Bad Luck, Diversity, And Bank Robbers

“Isn’t it supposed to be bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her wedding dress before the ceremony?” – Kill Bill Volume 2

I got mugged by six dwarves.  Not Happy.

There is such a thing as bad luck.  A neighbor of mine told me a story of when he was a kid.  He and his friends were throwing dirt clods at another group of kids.  Now, I remember doing exactly that.  Dirt clods were perfect for throwing because when they hit the ground, they exploded in a puff of dirt that I pretended was a grenade.

Pretending I was blowing up my friends.  Huh, sounds like a Unabomber childhood when I put it that way, doesn’t it?

Regardless, my neighbor said that one of the other kids got a dirt clod in the eye.  Why threw it?  I don’t think they ever figured that out, but my friend was the only one sued.  Why?

Every cloud has a silver lining.  Except a mushroom cloud.  That’s probably cobalt or strontium.

His dad owned a bank.  As I recall from the story, his dad’s insurance company ended up settling the claim.  No one said, “Oh, bad luck.”  There certainly doesn’t seem to be a place for bad luck in our world, but sometimes bad luck really does happen.  I mean, once upon a time a fortune teller that I would have to suffer with eight years of bad luck.

“And then things get better?”

“No, you stop suffering because you get used to it.”

To me, this seems unfair, but remember Law School Lesson 101:  never sue poor people.  It’s a variation of the Willie Sutton school of law, when he responded to the question of why he robbed banks with the answer of “Because that’s where the money is.”

I want to own a bakery just so when someone walks in and points at a cake and asks, “Is this gluten free?” I can respond, “No, that’s $16.50.”

That’s one part of the equation, but the second part makes it really rough:  massive damage awards.  Ask Alex Jones about the nonsensical $1 billion jury award against him.  Why not a trillion?  It’s not like Alex Jones has a billion dollars, and it’s not like they can strip being “Alex Jones” from Alex Jones, so if they take Infowars™, well, he’ll be in business the next day with a new company.  And if they take that, yet a new company.

Poor people are lawsuit-proof because they don’t have money.  Alex Jones is lawsuit-proof because (like James O’Keefe) his company is him.

Since most companies can’t hide behind the idea of being Alex Jones, they have to have a defense.  The defense?

Standards.

David Hogg has personally sold more AR-15s than Palmetto State Armory®.

If a company does the same thing the same way all of the time, and if every other company does that exact same thing the same way every time, it’s now a Standard.  While a company can certainly be sued if they screw up, it’s a pretty good defense to say what Ma Wilder described as a weak excuse, “Well, everybody else is doing it.”

So, if you ask Proctor and Gamble™ if they would jump off a cliff if everyone else was doing it, the answer is probably something like:  “If that would help us actualize projected profits in the near term and help build organic growth in the sector, that would be a strategy we would engage with.”  Or, in human terms, yes, yes they would jump off a cliff if everyone does it.  Sadly, this throttles innovative products.

This also leads to a herd mentality in large companies.  “Does Disney™ have DEI?  Well, looks like we need DEI, too.”  These companies realize that there is safety in numbers.  Sure, they want to be different, but they all want to be different in the exact same legally non-actionable way.

If being a diversity hire is a good thing, why don’t we publicly name them so they can celebrate it?

This (in part) has led to the extreme pliability of the companies to Woke propaganda, and their quick rebound once Trump was elected.  Was Google© all in for Kamala?  You bet.  Has Google™ swapped their maps to “Gulf of America” at the same time removing Black History Month©, Pride Month™ and scrapped targets to not hire white guys?

Yes, yes they have.

This surprised me.  I was expecting these companies to keep being part of the ResISTanCe since they actively opposed Trump during his first term.  Either they were neutered during and by the pandemic, or they’re horribly afraid of Trump and Elon.  Or they’re worried about the inevitable wrath of Barron when he reaches his full height of 65 feet (1 kiloliter).

In the end, there really is “bad luck”.  Now, I don’t think that everything is bad luck, I mean, when that double amputee tried to rob a bank?  That wasn’t bad luck.

After all, he wasn’t even armed.

