Bad Smells – Page 6 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Kardashians And The Cult Of Growth

“A future of economic growth, freedom, and happiness.” – Robocop

I had a hen who wanted to study economics. She was something of a mathemachicken.

“The economy grew at an annualized rate of 4.9% in the third quarter of 2023.”

And my response: so what?

There is a Cult of Growth in the world. In the United States, at least, that growth was literally in the DNA of the young country – there was lots of space and it was only filled with some pesky Indians who didn’t have a lot of resistance to smallpox or lead, some buffalo, no zoning, and lots of empty land to build Blockbuster Video® stores.

So, off my ancestors went. The idea was simple – fill the country from sea to sea with farms and businesses, eventually mines and mills and railroads and factories and highways. No one really planned it, and there weren’t economists reporting on unemployment figures to Rutherford B. Hayes.

What does the “B” stand for? Babebandit.

The growth that the United States experienced was amazing, and it was real. People built those farms and businesses and mines and railroads and factories and highways. That sort of growth allowed the creation of amazing wealth and prosperity because it was enduring and built upon itself. In those decades of growth, the United States experienced not diminishing returns but increasing returns as the steel mills fed the oil boom which fed the creation of the automotive industry and interstates.

Add in a few thousand nuclear weapons, and this growth of actual productivity and wealth production allowed the country to achieve tremendous national prosperity during a time of relative safety. Some would maintain that this prosperity peaked in 1973, but when you look at the relative availability of exceedingly cheap “stuff” – it was probably later than that. Perhaps a good case could be made for the 1980s when Blockbuster Videos™ roamed the land like a great majestic beast, spewing properly rewound videotapes and Raisinets® to all.

Regardless of when that exact date is, it is likely past.

Your momma is so old she rewinds Netflix® videos before logging off.

What was once achievable on a single income now requires (in many cases) two incomes. People of the past always thought that new labor-saving devices would accrue benefits to the worker, and we’d see a two- or three-day work week. Instead, we see people working more hours for less (relative) pay.

Why is that? I mean, the economy grew, right?

Yes, it did. But the way the economy grew, fueled by illegal aliens contributed to lower wages. The argument could be made that that the economic activity, the growth from these added workers helped everyone. Well, no. Illegals are certainly a net negative when everything is accounted for – welfare, roads, schools, medical care, voting GloboLeft, and Kardashian body hair.

I think she’s got so much plastic in her that if she swims it’s technically littering.

And the “growth” that we saw in many cases was the productive bit of the economy being hollowed out and shipped off overseas. Why? Because regulation increased in the United States (it never goes down) and it was easier to start and run a factory in Malasia than it is in Maine. And if iMegaCorp® can ship the factory over and increase corporate profits by 2%, they’ll do it.

Why? They’re owned by the people who make bad growth.

What’s bad growth? Well, the financial sector. It should be set up not as a casino or a place where the businesses make money selling money.

Growth is not always good. And it’s not always desirable. Let’s take an example: if I decided I wanted to gain a pound of weight next week, the healthy way to do it would be to put on a pound of muscle through exercise. But the easy way to put on a pound would be to pound some beers and milk shakes.

I believe her pronouns are HerShey.

The United States could do the same – we could increase the size of the economy by producing more and better cars or computers or flat panel displays, or bulldozers. Or, we could increase the size of the economy by ChaseCitiFargo™ charging extra fees on overdrafts and GoldmanBlackRock© buying a company, loading it up with debt that it can’t pay, and then selling it piecemeal for a 15% profit.

One of these makes a more productive society. The other is the equivalent of two people selling a house back and forth for 10% more each time and talking about all the wealth that they created.

So, not all growth is good, and not all increased profit is increased wealth. One economy can make stuff, the other just makes magical made-up profits. I’ve made the argument for some time that China’s economy is fine. It is. They know how to make stuff, so they are fundamentally more stable than the United States because the growth in China wasn’t in financial shenanigans, it was in productive stuff.

Did you know it’s illegal to water your plants in China? It causes the microphones to rust.

Does China have all sorts of debt? Yes, yes they do. Have they produced a lot of suspect crap in the past, especially for internal consumption? Yes, yes they have, and probably still do. Doesn’t matter.

