Category: Inflation Nation

More War Economics

“I had no idea that a study of nature could advance the art of naval warfare.” – Master and Commander:  The Far Side of the World

France has, however, done more executions than the United States, but they had a head start.

Earlier this month I had a post about the Economics of War.  This is not exactly a follow up, more of an additional exploration on the topic from a slightly different perspective.  And at one time I used to worry that one of my hairs are out of place, but now, with greater perspective, I don’t care if all six are out of place.  So, perspective matters.

War is about stuff.  In order to fight a war, there needs to be stuff to fight with and the stuff (and men) need to be in the right place at the right time, and General Nathan B. Forrest described his winning strategy for one battle, “I just got there first with the most men.”

Of course, that wins a battle, but not a war.  Unless you’re fighting against France, in which case all you have to win is the one battle if you have sufficient supplies of cigarettes, baguettes, suffragettes, and raclettes.  And a recent Rand® analysis says that’s probably all the United States can win, is a battle.  To quote the study, “U.S. industrial production is grossly inadequate to provide the equipment, technology, and munitions needed today, let alone given the demands of a great power conflict.”

Great power conflict means Russia, and it means China, and if we continue on this path, might even include France and Tahiti.

Why does the river Thames run through London?  If it walked, it would get stabbed.

Let’s talk first about industrial production.  At the beginning of World War II, the United States had a massive untapped labor market thanks to Democratic policies.  We also had the knowhow to build factories capable of mass producing, well, anything, thanks to Henry Ford.  We also had amazing resources, including more oil than Geraldo Rivera’s hair.  Although car production isn’t tank production, you can see it from there.  And airplanes?  They’re just cars with wings, like racoons are pandas that eat trash, right?

Yeah, we can make those.  And with that, the American weapons manufacturing industry was ramped up in 1939 and 1940 or so in order to sell (first) lots of stuff to the British.  It worked.  By the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the war started, the industrial machine of the United States was just warming up, and soon enough farm girls from the Midwest would be welding on Liberty Ships in Alameda.  In 1941, before Pearl Harbor, the United States had 9 aircraft carriers of all types.  At the end of 1945, the United States had 99 aircraft carriers.  That’s not a misprint.

99.

(Hint:  It’s been in overhaul since 2017 and the crew was reassigned to the Russian army)

(CC 4.0, RU.MIL)

In 2024, however, the United States, as far as I can see, is primarily engaged in the production of accounting irregularities, debt, corn syrup, and pizza rolls.  Oh, and worthless university degrees.  Can’t have enough of those.

But is it really important in the time of missiles and drones to have aircraft carriers?  Perhaps not, perhaps they’re as antiquated as bombers and useful mainly against adversaries that can’t “reach out and touch someone” like the Taliban or Iraq?  Perhaps not.  Maybe we should look at other components of weapons.

Let’s take just one technology that’s in everything now:  LED displays.  They’re in phones, but also in jet fighters, tanks, headsets, and any technology meant to share information across a battlespace.  A cursory examination shows that no significant production of LED displays takes place in the United States, and the two companies that I could find that were listed as “American” that produce LEDs have been bought by China.

I guess LED Zepplin was really technologically ahead of Incandescent Zepplin.

Sure, the Taiwanese and Japanese and Koreans make this tech, but those countries are (checks map) nowhere near the United States.  If there was a protracted war, I’ll leave it as a class exercise to estimate the chances that shipping between those locations and the United States might be impacted.  The extended supply chains required to make our most sophisticated weapons systems are long, complex, and vulnerable.

The F-35, for instance, requires parts manufactured all around the world, and even then, there have only been 1,000 made.  Is 1,000 a lot?  In billions of dollars, yes.  In fighter planes, no.  Yet, China claims to have created an automated factory that can make 1,000 cruise missiles a day.  Is that a lot?  Well, every day, yes, since the last data I have says that the United States has an inventory of 4,000 cruise missiles.  If correct, China can produce the entire inventory of United States cruise missiles in less than a week.

Are they crappier than ours?  Probably.  But we’d still have to shoot down every single one if we didn’t want to get hit.  How many days until we ran out of SAMs to take them down?

If our production of SAMs is like our production of artillery, not long, and then it would be slingshots.

Thankfully, we have never had to deploy the Tom Cruise missile.

Okay, those are technologically complex systems.  Surely on the old-style weapons we’re doing great, right?

No.  Russia is, by itself, producing three times the artillery munitions that can be produced by the United States.  And by Europe.  Combined.  And that’s today after we’ve been attempting to ramp up production for three years.

So, there’s economic warfare, right?

Many have argued in the past that China needs the markets of the United States, or they would collapse.  That was a good argument, in the past.  China now sells more to developing markets than to the West.  When people keeping talking about China being a paper economic tiger that will soon collapse, I just have to point to that same phrase being trotted out every year for the last 30 years.  China’s economy isn’t like that of the United States, and they’ve taken full advantage of the willingness of the United States to self-immolate its own manufacturing capacity.

China’s ship military ship production capacity exceeds that of the United States.  Oh, strike that.  Just a single Chinese shipyard exceeds the military ship production capacity of the United States.  When we shipped the factories overseas, we not only lost the know-how to make many things.  This is the stuff that the instruction manual doesn’t cover, the figuring out how to make the production line work, the solving of the myriad of glitches that come with a start-up.

It’s almost like this unilateral deindustrialization was encouraged.  Hmmm.

At least the robot will be charged with something.

This isn’t to say that we’ve been defeated – far from it.  But this is no longer 1990 when the United States could, with impunity, exercise military might anywhere around the world and be essentially as unchallenged as Kamala at a vodka-chugging contest.  I like to think (and hope) that at least some military planners have realized the amazing hole that we’re in, and understand that the era of unilateral American military dominance somewhere between “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the formation of the 183rd Transexual Human Resources Division.

This, however, is not the end.  It just means that the Russia/Ukraine war is a foreshadowing of what’s to come as Pax Americana fades into memory.  We will see many more regional wars, and most of those wars will be wars we can’t impact in any meaningful way.  This, of course, assumes that we don’t have a stockpile of wunderwaffe sitting around that can allow immediate battlefield dominance and intelligence.  Hmmm.  Not seeing that, but, again, I’m not on the list of folks that get those memos.

Would Peter Sellers drive a pink panzer?

We can also use this time to ask ourselves what, exactly, we get out of having military bases all around the world when the single biggest threat is the open border at the south.  Abraham Lincoln, more than 25 years before he was a theater enjoyer, said this at the age of 28:

Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow?  Never!  All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth, our own excepted, in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.

Yes.  Neither the Russians nor the Chinese could ever take this country by force, but yet we’re bringing in millions of military age men into the country so they can eat all the ducks that swim in the Ohio.

I wonder if we’ll regret letting the illegals get there first, with the most men?

The Government: Killing You With Their Compassion

“I warned you about compassion, Bruce.” – Batman Begins

The people who were pro-vaxx say that our jokes about being right are getting old.  Unlike their kids.

It has long been a theme here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise that compassion and charity are wonderful things.  For me as an individual, there is something fundamentally uplifting about giving of my time, talent, or treasures to those that I can help.  If done properly, this compassion and charity are amazing at lifting people up when they need it.

But the dark side is when someone is compassionate for you, with none of your involvement.  This is a hallmark of the GloboLeftElite:  they want to take your resources to give to other people.  They then call that compassionate, and tell me I’m evil if I don’t buy into the concept.

In fact, if you look at people on the TradRight, we are far, far more compassionate with our actual time, talent and treasure than people on the GloboLeft.  Donation statistics show it, and if you look at the people involved in actual charities and volunteer organizations (that don’t depend on other people’s money) they are overwhelmingly on the TradRight.

They don’t have blook banks in England, but they do have a liver pool.

But let’s talk about the Leech Class, a faction of the GloboLeftElite, who suck the cash and resources from all of us to support their “charitable” goals.

FEMA comes to mind due to the recent incident where DHS spokes-scrotum Alejandro Mayorkas.  Only in the corrupt stages of a failing nation could a paperwork American (Majerkas) who was born of a Turkish father and a Romanian mother and who was born in Cuba be put in charge of immigration.  Oh, and an anchor baby running for president.

But here we are.

This week, Madorkas said there wasn’t any money to help hurricane refugees.  It turns out that under border-Czar Harris, the Biden/Harris Junta declared, proudly, that they were diverting FEMA funding to give to American “Blue” cities to support the teeming hordes of illegal aliens that they had invited and, in some cases, had flown into the United States (this is true, by the hundreds of thousands).

Is a short dog from New Mexico an Albu-corgi?

Yes.  Biden/Harris created the crisis.  Then, they pulled the cash from FEMA to give to their cronies to pay for these illegals.  Where did the money go?  In New York, shiftless illegals are living in four-star hotels with turndown service.  They’re being provided with food at no cost.

And veterans have to fight for surgery.  And the people of North Carolina are told that there’s no money for them.

But illegals, many criminal, and many not even remotely vetted, are living in luxury hotels.

