Category: Big Thoughts

Never Lose The Battle For Your Mind

Bah! Your planet doesn’t deserve freedom until it learns what it is not to have freedom. It’s a lesson, I say!” – Futurama

What did they call George Washington’s teeth?  Presidentures.

“So, John, after I explained it, do you agree with me?” asked Captain Assholay.

“No, no I don’t,” I responded.

He looked frustrated.

The other details of the conversation were and are relatively unimportant, but the boil down to those two sentences.  The fact that the person asking the question was my boss is pertinent, since, well, Captain Assholay was (years and years ago) my boss.

As bosses go, I’d rank the Captain near the bottom of the ones that I’ve had.  I think he was borderline retarded, and I can say that word because it’s my blog, and I’m bringing it back.

One of my previous bosses was a man that reportedly lost the family fortune by punching a punter for the Green Bay Packers® who sued him and won because he couldn’t play anymore.  I guess punters are fragile.  On another occasion (while drinking) he mentioned that he threatened a witness in a felony trial so he’d leave the state and not be able to testify.

Captain Assholay?  Worse than that guy.

Alternate caption:  “Well, Forrest, there’s cheddar cheese, fried cheese, cheese sticks, cheese curds, cheese slices, cheese doodles, melted cheese, cheese dip (continues for three days) . . . that’s all the cheeses I know.”

But these two sentences encapsulated the relationship I had with Captain Assholay – his question was whether or not I would change my opinion.  I would not.

Neither would I lie about it.

I’ve followed a fairly simple pattern in my life:  when I’m working for someone, if they ask me to do something that is within my capabilities, and it’s not illegal, immoral, unethical, and doesn’t conflict with my values, I do it.  Even if I don’t like it.  Even if it sucks.  That’s why it’s called work, and not a hobby.

This, though, was different.  In this case, I was asked to conform my thoughts and agree with my boss.  If he told me to do something (again, nothing illegal, immoral, unethical, and not conflicting with my values) I would do it.  But the space he doesn’t own is in my head.

To me, agreeing with the Captain merely because he was my boss is something I couldn’t and wouldn’t do.  I’ll hold my tongue.  I’ll support silly things.  But my mind?

I own it.

My other friend makes wigs.  It doesn’t pay much, just enough toupee the bills.

I’m not sure Captain Assholay understood that.  Heck, I’m not sure he had the capacity to understand it.  But it’s not my job to raise him.  One (much better) boss of mine had a saying, “Right or wrong, the boss is the boss.”  That is true, and soon enough, we ceased working together.

I don’t send him Christmas cards.  Okay, I don’t send anyone Christmas cards, but if I did, I would not send him two cards.  My joy in thinking about him is that I do know that karma is real, and that the German word for empathy is schadenfreude.

Even though I’ll enjoy (at some point) hearing about his sudden but inevitable downfall, that’s not the point of this post.  The point of this post is about the latter part:  there are things other people can buy from me.  My time.

But they can never, ever, buy my soul.  They can never buy my integrity.  They can never buy my values.

He also joined a poetry club.  So far he’s made some ashtrays and a nice vase.

Life is about a series of compromises.  Anyone in a long-term relationship realizes that.  In fact, I’m pleased that The Mrs. has learned that if I promise to fix something around the house, I will, and she doesn’t need to nag me every six months until I actually get it done.

I couldn’t lie to the Captain.  Why?

I’ve given that some thought.  One idea might have been pride, but that’s not it.  I’m not much about things like that – the last time I washed one of my cars was sometime when Clinton was president.  So, that’s not it.

It was deeper.  And I look to my growing up, and the stories.  Would the heroes I read about have yielded?  Would Alexander?  Would Patton?  Would Richard Dawson?

No.

While I will render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, there are things that are simply not for sale, and never will be.  I will face the world that is being born knowing that.

“All I want for Christmas is Gaul.”

I don’t recall exactly where I read it, but the difference between the Mafia and Leftists is that the Mafia doesn’t care if you agree with them, as long as you pay.  Leftists?  You must pay, and you must agree, and you must humiliate yourself if you ever disagreed.  They will settle for nothing less.

The only answer is to never give in.

Ever.  Understand where the line is, and never, ever let it be crossed.  Even if you aren’t religious, understand that the battle is for your soul.

And you will be tested.

And you are not alone.

I saw my ex-wife get hit by a bus, and thought, “Man, that could have been me,” but then I remembered I don’t know how to drive a bus.

And that is the first step and the final step of winning.  If you don’t compromise, there will never be a one-way trip on a train.  Be free:  never give the space in your head, never give up your values or virtue.

Especially not to Captain Assholay.

Rigging The Game

“Coupons. Well, what a wonderful way to economize. Well, I could clip them and give them to my personal shopper.” – Frasier

The first symptom of COVID-19?  Believing what the government says. (all memes this post “as-found”)

It’s a strange, new world.  During my childhood, there was an active focus on one concept:  we’re all humans, regardless of race.  We should all be treated the same, and have the same rules.  Sure, there were programs like affirmative action, but the primary impact of those was (for the most part) in making sure that minority candidates were considered for jobs.  The rule (generally) remained that the most qualified person got the job.  Meritocracy reigned.

I won’t pick the date this changed, because it’s been a continuum, a bit here, a bit there.  But if you had seen the following headline in 1980 or 1990, I think the first thought of people would have been, “How can that even be legal?”

I was trying to think of a Bank of America® joke, but I lost interest.

The idea isn’t just at Bank of America®, it’s also at Wells Fargo™, too, you can look it up.  The concept is that companies attempting to get their ESG (link to my previous post on this monstrosity here) score up are setting up programs like that.  To be clear, any loan by any bank that’s not rooted in the ability of the borrower to repay is awful, and immoral.  It’s also shenanigans like this that led directly to the 2008 housing bubble and Great Recession.

In a related story, I wonder if Pelosi shorted them yet?