Their economy isn’t based on “growth” that occurs only on paper, and only due to paper even though people smoke in China to get fresh air.

They don’t worship the Cult of Growth.

Do I want to live there? Nope.

Again, there’s good news – this system can’t last, so it won’t.

The ride, however may be bumpy . . . as we get to rebuild it – on healthy growth this time.

Feminism: The God That Destroys

“Bullhorns are a core principle of eco-feminism.” – Futurama

Why are the books on Dwarf Rights on the top shelf?

The GloboLeftist use of power can be objectively observed to be feminine. To put it bluntly, GloboLeftism is feminism. One way this is especially apparent is the tactics that the GloboLeft uses – it uses the tactics of gossip, the swarm, and ostracization of those that it deems unworthy.

If you look carefully at how the GloboLeft attacks, it follows that pattern. Gossip against an enemy, a swarm against that enemy, and finally the ostracization of that enemy. With men, the way to solve a problem is simple – get up, get a hammer (or other appropriate tool, like a much bigger hammer) and solve the problem. Or fail.

If necessary, and the problem is big enough, get a friend. If that’s not enough, go build better tools and recruit more friends. Or a brigade. Or tanks. Or an army. Or take this newfangled flight and build jet engines to fight at the speed of sound and play with the fundamental forces of nature to create a miniature star to cause your problems to evaporate.

Simple. Okay, not simple sometimes. But it is direct. This is how men historically kept other men (and other tribes) in line, just various sizes of hammers.

I hope that joke didn’t catch anyone by surprise – I don’t want to be convicted of involuntary man’s laughter.

Women, however, use the gossip/swarm/ostracize technique naturally to keep the group members of other women in line. I’ve seen it. When women are together in a group and they split away from the main group, they begin the gossip to keep other members in line or to pull them down.

When a big enough transgression occurs, they swarm against the offender. Then they kick them out of the group. In smaller tribal groups this behavior was probably entirely necessary to keep the peace. Many of the historical tribal punishments were directed not at adulterous men, but adulterous women.

Why? Men have the key, and women have to have the lock otherwise the fighting and killing start. Also of note, is that in every point in history up until the modern society, women depended on men for their power – so women had to rule over women to keep the worst female impulses down.

What do you call a letter from a feminist? Hate male.

Back in the day, the worst case for a woman was to be shunned and shamed and denied resources. Being denied resources meant (in many cases) death for the woman, and her children if she had them. This is the core feminine fear, and is the basis for society today.

This was why, of all the crazy things developed by the commies, that feminism was the worst, because it preys upon a core fear. The result is that feminists have done everything that they can possibly figure out to remove any consequences for their action as feminism took hold. Examples?

Abortion made the defining hallmark of real femininity, having kids, an option.
No-fault divorce was next – having an affair no longer meant that a woman was liable in court for her actions – now divorce could happen just because she was tired. But that wasn’t enough – women needed cash and prizes for leaving the marriage:
Community property and child support followed. That was fine for high-status females. But what about poor females?
Well, for them we need welfare and Aid For Dependent Children so they can have as much irresponsible and unprotected sex as they like.
I’m generally not in favor of slugging women, but domestic violence laws have made men guilty until proven innocent, with many jurisdictions requiring an arrest if the police are called out for domestic violence. But even that isn’t enough:
Making fun of Lizzo because she’s the size of a school bus is now “fat-shaming”. And making fun of a woman who had sex with all of Wyoming is now wrong and called “slut-shaming”.

All of these are intended to insulate a woman from the consequences of her actions and choices. No society on Earth can afford this for long, because the consequences of insulation of consequences are what we see around us.

Rampant criminality because removing consequences should apply to everyone, up until they commit murder.
Declining birthrate as women avoid having children and having families until they’re at the point that having more than one or two for them is impossible.
Lower than optimal family formation is happening because women are skipping the family to become the drunk wine aunt that makes PowerPoints® for a living but can’t get a “good” man to commit.
Lower than optimal family stability, since there are no consequences, women can monkey branch from one man to another and this be accepted.
Sentimentality as a basis for public policy rather than rationality – i.e., illegals are viewed as individuals in pain rather than a contagion that will turn the Untied (it was a typo that I thought I’d leave) States into the average of Venezuela, Eritrea, Cambodia, and the Congo.
Degeneration as all consequences for anything sexual are removed as sex becomes the new sacrament for the feminist religion – note that in any argument with a member of the GloboLeft® they’ll soon drop a sexual insult.

