September 2023 – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Invisible Recession

“1000 points of light . . . recession bad, recovery good . . . I think I’ve got that.” – The Naked Gun 2 ½: The Smell of Fear

If Dodge® makes an electric car, will they sell Dodge© Chargers™?

Inflation has really started to bite here in Modern Mayberry. I’m not sure about the Big Cities, but I’ve begun to notice it around here. Today at lunch I made a trip to McDonald’s®. It’s rare, most of the time (if I eat lunch at all) I eat at home. It’s more convenient, and I really, really hate lines, but this was a late lunch and I could drive straight to the window. But hey, for me, it’s the McChicken®.

The prices at McDonald’s® have gotten silly. Whereas there used to be enough value in a Big Mac™ to make one of them (occasionally) worth it, it’s just not the case nowadays. I didn’t spend too much time pondering the price on any of the burgers, since I could get nearly a pound of steak for the price of the average burger-fries-drink combos. But again, for me, it’s the McChicken™.

What a fun, cool, happening place, if you can get 3-for-free!

Why are people not going out?

The prices are silly.

I think (and I might be wrong) that our local McDonald’s™ just has to match the prices that are (more or less) nationally set by some sweaty accountant in Chicago wearing a Grimace™ costume and questioning the life choices that led him to have to report every day to Stacy, who is forced to wear a Hamburgler© costume. I can’t see the labor around Modern Mayberry costing nearly as much as in a bigger city. The food, I would imagine, costs exactly the same as in the bigger cities.

The result? I’ve noticed that the lines are much shorter at the local fast-food restaurants, even at peak hours. One of the regional chains hasn’t raised their prices, since all of their restaurants are just scattered around Upper Lower Midwestia and they don’t have to worry about the price of a Quarter Pounder™ in Manhattan. Their lines are the longest in town, so I follow Yogi Berra’s advice, “Nobody goes there anymore, that place is too crowded.”

Since COVID, my favorite local restaurant has closed. It was a bona fide restaurant, great service, great food. Supply chain issues coupled with labor oddities and lower business slowly torpedoed them. They liquidated before they lost a lot of money – they saw what was coming and wanted to go out on their terms.

I’ve been told that McDonald’s™ was sued once for bugs in their food. They won the case – no one on the jury believed they used any natural ingredients.

And our world got a little bit smaller, so we now have dinner somewhere else. It’s cheaper, but I notice that both of the places that we normally go aren’t very busy anymore. And the waitresses that work there aren’t changing jobs anymore – the good ones are keeping their jobs now. Something tells me they’re a little harder to get now.

So, if you’re counting restaurants and the people who work there (and those that used to own them) Modern Mayberry definitely has fewer restaurants. The revenue in the town might be the same, but there are (my guess) 20% fewer customers.

This is the invisible recession.

I always carry some McDonald’s® fries when I walk the dogs in winter. Fries go great with chilly dogs.

It’s invisible because I’d imagine that, even though McDonald’s® is (visually) selling less McFood©, they’re charging more. So, higher prices times lower volume is probably about even. But the value created to the consumer is far, far less even though revenues might be neutral. Unless you count eating healthier food than McDonald’s™ makes as value. Heck, Ronald has killed more people than Pennywise.

I suspect this is going on everywhere. Wages are certainly not keeping up with daily expenses, and those who are less fortunate haven’t had raises that have kept up with inflation. And why should employers pay more? In a recent month, a net 1.2 million jobs were “created” but 600,000 Americans lost their jobs. They were replaced by immigrants (illegal or legal).

Thankfully, corporate profits were saved!

It’s better than when he ran the farm using Artificial Intelligence and had to reboot it all before the power outage – AI, AI, Oh.

Interest rates are up, and I expect they will continue to go up because there is no semblance of any fiscal adulthood in Washington, D.C. on either side of the ball. The Democrat mantra of “spend more” is always followed by the Republican response of, “Well, okay, but not quite that much” as the dance of the destruction of the currency continues.

I hope I’m wrong, but this is based on the bet that politicians will continue to be weak and craven, and that 2024 is an election year. What do politicians like during an election year? A good economy with low inflation. Failing that, politicians like distractions and spreading money out like AOC on a Saturday night. If you can’t make a good economy, fake one.

More money floating around means . . . more inflation. But if wages aren’t going up because there’s a massive influx of illegals?

Just more misery, especially for those at the lower end of the pay scale. All of the typical Leftist voting blocks will be rewarded, of course. The standard Leftie professor at the average Leftie college (but I mostly repeat myself) will get raises because the Left takes care of itself and funds itself. The Left believes in the state and uses it as a propaganda and funding arm. Why do drama programs get special federal funds?

