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.

Debt, Trench Warfare And An End Of The World Cult You Can Believe In

Had some (planned) other things come up, so one from the vaults that many of you might not have seen . . .

After World War One, the phrase, “Happy as a Hapsburg in Serbia” fell out of favor, as did the “Hair Smile” style of mustache.  Or is that Herr Smile?

I’ve already told the story about digging out of debt.  In retrospect, it seems to me that all of those stories end up sounding the same:  “I weighed six hundred pounds, my kitchen floor was covered in dirty dishes and cat food, and I had $3.7 million in debt until I found Wildernetics© and the First Church of PEZology™.  Look at me now!”

flammen

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part One).  These are from a soldier’s joke newspaper, The Wiper’s (a mangling of Ypres) Times, produced for soldiers by soldiers that found an abandoned printing press.

I know my methods can solve everything, but today I had a crazy idea.  How about spending some time talking about how I got into debt in the first place?  I know that might cut into the revenue of the Wildernetics© End of the World Cult and Take-Out BarBeQue Restaurant®, but I figure you might come back for the brisket.  It’s very tender.

I’ll quit teasing.  How did I get into debt?  First a little.  Then all at once.

Let me rewind a whole marriage.  As regular readers will know, The Mrs. was not the first, but she is the final spouse.  My first marriage was an example of a series of escalating poor mutual decisions where each side seemed to lack a brief moment of sanity to back out before anyone got hurt, sort of like the run-up to World War I.  Even before Archduke Franz Ferdinand proved that .380 ACP was a useful round against Hapsburgs and their notably gelatinous bones, World War I was inevitable.  Before I said “I do” everything was in place for the trench warfare of future divorce.

ditch

Okay, I apologize for this joke.  I think it violated the Geneva Convention.

But, rewinding.  After graduating college I got married and got a starter job, which is to say I had a job that just barely paid the bills.  Nearly exactly.  In fact, after working at the job for a few months, we were exactly (most months) at zero.  We weren’t saving any money yet, but we also weren’t in the red.  Success.  My credit card limit was 10,000 . . . Siberian Lira.   This was equivalent to a whole bright and shiny quarter.  This helped me stay debt-free.

Then came the table.

optimism

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part Two), this one is for James.

We had a dining room table.  It wasn’t great, and the chairs that came with it were a bit ratty – the vinyl arms had been slammed into the table often enough that it looked like a pack of rabid Chihuahuas had spent their lives sitting on the chair seats and gnawing on the arms.  I imagine them growling and chewing in unison as they sat around the table, like Viking Chihuahua rowers.  Most all of our furniture was second-hand or gifted, but the table really was the biggest eyesore.

unread

Okay, this one isn’t mine, but I couldn’t resist.

At some point, discipline broke.  I know how silly it sounds to say that now, but back then, month after month of not buying anything but actual necessities takes more discipline than Elizabeth Warren around a tribal gathering.  Eventually, I gave in.  We bought the table.  Using debt.  Back then, individual stores would give you amazing credit limits just to buy their crap.  They gave us more than enough credit to buy that table, and with the money I saved from shipping the Chihuahuas back to Denmark, I figured we’d be money ahead.

fireworks

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part Three).

The table was only $500, but the difference between having no debt (outside of a mortgage) and having debt, even a small one, was a huge psychological hurdle for me.  It’s like having a doughnut when you’re doing low carb.  “I got weak had one doughnut, so I might as well have, say, 36.  And do you have any whipped cream I could just guzzle straight from the can?  I broke my diet, and don’t want to waste it.”  Pretty soon other nice-to-have things showed up, very few of which I still own today.  But I had crossed that mental barrier from peace (debt-free) to war (spend away!).  Suddenly, the credit card companies realized I had debt, and immediately wanted to lend me more money.  My credit limits tripled.

I hope that this doesn’t sound like I’m blaming The Ex.  Like Adam in the Garden of Eden, I was fully complicit.  Ultimately the debt grew faster than my wages.  This led to the idea of grad school:  I could get free tuition plus be a paid graduate assistant.  Would it work?

Sure.  There were also student loans.  Free money!  Oops.

bellgas

Okay, let’s all admit that Nachos Bellgrande® is NOT a war crime.

gas

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part Four).

There were some places along the way that I could have gotten off the merry-go-round.  When I sold that first house to move for a new, post-grad school job, we’d made a stunning 40% profit in three years.  It would have more than paid off a good chunk of my student loans.  Nope, that would have made too much sense.  We did pay down a little debt and bought a new house, putting down the minimum down payment.

But most of the money was just spent.  About this time I also had one of the worst ideas I’d ever had in my life.  The Ex and I were always arguing about money, and about the thermostat – I knew that 50°F in winter and 90°F in summer were reasonable temperatures, but The Ex disagreed.  Well, if she had to pay the bills, she would certainly understand how tight money was.  Right?

No.

We had a different view of not only household temperature, but the idea that one should pay monthly bills, well, monthly.  I didn’t figure this out for three years, by which time I owed enough money to qualify as a third-world country, but one of the nice, mainly atrocity-free ones.  Mainly.

mgmeme

Taco Bell® inspired outfits?

Debt is like George Washington’s description of fire, it’s an amazing tool, but a fearful master.  My advice is to pay all of your bills in full, monthly.  I know that the people who own your debt disagree.  Why?  They want you to have debt, as much as you can pay.

I had a friend (since passed away in an accident) who I called Batman© on this blog (“I’m Batman,” – Batman, in Batman).  He had one particular investment that was worth about $12 million – a series of apartments.  He had paid the apartments off before they were even built by selling future property tax credits to other businesses.  Yeah, that kind of friend.

But he viewed his tenants as slaves (his term), who went to work daily so they could send him money every week.  I heard him use exactly that phrase to describe them.  He liked his tenants and was a good landlord.  However, he knew the score:  when they went to work each day, they went to work so they could pay him.

