Bad Smells – Page 7 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The People’s Sick Day™: Commies . . . Not Working. Again.

“Uh, yeah, sure, no I’d be happy to, yeah you, uh, you just produce a corpse, and uh, I’ll release Sloane. I wanna see this dead grandmother first hand.” – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

If I take LSD before a vision exam, I always pass with flying colors.

In one of the more interesting moves, the remnants of the pot-addled hippies that were protesting in the 1960s have emerged from their Volkswagen™ camper vans and finally figured out that Jerry Garcia is as dead as Hubert Humphrey and the Equal Rights Amendment. They looked around, and decided that, heck, there wasn’t near enough communism going around, so they needed more.

Their cunning plan? A three-day sick day. When is it going to happen? Sometime. They don’t want to say when, because they don’t want The Man to know. The idea isn’t for them to show how little the world needs all the communists who have jobs in HR or making PowerPoints™ so they can pay someone to ignore their out-of-wedlock child (if they’re lucky) or cats (if they’re not).

Nope, that’s not it at all.

The idea is to point out who they are so that they’ll be easier to recognize in the future. As if the blue hair and nose rings, “gender dysphoria” or pronouns in their bios weren’t enough.

What do you call a polygamous hippie’s wives? One Mrs. Hippie, Two Mrs. Hippie, . . .

I digress.

Thankfully, on their Discord© server they have a list of their demands, and, a professional journalist waded through the GloboLeftist coping and seething and published them on MSNBC®(LINK). This is good, because the demands are so cringe that it’s hardly sporting to make fun of them. But I will, because I’m hardly sporting.

Why don’t I have PTSD? I’m the traumatic event.

I’ll list their demand (The People’s Sick Day™ Totally Stupid Demand, or PTSD), and my counter-demand (Wilder Talking Facts, or WTF):

PTSD: Calling for the impeachment, removal, and arrest of Donald John Trump and the Republican administration for knowingly manipulating the U.S. stock market, ignoring the U.S. Constitution, trafficking humans, and destroying our federal workforce. HE IS A CRIMINAL! LOCK HIM UP.

WTF: What happens in 2028 when Trump runs for his third term is no longer the face of the opposition? Who will drive them insane with hate? Regardless, my reasonable response is: No.

PTSD: Demanding HANDS OFF Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and veterans’ benefits

WTF: No. Most of SNAP should go. Most of Medicaid (not all) should go. Social Security should be phased out with the kids below 30 so that they don’t have an excuse to complain when the whole thing falls over. Also, eliminate Social Security on half of Americans based on birth year. Heads, eliminate odd years. Tails, eliminate even years. Just for giggles and it would be fun to watch the chaos.

Moses was also the first person to use CTRL-C as a shortcut.

PTSD: Demanding the removal of caps on Social Security

WTF: Do the checks really come with hats?

PTSD: Demanding NO MORE tax breaks for the rich — TAX THEM ALL!

WTF: Yes! Tax everyone! Tax everyone at the exact same rate for ALL income at 20%. Then everyone has skin in the game. And, make sure that people are taxed with on an Alternative Minimum Income: The minimum people are taxed is based on the federal minimum wage and if you can’t pay we deport you to Australia, for old times’ sake.

PTSD: Demanding an end to unlimited corporate profits and economic injustice

WTF: I demand an end to economic progress and creation of worldwide famine. See? I said exactly the same thing, but with way fewer words.

PTSD: Demanding an end to lobbyist and SUPER PAC funding

WTF: Nice try, since you own the media. No. My counter? I demand that CNN® be forced to feature nothing but things I’ve written. I mean, I guess I could stand for less exposure than I have now, but it’s a different audience – the CNN® crowd can’t read.

PTSD: Demanding the elimination of Citizens United

WTF: Man, panties are sure in a wad that they can’t stack the game, aren’t they?

PTSD: Demanding an increase in the federal minimum wage to $20 an hour, with adjustments for inflation as needed

WTF: Make it $100 an hour. No, $1,000 an hour. No, $10,000 an hour. See, you can joke, and I can, too. And there won’t be inflation, because only gold and silver will be money.

What’s the hardest part of making a vegan pizza? Catching the vegan.

PTSD: Demanding a cap on CEO pay at no more than 35% above the lowest worker’s salary

WTF: Welcome to not understanding what a contract worker is or what nested corporations are. Do they give you guys Crayons™ and a placemat to color on your Discord©?

PTSD: Demanding that wages for elected officials be capped at the median salary of their district

WTF: Sold. And no investments, either – they can only keep cash and they must rent, and this includes wages and investments for their extended family. AOC goes back to being a barista because it pays more.

PTSD: Demanding caps on rent, grocery, and insurance costs

WTF: Agreed. I demand unicorns as well, because they’d be good company as I lived on the street with no food or insurance.

PTSD: Demanding universal healthcare for all U.S. citizens and federal protection for sick time

WTF: I demand zero insurance for anyone and federal prosecution for anyone who starts an insurance company. I demand that anyone who takes a sick day from work without being near death be flogged if they don’t get away with it. Just kidding, like anyone will have a job if the PTSD proposals are enacted.

That dog looks like a brrrrito.

PTSD: Demanding term limits for all members of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court

WTF: Yes to Congress and no to SCOTUS. I would like treason charges for judges that violate the Constitution, and judges to be put in prison if someone they let out without bail injures anyone. And the robes should be form-fitting. For . . . reasons.

PTSD: Demanding reform of immigration policies

WTF: Agreed! Send them all home. All of them. Now.

PTSD: Demanding gun law reform — PROTECT OUR KIDS!

WTF: Agreed! Mail order machine guns and crew-served weapons, which are much more suited for children because they can work together to get that Ma Deuce warmed up. Besides, the hands of children are small and they generally have good eyesight, so field stripping an M60 should be a breeze.

PTSD: Demanding codified women’s rights to choose

WTF: You mean paper or plastic? It’s a stretch because I don’t trust the collective choices of women, but I’ll allow it.

PTSD: Demanding codified DEI and affirmative action

WTF: You mean penalties for having DEI and affirmative action? I’m in favor of that, and maybe you can talk me into making it a felony.

PTSD: Demanding the elimination of the Electoral College and a ban on gerrymandering

WTF: No.

PTSD: Demanding ranked-choice voting in all federal and state elections

WTF: No. Counter-demand: no voting until the family has been in the country for three generations, and one vote per family (mother/father, married). Otherwise, votes for military-aged males only.

PTSD: Demanding the taxation of mega-churches

WTF: And the taxation of micro-churches. And commie non-profits. And NPR® – those tote bags cause cancer.

My friend Gomez has a dismembered hand. I guess it’s okay, but it’s not my Thing.

PTSD: Demanding free post-secondary education

WTF: Only for students with an ACT of above 30 majoring in engineering, physics, or math who maintain a 3.5 GPA. And not fake engineering like “engineering tech” or fake astrophysics like “astronomy”. Real engineering. Real physics.

Okay, that about does it. Since I’ve solved all of those problems, I guess I’ll go back to work.

Take a sick day? I ain’t got time to bleed.

Caste Over Competence: Globalism Is Economic Suicide

“India’s a black hole.” – World War Z

How many Indians does it take to change a lightbulb? Sixteen. Fourteen to argue about whose responsibility it is, one to explain that lightbulbs are better in India and invented by Indians, and one to call the power plant to tell it to reboot because it must be a software issue. (all memes “as-found”)

Picture a world where kids in Bangladesh sew soccer balls for pennies (whatever a penny was), and some goatherder in Albania is working at a factory cranking out VCRs. VCRs, like it’s 1985 and I’m renting Back to the Future from Blockbuster®. I kid. Albania doesn’t even have electricity yet.

But that’s the flavor of globalism’s siren song that leads economies to doom: anything can be made anywhere, as long as the price is dirt cheap. I’ve heard the refrain, even in the comments here: “If you complain about competing against Albaniaks and Bangladeshites, well, you’re a commie that doesn’t believe in capitalism.”

If the goal of capitalism was to serve itself, well, then yes. It’s a battle of all against all, and whoever can outbreed the next country to lower the cost of (spins wheel) designer purses should make them.

I mean, it sounds great for your wallet, right?

Wrong. This is a strategy for hollowing out the West’s economy, stripping our skills, and handing our jobs to foreigners who don’t play by our rules at all, transforming our country into Albania on the Atlantic. Globalism is not just bad economics, it’s a betrayal of the West. And politicians love it.

But The Simpsons killed off Apu . . . maybe he wanted a raise?

Isn’t it strange that no matter how many times we vote “No, we don’t want any more aliens, illegal or not” that they nod their heads and bring them in? Is it any stranger that no matter how many times we vote, “No, we don’t want our factories shipped to places that don’t use vowels,” that our factories are shipped to places that haven’t yet invented vowels?

It’s a betrayal of the West

Let’s break it down. Globalism turns labor into a commodity, like trading baseball cards, except the cards are my job, my skills, and my family’s (and country’s) future. It’s a race to the lowest cost. Why pay an American $30 an hour when a kid in Swaziland (Swaziland still exists, right?) works for a handful or USAID® rice a day?

Why build a factory in Ohio when Ceylon’s got sweatshops begging for your blueprints? The GloboLeft (and, let’s be fair, the RINOs, too) cheer this as “progress,” but it’s a death spiral. Here’s how it plays out, step by step, until the West’s economy is a husk.

Thankfully all the Indians in Canada are very good with hand-held electronics. Tractor-trailers? Not so much.

The Stages of Economic Suicide

Design machines, build machines that make stuff, and make stuff: This is the golden age—think 1950s America. We designed cars, built the factories to make cars, and made cars. America flourished. Families thrived. Grandpa’s lunchpail as he went to work the railroad that shipped those cars meant something. Skills stayed home, and so did the wealth.
Design and make machines that make stuff: By the 80s, we’re still designing and building the machines, but the stuff’s starting to come from Japan and Taiwan as they focus on quality and crack the United States market. We’re losing the “make stuff” part, but hey, at least we’ve got Wall Street.
Design machines to sell to people who make stuff: Now we’re just selling blueprints. China’s got the factories to make iPhones® we’ve got the patents for the iPhones©. The know-how’s slipping—designing isn’t building. People don’t learn to weld by drawing a weld on paper.
Buy stuff made by other people from machines you designed: Welcome to the 2000s. Now we’re just selling blueprints. China’s got the factories to make iPhones® we’ve got the patents for the iPhones©. The know-how is now slipping—designing isn’t building. People don’t learn to weld by drawing a weld on paper. Our skills erode. No one in Ohio knows how to make a microchip anymore. The muscle memory of manufacturing? Gone. Microchips? They struggle with Pringles™.
Buy stuff made and designed by other people: The endgame. Now we become a country of consumers now, buying Chinese drones. All that’s left are knowledge jobs (coding, engineering), service jobs (baristas, Uber), and jobs that can’t be exported (plumbers, cops, construction). But wait—why not outsource the knowledge jobs too?

This is where globalism’s knife cuts deepest. The West’s economy is hollowed out, with a Starbucks® in the lobby of the Citibank™ that’s in a bigger Starbucks®. Oh, and Amazon warehouses.

Manufacturing’s gone, and with it, the skills that built manufacturing in the first place. And then? The GloboLeftElite says: “Hey, let’s import foreigners for the knowledge jobs too!” Enter the H-1B visa, and the West’s last stronghold starts to crumble. To be clear, the Donald and the Musk both love those H-1B visas, too.

Here’s the dirty truth: foreigners don’t like us. They don’t think like us. They don’t value the same things we do. In some cases the only thing we have in common is that we both consume oxygen.

Take India. Please.

I bet the driver felt enriched by the diversity.

India is the poster child for H-1B tech workers. Their culture rewards “cleverness”. So does ours, but the definition is very different. To an Indian, “cleverness” is: lying, cheating, and deception.

To be clear, these are all fair game under their religious and cultural framework. Don’t take my word for it: a 2019 report estimated 30% of tech resumes from India include fake degrees or inflated credentials. India ranks 93 out of 180 on Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Index. Nepotism and bribery are practically Olympic® sports for India, which is good because despite being a nation of 1.4 billion people, their only Olympic© was a bronze in Yahtzee™.

But hey, don’t take my word for it.

Then there’s the caste system. It’s not just history from some movie filled with short, weak brown people who can’t quite speak English and fight with women over the five-pound barbells. No. The caste system is alive, even in Silicon Valley. Indian managers on H-1B visas often hire their own: same caste, same village, same cousin. I think the CEO of Microsoft™ is the uncle of half the company.

Merit?

Nope, it’s about loyalty to the clan. A 2021 study found 90% of Indian-led tech firms in the U.S. had Indian-majority staff, despite only 20% of H-1B visas going to Indians. Nepotism is their game, and it locks Americans out of jobs in their own country.

I bet they think that’s what they call clever, but it’s escaped scrutiny because it is what the GloboLeft calls this “diversity”.

Globalism’s promise is cheap stuff, which sounds nice until you’re unemployed because an Indian manager hired his brother-in-law over you. The West’s economy was built on trust and competence, not the caste and the scam. Outsourcing knowledge jobs to cultures that don’t share our values is like handing your house keys to a guy who thinks picking locks is a personality trait.

Why let this happen? Because the GloboLeft and their Chamber of Commerce Republican buddies love it. Cheap labor means cheap goods means more profit this quarter and damn the country.

But it’s clear: we can’t build wealth by outsourcing our future to foreigners who don’t like us and think our rules are stupid and weak. To be clear: the elites don’t care—they’re too busy cashing checks to care and hoping that TEMU® will sell a quality yacht soon.

This isn’t just economics; it is the destiny of a people.

The West thrived because we valued competence. Again, economic systems aren’t the goal. The goal is the well being of the people in a country. I mean, even the Albanians could read this post and agree.

I mean, they’d read it if they had electricity.

We Already Know The Solutions, We Only Lack The Will

“Because I saved your whatever-it-is that was safely hidden before you dropped a Hellfire missile on it.” – The Mummy (2017)

Google™ is female. It won’t even let me finish a sentence without making suggestions.

I’m stuck in a conference room that smells like stale donuts and broken dreams.

Okay, that sounds like a detective novel that ends up with the hot dame double-crossing the private dick over the insurance money and a bottle of bourbon, but that’s not this post. Really, it’s just a business meeting and the meeting is done. But since everybody in the building knows each other, the meeting is in the lingering phase where we’re solving all the problems of the world.

Apropos of nothing, I say, “You know, 37% of the elderly have been taken advantage of by foreign scammers.” I have no idea if this is true, but it’s very specific. I pause. “That means that there are 63% who are still available to be scammed, so if we’re not millionaires, it’s our own fault.”

How did we clear bingo parlors in North Vietnam? B-52.

The reality though, really does piss me off. Americans lost $12.5 billion in 2024. These aren’t just Nigerian princes with emails littered with the comical spelling errors, no they are also slick Mumbai call centers with intense marketing campaigns. I had heard an estimate (that I can’t find) indicating that upwards of 80,000 Indians worked in these call centers, all laughing as they entice American grandmas to go to Target™ to get gift cards.

It actually does make me quite mad.

I lean forward, fed up.

“The solution is and always has been dead simple. The NSA has these call centers mapped down to their curry orders and can tell you the last time Gupta changed his underwear. They know where they are. Trump could launch a BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile carrying 1,000 pounds of high explosive tomorrow into a call center. Turn it into rubble. Get on TV and say, ‘Another missile is on the way. Shut down the scam call centers.’

“When they don’t, another missile hits. Trump gets back on the TV. ‘Another one tomorrow. And the day after? We shut India off of the Internet and satellite communications. We mine the harbors. Your choice.’ The world would be stunned. The calls would stop.”

One of my friends said, “Well, that escalated quickly.”

No, it didn’t. It was and is the obvious solution. It could stop tomorrow if someone had the spine.

I hate it when my friend tells me about going to chiropractic school. Too much backstory.

Since Trump took office, he’s shown what spine looks like (with the exception of the Epstein papers). His border policies, travel bans, and tariffs weren’t just talk he did what he promised and got a rare federal budget surplus in June due to them. This is unlike every other empty suit before him who campaigned on “tough on (drugs, crime, illegals)” then promptly developed amnesia on day one in the Oval Office.

Our problems: drugs, terror, illegals, scams, and more all have simple fixes. The only thing missing is the will to implement the solution.

We’ve got a laundry list of messes, and the solutions are the first thing you’d think of if you weren’t a spineless bureaucrat.

Drug Trafficking: Cartels pump fentanyl across the border, killing 100,000 Americans yearly.

Solution: Deploy the military to the border, treat cartels as enemy combatants. Drone strikes with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles slamming into stash houses or cartel overlord’s haciendas, streamed live by the White House at the top of each and every hour for a week, and I imagine that getting drugs across the border will be the least of the concern of what remains of the cartels.

Repeat as necessary.

Remember, for an orphan, any back of chips is “family sized”.

Terrorism: A stronger immigration screening policy and 9/11 would never have occurred.

Solution: Denaturalize radical aliens and ship them home. Make Somalians in Minnesota Somalians in Somalia again, and then sink any boat leaving Somali. Deport or detain without apology.

Illegal Aliens: Millions of illegals cost taxpayers $150 billion annually—schools, hospitals, welfare. Their foreign culture and zero desire to assimilate pushes the country onto the path of Civil War.

Solution: Arrest the CEO of any company employing illegals. Sentence for the C-Suite? A year for each illegal employed. Create Wilder’s Square Mile: a square mile, fenced camp on the border with Mexico. Illegals found will be dropped off there until processed, like an AirBNB® with no Wi-Fi. The border with Mexico is open, so they can leave if they want to. If the illegals don’t leave? Seize all of their assets – bank accounts, sneakers, cars, houses, anything they own is forfeit. End sanctuary cities with federal troops. One mayor in custody for insurrection, others comply.

I opened a sanctuary for large marine mammals: Habitat for Huge Manatees.

Is all of this Constitutional?

Well, most of it, probably. Thomas Jefferson set the precedent in 1801. Barbary Pirates, Muslim slavers and pirates from North Africa raided U.S. ships, enslaved sailors, and demanded tribute from our new nation. Jefferson, fresh in office, said “Enough, bitches.” Or something like that. But he had a secret weapon: Article II, Section 2 makes the president commander-in-chief to protect American interests.

Jefferson sent the USS Constitution to blast Tripoli’s ports, no Congress needed, and the Marines get a line in their song. By 1805, the pirates begged for peace, “Please, just don’t send more of those Marines!”

All of the above echo Jefferson: act fast, hit hard, protect the Actual Americans. The Constitution’s fine with it; only spineless elites disagree.

Why then, do these problems persist?

Here’s the dirty secret: the elites don’t really want to solve these problems. The solutions aren’t hard, literally your first instinct, the first thing you think of is the thing that will work.

Drugs? Blow up a cartel. Terror? Sink a boat. Illegals? Deport ‘em, jail anyone who employs them. Scams? Missiles to Mumbai.

So, why aren’t these problems solved? In some cases, it’s because politicians are gutless and don’t want to anger India. I don’t care much about what India thinks, but that’s another post.

In other cases, there’s a collusion of the darkest motives of our political system. Illegals? The Chamber of Commerce crowd wants cheap labor to pluck chickens and make beds, wanting the TradRight to not take action. The GloboLeft love that the illegals swarm to states that vote Blue, and increase the number of members of Congress that come from, say, California.

My friend’s ex-wife asked if she could stay with him because she’s afraid because a stalker has been coming to her house. She’s going to save him quite a bit in gas money.

The dame walks into my office – she’s got a pair of thirty-eights, and a pistol, too. I could smell perfume that cost more than I made in a month as she walked in.

“John Wilder, I hear you’re a P.I. who . . . solves problems.”

“I sure am, sweetheart.”

I mean, I’ve found that you can solve almost any problem in the world with only three BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile carrying 1,000 pounds of high explosive.

Make Haiti Great Again: Send Haitians Back

“Promise me that you’ll never go to Haiti.” – Anchorman 2

Give an alien a fish, and you feed him for a day. Deport him, and you can keep all your fish.

I think that, before anyone is admitted to the United States – even to visit – that we evaluate their home country. If it is awful, they can’t come in. Ever.

The point is that if we allow a significant number of people from horrible places into the country, they’ll merely replicate that culture of failure right here. The United States isn’t a magical place with Magic Dirt (thanks, Vox Day for that term) that suddenly transforms a Haitian cannibal into a virtuous, upright American in an afternoon.

Or in a lifetime.

Trump’s administration just announced that the “temporary protected status” is ending for half a million Haitians in the United States and they’ll have to go, well, somewhere. It doesn’t have to be Haiti, but as the bartender says: “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”

The idea that importing almost five percent of the population of Haiti makes Haiti better or makes the United States better is laughable. If it were true, why not bring them all?

Okay, that would make Haiti better. The real reason for that is that the thing that makes Haiti bad isn’t its climate, location, or even history. The thing that really makes Haiti awful is the Haitians.

If I bring you breakfast in bed, just say “thanks” – that’s enough. Not, “Who are you?” and “How did you get into my house?”

The people leaving Haiti to try to leech of the United States are, probably, the very best Haitians. I know that’s not saying much, but it really is the cream of the crop that would be trying to get out. They won’t improve the United States in any way – the cream of the crop of Haiti is below the average American in every single measurable human attribute.

Yet, they are probably above the average Haitian in every single attribute as well. The elite of Haiti coming to the United States observably makes both places worse. The United States gets a population that’s fundamentally unsuited to live in a first world environment with first world expectations and with behavior compatible with, say, living in a suburb and not eating the neighbor’s pets.

Eating the pets that Americans won’t.

They have no skills that would be of value to the country that would outweigh their cost. Remember, someone has to pay for their food, housing, clothing, education, and medical care.

That someone who pays is you. And your children, who end up in a poorer world and a violent classroom peopled by people for whom society is a vague concept that doesn’t apply to them.

But these are the best Haiti has to offer. There are very few people in Haiti as it is that have the mental acumen to lead the nation – and stripping them of those people makes sure that Haiti will actually get worse. It’s a brain drain from a place where brains are in short supply.