This causes the prices of hotels to go up – FEMA is even paying for empty beds in these hotels.  This causes the price of food to go up, you can’t add 10% population to a system and not expect inflation as more people fight for the same resources.

My urine is crystal clear.  It’s 1080 pee.

But it’s compassionate.  Compassionate to bring 20,000 Haitians into Springfield, Ohio.  The Haitians have zero experience living in a civilized society, having been brought up in a country (that they created) where a good day is there’s enough mud to eat.

Springfield didn’t add 5,000 houses, so where are these aliens living?

One rumor has it that a local politician/landlord booted out his American tenants who were paying $1,000 or $1,500 a month in a house, and replaced them with 20 Haitians who pay $250 a month for a cot.

Hey, profit, right?

And housing costs go up in Springfield.  I guess they can make it up since the dogcatcher no longer is needed to round up stray pets.

But I’m probably not considered compassionate when I bring this up.

Why have one man, when you can have 80 cats?

Today, I saw some brain-dead GloboLeftist X® (formerly known as a Tweet®) that we should be happy, because illegals keep the prices of vegetables down.

First, no, they eat them, too.  Second, if the base value of your philosophy is to bring in cheap labor to pick strawberries, you might have the morals of a slaveholder, but just with other hands holding the whip.

The final insidious nature of what we’re seeing is that this is the year that our national deficit is equal to the size of our economy in the United States.  The last time this happened was in World War II, and at least we got lots of tanks, fighters, bombers, aircraft carriers, nuclear bombs, and other cool stuff that I can’t buy on E-Bay®.  Again, ATF should be a convenience store, not a place for LGBTQ people to scheme to take away guns owned by honest people.

No, we’re spending all this cash on . . . the acceptable compassion and charity based on the values of the GloboLeft.  I saw part of a presentation today (on YouTube®) that FEMA put together so that the needs of people with non-standard sexual preferences were prioritized in the event of a disaster.

Prioritized.  “Hey, that 10-year-old boy is hungry, but he’s white and was born male, so let’s focus on the thirty-year-old dude who thinks he’s a girl and wants to have sex with cats.”  Yes.  Emergencies don’t know skin color or sexual fetish, but FEMA sure does.

I stopped drinking, but then I bought a motivational poster and decided Wayne Gretzky was right:  “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

That’s bad enough, but they’re spending so much money on the groups that the GloboLeftElite want to shower with charity that it’s turning whatever capitalism that was left in the United States into a joke.  Yes, people are still using cash to buy things, but the government is now buying more than the economy creates.

Mainly on charity.  For people who are not me, and not you.

The final piece is that studies have shown that people who get this unearned charity often resent those who have more, and want the charity to give them the life of a Bill Gates, rather than just guaranteed food, housing, education, and medical care.

It’s so unfair!  I still remember one woman who was a part of the first The Caravan of 10,000 people (what a dream, only 10,000!) was filmed after getting food aid consisting of refried beans, tortillas, vegetables, and a drink.

“This food isn’t fit for my dog!”

She was overweight.

Yup, that’s what governmental charity and compassion to the undeserving creates.  Oh, and as a bonus it wrecks the currency and makes you and I poorer.

Wonder how that’ll turn out?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Silent Coup

“And after your glorious coup, what then?” – Gladiator

What’s a three-line poem that overthrows a government?  A Hai Coup.

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

Volume VI, Issue 5

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom at the same place – though it will notch up quickly if there are any signs of the TradRight stiffening up.

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

In this issue:  Front Matter – The Silent Coup – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index  – 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 Silent Coup

Looking back at the last six years, it’s clear that there has been a silent coup.  The coup had its origins in the results of the 2016 election.  W, though just as demonized by the GloboLeft, played ball with the GloboLeftElite and was allowed to win, twice.

Obama was firmly a GloboLeftElite candidate from the moment of his selection – he was always in the pocket of the Washington and New York elite, and got his unlikely public image with the help of a fawning press.

Trump, however, broke the cycle.  A ¡JEB! would have been a fine candidate for the GloboLeftElite, but Trump took everyone by surprise.  They were so surprised by Trump’s victory that they weren’t able to cheat in time.  Hillary, who had been promised her shot, instead had to blame it on the Russians, who did buy something like a few hundred thousand dollars of Facebook® ads.

Since 2016, the Silent Coup has been a full court press against Trump.

  • The FBI set up Flynn for a phone call.
  • Trump was impeached for . . . a phone call, where he was asking about potentially illegal activities of the United States government.
  • The election results from 2020 were “fortified” by a well-funded group who did everything thing they could to skew voting so that votes could be harvested by the GloboLeft foot soldiers.
  • After the election, the war on Trump intensified, and a Special Prosecutor was illegally appointed to spend tens of millions of dollars to find something, anything, that they could charge Trump with.
  • A law was changed in New York eliminating the statutory period for lawsuits, so Trump could be sued by a woman that I would have turned down at her best, who couldn’t even remember the date of the assault, and, before her lawsuit, Tweeted™ about a question about people having sex with Trump for $17,000.

There’s more.  All of it equally silly, and the pending felony sentencing is postponed until after the election making it moot.

Well, it’s not all silly:  There have been multiple assassination attempts on Trump.

But the actions haven’t just been against Trump – they’ve been aimed at those who would support Trump.  Most recently Hurricane Helene hit the western part of North Carolina.  No, I don’t blame the Democrats for that.  But the hurricane produced tragic flooding.  Those areas are Trump +10% or +20% in a state that is crucial for both candidates to win.

What would the motivations be of a highly partisan government?  Recovery?  Or create enough chaos that thousands can’t vote in a close election?

What about allowing the sale (on an expedited basis in a way that has never been done) to George Soros of over 220 radio stations?  Oh, and that over 25% of the funding for this purchase is coming from foreign sources?

Beyond that, the government has been shoveling hundreds of thousands of illegals straight into Red States.  Why?  When the make them paperwork “citizens” then their votes will replace those of heritage Americans, and then there’s no more worrying about the pesky people who built this nation and their offspring.

Violence and Censorship Update

Obviously, the big story is the second attempt on Trump:

And that the press is observably all-in for Biden Harris:

And that it’s obvious the plan once they get full power:

And that only approved media should be allowed to be made:

And why you should ignore what the press says:

And some names aren’t allowed:

And this is the plan to keep people under control:

And soon the laws will vary based on your race:

Biden/Harris Misery Index

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

Yup, up again.  It’s like there’s a pattern here . . .

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 significantly, and this should be higher given that Venezuelan gangs are turning parts of US cities into no-go zones.  The meme below isn’t related to any of that, but I liked it:

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is up some.

Economic:

The economy is in full juice mode for the election.  There will be a hangover at the end.

Illegal Aliens:

September is showing as down, again, since (my take) the .gov folks are just making up numbers now.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://youtu.be/29JKG3OOV5A
https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1837363341360046429
https://x.com/i/status/1837835644279652796
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/leaked-us-army-documents-thousands-violent-venezuelan-prison-gang-members-run-amok-across
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1839747244561461495
https://x.com/judiciarygop/status/1841908406702977486?s=46

Good Guys
https://x.com/realdschmidt/status/1835804388687852030
https://x.com/TONYxTWO/status/1836957753270567118
https://twitter.com/i/status/1835830627251441713

 

One Guy
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1832805912945496432
https://x.com/i/status/1836429342806806920
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r_xc09q9vo
https://www.ammoland.com/2024/09/chicago-woman-defends-her-daughter-against-home-intruder-police-take-her-gun/
https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2024/09/16/jewish-groups-issue-travel-warning-about-massachusetts-county-where-man-charged-in-self-defense-shooting-n1226239

 

Body Count
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/USPopulationByRace_web.jpg?itok=xEy0RSJD
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2024-09-17_08-01-06.png?itok=-Wfnpo_M
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Counties-at-least-25-Percent-Dep.jpg?itok=0-ieqYQ5
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millennials-gen-z-childless-money-finances-massmutual/
https://www.muckraker.com/articles/finding-the-feds-missing-children/
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4900734-us-suicides-remain-high-cdc/

Vote Count
https://electionbriefing.com/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/11/politics/early-voting-election-what-matters/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc
https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-non-citizens-say-they-are-registered-to-vote-in-key-swing-state
https://news.gallup.com/poll/651185/partisan-split-election-integrity-gets-even-wider.aspx
https://www.arcamax.com/currentnews/newsheadlines/s-3422282
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/widespread-problems-with-u-s-mail-system-could-disrupt-voting-election-officials-warn
https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/OJ0TtjhBIQTDX0ZDApXCew–/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTI0MDA7aD0yNDAwO2NmPXdlYnA-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/us.abcnews.gma.com/d034e5923caf1fc1883add9a80a79e24

The Future Of War
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1842138275726680357
https://x.com/AncientAlien01/status/1840339044804292657
https://x.com/ConnieLingus123/status/1784570453094178936
https://x.com/UaCoins/status/1756753637483647280

Civil War
https://screenrant.com/civil-war-2024-movie-streaming-ratings-success/
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/09/17/age-of-rage-26-million-americans-believe-political-violence-is-justified/
https://napolitaninstitute.org/2024/09/18/17-say-america-would-be-better-off-if-trump-had-been-killed/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/09/17/half-republicans-wont-accept-trump-loss-2024/75142477007/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-2024-election-is-a-tinderbox/ar-AA1qG4j0
https://archive.is/Bpkki
https://www.thefp.com/p/republics-unravel-rome-america-trump-jan-6
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/09/28/you-dont-need-a-weatherman-to-know-which-way-the-wind-blows/

Economics Of War, 2024 Edition

“Well, it seems to me, sir, that God made me a fine instrument of warfare.” – Saving Private Ryan

I guess that there’s no thyme to tell all his stories.