And Batman was a good guy and he taught kids that debt was a form of slavery of ordinary people to wealthy guys just like him, not that they always listened.

My marriage to The Ex?  That particular marriage is proof of the old Henny Youngman joke:

“Why are divorces expensive?”

“They’re worth it.”

peaceinourmeme

Yeah, divorce just STARTS the argument.

The day she moved out was one of the happiest days for both of us.

I was still digging myself out of debt when I met The Mrs.  As our relationship blossomed, I thought it was only fair to tell her of the debt that I had.

“The Soon To Be The Mrs., I have something to tell you.  You might want to sit down.”

The Soon To Be The Mrs. looked shaken.  She sat.  I told her about my debt.  She laughed.

“Is that all?  I thought you were going to tell me you’d been in prison.”

No, not prison.

But I still owed reparations payments to France.

Propaganda Attack: The Wilder Experience (Plus Bikini Ending)

“PBS, the propaganda wing of Bill and Melinda Gates.” – The Office

I used to advertise that I catered to midgets, but the market was too small.

A curious thing happened last week.  For the most part, I think most of the people who comment and interact with me are pretty much what they seem.  I’ve had a few direct messages (email and whatnot) that seemed to be right out of the “FBI funds plot paid for by FBI and planned by FBI with equipment provided by FBI” files.  I told them point-blank that I assumed anyone sending me emails of that type were FBI and . . . they stopped sending me emails.

Huh.  That was weirdly easy.

Then there are the people commenting for commercial purposes to promote their own websites.  You can always spot those – the comments have nothing to do with the post, and are often some sort of cut and paste word salad.  If those make it through the spam filter I let the comments stay up, but don’t interact with them.

 

Does anyone answer their e-mails?

Moscow Rules (no coincidences) would indicate that, at least several times, I’ve managed to irritate someone enough to knock the site off the net.  With over 1,000 days of (more or less) continuous uptime, to get knocked off twice in one month probably indicates I’ve irritated the Junior Antifa® LGBT Programmer Alliance™ enough that they script-kiddied the place.

But last week’s COVIDIOCRACY post was enough to ratchet up the attention, I guess.

I’m not sure how the comment/spam filter works.  Probably programmers howl at a moonlit sky and throw Dungeons and Dragons™ dice until they level up their dwarf.  In reality, the programmers do choose parameters of known spam and then place those comments in a bin until people like me decide if they’re real or not.

The first comment to pop up, relatively early in the post was this one:

I’ll note a few things:  the name, “labrat” was chosen to give the impression that the person is engaged in science on a regular basis.  It’s not bad, really.

The first paragraph was intended to be fawning (entertaining) but also an attempt to discredit my credentials.  In reality, I have cheerfully acknowledged every error found in the blog, but there aren’t all that many, even when I calculated the mass of anti-PEZ® required for near light-speed travel.

The idea, coupled with the name, was to convey legitimacy to them, while removing legitimacy from the post for the casual reader.

The rest of the post is a word salad that’s attempting to:

  • Toss a claim that Dr. Malone didn’t invent the mRNA vaccine. Well, he didn’t, but it looks like he had a very significant role in the development of the technology (LINK).  I’ll let others sort that out.  Is he a crackpot?  Don’t know.  Didn’t say so, either way.  Regardless, I’m sure Malone knows more than “labrat”.
  • Say that viruses mutate.
  • Indicates that new data means new approaches. Like, lockdown (what number is this, three?) and I kid you not – the CDC® just said, “two more weeks” to stop the spread.

But then, just an hour later, this comment showed up to be moderated:

It’s . . . the same post.  But now it’s “hank”, which makes me think of either Bocephus or Hank Hill:

I guess all your rowdy friends can be there on Monday Night if you don’t criticize Barak Obama.

Under a different guise, “j-lab” started commenting on random posts.  Same quotes.

Then, another one.  Why this one?  I think it was a hello from the bot-master.  On another website I called him out as being up and active during the time businesses would be open from India to the Eastern Mediterranean.  His comment, “Namaste!”

And, finally, these two from the last 12 hours.

I bet those people are fun at parties.

I backtracked the I.P. addresses from the comments.  Just to let you know, I never do that with average comments.  Frankly, I’m just not interested where most people are posting from, I’m just glad you’re here.  But I did backtrack these.  Where did the comments come from?  Atlanta, Georgia.  Canada.  Japan.

They didn’t really come from those places.  All of the comments came from a proxy.  Those locations were just where it popped out into the “trackable” Internet.  It would likely be trivial for fed.GOV to track them, but for me, that’s where the rabbit hole ends.

But it’s enough.

The end result is simple.  I write about the coming Civil War?  Yawn.  I write about forced inoculations of experimental mRNA technology that appears to have little to no actual beneficial use.  What?  What do you mean?

In the Pfizer trials, there were 15 deaths from mRNA injected folks.  There were 14 deaths in the control group.

No.

Beneficial.

Effects.

The “jab” might have horrific implications for humanity.  I’ll probably hit some nightmare-level (and very low probability events) on Friday’s post.  Again, it’s very possible that the #clotshot might only hurt a few tens of thousands of people, and not be some sort of dystopian science fiction movie backstory.  Vaccines have been pulled for much less harm than has been reasonably attributed to the mRNA shot:

Before swine flu met Jesus it was swater flu.

So why push it so hard?  I’m not sure.  Governmental power?  Pharmaceutical profits?  Covering their tracks by removing the “control group”?

Regardless, all of the power, profit, and cover-up goes away with one simple trick:

The Best Post You’ll Read About COVID This Week: COVIDIOCRACY (with bikini ending)

“Quite frankly, we have had some very reliable intelligence reports that quite a serious epidemic has broken out at Clavius, something apparently of an unknown origin. Is this in fact what has happened?” – 2001:  A Space Odyssey

I’m not against all Gene therapy.

