpayer Day?  Hell, that seems only fair, right?

The only reasonable answer, therefore, is six “personal floaters” to solve the mess.  I figure it one day for each grandparent (since we’re all of varying pedigree and most have four grandparents, last time I checked, morning science headlines not withstanding) and a few more days for personal use.

Being deeply culturally conflicted, I could celebrate Denmark Constitution Day (June 5th, by the way).  Not that I care so much about Cinco de Hangover.  It’s just that since tequila is sort of the order of the day there, why not have a day of aquavit/akavit and snaps? 

Then (after the upcoming rebellion) I could observe Scottish Independence Day (whatever it turns out to be).  I’ll leave it to you to figure out what liquid would be celebrated on that day, although a nice peaty single malt 25-year old ought to be a good clue.  (No, that’s not a girl!)

We get onto thin ice on this holiday booze discussion quickly; there’s been so much marketing of holiday alcohol that it has caused a major health problem and one that spills over (so to speak) in ways that can destroy lives.

Yet, when I think about it, Christmas has always been associated with a tawny port in my mind, though some people think Crown or Black Velvet; New Years with champagne, of course.

All of which gets me around to the ponder of the morning:  What will all those financial industry people be drinking this weekend?  Nothing, I would hope.  The excesses in that world have done quite enough damage to the country already and it’s driving too many people to drink.

National Stock Broker (and lawyer) day – which today is, in a sense – might be more wisely timed for October 3rd this year.  That’s the Day of Atonement and, methinks, far more fitting for those in finance and law who manage the yoke.

Which gets me to Matthew 21:12 and a note to ponder on the lure of false profits.

I’m open to other thoughts, of course, but the more holidays, the merrier.  Besides, since everyone only works at 50% of capacity anyway, we could easily add a dozen more holidays and still hit the same GDP figures. Be a hell of a lot more time off…and we’d need more toys and that would rev up the economy.

See?  Doesn’t this make sense?  As a bonus:  There’d be a lot less fluff on social media – and who’s to say that would be a bad thing?  We’d be living the actual instead of living the virtual and that’s the point.

Web Surveillance

Reader Mark out in the Bay area wonders ”What’s wrong with data capturing for corporations?  Give me more…”

George,

I don’t get all the fuss about your comment this morning…”the corporate customers of all these analytics (read: spying on your habits) ARE going to slice and dice your thinking based on your social and they will try to sell you things.”

Back before social media, computers and such there was the Nielsen ratings system. These people would send mailers to be filled out or in overnights, call random households on their land line and ask them what their TV viewing habits were that night or during a ratings period. And, people loved it. It was an honor to fill out that log and questionnaire Nielsen gave you.

Read More

Markets: Friday on Thursday

There’s not really much to talk about ion markets this morning.  The Dow put on a marvelous short squeeze Wednesday but in the after math this morning, look for the Dow to give back some of that as the day wears on.  The reason being it’s a three day weekend for markets and there’s a good chance that the Ukraine situation could change for the worse (much worse) by Monday if Vlad Putin gets is T levels too high.

The unemployment claims for last week came in about 8,000 lower than  expected, which convinced the futures that the world was not ending just this minute, so we slid back to about an even opening level.

Goldman earnings came out and yes, their net income fell, but it was better than what the street was looking for, so score another one for the bear squeezing bulls.

Consumer spending dropped in Japan in the overnight action, but it didn’t impact markets much.  In the European action today, most markets are up a bit, so it looks like a pretty calm day for trading as options expire and money types make this a three-day weekend.

I must not be a money type…we’ll be here grinding out wit and sarcasm (for a change) tomorrow.

Russia Working US Spying on Civs

Edward Snowden is asking Vlad Putin about civilian surveillance, which is writ large here in the (former) land of the free.  Putin claims the Russians don’t engage in it.

Beer on the side says one of two things is true:  Either not as much OR they just haven’t been caught at it yet, like the American alphabeteers have been.  Give it time.