Name something that goes better together than “Wilder” and “procrastination”. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Oddly, feminism does the opposite of what it says on the label – it either turns women into cut-rate men, making them unhappy tramps who “settled” but still thinks she deserves a Chad because she slept with fifty Chads. Conversely, it deprives them of family, making them unhappy drunk wine aunts by having them chase a career so they could be complete women that don’t need no man. In fact, keeping women unhappy is better for the GloboLeftElite because it keeps women dependent on feminist ideology and makes them defend it all the more.

Go figure.

What African country do neckbeards hate the most? Chad.

The reason this all was available was because we have amazingly abundant resources and could pay for it out of the spare change that we had from printing money.

The good news is that this can’t last.

To be clear: I really like women. And I know that women are different than men. I know that this might be heresy at places like Harvard™, but it’s true. Women add to society, but when they’re in unmitigated charge of society, it just creates a big mess like the one we’re seeing now. The future needs women, acting like women, in families, making children that are worthy of being called men and women, which can only be made by the atom of society – the family.

The future won’t be the feminism of the GloboLeft – it’s a cancer. And the methods that it uses gossip/swarm/ostracize aren’t ways of solving the problems that we have right now as the resources of the eternal summer end – that’s when the only real solution is the solution of men – get a tool and fix it. The only real question is what form that solution will take.

Will it take a miniature star to fix it?

What did fatman say to little boy? “Nuke, I am your father.”

Be Bold. Life Is Too Short For Anything Else.

“That’s a bold statement.” – Pulp Fiction

A lion would never drive drunk. But a tiger would.

One of the problems with life in Modern Mayberry is that it often moves at a fairly slow pace. Especially in the time when an adult is focused on raising kids, the days tend to blur one into the next.

If your life is good, this isn’t really a problem. When I was younger, my life was spent going to weddings. Now that I’m older, more time is spent going to funerals. It is important to not get mixed up as to which you’re at, although sometimes “My condolences,” is appropriate at a wedding and I’d almost be willing to bet $20 that at least one person will say “Congratulations!” after my funeral.

However, in the event that I’m wrong, collecting on that bet might be a problem.

Maybe I’ll add bikini girls. Will that put the “fun” in funeral?

One thing that facilitates this blur is reading stuff on the Internet. One blogger I read (LINK) is giving up doomscrolling (or reading the unending list of negative stories that are available in the news) for Lent. I suppose you could leave him a comment, but you’d have to wait a few weeks to get a response.

But when it comes to doomscrolling, there are huge numbers of these stories available. The business model is simple: scary stuff attracts eyeballs, and eyeballs means revenue. As I look at my own past posts, I’m thinking that, even though I talk about a lot of scary stuff, that I’m mostly relentlessly positive. I can even recall a comment section or two where I’m called a Pollyanna because I’m so positive.

What do we want? Hearing aids. When do we want them? Hearing aids.

I can live with that. Being positive, being for things and knowing that, in the end it’s all going to work out keeps me positive. In most cases (most, not all!) the things I write about don’t make me angry, either.

Again, stress on the “mostly”. And I try not to get worked up about events occurring half-a-world away that I can’t control or even much influence. Things are what they are.

And, for most of us, things are generally pretty good on a day-to-day basis, even when things aren’t perfect. Even on a bad day, most parts of the day are good. The thing that gets us is built into the doomscrolling: spending time worrying about things that simply have not happened.

My friend wrote me a text that said, “What do you get when you mix a gullible person with an optimistic person?” I replied, “I don’t know!” He texted back, “Read it again.”

I write about the coming Civil War 2.0 not in hopes that it comes, rather to make people aware that it’s coming. Do I sit and worry about it daily?

No!

That would take away from the time I spend thinking about the Roman Empire.

In this moment, there are things that I could let bother me. However, I realize that letting them bother me gives them power over me when that’s the last thing I want. “Take not counsel of your fears,” is attributed to George S. Patton, Jr. I’m sure other people said the same thing in similar ways in the thousands of years that people have been saying things, but when Patton says it, well, it’s been said.