Note 1:  none of the memes for this post are original (most all of my regular post memes are), these are “as found” on the Internet.  I don’t think that there are any major inaccuracies, but, as always, engage in critical thinking.

Note 2:  this isn’t medical or life advice.  You have to assess your own situation and make your own choices. 

I was wandering through the Internet this week when this little gem of information caught my eye:

When I caught a bacterial infection, the doctor told me I was a man of culture.

The “jab” (which is not a vaccine, more on that in a bit) had proven not to decrease the rate of infection.  Nope.  The #clotshot looks like it turns those that have taken it into super-spreaders.  They have the ability, if infected, to spread even more of the disease to other people.

Think about that for just a second:  the “vaccinated” are very likely making the “normal DNA” population less safe.  It’s a paradox.  But at least they don’t get it themselves, right?  Well, in the immortal words of Aesop:  natzsofast . . . .

So, this gives a whole new meaning to Royal Navy “carrier”.  Something tells me they should have seen this one coming.

It has become abundantly clear that the “jab” is (at best) only moderately effective.  I have had the ‘Rona.  The Mrs. tested positive for the antibodies, and when she was sick she was helpfully coughing directly on me all night.  It’s not as bad as licking a doorknob at a bathroom hobos use, but it’s close.

The symptoms for me were mild.  A bit of a coof, and a fever of around 99°F for about four hours.  For The Mrs.?  Worse, but not the sickest I’ve ever seen her.

For me, a fever of 99°F is something that happens about once a decade, at most.  I last took a sick day in 2001 or so, so I’ve generally been fairly healthy.  The flu in 2012 was much, much worse for me, but that’s only because I let it get in my lungs.  I guess it was swine flu, so I should have had some oinkment.

Blofeld:  “Mr. Bond, I’ve poisoned your glass with the measles vaccine.  Now you have autism.”  Bond:  “That’s fine, Blofeld, I’ve disassembled your doomsday device and organized the parts by size.”

CORONA is real.  But when you look at the statistics, it is a disease that simply doesn’t hurt young people.   By young, I mean less than 40.  So, when I see Internet harpies screeching that they don’t want their kids to DIE!!! because of selfish “unvaxxed”, what I see are people who probably dress their precious snowflake up in bubble wrap before they are allowed to go play in a playground that has been designed by dozens of engineers over thousands of hours to be safe in any conceivable circumstances.

And then they insist to replace the ground under the safe playground equipment with crushed rubber pellets that would safely allow Jeff Bezos to land on them if he jumped from orbit.

Oops, sorry.  Jeff Bezos hasn’t been to orbit.

But the statistics are clear:  your kid is safe, at least from COVID-19.

Never get involved with a cult of mimes.  They’re capable of unspeakable acts of violence.

Here at the end of July, 2021, though, the drumbeat of COVIDIOCRACY has reached a new high.  I was over at Phil’s place (LINK) and made a comment.  The comment was about the coming mandate to force everyone to get “the jab” or lose their government job.  This was the wife of a .GOV employee or contractor.  She asked me what she should do.  My response was simple – without knowing lots of intimate details of her life, there was no way I could answer.

When you don’t need a prion disease to have your brain turn into sponge.

Nearly immediately, my response was jumped on by a shill – obviously a paid propagandist.  It was interesting that the only hours they were posting were when it was 8:30AM in India to when it was about 6PM in India.  I’m not saying it was India.  It could have been someone really late to the office in China or really early to the office in the eastern Mediterranean.

Phil had attracted paid foreign agents to his site to pop up propaganda.  Propaganda for the “jab”.  If it were good for you, wouldn’t that be self-evident by now?

Let’s look at the huge push on the “vax”:

  • Coordinated media attacks to encourage it.
  • Pedo Joe announcing that he’s going to make Fed.GOV take the shot.
  • Coordinated attacks by shills on influential blogs and /message boards/.

Sure, you could say that it’s all about Pfizer’s® Pfrofits™, but it’s only a few measly billion that they made this quarter.  That’s not to say that Pfizer© isn’t Pcorruptly® attempting to manipulate the media:

The vaccine, though, might be dangerous.  I was talking with a friend and described it as “an untested genetic manipulation.”  He said that was too strong, and it sounded kinda crazy to say it that way.  Honestly, that was a fair criticism, and I especially appreciate those:  it’s a good friend that tells you when they think you’re nuts.  But:

My gut instinct might have been right.  DNA changes?  That can’t have any bad impacts, can it?

I guess it can.  And this is where the #clotshot becomes a crime.  Any healthy person under 40 is much more likely to die of the mRNA treatment than COVID.  There has been quite a run on heart attacks of healthy young men who were injected.

But even after this, the push for the injection is intensifying:

2

But why would you trust a government and a media that has consistently lied to you about the ‘Rona?

And they’ve completely expressed how they feel about anyone who has a different opinion:

Certainly, they’ll return your freedom to you after COVID is banished, right?

Be Goofus, not Gallant.

The Mrs. and I have discussed it.  We are not getting the #clotshot.  If this is an experiment, we’ll happily remain in the control group.  I’ve had the ‘Rona, so I identify as immune.

But, in the end, you have a choice.  You can submit to have a literally Biblical restriction on your life,

Or, you can take another track.  If enough people choose freedom, we’ll never have to worry for a minute.  You must remember – they’re more afraid of you than you should be of them.

See, it ends with a bikini!

Emotional Bank Accounts – Another Form Of Wealth

“I’m yours, Lurch.  My heart.  My soul.  My bank account.” – The Addams Family

If it’s 2% milk, what’s the other 98%?

I generally try to be an upbeat person.  I’ve got good reason to be.  So far, at least, most of the worst things in my life have led to most of the best things in my life.  And it seems the worse the initial event is, the better the final outcome.

