It Came From 1987

“That’s good, because she’s a predator.” – Fight Club

I walked into a bar in 1987.  The bartender said, “Hey, the party is in the back.”

I had started doing these more or less in order by year.  It’s a retrospective, and it has nothing to do with box office – it’s me going through the movies of the year and picking the ones I like.  They are in no order.  One thing about these movies – 1987 seems to be a year when the videocassette was fully in bloom, and many of these movies had a much better life on VCR than they did at the local movie theater.

Again, these are in no particular order, but one thing struck me as I went through the list:  this is the strongest list, by far, of any year I’ve done, with amazing, inventive time.  Only two of the movies on this list are sequels:  Evil Dead II, which was a remake; and House II (which was entirely different than the original House), and both were far more comedy than horror.

Movies were better then.  Much better.

1987 might have been Peak Movie.

Outrageous Fortune:  Yes, Bette Midler is annoying, but so is Shelley Long, and both are hilarious in this movie about actresses who get involved in a spy caper.  This movie marks the movie regeneration of George Carlin, whose career had been sitting in a dumpster until this.

Mannequin:  Kim Cattrall really can’t act.  Andrew McCarthy’s main acting skill was his hair.  It didn’t really matter in this amazingly stupid movie about a mannequin that comes to life only with Andrew McCarthy is alone with it.  That’s it.  Silly.  Stupid.  Cheap to make.  And fun.

If your wife was a one-legged mannequin, could you stand her?

Lethal Weapon:  Shane Black was the writer of this movie (more about him later) and it cost $15 million to make and hauled in $120 million before VHS revenues.  It was the origin of buddy cop movies and was from the time when Gary Busey made money by acting, and not acting strange and before Mel discovered tequila.  Helmets on motorcycles, kids.  Helmets.

Evil Dead II:  It’s not really a sequel, it’s a re-make of Evil Dead.  The horror levels are fairly low, and the special effects are really quite good given the $75 budget they were working with.  To describe this movie?  Lovecraft meets the Three Stooges® and Bruce Campbell with a chainsaw hand.

Raising Arizona:  The cover to this movie sucked, but I had seen nearly everything else in the video store, so I popped down my $2.00 to rent it (Be Kind, Rewind!) and cracked a cold one in front of the TV.  Wow.  I was not expecting that.  The Coen Brothers did a great job making a comedy about kidnapping children through the eyes of a convenience store robber.  By the end of the credits, I was hooked, and the last line made perfect sense.  No studio would take a chance on a movie like this today, because it doesn’t make fun of families.

The Secret of My Success:  A smart kid just pretends to be an executive and makes the company successful instead of doing the mailroom job they hired him for?  Micheal J. Fox was born for this role.  He was witty and quick, and Helen Slater was totes adorbs.  Did the movie change my life?  Yes.  I used this idea to start working at a company without being hired and it resulted in a hostile takeover, but thankfully I got probation and can still own firearms.

I never asked A.I. to put in “East Asians” but I guess it decided that Chicago gangs in the 1930s were ruled by Fu Manchu?

The Untouchables:  David Mamet’s first writing credit from this list, and Brian De Palma?  Amazing work.  The big bad guy was Capone, the good guy was Eliot Ness.  Inexplicably, Sean Connery was tossed in, because he needed something to do because he wasn’t making Highlander.  Historically accurate?  Of course not.  Wrap up the whole, big story in two hours?  Yup, including baseball bat management techniques.

I just asked for ponies.

Predator:  I was driving along on a cool night, when I decided to stop at a drive-in movie theater.  Yeah, those existed once upon a time.  The title of the movie looked sketchy, but Arnie was in it, so, maybe it wouldn’t suck.  OH MY!  It was one of those great times when I was shocked by how utterly perfect the movie was in every respect.  Accurate?  No.  Perfect?  Yes.  From the opening credit to the nuclear explosion, it was a perfect movie.  Shane Black, proving he’s a perfect human, didn’t write it, but played a one of Dutch’s guys.  A perfect movie.

Spaceballs:  A silly movie, but I saw it in 70mm, back when theaters used film.  70mm is probably not necessary for a Mel Brooks comedy, but, hey.

Oh, my, what sort of cannibalistic ritual did the A.I. plan for Kevin?

Adventures in Babysitting:  Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first:  I am no longer dating Elisabeth Shue.  She’s much older than I am, and I decided the relationship would never work.  Also, I hope to meet her one day.  The director, Chris Columbus, didn’t have enough to do after discovering Hispaniola, so he decided to take up movies, with some small success in movies you may not have heard of, like this one and Home Alone.

If only the cop was Elvis.

RoboCop:  Cop lives.  Cop gets shot.  GloboLeft ruins a city on purpose to get Power and Profits®.  Cop gets reanimated into a robot.  Cop falls in love.  I’m having a hard time determining if this isn’t a documentary.  Regardless, it stars Peter Weller, who got bored with acting and decided to become a college professor – RoboProf.  Seriously, he’s a professor, and probably the second coolest academic on the planet.

Summer School:  Nothing could make me not love this very stupid movie.  Mark Harmon is a loser teacher who has to teach summer school to a group of loser kids.  There’s a dog.  Harmon falls in love with Kirstie Alley before she became the size of a refrigerator.  Odd note:  I have talked to a person who gave me first person testimony that Kirstie Alley was *at least* a decade older than official sources claim.

More accurate than you might guess.

No Way Out:  Sean Young was really hot in this movie, so hot that the crazy might have been worth it.  Kevin Costner continued his domination of 1987 with this second big movie of 1987.  It was a great movie.  Spoiler alert:  You’d never guess that Will Patton was actually Godzilla®.

House II:  The Second Story:  As I said above, House and House II have zero in common except that both were covered by building codes.  There is nothing at all logical about this movie, and it is about as scary as the Building Code Commission Agenda.  It’s silly.  It’s fun.  It’s nothing that Hollywood would make today.

Amazon Women on the Moon:  Another rental.  I had no idea what I was in for.  As a kid growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, late night television was great because 5th graders can’t get dates legally because they can’t drive.  This is a very, very underrated movie.  On a $5,000,000 budget, it produced a box of candy cigarettes and some shiny stones as revenue.  Why?  Gosh, manslaughter charges against the director (on another movie) for starters.  Watch the part “Son of the Invisible Man” for amazing chuckles.

Now with 100% more PEZ®.

Real Men:  John Belushi died, so the world left us with Jim.  Jim?  Not so bad in movies like this.  Is it serious?  NO!  It’s a 1980s comedy with John Ritter.

The Princess Bride:  An utter classic in every respect, as long as you can ignore that Rob Reiner and Mandy Patinkin (huge GloboLeftElite) were involved.  It cost $16 million.  Box office was $31 million.  Cultural impact?  Huge.  Much bigger than that amount.  I read the book (got it from those little book order things that they gave out at school) before the movie came out.  We need more giants in film.

“As you wish . . . ” and I wish there was more Elvis.

House of Games:  David Mamet’s second spot on the list.  Mamet is actually (sort of?) on the TradRight now.  Annnnnnyway . . . this movie is about conmen and con games.  I saw this one on HBO® or Skinemax® and was surprised at the tight plotting and especially liked Joe Mantegna’s acting, even if his name is too long and has too many vowels.

Prince of Darkness:  One of John Carpenter’s Apocalypse Trio.  This movie involves alternate dimensions and the Ultimate Evil all rolled into one, complete with Susan the radiologist (glasses) and Alice Cooper.  It is a horror movie, so if you don’t like those, it’s a skip.  Carpenter at his best.

Arnold needs to pump some iron . . . looking like a girly man.