Charity, Corruption, And Bad Jokes About Iron

“Get out your pocketbooks and remember it’s all for charity.” – Groundhog Day

I told that joke to my blind friend and he didn’t see the humor in it.

As we pass through this next week, I’d like to remind everyone that Trump hasn’t been in office even a single month (seventeen years for GloboLeftists) at this point.  One argument that I’ve seen the GloboLeft chattering class attempt to make is that USAID® is “too small to worry about, it’s less than 1% of the budget”.

This is a continual talking point, so you know that the GloboLeftElite is coordinating them to make this point.

So, we are presented with the Paradox of Federal Spending as presented by the GloboLeftElite:  “Every small budget cut is too small to matter, and every large budget cut is impossible to make.”  I supposed I should call it Schrödinger’s Budget.

But in context, USAID™ funding is fifty billion dollars.  Doing the math, that’s $600 for a family of four.  .

Every year.

So, too small to matter?

No, $600 would matter to a lot of folks.  I mean, that’s a dozen eggs nowadays.

That seemed really funny in 2003.

But there is a much, much bigger picture here.

If the family of four had that extra $600, would they donate it?

  • Would they donate it to an AIDS clinic in South Africa so that African prostitutes could get AIDS treatments?
  • Would they donate it to Peruvian comic books to propagandize LGBT politics to Peruvian children?
  • Would they give it to a luxury hotel in New York City to house illegal aliens with the nightly bed turndown service and the little mint on the pillow that they so rightly deserve?
  • Would they donate it to a charity with several hundred million in the bank that pays their CEO $10 million a year so the charity could pay for oxygen for a 71-year-old with emphysema from smoking in Malaysia?

These are all real examples.  Nothing I made up.  This is where your tax dollars are going.

So, what would that family do?  Would it give it so they could see how monkeys act when they’re on cocaine?  Or would they use it for their own, selfish purposes, things like buying food for the family?

A guy I know quit coke.  He said it was the end of the line.

Well, they don’t get to decide, because unelected (and, to listen to the GloboLeftElite) entirely independent bureaucrats whose decisions are unreviewable by anyone get to decide how to spend that money.  Not the American public.  Not the State Department.  Not Donald Trump.

And certainly not you.

Back before Pa Wilder passed on, I’d go visit him when I could, and go to church with him.  On one Sunday we went to church, and the pastor prayed, “Oh, and I pray that the president and congress don’t pass welfare reform.  In the spirit of charity, those people need help.”

I’m sorry if you don’t like that meme.  Welfare jokes hardly ever work.

I got very, very angry.  I rarely get angry in church, except for those times I got burned with holy water, but that’s another story.  In this particular case, though, what made me mad was the idea that charity comes from the government.

No, charity doesn’t come from the government.  Charity is a conscious choice.  If the government gives someone money, it took it from someone else.  It wasn’t voluntarily given.  And if you think taxes are voluntary, I encourage you to stop paying them and send me the result of that experiment.

No, welfare from the United States government is a cruel parody of the idea of charity.  It is money taken by force from people who may not want to give it.  That’s bad enough, but it gets worse.  Since it’s given not by an individual or church but rather the government, the welfare is often resented by those that get it.

Yes.  Resented.  Because the act of welfare creates a system where the recipient is unconnected from the donor.  Not only that, it is money given without any obligation on the part of the person receiving it, so they experience no growth.  Additionally, there is no gateway to limit the recipient to people who are worthy.

I say it’s a parody of charity because real charity provides benefits to the giver as well as the receiver.  It is a virtue, but when force is applied it is stripped of meaning to both.

Would Ferrous Bueller’s Day Off be considered an Iron Man prequel?

This, perhaps, is the greatest tragedy of USAID.  It was taken over by GloboLeftElite bureaucrats.  The most charitable interpretation is that the agency was then taken over by people that Jerry Pournelle wrote about in his Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

“First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

“Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers (sic) union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

“The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.”

But “iron woman” isn’t a superhero, it’s a command.

This is the very kindest way I could describe the situation.

In my opinion, the more likely reality of what happened at USAID is somewhat different.  I think that $50 billion in funds dispersed on bureaucratic whims attracted corruption, and that corruption spread until nearly the entire organization was corrupt, top to bottom and fully in the hands of the GloboLeftElite to spend on themselves and to spend to increase their power.