War is one of the natural states of humanity.  Although we don’t have records back before when Grug was living in Switzerland before hot cocoa was invented, we do have Ötzi, a guy who died about 5,300 years ago.

What we can tell about Ötzi is that, first, he’s dead.  Secondly, we can tell that he was almost certainly murdered.  By who?  Don’t know, but it’s a pretty good bet that they guy who inflicted the wound died, too.  Unless he was killed by Keith Richards, who we should probably put on a space ship because only he could live long enough to travel to another star.

Why would I say that the murderer was dead (unless it was Keith Richards)?  The Yanomami people of the jungles of South America are as close as we have to “pre-civilization” people, and they killed themselves in at an astonishing rate.  About half of their men died in combat until fairly recently.

Do your part to keep him immortal.

The economics of the Yanomami violence are pretty simple – a bow, an arrow, a stone knife, and an enemy.  Heck, they don’t even have money, so I have no idea how they can get a rental car.

In one sense, we are the opposite of the Yanomami and Ötzi.  We have been fortunate enough to live in the Good Times, when the horror of nuclear weapons has thus far lowered the percentage of combat deaths since 1945 to what I think could be a historic low.  Why?

War is like football.  Everyone comes out of the huddle, and then lines up.  What the team on the offense is going to do?  Who knows.  It’s the job of the defense to respond and stop them, though using snipers is considered to be unsportsmanlike.  Creating surprise is now pretty difficult, especially surprise on a large scale.

My buddy said he made a voodoo doll of me.  I think he’s pulling my leg.

Let’s look at the Ukraine Conflict.

It started out as a grand, strategic move like a great World War II battle with tanks and bombs and planes.  That did surprise the West (me included) because it seemed so out of place given the safe world we live in – as /pol/ would say:  “nothing ever happens”.  The initial gains of the Russians were large, but by the time the Ukrainians got their feet under them, the Russians had a logistical snarl and found out that rubber tires rot if you just leave them in the garage for thirty or forty years.

Oops.

The war went from swooping strategy to what exists now: a series of mainly small-scale actions where when an infantry squad breaks through, it sometimes makes the news even though a gain of 500 yards is a big deal.  Why?  Because large troop concentrations are visible from space.  And anything visible from space is a target.  Neither side can effectively generate the schwerpunkt or focal point of forces required to break through and create a war of movement.

Are doctors who graduate online called Google® Docs?

Nope.  The latest development is that small squads of Russians are now using small, cheap ($2500 or less) dirt bikes to get to the opposing trenches fast, disposing of them as they storm the trenches.  This helps them avoid the ever-present drone swarms.  It’s like The Road Warrior, but with fewer shoulder pads.

And tank warfare?  For now, at least, it’s gone.  Just like bat is the “chicken of the cave” so is the tank now the “aircraft carrier of the land”.  They’re mainly just expensive targets, and a variety of cope cages, turtle shells, and electronic jamming have been field-innovated to try to protect them.

But when you lose a tank, you lose a pretty big investment.  Russia can only make (depending on your definition of tanks) about 1,500 a year, along with 3,000 other sorts of armored vehicles.  A big chunk of those tanks are modernized and rebuilt Soviet-era tanks.

A Russian T-90 tank costs about $4.5 million.  A drone with bomb costs less than a thousand dollars.  One economist estimated that the Russian tank losses alone was about an $11 billion dollar hit.

You do the math.

Remember when the Biden/Harris administration shot down the Chinese balloon?  At least they tried to stop some inflation.

Likewise, aircraft have had to stay well back because of surface to air missiles, of which the Russians produce a pretty good variety.  The Russians claim (heavy emphasis on the word claim) their radars can easily see the F-35 and F-22.  Claim.  An F-35 costs about $109,000,000 per aircraft.  An F-22 cannot be replaced – we lost the tooling.  Fun fact:  $109,000,000 in quarters would weigh five and a half million pounds, or the equivalent of the weight of pre-printed Biden ballots the Democrats had to dispose of discreetly after Joe dropped out.

As of January, 2024, we have 234 operational F-35s.  We have 187 F-22s.  And, yes, those babies can unleash a lot of havoc in short order, but missiles are cheap, and if it takes dozens to knock one of our fighters down, it’s dollars ahead.  And, let’s be clear:  they’re not always flying.  The US response to the Me-262 wasn’t to try to dogfight a German jet with a Yankee prop, nope, our aces hung around the German air bases and shot them as they had to land.

Is a boomerang their weapon of choice?

Every weapon has a weakness, and rarely can those weaknesses be overcome by papering them over with hundred-dollar bills.  But just as the object of making weapons has gotten bigger and bigger, our ability to fight a World War II style war has gone to zero.  One anecdote is that a captured German fighter pilot was bragging about shooting up a large quantity of American planes on the ground at an airbase.  Being at the airbase, the US officer took him outside and noted, “They’ve already been replaced.”

The German reportedly said, after a heavy sigh, “And that is why we are losing.”  That, and my great-grandfather, Johan von Wilder, who was responsible for downing five German fighters by himself.  Worst mechanic in the Luftwaffe.

The trend, though, is less $100 million fighters, but now seems to be looking towards large numbers of inexpensive, nearly disposable weapons that are cheap, lots of missiles that cost a few million bucks, and fewer “so expensive it’s silly” systems, except for those that give the really important part of the battle:  information – satellites and radar and the like.

But for all of that, the goal in war seems to have changed.  Rather than breaking stuff and killing people, the goal is more based on long-term fights whose goal is to cause the enemy to become unstable to topple their own leadership for someone more favorable.  I’m betting this is really a legacy of the Cold War.

I put my desk in the elevator.  I hope it takes my career to a whole new level.

I don’t think that we’re in any shape to fight an actual war against a determined opponent in a conventional sense for longer than a month or two, and wholly incapable of fighting in an area where we don’t have uncontested air dominance.  From an industrial standpoint, our ability to make more stuff isn’t serious:  outside of small arms and helmet and clothing, I’m not sure that there’s a weapons system that we could make without the help of overseas firms for critical items.

We just don’t make it here anymore, and building the basic industries to allow us to do so will take decades and trillions of dollars in capital invested.  I think we’ve reached the point where our primary weapon is financial.  There’s a precedent that situation can last a long time – the Byzantine Empire lasted in one form or another for over 1,000 years.

The Byzantine Empire had a gold stash that would make Scrooge McDuck® do whatever it is that ducks do when they’re happy, however.  We don’t.  Our wealth is based on paper and mathematics, and can move across borders in milliseconds (megafarads if you want an SI unit).

What would Ötzi’s people think about that?  I don’t really know.  I guess we’ll have to ask Keith Richards.

Alaska, Reparations, Bad Economics, And Football

“If nobody comes down and buys a car from me in the next hour, I’m gonna club this baby seal.” – UHF

Karl Marx never finished college, either. It was a class conflict.

When we lived in Alaska, one of the nicest things about living there was that we unplugged. Essentially, in Alaska we tuned out things that were happening “Outside”.

While Outside might conjure up images of John Wilder shivering in a cold car as the heater slowly went from blowing negative 55°F (8,321 Kelvin) air to 20°F (2.54 centimeters) air, you’d be right. But to an Alaskan, Outside meant any place that wasn’t Alaska.

The consequences of this mindset were very relaxing. National politics down in the lower 48 is a constant buzz in the background, but in Alaska, almost all of the news was local news – who had seen a brown bear, when the cat show was, and where the burning of Ronald McDonald™ in effigy to celebrate Midwinter’s Eve was scheduled to be. The only time national politics showed up in the news was when it had a direct impact on Alaskans, like drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

I hear this grizzly got fired – he was only doing the bear minimum.

ANWR has been a controversy since the 1970s, but it certainly isn’t much of a controversy with Alaskans – they’re in favor of it since oil drilling in the state literally put money into the pockets of local citizens. The only people who had much opposition were the native tribes that didn’t benefit directly and a very small minority of granola crunching hippies who we’d stake out as bear and mosquito bait in summer. Remember Alaska’s motto: “Step off of the tour bus, and into the food chain”.

As I recall, drilling in ANWR was so popular in Alaska that the movement against drilling in ANWR was based in Seattle so the activists weren’t sacrificed to the wolves.

Yup, almost all of the opposition to drilling was from people from Outside.

The perspective I got from living in Alaska, though, was that ANWR was just a political football. The GloboLeftElite loved ANWR because they used it as a perennial fundraising tool: give us money or evil people will cover this baby seal in oil and then not let the Haitians eat it, which is their right as Haitians and is perfectly normal, you know.