More after this…

WW III: Running the Numbers

As you’ll see in the Coping section this morning, there is plenty of bad stuff that has happened on April 19th and 20th, so we look at this weekend with a great deal of suspicion.

As you may have heard, a round of talks involving four parties will take place in Geneva about now.  But don’t hold your breath because there is likely nothing to come of them except more talk about more talk.  That’s usually how these things go, at any rate.

Which gets us to the short-term outlook:  To review, the Russians are supposed to wind-up their massive military “exercises”: near the Ukraine border by Monday.  But, if Russia really does have its eye on recapture of Eastern Europe, which has all that delicious arms manufacturing capability in advance of their having to take on China over all the resources in Mongolia/Siberia in a half-dozen years, then Putin will likely move sooner than later.

All of which sets us up for this morning’s strategic view from our war gamer warhammer…

George,

When the Crimea was annexed by Putin, I explained how the move violated every principal of international convention developed since the advent of Geneva Conventions post WWII.  Such a bold Ukrainian annexation demanded a diplomatic demarche from both NATO and their (up til now) chief military member, the U.S.  The Daily Mail penned a pointed article which makes what I believe to be a very valid case – we are facing what could be the advent of something much greater than a ‘simple’ Ukrainian civil war because of the (in)actions taken to date by the American administration.

My professional judgment in this situation is that as tension builds, intentions may become clouded. 

The current militaries of America and Russia are untested in the art of deterrence theory.  As a result, unskilled guessing and untested intuition replace game theory-based decision-making, relegating military deterrence to a novice game instead of one abiding by established treaties and strict international protocols or facing mutual assured destruction. 

Inexperienced gamblers often bluff and decide to go ‘all in,’ illogically risking everything on an empty hand.  So it is in matters of state and their inexperienced military regimes. 

If one side is bluffing and they don’t fold when matters become extremely dicey, vanity and pride overrule cool, calculating logic and military escalation begins.  The end result could be, well, the end.  On the other hand, when one side continually bluffs and folds, the other side makes bigger and bolder claims, knowing they will not meet serious resistance. 

Putin stands poised for his moment in time, a glorious and unopposed reclamation of former Soviet satellite countries under the strong, sweeping arms of mighty mother Russia.  The Crimea and Eastern Ukraine is likely just the tip of Putin’s pointy spear.  And make no mistake here – Putin is definitely not bluffing. 

Should he suddenly be faced with resistance from a formidable military opponent, Putin may be deterred from advancing further, deciding instead to hold the lines and bide his time until the clamoring dies down.  Putin knows that his chief opponent ‘is’ bluffing.  So he has little to lose and much to gain.

If NATO and/or the US continue to bluff the very serious and determined Putin, and the  bluff is noticeably weak or fails to ‘cover the bet,’ then there is no doubt in my vacuous cranial cavity that Putin will fully and quickly exploit the bluff, embarrassing NATO and particularly the U.S. in the process through a steady series of land grabs meant to reclaim an empire. 

The choice is binary – the west must either make a committed, “all in” stand against further illegal Russian annexation or it must accept Russian advances and conquests.  Bluffing a stand without the necessary deterrent force in place equates to weakness, leaving only the doomsday nuclear option for halting further Russian advances.

Meanwhile, the leaders in Poland can clearly see that massive speeding light down the Ukrainian tunnel. 

Polish leaders are requesting a strong military commitment, evidenced by U.S. forces on the ground ala Cold War West Germany.  Listening to their former Warsaw Pact neighbor and watching Russia make bold land grabs, NATO head Anders Fogh Rasmussen bravely and quickly (quicker than the U.S.) proclaimed that NATO is moving more troops toward E. Europe

What follows will sound to some of Ure readers like the rantings of a ‘hawk.’  To those individuals I would say, “no, I’m a realist.  Evil does not understand idealism, altruism and the unabashed nobility of all humanity.  They understand power.  The power which they crave is also the same power that they fear. 