“Better to fight for something than live for nothing.” – GSP

If I let my fears fill me up, I live a life of fear regardless of if it’s a perfect 63°F, and I have a wonderful cigar, and a great book beside me while sitting in a comfortable chair.

I think fear comes to people as they age. I certainly saw Pa Wilder get more and more cautious as he aged. I could give a few examples, but it doesn’t much matter. I did notice. And when I saw the tendency to do it start to crop up in myself, at least I understood what was going on and I could choose to be cautious or choose to be bold.

I think, however, that as I get older it is precisely the time to be bolder. Life moves in a blur, and days stack up faster, so they should mean something. If I knew I had only a year? What would I do?

Something to make that year worthwhile. If a month? A day?

The shorter the time left, the more that boldness matters and the less caution should. If I only had an hour of my life left, you can damn sure bet I’d do something with it, as much as I could.

Oh, that’s Samuel L. Jackson, not the famous English dude Samuel Johnson. I guess that’s the Netflix® version of the quote.

But life is built on compound interest. The more I try to write, the better I get. The more I lift, the stronger I get. The time to start is now.

The actions should be bold. While my days may pass fast, the more I can do with them, the more I will do.

When I pass, what will be left are the lives I’ve touched, the children that I’ve raised, the ways I’ve made the world better, and the words that I have written. Since the restraining order dictates who I can touch, and the lessons to the children are mainly done, that leaves making the world better and writing.

Even a full human lifetime isn’t enough, because they are so very short. But I’ll make do. With the remaining decades (hopefully) of my life, how big a dent can I kick in the Universe?

I guess I’ll see. And I’ll smile some, every day. And enjoy that cigar, and book, and chair when I’m not being bold.

“L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace.”

What Signs Would We See If The Economy Was Going To Be Okay?

“Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic.” – Fight Club

When I met The Mrs. I said, “Titanic.” She said that was a terrible icebreaker.

I worry that sometimes I talk too much about the downsides of workings of the economy and was asked, “What does it look like when things start to look better? What does it look like if it’s all going to be fine?” I know this might seem like rearranging the deck chairs to keep the Titanic from sinking, but, hey, let’s go with it?

These are great questions. Not as good as, “Would you like another beer?” but still very good.

These are also questions that could be political in nature (I might write more about that for Monday) but in this case I’m going to focus on the economy as much as I can, though it’s certain that political will slip in here and there – it can’t be avoided because we’ve got Joe all over the economy.

What will make things “fine” and how will we know when we get there?

If someone steals your booze, does that mean they’ve lifted your spirits?

First: Stop the infinite debt spending.

Several years ago I wrote about Modern Monetary Theory. In a nutshell, Modern Monetary Theory says that if you have a bill, pay it. If you don’t have the money, make it. The theory goes that there aren’t a set number of points in a game of football, so why should there be a set number of dollars in the economy. So, if you have a bill, pay for it.

This is an awesome theory only for a person that has the I.Q. of a Kamala/AOC lovechild. The worst thing about it is that it actually worked in the short term, which is the worst when it comes to an economic policy, because it gives lots of time for Bad Things to pile up.

What made it work is because the United States can pawn the piles and piles of dollars off to the world since everyone takes them because we have nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers and everyone knows what happened to Saddam and Qaddafi when they decided they’d start taking gold instead.

I asked a friend if he wanted to hear about the Russian victory parade. He said, “No tanks.”

Eventually either the desire or ability to soak up the dollars goes away. When that happens, even for a short time, the inflation inherent in the system feeds back.

Can this go on forever? No. Should we, you know, maybe consider stopping it before we totally wreck the economy? If we do that, there will be a hangover and a tough political bill to be paid.

Will we? Yes. As Ben Stein’s dad said, “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.” That will be a very, very bad day if it’s not one of our choosing.

Also? Fiat economies have a worse track record than Fiat™ cars for reliability.

Second: Stop the Wealth Pump®.

I really enjoyed Peter Turchin’s book, End Times. In it, he convinced me (he also has data to support this) that one of the biggest failures of my lifetime is the priming of what he calls the Wealth Pump™. The really short version of this is that policies that would support concentration of capital in the billionaire class are enacted (for example: open borders) while policies that benefit the average worker (for example: strictly controlled borders) are ignored.

