Category: COVID

Predictions On The Supreme Court COVID Decision

“Did having a girl on the team ruin the Supreme Court?” – King of the Hill

Ginsburg used to steal food at diners.  They called her Booth Raider Ginsburg.

Normally, Wednesday is for topics related to the economy or money.  Given that tomorrow is a big day for the Supreme Court which will announce at least one mandate decision, I thought I’d break from the usual.

Several of the Supreme Court Justices showed that they have all of the cultural awareness of a Hollywood gerbil.  They utterly flunked Current Events.  Justice Grimace Elena Kagan seemed to think that “jabbed” people couldn’t give the ‘Rona to other people, even though the vax doesn’t stop people from getting COVID, and doesn’t stop people from spreading it.  Oops.

But Justice Kagan looked like a genius compared to blithering idiot, Elmer’s Glue® eating Sotomayor.  The “Wise Latina” has zero understanding of the difference the powers of a State and the powers of the Federal government.  Sotomayor also seemed to think that 100,000 kids were in the hospital with the ‘Rona, “many on ventilators.”

No.  Just over 3,000.  And that includes kids in the hospital with COVID, not necessarily because of COVID.

Breyer is fast at math.  He’s not right, but he’s fast.

Justice Skeletor Breyer, though, invented people to have cases.  He said there were 750,000,000 cases, causing our hospitals to fill up.  If correct, everyone in the country has at least two cases right now.  Some poor people would have to have three cases.  Thankfully, Breyer has a driver, or otherwise he wouldn’t be able to find his way home.

Yes.  This is the level of basic life competence that you get when you restrain Clarence Thomas from giving them the occasional sleeper hold and throwing Kagan over the top rope.  Let’s face it:  life would be better if he smashed a chair over Sotomayor’s head once in a while.  It wouldn’t increase her stupidity.

What does Clarence Thomas wear to work?  A lawsuit.

I tend to think the Supreme Court, especially Chief Justice Roberts, is compromised.  Are they told what to rule on every case?  No.  But on some?  Yeah, I think so.  But that might mean something different when it comes to the mandate.

Back in September when Biden first announced his mandate, I posted my take on the situation:  Biden’s Big Bluff (LINK).  I thought then that this was nothing more than a naked ploy to increase his popularity.  As Biden has spent the next five months becoming less popular than back acne, he still needs the mandate.

But now he needs it to lose.

I’m not sure that he ever thought it would have gotten this far.  I think he was (internally) jubilant when it was struck down and put on hold by the Circuit Court.  This is the politician’s best scenario:  “I tried to fix the problem but [INSERT GROUP HERE] won’t let me.”  The politician gets to show that he cared, “but, gosh darn it, our enemies just want to use baby rabbit tongues to lick envelopes for fascist junk mail.”

Losing on the mandate gives Biden the ultimate out.

At least if you have dementia, all of my jokes sound new.

What happens if the mandate is upheld?

  • The economy still is a mess.
  • A group of millions of people are now being forced to choose between having a vaccine that looks more and more to have the effectiveness against COVID of a voodoo spell (except it’s great, apparently, at causing heart inflammation) or to lose a job.
  • OSHA has been weaponized for future Republican use. Illegal aliens have higher rates of COVID or measles or mumps or the flu?  Verify them to make sure they’re legal, because it’s for health and safety.
  • If the adverse effects from the various “jabs” keep getting worse at the current rate? Biden owns it.

Lots of times politicians are like dogs chasing cars.  They love to make noise and run around, but have no idea what they’d do if they caught the car.  ANWAR in Alaska and abortion are two of those issues, and Biden has no idea what he’ll do if he catches this particular car.

Joe was in two states today – confusion and disorientation.

But what happens if the mandate is overturned?

  • The Supreme Court can be blamed, and then threatened with either packing the Court, or not allowing Clarence Thomas to lift weights and maintain his Thor-like physique.
  • The economy gets better and the labor shortage doesn’t get worse. COVID fizzles into irrelevance when omicron gives everyone immunity and the ‘Rona is “solved”.  Biden then claims it was his leadership that did that.
  • The Republicans can be blamed for being evil. Pressure to end the “undemocratic” filibuster will increase on the Left, so the Lefties can push through voting rights “reforms” that allow individual bacteria to vote.
  • Lefties run in the midterm election against the “regressive” Republicans. They still lose horrifically, but not quite as badly as the massacre that’s currently in the making.

As Yogi Berra said, “Prediction is hard, especially about the future.”  And, I didn’t say this was a great outcome for Biden.  In less than a year, Biden and his administration has managed to take a bad situation and make it worse in every single way, and this is just about all Biden has.

Of course, Thursday will tell if I’m right or not.  Whatever happens, don’t make Justice Thomas mad.  You won’t like him when he’s angry.

BLM Has Killed More Blacks Than Lynching Has

“It doesn’t matter who we are, what matters is our plan.” – The Dark Knight Rises

What’s the difference between protestors in Hong Kong and Minneapolis?  In Hong Kong they protested against censorship.

I have written before about the Marxist origin of Black Lives Matter®.  That doesn’t appear to bother the news media, Leftists, or the corporations that shovel money into it like they’re feeding a machine.  Yes, Black Lives Matter™ is a machine, but it’s not quite the machine that the liberal wine-aunts that listen to NPR© think it is.

But challenge Black Lives Matter© while working for a major corporation, even in good faith?  That’s going to shorten your career.

Zac Kriegman worked for Thompson/Reuters®.  “Worked for” is the proper tense.  Kriegman had a bachelor’s in economics topped with a law degree from Harvard® and was working for Thompson/Reuters© leading their efforts in artificial intelligence.  His pronoun is:  “Was.”

A friend go fired from a keyboard factory for not putting in enough shifts.

Then he posted an essay on the internal servers.  You can read it here (LINK).  What was the sin he got fired for?  Objecting to the bias he saw at Thompson/Reuters™ and then, worst of all, proving via statistics that Black Lives Matter© and the Thompson/Reuters© narrative was . . . a lie.  A longer version of Kriegman’s story can be found here (LINK).  Thanks to Ricky for both of those links.

The results are clear.  According to the Tuskegee Institute (who apparently are the official counters of such things) a total of 3, 446 black people were lynched between 1882 and 1968.  Based on Kriegman’s data, it’s entirely likely that Black Lives Matter’s™ focus on “defunding the police” along with the Ferguson and Minneapolis Effects, that Black Lives Matter© killed more blacks in three years than lynching ever did in 86 years.

It is clear that facts like these have to be suppressed.  That’s why Zac Kriegman was fired.  At Thompson/Reuters™, the Truth doesn’t matter – just adherence to the Narrative.

But . . . why?

The answer is that the real goal (regardless of the stated goal) of Black Lives Matter© has nothing to with making the lives of black people better.  This is obvious from one initiative alone:  defunding the police.

No, no I really don’t.

I am skeptical of all police.  I tend to think that many police officers will do as they’re told, no matter who tells them, and no matter what they tell them.  History has proven that most cops will go collect guns from lawful owners or round up people for the “vaxx” camps if they’re told to.  Don’t believe me?  Check out Australia.

But if I were a cop in the liberal utopias where Leftists have put a target on my back, I’d do the bare minimum, while looking for a job anywhere outside places where arrests are irrelevant because the Soros-funded DA has installed a revolving door on the jail.  Oddly, this is exactly the desired result.  Soros wants chaos on the streets, and has found that cops won’t arrest people that won’t go to prison.  Those people are then left on the street, where they keep committing crimes until they get bored enough to kill someone.

Combine the following ingredients:

  • inflamed rhetoric noting that no problem in the black community is the responsibility of blacks,
  • occasional “martyr” victims that are selected not because of their innocence, but because the story (Ferguson) or video (Minneapolis) of the incident makes people really mad,
  • aggressive ignoring of the reality documented in FBI statistics that black neighborhoods are amazingly violent places – 58% of all people murdered in 2020 in the U.S. were black, and 54% of people arrested for murder in 2020 in the U.S. . . . were black, and
  • a news media, Thompson/Reutersâ„¢ included, that is all-in on the propaganda and what do you get?