Because they vote Left.

I guess the finale was shot before a live audience.

But real Americans that aren’t tied into the ecosystem of government gimmes are seeing their difficulties multiply. Me? I’ll still mainly skip McDonald’s© and save a few bucks and have more steaks and fewer fries. But the invisible recession is already here, at least in Modern Mayberry.

But, hey, for me? It’s the McChicken™.

Mechanisms of Control: Information

“He who controls information controls the world.” – Babylon 5

I was trying to finish a puzzle. I asked The Mrs., “Can you help me finish this one? It’s supposed to be a bird.” The Mrs.: “Put the Froot Loops back in the box, John.”

Last Wednesday I wanted to write about the mechanisms of financial control. Of course, there’s always more to write – that post was less than 2,000 words, but if I took the time I could probably write another 20,000 or 80,000 words.

It’s the same with this post. Even beyond propaganda, a big part of the game is information control. What information do we get, and where does it come from?

For quite a long time (I haven’t put any effort into going back in time, but it’s been here a while) the control of information has been used to actually create the news that Mainstream Media® uses. Sure, an earthquake is true and fair news. But 90% of the news that we are presented with in any given day isn’t news. Just like “processed cheese spread” or “buttery sauce” don’t contain anything resembling actual cheese or butter, most of the news we have is “manufactured news product” and doesn’t contain much news at all.

Have you heard of Karl’s sister, Onya? She invented the starter pistol.

A perfect example is George Floyd. He was a felon and junkie who died of an overdose. He wasn’t choked. George Floyd died because he had enough fentanyl in his system to kill Ecuador. The “news” created by his death was used and amplified for a purpose. In a normal world, Floyd’s death would have been ignored because “junkie dies of overdose” is another name for “Tuesday”.

Likewise, any sort of violence perpetrated by a white guy against (generally) black people is amplified, often to a national level. But the reverse? It’s suppressed and ignored to the point where black people think (really!) that they are the ones who are the victims, despite the fact that in 2021, 87% of violent crimes between black and whites were committed by blacks on whites.

But if black people watch TV or read the media, they’d be shocked and think that white people were the ones hurting blacks, and not the other way around. Why? The story that they’re selling is that white people are awful, and they’re willing to bend the language on a whim to make it so.

I bet they ADL® really hates pandas. They’re black, white, and Asian.

Racism used to mean that someone felt a race was superior. Now? According to the (rapidly disintegrating) ADL® it’s an explanation of why white people are bad and can never be not-bad no matter what they do.

My thought is that the Floyd death was amplified to put out a trap for Trump. Trump’s media coverage was uniquely and pervasively negative for a president. Remember when it was national news that Trump got an extra scoop of ice cream? Pepperidge Farms® remembers. And I do, too. Anything, and I mean anything Trump did became the big complaint of the media.

The Mainstream Media® always has an agenda. But who feeds them news? The Left. The organizations on the Left are the primary news sources. Like scriptwriters on Disney® movies, they create news stories that meet what they need for their organization’s goals regardless of reality. Also, like scriptwriters, people doing the news don’t really have any need for the Truth if it gets in the way of what they want you to think.

Other things are not very truthful, either. Global Warming® is one of the stories I just can’t escape when I watch the news. But how have they twisted the truth in . . . the weather? Here’s an example:

I enjoyed all four seasons of that weather show on Netflix®.

I’ve seen others. In the span of only ten years, those that want to sell fear to bring viewers have taken the same temperatures and cloaked them in a dangerous red color. Is it hot in summer? Yes! And that’s why the stories about Global Warming Climate Change™ all show up then. And they will every summer, even if it gets colder.

So, news is created by Leftist organizations, which include:

The Media (including entertainment),
Most of the Fortune® 500,
Most Schools,
The ADL®,
The SPLC,
Most Colleges,
Military General Officer Corps,
Most Religions, and
Almost Every Government Agency.

These organizations pump out press releases daily which feed the news cycle. Who fact checks them? Why, a compliant media! Snopes® is run by Leftists, and expecting the Washington Post® to correctly fact check Joe Biden? You’d have better luck pulling out your teeth and leaving them under your pillow for the ADL® to bring you a shiny new quarter.

I’m a racist. I just hate the 440-yard dash. Too long for a sprint, too short for distance. And turning it into the 400 meters didn’t help.

