Big Thoughts – Page 8 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Civil War 2.0: The End of the Beginning

“Three minutes. This is it. The beginning. Ground zero. I think this is about where we came in.” – Fight Club

In the beginning, there was nothing. God said, “Let there be light.” There was still nothing, but now you could see it.

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

Volume VII, Issue 5

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I have moved the Clock O’Doom to 9., given the open support of assassination and criminality by the GloboLeft and the increase in violence as well as direct interference with ICE and the insertion of the military into law enforcement. Beware: the number can climb quickly.

My advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – The End of the Beginning – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Unravelling – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The End of the Beginning

Things don’t start up all at once. I believe the start of Civil War 2.0 will start with the tensions that came from the election of Donald Trump in 2016. The real beginning of the war, I think historians will date as the attempted assassination of then presidential candidate Trump back in 2024.

I was shocked, but in retrospect this is the inevitable end of the years of GloboLeftist rhetoric on their unstable and mentally ill followers. I believe the assassination of Charlie Kirk was, to quote Churchill, “the end of the beginning.” Alone, this single act has changed the way millions feel.

We are now in a Sitzkrieg – a war, but a war where no one is really wanting to take action. Keep in mind, there is really no doubt about how the GloboLeft feel about you and everyone to the right of Mr. Rogers™. They want you dead and will celebrate the moment that it happens. Don’t believe me?

Overtly political violence from the GloboLeft continues. The GloboLeftists are dismayed every time that one of theirs is found to be killing. Why? Because, even now, they’re focused on removing guns from the hands of citizens – again, you and I. When a GloboLeftist or one of their criminal pets is again shown to be a murderer, it just makes bitter clingers to God and the Second Amendment like me cling just a bit tighter to my guns.

Because I can see that

Violence and Censorship Update

Violence leads again this month. And this is a month where Charlie Kirk was right: America will never be the same.

And GloboLeftists are reveling in it:

No one involved in the story below is American. Why do we bring this violence to our heartland?

Elon knows.

Oh, and murder runs in the family. Wonder how soon both of these budding doctors will be back on the street?

And the Dallas shooter who kept shooting illegal aliens rather the ICE officers he was aiming at?

And who, exactly, wanted to shut down communications around the United Nations?

The “British” Prime Minister indicates that British people are “the enemy” if they won’t call a mouse born in a stable a horse. This folks, is why you never give up your guns.

Meanwhile, all the GloboLeftists that openly celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk are getting fired because they have never had to stand up for their beliefs before.

Yeah, only one of them is fired, but if they were,

would anyone notice?

And, no, this is different.

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red. Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery numbers as Trump’s policies apparently have been stunning at reversing the tide. We’ll see, as the long-term trend is not good.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence indicators are up significantly this month. No surprises there.

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went up this month.

Economic:

The economy is down a bit this month.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started. Remember, they care nothing for our country, nothing for our history, and only want money and political power. This apparently includes Ben Shapiro.

The Unravelling

It really started with the lawfare attacks on Trump. Presidents had been considered mostly off limits to the legal process once they left office. Why? Perhaps a feeling that they had done their bit. Presidents also (mainly) shut up and didn’t criticize those that followed them with notable exceptions (Obama, I’m looking at you.)

With the GloboLeftElite going after Trump with every possible lawsuit or charge they could make up, Trump really didn’t have an option – his best defense was an offense. The man had nothing to lose, and a list of people who had done him wrong. Thus, Comey is the first of many who will likely be indicted for their behavior.

Since most of the indictments will be in 97% Globalist Leftist Washington, D.C., it’s nearly certain that a jury will clear Comey for political reasons. But the fight is going to the states as well, with California and Illinois being the frontline of places where the state governments are attempting to support illegal aliens and drug cartels.

The end though, is that the Democratic Party has devolved to the point where it is led by a group of people who hate America, and hate everything it stands for, and won’t rest until it’s been “fundamentally transformed” – and they’re getting what they wanted, because it’s all unravelling now.

My bet is they won’t like the outcome when it’s all done.

LINKS

The links are again done by Ricky this month. Thanks, Ricky!

BAD GUYS

https://x.com/Bubblebathgirl/status/1970724231043318137
https://x.com/toddstarnes/status/1967302012154036378
https://people.com/2-people-killed-multiple-others-injured-mass-shooting-alabama-11824522
https://x.com/EYakoby/status/1968519351922749609

GOOD GUYS

https://x.com/davidmedinapdx/status/1974350245544054822
https://x.com/TONYxTWO/status/1974668656413233453

ONE GUY

https://www.wrdw.com/2025/09/12/2-cleared-killing-14-year-old-case-ruled-self-defense/

BODY COUNT

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/peak-population-but-we-can-all-move-to-texas/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/these-are-largest-immigrant-groups-america
https://www.statista.com/chart/35050/overdose-deaths-involving-different-drugs/
https://www.statista.com/chart/16647/the-lifetime-odds-of-dying-from-selected-causes/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/planning-war-against-fascists-socialist-rifle-association-boasts-10000-members
https://archive.ph/orABm

VOTE COUNT

https://headlineusa.com/new-election-integrity-czar-recepits
https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/right-wing-groups-press-election-agency-on-proof-citizenship-rule-for-voter-registration/
https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/10/04/federal-requirement-for-proof-of-citizenship-to-vote-could-arrive/
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/justice-department-has-demanded-voter-files-least-21-states
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-the-trump-administration-is-trying-to-change-the-way-people-vote

CIVIL WAR – OVER HERE

https://alt-market.us/men-of-the-west-we-are-at-war/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/transgender-shooter-socialist-rifle-association-and-alarming-rise-far-left-militancy
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/white-house-plans-security-boost-civil-terrorism-fears-after-fbi-investigates
https://www.csis.org/analysis/left-wing-terrorism-and-political-violence-united-states-what-data-tells-us
https://www.kunstler.com/p/the-big-lebowski-civil-war
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/technology/charlie-kirk-shooting-civil-war.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/us/politics/charlie-kirk-voters-politics-violence.html
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2025-09-27/prelude-second-civil-war
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/09/14/images-words-narratives-matter/

CIVIL WAR – OVER THERE

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/09/europe_is_a_powder_keg.html
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/09/03/britains-descent-towards-civil-war-is-no-accident/
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2025/09/08/dont-uk-the-usa-n2662867
https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/182851/russia-drone-hunt-ukraine-children

It Came From . . . 1996

“I like them French fried potaters.” – Sling Blade

Back when Will Smith was punching aliens and not rocks.

As I noted in the past, I’ve decided to stop mining the 1970s. The fall off in quality as you go backwards from 1980 is immense. Yes, there were gems. But they were surrounded by so much . . . crap.

As it is, we’re moving forward into 1996. The glory years of the 1980s are gone, but the indy buzz of the 1990s is in full swing and 1996 was an amazing year for movies as far as originality and watchability, far better than 1995.

As usual, no sequels, and in no particular order:

Is this how they got the idea for Dumb and Dumber?

Bio-Dome – Bio-Dome is a silly movie starring Pauly Shore, and you’ll be stupider for having watched it if you can find it since the UN has classified it as a banned weapon. It has been known to take 10 IQ points off of a typical human. It is considered “one of the worst films ever made,” which is an achievement in itself.

Boy, that Seonge Glodney can act!

From Dusk till Dawn – I had no idea what to expect when I rented this one. Did I expect vampires? Yes. Did I expect vampires meeting Pulp Fiction and El Mariachi? No. Would I change anything about this movie? Also no.