But I’m betting they’d say my viewpoint is less than charitable.

Here’s Johnny: The Inevitable Return Of The Podcast

Streams will show up at 9EST (click the link below), that’s in less than an hour!  (and we typically pregame for five minutes, so it really starts up at 8:55PM)

Mrs The Mrs – YouTube

Funniest News On the ‘Net.

 

In this episode:

  • Conversation Street
  • Jackass of the Week
  • Thinkrealfast
  • I Heard It On The X

Winning The War: The Trump Blitz Vs. The Corrupt Media

“Sir, look, you’re on the cover of Time.  Listen:  “In as single week Agent Sean Archer has ordered a stunning series of blitzkrieg-style raids on the hideouts, staging grounds, and safe houses of our nation’s assassins.’” – Face/Off

And then after a few weeks they didn’t need to come for anyone anymore, because things were pretty good. (All images are as-found.)

The onslaught from Trump has been seemingly neverending.

If ever there was a difference in performance, it has been Trump 45 versus Trump 47.  Trump 45 was weak, and hesitant, and filled the administration up with RINOs or left in place Obama’s minions, but I repeat myself.

The goal for both RINOs and Obama’s poison pills was the same – to thwart Trump at every possible juncture.  Remember General Flynn getting fired after getting set up by the FBI?  Yeah, that was a different time.  Now, a D.O.G.E. staffer Xeeted “I was racist before racism was cool” and was fired.  And then rehired, because Trump 47 is no longer letting the enemy set the terms of engagement.

I wonder if Trump will eliminate green cards for the Mexican players?

The idea is simply this:  come out swinging, and don’t stop.  Ever.

Not every punch needs to land, and not every punch that lands needs to do damage, but the idea is to dazzle the opponent and keep them so distracted that they can’t engage their Mechanisms of Media Distortion.  Imagine that the entire nation is being reclaimed based on the plot of a Roadrunner™ cartoon.

Obama was wonderful at using the Mechanisms of Media Distortion.  First, AP® news would report a “story”.  Now, it would be a “story” in the sense that an event probably did occur.  Probably.  I remember walking near a Major University Campus when there was an Apartheid protest.  Oops, an Anti-Apartheid protest, sorry for that mistake, but I hope you’ll forgive me since the protesters were all white.  Anyway, there were three news crews out filming the six “students” who had two signs.

I saw the story on the news that night of the “big” protest, where all of the shots were tight so that the scarcity of protesters wasn’t apparent.  The big Anti-Apartheid protest was just a handful of people, but they got five minutes on a thirty-minute local newscast.

Anyway, a “story” happens.  This is then magnified by the Lens:  the New York Times™ picks the topic up, writes about it, and tells the rest of mainstream media what to think about it.  Reality must be carefully defined and curated for the public.  Why are GloboLeftist memes walls of text and not generally funny at all?

Because they have to define reality.  They have to have you look at the world in just this one very specific way, “Girls win at girls gymnastics” so they can get to a ludicrous and unsupported conclusion, “so women should be able to swim just as fast as a man pretending to be a woman.”  Here’s an example:

Less ready to do what?  Take 41% casualties before contact with the enemy?

Why do all stories have the same conclusion?  Because everyone is looking for the way that the Lens has spun it, and then they go with that opinion.  The sad thing is that this series of lies from the Mechanisms of Media Distortion work on people who aren’t particularly up on the issues, or don’t think critically about what is being told to them.

This takes time for the Mechanisms of Media Distortion to work their mental magic.  And this takes their focus to craft the narrative.  Trump 45 moved at a glacial pace in comparison, and in the end was almost like Obama’s third term the way he was obstructed from outside and from within.

Not Trump 47.

He is moving so fast that by the time one issue hits their consciousness, another one is loading up.  He jabs with the left hand (Greenland, Gulf of America) and punches with the right hand (D.O.G.E.).

The jabs from the left hand are calculated to drive the emotional outrage cortex of GloboLeftists.  “Gulf of America, he can’t do that!  It’s been the Gulf of Mexico since, well, for a long time.  It’s outrageous that he’d even suggest such a thing.  And Greenland, how can he do that to the Danish?  They, um, make great pastries.  And Legos™.  Yes.  He can’t stop the flow of Legos©!  And South Africans?  They colonized all of those Bantu that moved to the area after the Boer were already there.”