The track record is pretty good.  I’m optimistic.  Heck, with a small thermonuclear war, who knows how good things will get for me!

Optimism is one of my personal keys to life.  And it’s key to my relationships.

One thing I’ve learned (besides the fact that cats float but don’t like it) along the way is this:  what I get out of my relationships is just like my job or any other aspect of my life.  The more that I put into the relationship, the more that I get out of the relationship.

“I have become Fluffy, Destroyer of Worlds.”

Stephen Covey called this the Emotional Bank Account®.  I put the little ® there in this case because Stephen Covey ® almost everything under the Sun.

The idea of the Emotional Bank Account™ is simple:  every relationship that you have is one where you’re either doing the things that build the relationship or doing things that cause the relationship to fade faster than Johnny Depp’s career.

A ramen noodle warehouse burned down.  Dozens of dollars in inventory were destroyed. 

This is a simple and important concept.  In my career I’ve worked in lots of different office environments and seen lots of different characters that quickly developed an overdraft situation with me:

  • The Complainer: There’s a problem with everything, in the view of a Complainer.  It’s like working with Goldilocks, but the porridge is never, ever the right temperature.  There is no topic that isn’t complained about.  Heck, if they were the manager of the Tesla® plant, they’d complain that the place smelled musky.
  • The Helpless: Helpless people simply cannot do any particular task, and need help each and every time they do it.  If you allow it, they’ll pawn off as much of the task to you as they can, each and every day.  What’s the name for a collective parasitical group of people like this?
  • The Woe-Is-Me: This is a perennial victim.  Everything in their life that’s bad?  They’re not responsible for it.  How bad is their life?  They have to shop at Wal-Martyr®.
  • The Untrustworthy: Think you’ve told them a secret?  Soon enough the entire office knows.  And untrustworthy people who use marijuana are worse.  They’re guilty of high treason.
  • The Emergency Room Doctor: Everything has to be done now – it’s all urgent.  And there’s a sense of criticality about even the most mundane tasks.  I mean, if your parachute doesn’t open, why panic?  You’ve got the rest of your life to fix it.

Those people are draining.  Don’t be one of them.  How do I know this?  Once I was going through a rough patch, and was slipping into Woe-Is-Me.  I could sense from my friends that I had ridden that pony a little too long, or maybe I needed to up my deodorant game.  I decided to stop complaining.

Then The Mrs. complained that I don’t buy her flowers.  I have no idea when she started selling them.

I decided that if I had a problem worth complaining about, I’d deal with or shut up.  Even my best friends have a max tolerance level for dealing my emotional complaints.  The Mrs. is even more direct.  When I whine, her only comment is:  “And what, exactly, are you going to do about it?”

Oddly enough, though, I found that (in most circumstances) when I’m a positive person, people like to see me around more.  They ask me for help.  They offer help.  My account balance is full.

It’s not just at work.  It’s not just my friends.  It’s my family, too.  If every interaction that I have with them is negative, people aren’t exactly happy when Pa comes home.

Hopefully, this knife joke wasn’t too edgy. 

Being a positive, productive, trustworthy person?  When times are good, it’s important.  When times aren’t good?

Maybe even more important.  And when we talk about wealth, being surrounded by good, trustworthy people is wealthy, indeed.

Censorship: It’s Not Just For Government Anymore

“The Constitution? I’m pretty sure the Patriot Act killed it to ensure our freedoms.” – The Simpsons

When you do push-ups, are you just bench-pressing the Earth?

The First Amendment to the Constitution was pretty important to the Framers.  That’s why they put it first.  Duh.  In a move that I think would irritate the Framers, this one has been pretty twisted over time.

Like any of the Amendments, when it twists, it’s twisted Leftward.  I’ll give an unrelated example. Abortion was made to be legal by somehow twisting the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution:

Ninth:  The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Fourteenth:  . . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In reality, the Ninth Amendment is probably one of the most ignored Amendments.  Why?  Because government wants power, and people having rights is the opposite of state power.  But under the logic of Rowe v. Wade I should be smoke all the crack I want to and not be arrested.  Oh, wait, Hunter Biden already did that . . . .

Okay, I didn’t have a great tag line, but I have a second meme:

The First Amendment packs a big punch, it secures the rights of American citizens for a whole bundle of things, but the one I’m focusing on today is that the government can’t abridge the rights of people to speak freely.  You know, share ideas?

Leftists used to be all-in on the First Amendment.  They used it to weasel in Marxist concepts into schools and other institutions.  People on the Right ignored them.  For (what they thought) was a good reason:  every person with common sense could easily see that Leftism didn’t work.  Besides, they had to go to work and not argue with smelly Leftist college hippies.

So, Leftism crept in, and eventually took over institution after institution, as we’ve talked about before.  The response of the Right was always the same, “Oh, we lost colleges?  College kids!  They’re so fickle.  They’ll come around when they get older.”

What’s the name of the statue in the Temple of Regret:  the Coulda Would Buddha. 

That’s a shortsighted argument.  Where do teachers come from?  Oh, yeah, colleges.  Who do teachers have access to?  Oh, yeah, all the kids.

One thing that has been shown throughout history, however, is that the soft lies and false promises of Leftism are mainly only useful against weak, wishful, and self-hating minds.  The rise of talk radio after the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the prompt failure of nearly all Leftist radio hosts proves the point:  they can’t win in a fair fight of ideas.

So, what should the Left do after taking over the various institutions in the United States?

Pull up the ladder.

Get rid of free speech.

But there’s that pesky First Amendment.  What can you do?

What does free speech online and the square root of -1 have in common?  They’re both imaginary.

The answer in 2021 is rather simple:  use private companies to stifle speech that the Left disagrees with.