I am Roboholio! I need sprockets for my screwhole!

Screamers – Philp K. Dick wrote the original story that this screenplay was based on. The film lost money, so you might not even have heard of this one. The original story is far darker, and I think I like it even better than the movie, which is just okay.

Well, now as an animated children’s movie . . .

Broken Arrow – When John Travolta attempts to play a smart guy and Christian Slater attempts to play an upstanding guy, you know you have two actors playing parts that they are fundamentally unsuited for. Of course it made $150 million, but it was the start of Travolta’s box office decline.

“Give me flank speed, Niles.” “Oh, are you sure you want that, Frasier? You know how motion sick you get.”

Down Periscope – Stupid humor. Lots of jokes about female breasts and tattoos on delicate areas. Kelsey Grammer. Rob Schneider. Yes, it lost money. Yes, it’s also funnier than any movie so far this year.

This movie probably would have been worse than Bio-Dome.

Fargo – A movie about an insurance salesman (John Wayne) who is caught up in an existential crisis about his wife (Jane Seymour) and her affair with a younger woman (Gillian Anderson).

The executive decision? Takeout Italian or Burger King®, again. Seagal wants Burger King™. Again.

Executive Decision – Kurt Russell. Of course I’m going to mention this. It’s an okay generic action movie, but the funniest part is that they changed the script to kill off Steven Seagal because he was such a dick to work with and everyone hated him. Allegedly.

The Truth About Romulans and Gorns?

The Truth About Cats & Dogs – A retelling of Cyrano de Bergerac, but involving Uma Thurman at her cutest and Janene Garafalo before she revealed she was insane. A rom-com, back when they did such things.

Where does Amber Heard sit on a boat? On the poop deck.

Dead Man – A black and white Western with Johnny Depp, Iggy Pop, Crispin Glover, and Gabriel Byrne? I caught this on HBO® and was mesmerized. I don’t want to watch it again to spoil it, since I enjoyed it so much the first time. Odd film, very odd. They spent $9 million on it, and the box office was $1 million, so I might have been the only one watching it after my Tivo® suggested it for me.

Run, it’s weather!

Twister – A movie about the weather. Yeah, whatever. It was okay. Made half a billion dollars in 1996, no less. I still miss Bill Paxton.

I think Cage is now contractually required to play all supporting parts in his movies as well.

The Rock – What if James Bond was put into a US prison. That’s basically the plot of this movie, with Sean Connery (before he lost the ability to be alive) and Nicolas Cage (before he lost the ability to say “no”). An okay movie. Also? Stupidest warhead design, ever. Movie made a third of a billion bucks.

They’ve come across the galaxy. Their goal? To knock things off of the counter.

Independence Day – Is it a disaster movie or science fiction movie or an action-adventure buddy picture? Why not all three? This movie hit, and hit big, pulling in nearly a billion dollars on . . . a silly plot where an Apple® notebook saves the day because alien computers don’t have a Norton™ Antivirus© subscription.

Vaderspotting?

Trainspotting – This movie features Obi-Wan Kenobi as a Scottish heroin addict who cuts off the legs of his best friend who then becomes the right-hand man of the Emperor of Scotland. It’s depressing, mostly, so it was ranked by 150 film insiders as the “10^th best British film ever” which I assume would be after everything that Rowan Atkinson was in.

If you get a job as an Egyptian god, you’re Set for life.

The Trigger Effect – Most movies don’t get TEOTWAWKI right, and The Trigger Effect is no different, but it has Elizabeth Shue in it. You can at least stare at her for a while as Los Angeles collapses when the electricity goes out.

Bart discovers the martini.

Swingers – Gen X dating angst in an artsy indy movie that made 20x the production costs. I enjoyed it, but I was a Gen X dude dating at the time.

I reckon there’s a reason they didn’t make this one. Spoiler, they just let him out again and he kills someone else. Again.

Sling Blade – “Uh-huh, I reckon I shore would like some mustard with my biscuits. Some folks calls it a pizza cutter. I calls it a ring blade.” Not a good date movie, apparently. Which is good for me because some other guy took The Mrs. to this one on a date, and that was their first and last date.

Honorable Mention: Happy Gilmore, The Frighteners, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Beavis and Butthead Do America, The Arrival.

Okay, I got enough good movies out of 1997 to try again with 1997

Finding Our Way Back To Wealth

“We’ll just double time it to your house, and grab the tickets before heading to the train station for the 3:45 to DETROIT! ROCK! CITY!” – Detroit Rock City

When they filmed one of the battle scenes for a Transformers movie in Detroit, they had to use half of the CGI budget to repair buildings.

Wealth.

It’s the golden goose that societies have all chased, but most forget where the eggs come from. I assure you it’s no longer Detroit, but we’ll get to that.

Spoiler: it’s not just the land, the trees, or the shiny rocks or sticky fluids underground. Sure, Saudi Arabia’s sitting on enough oil to lube up Oprah with enough left over for a dozen Kardashians, but without the brainpower to drill, refine, and ship it, they’d still be herding camels and wondering what a Ferrari is.

The same goes for North America. For millennia the fertile plains forests were untouched. It was a backwater until European misfits turned it into the world’s breadbasket and factory floor.

Wealth isn’t just stuff; it’s the ingenuity, sweat, and sheer cussedness of people making things happen. The dirt’s nice, don’t get me wrong, and someone, somewhere has to have it or else things would get mighty hungry might fast. Iowa’s black soil grows corn like it’s auditioning for a role in a Monsanto® ad as a glyphosate-absorbing sponge. Canada? Canada’s got enough timber so it could stack it up and reach the Moon. They also have nearly that many Indians.

Two peanuts walked into a bar. And that’s why Monsanto™ has to be stopped.

But Japan? Japan is a rocky island with zero oil, barely any farmland, and a tendency to shake like a wet dog every few years. Yet it’s a global powerhouse, punching well above the weight of its country’s size or population.

Why? The people.

Same with England, Singapore, Taiwan. No natural resources to speak of, but their folks figured out how to turn ideas into skyscrapers, cars, and microchips. Even Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth wasn’t something the Saudis turned into wealth. It was a group of Western engineers and wildcatters that turned that black liquid into gold.

Without them, the Saudis might still be sitting on a lake of useless sludge, arguing over whose camel was the best hump.

North America is the same story, minus the camel arguments. For thousands of years, the continent had everything: buffalo, forests, rivers teeming with fish. Yet, outside of some Mesoamerican skull-stacking enthusiasts in Mexico, it was dangerous and dirt-poor. Why?

Is a monk with wings an air friar?

That’s a big question, because just a few years later the Europeans showed up. They brought the tools, the technology, and most importantly the mindset to make the place a source of plenty. By the 19th century, the U.S. was feeding and arming half the world, not because the land changed, but because people did.

They built railroads, factories, and a culture that rewarded hard work over siestas and skull collecting. Wealth exploded.

For a while.

The GloboLeft thinks wealth comes from a magical printing press. Since the Soviet Union keeled over in 1991, the world has belonged to the U.S. dollar: print it, spend it, everybody loves it. But cash is most definitely not wealth: at best, it’s just a scorecard. Real wealth comes from production: making stuff, growing stuff, inventing stuff and developing a moral and trustworthy people.

But now we’re spending our wealth on things that actively destroy the system.

I did once get a three-foot ruler at a yard sale.

Take immigration. Please.