The Running Man:  I thought this movie was pretty schlocky when I originally watched it back in the day.  Sure, it was fun.  Then I rewatched it with one of my boys and he said, “Dad, this movie is amazing!  Why don’t they make them like this now?”  Indeed.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles:  John Hughes, Steve Martin, and John Candy make THE Thanksgiving movie.  ‘nuff said.

Overboard:  Kurt Russell as a down-on-his-luck widowed carpenter who convinces amnesiac rich heiress Goldie Hawn that she needs to do the laundry and make the chicken tenders in order to reach mini-golf nirvana.  Amazing.

How good was 1987?  I skipped Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket.  Why?  It was a downer.

1987 was filled with riches compared to the corporate, soulless, paint-by-the-numbers stuff we see today.  What movies do you love that I left out?

A Tale Of Two Economies?

“Strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.  Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I guess, for her, these are dark times.

I saw a graph last week from the New York Times®.  The graph showed the views of the economy based on political party – people of the GloboLeft thought that the economy during Trump’s years in office wasn’t great and got worse every year until it fell off the COVID cliff.  Their view of the economy changed as soon as Mumbly Joe got into office.  Things were aLL bEtTeR NoW!  Oh, sure, not as good as they were when Obama was in office, but better than the average of the Trump years.

When looking at the Trump supporter numbers, it was the exact opposite, the economy had gotten better during Trump’s time in the chair, until the COVID cliff, but bounced back but had dropped off of that same COVID cliff.

When Biden got into office, if not a little earlier, the economy cratered for people on the TradRight, and has been in the gutter since then.

The takeaway from the Times™ is:  “Republicans react much more strongly to a president from the opposite party than Democrats do. That disproportionately affects the national mood during this Democratic administration.”

Probably the most important part of this graph is the why axis.

I’ll admit there is certainly bound to be component of that, but by any reasonable stretch of the imagination, the economy was much better under Trump than under Brandon.  I think the analysis by the Times© is myopic and doo-doo headed (that’s a technical term).

The Times© is missing the point that Biden voters are not at all the same as Trump voters.  Biden voters (the actual living ones), by far, make more use of public assistance than Trump voters.  Any move or perception of a move that the gravy train of cash and prizes for just breathing and eating Hot Pockets™ is going away is going to cause unease.

Since they are the consumers of things that illegals create more than Trump voters, any tightening of the border lowers the number of people to be Squatamalan nannies or gardeners and makes the “raise the minimum wage” crowd have to pay more.

The horror!

You might not think it’s a lie that there is worse than Biden.  The Canadians know it’s True-deau.

Lastly, a Trump administration will slow the growth of federal and state local jobs, as the gravy train is slowed, and as the regulations that spawn new regulatory jobs are strangled.

But what bout the Trump voters, are they delusional?

No, they own small businesses, and when profits are up, they’re happy.  And they don’t have bright green hair.  They’re homeowners instead of renters, so when interest rates are low, they can afford more house.  They don’t live in the urban hellholes so gasoline prices are much more important to them than they would be to the average Biden voter who lives in the core urban Bluetopia of some place like Detroit or Atlanta or Baltimore.

Things were better in the burbs, and better for families, and better for people who had to get up in the morning to make the doughnuts and keep civilization moving.  Oh, and the shutdown of the illegal pipeline raised their wages – lower labor availability raises wages.

Give a man a pizza and he will eat for a day.  Teach a man to make a pizza and he will work for minimum wage.

Who doesn’t like increasing wages?  The GloboLeftElite, that’s who.  They don’t like higher wages because higher wages mean decreased profit.  It’s odd that they end up having more money that they could ever spend, so it’s not the cash.  Again, it’s the concentrated power that money brings.

And concentrated power is equivalent to the ability to reward.  Or punish.

So, no, New York Times, Republicans are actually hurt by the economy.  And it’s likely on purpose.

And, since actual intact nuclear families are overwhelmingly for Trump, this leads to the next problem – if the conditions are bad for a family, imagine the problems that causes for the most important segment of our population:

Young men who want nothing more than a traditional, Norman Rockwell marriage with a wife, a car, 2 or 3 kids, and a home that they own.  That’s the desire.

The Hapsburgs had faces only a cousin could love.

The reality is that this dream is slipping away.  I think kids are losing ground every year.  Houses are more expensive, cars are more expensive to own and insure, and marriage costs more.  The situation is horrible compared to the early 1970s, when a manufacturing job could support a Norman Rockwell family.  Pay has stayed down due to the massive influx of cheap immigrant labor, whether that immigrant labor is here or in Vietnam.

Free trade means that we can be miserable on a race to the bottom for labor costs.  And mom and pop stores, as inefficient as they may have been, mainly kept the profits of their stores in town.  As the Walmartization™ of the rural economy continues, the guy who used to own the butcher store is now the guy at the meat counter, and the real butcher is hundreds of miles away in a meatpacking house, and is probably an illegal alien.

What was once a great middle-class life is now replaced as the GloboLeftElite search for yet more power.

The kicker is that the big key to a young man having a family, women, are more elusive every year having been propagandized into a dozen or more years of increasingly desperate and meaningless sex followed by desperation to find a “worthy” man as they enter their 30s and decide they want a kid.

Is that meme thot provoking?

So, guys check out.  They’ve got weed, booze, and video games.  When there aren’t women worth having, there won’t be men working to make themselves worthwhile.  Why are there no good young men?  There aren’t any good women worth chasing.

This leads to unrest in young men, and a misery in the population of people that are the real spark plugs of an economy, destruction of the middle class?

As usual, the New York Times® misses the big picture – the misery is real.  And they don’t care.

Why Does Asymmetric Warfare Exist? It Works.

“Apparently, my shoulder muscles are asymmetrical.  Did you ever hear of such a thing?  They say it’s genetic.” – Malcolm in the Middle

Never sell your soul to make good pickles – that’s a dill with the Devil.

Why do we have the TSA?

My contention is that there have been exactly zero hijackings of passenger planes since 9/11 (although one Alaska Air® plane was stolen by Sky King, PBUH).  Oh, sure, we had the shoe bomber.  That’s why one time when The Mrs. was going through a TSA checkpoint they made her take off her sandals and passed the x-ray wand over her bare, human, totally flesh-covered feet.

Yes, that really happened.

I suppose you could argue that a terrorist could put a bomb in checked luggage, so we needed minimum wage mouth-breathers to paw through my luggage and steal stuff, but an x-ray is far less invasive and cheaper in the long run than those idiots – besides, when I travelled with pistols, those were locked up and I didn’t have to show anyone anything.  I guess that’s one big advantage to having pistols.  Also, a TSA agent with a gun?

The TSA agent asked if I had any weapons.  “I prefer to kill with my bare hands,” apparently wasn’t the answer they were looking for.

Why have we spent billions of dollars on a system that (arguably) has saved no one, but cost me, personally, several hundred bucks when a TSA agent hot-fingered stuff out of my luggage?

Well, the government had to do something.  It doesn’t matter that the something was stupid and futile and useless, they did something.  The reason that they did something?

Asymmetric warfare works, though it’s called “terrorism” when not done by an established government.  Waco?  Totally not defined as terrorism.  Oklahoma City?  Terrorism.

Why is Ireland no longer governed by the British?  Terrorism, er, asymmetric warfare works – look it up.  Why does the state of Israel exist?  Terrorism, er, asymmetric warfare works.

What do you call a terrorist group from Hoth®?  Ice-IS.

Asymmetric warfare isn’t just bombs, though.  It works against individuals.

Make a statement that’s too far outside of the window of the acceptable?  That’s a public flogging and shaming.  Vox Day identified their tactics in SJWs Always Lie:

  1. Locate or Create a Violation of the Narrative.
  2. Point and Shriek.
  3. Isolate and Swarm.
  4. Reject and Transform.
  5. Press for Surrender.
  6. Appeal to Amenable Authority.
  7. Show Trial.
  8. Victory Parade.