So the chess pieces are lining up.  Much is at stake if diplomacy ultimately fails.  Diplomacy is more digestible when military power is standing ready.  Unfortunately for America, the U.S. economy demands their once mighty military suffer massive cuts to manpower and equipment to ‘help pay the bills.’  How can America gin up another ‘containment’ operation against Russia (as it successfully did during the Cold War) when just two months ago troops were in serious danger of not being paid because the sequester locked down their defense budget?  The U.S. is weaker, and Putin knows it. Still, American military might is sufficient to induce a reasonable amount of fear in Putin and his pawns if played right.

Read More

Coping: The Weekend Warrior’s Early Start

Not too often that I seek reader input on project around the ranch, but we’ve been busy getting the new sunroom and the new audio/video room ready to “button up” with sheetrock.

And so the question of the morning is:  Between Lowes and Home Despots, who’s got the lightest-weight 1/2 rock for the ceiling?

I know this is a rather esoteric kind of question, but it’s the little decisions that make a difference in home improvement projects.  Given a choice between wrestling around the heavier sheetrock or some of the new (lighter weight) material, this seems like a no-brainer.  Also, the lighter rock is supposedly less susceptible to sag when using 24-inch centers on the ceiling.

Any thoughts welcome, particularly brand.

Speaking of sheetrock…this will be my first time using Grabber GWNS125 Wet-N-Stick Water Activated Adhesive Joint Tape.  I have used the mesh type tape, which is touted as giving a much stronger joint where there might be movement (like along the ceiling-wall joint) but I’m going to see how this goes.

I decided a long time ago down here in bug country, that the only civilized thing to do is buy cases of Alex caulking and caulk everything you can find.  So that’s how we’ve rebuilt the house…probably more caulking than anywhere in East Texas around here.  But we get damn few bugs, says the Orkin man, so that’s a good thing.

Meanwhile,the adventure continues: A large enough part of Wednesday was spent wrangling 3/4” plywood onto the floor of the sun room…so today I will finish up the storm door on that and we’ll be ready to rock that room, as it were.

Then we’ll move on to the real entertainment (after one more bundle of itchyglass insulation to finish off the A/V room.  And today or maybe this weekend, Panama will do the under-house crawl to bring in the feeder line for power from the breaker panel…and then we will be ready for sheetrock.

The most interesting visual feature is the glass block which Elaine insisted on.  5-by-7 block is fairly inexpensive and when framed up with 2-by-4’s, it’s easy enough to put in during the framing and sheathing.  But it will make the sheet rocking a lot slower.  Architectural Digest material it isn’t, but fun, good use of recycled materials (20%) and a check way to turn deck space into something really useful while adding value to the homestead.

As I try to counsel our kids:  If you take all your free time and figure some way to monetize it, like putting “sweat equity” into a home, eventually you’ll come out ahead of the other 99% of humans who sit on their asses and take the dole.

It’s all about wise spending, too:  Thanks to Howard’s visit, we are now the proud owners of a pair of recyled/reclaimed Bose 901’s (series 1) which will be the mid-range speakers at the mixing console/computer.  These will be augmented with a pair of Polk Audio PSW10 10-Inch Monitor Series Powered Subwoofer (Single, Black) (one on each side) and for the tweeters, we’re still thinking about that problem…we may not need them as my hearing is starting to roll off about 14 KHz now, anyway.  And yes, virtually everyone’s high-end rolls off with age….

The cool thing is that thanks to eBay, GREAT 1970’s and 80’s used sound gear on the market, makes it possible to put together a world-class studio (playback) for under $500.  Or, you can just get a pair of Sennheiser headphones and call it good, too, too, I suppose…

For now, my biggest problem in life are mounting a storm door and installing more of that damn itchyglass insulation.

Thursday At the WoWW: Dreamland Ventures

Well, it happened again:  I had another one of those dreams with predictive content.

Rather than bore you with the details (or recount them again, what me being lazy and all…) I will just point you over to Chris McCleary’s National Dream Center site where I posted it (and also on the Peoplenomics.com site).