Genius!

That means it’s working.  See some of the jabs . . .:

Jab.

Jab.

Jab.

Jab-jab-jab.  Can you hear the GloboLeftist minds crumbling?

While the jabs do damage when they land, they also distract.

Trump is using the full power of the presidency, and he’s also slugging with D.O.G.E.  Check out the meme on how D.O.G.E. was made possible by Obama below, but 47’s people were genius there as well.  The power of the presidency absolutely includes control and oversight of the parts of government that are a part of the executive branch.

That face you make when you feel your own petard hoisting you, and not Michelle.

In the first ever in my lifetime actual, honest to God, transfer of actual power, Trump 47 didn’t wait.  While Tulsi and RFKjr are jabs, the real punch was landing on day one all of the political appointees that actually administer the government agencies and branches.  Those people were entering their new desks on January 20 and January 21 and cracking skulls and listing the names of the deadweight to be removed.

Hegseth not confirmed?  Who cares.  The new Under-Under-Undersecretary of the Air Force is ready to fire the DEI cancer that is over at the Air Force Academy.  Body blow.  The EPA Director of Whatever is firing everyone who has “Environmental Justice” on their record.  Gone.  Poof.

And D.O.G.E.?  It’s the biggest blow of all.

When I grew up on Wilder Mountain, it was a really dry area – I never once saw a puddle caused by rain at my house.  The land was sort of a sage-prairie, but I did find out that if I kicked over a random rock, there would often be dozens of bugs.  And when the dry atmosphere hit them, they’d scurry to dig back into the ground so the hot light of the Sun didn’t dry them up until they withered up like Nancy Pelosi without a vodka tonic.

BUGS3

The GloboLeftElite have focused on D.O.G.E. because it’s their money supply.  And don’t forget, there are plenty of RINOs that are a part of the GloboLeftElite.  They are part of the group that is fed and watered by whorehouses like U.S.A.I.D. after the money has gone through several siftings.  They get huge book deals for books that don’t sell, and form their own foundations to get their slices of graft.

Never Trumpers were Never Trumpers because they simply won’t go against their funding mechanism.

There is only one difference between people like this – at least a prostitute is honest about why she’s doing what she’s doing.

I think that’s the face you make when you find out your money has been given to George Soros to influence elections to elect GloboLeftist D.A.s who hate you.

The reaction by this type of person is telling:  they are shouting out against those who are uncovering the corruption and graft.  That is the genius of D.O.G.E. – it removes the timing for the Lens to focus attention, and then the GloboLeftElite are left to try to figure out how to defend the indefensible.  Elizabeth Warren’s quote below is a prime example.

But she said it in Hindi.  Oh, she’s not that kind of Indian?

Now, the GloboLeftElite is cherry picking their pet GloboLeftistElite judges to give the most nonsensical rulings in the history of American jurisprudence:

  • one ruled that even invalid and illegal payments had to continue,
  • another ruled that properly appointed members of the Treasury Department were prohibited from . . . doing their jobs, and
  • one ruled that the president has to keep a specific Biden-appointed lawyer on and couldn’t use another lawyer.

Yes, nonsense.  The GloboLeftElite are panicking.  And well they should be, this is an avalanche, and is the single biggest political event to have occurred in my lifetime, and is likely the biggest political event since Civil War 1.0 or Civil War 0.0 (the Revolution).

It’s bloodless, for now.  And Trump 47 better get on voter registration and voter I.D. and building a vote-irregularity machine for 2026, otherwise the GloboLeftElite will try to do anything they can think of to claw back power.  Don’t be deceived that the Democrat™ party is has less approval than slime (but I repeat myself again) at 34%, since a charismatic leader can easily lie his way into office.  Their survival mechanisms are engaged.

If Trump keeps punching, though, their reactions will keep damning them.

Oh, and who else besides me is going to vacation at the Gulf of America this year?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Trump Crossing The Rubicon

“I can take you to the Battle of Trafalgar, the Antigravity Olympics, Ceasar crossing the Rubicon, but Sheffield it is.” – Dr. Who

Julius Caesar had a nap before crossing the Rubicon.  The rest is history.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  6. Open War.