If a country is searching for a solid economy, this isn’t it.  If a country is looking to make actual equality the measure, this also isn’t it.  If it were just this, it would just be (outside of being illegal) just a limited number of bad business decisions, but it’s not limited to just this.

How about electric cars?  I mean, I’m as much into having children dig for toxic cobalt in the Congo so rich people in California can have electric cars and feel smug about it as the next person, but to create a tax incentive?

Seems a bit like we’re rubbing it in.

If Apple® makes an electric car, will it have Windows™?

Not to mention reparations.  It’s odd that the people who want to abolish debt for people that borrowed money are also the ones that want to pay people for things that never happened to them.  I guarantee that, no matter how much is offered it won’t be accepted.

Why?  It will never be enough.  Ever.

Another symptom of the Kleptocracy.

What about the Biden family themselves?  Is their economy wrecked like they’ve wrecked the nation?

No.  Joe went from $0 net worth in 2015 to $9,000,000 (latest info I could find) today.  How’d he do that?  I’m sure he cut back on Starbucks®.  According to reports, Hunter asked a donor to set up a job for his “pled guilty to a felony for $100,000 credit card fraud for makeup” niece.

They agreed to hire this felon for $85,000 a year.  She refused.  She wanted no less than $180,000.  To be fair, from the pictures it does look like she needs that much makeup.

Again, that’s small potatoes, when looking at the billions that have already been looted from the open checkbook that is the Ukraine.

The IRS called Hunter and told him he was being indicted for tax fraud.  He hung up, and told his dad, “Ha!  I don’t even pay taxes!”

And yet, there’s more!   I’ll skip over the massive payments for illegal aliens to play computer games and stay in hotels at taxpayer expense while actual Americans are homeless and face bankruptcy to medical bills inflated by donor companies like Pfizer®.  I’m sure that doesn’t make anyone mad.

What’s the difference between E.T.® and an illegal alien?  E.T. learned English and wanted to go home.

In point of fact, what we are seeing is the looting of an economy.  Our economy.  I think it’s been going on for years, but the looting wasn’t so visible because it was papered over, literally.  After the 2008 Great Recession, there wasn’t really any attempt to make the economy better, rather, the idea was to just keep printing money – Qualitative Easing is what they called, it, which was a fancy way to say that the money would be printed and buy up the weakest assets of the companies that the Fed® had desired to support.

Bank of America™ and Wells Fargo© were among them.

COVID-19 was the lynchpin, though.  As the tide receded and undulated, we could finally see who didn’t have a swimsuit on.  It turned out, it was most of the economy.  Now, inflation.  And, to top it off, eggs appear to be the 2023 version of toilet paper, so I guess this year that Halloween pranks will actually add value to the house.

It also looks like the plan that The Mrs. was brooding on, “let’s get some chickens that lay eggs” will finally hatch.

Maybe.

What do Green Eggs and Ham, Fifty Shades of Gray, and our economy have in common?  They all make people who can barely read want to try new things.

Oddly, it gets even worse.  Since 1988, the United States has paid $13 trillion in interest to . . . use its own currency – the government needs currency, the Treasury prints bonds, the Fed® creates cash, the United States owes interest and pays fees to the Fed™ member banks.

That’s weird, because the United States used to just issue its own cash.  Without debt.  Sure, if you print too much, that causes inflation.

Oh.  I see we’re soaking in inflation.  And the Fed® actively plans for inflation as a part of the business plan.  I think there’s a pictograph that might explain things . . .

Chuck Norris mines cryptocurrency.  By hand.

The looting can’t continue forever.  And that’s a good thing.  This made-up economy filled with economic nonsense that, at times, makes Lenin look like an economic genius, has a time limit.  Merit will return, just as the Gods of the Copybook Headings have always predicted.

There can be no other outcome.

The Destruction of the American Education Society – On Purpose

“And I say to you gentlemen that this college is a failure. The trouble is we’re neglecting football for education.” – Horse Feathers

Remember, if you teach homeschool, you can’t get fired for drinking on the job.

Jimmy Carter doesn’t deserve all of the blame he gets. He handled inflation poorly, energy poorly, lost a lot of helicopters in the desert.  Oh, wait, was I talking about Biden?

Nope.  Carter.  One of the biggest things to blame on Carter was the creation of the Department of Education, which he did in an election year to get more votes.  Of course, Carter didn’t start the rot, that really started with Franklin Roosevelt, who attempted to federalize education, because he wanted to further centralize power.  Roosevelt started a quite lot of rot, but it took longer for some of it to surface than the run time of Avatar 2.

What has happened since education has come under the control of the feds?

How many introverts does it take to change a lightbulb?  One, unless he needs help.  Then it’s still one.

Previously each state and local area ran its school system.  The schools themselves were, generally, of excellent quality.  But a bigger bureaucracy led to two things.  The first is the activation of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.  Dr. Pournelle’s description of it is below:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

Sure there are local school boards that are awful.  I’ve heard horrible things about Los Angeles, and other large cities.  Why?  Because the boards are so large that they have to have massive infrastructure – the idea of the neighborhood school disappears, replaced by massive numbers of administrators in a Soviet-style collective.

I couldn’t answer my daughter’s question, “What does a ballerina wear?”  I couldn’t put tu and tu together.

To make this better, we add in the feds???

Yikes.  That’s like solving an ingrown hair with a flamethrower.  It works, but what’s the cost?

Good teachers, for one.  Teaching has always been an important profession, and with local control, the messages that went out to the kids reflected both American values, and local values.  Even if you didn’t agree with the values of Los Angeles, you could move to a place where the school district mirrored your values, like mine, which has classes in PEZ™ dispenser maintenance.

But with federal control, you get federal rules on what can and can’t be done.  The result was the second problem with federal control:

Indoctrination.

I tried to indoctrinate a hairdresser, but I couldn’t condition her.