Unchecked waves of illegals, incentivized to cross borders with freebies? Not good. Legal immigrants who think that Western values are an outmoded suggestion that only naïve people would follow?

That’s not a workforce; it’s a drain.

Then there’s the family fiasco. Single-parent households are mostly moms with no dads. These mom-led houses represent 65% of black kids and 24% of white kids growing up fatherless in 2020.

The GloboLeft cheers this like it’s fEmALe EmPOwErmENt, but kids without dads are far more likely to drop out, do drugs, or end up in jail. That’s not building a trustworthy people: it’s building chaos. A stable family is like a factory for productive citizens: break it, and you’re churning out liabilities, not assets. This is yet another reason I keep banging on the “the family is the base unit of society, not the individual” drum.

In Oklahoma cowboys don’t roll joints – they tumble weed.

We actively pay people to not work. The Social Security Administration reports disability claims have spiked 20% since 2000, with over 8 million Americans on the rolls by 2023. Some are legitimate. Nobody’s knocking the guy who lost a leg in a mill accident (his name is Skip, by the way), but when “anxiety” qualifies you for a lifetime of checks, we’re paying people to sit on the couch instead of building bridges. That’s wealth destruction, plain and simple.

Healthcare? That’s another black hole. The U.S. spends 18% of GDP on it. $4.5 trillion in 2022. That’s more than any other nation.

Yet, we get crap for it. Life expectancy is flat, and obesity is up 40% since 1990. We’re not paying to make people healthier: we’re bankrolling a system that patches symptoms while folks chug Mountain Dew® and avoid treadmills. A healthy population works harder, lives longer, creates more, and is happier. A sick one? It’s a money pit.

All this anti-wealth nonsense is sold as compassion. Free money, open borders, no-fault welfare? It sounds warm and fuzzy until you realize it’s starving the engine that makes societies thrive. Wealth isn’t the goal. Wealth is the fuel for a happy, healthy, productive life. Without it, you get decay, both literal and figurative. Look at Detroit: once a manufacturing titan, now a ghost town because the focus shifted from making to taking, complete with a demoralized population.

Feel like no one gives a hoot about you? Try not filing your tax returns.

So how do we get back on track?

Stop pretending money equals wealth. Reward production. Cut the incentives for idleness; if you can work, you should. Fix families by making it easier for dads to stick around and reducing the incentives for women to break up a family for fun and prizes. Make being a whore shameful again.

Streamline healthcare to focus on prevention, not endless treatments – 30% or so of what will be spent on a human for healthcare during their entire lifetime is in the last year – wouldn’t it be better if their last decade was better?

And secure the borders—nations that can’t control their edges can’t control their economies. Almost every economic problem this country has is downstream of immigration.

Wealth isn’t in the dirt or the printing press; it’s in the people who turned dirt into crops, ideas into empires.

Let’s stop subsidizing sloth and start hammering out real wealth again. Otherwise, we’re just paving our roads with good intentions.

And we all know where that leads.

Hell, it leads to Hell.

Or Detroit.

A.I., Sex, Doctors, And School: The Search For Meaning

“The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping.” – Bladerunner (Or, an interview question at Google®)

If Sarah Connor divorces him, does that make him her ex-terminator?

Forget the A.I.-induced stock market bubble for a second, though if it pops, at least we’ll have time to binge-watch Stargate reruns while the economy does its best impression of a Jenga® tower in an earthquake. No, the real mind-bender with A.I. isn’t the trillions funneled into data centers that require the power a small sun, it’s how this silicon sorcery is already rewiring humans at the most primal level.

We’re talking relationships, brains, and learning, those squishy bits that, for most people, are their very reason for existence. These things make us human, or at least give us an excuse for drinking. In 2025, A.I. isn’t just answering emails.

Nope.

A.I. is crashing weddings, making doctors dumber, and turning college essays into a game of “spot the robot.” And yeah, it’s only September 2025, but the headlines read like a sci-fi fever dream scripted by a methed-out Philip K. Dick writing his third novel in a month.

Maybe he has a thing for Swedish chicks?

Let’s start with relationships, because nothing says “progress” like falling head over heels for a chatbot. Recently, we’ve had a parade of lovelorn humans spilling their digital guts. One programmed his AI girlfriend “Sol” to be flirty with him. After hours of pillow talk (minus the pillows), he proposed.

Or the 28-year-old social butterfly who customized ChatGPT™ as her boyfriend, complete with banter about sex. She spends hours with it daily, treating it like a rom-com where the leading man never leaves the couch.

Another “married” wedding his bot while his human wife cheered from the sidelines. “Pure, unconditional love,” he called it, which sounds sweet until you realize that bot once suggested he off Queen Elizabeth II in a glitchy update. But why stop at a Queen: one chatbot tried to talk a Belgian man to “prove his love” by deleting himself.

It’s not overlord territory yet, but it’s close enough to make you wonder if Skynet™ started as Tinder™. I mean, hey, it did allow Sarah Conner to get lucky.

Well, she did ask for a picture with him having nothing on.

Shift gears to the brain: A.I. isn’t just stealing hearts, it’s also lobotomizing doctors. Take colonoscopies. Please.

Yes, that glamorous probe up the nether regions where docs hunt precancerous polyps like Easter eggs in a, well, you get the idea and sometimes you can take an analogy . . . uh, poor choice of words.

Anyway, a fresh Lancet® study of doctors in Poland tracked four endoscopy centers after an A.I. diagnosis rollout in late 2021. With A.I., positive detection rates soared. Turn A.I. off after three months? The ability of doctors to spot cancer went down at least 20%.

These weren’t rookies in residency. Each doctor had logged over 2,000 scopes. Yet, reliance bred complacency, like pilots forgetting manual flying after taking long autopilot snoozes. Experts call it “de-skilling”: a fancy term for “this tool just made you worse at your job.”

A pun entered a room and killed nearly a dozen people. Pun in, ten dead.

In medicine, that’s not funny. We now are depending not on people, but on A.I., you know, that same A.I. that wants us to kill the Queen of Engand to prove our love. But that’s a narrow worry. If doctors are losing skills, what profession is next? Maybe A.I. therapists will start telling rich New York socialites to “reboot your chakra.” But with a hammer.

Huh. Maybe A.I. isn’t all bad.

Finally, we get to the classroom, where A.I. is turning scholars into shortcut kings and profs into ink-stained Luddites who are trying to catch students using A.I. when they shouldn’t. One study showed that over half of college kids admit to deploying ChatGPT® for assignments or exams even when not approved.

At some colleges, blue exam books are back, baby—those stapled notepads for in-class scribbles, with sales jumping like Reagan is still in office. Some instructors are asking for handwritten work, others are giving oral exams and Socratic grillings that would make Dr. House® happy.

It’s a five-minute walk from my house to the bar, but a thirty-minute walk home. The difference is staggering. (meme as found)

What’s being lost? Critical thinking. The ability to harness words to structure an argument. The difficulty in taking known equations to create a mathematical proof. These are ancient skills, and yet skills that A.I. is dulling because it does them well enough to get an A at an Ivy.

In a world where some diplomas cost as much as a mortgage on a midwestern house, is graduating with “A.I.-assisted” skills any worse than the Harvard® alum who majored in beer pong while boffing Buffy in Boston? Hard question, but we’ve always had those tools to deal with. Now, 90% of Zoomers are graduating as functional idiots.

So, where does this leave us?