I could give you many examples of this, but you already know many of them.  The result was the same – since the Narrative was like Cthulhu, and (until recently) only swam Left, there was an ever-advancing line of things you couldn’t say, even if they were 100% factual.  Some of these facts were (and still are, in some places) 100% censored.  That’s why they have to hobble and censor A.I. – the Truth is contradicts their Narrative.

And then everyone clapped.

The really, really corrosive part of this censorship is and was that the line was never a clear one, and kept shifting.

YouTube™ content creation is a big business.  It makes millions of dollars a year for some people.  Some even end up hiring writers, editors, and concentrate on making content that never would have made it to television in the past.  But they live and die at the whim of YouTube™.  Violate the nebulous terms and conditions, and not only do they end up losing their revenue stream, but they end up having to fire people that they’ve hired, people that they have grown close to.

So, as a content creator, they stay firmly on the “safe” side of the line.  Until the line moves.  Then, when their old videos (which were fine a year ago) now are found to violate the new narrative that just came into being last week?  They get scared.

See, it’s funny because it wasn’t my window I was naked in front of.  The Mrs. always tells me it makes the jokes more funny if I explain them.

And viewpoints are suppressed because of this non-violent, yet still very destructive type of terrorism.  My own podcast on YouTube® was flagged a year ago over making a joke about the Vaxx®.  Note that to any listener of the podcast, it’s really, really obvious that whenever we use the words “safe and effective” that we really don’t mean either safe or effective.  But when we say “no refunds” we actually really do mean that.

Regardless, viewpoints are suppressed.  For kicking off a few higher profile YouTubers® (Stephan Molyneux, for instance) they get compliance across the entire platform.  Molyneux had millions of comments and millions of hours of his content viewed during his time on YouTube™.  The result?

All deleted in a moment, and then banned from not only YouTube™, but PayPal©, Mailchimp®, and SoundCloud™.  Go to his Wikipedia© page and he’s listed as a “white nationalist podcaster who promotes conspiracy theories, white supremacy, scientific racism, and the men’s rights movement.”

Does this sound like isolate and swarm, anyone?

Yes, it’s economic terrorism on an individual.  And it works.

Oddly, though, in another sign that the Narrative can be stopped, Bud Light™ forms the backstory for the same tactics being used against GloboLeft.  We’re all familiar with the narrative that Bud Light© stupidly partnered with a man who dresses like a woman and lost hundreds of millions of dollars, but why?

Just in time to remind everyone before their Super Bowl® ads.

Because in the same timeframe a gender-confused young woman killed a bunch of people at a church school.  The name of the killer was known (and presented her as a woman, not the man she pretended to be).  The names of the victims were known.  But what was left?

The reason.  Within a day, it was known that the killer had left a Tranifesto, a description of why she had killed.  It was kept under wraps.

Why?

Because it showed, without a doubt, that her mind was twisted with a Leftist hate against . . . white people.  That’s simply not the Narrative, so immediately an investigation was started to find those horrible people that shared the truth of the mind of the murderer.

But the people (you and me) connected the dots between the beer and the shooter and were done.  Bud Light™ was and is seriously wounded.  And just like the YouTubers© that shy away from content that might cross the line, wounded companies stopped.  Not just InBev™, parent company of Bud Light©, but also every single app on my phone that normally turns gay-rainbow in June . . . didn’t.  Not a one.

I hope it will give it time to reflect.

The line had been drawn.  The economic asymmetric warfare from the people began to be heard.

I think that’s the case along not only the Texas border, but the whole border.  People everywhere are done with illegals, and done with pressing 1 for English and done with being quiet about the horrors caused, big and small by this unchecked invasion.  People are pushing back, and I’d expect that illegals and other immigrants will soon be the subject of public rudeness and shunning.

Racism?  No.  It’s our country.

Obviously, unlike in Canada, the government, despite its bluster, realizes that it can go only so far.  That’s the reason the Second Amendment is there.

And it has gone too far.

And no make-believe “compromise” will work, but more about that in the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, coming next Monday.

Friday’s Musings, Including LEGO, Seinfeld, And A Ted Talk

“Clarice, doesn’t this random scattering of sites seem desperately random, like the elaboration of a bad liar?” – The Silence of the Lambs

LEGO® just put in a hospital near my house, but they only do plastic surgery.  It’s busy though, people are lining up for blocks.

Fridays are generally the more relaxed post of the week, so this one won’t be an exception.  Here are some random musings:

Joe Biden won’t be the nominee – the cliff of performance we’re seeing from him is too stark.  Kamala Harris has the charisma of chlamydia, so she’s out.  That leaves two players for the Democratic nomination, Mike Michelle Obama and Grabbin Nuisance, governor of California.

My prediction?  Biden will bow out at the Democratic convention.  He’ll very emotionally note that “for the good of the country” he’ll bow out in favor of Obama or Nuisance.  The big networks will already have this in the books, and the new candidate will get hours of free advertising from every network so they won’t be stained with Kamala’s chlamydia.

What does syphilis and chlamydia have in common?  Kamala.

It’s funny to watch the Leftists try to blame cold winters on Global Warming®.  Yup, they did that.  Global Warming© is the best thing that every happened to the Left:  it’s an excuse to solve weather fluctuations with global governmental control and communism.  Everything is about Global Warming™, and finally Leftists have figured out how to blame it getting cold on everything getting “warmer”.

Sigh.

To the Elite, every single event will be used to increase control.  Stayed up too late and tired at work?  Mandatory bedtimes, unless you’re protesting or at a BIPOC LGBT+ riot, in which case you get a guaranteed minimum income.

If Global Warming© doesn’t happen, it will be anti-climatic.

Whenever I feel far from God, it’s not because He moved.  Duh.  Most (90%?) of the problems I have in life are the ones that I created.  Wonder who is going to fix those?

Things happen when they happen, and not when they’d be easiest.  The proper time to install machine gun nests and to mine the southern border with Mexico was 1960.  Life would have been pretty simple if that happened.

But it didn’t.  Life is what it is, and not what we’d like it to be.  The solution to the border problem is obvious to any thinking person.  It will be taken, or the United States will Balkanize into a collection of warring states, or a Caesar will arise.  Regardless, we’ll get snacks.  Or unending low-level conflict.  To-may-to, to-mah-to.

The Swatch© in Switzerland, thank heavens it wasn’t made in Croatia – then people would have been staring at their Crotch™.

Peak racial amity in the United States was in the 1990s and early 2000s.  Barack Obama was (for race issues) the absolute worst president in the history of the nation, erasing decades worth of propaganda poured into virtually everyone from the 1960s on led to my generation being the least racist generation of white kids in the history of the United States.

Race issues will continue to go downhill as all of that is undone by the racial animus currently on display against white folks.  But, hey, we’ll always have Seinfeld.

As found.

I thought I was getting too old to enjoy books, since the recent ones I read sucked.  I then re-read older books that I had, and discovered the truth:  Older books were better.  It’s not because people were better writers back then, but editors and the people who pick the books that are published pick crap.

Yes, I think people are getting stupider on average, but there are a lot more of them, so there still are a bunch of smart writers, even more than before.  But people who can write books that don’t suck aren’t getting them published as much.  Regardless, it’s time to read more than I have in the last few years.  Books are the best way to understand the thoughts of someone from years or decades or centuries ago.

I wonder if my memes will be studied 2,000 years from now?

Speaking of reading, several years ago, I started reading books with a pen in my hand.  If I see something I like, I underline it.  If want to make a note, I make a note.  It makes it easier to summarize books for this blog, but it also will allow a future reader to see what I thought at the time.

The Mrs. noted that, as laudable as this habit may be, it’s still going to cause people to talk if they see me reading Ted Kaczynski’s book with a highlighter.

TED:  Ideas worth spreading.  (As found, and as if I weren’t on enough lists.)

