After watching the final presidential debate (North American version) I found myself outraged at the politicizing and pussyfooting around the serious issues in this U.S. election. Both candidates were equally to blame, as anyone other than a dyed-in-the-wool supporter would be forced to admit. Snarky rejoinders and hurled barbs took the place of statements about substantive issues that divide the electorate.

Were this clown circus not simply meant as 'entertainment' for the ill-informed, it would have been a complete disaster for the purpose of providing a proper context for what ails the United States of America.

And the clock is ticking. There is less than mere days remaining until the election itself, yet the nation is still hopelessly divided. How is it possible that the country of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson has put forth two such disliked and tainted individuals to serve as the heads of their respective political parties? How is it that this once-great country has sold itself so cheaply.

Bonfire Of The Vanities

The one thing that this election cycle proves is that my beloved former country is in the midst of crashing and burning ... spectacularly.

Never in all of my 87 years have I witnessed this level of spite and angry vituperate remarks from one candidate to another as from Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. It is simply well beyond the bounds of the usual political devisive discourse of previous elections.

Regardless of the outcome of this political battle, the United States of America itself will desolve into a bloody class civil war. How sad!

I will probably receive a lot of heat for this post, but I would only ask that you read it in full before passing judgement, The editor/administrator of one of my most often read internet blogs, Jim Quinn of "The Burning Platform", has absolutely nailed it with regard to our current electoral circus. Check it out at:

The Burning Platform

Here is a partial quote from Martin Armstrong of Princeton Economics, a rebel-rousing debunker of anything governmental. Armstrong is someone I read daily in my meager "media briefings".

".... Hillary’s pick for Secretary of the Treasury will be Larry Fink, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BlackRock. He will get to sell all his stock in Black Rock tax free. This is why these people take these positions in addition to ego. They have to sell their shares and the law allows them tax-free status because this is a requirement. Why do you think Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson from Goldman Sachs took that position. Besides helping Goldman, they get to cash out tax free."

Hm-mmm, I didn't know THAT. Did you?

ARMSTRONG ECONOMICS.COM

USAEXIT

A Note To Those Who Still Remain Behind:

We are deep into The End Of The World as we know it). The Dark Days are upon us. The inescapable truth is that the world is almost certain to experience change (both good and bad) of such a magnitude that will have a massive impact for the majority of the unsuspecting world’s population for years and probably decades to come. It is, alas, the coming reality of humanity's Great Regression.

We are the generations that must adapt to these painful changes. And there is no short term action taken by any of our governments that can alter the bad outcomes. They have tried, and failed. And that, as even those who are slumbering in denial would admit, is something that everybody already knows.

Our politicians, those who would lead us, those who make the laws that govern our lives, have mostly sold out to the lobbyists and peddlers of graft and corruption. As we see daily, those with the deepest pockets with which to buy the votes are those who reap the vast rewards of these ill-gotten gains. The rest of us, and the 47% as they are so dismissively called, cannot win this lopsided political game of exploitation. This is not conspiracy theory run amock, this is the sad reality of our lives today.

However, simply escaping from oppression is not really what it's all about. What is needed is finding a place where you and yours can practice and enjoy peace, harmony and gratitude in the company of like-minded people in these protracted hard times ahead.

Those who have 'Eyes To See and Ears To Hear', will act. Those who don't, well ……...

There is more. Check out: Vilcabamba Healthy Living.

NEWS ..... THAT YOU WILL ACTUALLY LOVE!

I just stumbled upon a news link that blows away all the competition. It is where the new generation of information gatherers go for their perusal of "what's up" in our world.

WWW.OZY.COM

Try it. You'll love the 21st Century graphic interface .... Guaranteed!

The Times They Are A-Changin'

.... Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won’t come again And don’t speak too soon For the wheel’s still in spin And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’ For the loser now will be later to win. For the times they are a-changin’

Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don’t stand in the doorway Don’t block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’ It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. For the times they are a-changin’....

Bob Dylan

Ayn Rand Nails It .......

“When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing; when you see that money is flowing to those who deal not in goods, but in favors; when you see that men get rich more easily by graft than by work, and your laws no longer protect you against them, but protect them against you. . . you may know that your society is doomed.”

Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand

(p. 413 ; Francisco d’Anconia to Bertram Scudder)

Earthquake Here In Ecuador

About the earthquake. We are fortunately far from the coast, which suffered most of the damage and loss of life …. now reported in the hundreds. Our little village of Vilcabamba felt a brief but stomach-churning trembling and both Loja and Cuenca received little or no structural damage. Strangely enough, although Japan had a similar 7 point quake a couple of days before ours, there was less damage and loss of life there than here.

A Thousand Cuts ....

This brief YouTube video clip says everything to be said.

The person speaking will perhaps surprise you. Listen and learn who it is.

Who Is Walter O'Brien?

While listening to a Podcast that often offers interesting interviews (Tim Ferris of “The 4 Hour Workweek fame”) I came across a conversation with Walter O’Brien during which O’Brien mentions that to his mind Bill Gates was one of the most successful people he knew ..... and why.