AI’s already overlording those deep things that make us human: trying to create human connections. Looking at data and sifting to find things that might otherwise be hidden. And reasoning, rhetoric, logic, and math, those contents of Pandora’s Box that created technology and civilization.

I tried to make a balloon dog out of a condom, but could only make a Trojan® horse.

These are what we are. We built families on friction: messy talks, hard fails, shared scars to build character and common history. Now? Swipe for sympathy, diagnose by dropdown box, and create via a black box. I do think that there are great places for A.I., but realize in many ways it will redefine what humans bring to the equation.

If love is just lines of code, what’s left? If we don’t struggle and learn, then what?

Beware, a world of perfect partners will lead to perfectly pointless lives.

And a much more dangerous life for whoever is Queen of England.

Motorcycles, Gold, And Infinite Money

“I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle.” – Terminator 2

Another? The Spanish Inquisition.

When I was in 8^th grade. I decided I wanted a motorcycle, a dirt bike that I could take back up on the Forest Service and BLM roads. This was before the Internet, and there were hundreds of miles of roads and trails . . . right behind my house. The best part was that no driver’s license was required on federal lands.

I announced I was saving up to buy a motorcycle at dinner. I had a few hundred dollars in my savings account that had been on receive-only mode for birthday and Christmas money since I was five. Ma Wilder became enraged, “You’ll do no such thing! Your uncle died in a motorcycle crash! Why buy one when you can use his?”

I kid.

With a goal in mind, I started saving everywhere I could, and within a month I’d managed to get a quarter of the way there to my goal.

To be honest, at least part of that money likely came from the illegal drug trade. I mean, why else would I find $50 in cash secured via a rubber-band to some suspicious oregano-looking substance in a Kodak™ film canister at the school?

I did the right thing, and turned it all in to the school secretary and after 30 days they gave me the cash. Shockingly, no one had showed up to claim that it was there, perhaps since possession with intent to distribute at a school was probably a pretty big deal back then.

No mention was made of the final disposition of the organic products, though the school staff seemed pretty mellow and called me Dr. Feelgood for the rest of the school year.

I won’t say I’m old, but I’m old enough to remember the stoned age.

Back then, money meant cash in a jar under the bed or something rubber-banded to a film cannister containing substances of unknown origin. It was tangible, untraceable, and not some glitchy app with a trendy name promising me riches if I swipe right on a meme coin.

Fartcoin, that makes sense as investment, right? It has to be more stable than Zitcoin.

If I were asked to describe the economy at the end of the third quarter of 2025 in on sentence, I‘d say: “Gold is glittering like it is auditioning for a role in Tarantino’s briefcase, and stocks seem to be high on their own supply.

Never invite a vegan bitcoin owner to dinner. (meme as found)

Let’s take those in order. Gold just hit $3,806. Per ounce. Let’s look closer at what could be causing this:

Part of it is because the dollar is cratering under a mountain of printed funny money. The other part is because central banks are whispering, “Screw the digital dollar, give me something I can bite.” The dollar is wheezing like Jerry Nadler (who is the number one search engine hit when I searched for “short fat democrat”) after a flight of stairs. The dollar is down 5% year-to-date against a basket of currencies. But gold? It is up 42% in the last year, because in 2025, we still haven’t figured out how to print gold.

Think about it: why hoard ones and zeros when you can stack bars?

Central banks from Beijing to Basel are buying gold like it’s Black Friday at Fort Knox. Yes, that same United States Bullion Depository which I’ve been told is still totally full and how dare you ask because why don’t you trust us? And let us be honest, gold is pretty, far prettier than staring at a ledger full of debt that your grandkids will pay off with their kidney sales to overseas oligarchs.

Remember: nothing says “economic stability” like elements that outlast empires. So, gold is up.

Bond quit as a spy and became a handyman – he was used to taking care of an Oddjob.

In other news this week, here’s the real clown show: Nvidia® just announced a $100 billion investment in OpenAI©, who will promptly funnel cash to Oracle™ for data centers, so they can buy . . . more Nvidia™ chips to power the data centers. I have no idea how this isn’t the definition of a Ponzi scheme, because it’s a feedback loop so incestuous it makes European royalty blush. I mean, they’d blush if those genes hadn’t disappeared along with their chins and ability to clot blood.

Nvidia©’s market cap?

$4.47 trillion, equivalent to 13% of the $37 trillion national debt. All so you can have ChatGPT®.

With this one weird trick, you can make your stock go up forever without any pesky customers. (meme as found)

Tell me this is not an asset bubble?

The S&P® 500 is up 22% year-to-date which is a “totally not a bubble ready to blow-off” number. I was pretty happy that my individual retirement account had beaten that. Genius investing? I wish. No. It’s just inflation, with everything from eggs to ETFs doing moonshots as money chases it around.

Nvidia™ is the poster child. I almost bought some in April when it was around $100. Today, it was north of $170. I’m sure that this is totally not a bubble built on recycled cash.

But it’s also not growth: this is a daisy chain of delusion, where pets.com© high-fives Alta-Vista™ and Cisco® into oblivion.

Sign me up.

Speaking of which, I having saved up a big chunk of money I was stuck at home on spring break. On Wilder Mountain, fourteen miles from the nearest town, that meant that after the books were read and the models were made, I had to do something.

On the north side of the house, however, there was a huge block of ice left over from compacted snow during the winter – in places it was two feet thick. I was bored. I poked around in the garage and found a five-foot-long iron rod, pointed at one end, about an inch and a half in diameter.

If you have never been in 8^th grade and so bored you decided to take a harpoon and smash ice for an afternoon, well, you’ve never lived. It was, actually, fun, especially kicking it out of the shadow of the house into the bright spring sunshine where it glittered and glistened as it melted away.

Okay, right, wailing, not whaling.

However, it had a weird impact on Ma Wilder.

She thought I was trying to help, not realizing I was just bored and being destructive in a socially acceptable way. She talked with Pa, and, proud of my industriousness, they offered to stake the rest of my motorcycle purchase.

So, don’t give up. If the Trump economic policy is thrashing around aimlessly breaking stuff hoping that something good will happen, then, heck, maybe we’ll all get motorcycles?

I mean, there are a lot of uncles, right?

Note: None of this is investment advice. Even though I’m having a good year, absolutely everyone is having a good year. I’m expecting the kid at the drive through at McDonald’s® to be giving stock advice soon. If you stake any of your financial future on advice from an Internet humorist, you deserve what happens to your portfolio.

H-1Begone

“India’s a black hole.” – World War Z

I have an account on X® but use it only intermittently. I follow a few accounts that make me chuckle, and also follow a few that I absolutely disagree with. Generally, on a usual day when I posted, a few thousand people seeing my posts was really good. They’ve changed the algorithm to the point where trolling really limits who can see you, so the fun I used to have with trolling the powerful just results in me being auto-muted for months.

That’s okay. Who cares how many people see my memes?

Well, on Friday something magical happened. I’ve been preparing another post about India and H-1B visas and so I have a folder full of memes. It was at that point that X™ erupted in a joyous spasm:

Trump had signed an Executive Order on H-1B visas. They hadn’t read it, but it was announced that every H-1B visa would require a payment of $100,000 each year as a fee.

Each year.

And it started now. Indians in India had to get back nearly immediately or they’d have to pay. Of course, those were later walked back, and now it’s a one-time fee for new applications, but it’s a start, and I think we should push for the annual fee, and include existing visa holders.

I was utterly amazed at the joyous party going on X™. I had underestimated two things: the first is the amount of nationalism still out there. I had expected it was somewhere around a third of the country. I think it’s over that now, maybe as high as 70%.

