Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

When Change Comes

“There have been three major disasters and you were the only one unharmed.” – Unbreakable

What’s white, loud, and makes you spill your morning coffee? An avalanche.

There is a time and place when everything changes.

Sure, summer turns to fall which turns to winter which turns to, um, Daylight Savings Time. Regardless, like the seasons, some changes are reversible. I can freeze water and turn it into ice. Then, I can melt it and it’s water again and then I can freeze it. I then put it over my eyes – at least that way I look cool.

I saw Vanilla Ice at the local arena recently. He sold me a hot dog.

Reversible changes surround us. But there are irreversible changes, too. If I burn a piece of paper, it’s just gone. Forever. There is no physical process that can unburn the paper. Or bring back that Tweet® once you hit send – just ask Rosanne.

Changes like that happen to people and systems, too. I’m not going to focus on Russia tonight, but looking at Russia and Ukraine is instructive. When the ruble fell, it’s reversible. Will it reverse? Probably. At some point.

Maybe.

Will Ukraine ever be uninvaded? Nope. Heck, if you look at the history of Kiev/Kyiv it’s invaded approximately once every seven months. If ever there was a country that was more invaded, it wasn’t China, since only one person would take the Khansequences. The Ukrainian currency is called the hryvnia and it appears to be missing vowels. If Russia ends up conquering Ukraine, it won’t need any, since it, like the Roman denarius or the Babylonian shekel, will cease to exist.

There’s going to be so much losing. You’ll be tired of losing.

There are some things that you just don’t go back from. And that’s life. I wish I could go back in time and tell Pa Wilder to buy all the gold he could when anyone could purchase it all day long for $35 an ounce. If he had done that, I would have been a bullion heir.

In retrospect, it looks obvious. When Nixon did the irreversible – disconnected the dollar from gold, what did Pa Wilder think was going to happen? He thought the dollar would keep its value.

Why?

Because, after decades of the dollar being worth $35 an ounce, why would it ever change? For forty years of Pa’s life – gold had been priced at $35 an ounce. Gold would be (in the average person’s eyes in 1973) not a great investment.

But people, including Pa, missed the point. There was no physical process that would ever result in the dollar being backed by gold again. Nixon took the United States off the gold standard because he’d printed too much cash. And, as Biden will soon learn, prosperity doesn’t come from a printing press.

Wait, he made his money in Ukraine . . . .

I was watching a video from TIK History tonight when he brought up the conversation between a German and his banker back during Weimar Germany. “If you had only bought Swiss Francs (backed by gold) you would not have lost half your fortune.”

“But these are government bonds. Won’t they pay back?”

“The government that issued them no longer exists.”

In the United States, we have been in a very, very fortunate position. Our currency has been only ravaged by inflation and political theft over the years. We’ve been able to print up large quantities of dollars and just ship them over to people in other countries and they send us iPhones™ and soccer balls made by 12 year-olds since they apparently don’t have printing presses. Or because they have excess 12 year-olds.

Honestly, I’ve had 12 year-olds around the house, and I think one 12-year-old constitutes an excess 12-year-old.

Also, little kids from Nigeria are trying to give him US FIVE MILLION COOKYS.

Many currencies, like the Russian ruble, have been rendered nearly worthless nearly immediately by geopolitical events. That event is coming for the dollar.

I can’t tell you the date. I can’t give you the exact circumstances. But I will tell you that Charles Munger (Warren Buffet’s buddy) was in an interview where he flat out said that the dollar is eventually going to zero. The interviewer missed the point – when a currency implodes and goes to zero there is shock. There is starvation.

There are civil wars. There are revolutions.

But I can tell you after 2020, 2021, and now 2022 so far . . . change is in the air.

The Funniest Post You’ll Read Today About Ukraine And Impending Global War

“Now me, I’m overweight. My underwear has to be made specially at a factory in the Ukraine. They call me Daddy Round-Round. They send me a postcard every year.” – The Simpsons

Looks like the Democrats are changing focus!  Haven’t they heard about the huge rolling ball that is the economy?

I had three posts planned that would couple the main themes I write about, and they were planned to start today.  Meh.  It’s okay, I can write about that topic anytime, and I have the feeling that what most people want to talk about is Russia.  This will be shorter than most, because I have a collection of dank memes that will carry most of the narrative.  I’ve tweaked one or two, but most are “as found” on the ‘net.

In Soviet Russia, Internet brings cat to you!

I will admit to being wrong about the invasion – I thought that Putin would get what he wanted without using actual force.  Of course, being Russian, they typically use a chain, a tractor from Soviet Tractor Factory Collective No. 348, and an acetylene torch for wart removal, so I should have known.  Subtle is not in the typical playbook.  Some say the Russians play chess, but if they do, they use a shotgun.

Hello . . . Vindman.