I’m superstitious.  In high school I had a great football game (multiple sacks, multiple tackles, performed CPR on a child that choked on a Hubba Bubba®).  I used a particular roll of athletic tape before the game, so I used it the rest of the season.  There are dozens of things like that.  Humans have a pattern-seeking brain, and I have a good memory.  That’s not necessarily a great combination.

Sure, rationally, I know that these random coincidences are just random coincidences.

But you never know.

Electric Vehicles: The Big Con

“You mean, drive in hybrids, but not act like we’re better than everyone else because of it?” – South Park

If you buy an EV from Dodge®, you also get a Dodge Charger™. (Memes mostly as found)

Based on the evidence I’ve seen so far in news stories, I’ve come to a conclusion about electric vehicles (EVs).  It’s this:  If you keep your EV parked in the garage at all times and never, ever drive in the winter, it works perfectly.

And, no, I don’t have one – I don’t need to have one to view the evidence that’s piling up.  I would believe that even the manufacturers would tell you that it’s pretty hard to charge an EV when it’s zero outside, unless you warm up the battery first.

They also have lower winter range for two reasons:  they have to electrically heat up the interior, which directly robs range, and in cold weather the battery cannot discharge as deeply – the rate of chemical reaction that the battery requires slows in cold conditions.

I wonder if all those people waiting to charge their cars are listening to AC/DC?

The range of most electric vehicles is incompatible with a Real American Road Trip.  Modern Mayberry has one big advantage over most places – it’s 100 miles from anywhere.  The downside for that on an electric car is obvious – a round trip to Mt. Pilot is simply not possible during the winter, unless I find and use a charging station.  The one in Mt. Pilot (there is only one) is not exactly in the best part of town, and it’s dozens of miles out of the way on any trip – a 100 mile trip now has another half an hour of driving added, plus the time required for charging.

Or, I could just bring a gasoline powered generator . . .

You can tell it’s not an Apple® car – it has Windows®.

Yes, I suppose that it’s true that an EV could replace most of my car usage.  Most days I drive less than 40 miles.  But in order for the EV to work, I’d have to own a second car just for the (not at all rare) trips where I have to go over 100 miles from home.  The range of an EV is simply incompatible with the size of the United States.

I suppose that would make sense if owning an EV provided cheaper transportation.

It doesn’t.  Insurance is much more expensive for an EV than an internal combustion engine car of the same value because they’re much more expensive to work on, even when they don’t catch fire.  Hertz™ Rent-A-Car© found this out – they’re now ditching the majority of the EVs that they bought.  Too expensive to run, too expensive to fix, too expensive to insure.

What happens when a Tesla® hits someone at a given frequency?  It Hertz®.

A dirty secret that’s causing the value of EVs to drop on the secondhand market is that the batteries will die.  If you use an EV a lot, the batteries will cycle and die.  If you don’t use it, the batteries will age and die.  If I had twenty-year old vehicle (and I do) I know that the hoses will break, I’ll eventually need to replace the clutch pad and brake pads.  Stuff will eventually need to be replaced.

But every time Pugsley turns the key, it cranks over and he drives it to school.  If it depended on twenty-year-old batteries?

Not thinking it would be a pretty sight if he had to depend on batteries old enough to vote.  On a zero degree day.

If a crackhead stole the copper lead, would he be guilty of mis-conduct?

The biggest drawback to EV adoption is battery tech.  It sucks.  But let’s pretend that we could store five times the energy in a typical EV battery pack – move from a 200 mile range to 1000 miles.  That would be awesome!  Let’s forget that’s nearly an order of magnitude increase in capacity for a second.

Now, instead of 200 miles worth of electricity stored in a battery that you’re sitting on, it’s 1000 miles worth of electricity – five times the density.  Did I mention that when an EV battery fails, it fails spectacularly?  Like in a crash?

Yeah, my car has a lot of stored energy in the gas tank, but we’ve figured out how to (mostly) keep it from blowing up all the time after over 100 years of experience, and most car explosions are in movies where the hero tosses a cigar to blow up the villain.  Of course, he does this and doesn’t look back, because it’s way cooler that way.

My dog exploded – he was half Irish setter, and half meth lab.

I’ve come to the conclusion that EVs are nothing more than a niche car for people who live in nice climates that never get really cold and are rich enough to have a car for each day of the week.

The gamechanger, for EVs is, of course, battery technology.  Triple the energy storage and halve the charging time at a lower cost with more safety?  Excellent.  Atomic powered batteries that are crash resistant that only need charging every fifty years?  Winner.

But I won’t hold my breath waiting for that.  There don’t appear to be any breakthroughs on the horizon that will make this work. And if there were, there are other problems.

Where does all that electricity come from?  Right now, the Texas grid is shedding load.  And California, who can’t seem to generate electricity without creating wildfires would need to consume at least 50% more electricity to electrify all their transport.  Since California has gone from NIMBY (not in my backyard) to BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) it’s obvious that electric capacity would have to be built in Arizona or Nevada or in the orbiting Unicorn Fart Farm.

How do you get Canada to support their electric grid?  Say it’s transgender.

No.  California won’t be going electric anytime soon.  Sensible places like Alberta and Switzerland discourage or prohibit EV charging in cold winter months, and they aren’t governed by Grabbin Nuisance.

It’s weird when a society makes detailed maps about how it’s going to destroy itself.  Well, at least people will soon be able to walk like an Egyptian.

The irony is this:  if the Left was really serious about reducing greenhouse gases by using less gasoline, the answer is really simple.  35 to 45 mile per gallon cars were made in the early 1980s, and had sufficient power to be useful on the highway.

What happened?  Additional environmental controls that addressed problems than 90% of the country doesn’t have.  Nitrogen oxides?  Bad in places that have smog.  Out in the rest of the Midwest?  Zero issues.  Yet, every car is designed based on the problems of Los Angeles.  In Fairbanks, they had a pretty simple emissions test, and wouldn’t let you drive a car in winter (when Fairbanks has smog) if it didn’t pass.

That’s too simple.  Let’s make every car suitable for L.A.

Then there are the CAFE standards – the Corporate Average Fuel Economy imposed on the automakers.  But CAFE excludes trucks and SUVs, so now everyone makes trucks and SUVs.  What about the mighty Toyota® Hilux, the car voted most likely to be driven by a Middle Eastern Faction?  Can’t sell it here, because of California and CAFE – small trucks have to meet silly standards.

We could save millions of gallons of gasoline tomorrow if we allowed sensible cars to be sold.

But no.  That would lower the cost of a reasonable car with great fuel economy to about $15,000, and nobody wants that.  I mean, Big Auto and Big Environment are in bed and agree, so who cares about the people?

Who cares?  Toyota, apparently.

I think EVs combined with silly-expensive cars is a meme trap for the mass demobilization of the American people.  And why not?  They can go to 15 minute cities, as the World Economic Forum keeps preaching.  And since almost half the world’s electric cars are being produced in China, is this a plan to offshore what remains of automobile manufacturing in America?  I imagine a rhyme of the phrase utterd by Barack Obama, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” which will become “If you like your car, you can keep your car.”

If it was a good deal, and EVs were the solution, we’d see technological and price advances and not have to depend on silly government handouts to make them a reasonable purchase.  EVs will stick around longer than they should, but, just like Joe Biden, they will never be the solution, no matter how the Left tries to force it.

But, hey, I hear that EVs work great in the garage!

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: The Death Pact

“What in the hell is diversity?” – Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Yes, this is a real headline. No, that is not the Bee®. Yes, we are in Clown World, where having insane flight controllers is more important than, oh, your life.

All memes as found.

I still recall hearing the phrase “diversity is our strength”. Google’s® Trends™ only goes back to 2004, but it absolutely peaks in May of 2004. I think it must have been the Friends series finale, where Rachel is killed by a multicultural gang while Ross declares he is in love with Chandler.