Volume VI, Issue 9

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I considered moving the Clock O’Doom down a notch, but the illegals protesting lawlessly including injuring innocent bystanders who disagreed with them.  Beware: it can notch up quickly.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly.  The advice remains.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Crossing The Rubicon – Violence and Censorship Update – LAST CALL Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Full Spectrum War – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Crossing The Rubicon

On January 6, 2021, Donald J. Trump did not cross the Rubicon.  As his supporters entered the Capitol Building, he could have egged them on to stay and actually occupy the building.  He did not.  That was a moment in history where Trump could plausibly have conducted a counter-coup on the government.

He did not.

The counter-coup really started on January 20, 2025.  As Trump entered office, his strategy was entirely different – but more on that on Wednesday where we’ll discuss tactics.  No, the “how” is important, but the “what” is even more important.

The “what” is this is the most seismic moment in United States politics since Civil War 1.0, and perhaps since the American Revolution (or, as commentors have noted in the past, Civil War 0.0).

Quite simply, Trump has crossed the Rubicon by tearing into the Deep State, the entrenched bureaucracy that exists to perpetuate itself.  Oh, sure, that’s what we thought it did, but it turns out that that same Deep State functions to fund jobs for all of the Marxists Grievance Studies graduates the GloboLeftElite schools can produce.

And it appears to be a money laundering operation for the politically connected, with layers of foundations paying each other money, much of which originates from federal spending.  This spending has been obscured for so long that the Deep State though no one could ever find it.

D.O.G.E. found it, or at least billions of it.  I think when it’s all said and done that we’ll see that it’s an octopus with tendrils in everything.

Oh, that’s if they’re allowed.  This information is already causing the Democrats to behaving in the worst way possible:  defending the obvious corruption, with one of the corruptcongresscreatures actually saying “the public has no right to see how the government is spending money.”

They’re acting like the person who found the evidence of the crime is guilty.

The immune system of the GloboLeftElite has been activated:  the lawsuits and injunctions have already started, with the latest (and most ludicrous) one indicating that properly appointed staffers of the Treasury Department aren’t allowed to do their jobs.

So, Trump crossed the Rubicon.  Legally.  Devastatingly.

But now that he’s done it, there are not choices for him.  Trump (and Musk) have to win, have to follow this through, because if they don’t, the Deep State will convulse and likely send both of them to prison for life.

I’m not kidding.

This has already driven the GloboLeft rank and file to despair – they see the corruption that Trump is uncovering, and know they shouldn’t defend it, yet they can’t help themselves.  The fact that the federal government gave George Soros $28 million to help elect GloboLeftist D.A.s to increase the violence in big cities and that GloboLeft senators and representatives can’t denounce it?

Or the employees?  We know at least partially how they spend their workdays:

Tells you everything you need to know if they’re fine with the U.S. government paying a foreigner to influence local elections.  It’s because if they do what the Deep State wants, they’re rewarded with wealth and power in private sector jobs or in foundations.  You don’t denounce that which is making you unjustly rich.

There is danger here, yet this is perhaps the only offramp left to keep the nation out of Civil War 2.0.  Will it work?  Probably not – the odds are still against it.

But it sure is fun to watch.

Violence and Censorship Update

What a difference a month makes.  Facebook® has unleashed slightly less Orwellian speech after having criminally cut it back during COVID.

Even BlackRock® took some time out to tell the truth:

And hard GloboLeftists at CNN™ (but I repeat myself) are getting the boot:

And Hillary and Harris were caught giving Nazi salutes – amazing that their initials, H.H. weren’t noticed before now!  Of course, it would be silly to say that, right?

But, active violence is out there:

And the GloboLeft is starting to plan:

LAST CALL:  Biden/Harris Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month, and get a next to final look at what Biden has done.

Up.  Again.  I’ll keep tracking, since misery is a key driver for civil wars.

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time.  They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings.  As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence in December is down slightly, (remember, New Orleans is in January).

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it is up slightly.

Economic:

The economy is stable this month.