More death.

Arguing that having fewer cops in the areas where most of the murders are taking place will make things better isn’t magical thinking – it’s intentional murder.  Regardless of the reasons that black people are killing themselves – having fewer cops around won’t help the situation.

According to BLM™, that’s okay.  The goal of Black Lives Matter© obviously has nothing to do with helping actual black people.  What is it, then, that they’re up to?

The real goal of Black Lives Matter® is to create enough discontent and pain in the black community so that they’ll accept any solution.  Of course, the solution that the Left proposes is based on increased discipline, improving morality, focusing on keeping families intact, creating a culture of personal responsibility, and rigorous academic performance.

Ha!  Just kidding!  It’s literally the opposite of all of those things.  The current Leftist solution is like trying to help Charlie Sheen via giving him more porn stars and cocaine.

Charlie’s tested positive for everything except the ‘rona . . . .

And companies that support BLM© are complicit.  In the case of Thompson/Reuters© they reported uncritically on false claim that BLM™ made.  This, of course, provided oxygen for the fire.  Large companies then threw on bushels of cash, which provided more fuel.  The result?

Thousands of people, most of them black, who would now be alive except for Black Lives Matter™ are now dead.   These people had been utterly abandoned by their local politicians, media, and the large companies that earn Social Justice® points by pandering to those same NPR© liberal wine aunts.

The goal is simple:   to create an army of discontent people to increase violence and chaos.  It’s always easier to destroy than to build – and this idea is to destroy everything, leaving an America that’s hollowed out – a place with no center.  That’s what Leftists are good at.

Building and creating?  Not so much.

But at least black people don’t have to worry about lynching now.  They can just worry about how Black Lives Matter™ is going to “help” them next instead.

Currently Reading:  The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: January 6 Anniversary

“That shockwave created a subspace fracture.” – Sealab 2021

What’s more than step 9, but not quite to step 10?  This clock.

  1. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  2. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  3. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  4. Open War.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – January 6, The Anniversary – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Cracks Widen – 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 640 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

January 6, The Anniversary

January 6, 2021, a date that makes Leftist underwear uncomfortable.  After a year, we can certainly look back at what Joe Biden called, “The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

From Joe’s perspective, that certainly makes sense, since his view of democracy is his people counting the votes.  The gathered people there believed what a majority (56%!) of the American people believe:  the election was rigged.  How rigged?  That 56% of American people believe it was that fraud that led to Joe Biden having a Secret Service detail with spare diapers rather than a nursing staff at a rest home filled with nurses for him to try to grope.

How long can Joe Biden wait in line to vote?  That Depends®.

The news was breathless, and January 6 has been used as Leftist propaganda to try to drive people away from the Right.  The list of mainstream news accomplices is endless.  Anderson Cooper called it the “worst single act of political violence since the Civil War,” apparently having forgotten that an actual bomb was used in the building in 1971.  Oh, sorry, those were Leftists blowing things up, so it’s okay.

The numbers break out the way you might think:  65%+ of people on the Right think the coverage is overblown.  60% of people on the Left think there hasn’t been enough coverage.  Guess who runs the newspapers and media?

Despite damage being limited to “broken glass and busted doors” inside the Capitol building, the cost of “enhanced security measures” was added to bring the total cost of the “riot” up to $30,000,000.

But a riot?  Most of the protestors were unarmed, and hurt no one.  There were 15 cops sent to the hospital (though data is lacking) it appears none of the injuries were all that bad, and they only kept one overnight.  My third grade birthday party was more violent, but I’ll tell you, Grandma could take a punch.

Contrast that to this:  several of the Capitol Police were later admonished for taking selfies with the protestors, and seemed more amused than frightened.

Except for that one cop who shot an unarmed woman in the neck.  You know, the cop who was so competent that he left his pistol in a bathroom.

This was one Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone that Leftists didn’t like.

No, this wasn’t a “riot”, and the Capitol wasn’t “stormed.”  This was a protest of a stolen election.  Had this been a real riot, and had the Capitol really been stormed?  The protesters would have brought weapons, and the Capitol would have fallen that day.  The main reason that didn’t happen?  People didn’t want to take over the Capitol and hadn’t really thought of it.

The second reason that didn’t happen?  The FBI didn’t have enough time to recruit more people.  Yup – the FBI has admitted that they had informants in the crowd, and some people have gone on record that those same FBI informants were the ones opening doors and inviting people inside.

Now it has been a year, and the Left will attempt to use January 6, 2021 to further divide the nation and portray anyone to the Right of AOC as an extremist.

Violence And Censorship Update

The big news is from Twitter® this month, though it was a slow month in general:

Ghislaine Maxwell Trial

Something bothered Twitter™ about @TrackerTrial’s coverage of the Ghislaine Maxwell trial.  As I understand it, it was just updates from actual news inside the trial.  Result:  permanent ban.  @TrackerTrial didn’t ban itself . . . .

Not an original, but very funny.

The ‘Rona

Say what you will about COVID, it looks like the ‘Rona is also excellent at killing the truth.  There have been dozens of documented cases where the “official narrative” has had to be walked back because it was, well, a lie.  And people get banned for any information that is counter to the “official narrative” even (and perhaps especially) if it’s a lie.  Twitter© took out two folks this time:

Dr. Robert Malone, virologist and immunologist was banned.  Also?  Marjorie Taylor Greene, member of the House of Representatives (and not at all a virologist or immunologist).

I can’t speak to Ms. Greene’s ban, but I can talk (a bit) about the heresy of Dr. Malone.  One of his early transgressions was saying the spike protein might be dangerous.  Since the “all death” category is up about 40% this year according to insurance companies and healthy athletes are suffering heart attacks on the field, it looks like he just might be right.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence is up this month, but only slightly.  December isn’t (usually) a big month for violence, so that’s to be expected.  I would expect the next few months to remain calm as well, perhaps turning back up in March or April.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it ticked down this month for the first time in a while.  Deteriorating economic conditions could bring this up quickly.

Economic:

The drop in economic confidence continued this month.

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels for three months this year.  Now it’s just a record for this time of year, nearly triple last December.

The Cracks Widen

The last time the Pew® group did a study of how divided we are as a country was in 2017.  It was eye-opening, for me.  It showed that we as a nation were growing farther apart, faster.  The data went back to the early 1990s, and showed that we were splitting apart until 9/11.

For a time, 9/11 became a unifying story in the middle of a sea of polarization.  The country marched into multiple wars with (nearly) unanimous consent.  In the end, though, those wars just sapped the treasury and disillusioned nearly everyone.  The culmination of that wasn’t the execution of Osama Bin Laden, nope.  The culmination of that was our panicked withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Remember when they ran Idiocracy as a film, and not on CNN®?

We now have no unified measure of what it is to be an American.  If you talk to the Left, literally everyone has the right to what America is.  To them, a good American is someone on a benefits program and a predictable vote for the Left.  Language and culture not required.

What, even, does America stand for?  As I’ve written before, those in the Globalist camp (not exactly the same as Leftists, but they root for the same team) think that everything that’s legal defines what is moral.  Obviously, they’re not the same, but the Globalists work long and hard to get dollars – that is their only god.

Is that all that the United States is?  A franchise opportunity waiting to exploit every legal opportunity?

No.  It is not.

In part, though, our current crisis is a crisis not of will, but of vision.  There is no single thing that unites a country when members of the Left describe the flag of the United States as “frightening” and “hateful.”

I actually believe that there are a considerable number of people on the Left who are of good conscience and want to make the world better.  Oddly, though, it has been reproduced again and again that Leftists simply cannot stand people on the Right.

So, what does that leave us?

LINKS

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

Bad Guys!

PR: https://twitter.com/i/status/1469139447757299712

LA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahiIKFDkcHk

LA: https://youtu.be/p1ESzuENYdc

SF: https://twitter.com/i/status/1471202239272288258

??? : https://twitter.com/i/status/1469464813507997696

Chicago: https://youtu.be/9xJdJMrhgz8

Chicago: https://twitter.com/i/status/1468461553364062210

Seattle: https://twitter.com/i/status/1468346761756360706

Atlanta: https://twitter.com/i/status/1470225440132386816

Philly: https://twitter.com/i/status/1473434884962091008

Philly: https://twitter.com/i/status/1469846097807888386

 

Good Guy!!!