(If any of that is wrong, I’m just making it up because I never saw an episode of Friends.)

Diversity is our strength is true when you’re talking about reinforced concrete, the steel protects it against tension, and the rock, sand, and cement keep it great for compression, which is why my car is made from reinforced concrete.

But “diversity is our strength” is just a mindless platitude. (Platitude comes from the Latin word “Plat” meaning “I can’t spell flat” and Greek word “itude” meaning, “I can’t spell iTunes®”.) Diversity is our strength could just as well be replaced with Pfizer saying, “People are our biggest asset” when, in fact, their biggest actual asset is the dozens of Congressmen they own.

Hey, it’s all the same, Jefferson, Washington, and Adams could all have been replaced with people for whom “seven” is a color.

“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) is the new Affirmative Action (AA) – it’s simply a set of buzzwords that mean, “too many straight white men have jobs that we deserve.”

That’s it. Period.

Which jobs? Sanitation workers? No. No one is saying that there aren’t enough black sanitation workers, or that women are discriminated against in a 99.99% male-dominated field.

No. That’s not a job they want.

I think we need more cats writing about chess, since roughly the same number of cats play chess as women play NFL™ or college football.

What about the NFL® or the NBA©?

No. There is no one saying that the NFL™ has a discrimination problem because it doesn’t feature enough elderly disabled Asian women, even if they identify as trans. Why? Because people take the NFL™ seriously. And the NBA©? Doesn’t hit have a white person inclusion problem, as in they are underrepresented? And what about the “differently tall” population, or the Irish representation in the NBA?

No one is saying that, because white men are already minorities in those jobs. But in the NFL™ if there aren’t enough black coaches, that’s a problem. If there aren’t enough black quarterbacks, that’s a problem. Why? Because blacks want those jobs.

Silly. But mentally unstable air traffic controllers? Those are totally fine.

Thankfully, the Catholic Church is getting with the program. Next: Luigeusus.

Just like there is (maybe) one white cornerback in the entire NFL™, what about a position where . . . now stick with me on this, straight white males are the most qualified?

Not in the NFL©, but in the world?

That’s the problem. I mean, that’s the problem if the job is one that a Hispanic person wants. Or one that someone who has a bizarre sexual fetish wants. A big problem.

How big a problem is it?

Engineering is just filled with systemic and systematic and diastolic racism. That’s why so few minorities people of color (POC) are in STEM. What, Asians do fine and are overrepresented? Crap. I meant BIPOC – black and indigenous people of color. Damn Asians are always screwing up the con game, er, I mean, “push for equality”.

In the rush to get more BIPOC involved in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), I’ve heard that several larger universities that should know better have decided that they’d start recruiting STEM students from BIPOC candidates that don’t understand math. The odd thing is, if it’s a real science (biology, you’re looking pretty dodgy) it involves math where an understanding of calculus is the minimum standard.

And when it comes to diversity, why not diversity in safety? I mean, it’s been so boring for so long here in Modern Mayberry, wouldn’t the diversity added by atrocity make it all better?

Minimum. Mathematics are the tool, at every level, of people in STEM, unless you want bridges to fall down or airplanes to fall from the sky, or your Internet search history to be transmitted to your boss by “accident”.

Ahhh, yeah, that bridge in Miami that collapsed a few years ago? It was a triumph of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion since the women who designed it were of all colors of the rainbow. And Boeing’s problem with its software that crashed several of their planes?

Last I heard it was the result of offshoring the programming to inexpensive Indian programmers, which is cool, because it’s diverse, right? Good job Boeing®! I’m sure that you’re finding when one door closes, another opens. Often, in flight. But to have a plane that arrives at the destinations with all the doors closed wouldn’t be diverse, would it?

Thankfully, we now know that avoiding diversity is fascism.

And thankfully the FAA changed the Air Traffic Controller Test so that it was nearly impossible to pass as a white dude. Why? Because diversity. And now even mental stability is out the window. Guess I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing glue if I wanted to work as an air traffic controller.

In one sense, the real problem is that the straight white men built and invented most of the technology that created this world that feeds billions of people and keeps several billion living in luxury beyond the dreams of any Caesar. It’s just so darn complex! I mean, it requires people to understand math and stuff to keep it going! It’s another problem that straight white men created.

But I’m sure that having people who don’t have the capability to do math becoming engineers and pilots won’t cause any problems, especially if that means that straight white men don’t get the job.

What a great goal. I mean, what could go wrong?

I mean, diversity is our strength, right?

At this rate, only the Democrats will be eligible to be air traffic controllers.

Purpose, Calculus, and the “Why” of Life

“As you will find in multivariable calculus, there are often a number of solutions for any given problem.” – A Beautiful Mind

When you take a calculus test, make sure you don’t sit between identical twins – you’ll never be able to differentiate between them.

Often as I go through my daily life, I have to step back and ask the question, “Why?”

“Why” is a really important question, but Sir Isaac Newton was focused in his science on “What”.

Newton figured out (to the best of available information and measurements possible at the time) a very large amount of the “What”.  His equations of motion and gravity are really, really accurate, right up until the point where very large speeds (think how quickly illegals pass over our “border”) or very large masses (think your mother) change the game.  Newton’s rules allow us to predict the orbits of most of the planets with precision.

This is all based on based on 1690’s tech, which your mother would have been familiar with.

He also designed a second Pink Floyd album cover that day, after he set his roommate on fire.

Gottfried Leibniz, though, was really focused on the “Why” question even though he and Newton discovered calculus about the same time.

For Newton, the “Why” was a given.  Newton spent more time in study of the Bible than he did in study of nature or of economics (Newton was the Grand Baron of the Mint, or some such, and was really in favor of executing counterfeiters and people who clipped coins.

Like I always say, for every problem there is a very simple solution.

Leibniz wanted to go further and understand why gravity existed.  Ultimately, that was a question that he couldn’t solve with the measurements available at that time, and we still really don’t have a good idea for the “why” of many basic features of the reality that allows us to make and enjoy PEZ™, watch movies, or sit in a hot tub.

Yeah, things like “time”, “inertia”, “why everyone likes Italian food”, and “why we are even here in the first place”.  Those are things that are, so far, beyond the ability of physics and science in general to explain.

And that’s okay.

What kind of chicken did Leibniz order?  He always Gottfried.

When I look at my own life, I often wonder “why” about a ton of different issues.  I really believe that I’m fortunate in many ways that I really can’t understand the “why” of.  I remember when teachers would tell me that my kids were smart, well, I’d feel proud.

Now?  I realize that I had (almost) no impact on that, at all.  They were born with it – as Rush Limbaugh (PBUH) used to note that he had “talent on loan from God.”  When I first heard that, I thought it was braggadocio, but then realized that Rush was acknowledging that his way with words and skill at communicating, even his sense of humor were nothing for him to be personally proud of – they were on loan from God.

I get it now.

The events of our lives are like that, too.  Some are random, and some have a deeper meaning that either is immediately apparent or is apparent at some future point in time.  The random ones are just that, random.  It doesn’t generally matter (much) if a leaf falls on the east side or the west side of my house – I can ignore them perfectly well on either side.  It’s meaningless.

When a BMW® owner learns to drive, what car do they generally switch to?

But I’ve observed that little delays in my life, the “where did I put my keys” moments that slow me up getting out the door have several times saved me from getting into accidents.  A small thing?

Certainly.  But there are bigger ones that happen, too, things that are so unlikely to happen that they are effectively miracles – those have occurred far too frequently in my life for me to ignore.  Yes, once you’ve lived through 10,000 or more days, 5,000 or more commutes, some unlikely stuff is going to happen.