Also on the topic of dreams this morning, Stu over at the Age of Desolation site – where Nostradamus is the center of focus – thinks with the WoWW dreams I should be ready for what may be out there on the horizon:

George,
Read about your dream today… Holy smoke right on target… very weird about the Frenchman… Henri V perhaps?
I just finished reading Linda Moulton series: http://www.earthfiles.com/index.php?category=Headline+News

April 14, 2014 – Part 10: Hall of Mirrors with A Quicksand Floor

You need to check out the whole series, especially with your dreaming.

Stu

Yep, she writes some darn interesting material, alright.  My dreams haven’t involved any trips to UFOs and such, but if it ever does, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Oh, and if you find me naked by the side of the road in the wilderness, yammering senselessly, get me to a computer.

For now, the focus of my dreaming (off we go into the weird, here, so hang on…) seems to have been this morning’s dream which told me (in no uncertain terms) that I needed to read about “acquisitions in the Boston Globe” this morning and I would find something of interest.

Which I did, and sure enough, there’s there’s story about how Twitter is about to acquire Gnip…but here’s where it get interesting:  Apparently the way Twitter will make dough in this thing is by reselling analytical data from Gnip.

So as near as I can figure it, my “dreamland” input on this stuff is to keep an eye on all the action in data analytics when it comes to social media.

Think the NSA is interested in your personal life?  Well, corporations have an even greater interest because (unlike the alphabet boyz who don’t sell you soap) the corporate customers of all these analytics (read: spying on your habits) ARE going to slice and dice your thinking based on your social and they will try to sell you things.

That, says this morning’s out-take from dreamland, is a very big dead, indeed, and one of the reasons the web is “broken.”  NO ONE reads all the fine prints, but you go write up some social media remarks about thinking about buying a big ticket item (big screen, new car, things like that) and if you watch the web sites you surf and emails, and posts, care to guess what you’re likely to find?

Read More

Where Next: Gold in the Long-term

Coming up with all the assorted ways of looking at various financial data is a whole pile of work and if we can’t use the work product to make a buck, then what’s the point? This weekend we’re going to have a heavy duty chart talk about gold and we’ll lay out some expectations about the future. Even if you don’t hold a single round, you may still find the discussion a useful introduction in how to look at a financial asset and develop a measured view toward the future. I’ll save my own outlook for the end, but you might want to have some lighter fluid and a Zippo handy if you’re a real dyed-in-the-wool gold bug. First, however, a set of headlines to keep the festive midweek mood going…

Markets & Outlook: Conflicted Indicators

I had occasion to head up to Tyler, Texas Monday to meet up with visiting Howard Hill and lead him back to what we jokingly call Deliverance Country here in the outback.  And while I was there I loaded up the car with supplies because we don’t like to shop and it’s 15-miles just to find a gas station around here…

What struck me was how busy the town was.  There were wall-to-wall people everywhere I looked.  Parking lots of shopping areas were full, or darned near.  The Barnes and Noble was busy, Northern Tool had a steady flow of people going through.  But most telling was (to me) where people were hanging around at the Brookshire’s grocery.

They didn’t appear to have any restraints on spending and although there were some good deals on meats, on the high end they had some prime beef which was was staked $22.95 a pound.

OK, far from scientific, but it’s definitely not the kind of consumer behavior that I would have expected, especially given the strength of the online retailers in Monday’s retail sales report.

Yet there are signs that the “End is Near” financially.  One of these is the Baltic Dry shipping index which was down to 989 yesterday and this morning stands at    

These are the kinds of levels that we would expect to see when the country was running into a major recession.

However, as you can see in the chart to the right (if you have a big screen, anyway) the Census data on business inventories has continued to crep up in recent months, including the report out Monday.

Maybe people are shopping out of habit, but not actually buying much…that’s one possibility, I suppose.  And some hints may be had in other data that this may be the case…take the….