Illegal Aliens:

Will Trump stop them from coming?  Yes.

Full Spectrum War

In any conceivable actual Civil War 2.0 scenario, I know that most people have been looking at AntiFa® and have found them to be laughable.  They really are, since the mainly consist of women who haven’t seen a shower since George W. Bush left office and stick-boi soy men who couldn’t bench press the bar.

And, yes, we’re right to not worry about them so much, since they really aren’t a physical threat in a stand-up fight.

But it’s not just them.  What about those who are planning attacks on infrastructure?  That will happen in the middle of the night.  Who will help them?  Well, the FBI has given tons of explosives to their informants in the past, I can see them giving the real deal to GloboLeftists as payback.

And it’s not just them.  Trump has been deporting people, and threatened the cartels.  How many divisions do the cartels have?  Well, I’m not sure, but they do have battalion level force, and they’re used to operating in the shadows.  Out of fear, they’ve been very careful to avoid Americans who weren’t involved in the drug business, but if Trump declares war, they’ll infiltrate many urban areas like the Viet Cong.  Places like California could certainly put their full governmental weight behind this, especially if they choose secession.  And don’t think the Chinese wouldn’t fund this and provide weapons and ammo caches for them.

This will, more than anything, tend to racialize the war against Hispanics.  Lee Kuan Yew is relevant in this situation:

Again, if D.O.G.E. works out, fully 10% of the workforce of the United States will be kicked out of their silly make-work positions and some of them will be desperate, and many of them have been indoctrinated with Marxist ethics.

Do I think we’ll win?  I do.  But don’t believe that it’s going to be a cakewalk – it will be gritty and ugly in ways that will echo the worst of what happened in Cambodia.  But most of that will happen in cities, so, keep your head on a swivel if you want to remain in one.

Who knows, maybe Congress will issue letters of marque again?

Maybe that will solve a lot of problems:

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky.  Thanks so much, Ricky!!

BAD GUYS

https://x.com/i/status/1883502057547792836
https://x.com/i/status/1882323535219372335
https://x.com/i/status/1883704353481261395
https://x.com/i/status/1884339789706510755
https://x.com/i/status/1881800907563974771
https://x.com/i/status/1882952723022393813
https://x.com/i/status/1882430089293594789
https://x.com/i/status/1882222790297989403

GOOD GUYS

https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/armed-la-residents-patrol-neighborhoods-violation-evacuation-orders

ONE GUY

https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/n-c-doordash-incident-serves-as-warning-to-gunowners-about-limits-of-self-defense/
https://abc7chicago.com/post/shooting-charlotte-nc-doordash-driver-keshawn-boyd-charged-death-matthias-crockett-claims-defense/15832601/

BODY COUNT

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14253155/LGBTQ-people-reveal-outrageous-reason-buying-guns.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14258593/Number-children-killed-guns-America-soars-85-decade-school-shootings-hit-record-10-year-high-figures-show.html
https://wtop.com/national/2025/01/firings-freezes-and-layoffs-a-look-at-trumps-moves-against-federal-employees-and-programs/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2025/01/21/coffee-badging-employees-avoid-office-mandates/77731723007/
https://www.wola.org/2025/01/weekly-u-s-mexico-border-update-trumps-first-days/

VOTE COUNT

https://pridepublishinggroup.com/2025/01/29/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won-here-are-the-numbers/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_cabinet_of_Donald_Trump
https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-states-voter-laws-trump-demand-california-2020823
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5109332-johnson-voter-id-california-disaster-aid-trump/

CIVIL WAR

https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-farewell-letter-civil-war-swipe-donald-trump-2015286
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/trump-inauguration-white-power-politics
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-01-27-only-american-president-trump-resembles-jefferson-davis/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14326283/Texas-teacher-ICE-raids-students.html
https://www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwatch/stewart-bloody-civil-war-rhodes-stage-trump-rally-after-release-prison
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2025-01-15/days-thunder-civil-war-20-shaping-us
https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/01/25/the-cold-civil-war-is-over-we-won/
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/illinois-counties-exploring-succession-would-be-welcomed-in-indiana-house-speaker-says/3649511/
https://www.newsweek.com/california-independence-could-2028-ballot-2020785

Choose Your Fate

“Okay. Put it in your pocket. It’s yours. With the rest of those wallets and the register that makes this a pretty successful little score.” – Pulp Fiction

If Snow White gets tired of feeling Sleepy in the bath tub, is it okay if she feels Happy?