But we all know the bigger coincidences when we see them – the events that occurred in our lives that, looking backward, were either omens or led to situations we never expected.

This leads, ultimately, to a contradiction in my life there is John Wilder who:

  • Tries to prepare all of the important things so that everything is covered, and tries to live a virtuous and Godly life,

And,

  • Sees the outcome of the planning slowing turning into a colossal mess and the attempts at being virtuous leading to negative personal outcomes and says, “Meh, whatever.”

It’s true – virtue and grace don’t guarantee economic success – soulless creatures like George Soros prowl the world like a Lovecraftian Monster, using their money to spread chaos and disrupt cultural traditions dating back thousands of years.  And he’s rich.  If Soros has even a single positive virtue, I have yet to hear of it.

Kamala got chosen as VEEP for her race and gender instead of for providing sexual favors – which might make it the proudest moment of her life.

There is a scene from that great classic of cinema, BASEketball, where the main character (Joe Cooper) has reached rock bottom, he’s been abandoned by his childhood friend, his girlfriend is filled with contempt for him and he’s being publicly vilified.

His boyhood friend, however, has gotten everything:   public acclaim, money, and gets into a hot tub with a Playboy® playmate (they used to be girls).

Spoiler:  Joe Cooper sticks to the path of virtue, and in the end, everything is returned to him.

That’s the way that, as humans, we want to see life work out, so the good guys win.

What happened to the Russian who told a joke about Stalin?  I don’t know, either.

But it doesn’t always do that, and that’s okay – Soros will be rich until he leaves that money (along with control of dozens of Evil Foundations) to his son.  I can’t change that, and I won’t be upset about it.  It just is.

In the end, I’ll try to be like both Leibniz and Newton.  Like Leibniz, I’ll work as hard as I can to try to understand the “why”, but like Newton, if I don’t get there, I’m good with that.

I mean, they were okay with your mom, so you should cut them some slack.

The Wilder Cure For Illegal Aliens

“Prime Minister Tojo, Senator Edwards, my fellow Americans and our millions of illegal aliens.  It seems like only yesterday l was strafing your homes.  Here l am today, begging you not to make such good cars.” – Hot Shots!  Part Deux

What’s the difference between an illegal alien and E.T.?  E.T. learned English and went home.

I remember in high school thinking about the Roman Empire.  I chuckled to myself that the United States (clearly an empire even then) might fail but wouldn’t face the same challenges as the Roman Empire.  Where, I wondered, would the barbarians even come from?

James O’Keefe is a national treasure.  He’s amazing at pushing buttons on the Left to get them to react.  His latest piece of journalism is below.  WTWT.  In this, Mr. O’Keefe begins to pull the curtain back on a huge infection and begins to make public things that were thought to be “fringe” conspiracies.  Again.

In this particular case, Mr. O’Keefe went down to Arizona and followed illegal aliens (they’re not immigrants, they’re invaders) as they are housed at a shut-down school.  The school, Ann Ott Elementary School, 1211 E. Apache St, Phoenix, is surrounded by chain link.  From the looks of Mr. O’Keefe’s video, hundreds of illegal invaders are bussed every hour.

Where?

To the airport, so that the illegals can be forcibly injected into our society.

From the Google® Streetview™ capture in December, 2020, you can see the secrecy is already in place.  Fabric covers the gates so passersby (you and I!) can’t see in to see what’s going on.

2020.  This facility was in place during Trump’s administration. 

If I leased a building to help people do illegal things, how long before I was in jail?

The rot is very, very deep.

Who is a part of this corruption and ongoing subversion of our country and its laws?

The International Rescue Committee©.  Yeah, a shadowy NGO formerly linked with the CIA and headed by a member of England’s elite, and, oddly, has mostly been headed second generation immigrants throughout its existence in the United States.  For many decades, the IRC™ was mostly fixated on people of Eastern European extraction.  And that’s from their Wikipedia™ entry and their own page.

Why I don’t trust the second generation.

The IRC® gets (according to O’Keefe’s latest numbers) over $1.4 billion a year.  That’s enough to provide $600 to every illegal caught and released in the United States in the last year.  O’Keefe even found the receipts:

Wow, sooner or later that will start to add up! (from O’Keefe’s video)

This money, mainly, came from you.  Places like the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services pour hundreds of millions of freshly printed dollars into IRC© so they can do exactly what they’re doing.  None of this is a mistake.

The IRC™ is just one group.  There are others.

Follow the money.

But the funding isn’t just a secretive organization being run in the background by foreigners – nope.  The American Red Cross™ had a project manager there, too, and the place was filthy with Red Cross™ blankets.  The American Red Cross® normally does a lot of stuff with blood, which is the main income.  Over the years, it has also trotted to Congress to request funds to pay for disaster aid after events like Katrina.

Fair enough.

Silly to put your name on something proving you’re involved in human trafficking.

Want to bet that every bit of their aid in helping illegals break the law and transporting them across the country to transform us into a country that doesn’t resemble in the slightest the country we were born into?  I’ve not done the research, but I’m betting the Red Cross© is neck deep in this, too.

Both of these organizations are working as fast as they can to inject as many illegal invaders into the United States as quickly as possible to the tune of tens of millions.  AOC even said in her “big brain way” that the problem with undocumented illegal aliens is that they’re undocumented.  It’s the same sort of 12 year old girl logic that led her to previously respond to a question on how the United States could pay for a neverending stream of socialist benefits:  “You just pay for it.”

Real genius.

What AOC imagines when she things about illegal aliens.  How did Elvis® get in there?

Why are there housing shortages?  Illegals.  Why are we printing billions and billions of dollars so that these people can live free while you and I work and scrimp to get along?  And while we’re peppered first with advice to not have children, and then propaganda that we need hordes of illiterate people who don’t speak our language so that we can survive economically.

Because people like AOC and Black Rock® (Larry Fink is on the IRC© advisor list) like uneducated, often illiterate and criminal illegal aliens better than they like you and me.  They like them better than they like homegrown Leftists, too, since the illegals are a group of compliant second-tier serfs that feed their businesses with cheap labor and, soon enough, will vote reliably for the Democratic Leftist Global Elite candidates.  To top it off, these invaders are a net economic negative, costing far more than they produce in revenue.

Trying to import low-skilled, low-education labor to improve the economy is like trying to lose weight on an ice cream and beer diet.  But, hey, it helps people like Larry Fink buy your house and make you homeless, plus they get the fun of watching you get evicted.

Okay, this isn’t what Larry looks like, but I think they caught his smile watching you suffer.

From today on, I will do the best in my power to boycott every company and charity that I can that supports this invasion.  The Red Cross®?  I’m done bleeding for them, even though I’ve given plenty of gallons of red stuff over time.  As we find more of the groups that are doing that, well, I’m done with them, too.  And if there’s a business that employs illegal aliens?  Nope.  Not doing business with them.

Oh, Red Cross®, you don’t deserve to be immortalized in a PEZ® dispenser.

I’ve written before that the solutions to nearly every problem are simple, we just have to get to the point that we are prepared to do them.  They have to go home to their countries.  Again, self-deportation is preferable, and can be accomplished with sensible regulations in about a month.  Under the Wilder Plan© the main limitation on getting them out will be transport capacity, because, I assure you, they’ll want to leave, having no jobs, no benefits, no housing, the inability to buy at any store, and the threat of losing their children to orphanages if they don’t leave will provide quite a bit of incentive.

We’ll even offer free Pfizer™ vaxx on the way out, if they want it.

Hey, at least at that point they’ll really be refugees, rather than refugees that GO HOME FOR CHRISTMAS AND THEN FLY BACK HERE.

The result of the “everyone is an American” policy is a wrecked economy, political instability, and destruction of a country that formerly was one of the greatest the world had ever seen.  Even people in Leftist strongholds are now aware of this problem, so I expect they’ll start to try to stash them in places like Modern Mayberry.