If I were to travel back to 2000 and tell myself that in 2021 we’d see:

  • A sitting President would be censored from the Internet,
  • Private companies would create systems to track your every move,
  • Google® (2000: Don’t Be Evil®) would suppress ideas, and
  • Differing opinions would be branded as false
  • The government would openly lie . . . oh, wait, they always do that.

I’d think that we were living in some sort of dystopia.

The Left always sold dystopias with these sorts of characteristics as the result of a religious-Right dictatorship.  But, no.  This is entirely Leftist.

The most recent example is the White House has “reached out” to Facebook® to have them censor content about COVID-19®.  I would like to point out that time after time after time, the “official” narrative has been wrong.

I got an email saying I got a job at Facebook.  No interview, they had all my details.

Horribly wrong.  Remember the videos of those people dropping dead in China?  Remember the videos of the apartment doors being welded shut like some kind of intro to a zombie movie?  Seem silly now?

Yeah.  Remember the “don’t wear masks” leading to “wear masks” to “maybe wear two or three masks”?  Yeah, me too.

It’s obvious that the one thing missing during the entire ‘Rona event has been good information.  Every bit of it has been bleached, sanitized, and become subject to partisan polarization.

But “CDC Accepted Facts®” have been proven wrong again and again.  So, why is sharing an opinion that differs from the Currently Accepted Truth™ subject to censorship?  Because it is clear that Leftists are quite willing to shut down meaningful conversation in this country when it goes against whatever it is that they believe today.

That’s the plan.  The plan is not just for COVID-19©, but for every fact, forever.  And the “fact checkers” are people who hate the Right with every fiber of their being.  Just go to Hunter Biden’s Wikipedia® page, and do a search for “laptop.”  One entry.  No mention of, you know, the pictures of him zonked out smoking crack.

That’s another form of censorship, one Winston Smith would be proud of.  And, sure, Wikipedia© isn’t the government, and Facebook™ could ignore it when the President asks them to effectively censor people the government doesn’t like.  It’s okay when a private company does it, right?

The Constitution isn’t magic.  The only way that it works is if people actually demand that the government follow it.  If not?  Bit by bit it will be twisted into (sometimes) the opposite of what it says, in plain language.

If a deaf person goes to court, is it still a hearing?

There isn’t anything magical about the Supreme Court, and nothing in the Constitution gives them the right to be the ultimate decision makers as to what it means.  It was written in plain language for people like you and me.  Thomas Jefferson felt that every branch of the government was co-equal in being able to decide that an act of government was un-Constitutional.

Not saying that I’m the expert, but I think Thomas Jefferson just might have been in the room when some of the important decisions were being made.

The Constitution is a piece of paper, but it’s also a contract, a contract among men for the way that they will be governed.  I’d add that the ultimate decision makers on the Constitution aren’t the Supreme Court, but the Several States, and, ultimately, the People.

And that’s what scares the Left.  If they have to shut the People up, it’s because they’re scared.

Which is just what the Framers expected.

Who Do I Write To?

“A writer writes, always.” – Throw Momma From The Train

Gravity is a conspiracy theory.  It’s how the man keeps you down.

I wrote a while back about why I write.  TL, DR: because I want to.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, perhaps another question is, who am I writing to?

TL, DR:  You.

But a lot more follows.

I guess I’ll start for who I’m not writing for:  Leftists.  I don’t care about their opinion.  At all.  Anyone who thinks that a human who has/had testicles should compete in sports as a woman is delusional.  Anyone who thinks that prosperity can be bought with a printing press is dangerous.

There’s little to no reason to think that anything I ever will write or ever could write would interest a Leftist in the slightest.  This blog has had one or two Leftist trolls in the comments.  We ignored them, they went away nearly immediately.  I think that reading the things I write is probably painful for them.  They’d love to troll here, but that means they have to read it first.

Vampires are like Leftists:  they don’t reflect.

Leftists seem to be able to read, it’s the comprehension that gets them.  And I don’t think that Leftists will ever be convinced by mere words.

No, there are only two things that convince a Leftist they’re wrong:

  • When the State that they created decides to send the police in the middle of the night to collect them. Generally, the next part is The End.  How?  With a bullet (just a few, bullets are expensive) or, more likely, intentional starvation.  At the point when the real hunger sets in, I imagine more than one of them has that final thought:  “Maybe I was wrong.”
  • When a long drop from a great height ends in a sudden impact. Call it Pinocetivation instead of motivation.  It has the advantage of being a sudden and permanent cure.  There are, of course, variations on this them involving vast amounts of kinetic energy applied to a small portion of the body through a fast-moving projectile.  You get the point.

Leftists are, generally, not redeemable.  Once the infection of Leftism has set in, just like a ‘Rona mRNA shot, they’ll never be the same again.  Ever.

So, I’m not writing for them.  Even statements that have been proven to be true for thousands of years of human existence will be denied by them.  Why?  Because that’s not what we’ve believed for (checks watch) five years now.  It’s (insert current year here).

So, I’m not writing for Leftists.

When Starbucks®, Antifa™, Nike©, and Coke® are on the same side . . . . Reprinted with permission.

I’m also not writing to vilify things I see that I don’t like on the Right.  I’ve seen enough of history to know that atrocity really only comes from the Left.  The Right?  Mainly if the Right is unchecked they want to produce free and open societies where their citizens can be left alone so they can be prosperous.

Ohhh, scary.  I kid, but to a Leftist, the idea of a free and prosperous society that chooses who can (and can’t!) be a citizen is scary.

Leftists have a big problem with the idea of “their citizens” because to a Leftist, everyone is a possible American citizen.  They just aren’t Americans yet.

That’s obvious nonsense.

The policies of the Left, when unchecked lead to the greatest horrors man has ever seen on Earth.  The policies of the Right, when unchecked lead to the greatest prosperity that has ever been seen anywhere, at any time ever on Earth.