But I didn’t do it on porpoise.

It’s still that way to this day. No, not Haitians eating crude-covered seals, but drilling in ANWR.

The answer, despite being approved in 2017 or so?

No, not today. The GloboLeft keeps putting the ball down, and as Charlie Brown (AKA, Conoco©) gets ready to drill, the GloboLeft pulls the football out of the way at the last minute. It’s not exaggeration to say that this has happened literally fifty times since I’ve been alive. People in Alaska already know the score. Conoco™ is never gonna be allowed to kick that football.

The same thing is true with reparations.

Reparations are a really hideous joke on the black community, because they play off of the very worst of emotions – greed and victimhood. First, who doesn’t want someone else to provide them with all the money they could ever want? I mean, my hand would be among the first up, though I do know that there’s something corrosive to the soul about taking money I haven’t earned from people who haven’t wronged me, but, hey, free money.

The inventor of autocorrect died. The funnel will be helped tomato.

The more pernicious part of the reparations deal is that it establishes a narrative of victimhood and implies helplessness. Be a single mother with six kids by five different baby daddies? It’s the fault of slavery. Be convicted of seventeen felonies, be released, and then finally have to go to jail for life because no one stopped you from killing someone? It’s the fault of 300 years of systemic oppression.

Yup, and this isn’t an exaggeration. And, I guess they’ve got a point. Look at how oppressed Barack Obama was in being forced to be president. It even turned his hair white!

But reparations will solve literally everything, every problem. And let’s ignore pesky and inconvenient facts like the crime rates among blacks, and the relative success of nearly every other minority group in the nation except blacks. Oh, and we should look at how wonderful it has been for native Americans, because we gave them reparations in the form of reservations and unlimited Bureau of Indian Affairs welfare. Like communism, I’m sure it would work next time.

But, for a second, let’s pretend that if we gave out reparations, people would finally shut up. Think that would work?

No. I recall one ludicrous proposal (California, I believe) that would have given black people something like $3,000,000 each. The response? “It’s a good start, but it’s not enough.”

This is Dr. Evil level of economic understanding . . . .

What’s enough? Nothing is enough. There is absolutely no amount that will ever be seen to be enough, because there has been a force-feeding of victimhood for decades into the black community, and to say, “Okay, white guys, we’re even now,” would be contradictory to every bit of victimhood that they rely on to get them through the day. From personal experience in dealing with victims, they relish the pity, and will do absolutely anything to hold on to their victim status.

Also, there is no way that black people will ever get the sky-high sorts of compensation that they’re looking for (millions of dollars in cash, freedom from taxes, a free house, and $70,000 a year for 80 years was one proposal). Perhaps they might get another MLK, Jr. Street or a George Floyd Square, but they’ve already got two national holidays plus Kwanza.

Whatever Kwanza is.

Teach your children about Kwanza in a responsible manner.

No, just like ANWR was a football to money-farm GloboLeft-leaning women with too much disposable income who wanted to virtue signal that Haitians should be allowed to eat all the seal meat they wanted, reparations are a mechanism to vote-farm the black community for whoever promises them the best package that they’re never going to get.

And even that won’t eliminate the “economic understanding gap”.

I’d make a comment here about the ludicrousness of printing another few trillion dollars and then just giving it away as a cure to inflation, but since we’ve long since ceased being a serious nation in any respect, I’ll skip it. Perhaps we’re hoping to spend ourselves into the relative economic prosperity of, say, Spain or Mauritania, where they still have tens of thousands of slaves.

Dang, I shouldn’t have mentioned that, since now the Mauritanians will want reparations from the United States for slavery since I’m sure that somehow the United States is responsible for blacks enslaving blacks 4,017 miles (16 kilograms) away from the United States.

ANWR will likely never be drilled, and black people will likely never get more than a token sort of reparations. And that’s fair, because no living black person was ever subject to legal slavery in the United States, though now we do have unpaid internships. At charities. That don’t want us to drill in ANWR.

I guess you could say the drilling system is rigged.

Are We In The Middle Of A Planned Revolution? Yes.

“Day 93 under the dome.  With necessities growing dangerously low, who knows what spark will set off this powder keg?” – The Simpsons Movie

I saw two men in matching outfits so I asked them if they were gay.  Turns out that doesn’t make the NYPD happy.

A phenomenon that has sweep the world in the early 21st century has been the “Color Revolution”.  This is characterized by a “grassroots” movement whose aim was theoretically to create a liberal Western democracy on the European model.  An example would be most Western European countries, with the exception of the Islamic Caliphate of France.

What methods were used in these “peaceful” revolutions?

  • Leadership by Non-Governmental Organizations Civil Disobedience
  • Civil Disorder/Disobedience/Protests
  • Total Lack of Chill
  • Use of the Internet to Organize
  • Heavy “Student” Participation

When I read that list, I see a single conclusion:  the CIA did it, sometimes with the help of George Soros.

Probably one of the first places that this method was used was the Soviet Union.  All of the “spontaneous” protests at the beginning were likely anything but spontaneous.  The wonderful part of this type of operation is that if it works, great, an enemy is off the board.  If it doesn’t?  Everyone involved can put on their “so sorry that happened to you, buddy” face while preparing for the next one.

To be fair, I don’t think that most of the people that were trying to get the Soviet Union to collapse thought it was going to work as well and as completely and as quickly as it did.  One minute, the Soviets were all “Viktor Drago” and the next they were all “Trotsky after meeting an icepick”.

What do you call a man with an ice pick in his head?  Anything you want – he clearly doesn’t control the security apparatus of the USSR.

But there is more at play here.  Ricky emailed me an article from 2014 that talked in depth about Color Revolutions and their mechanics by Andrew Korybko which inspired this post.  You can find that article here.

The Color Revolution Model: An Exposé of the Core Mechanics

When we look at a Color Revolution, it’s like looking at an iceberg:  you only see the bit above the water but miss entirely the part that’s going to cause James Cameron to make a billion dollars and inflict those stupid Avatar™ movies on us.  No, Color Revolutions are years in the making and start with:

Ideology:  In the Color Revolutions to date, all of them have been based on the attempt to create a Western-liberal style of government, hence my suggestion that this was the CIA attempting to export “freedom” to a group of people who have consistently and convincingly desired to not be free.  Sure, some Egyptians want to live in a Western-style democracy, but most of them don’t.  Hell, most of the Muslims that have moved to Western Europe don’t want, at all, a Western-style democracy.

They want Sharia law, they want a government based in Islam, and they want all the wealth that the Western-style liberal democracies seem to create.  They want to live in Cairo on the Thames, not the actual, crappy Cairo on the Nile.  Why did Egypt’s Color Revolution fail?  Why did Libya’s?  Why did Syria’s?

They didn’t want that Western liberal democracy ideology, they just wanted the stuff.

Telling a good joke about the French Revolution is all about the execution.

Cash:  As NASA astronaut Gus Grissom said in the movie The Right Stuff, “No bucks, no Buck Rodgers®.”  In a Color Revolution you could say, “No simoleons, no Napoleons”.  That’s as close as I can get unless I retcon Stalin’s first name to Moolah.

But money has to come from somewhere, and most of the people that make up these Color Revolutions are poor college students who live on ramen and despair.

Where did BLM get money?  According to the Claremont Institute (LINK), Microsoft® pledged $244,400,000 to Black Lives Matter.  Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization pushing radical GloboLeftElite disruption.

Microsoft© is funding a Color Revolution

Against . . . you.

That’s a pickup line that could work for Boeing, too.

People:  There is always an inner circle of leaders of the Color Revolution, probably hand-picked by the funders.  The are willing and passionate about the Color Revolution, primarily because they see themselves as the ones who will get power after the event.  Because someone has to drink the Kool-Aid®, there are also followers.  Those are broken into two groups – the troops and the members of general public that are sympathetic to the revolutionaries.

Propaganda:  First, the message is crafted.  It is prepared in advance for the moment it will be communicated, and the People mobilized.  The propaganda may already be in place, sitting on websites prepared by and for the movement.  It may have been trained into the foot soldiers of the Color Revolution.  Regardless, the message gets out, and the goal is to get sympathy and support as the revolt proceeds.  In the United States, mainstream media is fully onboard with the GloboLeftistElite plans – would anyone be surprised to find out that ABC® gave Kamala the debate questions?  And answers?

I do think the debate about Mobius strips is a bit one-sided.

Spark:  Once all of the above are in place and ready to go, all that’s needed is a spark.  George Floyd, for instance was a spark.  It wasn’t George Floyd, it was that there was a video of a dying junkie that met the needs of the Color Revolution, which was already prepared and ready to go, complete with Ideology, Cash, People and Propaganda, complete with a complicit media to fan the fiery but non-violent flames.

Once these all came together, Floyd’s death was chosen and someone, somewhere, said, “Perfect.  Go.”  It doesn’t matter that Floyd was going to die due to the incredible amounts of drugs in his system.  All that mattered was what the video showed of his on-camera death.