Ohio: https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1472924467806584836

 

One Guy…

Rittenhouse 1: https://youtu.be/bHAAA9gcso0

Rittenhouse 2: https://twitter.com/WhitlockJason/status/1471985787168301058

 

Body Counts…

https://abcnews.go.com/US/12-major-us-cities-top-annual-homicide-records/story?id=81466453

https://nypost.com/2021/12/09/beverly-hills-residents-arming-themselves-after-murder-violence/

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/fentanyl-overdoses-become-no-1-cause-of-death-among-us-adults-ages-18-45-a-national-emergency

 

Confused?

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/brian-williams-signs-off-the-11th-hour-for-the-final-time-warns-theyve-decided-to-burn-it-all-down-with-us-inside/

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/52-of-young-adults-surveyed-believe-us-democracy-in-trouble-or-failing-harvard-poll-finds

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/12/08/americans-need-conspiracy-theory-they-can-all-agree-on/

 

Polarize!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zNr8Pf1QkY

https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/fuck-trump/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r11tw1RwQk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I6VqX2O0KA

 

Vote For Change?

 

USA: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/report-southern-gop-states-have-highest-election-integrity

FL: https://uncoverdc.com/2021/12/06/records-reveal-nextera-subsidiary-execs-behind-election-fraud-scheme/

MI: https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/court-fight-over-dead-people-on-voter-lists-heats-up-in-michigan_4162130.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge

MI: https://www.wxyz.com/news/read-michigan-other-state-details-of-aps-review-of-potential-voter-fraud-cases

WI: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-wisconsin-purchase/

AZ: https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/14/az-state-rep-reads-dem-whistleblowers-letter-to-the-doj-about-2020-election-fraud-during-election-integrity-hearing/

NY: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/new-york-elections-government/ny-nyc-council-set-to-approve-local-voting-rights-for-noncitizens-20211207-rbt6a4da7rbwvn5lrycvbz3y34-story.html

NY: https://jonathanturley.org/2021/12/10/is-new-yorks-voting-rights-for-non-citizens-legal/

UT: https://www.deseret.com/utah/2021/12/8/22825120/claims-sowing-seeds-of-doubt-in-utah-election-integrity-destructive-utah-lt-gov-says-voter-fraud

 

Revolt??

MUST READ: https://www.revolver.news/2021/12/damning-new-details-massive-web-unindicted-operators-january-6/

MUST READ TOO: https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/nov/17/story-doesnt-confirm-trump-supporter-jan-6-riot-fb/

https://dnyuz.com/2021/12/04/fearing-a-repeat-of-jan-6-congress-eyes-changes-to-electoral-count-law/

https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1470044610588250112

https://www.newsweek.com/how-donald-trump-could-become-speaker-house-without-running-office-1657764

 

Civil War???

PoTAYto: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/tags/en/tag/boycotts

PoTAto: https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Untitled-design-70-.jpg?itok=Wkb6egwi

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/citizen-militias-in-the-u-s-are-moving-toward-more-violent-extremism/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/20/us-closer-to-civil-war-new-book-barbara-walter-trump-capitol-attack

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/were-edging-closer-to-civil-war/

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/retired-generals-urge-pentagon-to-take-steps-to-avert-civil-war-after-2024-election

Penultimate Day: The View From 2021

“Well, I simply observed, sir, that I’m felicitous since during the course of the penultimate solar sojourn, I terminated my uninterrupted categorization of the vocabulary of our post-Norman tongue.” – Blackadder The Third

I invented a time machine so I can view the Resurrection on TV – it’s amazing resolution: ADHD.

Penultimate Day.

This is the only unique Wilder Holiday that I know of. New Year’s Eve? That’s for tourists. It happens every year. It’s the last day of the year. But what about the next-to-last day of the year?

That’s Penultimate Day.

Penultimate Day started as a lark, maybe a decade ago.

The Mrs. decided that she didn’t like her Blackberry™ phone, and wanted to shop for a new phone. We did. The deals were all bad, so we didn’t buy a new phone. What then? We’d driven nearly 100 miles (the closest place to Modern Mayberry that sold phones then) and decided to . . . eat Italian food.

Driving 100 miles home, we made jokes about it, and Christened the day, Penultimate Day. The three tenets:

  1. Shop for a new cell phone (at Best Buy® is best),
  2. Don’t buy a new cell phone (you can decide to not purchase a cell phone nearly anywhere),
  3. Eat Italian food, namely at Olive Garden® (it’s close to Best Buy™). Since, when “You’re Here, You’re Family™” is their motto, I still wonder why they look weird at me when I take off my shoes and put on pajamas to eat with my shirt off.

Where did I go after eating all of those breadsticks? The hospitialiano.

Ta-da! You can celebrate, too! Well, at least you can celebrate next year, since my math shows that December 30, 2021, has (thankfully) perished from the annals of history.

Last year was lame. We were in the midst of (yet another) ‘Rona lockdown – 40 weeks to stop the spread, or something, so we stayed home. This year, though, it was time for a full and hearty observance of Penultimate Day. I arrived from home, ready to not purchase a cell phone.

Sadly, only Pugsley was ready to go. The Mrs. and The Boy claimed that they were deep in the clutches of some evil virus. Since Pugsley was patient zero, and I was in the midst of recovery, well, we let the weak decide the day. Here’s our scorecard:

  1. We didn’t shop for a new cell phone.
  2. We didn’t buy a new cell phone. Win!
  3. We ate Italian food. Win!

We ate Italian food because I made (with assistance) chicken Alfredo for dinner. Since everyone else old enough to drink was sick, it was up to me to drink the wine. I threw myself on that grenade for the family.

I had a real problem when I used a collie for gathering my sheep. I had 48, but he always brought back 50. He was bad about rounding up.

I’m a giver that way.

But what happened this year?

  1. Everybody was sick. Last year? Everywhere was closed. As simple as our task was, we failed it twice in a row.
  2. When we sent Pugsley to buy food for dinner, he reported that one supermarket was entirely out of pasta. Pasta is, well, one of the easiest things to make and distribute. Why is a national grocery store chain out of pasta?
  3. They had chicken. I cooked that, and The Mrs. pronounced it “dry.” She wasn’t being mean – she was being honest. Dry chicken isn’t due to a lack of moisture – dry chicken is due to a lack of fat. My bad. More butter next time. I thought that putting a stick under each of my armpits was enough. I’ll add more in 2022, though I’m unsure of which crevices to put it in.
  4. Pugsley said they were out of Alfredo sauce. Since that’s easier to make than adding water to ice, I gave him the ingredients to make it from scratch. Oops! They had Alfredo sauce. Just the wrong aisle.

The most disturbing thing Pugsley said was this: “It’s weird. It was like there was nothing in the store. Most of the shelves were bare.” Since The Mrs. had just complained, “Why do you tell them to buy more things, our pantry is so full we can hardly buy anything at all,” I smiled. When she said, “And you’ve infected them. When I ask them to buy one, of anything, they buy three.”

I smiled so hard my face ached.

Being a skeleton is nice – nothing gets under his skin.

I will probably go to the store in the next few days. That will be the first time in months. Not because of the ‘Rona, mind you, but because I really hate going to the store because there are people there. I’ll give a look to see what is missing, or what has gone up in price.

But it’s been two years since we’ve properly celebrated Penultimate Day. Before The Boy graduates from college, we have only one more. I’m not thinking that he’ll often decide to come home so we can travel and not purchase cell phones and then eat Italian food. So, we have just one more year where it’s the four of us.

The only hobbit I met was a jerk, a real douchebaggins.

This is the last post I’ll make this year, and even in the 10 years that we’ve been celebrating Penultimate Day I’ve seen very big differences to our lives – Penultimate Day used to be a lark, but now it’s a time to look back. In the failure of this Penultimate Day, I’m wondering – what does it mean? How have we as a nation changed in the last decade? Do we even still like Italian food?