Consumer Price Data

Although the market seems (at least for a while) to be ignoring my outlook for a drop in the S&P to 1,750 levels, the strong rally Monday might be a “buy the rumor, sell the news” event looking ahead to consumer price data:

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent in March on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 1.5 percent before seasonal adjustment. Increases in the shelter and food indexes accounted for most of the seasonally adjusted all items increase.

The food index increased 0.4 percent in March, with several major grocery store food groups increasing notably.

The energy index, in contrast, declined slightly in March as decreases in the gasoline and fuel oil indexes more than offset increases in the indexes for electricity and natural gas.

The index for all items less food and energy also rose 0.2 percent in March.

Besides the 0.3 percent increase in the shelter index, the indexes for medical care, for apparel, for used cars and trucks, and for airline fares also increased.

The indexes for household furnishings and operations and for recreation both declined in March. The all items index increased 1.5 percent over the last 12 months; this compares to a 1.1 percent increase for the 12 months ending February.

Read More

Coping: National Dream Center–“Project August”

It’s time to let another cat out of the bag.  You may remember a couple of weeks back, I told you that I’d handed off my www.nationaldreamcenter.com project to Chris McCleary (MBA/MA/EdS) who has now gotten the website retooled and such.  He’s running the site with tons of energy and new content – the thing I never seemed to get around to doing…

About here, I’d remind anyone who is thinking about building a website that one of the keys to success is updating a site with new content daily.and Chris is adding content to the blog portion of the site…

But that’s not the important part.  Project August is.

The idea Chris has come up with is simple:  Get as many people as possible to attempt “dreaming the future” and ask them to dream about a specific timeframe.

So from May 1 to July 31, Chris is trying to line up as many people as possible to dream a specific future (August) and post those before August begins.

The idea is fascinating: Think of the scientific breakthroughs that might follow…. it boggles the mind.

Do you remember the Jody Foster movie Contact?  Where the plans for a radical “machine” show up?  Alien contact is made…or not (won’t spoil the ending of the movie for you). 

Now imagine that the connection between dreams/preconscious states is actually a two-way deal.  In one direction, we go about our waking business, and then “dream” at night as the mind works out the loose ends.

But we also know that things work the other direction, too.  I’ve had at least a half dozen of these events where things in a dream come true shortly after.  Besides the detour/accident dream on our recent adventures in Arizona, there was the one about the airplane with “146” aboard, skidding, but not injuries.  That one turned into an airplane safely skidding off a runway in Pennsylvania:  149 aboard and a week later.

Ever the scientist, Chris is now planning a real community effort to see what bits of a specific period (August) can be picked up in advance.  So drop on by the  National Dream Center site, dream the future and post your dreams…not whimsical crap, stay focused on only dream material – and let’s see what comes through.

Tell all your friends about it to:  We want as many people as possible all collectively “dreaming August” so that we can all look at the data and then see how much of it is fulfilled.  Along the way, I’m encouraging Chris to put out a special report (numbers and data) on August 1st to lay out the “Bell curve” of how the month looks going into it.

Who said you need a laboratory for serious research?  A web site and an inquiring mind is all the tools you need…

Speaking of websites, I’m  about to start up work on my Rural Pioneer website when.the trademark process is complete

I learned something when I started up the UrbanSurvival site in  ‘96 of ‘97:  When you have a catchy name, trademark the hell out of it  Go Google “urbansurvival” and you’ll find there is UrbanSurvival here and more than a million wannabes…all trading on guess who’s idea.

Late Spring: Got Diet Plans?

A note from reader Ray sums it up pretty well…as temps here in East Texas are down into the low to mid 30’s this morning:

Went to bed last night, it was 74. Got up this morning, it was 69 and the flowers & trees were blooming. It is currently 26 and snowing, with about an inch of ground cover — gonna play hell with fruit trees and early crops…

And with world food supplies as tight as they are, we wonder just how close our advice about “grow food of die” is going to get this year.

Tuesday at the WoWW

The World of Woo-Woo meets the world of finance and longwave economics, it seems:

Hello George – Here is my WOWW experience. 