Korybko suggested, back in 2014, that examples of these Sparks included (all of these are direct quotes):

  • A rigged election
  • The jailing of an opposition leader
  • The signing of (or failure to sign) a controversial piece of legislation
  • A government crackdown against the opposition or the imposition of martial law
  • Declaring or being involved in an unpopular war

Of the three Sparks that Korybko suggested, the top almost certainly happened in 2020, and the second and fourth are being implemented in some fashion against Trump and/or his supporters.  The list is, obviously, not exhaustive, and the event need never have happened in reality, as long as people can be convinced it happened.

After the event, the protests start.  And grow.  And spread.  In retrospect, it’s easy to see that the Floyd Protests were an attempted Color Revolution in the United States that was called off after the mechanisms to secure the 2020 election for Biden were in place, and, perhaps a warning of sorts to Biden that he’d best do what he was told if he could remember.

I was listening to a podcast tonight and Eric Weinstein noted that he had been assured that Biden does not have access to “the football” and that the United States is currently being run by a committee of the powerful.  The same committee, no doubt, that has put Kamala at the brink of power.  Note that Biden only dropped out after the (first) failed assassination of Trump.

Occupy Wall Street challenged the money powers of New York (not sure who was funding them, China?).  This was not to be allowed, so, to counter it, Trayvon Martin was used as a Spark, moving on to the “Gentle Giant” Michael Brown, and finally to George Floyd.

The fact that the clear self-defense shooting of Trayvon Martin was used to get the hippies and AntiFa® out of New York and have them start protesting for black people instead of against bankers.  I guess the bankers got scared, and hippies and AntiFa® have a short attention span, or their leaders just like money.  They had to have something to do, and since it’s always easy to stir up a racial fight, that’s what the bankers picked, because a class fight might have endangered actual bankers.

One stolen joke is a coincidence, two is a pattern.  Thirty is an Amy Schumer standup routine.

These movements aren’t popular, and aren’t spontaneous, though they’re staged to appear so.  They aren’t even permanent – most countries that have had a Color Revolution revert to their old styles of government with just a little bit of time and often a lot of chaos.  Egypt went from its military government to a very brief “democracy” and then right back to a military government because that’s what Egyptians seem to want.

This may sound as crazy as predicting the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, but the government of the United States is nearing collapse, and the Color Revolution technique, or something like it, is being employed against you and funded by people like Microsoft® to guide the fall into, they hope, a situation where bankers can frolic freely.

That’s the rub – the importation of the endless hordes of illegals, the economic devastation of inflation and the contrived energy and housing crises and continual cultural provocations are cracks, big ones, setting the stage for a major change.  And, again, each and every one of them is intentional, and it’s gone far enough that I still believe we’re entering the danger window in 2025, with the early to middle 2030s the most likely time when the final Spark hits.

Beyond the Spark?

It’s up to us.

Cold AC, Hot Showers, And Bad Economics

“Baseball.  Cold showers.  Margaret Thatcher naked on a cold day.” – Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery

Also, a home DNA testing kit is apparently a poor baby shower gift.

It has been years since The Mrs. and I fought over setting the thermostat.  In summer, we both like it cold, and in winter, we both like it cold.

However, it has been much more of a recent battle on the thermostat with the kids.  Partially this is because they fundamentally didn’t know how the heater or air conditioner worked:  at our house, the unit is either on, or it’s off.

That’s probably the case at your house, too unless you have a fancy system.  The way most air conditioners work is that, when turned on, they’re at their maximum output.  Which is also their minimum output.  My air conditioner is never partly on – it’s either on or it’s off.  Period.

What this means is that if I want the room to be 70°F (3 milli-Coulombs) and you turn it to 62°F, it won’t get colder faster.  Instead, it’ll keep plowing down until it reaches 62°F (1.2 picoparsecs/square meter) if that’s a temperature that it can possibly reach.  Some days it gets hot here in Modern Mayberry, and the AC does just stay on, cooling as best as it can.

If I started an air conditioning repair business for congress, I’d call it AC/DC.

Regardless, when that would happen I would walk into a room on a day where it was 98°F (33mega electron Volts) outside and see my family huddled under blankets while frost began to form on the inside of the house because Pugsley wanted it colder, faster and set the thermostat to “freezer”.

The reason this happens is because of the timing of the feedback – the temperature of the house doesn’t immediately change, so the reaction of someone who doesn’t understand the system and wants immediate gratification is to keep cranking the dial downward.  As a dad, all I can think is, “Man, that isn’t cool.”

After the first brush with a too hot or too cold shower, we quickly absorb the feedback loop that after turning the shower in, we have to wait for the water to change, and if we move the lever too far to the “hot” side because the water is cold at the start, unpleasant things will happen.

That’s a fairly quick loop and sudden cold or hot is a fairly quick teacher.

I think step five is the hardest.

But a much longer loop would be certain parts of our economy.  Sure, if the Fed® changes the interest rate, immediately interest rates change across the country because the Fed™ artificially drives those rates.  So, that’s like your shower, except the Fed© asks us to assume the position so it can use that interest rate to compound us.

Other things, though, by nature have a much longer response time.  Sure, the price of oil cratering can immediately send ten thousand fracking workers to the unemployment line, which is an immediate response.  But soaring oil prices?

Responding to those requires time and investment.  First, suitable land for drilling has to be acquired, along with permits and leases.  After that, a rig has to be found, and a crew has to be found for the rig, and half of the people that used to be on it won’t go back because they’re tired of the 120 hours this week and zero hours a week for months after the price of oil goes to $40 a barrel.

Then, pipe is needed.  And to move it, trucks, truck drivers, pipelines, et cetera.  This takes years to build – Exxon® once noted that their projects are built on multi-decade scales.  That’s a slow change, and often Exxon™ plods along in down years because they know that prices will eventually head back up.

The reason Saudi Arabia has so much money isn’t the crude oil sales, they just don’t let their women spend it.

Politicians, however are impatient, since voters are impatient, and so politicians want results.  Now.  Explaining that having a fracking ban will decrease the amount of oil available which, in turn, will raise prices is beyond the understanding of the average GloboLeftist politician.

The reason is that they have no fundamental understanding of how our economy works and where those segments of the economy with a time delay are located.  They simply think, “We’ll mandate that cars get 250 miles per gallon and are so safe that a fusion bomb ignited next to one will only scratch the paint.”

I mean, it’s worth it if it saves even one life, right?

The fact that these mandates are beyond the bounds of thermodynamics doesn’t matter to them.  They don’t understand what thermodynamics is, and I can barely imagine trying to explain it to a GloboLeftist politician:

John Wilder:  “Okay, we’re going to discuss entropy, which is the idea that systems go from a state of order to a state of disorder.  With me?”

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez:  “Huh?  Why are you in my house at midnight?”

JW:  “Let me try a different approach.  How many pairs of shoes do you have, Ms. Cortez?”

AOC:  “Oh, like 40 or 50?”

JW:  “Good.  Now, what’s the worst thing about having 40 or 50 pairs of shoes?”

AOC:  “I don’t know?  That they smell like my feet?”

JW:  “Well . . . . okay.  But is it hard to keep them organized?”

AOC:  “OH!  Totally!  I mean, l generally just keep them in a pile in the guest bedroom, but that makes them hard to find when I need to go to work.”

JW:  “Right!  The amount of disorder increases!”

AOC:  “Oh, I get it!!!  Beer must be really bad for entropy, because when I was a bartender people would get drunk and disorderly all the time!”

JW:  “And let’s not talk about your shower, because I’m pretty sure that with your housekeeping skills and the length of your hair, the drain probably looks like you shave wookies® in there.  Besides do you know how an air conditioner works?”

AOC:  “In this house, we’re environmentally conscious – no air conditioner.  Instead?  Only Fans®.”

I hear wookie® steaks are often Chewie.

Politicians make decisions on a regular basis that have very few short-term impacts, but that may have economically disastrous long-term impacts.

Longer term decisions include:

  • tax policy which drives investment decisions and can kill industries,
  • Social Security and Medicare, in which cash is taken, spent, and then the next generation is saddled with the repayment obligations,
  • immigration policy, which changes the population and workforce over decades,
  • tariffs, which determine winners and losers, and
  • many other things that you or I could name if we just spent 10 minutes thinking about it.

Each of these has a feedback loop that’s measured in decades.  The demise of tariffs and replacement with income tax, for instance, gradually resulted in the industrial might of the United States being dismantled and shipped overseas where labor was cheaper.

I’d make a joke about offshore drilling, but many of those are crude.

Now, we don’t know how to make those things anymore, all because of long feedback loops.

But since I’ve learned about Global Warming, I’ve decided to keep my air conditioning on all the time.  I know I can’t save the planet all by myself, but I’ll do my best.

Kamala: The NPC Candidate

“This isn’t a video game.  There are no extra lives.” – Edge of Tomorrow

Kamala posted a commercial to YouTube®, I tried to reply, but just like Kamala the comments were disabled.  (Memes and content mostly “as found”)

Kamala Harris has invented a new type of presidential candidacy – one based on being absolutely nothing.  Seriously.  She has stated exactly one position publicly:  “No tax on tips” which is precisely the position staked out by Donald Trump two months ago.  I guess we should give Kamala this one, since she’s no stranger to a variety of tips.