That’s why I don’t, and won’t, shoot Right.  Do I endorse everything everyone on the Right says?  Of course not!

Even though I don’t write about the things I disagree with, I write (mainly) for the Right.  I’m not trying to convert anyone.  I’m also not trying to spread dissension in our ranks.  That’s what the Left is for, and I won’t do add fuel to the fire for them.

Yup, this is the energy policy of the Left in a nutshell.

Several readers I know in real life.  I’ve written many posts with them in mind.  Many readers I’ve grown to know over time through comments and email exchanges.  I write with them in mind, too.  I don’t hold my tongue to not offend someone.  Not everyone shares all of the same opinions.  What one friend might agree with, another might disagree with.

That’s okay.  This isn’t a cult.  Unlike the Left, we’ll take you even if you’re not up to every single nuance of our current doctrine.

But when I write, I want to do this:  make people think about the world in a different way.  There is nothing I love more than when I find that something I thought was true was false.  It gives me pause, and makes me reassess my philosophy from top to bottom.

I recall a particular day where I did just that:  George “read my lips” Bush came out against a tax cut.  This particular tax cut was proposed by a Democrat.  Bizarro world?  Sure.  But I realized that George was just another one of them – the permanent ruling class in Washington.

I won’t promise I’m consistent, but I do promise to tell the Truth.  And when I find I was wrong?  I’ll tell you that, too.  I won’t be shy – Pa Wilder taught me that telling the Truth about being wrong isn’t the sign of a weak man.

Writing to convince people is a fool’s errand.  You already know who you are.  And if you’re here, chances are good we’d be on the same side.  Who knows, some of you may even be in Mayberry and not know that I’m walking around with you daily.

Not my target audience.

In the end, the war of ideas and of information is where our battle will be won.  We must keep our heads high, our spirits up, and be of good humor.

Which is why I’m writing to you.  Our day will come.  This is not over.  We are not done.

The Command Economy, Coming Soon To A Nation Near You

“Mr. Sulu, lock phasers on target and await my command.” – Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan

Kim Jong Un and Dominos Pizza® share one thing:  both can deliver a crispy Hawaiian in thirty minutes or less.

At the end of the Roman Empire, laws had to be passed to keep the place going.  Some of the laws were normal, like huge taxes complete with people to come break your kneecaps if you didn’t pay the tax.  Some of the laws were a last-ditch attempt to keep the Empire going – the Romans were having difficulty developing technology because they couldn’t do algebra.  Whenever the Romans tried to solve for X, they kept coming up with 10.

Okay, enough math jokes for one paragraph.  The real problem was that laws always have unintended consequences.  When those unintended consequences pop up, what’s the obvious thing for a lawmaker to do?

Well, they don’t call them lawrepealers, they call them lawmakers, so they make another law.  And that new law has unintended consequences, too.  Why?  Because every law has unintended consequences.  If you’re a lawmaker, what’s your solution?

Yet more laws.  It’s like trying to fix a fraudulent election system by voting, but that was what the Empire did – pass more laws.  Expecting politicians to fix actual problems is like expecting the iceberg to fix the Titanic.

It got so silly that they had a law that if you were a farmer, your son had to be a farmer, too, so that Rome had enough farmers.  It wasn’t just limited to farmers, it was any old occupation.  If dad did it, junior had to do it, too.  The reason that they did that is because farmers were headed to the cities where the welfare was better, and just walking off the farms.

I wonder if that had any lasting consequences?

What we’re seeing now in the United States is something sadly similar.  A law is passed, and it has horrible consequences.  The solution?  More laws.

Taxes are simple that way.  Who gets taxed?

That’s simple!  People who don’t have their congressmen’s cell phone number on speed dial get taxed, that’s who.

Why are Sherlock Holmes’ taxes so low?  He’s an expert at deduction.

In order to not tax the people congressmen know, congressmen have to write increasingly complicated laws to create increasingly complicated regulations that then result in complicated interpretations which become as legally binding as the law that led to the regulation that led to the interpretation.  Whew.

Why so complicated?  Because if it were simple, everyone could take advantage of the tax code like it was one of Harvey Weinstein’s dates.

The result?

Jeff Bezos had at least two years that he paid zero taxes between 2006 and 2018.  Good job, Jeff and the legions of tax attorneys you hired!

Me?  I have to make do with TurboTax™, which sadly won’t talk to congressmen on my behalf.

The result of all of these laws isn’t just cronyism, where bald, Bond-villain wannabees like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates save money so they can take their hideous goblin-looking girlfriends out on dates while their ex-wives slave away with only billions of dollars to show for their decades of devotion, which is quite a bit of money.   Some people work an entire year and don’t make $50 billion dollars.

I wonder if she enjoys his company.  Or his companies?

Tax law isn’t the only problem, and it isn’t even the worst problem.  The worst problem is the Command Economy.

What’s a Command Economy?  Essentially, it’s when the government decides that all of those natural economic laws that follow from generally free commerce that have worked throughout mankind’s existence are useless.  The result?

Men, top men mind you, decide who wins and who loses in the economy.  It’s like Jeff and Bill not paying taxes because legislators are lining up to do what they want, but worse.  It’s more like a transsexual bodybuilder having a prostate infection prior to the women’s weightlifting competition in the Olympics®.  We all know that’s not pretty.

What is the result when people try to plan the economy?

Disaster.  I’ve talked again (LINK) and again about the Soviet attempts at a planned economy.  It never works well.  People respond to incentives, and no single person (or even a bureau of people) is as smart as the collective decisions of millions of citizens.

Perhaps the most tragic story is that of China, which I’ve also written about before (LINK).  There, anything that Mao said, or that Mao’s advisor’s thought he said, became immediate law.  The result was the starvation of millions.  Ask AOC, and she’ll tell you, “That wasn’t starvation, that was simply involuntary food restriction, silly.  It was for their own good.”