      I was on vacation visiting my mother at our family farm in western PA.  The old farm house is a two story, 4 bedroom. My mother’s room is on the first floor and my room (for when I visit) is upstairs.  I used another bedroom, across the hall to layout my suitcases on an empty bed since I was the only visitor this particular week.

     Mother went away for the weekend with a friend and I had the house to my self.  Important note: we lock all the doors and few have keys.  On Saturday I went to get something from my suitcase and observed a red leather ladies clutch purse ON TOP of my belongings, an item I did not recognize.  This freaked me out since I was the only one in the house the entire time since I last retrieved something from my belongings.

     Mother arrived home the next day and I asked her to follow me up to the bedroom.  I pointed at the red purse and asked, “Do you recognize this?”  She almost fainted and said, “That was my mother’s . . .

Read More

Markets: How Far is Down?

The market is going to rally this morning – and it might even make it back up to 1,840 on the S&P.  But we play the long game around here, and so we begin this morning with a very somber outlook for markets, except as our Peoplenomics subscribers have known for weeks, it won’t be somber around here because anyone with half a brain can make as much (or more) money when markets are going down, compared to when they are going up.  It’s just that that the American public has been hoodwinked into thinking that taking the short side is somehow bad.  Truth is:  Your money doesn’t give a shit.  It goes to the people who make the “right” bet, not the ever-higher economy pap that’s sold by politicians and hucksters; if it’s not too early to draw a distinction between ‘em.

We look at some comments from a “couple of Robins” to get things rolling:  Robin Handler of the Options Signal Service offers this (in small part) to his readers:

This is the absolute worst set-up I have ever seen in my life!  DJI at 4000? Yes! Very possible in the next two weeks.

I am not an astrologer. I am not a numerologist. I just look for anomalies that foreshadow big and unusual events in the stock market.  To quote Bob Dylan, “You don’t need to be a weather man to know which way the wind is blowing.” And if there are dark clouds on the horizon, it is time to “seek shelter from the storm”.

Things have already started happening that I predicted, and could take the DJI down a few thousand points IF the Stock Exchange is not closed.

The issue, he notes is the Cardinal Cross where Pluto goes retrograde and Mars kicks it up a notch around the 21st, so our April 23 “duck date” may be pretty good.  Especially with the battle of words over Ukraine that (in Energizer bunny fashion) just keeps going, and going, and…

The other Robin who always has a a fine perspective on things is Robin Landry who manages client money from his office up in Shawnee, Oklahoma, which he decided long ago was better than the big city rat race.

Landry’s view is less influenced by the headlines, the starts, or any of the rest of it:  He just looks pragmatically at his charts and when it comes to Elliott waves, I put Landry in the same league with Bob Prechter, but without so many calls about the “big one” is here.

Landry’s approach is very measured:  As of last week, he was expecting a bit of resistance in the 1805-1810 levels on the S&P, but at that time his indicators were suggesting that these could fall quickly which leaves us at the 1,740-1,750 levels as the next target zone.  “We’ll just take it one step at a time, George,” is one of his favorite remarks when I pencil out scenarios several wave movements ahead.  He’s been a great teacher.

Read More

Coping: Profits of Doom, A Realist’s View of Gold

As you know, UrbanSurvival was one of the original “doom” sites, and then into prepping, long before it became vogue.  And our present focus  – unlike many of the doom porn and “whip ‘em up” sites – is about making it through the present and still arriving disruptions over the next couple of years with as much common sense as possible.

This morning I had emails galore from outfits like Patriotsomething and Survivalsomething and they were assuring me that Obama has plans to fill up FEMA camps, take away our guns, and all the rest of it.  Oh, and let’s not leave out sites – selling newsletters and what-have-you – that are worked up over changes in law coming July 1 which “…will collapse the US dollar!”

Poppycock and panic sell well…so our first item of business this morning is to remind you of the Wikipedia entry on Yellow Journalism which begins…

Yellow journalism, or the yellow press, is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers.[1] Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism.[1] By extension, the term yellow journalism is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion.