This news is then pumped into the heads of Leftists, nonstop. Places like Google® and Facebook™ and YouTube© where alternative viewpoints aren’t allowed. Think that the Vaxx® was a big mistake? YouTube™ is still censoring that one.

Leftists, for the most part, I’m not concerned with. If they ever stumble upon these posts, they won’t be able to read them. They may be smelly virgins without a hope of ever having babies, but they’re not illiterate. If I say the sky is blue, they’ll immediately ask for a source because the Right to them is worse than Satan.

When no one laughed at Neil Armstrong’s Moon landing jokes, he’d just say, “Well, I guess you had to be there.”

They don’t want to think, in fact can’t think, about some of the concepts that I write about here because their amygdala will stop them from listening. Literally, a Leftist can’t read one of my typical posts without getting so angry that they can’t read it.

No, I write for the Right, and I write for the middle. The Right is self-explanatory, since I’m on the Right. The Middle have been the people the Left is targeting. I’m sure that they believe that they can convince the Middle if they deprive them of any other viewpoint.

The Left is excellent at that. They want to tighten down Twitter, er, X®, Facebook™, Instasnap©, MySpace©, and any other place that the Right can disagree with the Leftist narrative. Wonder why the newspapers eliminated the comments sections? The Right was (and is!) amazing at getting points out that countered the information goals of the Left.

Quite simply, from their standpoint, that had to be stopped.

AOC had to write an essay in college about genocides. Took her a long time to decide if she was for or against them.

Again, remember that the “news” you get from the Mainstream Media™ is simply not news, but a product, like “buttery spread”. It isn’t news. Have some fun with it – count the number of stories in a day that you come across, and see how the Left is trying to manipulate you.

When you see it, you’re free to make your own opinions. And free to wake others up.

Mandela Effect, John McAfee, And Whale Sex

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” – Hamlet

If someone commits first degree murder in Canada, is that 34 degrees in non-metric murder?

The posts have been pretty heavy recently, so I thought I’d do a changeup before we dig back into the heavy stuff next week. I’ll start with a bit about John McAfee:

John McAfee was being interviewed by Wired magazine back in 2013 (LINK). In the middle of the interview, McAfee pulls out a revolver and dumps the ammo. “This is a bullet, see?”

The interviewer responded: “Let’s put the gun back.”

McAfee puts a single bullet back in the revolver and spins the cylinder, which holds only five bullets. From the article:

Nothing happens. He pulls it three more times in rapid succession.

There are only five chambers. “Reholster the gun,” I demand.

He keeps his eyes fixed on me and pulls the trigger a fifth time. Still nothing. With the gun still to his head, he starts pulling the trigger incessantly. “I can do this all day long,” he says to the sound of the hammer clicking. “I can do this ten thousand times. Nothing will ever happen. Why? Because you have missed something. You are operating on an assumption about reality that is wrong.”

To be fair, a good stage magician could do this, so I have to doubt it since I wasn’t there. And McAfee? While he was a “presidential candidate” he Tweeted® out about the really important issues of the day:

Really.

This is probably number one in my category of “answers to questions no one really ever asked” file. But, yeah, John McAfee actually Tweeted© that.

The closest argument is that, if the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, John McAfee really does die a lot in alternate realities, like all those Mario® corpses I accidently killed by walking into turtles in Super Mario Brothers™.

What’s the Many Worlds interpretation? Simply this, that whenever a clerk asks “paper or plastic” the answer is “yes”. When there’s a decision or a probability that something happens, all the things happen. The catch, though, is that the Universe branches at this point, and those decisions and probabilities themselves bring new universes into being.

I won’t go into the details, since you can read if you’re interested and you’d be bored if you’re not, and I’ll bet the incredibly intelligent Frequent Commentors will engage in a lively debate as to the relative crackpot level of Many Worlds. For this post, let’s just call it a convenient way to create a nearly infinite number of parallel universes right next door, but (probably) disconnected from our reality.

I put in the probably because for a long time I’ve thought that the Many Worlds interpretation might explain the Mandela Effect pretty well.

I actually ran into the Mandela Effect before it existed during a conversation with The Mrs. one evening. We were watching a TV’s Funniest Game Shows on Fox® when we were newly married. Richard Dawson was narrating. I have written about this once before, but this is a (slightly) different take.

Me: “What? Richard Dawson is dead. He died in 1989 of lung cancer. I remember reading it in the paper one morning.” In fact, I remember it specifically as in January or February of that year.

The Mrs.: “Yup, I remember the same thing.”