I have some very strong feelings about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  I don’t care.  It’s not that I like the idea of a sovereign nation invading another one, but let’s face it:  these are two countries that both use wrapping paper for money and have languages that sound like someone is strangling a duck.  And?  We have zero national interests in Ukraine.

Silly old bear.  Everyone knows that, just like Piglet said, whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

I mean, unless Hunter is still taking tons of cash from them.  That would certainly be a casus belli.  Or a reason to scratch Putin’s belly.  Wait, I just channeled Joe Biden.  Who knew pants could be so wet, sticky, warm and uncomfortable?

If we don’t do something, Mexico might invade.  Oh, wait . . . .

I am not alone in not caring.  I saw an AP® poll that indicated only 26% of folks in the United States thought we should play a major role in the conflict.  About half thought we should have an uncredited walk-on cameo, and the rest just wanted to be left alone to polish their ARs in private.

I just wanted to add some things to my shirt.  Arts and crafts, really.

It’s the 26% that I find intriguing:  this 26% is mainly, but not all, Leftists.  I have no particular idea why Leftists hate Russia so much, but they really, really do.  I think it goes back to the 2016 election, where they think that Russia tipped the election for Trump.  It certainly had nothing to do with Hillary being as electable as the hind-end of a roadkill skunk.

I sure will be happy when they manage to un-Super Glue® his hands so he doesn’t have to sit like that.  I think Trump left all those bottles of glue around the White House as a prank.

So, here are the dank memes that describe the week.  They create their own narrative, sort of, but I’ll add in a word or two myself.

The First Rule of Leftism is You Don’t Deviate From The Narrative:

The Second Rule of Leftism is You Don’t Deviate From The Narrative:

The Leftists (and a Neocon) were out in force, setting up the New Narrative and letting you know exactly what they think about you:

Of course, I didn’t create this retort, but I thought it fit pretty well here:

An actual, frightening comment from a committed Lefty who knows the “Adults in Washington”:

And political opponents chimed in:

Then the even more schizoid side of the Left just had to chime in, letting us know what the real and important issues are:

And, when it’s time for lies, you know that the media will be there:

Of course, the US Armed Forces were there for a show of strength:

But of course, there is a war on, so sometimes navigational errors happen:

And India definitely wants in, sending their passenger jet alone into the no-fly war zone:

Leftists wonder why the Right isn’t on board:

Someone figured out that combat bridges are a thing and that Sam Hyde was with the Russians:

So, if this blows over, maybe I’ll just watch a movie this weekend:

Financial Vulnerability – Who Owns Your Money?

“Also, I’ve been told that the company’s expense accounts have been frozen. . . “ – Arrested Development

It’s hard to explain theft to a government, because they take things, literally.

The power to regulate is the power to destroy.  If you know who has that power over your life, that’s one aspect of preparedness – financial or otherwise.

Here’s an example I saw play out in real life:  In Modern Mayberry there was a retailer who had a small specialty shop.  Now, in Modern Mayberry there are limited shopping opportunities.  There’s the Walmart®.  There are seventeen antique stores selling stuff from nearby barns.  There’s a used kids clothes store – they’re very specific about just taking the clothes.  I tried to sell Pugsley during his difficult phase, and they simply wouldn’t take him.

But this shop was different.  It was a very specialized store – bicycles and parts – and nice bikes, the ones that cost more than the $75 that Walmart™ wants for a Huffy© with “some assembly required.”  It just so happened I was going through a biking phase, so I was gearing up.  One day, I got a package that I’d ordered from Amazon™ – I noticed that this small package (bicycle stuff) had come from the local retailer.

I thought to myself, “That’s weird.  Not as weird as a badger wearing underwear and lip gloss, but it’s not Saturday night yet, either.”

I did find two badgers in a U-Haul® once and called the ranger.  “Are they moving?” he asked.  “Maybe.  I guess that would explain the U-Haul®,” I replied.

I walked in there since I’d bought my bike from him and asked the owner what was up.  About the bikes, not the badgers.  I don’t think anyone can explain the badgers except people over at the military base, and they’re not talking.

The owner explained his business model to me.  It turned out that he did very little business locally.  What he had done was to build a small niche business selling specialty bike stuff on Amazon©.  Even though his merchandise was branded by non-Chinese makers, he bought it in bulk from China and sold it via Amazon®.

“I even sell some of it back to customers in China,” he laughed.

Then one day, Amazon© changed (in some fashion, I’m not aware of the details) the terms of the deal.  Within six months the shop was closed.  Within a year, he was divorced and had sold his house and had left to wander and find rights to wrong, or wrongs to write.  Or something.  I kinda got bored after he kept wanting me to snatch a pebble from his hand and stopped listening.

The six or so employees?  Also gone.  Not dead.  Just had to find new jobs, like looking for stuff in barns.  Side question – where did barn owls sleep before we invented barns?