Now, dear reader, let me state my own personal bias about this matter of the PC versus Apple. My first introduction to any computer was a Kaypro II back in 1984. It was also the machine upon which I learned to code. A year later I purchased my first Mac, the Apple IIe. Since then I have never owned any other computer than a Mac.

In fact for many years, and even now to some degree, I have always bought into the whole marketing rivalry of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and the founder of Microsoft Bill Gates. Of the two machines I always found Apple to be more elegant and intuitive to use than Microsoft’s. Bill Gates was simply, to my mind, the ‘nerd computer freak’ versus Steve Jobs as a master salesman/inventor/artist.

But damned if Walter O’Brien wasn’t right about Gates being the most successful of the two men .... and the richest.

In the last 12 years of his life, Jobs did reinvent himself and his business not once but several times, and finished far ahead of his rival. He built the most valuable business in the world--creating more than half again as much wealth for his shareholders as Microsoft.

As Walter Isaacson writes in his highly readable biography, Jobs "revolutionized six industries"--personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing--and he "reimagined a seventh"--in creating the stores that became shrines to his memory in the days and weeks following his death from pancreatic cancer.

But in the end, much like the old fable of the “Tortoise and the Hare”, it was Bill Gates who crept into first place on the totem pole of success, with not only the financial benefits but with his wife Melinda Gates philanthropy as well.

Oh, and just who is Walter O’Brien? He is the Irish born, 197 IQ president and founder of Scorpion Computer Services ..... which you really ought to Google and get acquainted with him.

Beauty and the Beasts

Shown above is a photo of Nomi Prins, a VERY bright woman who has been a managing director at Goldman Sachs, ran the international analytics group as a senior managing director at Bear Stearns in London, and worked as a strategist at Lehman Brothers and analyst at the Chase Manhattan Bank. Nomi Prins is also a renowned journalist, author and speaker. She is currently at work on a new book, "Artisans of Money", that will explore the recent rise of the role of central banks in the global financial and economic hierarchy. Her last book, "All the Presidents' Bankers", is a groundbreaking narrative about the relationships of presidents to key bankers over the past century and how they impacted domestic and foreign policy.

In short, the lady knows whereof she speaks. The effected 'Powers That Think They Be' don't even attempt to contradict her assertions of their "dirty deeds", she blows them out of the water every time. Remember this woman .... she brings important information to the table.

The REAL Reason Psychedelics Are illegal

“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”

– Terence McKenna (American philosopher, psychonaut, ethnobotanist, lecturer, writer and author of several books. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, culture, technology and the theoretical origins of human consciousness.

Ritalin and the Day-Dreamers Amongst Us

My paternal grandfather was a doctor, a physician specializing in psychiatry. However, he always thought of himself as a neurologist, that subsection of medicine dealing with the nervous system. HUGE difference between the two practices.

At its core all psychiatry is a collection of theories expressed by humans who still cannot define the ‘psyche’, ‘mind’ or what it to be ‘human’. Even the cult founder of psychiatry, Schlomo Freud (you probably know him by name of Dr. Sigmund Freud who died as a cocaine addict), acknowledged that since ‘mind’ cannot be examined by collecting and codifying all human behavior - - except by means of classifying the subject in question as being either ‘sane’ or 'mentally ill’.

Granddad never believed in that controverial psychiatric distinction. My father’s older brother, also a M.D. physician, but who called himself a psychiatrist, did. Different generation and different belief system.

This so-called ‘science’ known as psychiatry is based on criteria listed in the widely used “Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals of Mental Disorders”. In other words, criteria made up by the psychiatrists themselves that has generated much criticism, including the National Institute of Medical Health, which argued that the DSM is both unscientific and subjective. A good example of this is to be found in term “Attention Deficit Syndrome”, otherwise known as plain old inattention by those of us who habitually looked out of the school windows day-dreaming during boring classroom lectures. Today you get the prescription medication called Ritalin for that.

Both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who invented Apple Computers, along with a bright guy named Einstein, were dreamers ... and none of them were forced to take Ritalin back then. Oh wait a minute, “Attention Deficit Syndrome” had not been invented by the psychiatrists yet. Hmm-mmm, ‘Nuff said?

"A Wicked Storm This Way Comes"

In the midst of the elder-age season of my discontent, I see that there is already a wicked storm beginning to sweep across the land of North America. However, most folks are too distracted by their iGadgets and the imbecilic political campaigns to notice. Just so long as we can Twitter, text, post selfies and amuse ourselves with other electronic opiates, the longer we will remain unconscious to the dangers around us.

What we are now experiencing is but the lull before the actual storm. Despite those lightning flashes over on the horizon, few are heading for the safety of their storm cellars. The potential for catastrophe is exceedingly high and burying our heads in the sand is not a viable strategy.

“The people have been permitting a small cadre of elitists, billionaire financiers, corporate chiefs, propagandist media moguls, and crooked politicians to make the choices dictating the path of our country since the 2008 dawn of this Fourth Turning. The choices they have made and continue to make have imperiled the world and guaranteed a far more calamitous outcome as we attempt to navigate through the trials and tribulations ahead. Their strategy to “save the country” by saving bankers, while selling the plan to the public as beneficial to all and essential to saving our economic system, has proven to be nothing more than the greatest wealth transfer scheme in human history.” - theburningplatform.com