Thus, the difficulty we all face in noisy times, rumors of war, and fast market conditions is sorting out the what from the hype in order to make well-informed decisions.

Thus, whenever I get emails (like imminent dollar collapse, taking guns, or FEMA camps) I do two simple exercises.  First, I look at the manpower picture and secondly I look at “How would I handle it?”

Since UrbanSurvival is mainly about economic matters, the hype (running to typical tax-dodger pandering) about the upcoming start date of FATCA, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, is a fine example.

No, it will not likely cause a collapse of the US dollar and gold going to the moon.  That’s still 2-5 years out.  The purpose of FATCA is to catch tax dodgers and, since the world is becoming awash in computer horsepowe4r, it seems like a reasonable thing to do.

As a regular taxpayer myself, not having any offshore accounts, the impact of FATCA on my life looks to be about zip. 

On the other hand, if you’re got offshore accounts, perhaps even trusts and the like, then yes, it could be a very big deal.  For people squirreling away money, looking to make you and me pay their share of the cost of government, it is a HUGE deal.

IRS has set up a FATCA discussion over here where they try, despite the doomsayer hype, to explain what the purpose of the coming law is:

FATCA targets tax non-compliance by U.S. taxpayers with foreign accounts

  • FATCA focuses on reporting:
  • By U.S. taxpayers about certain foreign financial accounts and offshore assets
  • By foreign financial institutions about financial accounts held by U.S. taxpayers or foreign entities in which U.S. taxpayers hold a substantial ownership interest
  • The objective of FATCA is the reporting of foreign financial assets; withholding is the cost of not reporting.

There are more links to details on the IRS’ individual taxpayer page over here, but every read I’ve done makes it clear there’s no direct impact on people who have no offshore holdings.

So where does the “end of world” hype come from and why are marketers stuffing my inbox with emails telling must time is running out and I need to buy a newsletter to guide me – even though I don’t have a foreign account?

The logic seems to be that because of the reporting requirements, there may be some foreign banks (and multinationals) who will opt out of doing business with the US.  And this, in turn would cause collapse, seems to be the thinking.

Well, not hardly.

First, bankers are addicted to the US consumer like the suckerfish that swim with whales.  They need us more than we need them.

Secondly – and I keep screaming this at the top of my lungs:  We are in a period of DEFLATION which is where CASH IS KING!  Read your history.

When crap hits the fan in the markets, the Big players have to sell everything including the kitchen sink and, yes, that gold they have been dabbling in.  So it will come down with the market, methinks.

Here’s how I think it’s going to play out:

Between now and say fall of 2015 or 2016, the bonds will continue to be a fine place to park money.  Three years ago, we opted for a 1/2-gold, 1/2 bonds approach to financial assets, even realizing there is a penalty on holding gold bullion of 30% on the gains – which is why we only have (ahem…) a lone gold coin.  But bonds have been a blast, too.

But fully 60% of our net worth is tied up in something even more important:  Fee simple, paid for real estate in a rural area.  We keep the taxes current and focus on the one thing that really matters:  Keeping our break-even (“the nut”) as low as possible.

When you work with serious money for a while, it becomes clear:  You can (and should) manage both sides of the personal financial statement:  The income and the outgo.  Everyone works on the income side, but few focus on reducing costs (except the New Minimalists and some Millenials have caught on to the hype fest).  And that leaves a whole bunch of  50+ people who don’t take time to read the details to panic and make wrong decisions.

Now, as for the history:

The USA is in a longwave economic Depression.  The Fed’s plan (unlike the 1930’s event) has been to step on the gas as much as possible to keep the effects of the Depression from being widely felt.  In order to do this, they have been printing money like crazy.  M1 is going up recently (basis last three months) at an 18+ percent annual rate.  Yet prices are not going to the moon.  Up?  I didn’t say they weren’t.  I said they were being supported.