I used the pull-start on my Briggs & Stratton two-stroke Pentium® computer and dialed into the Internet and, after the modem made those squeaky-fuzzy sounds found . . . Dawson was alive. This was despite The Mrs. and I having had exactly, down to the month, the same memory of his death, from the same time and cause.

I wonder if parking would be difficult in a parallel universe?

It’s not called the Richard Dawson effect, it’s called the Mandela effect because a group of people were convinced that South African leader communist Nelson Mandela had died in prison in the 1980s, versus his actual death in 2013, and this surfaced around 2010.

One of the biggest examples of this that people share is something simple – the Fruit of the Loom® label. I had a memory of this logo looking as a variety of fruit sitting in front of a fruit cornucopia. I even asked (while The Mrs. was cooking dinner a few years ago) for The Mrs. to describe the logo.

The Mrs.: “An apple, and some grapes, maybe another fruit, all sitting in front of a cornucopia.”

Me: “Which side is the cornucopia on?”

The Mrs.: “The right side.”

I showed her the picture below of the logo with the cornucopia.

“Yes, that’s it, exactly.”

Except the Fruit of the Loom™ people say they’ve never had a logo with a cornucopia. They say they’ve never had a cornucopia in their logo, though they been asked about it plenty. But it’s not just me. The painter of the album cover for the 1973 album Flute of the Loom had some thoughts about the logo:

And the way I remembered it on my t-shirts and underwear? This logo looks exactly like it, though I’m nearly certain it’s a fake:

The only other really big one for me is the character of Jaws from the James Bond movie Moonraker. I’m not old enough to have seen it in theaters, so, like every male since forever, I was watching it on TV the night it premiered for the first time on network TV.

Back then, every guy at school had seen Moonraker the night before. And the one scene that made us all laugh? When the great, hulking character Jaws had been rescued by a tiny little blonde girl named Dolly. Jaws smiles at Dolly, exposing his metal-filled mouth. And the funny, payoff scene is when Dolly smiles back, and exposes a mouth filled with braces. Love at first sight, and hilarious. You can see it in the clip below:

This is exactly how I remember it. Exactly. And exactly what the guys were talking about at school. And, like the t-shirt above, it’s almost certainly a fake, too.

When I discussed the scene with The Mrs., despite never watching Moonraker together, she remembered the braces as well. In her words, “Without the braces, the scene just doesn’t make sense.”

But when I checked the streaming version of the movie, well, no braces on Dolly.

Can I explain Richard Dawson, Fruit of the Loom©, and Dolly?

No, I can’t. And the memories are interesting because they’re so very specific. It’s almost like there’s something else at play. Back to the Wired article on John McAfee:

To illustrate his point, he takes out his pistol. ” Let’s do this one more time,” he says, and puts it to his head.

Another round of Russian roulette. Just as before, he pulls the trigger repeatedly and nothing happens. “It is a real gun. It has a real bullet in one chamber,” he says. And yet, he points out, my assumptions have proven faulty. I’m missing something.

. . . I’m not seeing the world as he sees it. He opens the door to the bungalow, aims the gun at the sand outside and pulls the trigger. A gunshot punctures the sound of the wind and waves. “You thought you were creating your reality,” he says. “You were not. I was.”

He pulls the spent cartridge out of the chamber and hands it to me. It’s still warm.

If John McAfee really is dead, you damn well better believe it’s consensual.

Livestream at 9EDT – Episode 101 – News, Politics, Beer

Livestream in less than 30 minutes!!! We’ll start early, about 8:55EDT for the pregame – link will appear at:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUskuritR5P3BBJpOr5gzhg/streams

Funniest News On the ‘Net.

In this episode:

Politics
Basketball
That Guy Walking Across The Atlantic
Riding Shotgun
ThinkRealFast.

Catch it live or on replay!

Mechanisms Of Control: Financial

“You must not take the Controller away. We will all die! The Controller is young and powerful. Perfect!” – Star Trek, TOS

Song lyric idea: “The Beautiful Sheeple, The Beautiful Sheeple . . .”

Currency started out innocently enough. If I wanted to sell my wheat and then buy some beer, well, I could trade my wheat to the brewer. But what if the brewer had all the wheat he needed, but needed, oh, hops? My wheat would do him no good. There is evidence of a guy making beer in the Bible, after all there’s a book in the New Testament named Hebrews.

I could try to trade my wheat to the guy who grew hops, but if he didn’t need any wheat, what was I to do?

The problem that currency solved was a simple one – how do I trade with someone who doesn’t need what I have? How can accountants get into amusement parks? How can ATF® agents do, well, anything since absolutely no one has any use for them?