The entire business gone – all with one, simple rule change.

Is there freedom of speech in Canada?  Sure, but if the government doesn’t agree with you, there won’t be freedom after speech.

Canada made a simple rule change, too.  They suspended the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  They decided that if you disagreed with them politically, you could have your money frozen.  I’d use the word “stolen” but it’s not clear that’s the case yet.  Of course, like any breaking news in the land of the Internet, take every story you see below with a grain of salt.

I knew Trudeau had a fixation on single moms, but this is ridiculous:

And they can shut down your life nearly immediately:

The idea is clear, though.  Just like that small businessman in Modern Mayberry, one tiny rule change can make everything go away.  In this case, of course, the rule change wasn’t tiny.  It allows banks to shut down the accounts of those people who try to get all their money.

And for what crime?  Giving (in some cases) token amounts to the Truckers Who Honked.  A $50 donation, made before the emergency act, before it was “illegal” resulted in all of her cash being (at least for now) forfeit.

To be clear, if the government can do that with a stroke of a pen, is it really your money?  Thankfully, though the Canadian government is taking a stand against tyranny.  In Ukraine:

Roses are red, sorry for the hypocrisy, we’ve just updated our foreign policy.

There was a push a while back for what’s called “Universal Basic Income.”  The idea that everyone would get a check each month for breathing.  Think the government would manipulate that to manipulate you?

Nah, no danger in with this, right?

It gets worse.  It turns out that this is, by far, the biggest dream that Leftists have had since, well, forever.  Let’s hear it straight from one of them on Plebbit® (Reddit©). . . .

This is what they admit that they want to do to those who don’t follow their dictates.  They admit this in public.  The poet and well-known philosophizer Samuel Hyde perhaps said it best:

And there’s certainly no danger and nothing you’d have to prepare for with this new government change, is there?

Canada, Lies, and Videotape

“When the truth offends, we lie and lie, until we can no longer remember it is ever there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.” – Chernobyl

I hear Justin got great Marx in school.

On Friday the folks that run the hosting service told me that the place was infected again.  This is a (more or less) normal occurrence since I wrote the post telling Mr. Biden exactly where he could shove his bald-faced threat of war against average Americans.  That’s when the hacking started.  It comes and goes in fits and starts.

The most frequent times are when I bring up points against The Narrative.  Particularly, they were worried about COVID and any sort of deviation from “vaxx is Mother, vaxx is Father, and you should do anything that the State says.”  Those things tend to correlate strongly with attacks.  Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is enemy action.

I think the latest thing to set them off (and this was a fairly strong set-off) was the post /pol/ versus The Canadian Banking System.  Huh.  Who would have thought that central bankers would have thought that the idea of collapsing the banking system would be so very scary that they would go after anyone who dared point out that Empress Justine (and the Canadian financial system) had no clothes?

I would think that the deeper the truth, the more they’d go to suppress it.  And that appears to be just the case with everything going on in Canada.

First, there’s the law itself.  The Emergency Measures apply to, shall we say, a very limited group of people.  If LGBTQ+ Afghan refugees wants to burn down Ottawa, that’s fine.  Just can’t have truckers with bouncy houses.

The long-term goal is to make these new powers permanent.  This allows government to have nearly unprecedented control in Canada.

Thankfully for Justin, many world leaders liked his methods:

The police in Ottawa also have signaled that they want revenge.  They will not stop until every single person involved in the peaceful protest in Ottawa is punished.

Leftists, of course, agree fully with this:

They agree so much, that they probably bought the story that was going through the news media.  As the police were breaking up the protesters, they brought in mounted police.  According to the radio station I was listening to, a protester had “thrown a bicycle at the horses.”  At least we know who would have turned in Anne Frank so that they could have been good boys.

No, it’s not your imagination, there isn’t a bicycle there.  Why?  Because it’s a mobility scooter.  Soon enough, the Toronto Star© jumped in and said that people were faking photos to make the Mounties look bad.

Thankfully, I have a picture of the top Toronto Star™ correspondent.  I think his name is Bob.

I also got a copy of the Toronto Star® journalism guide.  It’s low on words, since I’m not sure many of them can read:

Here’s a picture of the event, with the mobility scooter crushed in the snow.  It could be fake, right?

Yes, it could be fake.  I had that thought myself, until I found not one, but two videos that corroborated it completely.  I tried to upload the media files in a player, and if that failed you can download the media below:

Video 1

Video 2

Here’s what the nice lady looks like:

Solzhenitsyn perhaps said it best:

So, they will lie to you.  They will take your jobs, take all your money.  They have threatened to take children from protesters, and have threatened to kill their pets.  It’s clear how they feel about Canada.

Always remember, when they give you no choice, that’s where freedom begins.