Schools used to start with teaching basic skills.  If there was a student who wasn’t getting it, they were flunked.  Try to flunk a kid today?  It can’t happen.  The result in (as I recall) the Baltimore school district is that the parents are suing the schools because, after 13 years of education and a diploma, graduates can’t read.  For the sake of the school district, I hope the plaintiff’s lawyer went to school there.

But why can’t the students read?

The idea was that there was a certain minimum competence in reading, writing and math that was required and expected.  The basics of history and geography were also taught, as well as classic literature.

And that was it.  Bring your own lunch.  Need someone to talk to?  Go talk to your friends.

The basic function of the school was education.  Sometime around 2006, though, the competence level was reset to “breathing”.  Now?  Biden’s Department of Education wants “projects” that increase Critical Race Theory usage in schools.  The same initiative is called “Promoting Informational Literacy Skills” which essentially involves coming up with ways to convince kids that The Current Thing is correct, i.e., not to “do your own research” and to only trust .gov sources.

I guess she was just biden her time.

The bureaucracy was bad enough, but the indoctrination is worse.  The difficulty is that most school districts compete for federal money, and when they accept it, every single rule applies.  Remember, the first rule of government club is that you do whatever the government says.

Back during Obama, the Department of Education even put out a “letter” that indicated they would investigate any school who didn’t discipline students the way the Leftists in Washington wanted.  So, suspensions and detentions essentially ended in many school districts.  The result?  Well, I don’t think anyone is complaining the schools have too much discipline nowadays.

Why would they want that?

We can be assured that the Department of Education never educated a single kid, in fact whoever was responsible for my algebra homework was fired.  But they have been responsible for indoctrination with Leftist values.

If you listen to Pink Floyd and eat ice cream, you become comfortably plump.

The solution starts with saying no.  No to federal rules, no to federal money.  And if anyone wanted to actually improve education in the United States, the first thing to do would be to abolish the Department of Education and every single one of its rules.

After that?

Time to think about that pesky Department of Energy . . .

Pfizer: Mutating COVID For Fun And Profit?

“No, no, this can be explained. Dad, we had clients, Pfizer® clients. Champagne.” – The Wolf of Wall Street

I think that Pfizer® is going to find this a knight to remember.  All memes this post – as found.

I had originally planned to do a post on COVID tonight.  Then, Project Veritas® dropped a video directly on point.  So, I had already prepped for this subject, and then, *poof* out of nowhere appeared another bombshell story that once again proves the Wilder Theory of Greatest Amusement:  The Covid-Mutating-Grindr® guy.

For those of you unfamiliar with Project Veritas©, that’s James O’Keefe’s sharp stick in the eye of the liberal establishment.  It broke into national prominence when he nearly single-handedly brought down Obama’s Leftist useful idiots, ACORN™ in 2009, the community organizers created to pump the system for the Left.  If you recall, O’Keefe pretended to be a “sex worker manager” and brought in a teenaged “sex worker” and asked for advice on how they could hid her earnings from the IRS.

A hoot.

When I was single I often tried to impress my dates by talking about my war crimes.

He’s done similar sorts of hidden camera shenanigans poking his pimp-cane in the eye of the Left for years.  The latest one, though, is perhaps the best.  Ever.

A quick rundown if you haven’t heard about this one, and please take this with all of the “allegedly” that a developing story like this deserves:

A guy accepted a date on Grindr®.  Grindr™, if you’re unfamiliar, is a hookup app for gay guys.  This particular guy was Jordan Walker, M.D., with the title of Director, Worldwide R&D Strategic Operations and mRNA Scientific Planning for Pfizer™.  I have three of his email addresses, and two phone numbers for him that /pol/ certain unnamed Internet resources dug up.  Given what happened on his Grindr© date, I think it’s probably safe to say that Jordan Walker is a former Director, and now is Totally Unemployed.

The first rule of Pfizer® Club?  Don’t talk about Pfizer™ Club on a gay date.

I’ll give the most charitable interpretation of the video that’s out there now:  Walker claimed that Pfizer® was discussing force-mutating COVID so that they could make more mRNA “vaccines”.  Several of the snippets of later conversations would seem to indicate the Pfizer™ was already doing this.

When confronted by James O’Keefe, he did what every single person who was credible does:  he freaked out, claimed he had been lying, assaulted O’Keefe, threw O’Keefe’s iPad® to the floor, and threw a tantrum like a spoiled four-year-old who didn’t get his way.  As I said, that type of behavior just reeks of credibility.

So very dignified!

What was the name of the Chinese restaurant in the song Werewolves of London?  Oh, yeah.  Lee Ho Fooks.  That was my first thought about this situation – if true, not only was Pfizer© even more evil that I thought they were, they were to the point where they make the Soviets under Stalin and the Chinese under Mao look like saints.

So, if true, Pfizer™ has entered the ranks of the most Evil organizations ever to have existed, slightly above whatever organizations did the forced mutations to create Sarah Silverman.

My advice to our intrepid Grindr™ guy?  See an attorney and turn whistleblower.  Now.  And don’t tell the stuff you know about the Clintons – remember how that turned out for Epstein.

All this comes at a time when the evidence is growing that the vaxx is . . . really bad for lots of people.  Everyone?  Dunno.  But people under 55 who took it are certainly more at risk from the vaxx than from the ‘vid as evidence has become clear.

Even formerly staunch supporters of the vaxx are flipping, and admitting that not taking the vaxx was the right decision.  For me, this was not a hard decision to refuse the vaxx.  Why?

  • It is an untested technology.
  • The beta testers are the vaxxed.
  • It requires me to trust Pfizer.
  • I hope it turns out well, but many effects may not be apparent for years.
  • COVID was not that bad, and I liked my chances.

There are other reasons as well, but those are enough.  I know two people who took the J&J® vaxx in the early days, on the same day.  Both of them have had major heart surgery, within a month of each other.  Coincidence?