The solution was some sort of medium of exchange. In one sense, it’s magic. As long as everyone believes, it works. When used judiciously (i.e., backed by gold on demand) it transforms into something that is hard to manipulate – what we’d call money.

How do you greet a German wheat farmer? “Gluten tag.”

When backed by nothing, (like now) it’s simply cash or currency.

The history of the last fifty years (and the last twenty, especially) has been the history of printing currency out of nothing and then giving it to a few small groups, and then they use the cash to buy up everything.

Once a group owns everything, there’s no reason for them to worry about profit: they already own all the things worth owning. That’s BlackRock©. The Aptly Named® Larry Fink runs it, and it’s no longer about profits, it’s about control based on his ideology.

What does Fink expect you to do when it’s cold? Huddle around a candle. What about when it’s freezing? Maybe then Larry will let you light the candle.

People (last I checked) still drive cars driven by sweet, sweet internal combustion engines. Those internal combustion engines (for the most part) require sweet, sweet crude oil to be turned into gasoline and diesel. Yeah, ethanol exists and so does biodiesel, but those can’t pull the load, and ethanol actively takes food out of the supply chain.

What if, however, the United Nations leaned on banks to get them to stop the supply of oil by choking off the supply of cash to oil producing nations?

If it wasn’t clear before, it should be clear now: it’s not about humanity or human rights – it’s about control.

Is the reason Saudi Arabia has so much money all the oil cash, or that they won’t let their women spend it?

Please don’t believe me, believe them when they say it. Here is the head of the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) saying that “central banks will have absolute control over all money (sic)”. This is in how each dollar (or whatever unit) is used, what people are allowed to buy, and what people are prohibited to buy.

Why do Central Bankers drive Ferraris®? Because you’re okay with a Fiat©.

One thing I know that they’d love to do is to make money evaporate to force people to spend rather than save. This can be done with electronic currency, and I expect they will do it to make sure that people can’t save and are forced to work every day of their lives.

Even more than now.

35% of Americans think they’ll max out at least one credit card this year.
38% are using their cards for expenses that they never used a card for.
62% are considering a “side-gig”, even if they already have a job.

-Fintech Times, July 25, 2023 (LINK)

Things are looking down for many Americans. When it comes to the point of using credit cards for financing life, it’s getting rough – I know, I was in that trap when I was in my 20s. I’ve seen it here in Modern Mayberry where the labor market is now getting tighter, and more people are looking for work. Employers can now be a bit choosier, which will put downward pressure on wages. The reason for this is simple: people aren’t going to McDonald’s®, they’re eating at home for half (or less) the price.

Another sign of control: in a recent month, 1.2 million “native or heritage”, (i.e., Americans actually born as Americans from American parents in America) lost their jobs. They were replaced by 600,000 immigrants. Low-cost labor is still being imported, and putting even more wage pressure on the middle and lower classes. The Biden administration even ordered that some of the gates in “The Wall” be welded open, which defeats the whole “wall” idea.

Looks like that Bill Gates was in charge of the wall, too. Look at all the Windows®.

To paraphrase William Jennings Bryant (among others), it is difficult to get a person to voice dissent when their next meal requires them to agree. That, then, is the nature of control of economic systems as demonstrated by BlackRock®, the BIS©, and the World Economic Forum™ – the desire is to make it so that the average person cannot resist without being kicked outside of the system that provides food, shelter, and the occasional luxury.

I’m sure it would be easy to start your own Central Bank . . . oh, maybe not.

Even that deal is in danger: the desire to dramatically change the way that people work and live is on the table for these groups. Who, exactly, do you think wants you to live in a pod and eat the bugs, and not own anything? Owning everything that matters isn’t enough – they want to own everything, and make your ability to have anything depending on you giving them all of yourself.

Even your thoughts.

And to think, all we really wanted was a beer. I guess it was pretty expensive.

Civil War 2.0: A New Hope And The End Of Biden?

“I give hope to men.” – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

“Hope to see you soon!” isn’t what I want to hear from my doctor.

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

Volume V, Issue 4

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

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 – A Sign of Spring – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Fall of the House of Biden – 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 810 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

A Sign of Spring

A recent survey came out from the University of Michigan, which did a survey of high school seniors. The result didn’t particularly surprise me: high school boys aren’t a little more “conservative” – they’re a lot more to the Right. It has declined a bit since the high point in 2020, but there was no corresponding uptick in the boys turning Leftie. High school boys are nearly 2 to 1 on the Right.