  • Our nation has split apart farther than I ever thought it could go. There is rarely anything either side can agree on, except that they find the other side awful poopy heads.
  • The economy is even more poised for collapse. As it is, I think we’re riding a razor’s edge, where on either side is a collapse in prosperity that will last generations.
  • Alec Baldwin has finally made good on his promise to kill again.
  • The punchline to a joke since at least 1988 (really, look it up) inhabits the Oval Office despite a (legitimate) doubt that he was elected legally. The Left responds as they always do – by doubling down and declaring him the “most” legitimate President in our history.
  • We went from energy dependent to energy independent to energy dependent (and in crisis) in four years.
  • As far as I can tell, yes, everyone still likes Italian food.

We face a very unique crisis – one of cohesion, one of leadership, one of economic collapse. All at the same time. What will happen?

When I was a little kid, my dad made pasta when I was scared – to show me there was nothing to be Alfredo.

Who can know. All I know is that the Alfredo was pretty good tonight. And each day that my family spends together is special, and I cherish each one of those days. I have right now, so I will enjoy it.

As Marcus Aurelius said: “The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.”

Today I’ll focus and value those things I can control. And when I look at that? Penultimate Day 2021 wasn’t so bad after all. Happy New Year to all.

Predictions 2022: The Funniest Predictions You’ll See This Year

 

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

Hitmen sometimes make people tense.  Past tense.

Thankfully, by next week 2021 will be in the rear view mirror.  I’m hoping that 2022 will be better for everyone, but remember, when you say it, it sounds like 2020, too, so there is a chance that it will deteriorate faster into an incomprehensible disaster faster than a Joe Biden speech or a Hunter Biden crack weekend.  That being said, I managed to pull out the patented Wildervision™ Chronovisor 2000©, and have the following predictions for 2022.  Enjoy!

January

The big event will be the Supreme Court reviewing Joe Biden’s Federal mandates for “jabbing” people so that they can keep their jobs.  My prediction is this:  The Supreme Court (which is just regular court but with sour cream and tomatoes) will vote to uphold the mandate.  Here’s why:

All of the Leftist Supreme Court members plus John Roberts are all in favor of man-dates.  Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor have not had man-dates in years, and are really aching for them and hope they are “hot.”  John Roberts approves of man-dates on principle, because, “love is love, or at least that’s how the NSA® tells me to vote.”

I suck at playing the trumpet, which is probably why.

The surprise swing vote will be Justice Amy Coney Island Barrett Browning.  She will twist her hair and indicate that, you know, with all of the lonely nights at the Supreme Court, “well, a Justice has needs, needs mind you for a man-date.”

In a surprise move, Justice Clarence Thomas will assume his final form (The Thomas-Hulk) and throw the man-date approving justices into an orbit where they come close to touching the Sun.  It’s really cool.  His robes split open and everything.

The orbiting Justices will still not be as hot as Dead Justice Ginsburg, who still can’t get the sulfur smell out of her robes.  The Justices will return and try to form The Justice League©, but be sued by Warner Brothers®.

February

The groundhog in Minsk will see his shadow, which means that it will only be six weeks of offensive required for the Russians to take over the tasty bits of Ukraine that they want.  When confronted by NATO, Vladimir Putin replies, “Oh, Crimea river,” while riding a bear equipped with hypersonic nuclear missiles through a forest on his way to invent a sport-utility vehicle made from combining a T-72 tank undercarriage combined with a Holiday Inn Express®, which used 458 gallons of diesel per mile.

When all you have is 45,000 tanks, every problem looks like a problem a tank would solve.  Which is (honestly) almost every problem, ever.

Also, Bill Belichick’s Tom Brady Clone© defeats Tom Brady in Superbowl LVII™.  Belichick’s postgame comments are short, merely noting that he has seven thousand Tom Brady clones and is planning on living forever in a volcanic island somewhere in the Pacific with seven thousand hot, sweaty Tom Brady clones.

March

COVID variant “eeny, meeny, miny, moe” appears in Australia.  As there were no tigers available, there are no infections.  Australian lawmakers are incensed, as they had planned to charge all “unjabbed” infected $50 (Australian dollars) every day when they put them into concentration leisure camps.  As $50 Australian is only enough for one Chicken McNugget™, it is estimated that the lack of tigers cost Australia up to seven Happy Meals®.

The Australians kidnap Harvard™ students to fill the concentration leisure camps, having them fight off against vegetarian Cross-Fit™ enthusiasts every week in cage matches to see who is the most annoying.

Reprinted with permission.

Also:  Russia increases natural gas prices to France.  France surrenders.  Russia fails to accept surrender, noting the number of berets, cigarettes, and baguettes of bread required could not be supported by the Soviet Russian economy and that they cannot make as many burkas as are required by France.

April

The Sun emits the largest solar flare since the 1859 Carrington Event, but damage is focused around Detroit and Chicago in the American Midwest.  The event destroys the electrical grid and moves both Detroit and Chicago into Stone Age conditions.  It is estimated that the Stone Age conditions are so much better than what was there, that over $15 billion in improvements have been made.

May

Bill Gates declares, “The War on COVID is over!  We have defeated the dread ‘Rona!”  The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation© announces it has a new focus, getting Bill hot girlfriends in their early twenties.  The new plan is The Gates’ Dates Initiative™.

Bill happily announces it, “If you don’t offer up your attractive daughters to me, remember:  I have been working on smallpox and anthrax and lots of other diseases that end in ‘x’ and can ruin you all!”  Jeff Bezos announces that he is “all-in” providing that Gates will allow the tandem initiative, “Bimbos for Bezos®”.

How can you tell Gates released COVID?  Just like Windows®, every month there’s an updated version that installs itself automatically without your permission.

Both Gates and Bezos are proud to announce that they have hired O.J. Simpson as their security coordinator, noting that “O.J. will allegedly take a stab at any problem we have.”

June

The Federal Reserve™ announces that inflation of more than 20% per month is “mostly solved” and that they plan to stop printing money and giving it to banks “just as soon as we run out our intense desire for piles of cocaine and attractive hookers.”

My name is Jerome Powell.  Say hello to my little friend, infinite money printing.

Donald Trump emerges from Florida to note, “My vaccine is the best vaccine.  I bathe in it.  Those who have avoided it?  Sad.  Sometimes, when I’m bored?  I inject it into my eyes.  And I have the best eyesight.  Perfect.”

Also, it’s “blah blah blah, Black Lives Matter© riots, billions in damage, hundreds dead, for some reason everyone but Black Lives Matter® people are to blame” season.

July

Joe Biden has regressed to the point where coherent speech now eludes him.  “Jo-jo gotta go-go now anna maka doodie INNNA SINK,” “ICE CREAM YABBA,” and “The need to increase illegal immigrants and social program spending” are now the topics of his increasingly deranged addresses to the American people.

Kamala Harris responds, “Ha ha ha!  You know (ha) Joe!  He’s (ha) always being (ha) Joe!”  An ABC News© poll places Biden in a heated competition with houseplants and ice cubes for “most coherent political speech” of 2022.

August

Crowds of Pfizer®-jabbed Americans now have been reported to have developed, “An insatiable appetite for human blood – the untainted blood of those not exposed to the COVID jabs.”  Anthony Fauci insists, “This is a completely normal side effect.  You expect people whose DNA has been modified by a largely untested agent to want to drink massive amounts of human blood in a vain attempt to make themselves normal again.  Which is, normal.  Wear a mask or six.”

Not mine.  I’m sad they didn’t mention vampirism.

Other noted and “completely expected” side effects of the “jab”, according to Fauci, include:  death, inability to cast a reflection in a mirror, extreme intolerance of sunshine, and the ability to turn into a Wuhan bat and fly large distances.  The unvaccinated are apparently to blame.

September

Skipped.  I’m pretty sure the United Nations outlaws it or something.

October

The Harvest Moon is upon ye!  Beware!  The veil between this world and the next is thinnest here.  There are times when ye cannot ken the vast forces that an uncaring cosmos has coalesced into beings that exist in the deep and dark space beyond the stars, where even light cannae go!