Remember, to Pfizer™, we’re all redshirts.

Probably not.  Yet with lightning speed they rolled out the vaxx to younger and younger kids.  It was if they said, “Hey, three year olds should smoke cigarettes because they’ve been smoking them for a month and, outside of a raspy voice and smelling like Robert Downey Jr. after a night out, it seems to be good for them.”  It’s that level of stupid.

COVID wasn’t good, but the vaxx, like Sarah Silverman, was an entirely preventable tragedy.

I’m running a bit behind tonight and will end this early, but I think the following clips, presented without comment, show where we’ve been, and where we’re at.  To be clear, COVID is over.  Forever.  There will never be another reaction like the last time in the lifetime of almost anyone alive now.

100 years?  Maybe.  But this was a big enough goof that while there will be another, future, Virtue Signal sent out, it won’t be COVID.  And I’m thinking that Pfizer® will be trotting out a corporate policy that employees can’t use Grindr™ anymore.  At least they’ll do that before the war crimes trials start.

 

The Shape Of Things To Come

“This always happens, Oliver. Every time you open your mouth, somebody sticks a phone company in it.” – Green Acres

I think this cat might be chairman of the Fed®.

I heard a story once about an AT&T office, this was back in the 1970s or 1980s.  There was a particular employee who the day crew would always see finishing up at the end of his shift, putting tools up, and getting the work set up for the day crew.  They really appreciated him, since when they showed up, things were neat and ready to go.  They thought he stayed late to do this for them.

There was also a guy on day shift crew.  He’d show up early and prepare for work.  He impressed the night shift crew, because he came in early, and was getting his work ready to go well before the day shift showed up.

Eventually, after about a decade (or so the story went) the day shift manager told the night shift manager how much he appreciated how old Steve stayed late to get things ready for them.

“Steve?  He works day shift, and always comes in early, right?”

Ooops.  Steve finally got caught after working forever a little over an hour a day, showing up “early” for one shift, and leaving “late” from the other.

So, he worked about 200 hours a year.  For a decade.

I think he must have had a hobby.  Maybe fishing.

I think it was Alexander Graham Bell who first said, “How in the hell did you get this number?”

In the news recently, the layoffs have already started at “big tech”:

  • Amazon®: 18,000
  • Alphabet® (Google™): 12,000
  • Meta© (Facebook®): 11,000
  • Microsoft® (Microsoft™): 10,000
  • Salesforce©: 8,000
  • HP™: 6,000
  • Twitter®: 3,700

That’s like 71.56 miles (4,259,400,000 cubic centimeters, and yes, Ricky, you can check the math) of people.  It might be more cubic centimeters if they had a lot of carbs.

Some of these jobs are bogus, like the AT&T hour-a-day guy.  I’ve enjoyed watching the Tiktok® videos of the PowerPoint® making drones with no technical ability.  Typically, the drone shows up at work (if they’re not working remote) and has a free breakfast.  Then they goof for a bit, have a meeting, do a free lunch.  They indicate the lunch and breakfast are very tasty.  Then they have at least one more grueling meeting.

Photons never take luggage to an airport – they’re traveling light.

And that’s it.  From every one of the videos I’ve seen, the folks have no technical ability.  Some don’t even work at all – one person complaining about being fired hadn’t worked since May of 2021, since they were on medical leave because of PTSD.  What was the PTSD from?  Her managers were “mean” to her.

I’m not making this up.  She was shocked to be fired.

The other indicators are not good.  Paul “the Internet will be as important as the fax machine” Krugman put out a graph just recently on Twitter®:

What’s up with Paul Krugman?  Not his I.Q.

This is the single dumbest take I’ve seen since Custer said, “C’mon, man, how many Indians can there be?  We don’t need those cannons.”

Krugman has artfully taken out the things that people have to buy from his super-good news.

  • Food,
  • Energy,
  • Shelter, and
  • Used Cars

This is a fantastic analysis for people who don’t eat, are immune to freezing, live outside, and don’t need to go anywhere or buy gas to go anywhere.  It’s like asking Jackie, “Besides the car ride, how was your trip to Dallas?”

Why are prices of other stuff going down?  Because people aren’t buying them because they have to buy food, energy, shelter, and used cars.

Duh.

And he kneaded that!

Behaviors are changing.  Frivolous purchases are being limited.  The recession indicators are significant from things like yield curve inversion, Modified Mannarino Market Risk Indicator (LINK) and the banks closing down entire units.

But thankfully Paul Krugman says it’s all going to be spiffy.

And, it will be.  All of those cubic meters of people will end up doing something more important than making PowerPoints® and attending twenty-seven meetings about what shade of aqua and how many pixels to make the Google® doodle.  Let’s face it – about 70% of Google® employees could be axed tomorrow and nothing would change.  How do I know that?

That’s what Musk did with Twitter®.  Most of the folks Musk fired added no value, and the ones he kept were elated to finally be able to do something of value for the company.  The folks that were fired will certainly find jobs in the food service industry, become moms, or just sit on the couch at their Dad’s house curled up in a fetal ball of PTSD.  I for one am happy, because we need better waitresses.

From the Tiktok® videos, it certainly looks like they know how to serve food.

I searched “Lost Medieval Servant Boy” but got, “This Page cannot be found.”

Some of the destruction that comes from a recession is good.  It’s a reset, and it clears away silliness.  The danger, of course, is the destruction that comes from a runaway recession.  Small recessions clean.  Large recessions/depressions?  They can cleanse nations.  Look what happened in the 1920s and 1930s around the world – entire governments were replaced.

Thankfully, I hear AT&T® is hiring.  Night shift or day shift?

Both, please.

Biden And The Coming Revolution?

“No, I quite approve of terror, arson, murder, any tool that serves the revolution.” –Nicholas and Alexandra

I wonder if this came as a peasant surprise to the nobility?