It doesn’t surprise me. Part of the war of the Left has been a war on manhood, and you can see the increase in feelings on the Right corresponded well with politicians, the media, and companies like Gillette® telling young men that they’re awful, trying to convince them to emasculate themselves, and flat out trying to tell them that they’re really girls deep down inside.

This has sparked a backlash, and the Leftists will probably have lost an entire generation of young men. As an example, a bunch of Leftist researchers from Oregon State tried to get engineering and computer science students to take a survey about Leftist gender gobbledygook. The (primarily male) STEM students roasted the survey so hard that several of the transgender researchers were made even more mentally unstable having to read the responses that conflicted with their carefully created safe-space of ideas.

Of course, the response to the survey was that there needed to be more “reeducation” for the young men. That will, of course, just push all of them farther Right.

I will note that girls in high school (who have been Lefties since probably forever) did spike upward with the Supreme Court abortion ruling to their highest level, ever. I’m not particularly worried about this, because I think most of the high-quality men will be on the Right, and, well nature will take its course.

And bad times? Bad times bring out the Right in people. And, those are certainly not here, but they are coming.

Violence and Censorship Update

We’ve had much more violence than censorship lately, so let’s start off with the Mayor of Chicago (who sadly beat the meme-worthy Mayor Beetlejuice) has determined the reason that violence in Chicago is so bad. Thieves? Criminals? No, continuing the logic of the Left, the causes for violence are inanimate objects, like cars, guns, houses with glass that’s too fragile, and people who look like they might have more the $5.

In Stockton California, two 7-Eleven® beat the everloving snot out of a thief who felt that he could take his time while stealing thousands of dollars of cigarettes. The bigger crime is that the clerks who defended justice in such a wonderful and amusing way were vilified by the California press. Wonder why there’s crime? This is why there’s crime. The Stockton police say the Sikh men who beat on the criminal won’t be charged. I won’t make this into some sort of Sikh joke.

Antifa members walked after a Leftie jury found them not liable at a civil trial. The Left can and will continue to be violent as long as there are no repercussions of note, and it is certainly not in the interests of the Left, who hold the reins of power in cities like Portland, to stop them.

Part of our language is having a variety of words for things. Part of the very worst, most Orwellian type of censorship is removing those words and changing their meaning. Case in point, the word, “Woman”. It has existed in every language, ever. Yet now, we have woke CEOs who now try to police the language of people who aren’t even a real percentage of their actual customers. Harry’s Razors® will probably not be the new Bud Light®, but you can see it from here.

Ignoring this, of course, will have the real, simple words that have been in our language AS LONG AS WE HAVE BEEN HUMAN eradicated or shifted in meaning to the point of uselessness. Thus, this attack is censorship. Just ask Trish:

Lastly, I’m sure Mr. Musk will be in for trouble as he points out one of the biggest advocates for censorship on the Internet:

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again. I have no idea why that would be, with leadership as smart as this (note, Lathechuck corrected that Harris (probably) never said this, but she’s said so much other stupid crap I didn’t fact check this one):

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 is up, slightly – I was expecting more during a long, hot summer. I’m guessing that people don’t even notice it anymore.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was nearly dead flat. Biden is unravelling, so this may increase a bit.

Economic:

Economic numbers are swinging back down again this month, but I expect October will be a bit more interesting after earnings reports.

Illegal Aliens:

The border numbers are up only slightly, and I think that (shockingly) the government may just be lying or that the Border Patrol is being told to leave the illegals alone. Why would I think that?

And the result is that anyone trying to do anything to stem the unrelenting tide is called out.

The Fall of the House of Biden

Okay, maybe that title is a bit too much, but we’re deep into election season and there’s no real sense that Biden is doing anything or will do anything. The first hint is that Kamala is nowhere to be seen, but, then again, that might be part of the campaign because, well, she’s Kamala.

All sorts of other bad news are coming out now for Biden. There is yet more information showing up that would indicate that the vote was, at the very least, suspect in the only places that were required for him to steal the election. I think this is intentional, and I think it’s because the Left wants Biden out. Why? He’s a horrible, horrible liability every time he opens his mouth.

The playbook for the 2024 election is starting to show. They’ve also let slip that the prosecution of Trump is entirely political. The rumor is, and I stress rumor, is that the prosecution of Trump is being done in coordination with the Biden White House. It certainly fits the setup to prosecute Trump, but also bring Sleepy Joe down, too. His bizarre behavior certainly hasn’t helped:

I mean, really, who would let their child anywhere near a Biden?