These beings walk, caring only in your obedience and worship as their corrupted thoughts infect all of spacetime and begin to slowly chip away at your everyday reality, making you doubt in your very sanity.  They seek only the vast amounts of power that they can siphon from your suffering, and would gladly make your existence from here to the last energy available in the universe is spent one of agony that they can feed on.

H.P. Lovecraft wrote a cookbook, the Necronomnomnomicon.

Also, it’s October so make sure you change out your smoke detector batteries and don’t forget to go see the latest Disney® movies!

November

The Democrats lose all of their seats in the House of Representatives (except for the seats from California and New York City) as their mid-term strategy of “Appease the Great Horrific Beasts from Beyond the Cosmos Through Your Eternal Suffering” strategy (mostly) backfires.  Nancy Pelosi is outed as a trans-dimensional demon that sucks the souls of the unborn for immortal life, and gains three points in her latest election.

Democrats claim that they will pass laws so that psychics will be allowed to fill in ballots for “people who thought about voting but were too lazy to actually vote,” because “every thought about voting matters.”

December

December is filled with surprises:

  • Elon Musk announces he has created a time machine. His stated goal is to use it to go back and, “nail Farrah Fawcett when she was really hot.  And alive.  Or at least really hot.”

Yeah, I know, this joke has been done to death.

  • Wilder, Wealthy and Wise© author John Wilder is Time Magazine’s® Man of the Year for being so very awesome, funny, and predicting the “whole vaccinated are now vampires that can only be killed by making them sign up for time-share condominiums” plague.
  • Donald Trump begins selling time-share condominiums, noting, “these are the best condominiums ever. You’re sure it kills them, you know, the vampires, right?”  No one reminds him Trump is a vampire.  Trump buys six condominiums, after asking Musk if can do anything about Natalie Wood.
  • China announces that their relationship with Taiwan is over. “You know Taiwan, it wasn’t you, it was me.  Cheer up.  I’m sure you’ll find someone.  There are lots of great hegemonies out there.”
  • Justice Clarence Hulk-Thomas begins his Justice Tour, and announces, “If I come down your chimney, you’d better pray.”
  • Hollywood announces that they are ready to make the first biopic of Joe Biden, “Ima maka dudie,” starring Ron Perlman as Biden.

Christmas – It’s Not About The Money

“It’s not the money, it’s just all the stuff.” – The Jerk

What do Musk and Edison have in common? They both got rich off of Tesla.

Wednesday is normally a day where we talk about wealth, economics, money, currency, and the state of the economy. But, it’s nearly Christmas, so I thought I’d take this time to give a different take on wealth. And no, it’s not Joe Biden appearing in a Marvel® movie where his superpower is to make vast amounts of wealth disappear, because he can do that on, oh, every Tuesday.

Don’t get me wrong. I love prices. Prices are a great way to allocate things in such a way that the most people win. I have my pile of cash and get to buy (within that limit) the things that make me the most happy. Does everyone want a really cool sports car? No, some people don’t want them at all.

Personally, I’d love to have a cool sports car, but I’d much rather not have a mortgage. So, I make choices. And then cry silently in my pillow at night because I’m dead inside because I decided I didn’t get that Mustang®.

Othello always would visit Sauron through the Moor Door.

Regardless, choices mean that I’m in control. I mean, if I chose to study theology and then move to Colorado after I graduated? My choices mean I could become a high priest. I am free to choose and try to optimize my life based on my resources, talents, and luck.

Combine that with a system of (more or less) private property, and the system allows for the sum of millions of individual actions as people try to maximize their happiness. This provides incentives to work to buy steak. Or starve. But owning property provides incentives to create wealth. So, in striving to get enough money to buy a Lambo® and a vapid trophy wife in a functional economy, a businessman works to create the most joy for his customers.

Boom. People who have never met, and will never meet, work together to create a complex economy. This economy translates information based on prices, and is fueled by incentives, and private property.

And yet . . .

What’s the fastest thing in the universe? Nic Cage accepting a movie role.

As much as I love this system, I have to mention again, this system exists to serve men. It does not exist for men to serve it. There is a richer experience of life than only the pursuit of profit.

Also, this system is one that optimizes without regard to morality or virtue. On more than one occasion I have heard a Wall Street billionaire exclaim, “this isn’t Boy (or Boy-Girl, or Trans, in 2021, I guess) Scouts®.”

That was a direct rejection of morality and virtue.

The result of that type of thinking?

If it’s legal and can pull money out of someone’s pocket, Wall Street will do it. If heroin were legal for sale, Wall Street would be looking to invest in the e-Heroin® mobile App. They’d sell underage . . . well, you get the picture. Heck, Wall Street would sell ghosts as supernatural slaves if they thought it wouldn’t come back to haunt them.

When money is their god, they will do anything to get it. Wall Street will do anything legal. The black market, we know, will do anything illegal, as long as they get paid. Wall Street and the black market have essentially the same morals. And, like Satan, Wall Street just has better lawyers and lobbyists.

If there is a fault in the system, that is it.

I hear Charlie Brown was suspended from school. Some kid was allergic to Peanuts™.

And Christmas is one of the best times to point that out. Christmas is a holiday that has been morphed over time into one that, if we were to go by commercials alone, was based only on the mass consumption of stuff.

I won’t go into the deep history of Christmas. It’s long and more complicated than the math that Nancy Pelosi uses to charge her vodka back to taxpayers. But the short version is that the Winter Solstice was a great place to put a festival if you were going to convince the Germans and the Vikings that this new Christianity thing would work out okay for them. To make it work, Christmas had to be a party.

And it was. And it is. Over time, though, the party aspect of Christmas changed to a focus on family and generosity, which seems to be well matched to the holiday’s stated purpose. The meaning of Christmas then, is giving, not getting.

Certainly, there’s a certain magic in the eyes of a young child being surprised when the gifts under the tree far exceed anything she could imagine. The delight in a boy’s eyes when he sees the BB gun that will probably shoot his eye out?

Priceless.

I pitched a movie to Alec. He shot it down.

That’s the magic of the giving. The Mrs. and I, however, are old enough that we like the peace and family aspect of Christmas far more than the “stuff” aspect. I’ve given her the same gift for Christmas for the last five years (hint: it’s expensive scotch). She enjoys it. The Mrs. generally gets me something small. I like the keychain fob that she got me a year ago, “Be careful, handsome, I love you” better than something large, or an expensive scotch I won’t drink because it’s too expensive.

This year, The Boy and Pugsley have also (I think!) surpassed the greed aspect of Christmas. It’s not so much about the gifts they get. Heck, it’s not so much about the gifts they give, either. It’s about waking up on Christmas Eve, getting together and sharing the few gifts we have for each other, having a nice dinner, and then . . . relaxing together.

Together. And for me, that’s the biggest gift.

It’s that spirit that makes me look forward to Christmas. We’ve long been a “Christmas Eve” gift giving family, because it defuses the emotions associated with gift giving and leads to a very quiet and family-based Christmas Day. Plus no one wants to get up early if the presents are all already opened.

That’s the opposite, really, of the advertising that pelts us on a regular basis. The ads are all based on more and bigger. Time to give your loved one a $75,473 car with a big red bow, because nothing says love more than massive consumption.

Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. It’s a Christmas Eve movie.

Just like in most of our lives, we have choices. We can live the choice and have the Christmas that the media wants to sell us which is a holiday based almost entirely on creating the most economic activity possible.

Or? We can enjoy our family, and choose to place emphasis on giving, and choose to understand that the Nativity itself was the greatest gift that could be given. Even if you aren’t a Christian, understanding the promise of redemption in that gift of a child to mankind is one of supreme optimism.

That optimism is based firmly not in economics, since it promises exactly zero economic prosperity. No, this gift is not money – it was a gift based on virtue and morality.

I love prices, and incentives, and the creation of wealth. But there are things that are more important than money. You know, things like all the stuff . . . .