I dropped a piece of ice in the kitchen. I was upset, but then it melted. I guess it’s water under the fridge.

Turchin’s models have shown that the Wealth Pump™ everywhere and always leads to tremendous social turmoil. Even without the economic misery for the common man that the Wealth Pump© implies, the turmoil from the hordes of teeming illegals will create turmoil that will last lifetimes. But stopping the Wealth Pump™ is imperative.

Will Bezos and Soros owned Senators suddenly ignore the billionaire class they serve? At this point, not voluntarily. The bacon-wrapped shrimp and cool stock tips are pretty powerful to keep them in line.

Third: De-financialize the economy by putting out the FIRE.

Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate is called the FIRE sector of the economy. In theory, FIRE exists to serve the actual productive sectors of the economy that make actual things that people need like potatoes, beer, steak, PEZ™, shoes, rifles, books, and toilet plungers.

That’s the way it should work.

Instead, it’s a gambling economy filled with people who try to manipulate and tweak and profit without producing anything. The big oil squeeze of 2008? Rumor was that was a big investment bank trying to make a bet profitable on a short against a particular company. The investment bank didn’t produce anything useful except for profits. By manipulation.

I think FIRE might be more dangerous than fire.

Again, ask the Nancy Pelosi why her stock portfolio is so profitable, and ask why first term Senators do so well in the stock market. Or don’t. But it’s FIRE that’s the primary machine in the Wealth Pump™ and these create increasingly horrific schemes.

Examples? Everything is a subscription because it increases revenue and profits. Now it’s moving into video games: design a game once, sell a subscription to it so that people can’t play it again for free, but instead have to pay a monthly fee. It’s already moving that way for software.

And look into who is buying all the housing. It’s on FIRE.

Fourth: Rational housing valuations.

People need a place to live, and a pod won’t cut it, but houses are now big investments. Why? Because they need more profits to feed the Wealth Pump®. Housing prices returning to something a guy with a high school degree working a manufacturing job can afford is crucial, since that’s where families come from. Is it possible in San Jose? No. It’s possible in Modern Mayberry, but that’s because BlackRock© hasn’t started buying here.

Fifth: Space for humans and A.I.

I know that some are skeptical, but A.I. is already making hundreds of thousands of jobs obsolete. Running a backhoe? No. Writing articles? Yes. Things that are easy for humans, are hard for A.I. Things that are hard for humans (and thus draw a higher salary), are often easy for A.I.

Are expert-level programmers still required? Absolutely. But not as many, since an expert-level programmer acting in tandem with A.I. will have a tenfold increase in productivity.

Who loses? The “not as good” programmers who are now not required.

This has happened before in all sorts of industries. DJs on the radio began voice tracking decades ago. The average DJ makes minimum wage (average, some are highly compensated, most are not) but still the radio stations paid $20,000 to eliminate them because making the product cheaper is what they know.

ChatKGB: it asks the questions.

Automation increases profits, but it doesn’t lead to some sort of techno-utopia where we have three hour work days. People just lose their jobs. As profits have gone up, pay has gone down (relative to inflation) and work hours have gone up for salaried folks.

A.I. hasn’t hit in a big way, yet. It will. Making space for people is unlikely, but necessary.

That’s a summary of how we can tell if we’re going to pull out from the looming economic catastrophe, what it looks like if things are going to get better. I’ve started sketching out a few political things to show that things are going to be okay, and (like I wrote above) will likely show up on Monday.

So, like the Titanic, it looks like we might have a change in destination. But we’re making good time!

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Two Minutes To Midnight

“Two minutes, tops. But it’s a tough two minutes.” – Reservoir Dogs

Finland has no border problems – no one can cross the Finnish line.

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

Volume V, Issue 9

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

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

In this issue: Front Matter – Governing War Structures – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Kabuki Border Theater? – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 810 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Governing War Structures

In the aftermath of the Virgina Second Amendment rally a few years ago I had a realization about path to Civil War 2.0: organization will be very, very fast. I think I even wrote those words in the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, but I’m too lazy to look it up. Regardless, I’m going with a full “I told you so” about this one.

What’s gray, has spikes, and runs around a field? Barbed wire.