The Virtue Of Being Unreasonable

“I’m a reasonable guy, but I’ve just experienced some very unreasonable things.” – Jack Burton, Owner-Operator of the Pork Chop Express

I put some giant, big, huge, enormous bread in the toaster today.  I made synonym toast.

I remember hiking my first 14,000 foot (43 liters) mountain.  It was a spur-of-the-moment trip.  I grabbed two of my friends and off we went.  We intentionally spent the night above 12,000 feet (12 kilopascals).  The world above 12,000 feet (32 ergs) is strange, to say the least.  Water boils at a very low temperature due to the low atmospheric pressure and cools very quickly.  I’ll tell you – low atmospheric pressure certainly makes my blood boil.

The next day we finished the ascent as planned.  Also as planned, we decided to hike our way back out to the car.  We made our way back down, losing well over a mile in altitude, thankfully not all at once.  I had worn sneakers up the hill.  Those were perfectly fine for going up.  But when we started heading down from our camp, the bottoms of both feet started to feel a bit warm.

Some of you probably can guess where this is going.

After several more horizontal miles and several thousand more vertical feet, that warmth in my feet had turned into a blaze.  I looked forward to the creeks that cut through the trail, which provided cool water to cool my feed as we waded through.  It felt wonderful.

I met a moray that had been knighted.  Now that was Sir Eel.

I didn’t realize it then, but what was happening was with each downhill step I took, my foot slipped just a bit inside the sneaker.  Just a bit.  That slipping of foot against the inside of the shoe generated friction.  That friction was multiplied by thousands of downhill steps.  The primary location that friction showed up?

The soles of my feet.

Finally, we made the Jeep® that my friend had borrowed for the trip.  I peeled off my shoes when I got in the back.  The sole of each foot was covered in a single, large blister from heel to where the toes start.

One friend asked, “Why didn’t you have us carry your pack?”

My response?  “I carried it up.  I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to carry it down.

Hey, don’t laugh at those shoes – ATF agents have to wear those every day.

Certainly, that was more foolish than heroic.  I had in my mind that I wasn’t going to shirk my responsibility to someone else.  It certainly wasn’t a reasonable idea, but that’s okay.

Change isn’t made by reasonable people.  Real accomplishments are made only by people who are fanatics.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to the weekly trip to the grocery store:  being Mad Max in the aisles is probably counterproductive.  But when working on trying to accomplish something significant, being reasonable has to go right out the window.

On the other hand, given how Biden has messed things up, this might be what shopping looks like this summer.

I was talking with Pugsley about diet (last week’s post was a taste of the conversation).  The Mrs. overheard the conversation.  “Ahhh, your dad has a case of the TB – True Believer.”  She paused, “Pugsley, if you’re ever around someone who used to smoke, it’s the same thing.”

And she is right.  Quitting smoking is hard.  Nicotine is highly addictive, and quitting, once started isn’t a reasonable thing.  It requires willpower.  And, like Mark Twain said, “Willpower lasts about two weeks, and it’s soluble in alcohol.”

It’s so very hard to quit tobacco that it often takes several tries – I know, I did it.  So, to finally quit takes fanaticism.  This is, in the end, the same sort of fanaticism that it takes for any significant change.  It’s the same sort of drive that makes Elon push SpaceX®.  It’s the same sort of drive that the Founding Fathers had when they forged a new nation.

Elon Musk is a bully.  He beat up NASA and took their launch money.

It’s the same drive that creates great teams.  Once people buy into the vision of what can be created, they give of themselves to further the vision.  If the goal is big enough and important enough people ignore their sense of self.  That’s when the magic happens.

Not only do we get amazing things done, we don’t really care who gets the credit.  Big goals create big teams, dedicated teams.  They come together and work towards success.  Do they always win?  Certainly not.  Sometimes the biggest goals are tackled by amazing teams and the team fails.

But not as often as you might think.  Let’s look at the difference between NASA and SpaceX®.  When NASA and SpaceX™ started working on a project together, NASA freaked out.  Why?  SpaceX© was going too fast.  They were achieving in a month things that would take NASA a year.

Although NASA still has people driven to get man into space, there aren’t many.  Most just want to keep a job until the Federal pension kicks in.  SpaceX™ just wants to get people into space, and it’s pounded into them daily.  The difference is a vision.  In the 1960s, NASA had both a vision and some particularly talented scientists that had some rocketry experience from previous jobs.  They achieved one of the most amazing feats that humanity has every accomplished.

Why do wolves howl at the Moon?  They don’t have cell phones.

Vision and fanaticism matter.  And they’re good things when the vision is good.  When the vision is dark, that fanaticism is dangerous.

I’ll change gears from outstanding feats back to my feets.  The blisters (one per foot)came off, and most of the fresh skin underneath was exposed.  It stung.  For a while.  A day later?  It was like nothing had happened.