A Day Trip To Another America

“The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.” – Star Wars®, A New Hope

Well, at least they’re admitting it . . . (None of the memes today are originals – they are “as-found” on the Internet)

Pugsley is an athlete, and that causes us to have to go to places to see him engage in his sport (elk milking) across the state, and sometimes across state lines.  These are, for the most part, the only trips of any significance that we have taken in the last two years.  Pugsley, sadly, is old enough that I can’t skip the trip with him on his sports jaunts since he no longer buys my excuse.

What’s my excuse?  I’m adopted.  So, I tell him, “I can’t go because my parents won’t sign the permission slip.”  He doesn’t even giggle at that.  He’s got a cold heart.

Here in Modern Mayberry, masks have essentially disappeared from all public life.  The only place that might still require them is the local hospital, and thankfully I have no idea if they do or not.  We ate brunch today and, although many of the patrons at the restaurant were older folks, there wasn’t a single mask to be seen.  These are country folk.  They’re more afraid of bad weather for the crops than they are of a virus, and they feel that they can control the virus about as much as they can control the weather.

Everywhere our family has been across the state, it looks and feels like the same.   It looks a lot like the elk-milking competitions I went to when The Boy (Pugsley’s older brother) was in high school.  This was back before the Great Plague Of Overblown Impact hit us.  There are no masks, and people just behave like . . . well, nothing ever happened.

Late 2021 looks exactly like 2019 in my daily life.  We even shake hands when we meet people and we don’t act like we’ve just dipped our hands in some sort of biohazard, or have touched AOC’s teeth.  But I repeat myself.

The elk milking competition went well.  There were hundreds of people all inside for a day.  I coughed once, I think (nacho went down the wrong hole, and no, I’m not going to make that a joke about my nacho hole) and no one bothered to even look.  Here in Midwestia, we’re over it.  We’re not afraid.

We don’t care anymore.

Or, at least I thought.

The Boy has been off at college.  As finals were over, and Pugsley’s elk milking competition was near his college, The Boy came on to cheer his brother on.  Those elk milking siphons sure make a guy’s wrists tired.  After the competition was over, we decided to go and grab some food.  As we have exactly six restaurants in our usual rotation in Modern Mayberry, eating somewhere new is a treat.

The Boy asked his friends about good restaurants near where we were.

They were all in . . . Blue City.  Every Red State has a Blue City, where nose rings and “meat is murder” t-shirts outsell gasoline and beef jerky.  The friends came up with three names.  Two were burger joints, and the third was a Japanese place.

I’ll admit I was interested in eating Japanese.  At first, I had some pretty big resistance, until I explained it wasn’t Japanese people that we were going to eat, but Japanese food.  Then everyone agreed.  I guess it’s a matter of taste?

Huh, that’s a specific list . . .

We got to Blue City.  Pugsley, fresh off of his second-place elk milking victory, was driving.

The first thing I noted was this:  in Modern Mayberry, if I want to go to a place, I can park near it.  In Blue City, in order to get to the Not At All Cannibal Where You Eat Japanese People Restaurant, we had to park over a quarter-mile away.

Honestly, the walk didn’t hurt me.  Nor did feeding the parking meter $1.50 to park to not eat Japanese people.  Nor did walking through the faceless, anonymous crowd.  But it wasn’t a pleasant walk.  It felt like walking in a street from some sort of dystopian movie, like Bladerunner®, filled with people who hordes of people I didn’t know or and who didn’t care about me on crowded streets.  It was like being in my house in the morning before anyone had any coffee.

Thankfully I didn’t have to fashion a cloak out of an abandoned tarp.  Or did I?

I came to a store that I wanted to go into.  I was about to open the door when I noticed the laminated sign on the clear glass door:  “No entrance without masks.  If you wish to purchase our products but don’t want to wear a mask, feel free to visit us on the Internet.”  The Mrs. quite succinctly mentioned where she thought they could stick their Internet, but I wondered if it would be uncomfortable for them to have so much CNN® up in that dark, moist place.  We left them in peace, and I hope they have a lot of dark, moist success.

We kept walking to the Restaurant That Definitely Doesn’t Serve Asian People As Food Because Of That Health Inspection, the foot traffic was continuous.  Many people were masked, though not all.  Finally, we got to our destination.  On the door was another sign, just like the first store, though they didn’t offer to ship cooked people over the Internet.

This immediately caught the ire of The Mrs., and since she’s at least a bit Irish, you don’t want to get the ire of an Irish lass too Irish.  Or something.  Let’s just say that she can have a bit of a temper that makes Belfast in 1972 look like a Care Bears® movie.  I looked inside the restaurant, though, and there were plenty of people not wearing masks.

They were mostly all eating, but they weren’t wearing masks.  Apparently, the virus doesn’t travel when you’re sitting and eating, only when you’re standing and ignoring the duct-tape crosses on the floor in the line.  When we first entered the restaurant, there was another person not eating and not wearing a mask.  Since he could get away with it, I figured we could, too.  As he was a people of color, I would have a jolly fun time making a YouTube® show if they kicked us out, and not him.

They ignored that we were unmasked heretics and were pleasant and served us.

Hey, that’s Internet me!

The restaurant really didn’t serve Japanese food, just ramen.  It was expensive ramen, since ramen with steak in it cost $14.50 a bowl.  They took our order, and we waited at our table.

We got the oddly shaped (14 inches wide and eight-foot long) table near the front.  The chairs were weirdly high and the restaurant smelled of . . . farts.  Really.  The ramen, though, was excellent.  Mine was filled with steak and mushrooms and was unexpectedly (and subtly) spicy.

I generally get the chair so I can see the entrance – The Mrs. is used to it.  We had gotten to the restaurant right before the rush – patrons that came in right after us were told that they could get a text when a table was available.  In Modern Mayberry, you can walk into the best restaurant in town and (generally) have no more than a zero-minute wait.  And a quarter block is a long walk to it.

But it wasn’t that which bothered me the most.

What I noticed were the patrons coming into the restaurant.  They all wore masks, even the young children.  I understand that there is both a logical and a scientific case to be made that masks do help stop disease spread.  And nearly every person in the restaurant was at zero risk of serious complications from the ‘Rona.  The children were at zero risk.  Heck, I was nearly the oldest guy in there.

As everyone in the Wilder fam has had the ‘Rona, my fear level was zero.

Oh, money can’t buy love, but it can buy fear.

But what I saw wasn’t so much fear or even altruism in wearing the masks.  What I saw was subjugation in its nearly universal compliance.  Would I have put on a mask to eat a Japanese person bowl of ramen?  No.  I wouldn’t put on a mask to eat a nice steak bathed in PEZ® with Johnny Depp as he drank Amber Heard’s tears.

After dinner, I was struck by the differences in attitude between Blue City and Modern Mayberry.  I felt fear in Blue City that I never feel around here.  It’s not that the ‘Rona is done here – there are still 50 or so cases a week in the county.  But I get the sense that residents here are just done caring about it.

Of the people who have died in our county, I know exactly zero of them.  Zero.  And I know a lot of people around here.  As mentioned before, I’ve had some variation of COVID, as have The Mrs., Pugsley and The Boy.  From the data I’ve seen, that makes us functionally immune in a way better than (insert jab booster number here) can never achieve.  The virus itself will hopefully have zero additional physical impact on the Family Wilder.

Oh, wait.  They’re not done yet?

But what impact will baseless fear have on our lives?  Right now there is a threat that if we:

  • don’t take an mRNA shot that doesn’t work,
  • we won’t be able to work because we might be able to transmit a disease that we can’t get,
  • but that those who get the mRNA jab can get.
  • And those who get “jab” can also transmit.

Fear is the source of most Evil things that have plagued (intended) mankind.  At this point, the biggest shortage we have is a shortage of courage.  Stand strong.  I won’t suggest that you do or don’t do anything, but for me, the mRNA shot and its infinite number of iterations is a step too far.

What If The Mess . . . Is All Planned?

“There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress in this period in history.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Think you’ve had a great morning?  Every day Joe wakes up and someone gets to explain to him that he’s the president.