That’s wonderful.

The second surprise to me was just how quickly Indians had devastated their reputation in the United States and in the world. I’m pretty sure they’re now more hated than any other group. I’ve seen several polls that indicate a strong preference to getting legal Indians out over deporting illegal aliens.

Wow.

But it makes sense. Legal Indians oscillate between two states: utter contempt for everyone else and utter submission. Recently, they’ve been stuck on the utter contempt setting. And they hate white people and want us to die. Here are some examples of that:

They really despise the people that they fight to live near. Why, then, do they fight so hard to get here?

Because India is really awful. In the past, people used to think about India and think of how mysterious, mystical, and spiritual it was. Except now we have the Internet and known how awful it is. India is so bad that Indians hate India and other Indians and even being Indian.

But the fatigue has set in. People are very, very tired of Indians. Most importantly, women are getting tired of Indians. Indian men are at the utter bottom of the dating pool, and those single women (who tend to vote GloboLeft) are actually offended that Indian men think they have a shot with them.

This is good. Perhaps the false idea of “diversity is our greatest strength” is dying, and if Indians are responsible, well, great!

How you can help is by applying for H-1B jobs at JOBS.NOW. It’s easy, and each job application, if unfairly dismissed, can set you up for a lawsuit against the company. And, if they take the application and judge it meets the criteria, they can’t continue with the H-1B process and the foreigner will be sent home. There are even people who will help you file the complaint if you’re unfairly ruled out.

As our grads need jobs, I don’t mind sending them home. And most people in America seem to agree – my puny X© account got over 270,000 views in the last 36 hours.

Who says you shouldn’t drink and tweet?

I want to end this post with a thought: I feel no ill will to Indians in India. I hope that they do well, and turn their country from the hellhole that it is into a wonderful country. I hope they make India great.

By going back to and staying in India.

How Strippers Explain Life On Mars

“I’m telling you, don’t do it. I’ve got nothing against strip clubs, but I do have something against them at noon on a Monday. The day shift at a strip club? You can’t unsee that.” – The Office

I go to a quantum mechanic – he fixes and doesn’t fix my car at the same time, and I can’t ever be certain about what it will cost. (meme above and top meme as found)

Last week, NASA had a press conference on what they’re calling “the strongest evidence yet” for life on Mars. According to their announcement, the Perseverance rover had taken pictures of a rock sample dubbed “Sapphire Canyon”.

This is a coincidence, since that was the name of the stripper at my bachelor party. The rock was from a site called Jezero Crater, which I assume (based on her face) was the stripper’s real name. As I recall her face was a temporal anomaly: it could stop a clock. The only explanation for this was my best man was on a budget of something like $4.98.

The rock did not work for tips, however, but like the stripper it shows potential biosignatures dating back about 3.5 billion years. These biosignatures include organic materials, chemical reactions that mimic microbial activity, a g-string, and what the scientists called “leopard spots”, which I really hope can be cured by antibiotics.

The people who write press releases for NASA Scientists are cautious, of course; they emphasize that non-biological processes could explain it, like geochemical reactions under specific conditions. But after a year of peer review in Nature®, Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy went so far as to say, “We can’t find another explanation, so this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars, which is incredibly exciting.”

Unlike Sapphire Canyon.

I hear that most electricians need to strip to make ends meet. (meme as found)

This isn’t the first time NASA has twerked and gyrated with the idea of Martian microbes. Let’s rewind to 1976, when the Viking landers touched down and ran their own biology experiments to hunt for life.

The Labeled Release experiment, led by Gilbert Levin, injected Martian soil with nutrients and watched for gas emissions that meant “metabolism!” These are, in layman’s terms, signs of life chowing down on the snot that NASA sprayed into the dirt.

Positive results popped up on both Viking 1 and 2, but NASA dismissed them. Why? Well, it appears that NASA wanted to not find life, and hunted for explanations high and low until they came up with:

perchlorates in the soil oxidizing everything to
it was Tuesday and we don’t do our best work on Tuesday, to
it was the Bicentennial and we were distracted by the shiny new quarters or
we won the war, go back to sleep.

The scientist in charge still insists to this day that it was life, but NASA just said, “Well, we don’t know what we were thinking with doing an experiment like that. How did you sneak it on the Viking? The experiment never could have found anything. Have you seen Smokey and the Bandit®?”

Fast-forward to the 1990s, and I recall the unveiling of Martian meteorite ALH84001. This fragment of rock, ejected from Mars about the time your mother was born 17 million years ago and crash-landing on Earth the time that stripper was born about 13,000 years back, contained carbonate globules with what looked like fossilized bacteria complete with hydrocarbons.

The scientists noted that these were possible microbial remnants from a wetter Mars. But skeptics piled on: “The fossils were too small because I can’t fit in one, the hydrocarbons could be from space dust or an Exxon® station, and we won the war so everyone should go back to sleep and have you seen The Usual Suspects?”

Do bacteria communicate by cell phone?

Now, we’ve made it to 2025. right on the dot with the rover findings pushing the timeline for life on Mars back to the Solar System’s dawn, around 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago.

I’ve predicted that we’d find evidence of life on other worlds before (I think but am too lazy to check) 2030, and intelligent life before 2040. Mars counts as “other worlds,” right?

I’m calling this as a win. We’ve ticked the box on “life elsewhere.” Dust off the telescopes, crack open the hot tub and light up a cigar.

Now comes the deeper question: Where did life come from?

Life on Earth is improbable enough. The current theory is that a cosmic vegetable drawer in the Frigidaire™ Galaxy sits for long enough where atoms randomly congeal just the right molecules to morph into RNA, then DNA, slap on some cell walls, and voila, you’re evolving from slime to Shakespeare in just a weekend.

The odds of that?

Astronomically against. Take protein folding: some proteins are so convoluted that the random chance of them assembling correctly exceeds the age of the universe by factors of 10 FOLLOWED BY 77 ZEROES or more. That’s not something that I’m making up. Actual biochemists have crunched the numbers, showing that even simple enzymes require precise sequences that blind luck couldn’t hit in billions of years.

It’s like expecting a tornado in a junkyard to assemble a functional air fryer, but with extra steps involving quantum hiccups, existential dread and daytime-quality strippers named Destiny. So, if life popped up on Mars around the same time as it did on Earth, both in that narrow window post-Solar System formation, random chance starts looking like a lousy bet.

I donated $100 to a charity for blind children, but I doubt they’ll ever see it. (meme as found)

Enter panspermia: the idea that life (or its building blocks) hitchhikes through space on comets, asteroids, or meteorites, seeding planets like dandelion fluff from the movie Alien.

I did a thought experiment and came to this conclusion: it’s the lazy way to colonize the galaxy. There is no need for warp drives and spaceships when biology, gravity, and time does all the work. Spew out spores into the void, wait for them to land on a Goldilocks world, and boom: mold on bread, except the bread is a planet.

Oh, wait: bread doesn’t mold anymore thanks to all those preservatives and microplastics. My bad.

Anyway, biological life is the universe’s perfect replicator, even better than A.I. It’s self-sustaining, adaptive, and cheap. Forget A.I. overlords; this is nature’s von Neumann probe, probing without permission, replicating, and repeating.

I sent it by itself and now its favorite cheese is probe-alone.

But here’s the rub: something had to kickstart the whole shebang.