Oh, sure, Mr. Trump’s trademark is being “short on details” so that he can leverage a win, but based on 2016, what really outraged the GloboLeft is that Trump actually tried to follow through on many of his positions.  One thing that Trump won’t be to voters is a surprise, but I think Kamala is so unknown as to be a surprise, and not a good one.

Kamala’s first interview question:  “Describe yourself in one word.”  Kamala:  “Vague.”  Interviewer:  “Can you elaborate?”  Kamala:  “Possibly.”

Why?

She’s pulling what I’ll call an “Ultra-Clinton” approach to her candidacy.  Back when Hillary first ran for senate in 2000, I was expecting that, finally, she’d have to address the public.  There wasn’t any way, I naively thought, that she could duck the people for an entire election.  I mean, without killing them.

Whoops.  While Hillary did do carefully staged and vetted “listening tour” events, what she didn’t do was meet with anyone but fawning press.  She successfully avoided all genuine interaction with people so she wouldn’t have to kill time.  Of course, Hillary was well known to be a GloboLeft accomplice, so it wasn’t any surprise when the New York machine churned out a senate seat for her to launch an eventual presidential campaign.

Kamala Harris, though, is another matter.  She is the ultimate in vapor.  What, exactly, does she stand for?  Apparently, no taxes on tips.  But beyond that, she is a ghost.

Is she Indian or black?  Yes, though my guess is that more of her ancestors owned slaves than were slaves.

I guess if she doesn’t owe reparations, nobody does.

Is she for or against illegals scurrying across the border in unending streams?

Yes.  She wants to be seen as “tough on immigration” at the same time she promises to “let every illegal sitting in detention out on day one”.

Is she against inflation?  You bet she is, and on day one of her administration she’ll do something (the something is not mentioned) to stop it.  Why the Biden/Harris administration can’t stop it right here and now isn’t discussed and no one asks here that question, since that would be mean or something.  As usual, the Bee nails it:

If honesty is the best policy, I guess Kamala’s normally uses the second-best policy.

Interviews?  Trump sits down to a multi-hour open and candid conversation with Elon Musk, and sits for interview after interview.  Kamala?  She might sit for an interview sometime by the end of the month.  Maybe.  If they can keep her off the gin for that long.

And Trump’s request for three debates?

Well, there’s just one on the schedule, and that’s enough for Kamala, at least in August.  Heck, in September I’m not so certain that Paperwork American Judge Juan Merchan won’t slap Trump in irons and send him to prison.  Oh, sure, he’ll get out on an appeal shortly thereafter, but don’t count that possibility out.  This election is a circus, and we’re far short of the finale.

They did a study of how often Kamala was drunk.  The results were staggering.

But what is known is that Kamala is really attempting to appeal to a select group of voters:  those who aren’t paying attention and who will vote for a candidate based on what they feel.

Kamala has no need to preen for the hard-core GloboLeftists that want to hang Trump because they don’t like his face.  They’re going to show up for her even if she changes her tune to being pro-life and wants to start distributing AR-15s to every citizen.  They’d vote for her, because what they believe in is based only on what the latest talking points are from the DNC.  These people are Non-Player Characters (NPC) because they’re programmed by the mainstream news or by whatever the talking head night joke men tell them to believe.

What, really, is an NPC?

Since humans are social creature, there is an inherent tendency in many people to follow.  In the past, this made sense.  The number of people, say, a French peasant would have seen in their life was small, and they derived their beliefs by what was presented to them other people, rather than any other source.

This variety of NPC is popular in the UK, and in the United States too!  Talk about diversity!

Women, especially, were subject to this effect.  An example proving that was the number of war brides that American troops returned home with from Germany.  I don’t have the total from Germany, but over 300,000 war brides came from Europe, many speaking little English, to the United States.  These women immediately married men of the armed forces that had bombed and terrorized them for years because everyone said they were in charge now.

See?  NPC.

But as family groups become fractured due to no-fault divorce and a system that gives women cash and prizes for divorcing men, and as people become uprooted chasing economic success in areas far from where they grew up, they became reliant on a different tribe:  mass media.

No one is entirely immune, but some are entirely dependent on mass media for their opinions.  A close-knit family, longstanding friends, family stories and novels and other idea intrusions (like this blog) serve as counter-programming to the NPC soup that many live in.  The more you’re divorced from Infocancer like The View, the greater your immune system, and the less of an NPC you are.

This phrase must have tested highly with the NPC species Karenus Manageriusspeakum.

Kamala is not for you.  Kamala is for the NPC.

Kamala has to appeal (or pretend to appeal) to the middle.  These are the people who aren’t on the GloboLeft, and aren’t on the TradRight.  They just want to grill and enjoy the sunset and consume mass media.  Be aware, this how they were built – to follow.  Immersive multi-media that’s fed from a screen and doesn’t require any critical thought is what they desire.

For the NPC the TV or TikTok™ is their tribal sense of purpose.  Along with a lot of drugs.

How the NPC class copes.

The difficulty for Kamala is that for many of these people the last four years have been hell.  Their businesses have been closed (if they own a business) and their paychecks have dwindled in the face of ever-present inflation.  They’ve seen awful riots, they’ve seen this weird transgender explosion that they don’t much like, and now they notice huge numbers of people who moved into their neighborhood and don’t speak any English staring at them when they fill their gas tank.  They know they’re supposed to like them, but also have a tingling sense that these aren’t refugees or immigrants.  They’re becoming worried that this is an invader class.

Huh.  Wrongly think.  Get on board, citizen!

Kamala has to appeal to those people to win.  She can’t do it on record, so the best option is to run against anything she has ever stood for, or at least pretend to run against that.  She can say anything in front of any group, and will wait for the networks and search engines to run interference for her so that she can fulfill her strategy to win the White House.

How?  Kamala intends to be the first NPC candidate, standing for nothing, with no real substance except a desire for power with the media as her staunchest friend and defender.  Let’s get this woman some more gin!

Incompetence Can Be Fatal, But It’s Always Expensive

“You know what doesn’t look good?  A story about gross incompetence.” – American Hustle

My garden shears will never be obsolete, after all, it’s cutting-hedge technology.

My science teacher in high school, who I’ll call “Mr. Johnson” (not his real name except that was totally his real name) often lectured us on things entirely unrelated to science.  It wasn’t a doctrine he was trying to instill us with, it was merely that he was old enough and close enough to retirement that he really didn’t give a damn about 90% of the class.  I don’t think that he even cared if we listened, since he was only talking to 10% of us anyway.

You either got him or you didn’t.

One of his random asides was about the word “crisis”.  Mr. Johnson hated the use of the word crisis except to refer to a single moment in time.  His definition was that the crisis was a moment – the Cuban Missile Crisis when everyone was poised to push the button, and yet backed away from world condemning us to live in a world where The View exists.

Regardless of Mr. Johnson’s definition, I think we’re in the midst of a crisis.

Why do I think this stage would smell of old kitty litter and stale chardonnay?

Datapoint:

  • Crowdstrike™

The Crowdstrike© software incident from just two weeks ago brought down at least 8.5 million computer systems, and brought them down in such a way that they couldn’t restart.  To make it even better, once a fix was found, it had to be fixed computer by computer.  Why?  Because they didn’t test the patch.

Right now, the estimate is that this caused at least $10 billion in financial losses, though a communist would tell you that it was a good thing since all of those computer techs had something to do other than play Tetris™ and Minesweeper© while listening to Dan Fogelberg.

I think Boeing® should adopt a “no slippers” policy.

Datapoint:

  • Boeing’s© Starliner™

The Starliner® is anything but, more resembling a large orbiting bucket filled with cash than a spacecraft, it sits, useless, stuck against the side of the ISS.  If it were the only failure to Boeing’s©, name, that would be one thing, but it’s not.  Their planes regularly either fall from the sky due to poor programming kludges, or have random spontaneous partial disassembly of their planes in flight due to spotty manufacturing quality control.

Boeing™ had a pretty good reputation for decades as a company that took engineering seriously – the name of the Boeing® 707 was rumored to be an engineering joke – it’s one over the square root of two.  It kept showing up in their calculations, so they decided that was a good omen for naming their (then) flagship airliner.  In reality, it sounds like it was just a product number, with the 7 series being jets, and they liked the sound of the end 7.

Regardless, they didn’t call it a “Dreamliner™”.

NASA refuses to send a giant duck into outer space – they say the bill would be astronomical.

Datapoint:

  • NASA

I loved NASA when I was a kid.  They were generally seen as a triumph of competence and coolness under pressure.  They did real engineering, and also were great at managing the integration of multiple complex systems in a manner where they worked pretty well, Apollos 1 and 13 notwithstanding.

They literally wrote the book on getting man to the Moon using the very limits of known technology at the time.  Getting to the Moon was so hard that it was barely in our grasp, yet they did it, time and time again.  They even managed to get the ISS built.