Stalin and Mao:  still a better love story than Twilight.

Why did people starve to death?  Because the incentives of productivity were destroyed.  It has even happened on this continent when the Pilgrims showed up.  Their first idea was that everything would be held in common – they even wrote it down in the Mayflower Compact.  So, regardless of who gardened, everyone shared equally in everything.  What could be more Christian than that?

Mutual starvation, apparently.

Two years after the foundation of the Plymouth Colony the Pilgrims dumped their Mayflower Compact on the Ash Heap of History.  People could farm and keep the stuff they grew and do with it whatever they wanted.  The result?  The harvest of 1623 was the best harvest the Pilgrims had, until the next year when they produced even more.  The Chinese have dumped all the crazy Mao stuff, and have used the incentives of the free market to quickly pull amazing numbers of people out of poverty.  The Chinese people say they don’t mind the associated total state political control, but the CCP noted back to the people, “I don’t recall asking your opinion on anything.  Back into the kitchen!”

The secret ingredient in creating real prosperity remains the same:  private property.  Duh.

But people never learn.

Never mix math and booze:  don’t drink and derive.

I fear we’re at the brink of the next, tragic, Command Economy.  Of course, I’d love to blame this on the Left, but at least on this one?  It’s been a mutual suicide pact leaping towards a controlled economy.

Bill Clinton is the unlikely hero here.  Realizing his only path for re-election after his wife’s failed attempt at socializing medicine was to govern from the center, he did just that.  He stopped being a water carrier for the economic Left and stuck to cigars and interns for his amusement.

Clinton is a critically flawed man, but his true allegiance was power, and realizing that the path to it was one of moderation, he followed it – at least in the laws he signed.  Bush II wasn’t so inclined, he never met a person whose money he didn’t want to spend.  W’s abuse of the economy started with “compassionate conservatism” and continued through massive bribes of additional Medicare funding to buy his re-election.  Just as Clinton drove Right to get re-elected, Bush drove Left.

Obama?  Socializing medicine in a way that’s obviously not something that can be paid for in the long term is his legacy.  Otherwise, he mainly just continued W’s budget shenanigans, but with his friends winning.  Of course, why not.  They had his cell number.

I’d love to tell you that Trump was in some way different, but Trump has one strength – making a deal.  The laws of physics and economics are, sadly, not negotiable.  Biden?  Who knows what he thinks.  He certainly doesn’t.  But the idea of opening the checkbook has been continued (by someone) under Sleepy Joe.  I just got a check from .gov.  It was for “advance payment of child tax credit.”

What’s this?

Bread and circuses.  Flooding the economy with cash in the idea that not only votes can be printed by the millions, but prosperity can be printed, too.

Political Tip:  it’s okay to use your family members as political props, just remember, don’t use them as Halloween props.

The result is going to be predictable:  the inflation that’s currently occurring will be an “unintended consequence” of the spending today.  The reactions will be simple, and wrong.

  • “Let’s fix prices.”
  • “Let’s mandate higher wages because of higher prices.”
  • “Let’s give more money to those who need it most.”
  • “Let’s give a tax credit for alternative energy.”
  • “People. We have a lot of them.  Could we turn them into food?  Chuck-fil-a®, anyone?”

All of these ideas sound good (except Chuck-fil-a™, unless they have good dipping sauces), but all of them are wrong.  The distortions that resulted from FDR’s New Deal® still reverberate in our economy today.  Social Security alone has lifted trillions from the economy and removed the incentive to save for retirement.

Just like so many of the siren songs of socialism, Social Security sounds super.  People who get it say, “I paid in for it, so I earned it.”  Well . . . no.  The benefits far outweigh the contributions.  Social Security is really just income redistribution from the young to the old.  But hey, it sounds good, right?

Other distortions, as I said, are on the way.  We’ve seen this song and dance before.  Can’t sell at NY strip for more than $12 a pound?  Welcome to a new cut of meat – the Missouri Strip.  Or the Ohio Strip.  Of course, the reaction from government at this late stage will be to imprison people who attempt to get cheeky by getting around the laws.

What’s the hardest thing about being vegan?  Keeping it to yourself, apparently.

That’s what governments do when they are starting to lose control.  They come down in force on those who thumb their noses.  Look at the charges levied against the January 6 protesters:  they’re unjust.  Why are they unjust?  Because the more frightened a government is, the more it overreacts.

The reaction in the economy will be similar.  The idea that we can ignore thermodynamics and select an energy source without consequence is one that will be chosen.  Ideology will attempt to trump physics.  Instead of being hungry for food, if a Command Economy takes over, we will first hunger for power.

Of course, Leftism has caused nothing but hunger whenever (and that’s not an exaggeration) tried.  Want a diet plan that always works?  Communism is a sure bet.

Why can I be so sure in making that prediction?  When the Romans tried a Command Economy, it failed.  Those farmers, whose sons were supposed to take their place?

Those Roman sons walked away from the productive farms, because the price, their freedom, was too high.

In the end, economics always wins over ideology and bad math.  Always.  Generally, though, a lot of tragedy precedes it.

Let’s just hope this isn’t coming soon to a farm near you.

Apologies

This post is running late.

It’s written, but the meme magic hasn’t been woven in, and it’s far too late to continue.  I ended up working on some unanticipated pressing issues (nothing bad, just stuff that had to be done) that ate up a few hours and started me off late.  I’ll finish the post tomorrow and respond to the previous comments then, too, as usual.  The good news?  You’ll have back-to-back Thursday and Friday posts.

Again, my apologies.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Cache

“You would then illegally scrounge whatever material you could from a backup supply cache that I’ve overlooked. The same cache where your team are waiting for further orders.” – Mission Impossible:  Ghost Protocol

I have the eye of a tiger, and the heart of a lion, and a lifetime ban from the zoo.

Cache.