The worm has turned on Biden.  Pardon me if I say that this is right on schedule.  Trump document frenzy made the Left drool like Amy Schumer when she’s near a cake or AOC when she’s near a new coloring book.  To get Trump, the Left would do anything.  Anything.

In a very real sense, just as the Left views abortion as a sacrament, the destruction of Trump is a religious goal, as he is the manifestation of their supreme Evil being.

This is nothing new.  Remember when George W. Bush was president?  His politics were, essentially, as controversial as lukewarm dishwater.  But the hate flew strong.  Until he started showing up in group hot tub photos with Bill and Hillary and Barack and Mooshell.  Then he was no longer the Prince of Darkness, instead just a fuddy-duddy old man who chose wrong.

I’m really glad I couldn’t find the hot tub photos.

Biden, though, is in as bad a shape politically as he is mentally.  Joe was (s)elected for the job because he has never really stood for anything in particular, so he’ll stand for anything at all.  Even his “memories” are false half the time, talking about things that never happened so that he looks the best to whoever he’s talking to at the moment.

The perfect candidate.

Who is in control then?  One would first point to the Chief of Staff, but that person just quit.  It’s clear that half of his appointees have little to no competence at anything – I’m fairly certain that only one or two of them could pass the probation period making pizzas at Chuck E. Cheese™.

Kamala says her body is a temple.  Everyone is allowed in.

So, I’m not at all sure who is running the show, but we all know it’s not Joe.  And whoever is running the show is done with him.  Will they force him to step down?  Maybe.  It would be chaotic, and risky.  Replacing kneepads as Veep would require a majority vote – of both the House and the Senate.  Since the Republicans hold the House, this would not necessarily be an easy choice.

Even if Joe survives (politically) to 2024, the only reason to have him run again would be for the amusement factor.  It’s also clear that the person who will eventually replace Joe is not Kamala.  Oh, sure, she might do that until the next election if Joe’s forced to resign, but “they” will make sure that she’s not allowed to do anything of particular importance.  Maybe she could do coloring books with AOC.

Someone asked her why the chicken crossed the road.  She said, “It’s because of corporate greed!  Chickens should not be forced to lay eggs – the eggs should lay themselves!”

The danger is the weak leadership combined with the political polarization and the hidden nature of those who are actually running the government.  This seems to me to be very similar to the period before the French Revolution.

  • A weak leader,
  • Massive governmental debt leading to economic crisis,
  • A significant rural/city divide,
  • A significant atheist/religious divide,
  • Political polarization fueled by agitators, and
  • Silly clothing styles.

One of the interesting things to me are those agitators.  They were clearly in place at the time of the French Revolution since the Leftist (the French Revolution is where the name “Leftist” came from) pamphlets that appeared “spontaneously” and the large number of inflammatory newspapers that were designed to fuel the Revolution, primarily in Paris.

I tried to tell a guillotine joke, but I always mess up the execution.

The effort was too large and too well coordinated to be an accident.  Was Marat, the lizard-skinned angry little toad of a man the leader?  Was Robespierre?

In the end, it didn’t matter.

The Revolution gave way to the Terror, where (thankfully) Robespierre and Marat were finally executed.  They had to be executed, since, once any Leftist revolution starts, it keeps moving Left in great gouts of blood until someone has the gumption to kill everyone that’s to the extreme Left.  Stalin learned that lesson, and purged Trotsky along with millions of others.

The end result has almost always been the same as what happened in France.  Tired of the nonsense coming from the anarchy they accepted a new Emperor, this time one named Bonaparte rather than Bourbon.

What position would Quasimoto play at Notre Dame?  Probably halfback.

The playbook is the same, and it seems to follow the same parameters over time.  Understand that as the statues were pulled down from Notre Dame, and as it was transformed from a church into the “Temple of Reason” that we’re seeing the same things today.  The Left removes the past, because nothing can come before – they see this as a cleansing, the ability to return to “Year Zero”.

The future does not repeat, exactly.  The Russian Revolution wasn’t the same as the French, but they certainly rhymed.  As I look to weak leadership, polarization, economic difficulty, and Amy Schumer, I see the same conditions that existed back in 1789.

I’m still interested in who is going to benefit . . . if there’s less Amy Schumer, then everyone.

D’Oh, Canada: Showcasing The Leftist Plan So We Can Plan, Too

“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we… are the cure.” – The Matrix

Greta is the solution to climate change.  Every time she’s on the TV, tens of millions of people shut it off.

Apparently, Justin Trudeau up in Canada needs to be reminded that in the movie, The Matrix, Agent Smith was the bad guy.  Really.  Check it out.  Keanu Reeves fought him, and everything.  For whatever reason, Canada (and Leftists in general) have adopted the idea that Agent Smith was their dude and the inspiration for their philosophy.

In two words, their philosophy is self-hatred (does the hyphen make it two words?) and power.  I’ve established that again and again.  It is why (really) I’m in favor of bringing bullying back.  As a society we let losers do loser things, give them participation medals, and then after having zero incentive for self-improvement, they wonder why they’re not the head of the class.

I was bullied in school.  I deserved it.  I used it to get better, stronger, and faster.  I’ve even seen communications between Leftists where they advise each other not to exercise because exercise leads them to become members of the Right.

God, I wish someone had bullied Justin Trudeau so that he would have developed into a man, rather than the corporate globalist man-child with no sense of identity and a sense of entitlement the size of Canada.

Okay, this is supposedly a Photoshop®.  But, admit it, it wouldn’t surprise you if it was real.  And this is my only original meme for this post.  Rest are “as found”.

This brings us to Canada’s plan for self-immolation – “Just Transition”.  Just Transition refers not to Justin finally admitting he’s transitioning, but rather the “teenager’s idea of a good plan because climate is scary” transition from fossil fuels to, well, they don’t really say.  It can’t be too much solar, because, last time I checked, in the winter in Canada at northern latitudes, the SUN IS DOWN MOST OF THE DAY.