But now?  Barrack Obama stated that the primary goal of NASA was Moslem outreach.  During the eclipse of 2017, they even spent NASA resources to make a Braille book about eclipses.  What was that meant to do, taunt the blind kids?  And, yes, the Webb Space Telescope has been pretty cool.  But the Space Launch System costs about $4.1 billion per launch, and each launch takes about six months.

I was okay after I figured out alcohol could kill COVID.

Datapoint:

  • COVID-19

Every aspect of the response to COVID-19 was horrific from an economic and medical standpoint.  From an economic standpoint, the government response was to blindly throw as much cash in as many places as possible as quickly as that could.  This was a bipartisan effort.

The panic and hypocrisy weren’t limited to the economic response, no.  The medical response was just as inept, as Fauci now admits he just made things up as some sort of medical theater.  Ventilators appear to have killed more people than they saved.  The abomination of the “Vaxx” has led to an excess mortality that many reckon has a body count higher than COVID itself.  I, for one, really hope that everyone who took the Vaxx® recovers, but can we forget a government and its accomplices who tried (and in many cases, succeeded in forcing people to take it?

I can’t, though the GloboLeftElite surely hope you forget.  But remember, there are no refunds.

I was wondering if this was going to be too dark, but then I realized it’s all under two and a half miles of water, so of course it’s going to be dark.

Datapoint:

  • The Titan Submersible

In one sense, I certainly admire the guts that it took to build a submarine from a pressure hull and off-the-shelf parts like an X-Box™ controller, but the hubris of the owner remains:  the CEO didn’t “hire 50-year-old white guys” because they weren’t “inspirational”.  I wonder if we would have made it to orbit if Von Braun had a similar philosophy?

Well, I guess he paid the ultimate price for his hubris and disregarding competence in favor of the “inspirational” stories.  Most CEOs just lose their shareholder’s money, like Disney™, which I could write an entire post on.

The crisis we face is one where we’ve lost the capacity for competence and will to achieve that we had as recently as the 1960s even as our systems grow far more complex.  Again, one software update cost $10,000,000,000, NASA doesn’t produce spaceships that can fly with any reliability, and Boeing™ went from making some of the most reliable airplanes in the world by the thousands to a company that survives on government contracts, accounting errors, and inertia.

Maybe, though, this crisis will do what the Cuban Missile Crisis couldn’t do:

Free us from The View.  Wonder if they’d like a trip to the Titanic?

How Corporations Ruin Nations, Part II: Readers Strike Back

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” – No Country for Old Men

How many clickbait articles does it take to change a lightbulb?  The answer will shock you.

First:  thanks everyone for the comments last week, agree or disagree, it was an epic comment section with over 5,000 words of well thought out commentary.

One of the things that I think we all have to realize is that the thought process and institutions that got us into this situation are the thought processes and institutions we have to reform because that’s how we got here.  This is the same logic used by the Founders when they created this place.

I am first and foremost for things that make the family strong, and the virtue that comes from being observant is absolutely one of those things.  The Constitution isn’t agnostic, though it allows you to be.

I am furthermore very much in favor of limited freedom.  Well, limited how?  You know, pesky things like murder should be outlawed.  Does no-fault divorce with alimony and child support make women “freer”?  Yes.  But it’s horrible for our nation.

And I am for a mostly free market.  Should marijuana be legal?  Probably not.  Should Google™ be able to change its search algorithm with the express intent of keeping Donald Trump out of the White House?  Also, probably not.

Should every corporation be able to live forever and go into any line of businesses, leading to Facebook™ buying competitors just to keep relevant?

Yeah, no.

What’s the difference between Mark Zuckerberg and your wife?  Zuck knows more about you.

Below are some great points that I had to condense.  I tried with utmost sincerity to try to trim them fairly, so they didn’t lose context though I fixed a few typos.  Keep in mind if I had kept all the bits, this post would probably end up doubling to around 7,000 words, and ain’t nobody got time for that.  Comments are in bold italics, responses are mine.

Free market capitalism only works in a very homogeneous society with a shared and enforced set of Christian values, along with churches strong enough to enforce said values.

John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Freedom, and free market capitalism, really only works with a moral and religious people. Everything else quickly turns into some form of tyranny. Or tranny. Or both.

I disagree – the free market can and has flourished in many locations through history, see Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings.  Now, combining the free market with a mostly free society?  Yes, that requires a virtuous people, with a shared virtue founded in a shared religion.

The worst is altruistic people without religion:  those are monsters.

Kipling, Gods of The Copybook Headings, and It’s Different This Time

Ahh, when you get the smug feeling that comes from your altruism but somebody else pays the price.

the absolute number one reform on corporations that needs to happen is not on the list though: this is removing the liability shield. The shareholders of a company must be liable for the actions done in their name, as well as for the debts of the company, and they must be actual people, not other corporations. the debts are easy to prorate over the outstanding shares. the liability for damages or criminal activity, however, must be shared by all shareholders.

In researching this, although not all shareholders may have been liable, the managerial class of the corporation were legally and criminally liable at least for a time in the country.  I was surprised!  And, for the same reason you suggest.

Restricting corporations sounds great, but how could it be enforced? More .gov, more bureaucracy, more laws, more grift. Rather than strongarm huge national and international entities, think of ways to incentivize the local aspect. We don’t need any more .gov regulation mucking up our lives.

Just devolve it back to the Several States, it would be a rather simple Constitutional amendment.  Oh, and have the Several States select senators to protect their rights.  Much of this nonsense happened after senators became “super congressmen” with longer terms.

Sorry, looks like this picture has a piece of Schiff on it.

Corporations only exist because of government powers. They could not exist without the government enforcing their existence 24 hours a day. If the government were to simply no longer recognize corporations as legal entities, they would disintegrate in seconds. So changing the terms of that government support is not anything out of imagination.

Yes.  And there is historical precedent.  And don’t forget that AT&T being broken apart didn’t cause the world to explode even though they had a Death Star© logo.

The corporations MAKE the laws.

This is very, very true.  I reference the exact stats a little lower in the post, but if the Elite is for a regulation, then it happens.  Look at the endless hordes of illegals:  this was chosen by both sides.  Either could have stopped it, and either could stop it today.  But the Elites have bigger pocketbooks.

Peter Turchin’s End Times: There Be Dragons Here

Chain stores outcompete mom-and-pop stores. Customers prefer to buy from them. Why are you objecting to what customers have decided they want? It is not obvious that patronizing chain stores is contrary to customers’ interests.

Your policy prescription reads like the envy wish list from local pharmacists who can’t compete on price and selection, and demand government ban their competition.

At one point, I agreed with your statement wholeheartedly even though I’ve never been and never will be a pharmacist.  Customers do prefer lower prices.  Larger big-box stores can get those by several ways:  a good one is lowering the cost of goods delivered to the store via increased efficiency, a bad one is offshoring all manufacturing in critical industries.  But the impact on the community is not zero sum.  Profits that would stay local aren’t local anymore.  That has a cumulative effect.  If you really want big box stores and they’re 50% locally (in-state) owned with a specific mandate, and there are strategic tariffs?  Maybe we’re both happy and life is better.

Never put a catheter into a pharmacist, you’re just left with a harmacist.

The next comment went point by point, but I skipped a few points (length):

  1. Require corporations to be chartered as separate entities in each operating state.
    And here we have the restriction that really silos the states from each other. I don’t know – CAN this be done at the state level, or would this require federal action?
  2. Require a percentage (greater than 50%?) of local (think, people living in the state) ownership in each corporation.
    If the preceding point can be done, so can this.
  3. Sharply restrict lending by out of state institutions.
    Ok, I know there’s a federal law on this – the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking Act.
  4. Tiered sales tax based on company size: the bigger, the higher, which reflects the value these companies are taking out of state.
    Let’s add income taxes in here too, and combine this with points 1-6 above, and create a new legal entity – the “Domestic Missouri Corporation” (for example), which must have 50%+1 local ownership, a 50 year limited life, collects no sales tax, is exempt from as many state regs as reasonable; and income derived from a DMC is taxed at an extremely low rate by the state (if at all), and liquidation distributions from a DMC (at the end of the 50 year life) are exempt from state taxes. DMCs can be banks, and are then exempt from most state-level banking regulations.

There was an awesome longer comment talking point by point about the legality at the state level of doing this that I excerpted above.  Yes, it would require an amendment to the Constitution, because the Supreme Court (activist in the Robber Baron days) essentially nationalized corporations, primarily to protect the railroads (many of the court cases that changed the status of corporations from limited to infinite dealt with railroads).

Our local railroad has a good training program.

The big corporations collude with the government to use your tax dollars – stolen from you at gunpoint – to subsidize their costs.

A point I missed, thanks for bringing it up.  This is a particularly insidious trap – and it creates more input for the victim machine that is the GloboLeft – they import millions to undercut wages, profit strip an area, but are in favor of subsidizing the low-wage Potterville they’ve created.  People who depend on the government want . . . more government.  And (as noted by another commentor, they also look to have local communities give them a tax break, or even tax citizens to get them to pay for capital expansion (new stadium, anyone?).