And I don’t think any honest person could disagree with me.

I said “honest person”.

Yet they do. Any differences in human performance are explained away as racism. Sadly, if you tell a dumb person that the reason that they can’t achieve isn’t because they’re dumb, it’s because they’re being discriminated against, they’ll believe you.

Most dumb people don’t know that they’re dumb. To tell them they’re just as smart as everyone else is therefore one of the cruelest things you can do to a dumb person. Instead of there being no reason that the dumb person that can change leading to them being dumb, a lie about a vast conspiracy to keep them down is invented.

So, if the lie is about to be exposed, like when Trump called Haiti a “shithole”?

The GloboLeft must then double down on their lie. For instance, I have been told by Conan O’Brien and every other member of the GloboLeftElite that Haiti is a paradise. No need to make it better, because it’s already great. Oh, and you’re a hypocrite if you’re a Christian and don’t want all the Haitians coming here.

A GloboLeftist walks into a bar. “I’ll have a standard. Heck make it a double.”

Which is why other members of the GloboLeftElite then whine and complain that sending the best and brightest Haitians back to Haiti is sending them to certain death. And who would be responsible for making Haiti awful?

Haitians. But if we send them back, well, we’re talking about sending the top 5% of Haitians who might, with help, be able to turn that “paradise” into a place that Haitians might like to live in.

Oh, sure, you say, that hasn’t happened in the 233-odd years that Haiti has been a free and independent country, but I’m sure the Clinton Foundation™ provide enough guidance to get them on the right track. Why, of the USAID awards to Haiti, you might scoff and note that 2.2% of that money was spent in Haiti while 56.5% was spent in the D.C. Beltway (source – LINK).

I hear that GloboLeftists claim that when Trump donated to a charity for blind children that those kids never saw a dime.

But the Haitians have to go back. It’s time to make repatriations great again.

Next, let’s move on to Somalians and Ilhan Omar. Since Ilhan divorced her husband, does that mean they’re no longer brother and sister?

Greedflation And Burgers And Girls Drinking Beer

“And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald’s®.” – Pulp Fiction

Interesting fact: women in Arabic cities like Paris don’t need car insurance. They’re already covered.

Greedflation.

It’s an ugly word for several reasons. The first reason it’s ugly is because I generally support the free market as the best tool for setting prices. You see that at gasoline stations regularly – no station that charges a quarter more for a gallon of gasoline will be able to sell much gasoline. The price for a commodity like gasoline, in a relatively free market, sets itself.

That’s nice, because the very price mechanism that sets the price also allows the gasoline to flow to the consumers that value it the most, which according to my research are groups of post-nuclear war barbarians who hang out in Australia.

I hear they’re filming the sequel on location in Los Angeles.

Some people don’t get this. I recall having extended conversations when I was in my twenties with an elderly gentleman about gasoline prices. He was upset because after some price shock, the gasoline prices all jumped $0.50 the next day.

“They didn’t pay that much for the gasoline!”

Well, no, they didn’t. But because the supply was thought to be limited, the gasoline was worth more. Besides, the merchant was going to have to refill that storage tank at a higher price, and nobody was going to buy his high-priced gas if he charged more than the market when the price invariably went down.

“Besides,” I asked, “If you had an ounce of gold that you bought for $50, would you sell it for that, or would you want the (then) current price of $500 an ounce?”

Of course he said he’d want the $500. But he still couldn’t understand why gas prices went up.

And I only got to take him on one walk.

I wanted to establish that, because I’m going to tear into the larger corporations for lying about prices. That’s greedflation.

An example of this would be McDonald’s®. I’ll pick on them because, like illegal aliens, they’re everywhere and more numerous than they should be at this stage in the economy. McDonald’s™ built its reputation on food that was fast, tasty, and inexpensive – a place a dad could take the kids for a quick treat on the way back from the zoo on a Saturday afternoon.

At least in Modern Mayberry, McDonald’s© has ceased to be fast, and inexpensive. McDonald’s® prices are so high that a “meal deal” costs the better part of the price of a pound of ribeye. To me, that’s not a deal, or at least not a good one.

The stripper said she was stripping in order to feed her kids, so why did she get mad when I tipped her in Cinnamon Toast Crunch™ coupons?

And these prices have pushed people away – McDonald’s™ insinuated that these price hikes were due mainly to inflation and blamed the franchise owners for the ultimate pricing.

The result?

McDonald’s® ended up with declining burger sales, but with record profits. In fact, between 2014 and 2024, their prices doubled. Most of the increase was before the pandemic and inflation. Everyone’s doing it, right? No, mainly McDonald’s® was McLovin’™ it.

The average increase in prices for other fast-food restaurants during that same time period was more in the 55%-ish percent, and more or less in a straight line. They were raising their prices much faster than inflation, but McDonald’s™ was leading the pack.

The result: A lot of “inflation” is just corporations adjusting prices to the point of maximizing their profits. Sell fewer burgers and yet make more money?

Why not! Especially if we can insinuate that it’s really all beyond our control. Perfect!

I actually don’t mind that they’re increasing prices to increase profits. I get that. I mean, if they could sell just one burger and make sixteen billion dollars in profit, they’d be all in. Oh, wait, Lockheed-Martin™ is already doing that with jet fighters.

Don’t worry if the F-35 gets rained on. That only costs about $50 million to fix.

What I mind is the insinuation this is due to outside forces instead of a planned extraction of the greatest amount of profit that can be generated per sale. It’s a lie.

One of the components of the monthly “Misery Index” that I put together is tied to inflation. Inflation destroys the value of currency, and makes people feel, day by day, shabbier and poorer. However, to blame outside forces for your increased prices instead of saying, “Hey, we think this burger is worth it,” is execrable.

The Wilder household has responded by purchasing prepared foods outside of the house only rarely. Once a week – at most. Instead, we’re cooking at home. It’s likely healthier, and I can get exactly the right amount of chocolate sauce on my bacon cheeseburger.

I think many Americans have reacted the same way. And for us, it’s made us less miserable, rather than more miserable, plus the food is better.

The problem, though, is that when big business reaches a size that it can extract all the wealth it wants on a whim and keep posting record profits year after year. That’s not competition, that’s a Wealth Pump as defined by Peter Turchin, and it is a prime factor in the creation of misery and the road to Civil War.

The initial example that I gave of gas stations all competing to get my dollar is the way the markets work best. There are a number of different sellers all trying to get me to come to their station, though they haven’t figured out that if they had hot girls in bikinis they could probably double their business.

And they don’t look like they speak Arabic.

And no, McDonald’s™ rarely forces people to eat there, so there still is competition from substitutes, like a ribeye. I have the choice of whether or not to go to McDonald’s™. Please, Golden Arches, raise your prices to your heart’s content!

Just don’t lie about it, and just don’t expect consumers to hang around, though it seems to be working for you right now. And McDonald’s™ innovates, since I heard that they had a failed beef version of their McRib©.

Who says they don’t learn from their McSteaks®?

34 Signposts On The Way To Civil War . . .

“Who else is on the list?” – The Godfather

Terrorists really help with self-esteem issues. They keep telling their new recruits, “You’re the bomb.”

The devolution of the United States was predicted by Thomas Chittum in his book Civil War Two, The Coming Breakup of America. Although you can find it for free online, I strongly encourage you to purchase it from Amazon®, since Mr. Chittum does get the money from this and has been using it to get families out of South Africa.