The barbarians are now here.

The solution is simple.  While we’re at it?  Arrest and jail every single person involved in this pipeline of misery for treason.  After a fair trial.  Then deport them to the country of their choice with the illegal aliens they so love.

We do this, or we Balkanize.

And I’ve heard the advice, “Never go full Balkans.”

Ye Olde Wilder’s Almanack of Things That Won’t In Thine Yeare of Our Lord 2024 Happen

“Since when can weathermen predict the weather, let alone the future?” – Back to the Future

I think Lady Macbeth wanted to walk her dog the other night.  She kept yelling, “Out, damned Spot!”

Notes:  No podcast tomorrow.  Or the next week.  I’m not going to push The Mrs. this week, and next week she has to go get measured for one of those plastic bubbles so she can live in one (just kidding, follow up visit and we probably won’t be home from Modern Mount Pilot by then, she’s getting better every day). 

Second:  if you’ve emailed me and I didn’t respond, please email me again.  I enjoy and respond to every email sent to me (if I’m cc’d or bcc’d, no, but I read most of those).  I found several in a spam filter today, and I apologize for not checking that since roughly 2007.  I’ll check every week now.

Now, on to the show!

Last year I swapped out my idea of predicting the future.  It appears to be harder.  Now, I predict what won’t happen.  It’s more fun, and I can pretty much bat 1.000 by doing that while making a few humorous points along the way.  So, with that, here are my Wilder Predictions for What Won’t Happen in 2024™.

First:  Ukraine won’t “win”.  So far, the war in the Ukraine has been a disaster for everyone involved.  Had Donald Trump been in office, this never would have happened.  Donald is all about the deal, and had he been president at the time, Putin and Zelensky would probably have come together over a deal that would have been mutually beneficial, and trade would have probably been increased between the two, and there would have been hugs all around.

Really.  That’s what would have happened.  Biden could have shut this down with one phone call.  Of course, the Left would have gone nuts, since a large part of their strategy is to pump the wealth out of the Ukraine directly into either their pockets or their campaigns.  Ukraine is a country that makes the money laundering on Better Call Saul look like amateur hour, so I guess peace was never an option.

Still more credible than the official story.

Second, Israel and Palestine won’t be joining each other for dinner.  Ever.  Note:  I don’t have a dog in this hunt.  The following is an analysis, not a wish list.  No matter what I feel, the writing is on the wall.

This is an existential crisis for both sides, and both are already in a diaspora so they can continue this fight wherever Jews and Palestinians (or Leftists) are in the same city.  In the long term, nobody wants the Palestinians, even (and especially) the neighboring Arab states, so Israel wants to export them to Europe and the United States.  I’m betting they all end up in Canada, or what future historians will call, “Gaza with Grizzlies.”

The Romans couldn’t invent algebra because X was always 10.

Long term for Israel, well, Israel is doomed, too.  They’re surrounded by Islamist populations that will soon outnumber them 50 to 1.  I anticipate another diaspora there, too.  Maybe to Ukraine?  Not sure anyone will be living there, but there will be plenty to mine.  Or de-mine.

I think eventually the merged Facebook®/Al-Jazeera© will probably end up running Jerusalem.

Third, and I’m going out on a limb with this one:  The US Debt won’t come down.  Even though Congress and both presidential candidates will jaw about it incessantly, they won’t do anything, and I do mean anything to even slightly slow it down.  Nope.  It’ll increase faster than Taylor Swift can ruin a football franchise.  Side note:  I took my car to the mechanic because it was making a horrible noise.  Turns out it was Taylor Swift on the radio.

Fourth, the 2024 Election won’t be free and fair.  I know, I know, I’m playing with fire on this one.  It’s clear that the Left mobilized every single trick they read on that Buzzfeed® article, Ten Crazy Things You Can Do to Steal An Election And They Won’t Stop You (You Won’t Believe Number Seven!).  They even bragged about it in a Time® magazine article about how they conspired to do everything they could possibly think of to Make America Democratic Again, since it was clear that Joe Biden created as much enthusiasm with the American people as passing a kidney stone.

They stole the election.

I wish our elections were less corrupt, like China or Russia.

The biggest factor was in creating slop in the system.  Early voting, that ensured that dead people would vote.  Yeah, dead people.  Some percentage of people who voted died after their ballots were cast, and not all of them were Friends of Hillary.  So, dead people voted, and their ballots were just as good as yours.

Ballots were harvested, this is clear, we’ve seen people dropping off dozens and hundreds of ballots.  Exactly as designed.  Mail in voting?  Why not?  And early voting resulted in numerous cases (especially in Michigan) where the early vote was counted, even though the actual voter showed up at the poll and claimed they never requested an early ballot.  They were given a provisional ballot.  In a leaked recording of a Michigan training session, the provisional ballots were given out so people wouldn’t throw a fit.  The provisional ballots of people who showed up in person whose votes were stolen were . . . discarded.

Making an election free and fair is easy:

  1. Paper ballots only. California just outlawed paper ballots, so you know this is a good idea.  The idea isn’t that we make the system so that votes are easy to count – the idea is that we make the system so only valid votes get counted.  If you need more people and it’s important, hire them.
  2. Same day voting, in person, only. Exception for the military – they vote where they are.  If overseas, they vote on election day and the votes are counted right there and results transmitted to the precincts by 11:30pm precinct time.  That day.  All votes are counted by midnight.  If not counted by midnight, they are discarded.  If Detroit can’t figure out how to do that?  Pound sand.
  3. All votes, all voting boxes are counted and are on video every second and broadcast.
  4. All vote counting takes place on video in full view.
  5. Every voter sticks their hand in that blue stuff they cover bank robbers in. It’ll wash off.  If you have a Smurf® hand?  You can’t vote again.  Oh, and you need I.D., even though the Left thinks that blacks aren’t smart enough to get one.

As I said, this won’t happen.  Leftists want every vote counted so that they can just manufacture votes as needed.  People on the Right want only valid votes counted.

Thanks to Biden, soon every American will be a billionaire!  Of course, that’s what it costs for a Snickers®…

Fifth, suppression of viewpoints on the Right won’t stop.  One of the key elements of control is the control of the ability to share ideas.  That’s why the Left was the “Free Speech” party right until they felt they could spike the ball and start sending us to the GULAG.  Blog views are down over most of the Right blogs, and that’s due in part to suppression of search engine traffic, which is a primary way that new readers find us – they stumble upon us while searching for a topic.  If I were Vox Day I’d suggest we create a news and commentary search engine for the Right.

If only someone like Ricky would make one…

A bikini covers only 5 to 10 percent of a woman’s body, yet men are so polite they only look at the covered parts.

Sixth, Elon will not hit peak amusement in 2024.  Good heavens, that man cracks me up.  It’s really fun to watch him change positions over time, but not unusual.  Why?  They have to suppress our ideas because the Truth is inherently Right.

Seventh, no alien contact will happen this year, but it will be trotted out again and again – my bet is that in March and July or August or whenever Biden needs a distraction it’ll show back up in the news.  It’s the ultimate shiny object to distract with.  I mean, besides COVID.

Eighth:  The RINO congress won’t suddenly become effective.  This is a repeat for the last 27 years.  Gingrich did a good job.

Ninth:  Illegal immigration won’t be stopped, but may be (slightly) slowed.  The Wealth Pump from the Elite demands it, and the ideology from the Left demands it.

If you filmed a superhero movie in Detroit, you’d have to use CGI to repair buildings.

Tenth:  2024 is not the year we lose.  The spark that is at our core has existed since (at least, and probably before) the dawn of civilization, and started to burn brighter some 2024 years ago.  That won’t change.  Provided we don’t go full Revelation, we’ll exist until we go full Revelation.