Peter Grant over at Bayou Renaissance Man (LINK – if you’re not going there regularly, you’re missing out!) mentioned a quote from Monday’s post (The Winds Of War?):

The idea is simple – warfare encompasses absolutely every facet of the life of the enemy.  Destabilize the government.  Force their economy into chaos.  Starve them.  Own their communications systems.  In other words, it’s just like a Biden presidency.

When I write these posts, there are generally multiple edits.  First, I do a draft.  Then I go through and edit that.  Then I go through and use hammer, tongs, spackle and a welder to fill the post with jokes.  The last bit I do is to go to work in the meme forge and sweat and pound and make (mostly) new and original memes.

If your only tool is a meme, every problem looks like a grumpy cat.

In this case, I wrote the Biden line in the first edit.  I was trying to be a bit cheeky, but it just fit so well.  When Mr. Grant noticed that line . . . I thought about it even more.

What happens when your government is making war on you?

Seriously – if a foreign government would try to:

  • destabilize our currency (not money, currency) through massively printing it,
  • produce and disseminate propaganda to further polarize the citizens,
  • import millions of people with no ties to the country and no understanding of its governmental systems,
  • work through an admitted conspiracy encompassing virtually all media(traditional and social as well as search engines), corporations, state and to make sure the vote produced the “correct” winner,
  • make yet more Marvel movies,
  • effectively purge from the military all senior officers who don’t follow the correct ideology, and
  • create a culture of dependency on government programs,

we would say that was an act of war, or a copy of the secret Disney® business plan.

Sure, Donald Duck can walk around Disneyland© without pants and he’s beloved.  I do it, and I’m “banned for life.”

From an economic standpoint, one goal appears to be:  destroy the middle class and destroy small independent business owners.

Why?

Large businesses can be easily converged into following the Narrative with little actual damage in most cases.  Need examples?

  • Gillette® attacks traditional masculinity. It’s still in business.  It doesn’t want my business, and doesn’t care.  It’s doing fine financially.
  • Coke™ reportedly provided access to training that told employees to “be less white” and its stock is up about 20% since that came out, despite my personal boycott.

That’s two.  There are countless others.  If you look at the major companies that financially support the radical Marxist organization Black Lives Matter©, they are overflowing with cash.  They are free to take whatever political positions they want, as long as those positions are Leftist.  Just ask Ben & Jerry’s®, which is a Leftist political organization masquerading as an ice cream company.  I guess communists have finally fed someone.

I met a French guy – what a coward.  He kept asking for “mercy” . . .

Big Businesses love Big Government.  They love the huge shield that regulations bring – the more regulations, the fewer competitors they face.  And, if you’re lucky like me, OSHA names a new safety regulation after you.

Big Businesses also don’t care what consumers think, because most consumers are mad for a week or a month and then forget.  Me?  I haven’t bought Levi® jeans since 2002 or so when they went full anti-Second Amendment.  I guess I’m stubborn.  Must be in my jeans.

Big Business also doesn’t really care about inflation.  So what if a dollar is worth less?  Their job isn’t to sit on piles of cash, their job is to create cash flowing through the business, while keeping some of the cash for themselves.  Because the cash is flowing through, it doesn’t matter much if that cash is becoming less valuable every day, they’ll just make more cash and use it immediately to buy more raw materials.

Hunter wanted to be the Secretary of Energy until he found out it wasn’t pipes and lines.

Destabilization of the economy through inflation, though, is good if you want to create more government power.  Another way to create more power is to make sure people are polarized.  That means that they can’t come together to demand freedom.

Increasing poverty is a good one, too.  Having people become poor makes them slaves to the government, and afraid to speak up at injustice.  Microsoft® may choose to support Black Lives Matter™, but individuals can be fired for criticizing it on their own time even when not connecting that criticism to their employer.

Is it government suppression of speech?  No, why would they bother when private businesses will do it for them.  The effect, though, is the same.

At least he’s not French Vanilla Ice.

Is it too far to call it warfare against the Right?  It’s more than that – it’s a war against every aspect of American culture and the basis of what made that great – Western Civilization.  The statues are coming down not because the Left hates slavery or “colonialism”, the statues are coming down because they want to erase the history of America so that they can rewrite it to fit.

Looking into what that means to wealth for individuals, let’s extrapolate what we know:

The United States government for over 100 years had gold and silver as money for a very special reason – gold and silver meant stability for the money of a country.  You either have gold or you don’t.  You can’t print more.  Could you manipulate it?  Sure, but it was certainly harder than running a printing press.

When FDR (press S to spit) took from American citizens the right to own gold, he was effectively robbing them.  He bought gold from them at $20.67.  A year later, he revalued the dollar to $35 dollars to the ounce of gold.  It now took $1.69 to buy what a dollar did before Roosevelt’s heist.

“For example, the free circulation of gold coins is unnecessary, leads to hoarding, and tends to a possible weakening of national financial structures in times of emergency,” was what that philandering monster said to excuse the theft.  Me?  After I read that, I was glad he was in a wheelchair.

Fun fact:  he never ran for office.

But the pattern is there:  if the Left wants something you have, they will take it.  Will they confiscate gold in the future?  I don’t know.  I tend to think not, unless it’s just for spite.  In this case, they’ll inflate the currency, and lend freely to Big Businesses and Big Banks so that they can acquire houses and land and every asset with cheap, borrowed dollars.  Why steal the gold when they can make people so impoverished that they sell it?

After the elite have bought all the stuff they want?

Inflate again if they missed something.  Will they lose control and end up in hyperinflation?

Probably not, unless they want to.  But realize that almost every person reading this doesn’t have a seat at the table, and the game is certainly rigged.  We knew that.

But what happens when a government declares economic war against its own people?

Energy in 2022? I Hope So . . .

“No, Jonny. It consumes them. It eats energy – sunlight, electricity, the energy in a living body – anything it can get.” – Jonny Quest

I went into a room with a negative person in it, and then there were no people in it.

Energy is freedom.

Energy allows one person to do the work of hundreds or thousands.  I sit here typing this in Stately Wilder Mansion, it’s near freezing outside, yet a nice and toasty 61°F (43 and 2/3°kiloPEZ®) inside due to natural gas piped directly to my heater.  I like it cold in the house, just like my heart.

My computer is running, the television is running, and because I am apparently the only person in the house who knows how to use a light switch, at least 32 lights are on in the house are on.  It’s winter, so a light left on is (at worst) a little inefficient heater, so all is not lost.  I will tell you that when I die, though, I will walk to the light.  And turn it off.

Our energy costs aren’t all that high in winter, especially since I can keep warm by rubbing my thighs together like a cricket.  I go and fill my gas tank about every two months, so gasoline isn’t even that much of an issue.  When your commute is four miles a day (two miles each way) and takes four minutes (if I get caught at the one traffic light), well, it’s hard to use a lot of gas unless I pour it all over the truck and ignite it to look like a cool meteor while I’m driving.  Again.

But energy is freedom.

I started bench pressing again.  That’s a huge weight off my chest.

When energy prices are low around the globe, freedom increases.  As I’ve discussed in previous posts, high energy costs act like a tax on nearly all physical goods.  Sure, it won’t make the cost of a Kindle® e-book go up much, but it will increase the cost of a physical book – that has to be manufactured using energy, moved using energy, and delivered using energy.

So, what’s up?  Why are prices where they are?  Where are prices going?

I’ll start with “what’s up?”

We can’t create additional energy just by turning a knob:  the process is a bit more complicated than one of Joe Biden’s coloring books.

Let’s take oil.  In the 1930s, oil in Texas was so plentiful that it crashed the price.  Pools of the stuff would show up if you stuck a McDonalds straw too deep into the ground in East Texas.  Oil was so plentiful that people could barely tell the difference between water and gasoline.  Of course, in Flint, Michigan, you can get the gasoline unleaded.

I hear their swimmers are always in the lead.

What happened then is the Texas Railroad Commission decided it was in charge, and it limited the amount of oil that could be produced.  It was OPEC® before OPEC™ was even thought of – their idea was to stabilize the price of a seemingly limitless resource.

It worked.