First: Texas wasn’t ordered by the Supreme Court to do anything. The Supreme Court’s decision was removing an injunction against the more or less worthless Customs and Border Protection (CBP) being able to remove razor wire that Texas put up, so the ruling doesn’t require Texas to do anything.

Second: If CBP is as bad at customs as they are at immigration, I’d expect that you could export nuclear bombs to Bulgaria.

Aside from that, the amazing thing was about how quickly a coalition of the Several States backed Texas. I was doing a podcast with The Mrs. and Mark and even as we were talking, more and more governors were saying that they stood with Texas in real time – state after state.

This was a big deal.

If at first you don’t secede, try, try again.

And it happened very, very quickly. This is the trigger to number 9 on the Civil War 2.0 countdown list, and it happened in less than 24 hours. The list is incomplete, since I’m certain more of the Several States would side with Texas if things went sideways, and places like Colorado and Illinois would mostly secede, leaving small islands of blue in seas of red. Kentucky? Yeah, they’d be in as well because of their pioneering spirit. In Kentucky, when your car breaks down? You build a house next to it.

Now there’s a slogan I can get behind.

The oppositional structure for Civil War 2.0 developed out of thin air on a single evening in January. There’s more to the story down below, but the lines developed amazingly quickly. I thought the real issue would be the Second Amendment, but illegal immigration managed to do what no other issue that the TradRight had could do: make everyone notice. The unending flood of illegal aliens (an absolute record this month, ever, as shown in the Civil War Index graph below) has been the catalyst.

Note to the FedGov folks, if you enforced the actual Constitution and kicked out the illegals, you could probably stop Texas from straying.

I do expect that (for reasons as noted in our second story) that the tension from this may fade, but the governing structures are in place, which places us firmly at two minutes until midnight.

Yes, we are very close, but Biden backed down because he realizes that on the FAFO graph, he’s pretty close to the FO section.

Does this make him scared enough to pee his pants? Depends.

The federal government has to push so hard because it feels that its power is becoming more tenuous. Yes, this tension may fade and after two more months I’ll back down the clock of doom, but this is an amazingly large step.

There have been others.

Missouri would be in trouble except for:

Violence and Censorship Update

I’ll (mostly) let the memes speak for themselves.

As God is my witness, I never knew convicts could fly.

And people say there isn’t a perfect woman.

Looks like Canada is behind enemy lines now.

If I X’d® this, I’d be in jail now. So why isn’t Soros? Oh, yeah, he’s a billionaire who hates America.

Think he wants to put up the Statue of Oppression?

What’s a sensitive event? Whatever Google® says it is.

I wonder if Australia realizes this will just make all the edgy kids get swastika tats?

Canada, are you doing okay? Looks like you haven’t figured out the whole “laws” thing.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again, but only slightly. Does it matter after the damage has been done?

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence is flat. Winter is in, and riots aren’t as fun in galoshes.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly down.

Economic:

Economic numbers did a slight dive. I wonder if it’s because they caught this guy?

Illegal Aliens:

The most, ever, in the history of the country. For all time.

Kabuki Border Theater?

PIERRE

The Texas border confrontation has been in the news bigly. Is it real? Follow this (LINK) from a Texan (courtesy Aesop) who says that just a mile from the confrontation spot that the border is wide open. Wide open, but perhaps slightly inconvenient.

Does this matter?

Yes, it matters.

Absolutely. The border simply does not exist in 2024. Anyone can walk across at any time, any place, and be rewarded with cash, prizes, airfare to anyplace in the nation, and free room and board. It’s in New York. It’s in Boston. It’s everywhere.

What’s a radical Leftist’s favorite font? Sans sheriff.

The GloboElite get cheap labor. The GloboLeftists s get free votes and power. Oddly, they even share that.

Remember to call a doctor if your election vote counting lasts more than four hours.

But, hey, I hear that they’re close to an illegal immigration vote in Congress!