The recent increase in M1/M2 is in lieu of the quantitative easings, which the Fed is trying to roll out of.  Reason?  The Fed now has a balance sheet of better than $4-trillion dollars, which is almost 25% of a whole year’s worth of GDP.

The problem with those assets?  (Mainly bundles of loans and such…) Well, the Fed and the mortgage outfits are totally screwed if the public – en masse – decides to walk out on the paper held by the Fed.  When someone stops paying, the value of a mortgage quickly free-falls toward zero which is why it’s so important to keep loans out of the “non-performing” column.

Again, this is precisely what economics would predict in a deflationary depression.  The Fed is trying to “build a bridge” over a terrible part of history over a gaping economic valley that could (and may) swallow the whole world.  Right now, we are still a year or two out from the bottom, which will come when bond yields get down to the zero level and we’re getting close.

But here’s the absolute key thing to remember:  America’s dollar will NOT go to zero any time soon.  But, if it does, the price of paid for real estate (*if you could find a buyer) would go to the moon, Jupiter, or the stars.  The government has a vested interest in making sure that doesn’t happen.

If the US dollar DIDN’T FAIL in the last hellatious depression (1930’s) then I keep asking myself, why would it now?

To be sure, at each turn of the great cyclical economy of the whole world, things tend to move “next country west” and so, this time around Asia looks like a decent hangout for people with money and we note that folks like commodity legend Jim Rogers aren’t in the US doing their trading.

Even so, the British pound didn’t fail in the last Depression, and so the US – even if losing its grip as the reserve currency – will likely follow the path of the UK in the last depression. 

Not that buying gold won’t be a good idea in time…. a year and maybe three or four. 

It’s just why would you buy gold when the long term chart has only recently begun to move up – and only a bit?

From the really long-term perspective, gold looks to me like it has done a major peak (back at the $1850’ish level) and has done a wave 1 down, a wave 2A, wave 2B, and we are in wave 3 now with a target of $1,400.

Unfortunately, however, after that, $1,000 or less comes into view.

The problem most people have is that they don’t see relative values in a long enough time scale.  A quick look at the ultra-long chart of the 10 or 30- year treasury ought to bring you to your senses.

The perfect time to buy a home (for new families) will be when the long term rate bottom is just in and that doesn’t seem to be right now. 

So we sit back, calmly watching the worrywarts and the hype festival in the inbox, an realize (as we point out to Peoplenomics readers twice weekly) the long game is what matters and the ultra long game matters above all.  People have a hard time with that, but a “Foo and his goo are soon poo…” to Shakespeare it.

THIS IS NOT TRADING ADVICE. 

Since making money is so much like golf, this is how I’ve teed up and it’s my shot for the green.  We can make adjustments when comes down to putter time.  For now, hand me a 7-iron, would you?  The chip shots are for our Peoplenomics.com subscribers (who make UrbanSurvival possible, by the way).  But occasionally we’ll review the Tee shots here…

The Future Close At Hand

All of which doesn’t get us past grabbing at the Tums or taking a swig on the Kaopectate/kay-0oh-poop-straight as things look likely to head into major conflict conflict window.  As I wrote in one of my rare Sunday Strategic notes on March 16:

While you go dust under the bed, for the Spring Scary Season, the smart money around here has circled April 23rd, or thereabout, for the full-on military moves to begin in eastern Europe. 

And just to toss in a dash of Pickapeppa sauc (4pack), here comes a note from G.A. Stewart, author of the Age of Desolation and a/the leader in modern thinking on Nostradamus:

George,
A reader sent me this video clip on March 9th, after things with Russia began heating up.  Father Malachi Martin: Vatican insider.
Listen at 11:55

Question: Does Russia still play a roll in the Miracle of Fatima even though the Iron Curtain has come down…
Father Malachi Martin: It does, it does… Russia will be converted by my Immaculate Heart…
… So, Russia is still within the plan.
…That would take me too far afield into Papal Secrets.
…Why Russia and Kiev are involved in the final solution to this problem, but they are.

The plan is in man… Father Malachi Martin proves it.

Read More

+ More