This isn’t over.  We’re not done.  Take that to the bank.

2023: The Funniest Year-End Review You’ll Read Today, Probably

“Ten years I’ve been working in this town, that man never gave my food a good review.” – Psych

Why do skydiving companies get great reviews? Only the survivors rate it.

Every year here at Wilder, Wealthy and Wise, I like to end the year with a look back at how ludicrous and pointless that year was. 2023 is, so far, no different, but there’s still 11 days left for it to either get sillier or for them to indict Trump.

January 3

After 754 days of voting, a bloodletting, and an oath to the grim god Gorto the Nasal, Kevin McCarthy is elected Speaker of the House.

January 9

Joe Biden’s lawyer confirms that Joe had classified documents in his office, garage, closet, and several nuclear codes were stuffed in his Depends™. Biden’s lawyer contends, “It’s okay because he’s not Trump and we couldn’t read the nuclear codes because the ink was urine-soluble.”

January 24

Former VP Mike Pence notes that in a search, he found several classified documents, too, although his were wrapped around 30 pieces of silver. In related news, Pence announced the forming of his new heavy metal group, Judas Pence.

I guess Tom Brady and Robert Kraft both went to Florida for happy endings.

February 1

Tom Brady announces he will stop playing pro football and attempt to become Taylor Swift’s boyfriend or immortal, whichever is easier.

February 3

A train carrying hazardous chemicals derails in East Palestine, Ohio, causing mass evacuations and still not quantified environmental damage. As no Palestinians or Israelis were involved, it was quickly forgotten. Biden quickly uses the event to request more aid for Ukraine. BUT DON’T WORRY ABOUT OHIO – LOOK! – THERE’S A CHINESE SPY BALLOON!!!!!!

February 20

President Biden makes a surprised visit to Kiev. What makes it a surprise is that Biden thought he was just going out to get ice cream, Jack.

February 22

The “Three-Day Special Military Operation” in Ukraine enters day 730. Putin has since renamed it to “Special Military Operation Anniversary Tour.”

March 10

The FDIC announces that Silicon Valley Bank has been closed. Thousands of starlets awaiting surgery sigh in relief when they find out that Silicone Valley Bank is still open.

You didn’t think I’d pass that one up, did you?

March 10

Xi Jinping is re-elected president in China with a vote declared “fair and free” by the Democratic Party of the United States. “No evidence of anything wrong here, it looks like China has successfully defended their democracy, especially since Donald Trump wasn’t elected.”

March 15

The French raise the retirement age from 31 to 32 years of age. There are riots. The French surrender.

March 30

Trump Indicted on charges of “being Donald Trump”. Leftists everywhere say, “We’ve finally got him this time.”

April 4

Finland joins NATO, adding a +5 to the autism level of NATO.

April 24

Tucker Carlson is fired from Fox News™, since firing your most popular host and one of the most popular people on television for no particular reason is what networks do all the time.

Mayonnaise may be trying to kill me. At least that’s what Tucker’s sauces say.

April 25

Joe Biden formally announces he is Joe Biden, and will win the presidency in 2024 so he can “take over and build from the wreckage that the current president created, Jack.”

May 2

The Writers’ Guild of America goes on strike against Hollywood. They are nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize™ for stopping their crusade against good movies and humanity.

May 6

King Charles crowned. Meghan Markle immediately rushes the camera and notes that she’s not king because she’s black and that’s why people don’t like her.

Meghan Markle – the first woman to turn a prince into a frog.

May 9

Trump is found liable for sexually abusing a really unattractive female in the very plausible and not at all made up story about him pulling her into a dressing room in a crowded luxury department store because that’s where billionaires commit sexual assault against homely women. Leftists everywhere say, “We’ve finally got him this time.”

June 8

Trump again indicted on charges that he is, indeed, still Donald J. Trump despite Leftists wanting him to not be Donald J. Trump. Leftists everywhere say, “We’ve finally got him this time.”

June 18

The search begins for the submarine that had been taking people to go to see the wreckage of the H.M.S. Titanic in person. Critics say the submarine name, “U.S.S. Turning Millionaires Into Something With The Consistency of Library Paste” was probably not to blame.

June 23

The Wagner Group begins a march on Moscow, despite it being June and Prigozhin not having reservations. The march ends when Prigozhin is given several gift cards and a Happy Meal™ with a Transformers© toy.

June 29

The Supreme Court rules that colleges and universities can no longer discriminate against people based on their skin color. Harvard™ and Yale© announce an immediate initiative to bring in hair texture and tendency not to sunburn as a specific reason for admission.

I guess a guy in a wheelchair could be a sit-down comedian?

July 27

Hunter Biden’s plea deal sentencing the United States government to give Hunter Biden an apology and $23,000,000 for inconveniencing Hunter by stopping him from snorting coke off of hookers while taking naked pictures of himself falls through when OMIGOSH! ALIEN HEARING IN CONGRESS! IGNORE HUNTER! ALIENS! IT’S REAL I TELL YOU!

August 1

Trump again indicted on charges that, despite being warned, he is still Donald J. Trump. Leftists everywhere say, “We’ve finally got him this time.”

August 8

Hawaii wildfires break out, and Joe Biden immediately announces more funding for Ukraine to the tune of “a gazillion trillion”. For residents of Hawaii, Biden promises a “buy one get one free” coupon to Subway™.

August 14

Trump again indicted on charges that, he is “still breathing and stuff.” Leftists everywhere say, “We’ve finally got him this time.”

August 23

Wagner Group leader Prigozhin is killed in a totally accidental and coincidental plane crash. Shards of shrapnel from a Transformers™ Happy Meals© toy are suspected to have caused the malfunction.

Is Prigozhin really the only one who didn’t see this coming?

September 14

Queen Elizabeth II is still dead. Meghan Markle announces that she has assumed a new form, Mega Markle, and will eventually usurp the throne after her dragons are full grown and that, “Those meanies are gonna be sorry!”

September 28

Dianne Feinstein passes away at the age of 1371 years old. She is survived by her great grandson, Count Chocula®.

October 3

Kevin McCarthy sacrificed to Gorto and removed as Speaker of the House in a mostly peaceful ceremony. Three weeks later, Mike Johnson of Louisiana is elected Speaker, after promising “gumbo, elephant rides, pantyhose, and hot sauce” for everyone.

November 8

The Vatican decides that the new basis of Canon Law is that “anything goes, and if it feels good, do it.” It is also announced that Holy Water is a dated concept, and will be replaced by “Holy Lube”.

I used to take dead raccoons with me when I traveled by air. It was my carrion luggage.

November 14

Xi Jinping visits the United States and San Francisco shows they can clean up crime and the streets, but only for a foreign communist ruler. I mean, you have to look good for him, right?

December 3

Venezuela decides, “What the heck, let’s go get some oil” and decides to invade Guyana. Venezuela’s sixteen-man army with six working helicopters quickly crashed after not being able to find Guyana, which was unaware that they had neighbors, since the Internet has yet to reach there and their number one television show is Seinfeld.

December 16

Senate aide allegedly has sex in the Senate. Senate Democrats say it’s okay and perfectly legal, since at least one participant is an illegal alien, and, besides, Democrats are used to screwing everyone.

Most years, I have to make up some silly stories. 2023? Every time I’m showing Donald Trump being indicted in the above list? He was indicted. Can you imagine the excited Lefty flop-sweat each morning at Stephen King’s and Rob Reiner’s house when they hear that Trump was indicted, again?

Here’s to the world being absurd – it makes The World’s Foremost Hugo™-Nominated Humorist writer’s job easier.

NOTE: If you sell something or write something and are a regular commentor, please feel free to link your stuff or site as long as it’s legal and tasteful – my choice there on the tasteful part. If we’re going to build our own future, we should buy stuff from each other (if we like the stuff).