That probably doesn’t bother Sunshine Trudeau, since he will be in some mansion somewhere pretending to be Queen Victoria’s seat cushion.  But I’m thinking that ordinary Canadians, the ones who have to deal with this nonsense and will either freeze or starve, might have an objection.

Another Just Transition that probably wouldn’t surprise Canada.

The plan itself contemplates that at least 200,000 Canadians will lose their jobs, which will certainly hurt the back bacon and Elsinore Beer prices.  These 200,000 Canadians are in the energy industry.  What will replace that?

Don’t know.  This Just Transition plan, again, has nearly zero actual thought by adults who have more than a single functioning brain cell.  It is built on those old Leftist thought patterns:  self-hatred and a desire for power.  Why would people need light and heat?

Alberta is not a hot girl who has daddy issues and is thus a stripper with a heart of gold, but rather a Canadian province.  I guess that means admitting I’ve been in Alberta sounds a lot less dirty when I put it that way.  But Alberta does have a heart of gold, because they’re pushing back, hard, against the nonsense coming out of whatever town where Trudeau lives.  Ottawa?  Heck, I thought that was a river mammal.  Turns out Ottawa is where the bad things come from in Canada.

Maybe it will work this time?

Canada planning to destroy its own economy just to gain good boy points and score some additional chicken tendies at dinner isn’t unusual under the Trudeau leadership.  The main problem with Canada is that it doesn’t have an actual constitution with a bill of rights that puts a brake (no matter how fleeting) on tinpot dictators with delusions of godhood exercising their will.

Looks like Justin’s dad had the same idea.

Alberta, however, seems to have had enough.  The nice part of Canada is that they haven’t yet had a Civil War, and it would appear that the individual provinces seem to be able to tell the national government to go to, well, Ottawa.  Or at least the subject hasn’t been settled by armies yet.

It’s not just energy, it’s food, too.  We’ve seen the protests in the Netherlands.  Why?  They want to shut down the farms.  Why?  To stop climate change.  Canada has promised to do the same thing.  Look it up, search, “Canada nitrogen” – and I remember when I thought Canada Dry® was a national menace.

I’m not making this up:

And this a consistent Leftist theme:

Why do they want to shut down the use of fertilizers?  It’s not climate change, it’s food.  The Mrs. once read a story of a party in Washington, D.C.  At this party, the writer noted that he had a conversation with a Leftist.  I’d give you a source if I recalled it, but it was several beers ago.  “Too many people on the planet, by several billion,” the Leftist said.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Well, we will practice food restriction.”

“So, you’re telling me that the Leftist plan is to starve to death billions of people?”

They were silent when the bald fact was put to them like that.  So, yeah, Justin is working to ruin the economy of Canada.  But he won’t be sad if millions starve, in fact, that’s the plan.  I’m not sure Justin is smart enough to figure that out, since I’m pretty sure he’s just a lapdog of below-average I.Q. who wasn’t bullied enough as a child.

Canada has, unwittingly, provided people in the United States with a viewpoint of what the Left intends.  Watch closely.  And pray for the Canadians who will oppose this, in Alberta and elsewhere.

Hopefully, the folks in Alberta are very good at dealing with rats.

And remember, Agent Smith is the bad guy.  And he lost.  And the Leftists will lose, as they always have in history.  But I’ve never said that any of this will be easy.

Related:

Ricky sent me this video, and I can’t recommend it enough.  A few “s” bombs, but otherwise it should be required viewing from elementary schools on up.

What We Can Learn From The French Revolution: The Vendée

“There was nothing spooky about the French Revolution. People lopped off with the heads of thousands of aristocrats and carted them away in straw baskets, then turned the blades on themselves and killed thousands more. Just another segment of Western History.” – Kolchak, The Night Stalker

The French Revolution was a pain in the neck.

The French Revolution was the first major Leftist revolution in the world.  The ideology of the Revolution was stunning in its scope.  Not only was every single structure of the country to be changed, but even its history.  Nothing was sacred – especially the churches and clergy.  Notre Dame was renamed the Temple of Reason, though recently it was a really hot tourist attraction.

Additionally, something as simple as the calendar wasn’t exempt.  1792 was proclaimed as year one.  Each day was 10 hours long.  Each hour was 100 minutes long.  And each minute was 100 seconds long.  Of course, the week wasn’t spared – each month consisted of three 10 day weeks.  Yeah, they renamed the days of the week, too, and managed to eliminate both Friday and Saturday.  Bogus.

The names of the months were changed, too.  There were still 12, since the French could not figure out how to change the amount of time it took for the world to revolve around the Sun.  My favorite French month?  Ventôse, or the “month of wind” which lasted between February 19 to March 20.  The Ventôse Decrees (I assume issued during this “month”) legalized confiscation of everything counterrevolutionaries owned and redistribution to “needy” people.  One would assume that the leadership was just as “needy” as the Biden family.

What’s the best way to kill lots of communists?  Communism.

This was also the time when the Republic decided that the old way of measuring things needed to be chucked, too.  So out went feet and gallons and pounds and in came meters and liters and kilograms.  So, if you ever hear me talk about communist units, well, here’s the reason.  The metric system was just another part of the Leftists attempting to subvert all of history.

Oh, and they pulled down statues, too.

It’s as if there’s something familiar with what I’m seeing with the woke crowd in the United States.  Hmm.  Whatever could it be?

Regardless, there are some other events that happened during the French Revolution that are less known.  The item that’s the subject of today’s post?

The Vendée.

The Vendée is an area of France.  The French have lots of names for these areas, many of which sound like Joe Biden clearing his throat before a speech.  Let’s just stick with area or region, that’s close enough.

Why is the French flag blue, white, and red?  So that they can rip off the sides and surrender.