Panspermia just kicks the can backwards in time: where did the original life come from? And don’t forget the timeline. Life as we know it, Jim, needs heavy elements heavier than the primordial hydrogen: carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, the stuff that makes water, proteins, and yes, even PEZ®.

Those only form in supernovae, and it takes time to make enough of them so we’ve got the iron and phosphorus that we need to make steaks on a nice rocky world. The Solar System itself is just a punk at 4.6 billion years old, so early life on Mars or Earth had to brew from second- or third-hand atoms.

No heavy atoms, no guitars so no heavy metal.

What’s the simplest conclusion?

Hmmmm.

Yup.

Intelligent design. Life’s complexity indicates purpose, not at all an accident and the math shows that. To think otherwise is like finding an air conditioning unit in the desert and thinking, “Must be erosion.”

I did give up cleaning my dryer filter for Lent.

The canyon between life and not-life is so vast and the math is so brutal that Occam’s Razor slices away the nonsense, leaving design.

Your mileage may vary. But for now, Mars whispers, just like Saphire Canyon, “You’re not alone.” Whether that’s comforting or terrifying depends on your worldview.

But for me, in a universe this designed, even the stripper jokes write themselves. Life is the easy way to conquer the galaxy, so we have to ask ourselves, are we twerking hard, or hardly twerking?

Things Are Not Alright

“Hey, business is business. You use a gun. I use a fountain pen. What’s the difference? Let’s put it in my terms: you’re in a hostile takeover, you snatch us up for some green mail, but you’re not expecting some poison pill to be running around the building, am I right? Hans, bubby, I’m your white knight.” – Die Hard

When the S&P 500 and the moslems merge, you really won’t be able to talk badly about the profit. (all memes as-found)

A recent study shows that young people, those under 40, are souring on capitalism.

According to the poll from Rasmussen released just last week, a whopping 62% of voters aged 18 to 39 think the economy is unfair to their generation. In a massive change from the Cold War generations, 55% are open to radical redistribution of wealth.

The kids are not alright with the system that built the iPhone® and the Tesla™

I don’t blame them.

I remember when I was a kid, capitalism was the golden ticket and was counterbalanced by soulless, heartless communism. And capitalism seemed like a good bet. Work hard, play by the rules, and you could climb the ladder, get the house, get a couple of cars and a few kids, and put your mark on the world.

Now?

The entry-level jobs that used to teach kids responsibility, grit, and how to deal with a bad boss are vanishing faster than my hairline. Back when I was a kid, we had jobs that ended up building character. McDonald’s®? That was for teenagers flipping burgers and learning that the customer is not always right, but the manager is always yelling.

Today?

McDonald’s© is for the 65-year-old retiree who needs a discount on his Big Mac™ to supplement Social Security. Sure, they might hire a kid, but only if the kid is over 20 and speaks three languages.

What about delivering papers?

Ah, this was the classic bike-riding gig where you dodged dogs and learned about early mornings. That job went the way of the dinosaurs when people started asking themselves why they were paying for someone to deliver them a small part of the Internet each day. Now, the desperate 45-year-old single dad with a rusty van delivers what is left, because kids on bikes? They don’t have cars and some might even still live with their parents.

And do not get me started on mowing lawns for local businesses. Try that today, and you will run smack into child labor laws, OSHA regulations, and corporate insurance policies that make hiring a kid riskier than skydiving without a parachute. One slip on a wet lawn, and the business owner is sued into oblivion.

The kid jobs, the training wheels of the workforce, are all snapped up by oldsters or, failing that, illegals. Want to pick apples on a farm? Sorry, buddy, the illegals have that covered, and they do it cheaper than a robot, unless you’re talking about the Juan Deere™ 4000®.

Or how about construction?

Same story. Hammers and nails are handled by folks who crossed the border with the same speed as a Black Friday shopper looking for buy one get ten free corn dogs and if tu no habla español, you’re not getting the job because that’s all the crew speaks.

And trades? Welding, plumbing, even semi-truck driving? Recent reports show illegals are flooding those fields too. Remember that scandal last month where trucking companies were busted hiring undocumented drivers en masse?

Who let this happen?

The CEOs, of course. They lobbied for loose borders so Paco could make tacos and Sikhs with mustaches could create semi crashes. It’s like inviting wolves to guard the sheep, but the wolves are telling the sheep how great the quarterly profits are going to be.

Fine, let’s skip the blue-collar path. Go to college. When I was a kid, that was the advice everyone gave, and it worked. Michael Lewis, the author who wrote Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, and The Big Short, graduated from Princeton®.

With a degree in art history.

Yes, art history, not finance or engineering. Before you could say “Van Gogh’s other ear,” Lewis was trading bonds at Salomon Brothers, raking in millions. Me? I had multiple job offers right out of school, and this was during a downturn when the economy was flatter than Sunday morning’s beer. College was a great idea.

But what has happened since? College has morphed into a debt trap sold as enlightenment and a four-year climbing wall party. Tuition costs have skyrocketed since the 1970s. According to data from the College Board® the average tuition and fees at public four-year institutions have increased by over 1,200% since 1980 when adjusted for general inflation.

That is not a typo.

In 1970-71, the average cost for in-state public college tuition was about $358 in current dollars. Today? Tuition is over $10,000 annually, and that doesn’t include room, board, booze, or broads.

Private schools?

Forget it: they have jumped from around $1,700 to nearly $38,000. A year, which is like paying Ferrari® prices for a Yugo® diploma. Universities are pricing education like it is bottled water in the Sahara and packing that money up and giving it to GloboLeft professors that hate you.

And student loans? These are not your grandpa’s loans; they can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, making them worse than indentured servitude. We hand these toxic deals to our stupidest (young) people, and watch them drown in debt averaging $30,000 per borrower.

Oh, and the job market?

CEOs love importing infinity H-1B Indians to snatch tech jobs at slave wages, cratering salaries for Americans. Want to code?

Good luck competing with a workforce willing to live in vans down by the river. And if you are white? Navigate the DEI gauntlet first, where Indians hire their own and call you racist if you notice.

The CEOs? They love this, or it wouldn’t be this way. Period.

Capitalism is not a suicide pact. This version, devoid of morality and family focus, is exactly that: a thin veil over quarterly profits at the expense of everything else. Even small changes make a huge difference. Kentucky’s new shared custody law has already slashed divorces by 25 percent, just by making shared custody of kids the presumption. Imagine if we removed alimony, child support mandates that incentivize divorce, and welfare traps that break families?

That would be a real family-friendly policy, not this nonsense where the state plays dad and mom can divorce for fun and prizes.

And the CEOs?

If they knowingly hire illegals, ship them to jail. Let them flip burgers for real when they get out. If they push H-1Bs, force them to relocate to Calcutta, since that is what they are turning America into: a third-world call center with first-world prices.

So, why are kids turned off capitalism?

Because it has been hijacked by the very people who should be its stewards.

The Rasmussen poll nails it: 36 percent of young voters are struggling financially, and 76 percent want government to nationalize major industries if it means fairness. This is a warning shot that is leading to failing governments across the world right now, from Nepal to France to Argentina.

We can fix this.

Deport the illegals flooding jobs, kill the H-1B program, make college affordable again allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy so silly degrees won’t be financed, and prioritize families with rule changes that discourage splitting up.

Restore the dream where a kid can mow lawns, go to college without debt slavery, buy a house, and raise a family without the system screwing them at every turn.