But I’m sure the other candidates aren’t fake at all:

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12432283/Welcome-Hell-Inside-El-Salvador-mega-prison-12-000-gang-members-held-plead-food-medicine-terminally-ill-dying-them.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12417537/Newly-released-images-final-distressing-hours-five-Mexican-college-students-cartel-thugs-forced-one-victims-decapitate-childhood-friend.html

https://nypost.com/2023/08/22/border-patrol-admits-its-responsible-for-open-floodgates-in-arizona-border-wall/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12390343/Brazen-thieves-ransack-YSL-store-California.html

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/crime/boosters-fencers-cleaners-cartel-criminals-retail-theft

Good Guys

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12424809/Moment-hero-Michigan-gas-station-customer-calmly-shoots-robber-armed-box-cutter-holding-six-pack-Miller-Lite-beer.html

https://crimeresearch.org/2023/08/cases-where-armed-citizens-have-stopped-active-shooter-incidents/

One Guy

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230818-rich-men-north-of-richmond-the-hit-song-that-has-divided-the-us

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/24/1195655023/the-rise-of-oliver-anthony-and-rich-men-north-of-richmond

https://www.today.com/popculture/music/oliver-anthony-rich-men-north-of-richmond-song-meaning-rcna100667

Body Count

https://studyfinds.org/united-states-mortality-rate/

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2023-07-11_11-13-16.jpg?itok=SnHr9qTF

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12395233/Suicides-hit-record-high-year-nearly-50-000-Americans-took-lives.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12409321/Americas-addiction-crisis-laid-bare-TWO-THIRDS-adults-family-member-hooked-drugs-alcohol-one-10-lost-overdose.html

https://twitter.com/i/status/1693837585905250364

Vote Count

https://archive.is/R30H2

https://capitalresearch.org/article/report-how-charities-secretly-help-win-elections/

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fpjmedia.com%2Fnews-and-politics%2Frobert-spencer%2F2023%2F06%2F19%2Fnow-they-tell-us-new-report-reveals-critical-vulnerabilities-in-dominion-voting-machines-n1704516

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/08/25/georgia-ttv-says-they-have-the-goods-on-state-voter-rolls-in-2020/

Civil War

https://jonathanturley.org/2023/08/14/age-of-rage-uchicago-report-finds-30-million-american-view-violence-as-justified-to-keep-trump-for-power/

https://www.eurasiareview.com/30082023-us-civil-war-2-0-a-horror-scenario-that-is-becoming-increasingly-likely-oped/

https://ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2023/08/24/trump-talks-civil-war–assassination–election-lies-with-tucker-carlson-on-debate-night

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/25/sarah-palin-us-civil-war-donald-trump-prosecutions

https://newrepublic.com/post/175257/maga-georgia-state-senator-trump-trial-civil-war

https://michiganadvance.com/2023/08/12/gop-rep-maddock-on-tape-were-going-to-have-a-civil-war-or-some-sort-of-revolution/

https://truthout.org/articles/georgia-republican-warns-of-civil-war-if-case-against-trump-proceeds/

https://www.newsweek.com/pro-trump-lawmaker-fears-civil-war-if-fani-willis-isnt-defunded-1823253

https://news.yahoo.com/mehdi-hasan-shows-why-civil-054756823.html

https://theconversation.com/america-is-on-the-brink-of-another-civil-war-this-one-fuelled-by-donald-trump-210937

https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-united-states-election-2024-serious-threat/

We Already Know The Solutions

“Watch your top knot.” – Jeremiah Johnson

Bill Clinton thought Hillary would be a good president: “There’s no chance she’ll blow it.”

Alexander the Great is said to have solved the riddle of the Gordian Knot in 333 B.C. Whoever solved the Knot, the legend said, would rule all of Asia. Alexander took one look at the large and complex knot, pulled out his sword and cut right through it. I think Alexander was certain that he’d be successful and that no one would challenge his solution since he had, you know, an army with him. I guess you could say he was so confident that he was knot sure.

One of the things that I’ve seen fairly consistently in my life is that, like Alexander, I generally know the answer right when I see the problem. Some of them, like calculus problems, it took a lot of work to get the answer, admittedly, but there was no place when I said, “Well, if only the Federal government had a Federal Bureau of Solving Calculus problems, I’d be set.” No. I knew the only answer was for me to sit down and hack through that calculus problem until I had it solved.

Most problems in life are just that simple. Too hot in the living room? Get a fan. Turn the air conditioning down. Experiment to see how many cold beers it takes to make me feel cold. But I never think to act on that until I’m uncomfortable. When I’m slightly warm, I don’t go running for the fan, I just deal with it. But when I start to sweat?