Not long after the French Revolution, the people running France realized that they were surrounded by hostile countries that were headed by Kings.  When King Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793, the people who ran the French Republic were pretty freaked out and worried that they were going to be invaded by groups of Kings that weren’t fond of the whole, “kill your leader because it’s Tuesday” concept.

That’s when they decided to have a general draft to build a French army with 300,000 new additional recruits. Many areas fought back against this draft, since, outside of Paris, the whole, “kill the King, destroy religion, and start a war” policy of the Commies in charge of Paris wasn’t especially popular.

One area, though, was really good at fighting back.  The Vendée.  It’s on the western shore of France, and is notable for making that invisible rope that French mimes use as the primary regional product.  Like I said, they fought back well – they wanted to be left alone and to reopen their churches.  The army that was formed, the “Catholic and Royal Army” was initially very successful for several months in spring and summer of 1793.

The Popemobile is cool, but let me see you try to fly in a Papal airplane.

From a military viewpoint, they were very successful, at first.  Early in may they captured over 5,000 Republican troops.  They asked them to leave and promise not to fight against them anymore.

And then released the Republican troops.

This may have been a mistake.

Again, through May and June they kept winning, capturing lots of Republican cannons, powder and supplies.  Until they lost.  The Republicans captured quite a few folks from the Vendée Army.  And shot them or put them in boats and drowned them.

By October of 1793, the Committee of Public Safety in Paris decided that the solution to the Vendée was complete physical destruction.  After the defeat of the Vendée army in December, the revenge started.  The Republicans were not shy about what they wanted.

When one commander asked what he should do about women and children, the response was simple, “if it was necessary, to pass them all by the sword”.  The women were of particular interest, since they would be carrying anti-revolutionary babies.

Yeah.  Dark.

The invention of the shovel was groundbreaking, but it was the broom that really swept the nation.

The Vendée folks paroled their prisoners.  The Leftists?  Murdered them.  For the people in the Vendée, it got worse.  Some people from the Vendée got together with the British and the British funded and supplied a really lame invasion of France.  It failed.  Spectacularly.  The French might not like each other, but one thing was for certain – the French, I mean, all the French, hate the British.

This didn’t help the Vendée with the rest of the French.  Public relations level?  Disaster.

The Vendée had about 800,000 folks living in it prior to the French Revolution.  The Leftists killed, for the sake of ideological reasons, between (best sources I can find) 250,000 to 400,000.  This is about 1.5% of the population of France at that time.  That’s proportionately like losing half the population of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, New Jersey, or Virginia.

This proves, once again, that the only people that the French can beat in a war is the French.  It also proves, once again, that when Leftists run a country, the first priority of business is to kill their own people who aren’t on board with the Left.

Regardless, this didn’t stop the people from the Vendée.  They kept fighting, and were even a thorn in the side of Napoleon in 1814.

I asked my friend how things were going in Moscow.  He said, “I can’t complain.”

The Vendée made me think of the United States today.  It is easy to see the parallels – the full attack on every value.  The attempt to destroy everything from the past is in full force now.  The removal of the statues is part of the playbook.  The vilification of the values and heritage people?  Also part of the playbook.

Where is the Vendée in the United States?  Oklahoma?  Ohio?  Missouri?  It is clear that the values of the Left do not match values of many.

What happens when a line is crossed?  When the gun confiscation comes in?  If the Vendée acts alone, it fails.  If it’s not alone?  It wins.

You are not alone.  Nor is Oklahoma, or Missouri, or Ohio, or Texas, or Idaho.

This isn’t 1793, and we don’t cotton to the metric system.  Me?  I’ll never accept the metric system because I don’t want a foreign ruler.

A Little Friday Memefest

“Not random at all, maybe. Like there’s some pattern here?” – Silence of the Lambs

Thank you for attending my TED talk.

Tonight I got in really, really late.  As such, I normally have some notes and plans.  Not tonight, since I’ve been very busy.  However, what I do have is a collection of dank memes from all around the Internet.  Okay, that’s a lie.  Most are from /pol/.  But they are still pretty good.  I’ve collected them into several sections.

  • This is pretty short, but illuminating.  I would have originally thought that Canada would have been more stable than the United States, being more homogeneous and under less pressure.  Nah.  They’re going off the rails on the crazy train faster than Hunter Biden, full of crack, at Burning Man.
  • Leftist Logic. This is a series of items that define Leftism in ways that they would probably hate.  So, please share with a Leftist to help in their re-education process.  It’s easier than the camps or the wall.
  • The biggest hacking attacks Wilder, Wealthy and Wise®™© has ever seen has been from some of my COVID articles.  Cool!  The narrative is falling apart, and here are some memes that deal directly with that crumbling narrative.
  • Just that.  Random, yet hilarious to me. YMMV.

Canada:

This is how I imagine a medical consultation goes in Canada.  I’d tell someone to “kill himself” but I don’t want to get arrested in Canada for practicing medicine without a license.

The Canadians are sorta British, right?

Imagine how comfy their kids must feel when they tuck them in.

This is my shocked face.

Leftist Logic:

Carbon is so bad it made the Sun warmer.

Donna Brazile has the memory of a goldfish.

Mayo?  The 457th gender.

I identify as someone who has a full head of hair.  Dang.  Maybe I sould sue the mirror?

We had to kill the baby to save it.

Joe’s garage is more secure than Trump’s Secret Service patrolled personal office.  Right?

The Resistance.  Thankfully they have most major corporations, the Joint Chiefs, the universities, and most government bodies on their side.  Wait, who are they resisting?

I think Pugsley lost these.

Thank Heaven!  At least we won’t have any pesky actual women in sports.

Hmmm, one of these things is not like the other.

I think this is the Netflix® version.  Oh, wait, that’s not how this works . . .

I’m sure this will help us win wars.

Finally, the end goal of feminism has been realized!

Have they thought this through?

Did you think the goal of transhumanism was actually to make most people better?