I think a lot about what could be versus what is. Probably too much, sometimes.

What sort of examples? Well, a piece of walnut could be turned into fine furniture that might be used for hundreds of years. Or it could be burned in a fireplace and turned into ash.

That’s what I’m talking about. Yes, both of the results are useful, but one has enduring value while the other is ephemeral. Yeah, if it’s the single piece of firewood that keeps you alive for a night, well, that’s a goal, but in all the years I spent cutting firewood, not a single stick ever lived up to that level of valor. In fact, some sticks are downright bad, when a doctor presses my tongue down with a stick, I feel depressed.

There are other things, though, since I’m done talking about my wood. There is the split between having a high IQ and the performance that comes from that. Yes, generally higher IQ is correlated strongly with having a higher wealth and income, but I’ve seen geniuses who wasted it all. Athletic ability is in there, too. How many potentially great athletes disappeared because they had the work ethic of lightning: they followed the path of least resistance?

In France, is marijuana called oui’d?

I could go on and on with examples of this, but I’m thinking that these are enough. And, generally, it’s not firewood that I’m concerned with as much as human potential. A wasted stick of mahogany is one thing, but a wasted Isaac Newton is a tragedy. Man, after a few pints, Isaac really was a mess: Leibniz really pissed him off somehow.

The biggest part, I think, of turning human potential into achievement is something very simple: language. In one sense, I think we speak the world we live in and ourselves into existence. When I say, “I’m going to write a post today” that changes my future. There have been several times I’ve promised something like, “And I’ll have a great post on Monday” and I was very pleased with the result of what I created each time I said that.

You have to know your limits.

We take, I think, potential and will it into use. There is no time, ever, that I achieved something great and that it was something that accidentally happened. Dead Roman philosopher Seneca said that luck is when preparation meets opportunity, but the preparation took place in order to prepare for the opportunity. Thomas Jefferson didn’t just wake up one morning and decide to write the Declaration of Independence. Nope. Jefferson wanted to write it. Plus, they knew if Franklin wrote it that it would have been filled with jokes that everyone would have missed until after the FedEx® horse and buggy dropped it off to the king.

I’ve noticed that when I say that I’m going to do something, that’s 90% of the way to success in whatever I had planned. Today, for instance, I wanted to write a post that didn’t focus on politics or the cares of the day (that will come on Monday with the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report) since I felt I wanted a brief change before jumping back into the fray. So, with that declaration, I looked at some notes I had scribbled down, and saw that there were three that were related.

And I started writing.

Words, then, crystallized my vague intent into something specific.

The policeman was arresting me for counterfeiting, but I gave him 50 crisp $17 dollar bills and he let me go.

This brings me to the final point: the difference between potential and achievement is words, but with intent. Nothing (generally) happens in my life without intent. Sure, there are accidents. Sure, there are the things that other people do that change my plans, but more often than not, the only real barrier to any achievement that is physically possible is me failing to put my goal into words and intent.

I think that intention is important. Without intention, all I see are obstacles. If my goal becomes to achieve, however, I start to try to focus in my mind ways to achieve my goal by going around, through, or even using those obstacles to my advantage.

The final point is:

What is it you are here to do?

Why are you here?

If you’re unhappy, why aren’t you changing your circumstances? Until we draw our final breath, we have choices. Sure, I don’t have the same wide array of choices in this world that I did when I was 18, but there is still a lot of runway left for me to say those words that lock in the intent.

Did Noah keep the bees in the Ark-hive?

I’m here tonight writing because I want to be. I’m going to get up tomorrow morning because I want to. And I know I haven’t written the best essay I’m going to write, because I know that’s in front of me, not behind me. And I know that the grandest revelation isn’t behind me, it’s in my future.

So, almost everyone reading this today has the option to make the work that they do with the rest of their life a pile of ashes, or a piece of furniture worth being handed down.

Maybe I’ll make a recliner. That way my grandkids could say, “Me and this chair go way back.”