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1751673864524894408

https://twitter.com/i/status/1744577621319667964

https://twitter.com/i/status/1747837919312687268

https://twitter.com/i/status/1744180313876574264

https://twitter.com/tecas2000/status/1752757658161926364

https://twitter.com/TheWatcherDaily/status/1727684087245132251

https://twitter.com/tecas2000/status/1754194250638508470

https://twitter.com/i/status/1753461857124323462

https://twitter.com/i/status/1752897020560379985

https://twitter.com/i/status/1740256698781360200

https://twitter.com/i/status/1741324539265532308

https://twitter.com/i/status/1741890761845608774

https://twitter.com/i/status/1741106761984057418

https://twitter.com/ShootInUSA/status/1747178759730671934

Good Guys

https://news.yahoo.com/shootout-jewelry-store-oaklands-fruitvale-030731425.html

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1748054072215703703

One Guy

https://wcyb.com/news/local/kyle-rittenhouse-event-at-etsu-moving-to-larger-venue-because-of-high-demand-for-tickets

https://www.wjhl.com/news/local/controversy-at-etsu-over-kyle-rittenhouse-as-guest-speaker/

https://www.timesnews.net/opinion/columns/bob-arrington-kyle-rittenhouse-etsu-and-free-speech/article_8dc3908e-c06b-11ee-819d-7f6c131835ee.html#google_vignette

https://www.newsweek.com/kyle-rittenhouse-republican-gun-control-ar15-1866056

Body Count

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/soldiers-killed-jordan-names/

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/01/10/army-sees-sharp-decline-white-recruits.html

https://dailycaller.com/2024/01/24/us-military-stretched-too-thin-to-deal-with-threats-report-says/

https://www.heritage.org/military

https://www.yahoo.com/news/no-longer-top-level-fighting-070000553.html

https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1747835202985185509

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/blood-clots-embalmers-report-mid-2021-covid-vaccines/

https://studyfinds.org/childless-millennials-parents/

https://www.prri.org/research/generation-zs-views-on-generational-change-and-the-challenges-and-opportunities-ahead-a-political-and-cultural-glimpse-into-americas-future/

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1750650452105179630

Vote Count

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1691812817798566281

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fjustthenews.com%2Fpolitics-policy%2Felections%2Fdhs-agency-warned-about-integrity-mail-voting-2020-election-while

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2024%2F01%2F16%2Flawsuit-uncovers-how-raffensperger-tried-to-memory-hole-the-election-law-trumps-georgia-call-was-about%2F

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/government-suppressed-censored-concerns-over-mail-in-voting-in-2020-report-5573274?utm_source=epochHG&utm_campaign=CFP&src_src=epochHG&src_cmp=CFP

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ajc.com%2Fpolitics%2Fwitness-shows-how-to-tamper-with-georgia-elections-in-security-trial%2FWUVKCYNV3ZGOVNB6X6TDX2GEFQ%2F

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/13/trump-loyalists-2024-presidential-election

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/01/25/afl-lawsuit-cisa-withheld-critical-election-administration-information-to-further-its-own-agenda

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/01/26/exclusive-defeat-maga-meet-the-radical-left-network-that-hijacked-democrats-in-effort-to-stop-trump-at-all-costs/

https://indivisible.org/groups

Civil War

https://tomluongo.me/2024/01/25/soft-secession-insurrection-or-the-real-return-of-federalism-in-texas/

https://donaldjeffries.substack.com/p/greg-abbott-and-the-invasion-of-the

https://ijr.com/gen-flynn-constitution-literally-allows-texas-engage-war-southern-border/

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/clay-higgins-calls-on-texas-to-ignore-supreme-court-ruling-because-biden-is-staging-a-civil-war/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12954689/Texas-independence-vote-court-ballot.html

https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Them-vs-Us_CTUP-Rasmussen-Study-FINAL.pdf

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/default/files/2023-12/dec-2023-cgvs-defending-democracy.pdf

https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/americans-are-fighting-for-control

https://news.yahoo.com/endless-civil-war-americas-160-013209995.html

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Famgreatness.com%2F2024%2F01%2F08%2Fa-culture-in-collapse%2F

https://indi.ca/why-civil-war-is-too-good-for-america/

https://off-guardian.org/2024/01/31/discuss-is-world-war-3-really-on-the-horizon/

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 5^th 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:

Locate or Create a Violation of the Narrative.
Point and Shriek.
Isolate and Swarm.
Reject and Transform.
Press for Surrender.
Appeal to Amenable Authority.
Show Trial.
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.

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!