It’s from a French word, cache, and it’s pronounced exactly like the word “cash” but you simply have to add the sound of a six-day-old banana being chopped in half with a rusty meat cleaver on the end.  I have no idea why people say learning French is difficult.

Cache was originally a French trapper word for a place where they hid stuff like gunpowder and spare Velcro® and the PEZ® extract that they painstakingly hand-squeezed from beaver glands.

Who exactly were the French trappers hiding stuff from?  Probably beavers wanting their glands back, or the rare deepwater Apache wanting gunpowder to snort.

Why am I bringing up old French slang terms?  I was inspired to write this little post down because both Aesop (LINK) and Eaton Rapids Joe (LINK) wrote about it today.  So I decided to jump on the bandwagon.

Why don’t dairy cows wear flip flops?  They lactose.

Each of them had a slightly different take than I will, so, please do give them a visit.  Here’s my $0.02 worth:

What am I going to want to hide and why?  First, how about what not to hide?

Food.

This is one of my pet peeves.  Many, many people in America have been hungry, as in “I skipped breakfast” but few people living in 2021 America have really been hungry.  I remember reading that T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia” not D.H. Lawrence who was “Lawrence of Chlamydia”) was always showing how tough he was.  Why, one day, he went a whole day without having any food.

Most people in the United States could go weeks without any chow.  It always amuses me when I read an article about some programmer from San Jose who followed the Apple® Maps™ direction and ended up snowbound for three days is found.  Almost always, the news story ends up with some insanely stupid comment, “And Brandon survived for six days on nothing but Taco Bell® Fire Sauce™ packets.”

If you mix Taco Bell® Fire Sauce™ into ramen, it tastes just like poverty.

No.  Brandon was fine going to be fine.  The 86 calories he got from the hot sauce packets didn’t cover that thin margin between life and death, and he didn’t really need to eat the two people with him.

When it comes to bug-out bags (or get home bags) the last thing I’d want is to add food.  And that goes for your cache, too.  Food is bulky, and, over time, will spoil.  Food is a difficult thing to conceal for long periods.  I mean, have you ever left a ham sandwich with mayo on the counter for a week or two?  Ugh.

Freeze dried food or MREs will last quite a long time if kept dry, but how many MREs would you have to bury to survive for a reasonable period?

A lot.  I could do the math.  And I certainly do suggest that you have a ludicrous amount of food on hand – as much as you can afford and store.  But to go out and bury it?  Unless you have enough land and enough money to build and bury a bunker, creating a food cache would be just as silly as creating a water cache.

Is drinking water from a straw the opposite of snorkeling?

But what should I cache?  That’s where it gets interesting.  What does it take to keep me alive?  What do I want to hide?

As many before me have said, if you think it’s time to bury your rifles, perhaps it’s time to start loading them instead.  But rifles are a great thing to have when times get tough.  Rifles are a great thing to have when times are great.  I just love rifles.

A rifle without a cartridge means I have to do cardio to bash the commies with my rifle butt.  That sounds like work.  So, why not store some ammo, too?  And, by ammo, I mean a LOT of ammo.  Since the prices are coming down now, it’s pretty close to the time to smash the “buy” button.  So, that’s something that I might want to have.

Tools.  What kind?  Knives.  Hatchets.  Fire starting stuff.  Rope.  A good pair of boots.  Bitcoins.

Medical supplies.  Some of them have a pretty short shelf life.  Bandages, not so much – they can last as long as they’re dry and sealed.  And, if it came down to it, some triple-antibiotic salve is worth having.  Personally, I’d try that even if it was expired even if it didn’t work any better than rubbing cottage cheese into a cut at that point.

Well, I can’t store a year’s worth of water, but I can store high-quality, high-volume water filters that will do 100,000 or so gallons.  That should give me time to figure out how to clean up the local creek water.

The Mrs. got me a bracelet with my initials on it before I went into the hospital, but they had a silly typo – instead of JW it said DNR.

Where should I hide my cache?

Any public lands are just that – public.  If someone finds my cache, well, hey, “free stuff” will be what they think.  In the western half of the United States where there is an immense volume of public land, it’s certainly easy enough to find places where no one has ever been.  I know that in several of my trips, I’ve been places that no other person, ever, has walked.  That’s a good place to hide stuff.

Depending on where you are, there might not be any public lands to speak of, especially if you’re east of the Mississippi.  That means hiding it on lands that you or someone else owns.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t generally think highly of people who dig holes on my land and bury stuff on it.  Heck, the other week I dug down and found a wallet that someone had cached here at Wilder Mansion.  Anyone know of a “Jimmy Hoffa”?  I seem to have his wallet.

If I or my family own it, by definition I’m in much better shape.  It’s even better if I have 50 or more acres, because playing tic-tac-toe across 50 acres gets a little tiresome.

Like anything, I’d suggest that you never trust on a single solution.  “Two is one, and one is none” is old-school prepper talk.  Redundancy is the key.  Why have one AR-15 when you could have two?  Two means that if one breaks, you have the other one.  And if they both break?  You just might be able to use the parts from one for the other – that’s the reason The Mrs. and I had two boys, after all.

Buy a communist a plane ticket and he can fly once.  Push him out of a helicopter and he can fly the rest of his life.

The same goes with caches.  They have one cache, when you can have three?  Why have three, when you can have four?  Having two water filters is better than having one.  And having two of the same water filter is better still.

The last thing is that if I have a cache, i need to be able to find it and access it when I need it.  If i hid it so well that even i can’t find it, it’s lost.  Perhaps some future archaeologist might find it interesting, but that doesn’t help me.  As I’ve recently seen, I can’t even remember all of the 300 or so passwords I have, so trying to remember where I buried my cache in a decade might be difficult if I can’t remember “password123”.

But whatever you do, don’t cache French fish.  They’re literally poisson.