Something did happen, though.  I climbed a really tall mountain.  Did I accomplish the goal?  Certainly.  And I was completely unreasonable in the way I went about it.  The good news?  You can be unreasonable, too.  Because if life is a hike, it’s only done at the end.  And to accomplish things?

Sometimes you have to do something unreasonable.

/pol/ Versus The Canadian Banking System

“Blame Canada.” – South Park, The Movie

Momma Bear angry!  I hope she packed him an extra-special lunch for his next day when he had to go Prime Minister around all those mean other boys.

Notes:  much of the memetic content is “as-found”.  We’ll also livestream on 2/16 at 9pm EST at this channel.  

Justin has had a bad run of it recently.  His mommy had to stick up for him in public, and those gosh darn people won’t do what he tells them to do!  Plus, he just recovered from his bout of the ‘Rona.

The problem is, first, that they were locking down his beloved Ottawa.  As the Bee® notes, that’s Justin’s job:

And this was driving the people crazy.  They felt like they were being held hostage:

Nothing Justin did seemed to make it better:

People weren’t at all sympathetic.

So Trudeau decided to double down.

One of the biggest fears that bankers used to have was the bank run.  That’s the phenomenon where people show up at the bank and demand cash.  Of course, the bank only keeps a few bucks on hand, so soon enough they run out.  What happens then?  People begin to get angry.  Pitchfork and torch angry.

Trudeau’s wife was robbed at gunpoint at an ATM.  The robber asked, “Do you ever want to see your husband again?”  She said, “No.”  They both had a good laugh.

For the record, only a small fraction of the currency in the country is actual, printed cash which is why if you want more than a small fraction of your cash from the bank, they’d pull out their pockets and shrug.  The vast majority of cash is just a collection of ones and zeros located in computers in various banks.

It’s a useful fiction so socialists and people wanting to finance wars can just print more cash to pay, and everyone pretends that it’s not stealing.  Countries have been very, very careful not to upset this particular applecart.  A politician can mess up a lot of systems, but that politician would have to be a fool to suggest that he’d freeze the bank accounts of millions of his own citizens.  Or that politician would be Justin Trudeau.

But I repeat myself.

That’s what Justin Trudeau did.  He indicated that, because he said so, they’d take all the money they wanted from anyone who they thought was helping the protesters.

No, actually even Gilligan wouldn’t have tried this nonsense (apologies to Aesop for spoiling Gilligan by comparing him to Trudeau).

Seriously, what was Trudeau thinking?  That the millions of people that, using emergency powers normally reserved for war against an outside enemy would just be pulled out because people wouldn’t take a shot he wanted and drove trucks and protested peacefully?  Oh, sure it was a peaceful but honk-filled protest, but that’s akin to a world war?

Honk War III?  World War Honk?  The Honkening?

Yup, I guess.  But this time there’s an amplifier.  /pol/.  /pol/ is a website run by the notorious hacker, 4chan.  /pol/ is, well, its own place.  It’s essentially an autism-powered supercomputer that has its own interests, language, and customs.  I really don’t recommend anyone go there.  Besides, they’re full.

But /pol/ is capable of wizardry.  The night that Kyle Rittenhouse created two good commies in Wisconsin, /pol/ had videos from every angle before and after the shooting, and identified the people Rittenhouse erased, including criminal records within hours.  They also tracked down an Antifa® killer from Portland and had his name, address, employer, and location before the police.

So, the crazy new idea to steal people’s money more quickly?  /pol/ jumped on that.

It didn’t take long for the word to get out to the world:

And it didn’t take long for the news suppression to hit:

Understand that this will probably come to nothing.  But also understand this:  the banking systems and veneer of civilization is thin . . . unlike future Trudeau.

I hear he stress eats.

War, You’re Soaking In It

“Fiddle-dee-dee! War, war, war, This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides, there isn’t going to be any war.” – Gone With the Wind

For whatever reason, French players are in “spectator only” mode.

War.  It’s one way we find out the difference between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin.

The traditional way that most people think about war involves troops and uniforms and guns and bombs.  That’s why people are focused on Ukraine – it seems like a time when the world might once again see something like in the old war movies.  Biden is especially wanting this, because it could distract the world from the economic and cultural ruin that’s spreading in the United States.  How else do you explain the free crack pipe initiative?

As I’ve noted before, the United States has spent trillions of dollars to try to make the “old” form of war obsolete.  As such, don’t expect the next war to look anything like the last wars.  Just like civilization, technology, and economy have evolved, so have the methods of war.

The aim of war is still the same, however:  to get your enemy to do something they would otherwise be unwilling to do, like watch The View.  You don’t have to use tanks or bombs to do it.  This was what the old Soviet Union planned to do with the United States – subvert it from within.

The Cold War really was a war.  The United States attempted to subvert the Soviet citizens through exposing them to the wonders of capitalism.  Plentiful food, for starters.  Blue jeans.  Rock and roll.  The average citizens could see that something was really, really wrong in their society.  At the end, people in the Eastern Bloc walked away from their governments.  In some cases, they evicted the former leadership 7.62mm at a time.