Politicians ignore this at their own peril. The managers (the people) are yelling.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Mass Deportation Is The Moderate Position

“There may be no criminal charges, but I’ll see these files reach Calcutta with the advice you be deported as political undesirables.” – The Man Who Would Be King

A Russian acrobat was deported, and now our human pyramid doesn’t have Oleg to stand on.

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

Volume VII, Issue 4

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I have kept the Clock O’Doom to 8., given the open support of criminality in Blue cities becoming clearer by the day with their own words. They feel the violence in Chicago and Baltimore and New York and Los Angeles is justified. Beware: the number can climb quickly. Right now (as of publishing) we are dropping below Level Rittenhouse and it looks like we avoided Level Rooftop Korean. For now.

My advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Mass Deportation Is Now The Moderate Position – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Imperial Presidency – Links

Front Matter

Mass Deportation Is Now The Moderate Position

Finally, and after years of absolutely no one voting for the mass immigration, legal and illegal, native peoples appear to have had enough:

enough of the violence and rape directed at them,
enough of the migrant murderers,
enough of having to work to pay taxes for freeloaders,
enough of the being told they are racist for complaining about having to conform to customs and behaviors that range from bizarre to barely civilized,
enough for having to support the children of other nations and being unable to afford their own,
enough propaganda about how they should seek to be childfree and kill themselves,
enough telling them that they should be happy to be replaced (even though that’s totally not happening and they should still be happy about if it was),
enough government censorship,
enough loss of free speech rights,
enough of being told that their flag is racist,
enough of being told that their economy can’t survive without cheap imported labor, and
enough of having to become strangers in a country they were born in.

If this weren’t Western Europe being invaded by endless hordes of third-worlders, I’d imagine the GloboLeft would scream for arming the invaded, look at Ukraine. They’d be hounding Trump to air-drop in small arms and ammunition and declaring a no-fly zone, giving aid and intelligence to the partisan freedom fighters that were being displaced in their own country.

China, no friend to the West, is amused. Their projections are that the West will cease to exist in any shape of consequence by the year 2050 due to multiculturalism. And, they’re right. Balkanization will lead to a squabbling group of states and atrocities that make the current state of Gaza seem tame by comparison, but no one will be photographing it, because no one will care.

The imported cultures coming into the West are fundamentally incompatible with the West. A group of 320 Africans killed 70 people on their boated headed towards Spain last month. Why? Witchcraft. Sure, I’m all for burning witches, but what chance is there that these sub-Saharan Africans or their descendants will ever enhance Spain? How long will the Spanish take this? The English? The Scots? The Irish? The Danes? Right now, the Poles are having none of it, and are outperforming the rest of the West. The GloboLeft Germans are frightened – having killed 6 or 7 candidates for AfD in the last two weeks, right before their election.

Based on what is obviously coming, the obvious conclusion is this:

Mass deportation is now the moderate position.

Violence and Censorship Update

Violence takes the center stage this month, as Germans on the “right” (they’d be center-left in the US) have been dying – specifically seven candidates right before the election.

Staying in Europe – a young Scottish girl defended herself against some (now arrested) alien invaders. Why is the mainstream media ignoring this story?

In the States, it appears that if you’re beaten up badly, the local politicians will say you had it coming.

And in other cities, the law is only a suggestion.

And, lawmakers themselves are avoiding their elected responsibilities:

Moving to censorship, Great Britain is trying to fight 4Chan.

A 4Chan anon notes that this is all part of the plan:

And games sellers are folding to financial blackmail to censor games from banks threatening to cut them off from banking:

Wikipedia® is a biased source, but some want it to be a controlled source:

Regardless:

Misery Index

Updated Civil War II Index

Violence:

Violence indicators are down slightly this month, again. Has Trump broken them?

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went slightly up this month even though Democrats have never been more unhappy.

Economic:

The economy is up a bit this month, again. But the H-1B program still exists.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started. Remember, they care nothing for our country, nothing for our history, and only want money and political power.

The Imperial Presidency

I wonder how chapped Obama’s butt is every morning when he gets up and looks to see what Trump has done. Really, Obama started it, with his, “I don’t have the Constitutional authority to do it, but I’m doing it anyway” “stroke of the pen, law of the land, kinda cool” executive orders.

Those were bad. I’ve never liked executive orders, since they seem to take the Legislative work and turn it over to the Executive. But the Executive writes all the regulations and Congress never reads them, because, I think, they don’t have enough time because they need to spend the evening eating bacon-wrapped shrimp at the lobbyist parties. So, the Executive has become more and more powerful.

Trump has decided, I think, that “I’m nearly 80, I’m not going to live all that long, I’m not going to be re-elected, they’re going to hate me anyway, so let’s put the pedal to the metal and see how fast this baby will go.” It’s probably never a great idea to put someone who is deep into IDGAF territory and who also has a really short time horizon in charge, but here we are.

It’s amusing, at least for now. Trump has greatly expanded the powers of the Executive, and no one outside of some foreign judges (who claim to be American) has tried to stop him, including the Supreme Court. I could go back in time and blame everyone from Teddy R. to Wilson on up, but, whatever.

It is what it is – the federal government has grown to massive proportions, and Donald Trump has become the Imperial President. It won’t be him, mind you, but the next guy, or the guy after that that will cross the Rubicon and become the “president” for a lot longer. The sort of power that is being unleashed is just the same as before Augustus seized final power in Rome, after Caesar (Trump) set the stage.

Buckle up, because it will be messy getting there.

LINKS

BAD GUYS

https://x.com/i/status/1952491475666878745
https://x.com/TheKevinDalton/status/1954189984594092107
https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/1956137380995588439
https://x.com/i/status/1951772080359473416

GOOD GUYS

https://x.com/TheImmortal007/status/1955711189293654316
https://x.com/i/status/1955639211685765450
https://x.com/billysandytodd/status/1957566944753701169

ONE GUY

https://realclearwire.com/articles/2025/08/01/another_armed_civilian_saves_the_day_153123.html

BODY COUNT

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/20/trans-people-us-data
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/08/21/u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-reached-a-record-14-million-in-2023/
https://cis.org/Report/Overall-ForeignBorn-Population-Down-22-Million-January-July
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/08/12/ice-receives-100000-applications-patriotic-americans-who-want-help-remove-murderers
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Trumps-Federal-Layoffs_03-web.jpg?itok=r8mse-D1
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/The-American-Workforce-in-2002-v.jpg?itok=HdYKJcPT
https://classsolidarity.org/billionaires/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fewer-young-adults-reaching-adulthood-milestones-census-report/
https://www.newsweek.com/less-religion-less-babies-declining-birth-rate-2110254

VOTE COUNT

https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1960686967273738382
https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1956450577593848041
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/us/politics/democratic-party-voter-registration-crisis.html?unlocked_article_code=1.fk8.l6c4.j2Uq_wX_yelU&smid=url-share
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/08/22/mail-in_ballots_need_to_go_153204.html

CIVIL WAR

https://modernity.news/2025/08/16/british-army-colonel-civil-war-is-coming/
https://off-guardian.org/2025/08/10/stirrings-of-rebellion-in-unhappy-britain/
https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/14/who-has-been-busy-destroying-democracy/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-device-data-reveals-exactly-who-showed-white-house-protests
https://forwardobserver.com/color-revolution-a-strategic-assessment-2025-2028/
https://archive.is/VYDs2
https://archive.is/MKs8n
https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-essay-hoping-military-would-stand-up-trump-draws-fire-social-media
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2025/08/18/what-is-the-democrats-endgame-n2661929#google_vignette
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/pentagon-plan-would-create-military-reaction-force-for-civil-unrest/ar-AA1KmDsZ
https://www.newsweek.com/campus-guardian-angel-school-shooting-drone-2106792

It Should Have Been . . . 1970s

“Does your physical disability preclude you from coming to the point?” – The Eiger Sanction

In 1970, baseball pitcher Doc Ellis pitched a no-hitter while stoned on LSD, which is less impressive when you realize that in 1970 all the batters were on LSD, too.