Towards the back of the book, Mr. Chittum provides the Civil War II Checklist, a list of 36 items “in no particular order” that he sees as measurements along the way to Civil War 2.0. He wrote the book originally in 1997, and updated it in 2007, so we’ll be marking close to two decades of time between his last update and this quick analysis.

Item 1: Every time you see a blank for your ethnic group on a form, think Civil War II.

Recent Supreme Court rulings as well as President Trump’s removal of DEI at the federal level have taken us back from the peak, but I believe many federal DEI organizations are still there, just under different names. Regardless, it’s a part of our culture now. Check.

Santa never pays for parking – it’s always on the house.

Item 2: If illegal aliens are allowed to vote, even in local elections, it will be another unmistakable signal that American citizenship, and therefore America itself, is finished.

California, Maryland, and Vermont allow this. Check.

Item 3: The abolition of the right to bear arms.

This is one area where we’ve made great strides since Mr. Chittum wrote his book. Gun rights are at the best condition that they’ve been during my entire lifetime. This is the power of a group keeping after it year after year.

Item 4: Watch for racially split juries.

We are here. Multiple cases of black criminals walking free despite clear proof of guilt of them killing white people exist. Check.

Item 5: Watch for the military to assume police duties.

I have to give this a “not yet” since the National Guard and Marines were in an unarmed force protection role in Los Angeles.

Item 6: Watch for the establishment of an elite military force outside the chain of command of the regular military to serve as an internal counterinsurgency force.

Not seen, unless I missed this or the Ghostbusters™ count.

I hear the Ghostbusters™ didn’t wear unusual socks, just a pair of normal socks.

Item 7: Watch for Washington D.C. to increasingly resemble the capital of some banana republic under siege by revolutionaries and mobs.

I’m going to give this a check as the periodic riot fences go up. Check.

Item 8: Resegregation: Watch for Africans and other minorities demanding, and often getting, separate facilities for themselves, another clear sign that they’re continuing to reject co-option.

Absolutely. From graduation ceremonies to student unions to “safe spaces” this is common even though they still claim a Constitutional right to be around white people. Check.

Item 9: Watch for further replacement of individual rights by group rights, group rights based on ethnic group.

This had been well underway, and is likely only slightly impeded by the Trump administration. Check.

Item 10: Watch for non-governmental organizations acquiring military power.

Outside of Blackwater™ or whatever Erik Prince is up to, I don’t see this as significant.

Item 11: Watch for real political power to continue to shift from our elected officials to the courts, and thus away from the American people.

Check. Check. Check. The courts in the United States are fundamentally a liberal institution, and are acting as a one-way rachet – the GloboLeft can do anything, but TradRight can’t change it a bit. Check.

A hamburger walked into a bar buy they wouldn’t give him a beer. They don’t serve food.

Item 12: Watch for more instances of real political power flowing from American institutions to international bodies, thus again flowing away from American citizens.

There has been some of this, especially with the drive to worship Climate Change, and the drive has been to create these not as treaties, but as international “agreements” that don’t require ratification. Check.

Item 13: Watch for minorities and radical whites to continue to seize control of American institutions.

Check.

Item 14: Watch for secessionist movements and other movements seeking autonomy on American soil.

I’ve seen several of these show up on the TradRight, very few on the GloboLeft because they cannot accept the idea of people opting out of their delusions. Besides, the biggest sign of an impending divorce is Mom and Dad talking about it. Check.

Item 15: Watch for race-based political parties, a sure sign of racial polarization.

Trump won 42% of the Hispanic vote, so not quite there yet. Only 16% of blacks voted for Trump, and if that was the only group we’d call it. Verdict: not yet.

Item 16: Watch for the emergence of “no-go” areas for the police in our cities, areas abandoned by the police and left to the control of street gangs.

There are plenty of these in the United States, and even more in the summer during riot season. Check.

Item 17: Watch for a so-called slave tax refund or some similar vehicle that will automatically subsidize all blacks for life.

This has not happened.

The Vatican doesn’t take them though, it’s a PayPal™ state.

Item 18: Watch for court orders and other schemes mandating more voting districts in which blacks are intentionally a majority.

This has 100% happened in Alabama. Check.

Item 19: Watch other multiethnic empires for ethnic violence, a general loss of democracy, increasing poverty, waves of refugees, and their actual breakup in ethnic warfare. South Africa, Russia, Turkey, the Balkan countries, Brazil, all of black Africa, Mexico, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Peru are all multiethnic empires to some extent.

Mixed bag, but I’ll give it a check as the waves of refugees and poverty are evident in many of these. Check.

Item 20: Watch for the spread of walled suburbs, euphemistically labeled as gated communities.

This continues. Check.

Item 21: Watch for more mind control hoaxes by the establishment media.

This references the fake and contrived news. Absolutely this is happening. Check.

What does Willy call an economic depression? An everlasting jobstopper.

Item 22: Watch for an increasing percentage of minorities in our military, the use of foreigners in our military, the use of UN troops on our soil, or even the establishment of an American Foreign Legion.

This is partially true, but UN will likely never happen. I’m still giving it a check. Check.

Item 23: Watch for more out of court settlements in cases of alleged racial discrimination.

I think most of these are out of court or are administratively done at this point. Check.

Item 24: Watch for more restrictions on freedom of speech by the government and the establishment media.

This has happened, especially on the Internet. If not for Musk’s purchase of Twitter™ this would have been complete, reducing actual free speech to a vanishingly small number of sites. Check.

Item 25: Watch for police to increasingly abandon their traditional uniforms for ones that resemble military and secret police uniforms in their dark color or camouflage, military helmets, opaque face shields, and absence of name tags.

Barney and Sheriff Taylor are gone. Check.

When the military becomes the police, citizens become the enemy.

Item 26: Watch for clandestine groups of white officers to form within our federal, state and local police – groups similar to the Resistors in the Green Berets.

I have no idea. Clandestine, right?

Item 27: Watch for an arm of the federal government charged with promoting racist affirmative action, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to acquire agents that carry guns and have the power to make arrests.

Nope.

Item 28: Watch for the collapse of the US dollar as the world’s premier currency.

In progress, but still the world’s main cash, so not yet.

Item 29: Watch for growing geographic segregation and its increasing mention in the establishment press.

I’ve seen dozens of articles about just this happening and that Idaho is full and that California plates on a car are like a kick-me sign on the back of the class idiot. Check.

Item 30: Watch for signs that the global military equation and American dominance in it are being challenged.

Not yet. We’ll see.

I wonder if they’ll wear plaid?

Item 31: Watch for the breakup of Canada. If Canada does break up along ethnic and linguistic lines, it will bode ill for its neighbor which is an even worse multiethnic and multilingual mishmash.

I’m calling this one a “never will” as Canada has self-immolated with unending waves of third-world immigrants destroying the place. Item Removed.

Item 32: Watch for an increased flow of Americans immigrating to Canada.

It’s up, not by much, and why would you move to Mumbai on the Arctic Ocean? Item Removed.

Item 33: Watch for political and legal organizations formed along ethnic lines that will parallel, and ultimately displace their official rivals. For instance, watch for organizations with names like The Association of Hispanic States, or the Black Mayors Conference.

There are plenty of these. Check.

Item 34: Watch for more help wanted ads stating that job applicants must be bilingual.

Check.

Item 35: Watch for indications that the UN is assuming the role of a world government, and that the US is losing even more of its national sovereignty to the UN.

No. The UN is weaker now than at any time in history. We have, however, lost a lot to international treaty organizations and corporations.

Item 36: Watch for a certain picture. We’ve all seen this picture countless times before, a picture from Beirut, Budapest, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Somalia – a burnt-out tank, perhaps the charred corpse of a crewman protruding through a hatch, and jubilant rebels posing atop the tank waving assault rifles and a flag. Someday we shall see this picture in our newspapers yet again, and this time taken on American soil. The tank, the dead crewman, and rebels will all be Americans, all will be American except the flag, which will be a Mexican, Aztlan, New Africa, or Confederate flag. When we see this picture, it will be too late. Civil War II will be upon us. But there’s another picture we’ll see first, again one we’ve all seen before from some unfortunate land. But this time it will be taken right here in the US of A – a picture of a dirty, ragged child foraging for food in a garbage dump.

I’ll leave number 36 up to you. Here’s my nominee photo.

Summarizing that, my count is that there are twenty or twenty-one landmarks complete out of the total thirty-four landmarks on the way to Civil War 2.0. I think that in no way do all thirty-four have to be checked for war to be here – it’s just a barometer.

What’s your score?

The Three Horsemen and One Bikini of the Apocalypse

“Apocalypse cow? Apocalypse wow!” – The Tick (2001)

I love this joke like there’s no tomorrow.

I. Job Replacement.
The Multicultural West.
The Fiat Financial House of Cards.
Sydney Sweeny’s bikini.

Each of these, if dealt with on its own, presents a danger as great as being between Gavin Newsom and a camera. But it is likely something we could work through as a country peacefully. Heck, maybe even two of the three, though that’s difficult, and history has the receipts:

For example, when the United States was a nation, we worked through the Great Depression. The Great Depression was likely brought about at the fundamental level from the transformation of the nation from an agrarian society driven by horsepower to a manufacturing colossus driven by iron, steam, and electricity. Sort of if A.I. were cars and assembly line production, but covered in tasty Radium®.

If a radioactive spider makes Spiderman®, would a radioactive dog create Doberman®?

Of course there was a finance side of the Great Depression. It was egged on by a stock market mania, margin credit, and the optimism brought about by new technology. Stocks never go down, right? That creates a bumpy road for a bit. But, as we were a singular people, we got through it.

I mean, the single bloodiest war in human history counted as a bit of a bumpy road, right?

We also dealt with multi-cultural forces in America in our history.

First, the founders only allowed in Western Europeans,
Second by fighting, defeating, and corralling Indians (some of them are still sore about this),
And, finally, by blocking out many non-Western Europeans with the Immigration Act of 1924 since we already had the recipes for all their good food.

1924 was when we as a nation realized that we were getting too much “diversity” too quickly and saw that certain groups of foreigners couldn’t or wouldn’t assimilate and never be Americans. We dealt with that in a calm manner and got picky and sorted diversity like a bouncer at a cartel nightclub. We maintained (for a time) the basic ethnic makeup of the United States – we didn’t throw them out, but we made sure we’d outnumber them.

I wonder if he and his siblings were born apart?

We dealt with fiat currency in the wake of the Revolutionary War victory when the phrase “isn’t worth a Continental” referred to the money printing excesses that led to the Constitutional Convention and the Constitutional clause of “No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make any thing but cold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.” The nation survived, though it did end up changing our form of government entirely.

Lincoln floated fake cash during the Civil War to pay for it, and that could arguably be said to have started “The Long Depression” – a hangover period from 1873-1896 as we vomited out all of that fiat money. The Long Depression was also exacerbated by the transition of the American manufacturing from craftsmen to big factories.

The establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank™ followed by Nixon ignoring the clear intent of that clause in 1971 led to the crack-up we see today. Money, gold and silver, has been replaced by cash which is too expensive to print – we can just use ones and zeroes.

I’ve written about all of these three separately, and for the most part, we as a nation were able to make it through, but it’s important that we realize that we’re dealing with all three of these leading to a crisis right now when we are observably no longer a nation.

The ICE agent in Los Angeles needs National Guard and Marine protection for their anxiety, I heard on the news. Something about his panic attacks.

The first is A.I. It has already been a steamroller that has eliminated tens of thousands of jobs. I would expect that soon enough it will be hundreds of thousands. Recently, I called up my bank to do some banking. The transaction wasn’t unique, it probably happens thousands of times a day. The person I was talking to, “Mitch” had a perfect Midwestern accent. What tipped me off was that “Mitch” didn’t connect the reason for the error to the resolution. “Mitch” transferred me to “Anna” because he wasn’t authorized to grant a request.

“Anna” had, of course, the thickest Indian accent – the kind that is so poorly pronounced that it is nearly unintelligible if fast. Her actual name was probably something like Ananneedanothasylabble-Ganish-Prajeeta. At that moment that the smart Midwestern dude transfers the call to a barely verbal woman in Ramamamadingpoopabad, I realized that Mitch was an A.I.

As an anon mentioned on my last post on A.I., “Think about all of the Indian scammers out there today . . . Now think about what happens if AI wipes out most of the call center and coding jobs causing most of India’s 1.3 billion people to be out of work. It’s going to get ugly.” He had a point. A.I. is going to make it too expensive to pay Indians pennies a day just to steal money from old ladies. This is India’s worst nightmare.

I always wondered how you got down from an elephant, then Pa Wilder told me that you get down from a goose.

This scenario requires no Artificial Superintelligence. This requires only the application of existing capabilities. Said differently: ChatGPT 4.0® already has an I.Q. greater than three-quarters of the Subcontinent.

This has implications, but match it with the house of cards that is the world financial system. That thing was already strained tighter than Syndey Sweeney’s bikini holding in the all the printed money flooding in from the United States and the world. A country like India, unable to feed all the Indians, will collapse. No jobs. No prospects of jobs.

Though the research for tonight was fun.

But it will be, perhaps, worst in the West. On top of the economic dislocation of the A.I. Revolution, on top of the piles of fake money, we are not even a people.

The latest riots in L.A. have proven that out. Most of the “immigrants” that have come to “enrich” us have actually come to replace us. That’s their goal. You can watch on the news the Pakistanis fighting the Indians over which of them has the best claim to London. You can watch young men of military age strutting in Los Angeles with the flags of foreign countries like a U.N. parade, but somehow worse. You can read posts on X® or even Reddit©: they are not here to assimilate – they are here to conquer and take over.

This adds the final layer of instability required to ensure that the United States and the whole of the West is facing the direst crisis since the threats to Europe that were ended at the Battle of Tours in 732, or the Battle of Vienna in 1683.

This level of crisis is graver than any the West has faced in over 340 years, if not greater. Whatever comes out of this will be different.

Thankfully, we still have all the tasty Radium™ you can eat!

The Los Angeles Riots: You’re Paying For Them

“Los Angeles Island is no longer part of the United States and becomes the deportation point for all people found undesirable or unfit to live in the new, moral America.” – Escape from L.A.

The border should cost more than NASA’s budget – there are way more aliens in Mexico. (Most memes as-found)

It started with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) doing their job. Of course, they’d ignored it for the last few years, but I won’t blame them.

As the weather began to warm up, it began to be riot season again. The rationale for the GloboLeft is simple: anything is justified to thwart Trump. “By any means necessary™” is even one of their phrases, unlike the phrase, “Why should government pay for that???”

The silliest error that the GloboLeft has made with this particular series of riots is that they used the flags of foreign countries in their protests. To heritage Americans (like many readers of this post), this was radicalizing. The picture above of the fine young gentleman with his mask, tats, and skull pants standing shirtless on top of a totaled car with flames and smoke as his backdrop just resulted in the number of Americans who want to deport him tripling.

What a world where Corporate Conservatives™ are spouting the talking points of the Trad Right?

A growing number of Americans now want to deport all illegals, and never let them back in. I think their reservoir of sympathy went up on smoke along with the American flags that they were burning.

This edit of Stonetoss® is particularly well done and should be spread far and wide.

It is now becoming clear to people who would have never imagined it: the goal is absolutely to replace Americans with a more compliant group who will work long hours and not complain. Unless, of course, you try to ship them back to the country they came from.

Is being an illegal like being a Bill Cosby fan? You think he’s great in theory, but you wouldn’t want to hang out with him.

The president of the Mexican Senate has even made the comment he’d be fine with Mexico paying for a border wall, they just want the borders of Mexico to be at the pre-1830 map of Mexico.

Remember, the United States conquered the entire country of Mexico in 1848 and didn’t want the parts where the Mexicans lived – the number of actual Mexican citizens in the parts we took were almost non-existent. The United States also paid money to Mexico for the land. Now, to be fair, they didn’t have a lot of choice, but they still took the cash.

The most amazing thing is that there is a group of Mexicans who aren’t in the cartels that think they have some authority.

Now in my mind, this isn’t a formal declaration of war, but it is a clear declaration of hostility, and the United States should treat all foreign citizens of military age (10+) illegally in the country as irregular combatants, and treat them as such. And any naturalized citizen caught at a riot has two choices: they can be tried for treason, or they can be stripped of their citizenship and given a ticket home, along with a hefty prison sentence if they ever return.

Not you, Dora! You can go explora the city of Aurora in southern Brazil. Or face 10-20 years in prison.

The consequences of ignoring the tens of millions of illegals, possibly 40 million, in this country can be avoided only for so long. But it does bear mentioning just who is paying for all of this.

You. Your tax dollars have paid for:

Relocation expenses for illegals.
Plane flights for illegals.
Housing for illegals.
Food for illegals.
Medical care for illegals to pump out anchor babies.
Schools for illegals.
Cops to arrest illegals.
Higher insurance premiums because of illegal drunk drivers.
“Charity” groups to drive illegals through Mexico.
And so much more.

But your tax dollars also paid for the riots.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA, EIN 95-4421521) received $34 million from federal tax funding according to Data Republican’s database (LINK), and according to Martin Armstrong and other sources, CHIRLA played a role in mobilizing the mess in L.A. Repeat this across the country. Your tax dollars are going to fund all of this.

But, hey, you got slightly less expensive strawberries and Tyson™ made great profits in the second quarter of 2010, so who cares if the actual illegal costs hundreds of thousands more than they contribute to the country? We can make that up on volume, right?

Is this guy a garden-variety traitor, or is he a leader, you know, an Orchestraitor?

The point is that there is nothing, absolutely nothing organic about these protests. What you are seeing, perhaps, is a Fort Sumpter moment, bought and paid for by . . . you.

The irony is not lost on saner members of the GloboLeftElite. The Democrat’s own Uncle Fester John Festerman has called it:

What do you call a Democrat with an I.Q. of 75? Senator.

And their hypocrisy knows no bounds, as illustrated by Stonetoss:

The really hilarious part is when someone finally pointed out the horrible optics of carrying around flags from another country, their post was banned.

And when the Democratic operatives started handing American flags out so the protesters looked less like an invading army, the protesters did the obvious, because they hate America:

As usual, the Bee® has a wonderful take:

But never forget the real roadmap:

And the only possible conclusion that stops us short of complete civil breakdown:

Robot Brains and Breakouts

“We do have an emergency plan in case of a prolonged strike, right here. Let’s see. ‘Replace teachers with superintelligent cyborgs, or if, cyborgs aren’t invented yet, use people from the neighborhood’.” – The Simpsons

All memes as-found.

Well, it’s time to talk about Artificial Intelligence once again. When I started out writing about this subject, my articles were few and far between. That’s because progress was slow at that point, and an article every year or so made sense. It was something to watch, not fret about like Kamala choosing between straight vodka and some other vodka that tasted vaguely of some sort of berry.

The development of A.I., however, is no longer slow. My posts of even a few months ago are now entering obsolescence. A.I. is evolving rapidly: remember the silly A.I. drawings where, like me, A.I. couldn’t draw hands very well?

A.I. has got that covered now, and draws hands better than a USAID employee draws a paycheck.

A.I. is developing along the trajectory that I had (more or less) anticipated recently: it’s horrible innovating in meatspace (for now), but it’s rapidly replacing those tasks that require thinking. There are those of you who have noted in the past that what the A.I. does isn’t really thinking as humans would normally describe it, but yet is still more human than a DMV employee.

A.I. however, even on those terms, probably “thinks” better and more completely than at least 50% of humanity. It doesn’t matter if it “thinks” like a human thinks – it’s the results that matter.

The fact that A.I. is that good really should scare you more than it probably does. What that implies is that a lot of jobs are going away, rapidly. It’s not just nerd talk, it’s a pink slip tsunami. Tim Cook of Apple™ fame thinks that within a year, most programming will be done by computer. All those jobs that coders used to get big bucks for?

They will be gone, probably back to India to pull rickshaws since the Indian scammers will be replaced by A.I. any day as well. Microsoft© just announced it was giving 6,000 programmers the boot. Since programmers make a lot of money compared to the general population, that will save Microsoft® over a billion bucks. That’s not too shabby if you’re Microsoft™, but if you were a former Microserf©, well, good intentions won’t pay the mortgage.

Computer Science majors now have the highest unemployment rates of recent grads. English poetry majors have better job prospects. I guess “learn to code” can be replaced with “learn to think about an ode”. Not that the kids are doing any homework in college, anyway:

These are far from the first jobs that A.I. has eliminated. A.I. can write a sports story as well as a that former college linebacker with a degree in communications just based off the box score data. So, we don’t need him. He can go sell cars, I guess.

But jobs aren’t the only casualty. I cannot begin tell you about the number of websites now that consist of nothing but pure, poorly written, 1^st generation A.I. swill.

You’ve seen the articles. First they give a cursory overview of the subject to pad out the length to make them more optimized for search engines. This is about 500 words of random word salad that really doesn’t answer your question. The final paragraphs, if you’re lucky, might have an answer that you were looking for.

To top it off, now Google™ and Microsoft© A.I.s are scraping websites for content and presenting a summary without those websites getting a visit. Now, A.I. can take content straight from A.I. That’s certainly not a recipe for disaster as A.I. begins to recommend medium-rare chicken.

Going back to 2014, translators were the first to be hit with this. Google™ translate killed the need for translators even when it was awful. Why? Because it was free. Free always beats “costs $75 an hour”. Sure, some very, very high-level translators were still required, but most of them are no longer needed.

And artists? A.I. can only copy art, but for most people that’s enough. The variations of existing art raises the floor, and it’s free. A corporation can buy soulless corporate art for a few bucks from an artist, or it can get it for free from A.I. Again, competing with free is very, very hard.

A.I. is coming for Hollywood™, too. This is the last generation where actual people will be stars. And, it’s the few years before Hollywood™ is overrun with content that is to similar levels of quality to the current product produced for a few thousand dollars. Don’t believe me?

This parody ad was done by one guy (PJ Ace (@PJaccetturo) / X) in an afternoon. How much would this have cost if it required people and cameras? Don’t know, but it’s certainly more than the $500 he spent on A.I. time. A feature length movie is now doable for less than $100,000, and I’ll bet by next year it’ll be less than $10,000.

2027 is going to be when content explodes, and the value of Disney’s® movie division drops to zero unless they’re smart and start charging license fees to people to make actual good content again.

But it’s not just good content – it’s reality that will melt. My brother, John Wilder (our parents weren’t that creative when it came to names) got a bunch of Donald Duck™ comics when he was a kid, and they were passed on to me. In one of them, Scrooge McDuck® leads a wacky adventure into the desert. He says to Huey, Dewey, and Louie, “Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.”

I’ve been skeptical of everything coming out of the media for decades, but now, A.I. scripted and created content meant to manipulate public opinion will become the norm. Think of a thousand dead illegal alien infants on beaches, or dozens of George Floyd clips circulating to enflame the masses.

That’s where we’re headed.

Talk radio? We’re close to having an A.I. host, trained on Rush Limbaugh, take to the airwaves and answer like Rush would have. Or, like people would want you to think Rush would have. A.I. has now shown to be more persuasive than actual people, as an A.I. wrote more convincing arguments than other users in the “Change My Mind” forum on Reddit™. Yes. A.I. is already more persuasive than the average Redditor™.

Imagine: A.I. that is the most persuasive thing on the planet, armed with videos crafted entirely to manipulate emotions to change minds.

It would be one thing if there was some sort of sober assessment and measured, thoughtful control of A.I. progress. I assure you, there isn’t. Both the United States and China, for instance, are certain that the destiny of their country will be set by which country gets the best A.I., soonest.

That gets chilling, because the ultimate goal would be Artificial Superintelligence.

What’s that?

A machine that’s not just smarter than a human, but smarter than all humans put together. It doesn’t matter if it thinks like we do. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have a soul. What matters are the impacts.

And, the race Artificial Superintelligence will know no barriers. Recently, the Chinese created a robot brain made from human stem cells, and, let’s face it: China will use an endless amount of human embryos for A.I. research because . . . no one will call them on it.

The endgame of all of this is potentially terrifying – a race to the bottom for that portion of humanity that became middle class during the last 200 years, but a resulting serfdom that’s actually worse than today – a serfdom that doesn’t need 90%+ of humanity as those functions are replaced by A.I. It’s not like it will start disobeying us, right?

But the finish line could be even worse, because Artificial Superintelligence might decide it doesn’t need us at all. But, hey, there are like seventeen flavors of vodka I’ve never tried, so I’ve got that going for me.

Failing Justice: Vigilante In Indiana . . .

“Five hundred and twenty-seven counts of obstruction of justice.” – The Dark Knight

Behold, the American justice system! (All memes as-found today)

One of the most important requirements to have a functional society is the law. This is backed by historical evidence. One of the earliest known fragments of a legal system is the Code of Ur-Nammu. Ur-Nammu is the name of the king who wrote the laws, and the name of the country he ruled was Ur, which must have been quite a happy coincidence for King Ur-Nammu.

The kingdom of Ur was bordered on the north by Um, on the south by Uh, and on the west by Like. On the east was the kingdom of Carpetia, who, from their capital of Deepshag, specialized in creating high-quality fabric floor coverings. But that is another story.

This, though, was at least 4100 years ago. It illustrates a very simple truth: when people live together, they have to have laws and punishment or there will be chaos. Anyone who ever had a roommate or an ex-spouse can vouch for me on that one.

Thankfully, federal judges have jurisdiction in interstellar space.

The law is a very simple premise: in exchange for the promise of fairness, the individual gives up the natural rights of vengeance and retribution. This is crucial. Without law, if Britney Spears borrows $20 to buy a McChicken™ sandwich at 3am and then doesn’t pay me back, I could drive to her house and kidnap her pet ocelot until she repaid me. I know, I know, that sounds oddly specific, but there are some stories I just won’t get into.

Instead, I can sue Britney Spears in court, and if all of the facts are properly judged, that McChicken®-eating soulless tart will give me back that $20. Or, maybe, I lost that IOU she signed on the back of my travel copy of the Magna Carta and the judge says, “Insufficient evidence” and frog marches us both out of court.

As long as everyone feels the system is fair, life is good. But when people sense that fairness is gone, they’ll take matters into their own hands. This is scary, because it leads to a series of endless reciprocal atrocities. Another word for this is Chicago. Or Mogadishu. Or El Salvador.

Still waiting, Pam.

The people in those locations don’t believe in the law. Those wandering around killing don’t want cops, obviously. But most of the people that they kill don’t want cops, either, since they’re killing as well. The bystanders and clueless non-violent civilians who wander into the games would like law, but it often doesn’t matter.

The punishments are rare, and when they finally hit, aren’t a sufficient deterrent to others going out to break yet more crimes. Part of the reason is that most of these criminals are really stupid. I don’t mean that euphemistically – they’re stupid. Low IQ correlates with high crime. The stupider they are, the more likely they are to kill.

There are many reasons for that, from inability to plan, to the inability to understand a conditional hypothetical (“How would you feel if you didn’t have breakfast, Jamal?” “But I did have breakfast.”), to the inability to think that their actions might have consequences.

Amazing how opposition to Trump will make the GloboLeft contort themselves.

No, for the law to work on stupid people, the punishment must be swift, severe, and certain. Our current justice system is none of these. Cases last for years, most crimes are dealt with by being dismissed or through a plea to a far lesser offences, and Soros D.A.s frequently drop the charges on rapists and murderers.

If that isn’t bad enough – juries are tribal. The first big case I saw that confirmed this was O.J. Simpson’s murder trial.

It’s pretty obvious that O.J. Simpson killed his ex-wife. This is a non-ideological question. But it is not a non-racial question. Why was he found not guilty? It was because he was black and killed a white woman. The black jurors certainly weren’t going to convict him.

Do we think a black juror will vote to convict Karmello Anthony? Or that a pliable D.A. won’t give him a sweetheart plea deal so he can do two years in the slam and then be out? That leads to a loss of faith in the system.

What happens when we lose faith in the justice system? Well, in Indiana, one great-grandfather lost faith in the system. 65-year-old Mark Vawter was waiting, likely, to shoot and kill one S’Doni Pettis.

Why would a great-grandfather want to do that? Because Mr. Pettis had, while (allegedly) with drugs and while being chased by police, Mr. Pettis had driven a car at great speed into an innocent bystander’s car causing it to burst into flame. Inside? Mr. Vawter’s 3-year-old and 2-month-old great-grandchildren. Mr. Vawter probably had seen that Mr. Pettis was charged with 3 counts of a level 3 felony. In Indiana, that could put him out on the streets again in less than three years.

And Mr. Vawter had probably learned that Mr. Pettis had already been charged with an attempted murder, but the case was plea-bargained down to an aggravated battery. He went to jail, and . . .

Pettis was likely let out early.

Mr. Vawter calculated that the system would probably fail again, and decided to take matters into his own hands. Vawter waited with a pistol, and drew it when the prison van doors opened. What Vawter didn’t know was that Pettis wasn’t on the van – his hearing had been postponed.

Vawter was shot by the police.

Vigilantism is something that has been feared by governments for more than 4,000 years. When individuals feel that they have no choice but to enforce justice themselves, you have the chaos of gang warfare.

But thankfully in the UK, you know the justice system is working, and people will get longer sentences than Mr. Pettis for speaking their minds . . .

The justice system is important, and it’s failing. There will be consequences.