Uhhhhhh

COVID:

I guess I’m not supposed to talk about this.  Thankfully we have the CDC:

Certainly, there are no uncomfortable facts showing up about the ‘Rona?

But one thing is certain.  No refunds.

Random:

I don’t have comments, these speak for themselves:

And a good song ends on the note that started it . . .

The Most Dangerous Thought Of The Day

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” – Fight Club

Amber lost the lawsuit to Johnny Depp to the tune of $15 million.  I guess she’s now deep in Depp.

One thing that I like to do is test ideas.  Sometimes, like PEZ® and velvet Elvis posters, the idea is a classic of Western Civilization.  Other times, like communism, communism, and communism, the idea is horrible.  Others?  Others are a kludge that we’ve made work.  Or the idea is just the system that we have.

This post will test an idea that just might be the most dangerous one I’ve ever shared.

An idea that has been with us for most of recorded history is the concept of interest rates.  The idea is simple – I borrow $10 today, and next year I give back $11.  The extra dollar is the fee I pay for borrowing the money.  There are records that compound interest was charged by the Sumerians back even before your momma was born, back in 2,400 B.C.  They even had the math to accurately calculate it.  Area of a circle?

Nah.

How much you owe me?  That’s easy as pie.  But not as easy as a nearly 22/7 pies, I guess.

Sorry, that joke was irrational.

Regardless, interest rates have been with us a very, very long time.  And they have been vexing us for just as long.  The good properties of interest are that it allows for people who don’t have money to get it, which they like.  It allows people with “excess” money to get something for having the money, which they like.

There are some pretty significant downsides.  Let’s take a simple example:  There are several people on an island after a three-hour tour.  A three-hour tour.

There are 10 ounces of gold on the island.  I need to borrow them because, well, I have no idea.  Assume it involves me trying to get to Mary Ann’s coconuts.  Whatever.

A year later, the person who lent me the 10 ounces of gold wants 11 back.  But there aren’t 11.  I default.  I default because there is a limit on the currency.  This simple example shows that, in a society where interest exists, eventually there must be either a default, or there must be an inflation of the money supply.

I guess there’s a reason The Mrs. buys coconut shampoo?

This leads, inevitably, to a series of booms and busts.  It also leads to, over time, a greater and greater concentration of money (or cash) in the hands of those who actually do nothing more than have the cash.  In our society, these people often just print the cash, unbacked by anything, like it’s some amazing Sumerian money magic.

I hear the ladies love a man in cuneiform.

Thus, the financial sector, through the use of interest, both (over time) gains control over society through the concentration of capital.  The golden rule?  He who has the gold, makes the rules.  In this case, the Federal Reserve® (which is not federal, and doesn’t have reserves) is actually owned by the member banks.  So, the banks own the Fed™.  Which makes the rules.

As I said in a previous post, there has been a concentrated effort to remove the political from the economic, and the economic from the political.  Sure, Congress passes $1.7 trillion spending bills so we can send lots more money to the Ukraine, but who finances all of these shenanigans?

The Fed®.  Look in your wallet, and pull out some cash – it says “Federal Reserve Note®” – not United States Dollar.  A difference.  Congress doesn’t print the cash – the Fed™ does.  And the Fed© has to print more of it each year, because people keep getting charged interest.

This leads to cyclic bouts of inflation and/or currency default due to the accumulated debt.  The Great Recession of 2008 was brought about because of a debt-fueled housing spending spree that collapsed.

What car does the Chairman of the Fed® drive?  A Fiat™.

So, what happens if . . . we don’t allow interest to be charged?

It’s a big thought.  And the world has had interest rates for a long time.  In Imperial Rome, they varied from 5% to 25% depending on the time and on what was being invested in, and there are records of just the same sorts of credit crunches as we see today.  And also the need for the Romans to take their silver coin, the denarius, and turn it into a mainly base-metal coin by the end of the Empire.

But I’m not alone in speculating about what would happen if we stopped charging interest.  Aristotle himself (and not the Aristotle who makes the gyros at the fair during the local harvest festival in Modern Mayberry) had the idea that it shouldn’t exist because, heck, I’ll let him tell you:

“The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.”

I’m not sure if Aristotle was upside down on a used goat that he bought, but what I think he’s trying to say is this:  the act of lending money creates no value.  If I buy a building and build a PEZ® factory, the PEZ™ factory either makes a profit or makes a loss.  If it makes a profit, that’s one signal that it has created value for society.  It has employed people to make a wholesome product that, when consumed in moderation, is harmless.  If I can make a profit doing that, I’ve created value in society.

If I lend money?  Not so much.  My singular objective is only the profit from making money.

It takes an infinite amount of Zenos to screw in a light bulb.

How would such a world work?  Perhaps people combine to lend money to businesses based on the idea that they might create value (and thus a profit) and take the gain in their money from that value created through the business?  People combine to finance a business for a purpose, and thus gain.

No interest required.

How about a house?  Why would I loan money, absent interest, on a house?  Perhaps the payment could be based on the assessed value (thus making the loan an investment, rather than a loan).  If the value goes up, the payment goes up.  Down?  Payment goes down.

This would put skin in the game for the banks, and they would have a vested interest (pardon) in making sure that the investment was good.  No incentive for the housing crisis.  Payments linked to . . . value created.

Car lending?  Yeah, that’s harder, since that is a declining-value asset.  I’m sure that it could be figured out, since I’ve already solved tons of loan issues with the two solutions above.  I’ll leave solving the car loan problem to the class.  Oh, and the student loan problem, too.

I hear that $221 million in student loans were canceled.  Those lucky seven people!

It can be done.  It has been done.  Oddly, I think it would result in a freer world where, rather than focusing on ways to, uhm, view people as assets to extract value from, people would be forced to seek to provide value for their fellow man.  Making happy customers.

Think of it as a thought experiment.  A dangerous one that would change who has power in this world.

See, I told you this was my most dangerous post.