Time to take action.

What does a hipster say to create peer pressure? “C’mon, man, no one is doing it!”

I think most people are like this, not just me. Sure, there are things I do when I anticipate a problem coming down the road to save myself the trouble. But like that room temperature slowly rising, at some point I look at the situation and note, “This must be dealt with.” But I always knew the solution.

The solution itself isn’t the issue. Most solutions are mind-numbingly clear. The level of frustration or fear or whatever motivating me just has to be high enough that I’m willing to take the action necessary to solve the problem. To be clear, I also have to believe that my action might work – if I think the air conditioner is broken, for instance, I won’t bother to go over to turn it on and will stick with the whole “drink a lot of really cold beer” idea.

The above paragraph contains all three of dead economist Ludwig Von Mises’ causes of Human Action. Von Mises said for anyone to take conscious action, for any action three things needed to be present:

A Vision of a Better State
A Path to That Better State
Belief That Following the Path Will Take Us to That Better State.

While I’m focusing on today is when we already know what we want, I’ll just noted that it doesn’t have to come in that order.

It turns out my chemistry teacher was right – alcohol is a solution.

On a personal level, I have to be uncomfortable enough from where I am and where I could be to initiate action. The Vision has to be sufficiently far from where I am for me to care. But, again, I generally know the solution, it just requires enough discomfort to create action. If my air conditioner isn’t working in December, that’s not a big deal. If it has failed in July, that’s where I’m willing to pay extra to see the repair folks show up on a Sunday afternoon because the liquor stores are closed then.

Other examples – I don’t paint my house when it’s a little faded, I might need to see some bare spots. I wait until the trashcan is maybe slightly more than full to take it out. But in each case the action isn’t in question. I always know the solution. It’s not a mystery.

It’s similar as a society. In a society, we all have the ability to act as individuals, but there is some minimum number of people that are required to take action. One group, the 3%ers, took their name from the idea that only 3% of the American Colonial population fought and won against the British. I’m not sure that 3% is correct; that’s irrelevant to the post.

Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide.

Certainly, that’s a minimization, because if there hadn’t been broad support for the American Revolution anyway, it wouldn’t have happened. Rather, I am certain that group of fighters represented the symptom of a greater dissatisfaction.

Everyone on the side of the Revolution knew what had to be done. If you take a few minutes to re-read the Declaration of Independence, it certainly spells out the vision, and also spells out the reasons why it was important to take the action.

Of the signers, at least John Hancock had belief that the actions would work, since he signed his name so boldly and largely. And John Hancock never told a knock-knock joke. Why? Freedom rings, baby.

For each of the societal ills we see, the solution isn’t complex, it’s simple. We just haven’t had the guts to implement it. If mobs are ruling the streets of San Francisco or Chicago or Malmo, the solution isn’t to study the problem with a commission. The solution is to make crime much more uncomfortable than the reward for committing the crime.

I’m glad Godzilla® wasn’t Korean. That would have been Seoul destroying.

That solution to stopping crime will involve dead criminals. Oddly, it takes less to keep criminals in line than to stop criminality, but the solution almost always involves Rooftop Koreans and bar owners with very short shotguns and prosecutors that don’t prosecute good and honest people stopping crime.

If the problem is illegals flooding the southern border, the only actual solution is to make living in the United States a living hell for illegals. I assure you, if sufficient pressure was applied, the illegals would deport themselves in weeks.

Have an anchor baby? Fine. It goes into an orphanage or with foster parents. Illegals have to leave. Something tells me the parents will pack up the kids as they head out.

Brought here as a young child and the United States is the only country they’ve ever known? Not my problem. They have to go back.

Drugs? Simple solution. I’ll leave that one to you.

Illegitimate kids? Remove spousal support and child support and welfare. Illegitimate kids will cease in a year and the baby-daddy with 20 different baby-mommas will disappear while those baby-mommas cease to have sex randomly. Or, if they do? They have to suffer the consequences.

What about the kids? Yeah, heard it. Don’t care. It’s that sort of forced compassion that destroys nations, turns them into countries, and eventually leads to Balkanization.

I fell into the reupholstery machine at the furniture factory. I’m completely recovered now.

I’m right and every person reading this knows it.

The wonderful part is that these solutions will take place. Sadly, because the room is getting warmer, these solutions will take place only when the discomfort is so high that it will be unpleasant for all concerned.

And then, once again, the Gordian Knot will be solved.