. . . lots of corporations make contributions to local interests. WalMart posts these inside their store. In my neck of the woods, Family Express does lots of community support. On a national level, Thrivent does all kinds of stuff. All you need to do is ask. They approve even marginal stuff, though I know of no cases of them funding LBGTOMFG crap.

Back before the Boy Scouts went woke, I was a Cubmaster.  We went to Wal-Mart® and asked for contributions for day camp, even offering ad space.  “No.”  No large, non-local business contributed.  Local businesses did.  My experiences only.

I don’t disagree with any particular point, however, no set of laws will ultimately protect you from a group who A) is reasonably intelligent, B) is entirely unscrupulous and C) instinctively works together against outsiders. The only thing to do with a group like that is not deal with them and exclude them if at all possible.

Effectively, we are currently ruled by such a group. Until we are rid of them, these laws would grant temporary protection at best.

This is a significant problem, but it’s one that exists, well, everywhere.  Look at Indians (dot, not feather) that get jobs at Microsoft©.  What do they do?  They get on the hiring side and only hire additional Indians.  The same can be said of other groups that are insular – a friend works for a Mormon corporation.  He noted that non-Mormons can get jobs there, but never C-suite positions.  And, yes, Jews do this too and have been exceptionally successful at it.  One of James O’Keefe’s targets noted that at Disney©, there was no way that anyone but a Jewish person could get a top job.

Under a decentralized set of solutions as we’ve discussed, it is simply very, very difficult to concentrate that much power.

There’s a highway to hell but a stairway to heaven, which may be a commentary on the expected traffic load.

As an entrepreneur myself, I think all you really need is #1:  Restrict corporations to a limited life span, at which time they have to divest. . . . (or) . . . Just make them play by the same damn tax rules. That’s probably sufficient.

How about we replace most taxes with tariffs?

Your great ape brain firmware wants to blame the competing outside tribe instead of traitors who look like you, but that group is called “middle class WASP voters”. That group has such a large percentage of the votes that no other group can force any policy onto them. Why then are there so many policies made against their interests? Are middle class voters mostly a bunch of non-player-characters whose minds are programed by the mainstream media? If so then voting can never work.

But policy after policy has been shoved down the throats of the middle-class WASP voters.  Who voted for unlimited immigration?  Here’s Turchin:

“The political scientist Martin Gilens . . . gathered a large data set – nearly 2000 policy issues between 1981 and 2002.  Each case matched a proposed policy change to a nation opinion survey asking a favor/oppose question about the initiative . . . .

“Statistical analysis . . . showed that the preferences of the poor had no effect on policy changes . . . . What is surprising is that there was no – zilch, nada – effect of the average voter.  The main effect on the direction of change was due to the policy preferences of the affluent.  There was also an additional effect of interest groups, the most influential ones being business-oriented lobbies.  Once you include in the statistical model the preferences of the top 10 percent and the interest groups, the effect of the commoners is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”

Given inflation, the poor are revolting.  No surprise, soap is expensive.

I will say that communities becoming dependent on the corporations is a problem as well. Again, example here in New Home: We have two very large corporations in town and one just down the road that are likely substantial employers for this entire region. If they go, it will have a huge impact.

There is a place for larger corporations with longer lives.  But they need to be sharply held to task.  Why is Facebook™ still so big?  They bought all potential competition when the competition was still small.  Facebook® as Facebook™ is fine, but when they want to just buy other corporations to make themselves invulnerable?  No.  But someone needs to make aspirin and airplanes, and Bayer® and Boeing™ can do that.  Maybe if Boeing had maintained a focus on airplanes they wouldn’t suck.

One (of Denninger’s suggestions) was to eliminate the ability for large investment firms like Blackrock and Vanguard to vote proxy shares on the mutual funds of their customers. This gives them ginormous power to influence the country which is why we have DEI (among other things). With this power it becomes easier to vote themselves even more control. To stop this, the actual owner of the stock (even via a mutual fund) should be the one who votes the shares or else the votes are forfeit. That would deflate their power tremendously. I would go a few steps further though, and limit their ability to invest in certain areas (real estate for example).

Yes.  BlackRock® should be neutered.

Why wouldn’t you trust Dr. Anthony Fauchi?

Undertake to lay your finger on that clause in the Constitution which gives government that authority and power.

“To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;” – this is the literal and exact purpose of the article.  But note, this uses the proper word “among” meaning that Massachusetts couldn’t blockade Vermont if Congress said “no”.  It does not mean “within” which is the source of the mischief.  States are, however, given the power, and had it, and restricted the formation of corporations to a legislative event because they were so frightened of unbridled corporate power.

At the beginning, when the Founders were still around, most corporations existed for large, well-defined purposes for a limited amount of time, and couldn’t own things that didn’t meet that purpose.  This isn’t my idea, it was the Founders.

Yes.  It was and is misused horribly.  But it is applicable here.

Corporations get too big, and live too long (list of dead corporations)?

Yes.  Just because Sears© cratered as it was looted doesn’t mean that BlackRock© or Facebook™ or Google® should be allowed to wield unlimited power, either financial or via information restriction on the public.  The power of the corporation in public life can and should be limited by limiting their reach, lifespan, and ability to work across business sectors.

BTW, how did Smoot-Hawley do at saving American jobs?

Don’t know, ask China in 2024 – we’re not 1930 America.  At that point(1930) we had a trade account surplus.  Now?  Not so much, and it’s a race to the bottom.  A $5 tariff per $700 (at the time) iPhone™ would have swung the production cost to favor the United States.  By 200%.  Countries can (and do!) strategically target markets so that they can “corner” the intellectual skills and know-how to make strategic goods.  Domestically produced F-35?  No way, there are parts that in 2024 have to come from China, and the timeline for competency in that tech is measured in decades.

And how is NAFTA really working out for the economy?

I shot the tariff, but I did not shoot the subsidy.

Penalize companies for outsourcing jobs overseas, and you might be onto something.  But don’t subsequently bitch when American cars and medicines cost 20x what the same products cost overseas, where they’re made in sweatshops, and are uncompetitive in the rest of the world for the same reason.

That’s making my point for me:  we used to be able to do that – the P-51s flying off the assembly line and into Europe was because we had the capacity and the know-how.  Germany could figure out how to make cars.  And in what industry (exactly) are we 20x less efficient?0

I’ve been thinking a lot on this lately. Do communities really benefit from cheaper prices at stores like Walmart or DollarStore if all they are is conduits sucking money out of local communities? Or, banking at MegaBank Corp when the local bank is owned by shareholders in the community?

I know a guy who owns a bank here in Modern Mayberry. Has a nice house that he had built.  By local labor.  Bought the concrete at the local plant, owned by locals.  He also volunteers his time to lead a civic group.  Make him a branch manager of MegaBankCorp© and he’d be buying a crappy house, and too tired to go out and help out after dinner.  But, hey, with MegaBankCorp™ your interest goes to New York!

I’m guessing (hoping) this discussion is really just JW’s way of pointing out the dearth of anyone having read Adam Smith’s Wealth Of Nations, which came out the same year as the Declaration Of Independence, and therefore being wholly ignorant of how liberty works in a country not controlled by the state, cannot come up with one reason (out of any five hundred) why government control of any markets is asinine and stupid in the extreme.

Adam got a lot right theoretically but also wrong practically.  Yes, it would be silly to grow grapes in Greenland, but comparative advantage says not.  We’re not talking about grapes, though.  And, Smith was against tariffs, but the average tariffs went up as high as 60%.  During our industrialization phase up until 1930 or so, the average tariff was 50%.  Average.  And they made up 95% of federal revenue – so much that we didn’t need an income tax.

Adam Smith was against those, so we can see the United States was very weak and not an industrial powerhouse.  Oh, wait.

Socialists would be fine using the invisible hand to change a lightbulb, but it would have to be somebody else’s bulb.

Bonus points: When the government also decrees that the national minimum wage should be $20/hr, how many of you will venture to local restaurants to buy dinner out?

I’m against minimum wages.  Boot the illegals out, restrict legal immigration, let the price float while defanging .gov as well as .com.  Yes, government is a dangerous servant and a cruel master, but so are Facebook™, Google©, and BankAmerica®.  Defanging both of them isn’t a bad idea.

So you’re okay with a government corporate entity living forever, but the idea that private citizens could have the same ability and right to incorporate scares hell out of you?  And when, exactly, are the masters of that government held liable for the consequences of their actions?

Governments end.  We have successive congresses, and successive presidents (elected or not).  Putting all of them on trial like the Spartans did after their terms (limited!) end is maybe not a bad idea – it would be fun to watch Clarence Thomas in charge of such an event.  I think the bigger problem is the regulator class, which should be mostly eliminated by actually following the limits placed on the federal government by the Constitution.

That would probably make her Schiff her pants.

Thanks for participating in this little thought experiment.  Again, it’s clear that the concentrated power of government is bad.  It’s also clear that the concentrated power of corporations can be just as bad, since they appear to inevitably twist themselves into anti-competition behemoths that want to control governments, import endless streams of illegals, and support Leftist causes – hence, the GloboLeftElite.