The Romanians made sure there wasn’t a next season.

The Soviet subversion of the United States was similar.  Just as the United States reviewed the cultural faults of the Soviets and exploited them, the Soviets looked at the problems in the United States and tried to undermine it using those problems.

And the undermining never stopped.  If you looked at the institutions under control of the Left in the 1970s, there weren’t that many.  The Left controlled:

  • Many Colleges and Universities.
  • The psychological establishment.
  • Lots of mainstream entertainment media.
  • Most mainstream news media.

This was, of course, the plan.  Get the Leftist foothold in academia and use it to indoctrinate the next generation.  The Left didn’t control the government schools at the time, because teachers work a long time, and most of the teachers in the 1970s graduated before the colleges fell.

Hippies refused Rolaids™, the last thing they wanted was an anti-acid.

That’s why this war was based on a “long march” through the institutions.  Sadly, even though the Soviet Union dissolved, their plan was still in motion.  Now, the following are mostly under the control of the Left:

  • The K-12 educational system.
  • Most Protestant religious organizations.
  • Most Catholic organizations.
  • The American Medical Association.
  • Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
  • The general officer corps of the armed services.
  • The courts.
  • Silicon Valley tech companies.
  • Most Fortune® 500™ companies.

Very quickly (within a decade, if nothing changes) the last institution will fall:

  • The junior officers and enlisted men of the armed services.

As I’ve discussed at length, part of the core of Leftism is hating the United States, the other is a pathological need to be a victim.  That’s why Leftist entertainment media always portrays the good guys as “the resistance” – what are they resisting?  The remnants of the United States.  Why do the statues have to come down?

Al has a molar pulled:  it was an inconvenient tooth.

The United States (as viewed from a common historical lens) cannot be allowed to have its mythology.  That mythology must be replaced by the new narrative – a mythology based on victimhood and oppression.  Even as they control the levers on every objective means of institutional power, they complain that the system is rigged against them.

Combined with that is the monetary policy of the United States which has been run with all of the discipline of a toddler in a room filled with chocolate birthday cakes.  As the bill for this mismanagement comes due, the tensions in the country will skyrocket.

The only thing the Left doesn’t have, are (at least) 80 million Americans who want nothing to do with the brave globalist/socialist future that’s planned.  I actually think the number will be substantially higher, because I think that when the center chooses sides, it will come down with the Right.

This situation is, of course, absolutely thrilling to China.  When I think about how China must factor in the United States into their plans in, say, the year 2040?  I think they assume that the United States will not be a factor on a global scale.

In the US, dogs are K-9.  In China, they are E-10.

In addition to the Soviet plan coming to final fruition, the United States is amazingly vulnerable to other things we don’t traditionally think of as war.  As mentioned above, we have an amazing mess in our monetary policy – and we have debt.  Think inflation is high now?  What happens when China starts dumping currency in the international market, and starts paying for oil with the Yuan?

Warfare in our current time starts to look like what someone did to the Iranians:  drop in a virus that makes their centrifuges that they were using to process nuclear material break.  Imagine the electrical grid being as reliable as Venezuela’s grid.  Sure, it could be enemy action.  But with current trends, it could also be our own ineptitude at running things in a world where hiring by merit seems to be a thing of the past.

What happens if every tenth financial transaction in our electronic payment system is “missed”?  How many days until the payment infrastructure is shut down and the entire country is in chaos?  What happens if Walmart™ experiences failure in the logistics and tracking system for the billions of dollars worth of goods that it handles?  How many people does Walmart© feed?

Due to the current emergency, Walmart™ has announced that they’ll open a second register.

These are all warfare, and don’t require a single soldier or a panzer division.  Moreover, this is exactly the type of warfare that has already been planned and prepared for in Moscow and Beijing.

I’d love to blame China, but the Chinese are mainly just looking out for the Chinese.  If the United States is in the way, the Chinese are going to pick the Chinese every time.  It’s self-interest.

And Biden and Putin?  One is a church-going Christian who loves his nation, who wants to help his people, and wants to secure his border.  The other is Joe Biden.

Human Chow: It’s What’s For Dinner

“Bachelor Chow™ . . . now with flavor.” – Futurama

I heard that it was projected that the next Muslim country to have nukes is going to be France.

It’s no surprise to anyone that the biggest health problem in 2022 isn’t the ‘Rona, it’s people who are overweight.  I’d imagine that most of you have seen the .gif that shows state after state with an increasing Body Mass Index (BMI) over time.  I just checked my BMI, and according to the chart I have to grow at least five more inches.

Part of my question as I’ve seen this epidemic unfold has been, why?  It’s not like the people in the United States suddenly lost willpower started consuming crap for no reason, though that would explain the popularity of Friends.  Although I think there are several other significant causes I think one of the biggest has been the rise of ultraprocessed foods.

Most foods (for all of my life) have been processed to some degree.  Ma Wilder didn’t feed us raw wheat – nope.  She used white flour in cooking and baking bread since mass-produced flour was cheap and lasted in the cabinet forever.  Ma Wilder told me that, since I was adopted, I would have to eat bread only from self-raising flour.

What’s the difference between Nic Cage and someone allergic to wheat?  Nic would never turn down a roll.

Processing of flour from wheat changes not only the nutrient profile – it pulled out the parts of the wheat kernel that don’t store well as flour – but it also changed how it acts when eaten.  An example:  wheat flour is made into the familiar powder that we’re used to.  This makes it easier to store and ship.  It also makes it pretty tasty.

The final thing I want to mention about flour is that mashing wheat up into a powder changes how quickly I’ll get to use the nutrients of the flour when I eat it.

Let me explain:

If I ate just a plain wheat kernel, I’d be able to digest most of it, but it would take hours of time and energy.  If I eat a piece of tasty, tasty bread, it’s available for use nearly immediately.

Especially the carbs.  I’ll save insulin discussion for a later post, but ultraprocessed foods have an amazing impact on insulin production.

And the physical form of the food can also make people fatter.  When rats were given (I assume) Rat Chow®, some bored grad student came up with the idea of feeding some rats plain Rat Chow©.  The other rats, however, they smashed up the Rat Chow™ into a powder.

Like I said, bored grad students.  Possibly drunk.

What’s the difference between rat poison and Diet Coke®?  Diet Coke™ has better advertising.

What happened?  The rats with the powdered food got fat and the rats that ate the “plain” food didn’t, even though both groups of rats were eating the same amount of calories.  The change in form changed the way the food acted in the rats – it made the nutrients available more quickly, which (again, because of insulin) made the rats fat.

Heck, it’s not even just the flour and powdered rat food.

An even bigger bomb to the body is sugar.  Sugar was once very uncommon as human food.  Our ancestors got it from berries (not a lot, but some) and, when they could fight the bees back, from honey.

If I get diabetes, will that make me a sugar daddy?

Domestication and widespread production of sugar didn’t occur until the folks in India figured it out in the early Anno Domini centuries (note to Zoomers, this was before the Internet).  They figured out how to take the juices from sugar cane (which can’t be stored or shipped well) and turned it into granulated sugar, which could be saved forever, and shipped across continents.

But for most of human history, sugar was wickedly expensive, and only the wealthy could afford to have it regularly.  Now?  I can buy granulated sugar for $0.50 per pound.  Sugar prices are going up, sure, but I can buy a wholesale ton of sugar for less than $500.

The next category of foods that just weren’t available to humans were vegetable oils.  I’m not talking about olive oil which is pressed and can be used just as it comes off the press – I’m talking about corn oils, canola oils, soybean oils.  As produced in modern times, these are really chemical products that depend on chemical processes to make them usable.

Their history has been slippery.  Transfats – or fats that were unsaturated after being subjected to chemical processing, were supposed to be healthier than butter.  We were told so.  Now it turns out that they increased the risk of heart attacks.  Oops.  Now, instead of being promoted by the government, they’re illegal to put in food.  And butter is now good for you.

The main thing about these processed foods is that they are cheap to make.  Some combination of flours oils, sugars, and . . . well, let’s take a look at the Totino’s® Pizza Roll ingredient list:

What’s the difference between a bag of pizza rolls and a musician?  A bag of pizza rolls can feed a family.

It’s an amazing list of chemicals.  I just really hesitate to call it food, however.  It’s what the word ultraprocessed was made to describe.  I was watching a video by Dr. Pradip Jamnadas (cardiologist, and I do recommend his YouTube® vidyas) and he had a word that was even more descriptive for foods like this:  pre-digested.

A lot of the work that our wonderfully designed digestive system goes through to get energy out of food is simply not necessary with Totino’s© Human Chow Pizza Rolls.  In large part the food is designed to hit the digestive system, and flood the body with calories, ringing the dopamine bell in the brain.

I really do think they’re tasty.  I don’t plan on eating them except on very rare occasions, because when I look at the label now, I don’t see what looks like . . . food.  It looks like Elon Musk’s shopping list for when he’s trying to create artificial life.

But the real purpose of this is to sell as many Totino’s® Pizza Rolls as possible and make the greatest profit.  This leads to one question that illustrates an overlap between libertarianism and communism:  “How much sawdust can I put in the food?”

On my diet I can have a libertarian salad:  lettuce alone.

To a certain extent, these ultraprocessed foods have succeeded admirably.  They’ve allowed cheap ingredients (often made from low-value byproducts) to feed millions of people at a reasonable cost.  The problem, though, are the consequences that we see now:  the calories taken in impact the human system in vastly different ways than the food that we were designed to consume.

So, my plan is to eat as close to real food as possible – meat, fish, eggs, and whole veggies.

And, yes, an occasional pizza roll, too.

Globalism, Competition, Bikinis, and Good Trigger Discipline

“Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say Ni at will to old ladies.  There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred.  Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress in this period in history.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

You can get Batman® shampoo, but not conditioner Gordon®.

I recall sitting in economics class in college.  The professor was from some Eastern European (I don’t remember which one) country.  I really enjoyed his class.  Instead of the traditional “Guns Versus Butter” economic trade off, he discussed “Pizza Versus Beer”.  It wasn’t Bikininomics, but it was still my kind of thinking.

Pizza and beer kept my attention, so one day he made the comment, “If there is perfect competition, there is how much profit?”  He paused.  I blurted out, showing my greatest economic strength even at a young age, “Bikini?”

He responded, “No, John Wilder, it is zero profit!”

I liked my answer better.  But his provoked me to think.  Perfect competition meant that companies could enter and exit easily.  There were no barriers to entry.

Guns and Butter?  Yes.  Cocoa Butter.

What, outside of a single piece bathing suit is a barrier to entry?  Well, it means that if a company wanted to start a business, it could do it without having to spend lots of money on building a factory, or through developing difficult intellectual property or expertise.  In fact, you’ll see today that the companies that have huge barriers to entry are often the most profitable.

It’s not surprising, then, that large companies are hugely in favor of building barriers to entry for themselves.  Disney® is attempting to extend copyright until Armageddon plus twenty years.  Pfizer™ wants to patent your DNA if you can properly spell their name (read the terms and conditions!).  Chase© wants to be the exclusive place where Fed™ trucks drop off all the Biden Bux.

But these companies are no longer American companies.  Once upon a time Boeing© built bombers for the Army Air Force to beat the Axis.  By the 1990s, they settled with the DOJ on a $32,000,000 penalty for giving missile secrets to China.  Boeing™ has ceased to be an American company.  Heck, they even outsourced production of commercial airline parts to China when demanded.  So they could sell jets in China, regardless of the technical expertise that China might gain.

I try to avoid Boeing® jokes.  They rarely land well.

Why?  Boeing™ is not American anymore.  They’re Globalist.  Like many Congresscritters, Boeing has no particular loyalty to America.  They just want a profit, preferably next quarter.

Globalists love barriers to entry.  For themselves.

They hate barriers to entry for . . . you.

Again, perfect competition means zero profit.  The idea is that if they can turn labor into a replaceable component, their business gets easier and cheaper.  If there is a never ending supply of cheap labor, wages don’t go to zero.  Heck, if they can automate what an employee does for less than five times the annual cost of the employee – it’s a done deal.

Globalists attempt to drive labor costs as close to zero as competition and automation can make it.

I hear that Elon Musk will be making robots in his Austin factory.  He’s calling them Tex Mechs.

Certainly, there are benefits, in that “stuff” costs less.  Or does it?  In the most recent run up on food prices, the word on the street is that while beef prices are up, while bread prices are up, producer income has not increased.  Farmers aren’t making more money.

Fertilizer prices are up.  Seed prices are up.  Pesticide prices are up.

Farmers have choices – produce at a loss, or produce cheaper crops that require less fertilizer and pesticide.  Or, heck, give the year a rest.  Since farmers can’t make up a loss in volume, I’d expect prices to go up again this year.

The other thing Globalists don’t like is paying people for stuff.  That’s for tourists.

I bought a cheap thesaurus once.  Not only is it terrible, it’s terrible.

Globalism isn’t correlated well with freedom.  Globalists aren’t really into that.  They like captive markets, and a captive labor.  Regulations are great with them:  it’s just another barrier for entry.  So, one of the first things the Globalists do is lobby for the creation of regulation.

How do you do that?  Well, owning a few Senators often helps . . . and owning a President is even better.

Freedom, like I said, isn’t something Globalists do very well.  Freedom means innovation, and innovation means that barriers could fall.  The only reason Silicon Valley is allowed to innovate in 2022 is because it’s owned and funded lock, stock, and barrel by Globalists.  Who do you think funds the startups?  I assure you, it’s not Santa.

No, nations that are concerned with their people are concerned with freedom.  Me?  I’m not sold all that much on democracy.  I like the idea of a constitutional republic better, but, then again that finally led to a place where “shall not be infringed” has been defined to mean “if government says it’s okay and doesn’t change it’s mind”.

I will note there’s pretty good trigger discipline.  Is that an AR-362436?

Oh, and Soros, Schwab, and Gates aren’t all that keen on democracy, either.  If voting mattered, do you think they’d let us do it?

Heck, we might vote for pizza and beer . . . or to be free.