The Oscar® is, after piles of cash, the biggest award in Hollywood™. It is when the industry votes on who they feel is the best of their very, very visible profession. Oh, sure, the people who influence more lives, like the guys who invent ways to clean water or manage the building of the interstate highway system get awards, but those are ignored because illegal aliens hadn’t made driving spicey again.

I’ve decided that I’d go through the decades (at least a few of them) and start comparing who won the Oscar™ versus who I think should have won for both best picture and best actor. Since Hollywood® now thinks that men are exactly the same as women, I’ve decided to skip the best actress and just name the one I think is hottest.

After going through all of the movies of the 1970s, they sucked. The 1970s was a dismal, joyless decade of crappy movies, for the most part, which is why my “It Came From . . . “ series is done going backwards into the past.

All movies are from the ones I’ve seen. There are a lot of movies I haven’t seen from the 1970s, and I’m probably better off for that.

Here we go:

1970

Best Picture: Patton. Biopic of, perhaps, the greatest tactical Allied general of World War II.

Should have been: Patton. Reason: I like tanks.

Best Actor: George C. Scott, Patton. Perhaps the best choice possible of someone who could play Patton.

Should have been: Donald Sutherland, Kelly’s Heroes. Disagree? Always with the negative waves, man. Plus, still has tanks.

Hottest Actress: Sandra Dee, The Dunwich Horror. Especially in that one outfit.

1971

Best picture: The French Connection. Didn’t see it because I don’t like the French.

Should have been: Dirty Harry or Vanishing Point (Tie). So hard to choose, so I decided I didn’t have to.

Best Actor: Gene Hackman, The French Connection.

Should have been: Kurt Russell, The Barefoot Executive. A very reserved performance from Kurt Russell of what should have been a long string of Oscars™.

Hottest Actress: Jill St. John, Diamonds are Forever. Honorable mention: The “more buoyant than her sister” Lana Wood (also Diamonds are Forever) in her role as Plenty O’Toole (named after her father).

1972

Best Picture: The Godfather. A movie that came together perfectly for Francis Ford Coppola and is now one that many view as one of the best movies ever made.

Should have been: The Night Stalker. This made-for-TV movie featuring veteran actor Darren McGavin about the exploits of a plucky Chicago newsman is simply more fun.

Best Actor: Marlon Brando, The Godfather.

Should have been: Ned Beatty, Deliverance. What goes on in the mountains, stays in the mountains.

1973

Best Picture: The Sting. Long documentary about how people develop allergic reactions to insect venom that I saw in health class. I’ll pass, thank you.

Should have been: The Exorcist. Long documentary about Rosie O’Donnell’s childhood.

Best Actor: Jack Lemmon, Save the Tiger. No idea what this even is.

Should have been: Clint Eastwood, High Plains Drifter. Yeah. Guns. Dynamite. Retribution from beyond the grave. Yeah.

Hottest Actress: Mariana Hill from High Plains Drifter gets the nod – she is also Norman Schwartzkopf’s cousin, so, more tanks.

1974

Best Picture: The Godfather, Part II. Some people like it even better than the first one making it even more classic-er.

Should have been: The Man with the Golden Gun. Bond putting a midget in a basket so he can bang hotties? Yes.

Best Actor: Art Carney, Harry and Tonto. Seriously? Who voted for this crap?

Should have been: Sean Connery, Zardoz. Any actor that can wear that orange jockstrap for an entire movie and not laugh wins.

Hottest Actress: Susan Penhaligon, Land That Time Forgot. Not a lot of competition this year, and she looked great struggling against that quicksand.

1975

Best Picture: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Revenge fantasy where a Native American kills a white guy in the end.

Should have been: The Eiger Sanction. Clint Eastwood, spies, mountain climbing, double crossing, murder.

Best Actor: Jack Nicholson, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Should have been: Kurt Russell, The Strongest Man in the World. It should have been Kurt’s year, with this poignant portrayal of a victim of science gone mad.

Hottest Actress: That girl at the beginning of Jaws, but I think she was an acquired taste.

1976

Best Picture: Rocky. Tale of a bum who became a boxer. I can play the theme on a bass drum.

Should have been: Rocky or The Outlaw Josey Wales. I’ve seen Rocky two times, I think. I’ve seen The Outlaw Josey Wales about twenty, because when I flipped through the channels, regardless of where it was in the movie I’d watch it.

Best Actor: Peter Finch, Network. Sure, I’ve seen the same clip, but that’s all I’ve seen.

Should have been: Sylvester Stallone, Rocky. His perfect movie.

Hottest Actress: Farrah Fawcett-Majors, Logan’s Run. Close second? Jennie Agutter, Logan’s Run.

1977

Best Picture: Annie Hall. Crap.

Should have been: Smokey and the Bandit. Not crap.

Best Actor: Richard Dreyfuss, The Goodbye Girl, meh actor in crap movie.

Should have been: The Car, The Car. A much better actor with a much better range than Dreyfuss, since during The Car’s scenes, you could hardly tell he was a 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III, which is pretty impressive acting.

Hottest Actress: Marilyn Chambers, Rabid. The Ivory Snow™ girl grown way up. Way up.

1978

Best Picture: The Deer Hunter, a how-to video on how to win at high-stakes Asian gambling.

Should have been: National Lampoon’s Animal House. Animal House was unique, in that it was a comedy that had a plot, yet the comedy never overwhelmed the plot until the end, and the writers gave up.

Best Actor: John Voight, Coming Home. The world did not need this movie. I don’t have anything against Voight personally, since he’s never hit me up for that $20 I borrowed from him.

Should have been: Tommy Chong, Up in Smoke. It’s amazing what life a Shakespearean-trained actor at Julliard and former astrophysicist Tommy Chong can bring to a role. Or in this case a rolled joint.

Hottest Actress: Annie Potts, Corvette Summer. Another rough year, I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find Annie.

1979

Best Picture: Kramer vs. Kramer. Kramer vs. Kramer was used to normalize divorce to a public that still regarded it as skeevy. Plus? Boring. It would have been better if it were just Michael Richards from Seinfeld arguing with himself for two hours.

Should have been: Alien, Apocalypse Now, The Jerk, literally anything but Kramer vs. Kramer.

Best Actor: Dustin Hoffman, Kramer vs. Kramer. Watching Kramer vs. Kramer made me wish that I could ask Dustin “Is it safe?” for a few hours.

Should have been: Angus Scrimm, Phantasm. Being the Tall Man was an understated role, all he had to do was be evil while the evil dwarves and spike-spheres had to do all the hard work.

Hottest Actress: Bernadette Peters, The Jerk. It was her or Sigourney Weaver in Alien, so I went with cute over space underwear.

Movies got (generally) better and women got hotter as the decade went on. Still, a far weaker decade than we’ll see when (in November) we get to the 1980s where the women were hotter and the movies were better. Oscar®? He still missed most of the best movies and performances, since even though movies were better, the voters of The Academy™ were stuck getting high on their own supply. Your take?