But the era of oil abundance in the United States ended in 1973, and the Texas Railroad Commission (which still exists but no longer regulates railroads, seriously) ended allocations.  Texas could no longer control the price of oil in the United States by restricting sales.  The hunt for the next big oilfield was on.

We had then to hunt for oil in more and more distant places.

  • Alaska.
  • The Middle East.
  • Deepwater offshore.
  • Johnny Depp’s hair.

Also?  When exposed to pollen, bees develop hives.

Then we hit the jackpot – fracking.  Fracked oil is different than conventional crude.  It’s hidden in tight rocks that aren’t as porous.  That’s where the fracking comes in – the rock has to be fractured to let the oil out.  To keep the cracks open, high-pressure water and sand (and chemicals) are forced into the cracks.  The grains of sand remain and keep the cracks open.  There are so many jokes I’m not going to do here.

When this process started, it was inefficient.  But smart people spending billions of dollars will tend to make progress over time.  Dumb people with billions of dollars?  We call that the opposite of progress:  Congress.

There are three problems with fracking:

One – fracked wells are most productive in their first year of production.  Oil companies often run a rejuvenation process that increases flow after a few years, but mostly the later years are just a trickle in comparison to the initial years of production.  So, to have a continuous supply, you have to keep drilling, which is not boring.

Two – you have to keep drilling.  If the price drops and drilling stops, then the quantity of oil available drops quickly.  Then the price goes up.  Then everyone drills.  Because everyone is drilling, then the prices drops again.  And everyone stops drilling.  This acts like a “crack the whip” on the economy, since, as mentioned above, high oil prices act as a tax.

Why fracking?  Because I hear drilling is rigged.

Three – there’s more than profitability at stake.  Let me give an example:  if I have to walk to the grocery store to get food, and then I walk back home, that sounds healthy, right?  Sure.  I’m burning energy to go to the store.

But what happens if I burn more energy to go to the store than is contained in the food that I buy at the store?

I lose weight.  I’m actually spending more energy to get food than the energy in the food I’m consuming.  Plus, I’m rubbing my thighs together so I can stay warm.

What might be good for me is devastating as an economy.  At some point, it will be so difficult to get energy from oil, that, just like my trip to the store, we’ll be spending more energy to get the oil than the oil will provide us.  The energy return on energy invested will actually deplete the amount of energy available for us to use.

The more energy we use?  The faster we run out of energy.

I spent an hour on the treadmill yesterday.  Tomorrow?  I might turn it on.

Our primary energy source is that thermonuclear reactor that shows up every morning.  Our secondary source is tens of millions of years of stored sunlight from that same reactor, which just happens to show up in the form of oil, natural gas, and coal.  But the sunlight striking us every day has a problem:  it’s so diffuse that it’s difficult to make profitable use of it.  Sure, it warms us, it tans us, it makes the wind for our turbines, the photosynthesis for our corn, and the rain for our hydroelectric.  Energy is only useful when it becomes concentrated in some way.

You can’t generate energy with a tan.  Unless it’s a really, really good tan.

Are we at the point where it takes more energy than it’s worth to get energy?  A wind turbine in a good location will return 10 to 20 times the energy it took to make it, though that’s over the course of 20 years.  In a bad location?  A wind turbine will never return that energy, though I hear they love music:  they’re huge metal fans.

So, are we there yet, where the production of energy costs more than the energy we get?

I don’t think so.  Not quite yet.  When we do get there, it will become a cascading failure – every bit of energy we produce will actually dig us deeper into a hole.  Just like the Red Queen I mentioned last week:

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Never take a racing snail’s shell.  That makes it sluggish.

To keep a world of 8 billion people alive and with enough energy to consume Doritos® and Disney™ and Facebook© takes an ever increasing amount of energy.  2020 was an aberration – people stopped driving and energy prices (temporarily) went down faster than Kamala Harris’ . . . approval rating.

The last question was “what happens next?”

Currently (today) oil is about $70 per barrel.  The analysts that JPMorgan® have chained up in the basement of their skyscraper say that oil will jump to an average price of $125 per barrel in 2022, and then pop up further to $150 per barrel in 2023.

Double today’s prices.  Yikes!

What about the Energy Information Agency (EIA, a .gov that seems to be actually interested in energy)?  They say that in 2022, oil will average about . . . $72 per barrel – nearly the same as today.

It’s funny, because to know the price of oil, you have to know what is happening with economic growth, oil demand, and inflation.  If any of us know any of those things with certainty, we could make bets and double our money or better in six months.

Why did Biden win the golf tournament?  Because he finished it with one big stroke.

If JPMorgan™ has that genie in a bottle, they certainly wouldn’t be sharing it with mere mortals like you and I on the Internet – they’d make private trades and be zillionaires.  The fine folks at the EIA probably don’t make nearly as much as the analysts at JPMorgan©, but they do have the abject despair of working at a government job every single day.

My prediction?

  • If the economy crashes and the stock market implodes, oil will follow. People who aren’t working don’t need to go to jobs.  Will oil hit $40?    Depends on how low the stock market goes.
  • But! If inflation spikes and the government keeps shoveling cash like coal into a train firebox, well, $150 per barrel oil might seem like a bargain that would be cheap enough to take a shower in.

Crappy prediction, right?

It is.  Because with all of the difficult issues we simply don’t know.  The easiest bet is that oil will be more expensive because once inflation is unleashed, it’s hard to put back into the bottle.  The 1970s looked like this, so that would be my best bet.

Regardless, expensive energy has almost always been the enemy of freedom.

Prepare accordingly.

COVID: “Hey, look at the mess I can make.” The Jab: “Hold my beer.”

“Either put on these glasses or start eating that trashcan.” – They Live

So, if I take it I can still catch the ‘Rona and I can still spread the ‘Rona, but the unjabbed are the problem?

The endgame of the ‘Rona may be near.

“Two weeks to stop the spread” has now been going on for 630 days.  “The Jab” got its Emergency Use Authorization about a year ago.  And now, the latest stats I’ve seen show 59% of the people in the country have double-jabbed, and 69% have had at least one dose.

But what are the consequences?  I would give you a conspiracy theory, but let’s face it:  in 2021, conspiracy theories should be called what they really are:  plot spoilers.

Honestly, the impact of the vaxx is not fully known, and probably won’t be for years.  But there have been a stunning series of news stories showing up that tell us that whatever problems are causing the wave of excess deaths, it is certainly, completely, and utterly not the mRNA gene therapy causing it:

(LINK)  Cannabis!  Yes.  That certainly is the only reason that young people who normally never have heart attacks and die are having them.  Whew.  Problem solved.  The American Heart Association would never lie to us, right?

(LINK)  Oh, the heart attacks are being caused by stress because of the ‘Rona.  Well, that’s relieving to know!  This is mainly in that heart-attack-prone age group of 30 to 45.  Oh, and the 300,000?  That’s in the UK.

(LINK)  Don’t forget poor diet.  Also, show a picture of keto food while complaining about sugar.

(LINK)  Climate change!  You have to remember that changes babies in the womb now, and makes their hearts do something . . . I guess.

Shakespeare had a line in Hamlet:  “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”  It’s like they’re explaining why a present and future wave of heart attacks has absolutely nothing at all to do with “the jab” or any side effects.

But, we’ve already listed the American Heart Association as a source, right?  What else are they saying?

The study in question is here (LINK).  Apparently, some doctors think . . . the jab might cause . . . heart attacks?  But I thought it was stress or bacon or climate change or weed? By the way, The Mrs. informed me that Twitter® is reportedly censoring this link.  Huh.

But here it gets deadly serious (LINK).  If Dr. Rogers is correct, the blood of thousands of children will be on the hands of those that force kids to get “the jab”.  Even adults over 65 are five times more likely to die of the mRNA than to die of COVID, if the cited literature is right.  RTWT.

I would normally think of that level of misconduct as being, well, criminal.  In Australia, however, there’s a manhunt for three folks who broke out of a concentration camp voluntary COVID isolation leisure facility.  I guess criminal has a different meaning down there . . . .

I mean, it’s voluntary, right?

I guess that just makes one thing perfectly clear: