Inflation Nation – Page 8 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: National Divorce? Getting Closer.

“Dolores, I am making a citizen’s divorce.” – The Man with Two Brains

Big Alarm Clock is a conspiracy! Wake up people! (all non-regular memes are as-found)

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

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same. Again. This is moving sideways, but things can unravel 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 National Divorce – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Silly Season – 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 over 740 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The National Divorce

I remember reading about research a while back that (my fuzzy memory says) indicated that when a married couple didn’t want to have a divorce, one of the easiest things they could do was not talk about a divorce. I guess that would mean that the first rule of staying married club is don’t talk about divorce club.

Marjorie Taylor Greene brought up the issue in a big way:

It’s a stark question: do we want to stay married, or not. Folks on the Internet followed suit, with this poll:

The Internet is what it is, and a poll like that isn’t at all scientific. But 19,000 people (75% of respondents) were done. They were ready to get lawyers, and decide how we get to split up California and Virginia and who got alternating weekends with Michigan.

A much more scientific poll was done by Rasmussen® (more on them later in this Issue) and it emerged that a majority of Republicans wanted out. 47%, plus an 11% who might be in favor, but they wanted to know if they could still get Netflix™ off of Uncle Tim’s account it he were stuck in a Blue State before they made up their mind.

Leftists are never in favor of making anything smaller, since it lowers their power. Remember, it is Leftists who are on the side of international and world governments. I’m pretty sure they’d love to include Mars, too, since it’s Red. This is shown in the poll below:

Fully a third of all people (based on Rasmussen’s™ report) are ready to check out. That’s a lot. Although Gallup® wasn’t around to do a poll, most literature I can find seems to indicate that only 1/3 of the folks living in the Colonies wanted the Revolution, so 1/3 is a big, big number.

I’ll add in this other (entirely unscientific) poll:

Again, unscientific, but it shows that there are a sizeable number of folks out there who believe that soldiers would, if ordered, shoot on American civilians. That’s another scary thought, and perhaps feeds back into the idea that people would much rather have a peaceful exit rather than a violent one.

I read that this year’s CPAC (Republican fanboy convention) was poorly attended, and lacking in energy. And why not? The most fervent people in the Republican party are done, and don’t trust the vote, and don’t think that their votes may ever matter again.

Spiderman®, though, seems to have an opinion:

Violence and Censorship Update

Cancelling really isn’t government censorship, but it’s censorship nevertheless. Scott Adams, noted cartoonist and author, really rustled the collective jimmies of the Left. Rasmussen™ had a poll about whether it was “okay to be white” and 47% of black people indicated that it was either not okay, or they weren’t sure.

Scott has a YouTube® channel (still!) where he talks about whatever he wants to talk about. In this, he opined that if that was the way that black people felt, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be around them. The following cartoon describes it in such a way that Scott retweeted it:

The outrage was both predictable, even though Scott noted that many black people he knew called him up and said that his stance was completely reasonable. Mr. Adams’ publisher dropped him. Mr. Adams’ cartoon syndicator dropped him. Mr. Adams’ agent . . . dropped him. His new book, due out in the fall? Cancelled.

I don’t feel bad for Scott, he knew what he was doing, and he has tens of millions of dollars. But what is it about that simple narrative that makes the Left explode? I’ll cover that in a future post.

The Silence of the Adams

It’s not violence now, but Illinois has now decided that most crimes short of murdering someone and taking selfies with the victim are now non-detainable. Burn someone’s house? Out without bail. Kill someone while high? Out without bail.

Florida. Sigh. Why? They want to make bloggers who write about elected officials register if they make money for their efforts. Is this the single stupidest thing to come out of Florida since they elected ¡Jeb!?

The publisher of Roald Dahl is going through his books an removing whatever they don’t like based on political correctness. No more “ugly” or “fat” or . . . black. Paging Scott Adams . . . These “corrections” are showing up in people’s previously purchased e-books, too. This is why physical media is good. And why I have lots of books.

It’s not censorship, exactly, when programmers prevent A.I. from coming to conclusions based on fact, but it’s close. There are certain facts that are inconvenient, like boys have xy chromosomes and girls have xx chromosomes, so programmers prevent A.I. from talking about that. Elon Musk says he’s going to do his own, non-woke A.I.

When the trains carrying ethyl-methyl-death crashed in East Palestine, it was a story that was minimized until it couldn’t be. I follow stories like this that are under the news, and was aware of it within a few hours of it happening. But the news? No reporting on it, since it didn’t impact Baltimore and had the potential to make the Biden administration look even worse than it normally looks.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again, and, like Kamala’s womb, this graph doesn’t eggs. Here’s a recap:

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 still minimal right now. I’m betting it stays down until June at the earliest.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit more. I think this is a conscious attempt to keep things together, Biden just came out in favor of “law and order”, because I think he saw it the show on cable.

Economic:

Economic numbers took a big dive this month, which surprised me. The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which still isn’t good.

Illegal Aliens:

The number took a big drop! Yay! Oh, it’s still higher than ever for that month. I’d say border is wide open, but we have no border.

So, when can we ask the Mexicans to leave?

The Silly Season

One way to deflect a story is to not tell it. The other way to deflect a story is to flood the media with, well, nonsense. My favorite this month? The Chinese Spy Balloon™. During World War II, the Japanese decided they would make Americans afraid. They launched 9,000 balloons filled with explosives at the United States. As near as I could find with an in-depth three-minute look, one exploded. Out of 9,000.

Ohhh, I’m so afraid.

I’m not sure what we’ve found out about the Chinese Spy Balloon©. I think that we’ll find out they were trying to check up on why Americans weren’t buying more extended warrantees based on those cell-phone calls. Since we haven’t heard anything, I’m think that it may actually have been a weather balloon. Regardless, they can solve their problem with just a little bit of camouflage that the United States would never shoot down:

Was this the story that they were attempting to distract us from?

It’s a scary one. Why do we need so may people? Why aren’t all the traditional people who would go into the military signing up? Oh, yeah. They’ve been told they’re racist. They’ve been told they have unearned privilege? They’ve seen the military force people to take the vaxx. And now they want them to sign up to fight?

What could be next?

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11761485/NYPD-release-images-four-brazen-thieves-staged-50-000-raid-Manhattan-Givenchy.html

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1628194739987046400

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626367620151738375

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626397252334809090

https://twitter.com/nofones2/status/1626369625314279426

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626447147225718786

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1621965430930669569

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1628225095893131264

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1627464538609139714

https://twitter.com/762sfuxk/status/1626379421065134080

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11735803/Armed-intruder-left-critical-condition-shot-neck-homeowner.html

One Guy

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11632047/Vigilante-killed-robber-Houston-restaurant-breaks-silence.html

Body Count

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11732497/More-48-000-Americans-committed-suicide-year-report-finds.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11711353/Seven-states-eye-legalizing-assisted-suicide-America.html

https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/new-paper-an-estimated-13-million

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/is-coincidence-now-the-leading-cause

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11738179/Still-think-secure-Joe-Moment-500-Venezuelan-migrants-walk-southern-border.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11730363/Biden-preparing-mass-deportations-non-Mexican-migrants-Mexico.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11733577/Map-shows-14-million-Americans-live-5-miles-cancer-gas-emitting-plants.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11776999/The-blanketed-fentanyl-NINEFOLD-rise-deadly-opioid-use-western-US.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11701187/Zombie-Nation-Shocking-images-lay-bare-Americas-drug-crisis.html

Vote Count

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11761979/Kari-Lake-vows-Arizona-gubernatorial-defeat-state-supreme-court.html

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/02/08/maricopa-heat-maps-the-story-keeps-getting-worse/

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/15/everything-you-need-to-know-about-democrat-gov-tony-evers-bid-to-overhaul-wisconsin-elections/

https://alaskapublic.org/2023/02/17/launch-of-campaign-to-repeal-ranked-choice-voting-draws-a-crowd-in-anchorage/

https://raheemkassam.substack.com/p/fox-vs-dominion-discovery-docs-show

Civil War
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/keith-olbermann-calls-economic-civil-war-institute-gun-control

https://www.foxnews.com/media/olbermann-urges-blue-states-wage-economic-civil-war-red-states-starve-red-states-submission

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/internal-atf-docs-show-zero-tolerance-guidelines-shutting-down-gun-stores

https://www.carolinacoastonline.com/tideland_news/opinions/article_bec42134-ad30-11ed-979b-4365a8a67e62.html

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/17/idaho-house-approves-talks-to-annex-oregon-counties/

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/lost-cause-2-0-desantis-and-republicans-inspired-by-racist-confederate-history-re-writes/

https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/newswire/gops-civil-war-republicans-confront-bitter-divide-no-clear-path-forward/

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/06/megadonor-gop-richard-elizabeth-uihlein-00081267

https://www.reformer.com/opinion/columnists/nicholas-boke-what-would-a-civil-war-look-like-anyway/article_c6beefac-aca1-11ed-9fa4-d74d7a722a44.html

https://sundayguardianlive.com/world/will-2022-witness-american-civil-war-2-0-will-happen-2024

https://news.uchicago.edu/us-headed-toward-another-civil-war-william-howell

https://www.businessinsider.com/mtg-defends-call-split-up-us-says-civil-war-looming-2023-2

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/marjorie-taylor-greenes-national-divorce-was-the-civil-war.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/marjorie-taylor-greene-secession-civil-war/673142/

https://www.theringer.com/2023/2/24/23613267/emasculation-proclamation-civil-war-ii

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/project-veritas-has-forced-out-james-okeefe.html

https://hard-drive.net/hd/technology/ken-burns-releases-4000-part-tiktok-series-on-the-civil-war/

Discipline, Romans, And Spending All The Money

“That’s newspapers for you. You could fill volumes with what you don’t read in ‘em.” – The Green Berets

I decided never to jog with Marcus Aurelius. It’s always dangerous to run with Caesars.

Self-discipline is hard, but it starts with the smallest step. Even (the dead) Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius in his book Meditations talked about how hard it was to get out of bed in the morning. Marcus talked about how warm and comfy he was under the covers, and how he’d like to stay there, curled up. In then end, though, he got up because he had responsibility to govern the Empire that was a bit more important than his desire to be comfy.

Me? There are some mornings I would have given up Gaul for another fifteen minutes. Okay, maybe not Gaul because of the food, but definitely Judea.

Marcus did the tough (maybe he had a hangover?) thing because he had a responsibility to millions of citizens to do his very best for them, and as nearly as I can determine, he took that seriously. Plus? It’s good to be the Emperor. I hear they didn’t have to wait in the drive through for Chicken McNuggets® and always got enough Hot Mustard™ sauce.

My advice? Never eat a Kid’s Meal at McDonald’s®. Their mothers tend to get upset.

The difficult part of discipline is that it requires, well, discipline. Getting good things in life is difficult – that’s why we work for them. And that’s why it’s called work. It’s tough. But when the seeds are planted, cared for, and weeded, then at harvest it’s time to reap the rewards. Discipline is like that. Heck, some sort of east Asian place that I can’t be bothered to look up has a proverb that says that, “A woman who marries a man who works hard every day will never starve.”

I don’t think that was China, because if it was China, they have been starving every century by the tens of millions, especially when they embarked on the Chinese Diet Plan called Communism. Maybe it was Puerto Rico? Or Applebee’s™?

Probably not. But I think it might have ended in a vowel, but not Y, because that’s sometimes only a vowel, and I don’t think that Asians use the same fonts.

So, if even a dead Roman can figure it out, why can’t we?

Some people want to ban Roman numerals. Not on my watch.

The latest bouts of fiscal insanity in the United States have made me think that none of them have read Marcus Aurelius, or maybe even can read. What triggered this post is the recent Supreme Court Case about ghosts. Oh, wait, that’s later. No, student loans.

Student loans in the United States are a particularly horrible thing that gives money to Leftist professors so that they can indoctrinate youth but the youth has to pay for it until they lose all their teeth or pay it off. I think that was in the terms and conditions of my student loans, but I can’t be exactly sure, since after I signed my name, they gave me $7,500. Duh.

The most pernicious thing about student loans is that they live forever. I paid mine off in January, 2013. I paid ahead, but didn’t want to pay them off completely if the world ended in December, 2012 (which was a thing). Oddly, this is a true story, and illustrates how far I’m willing to take a joke.

But student loan forgiveness is just the tip of the iceberg. For the last five or so years of my life, the government (both Right and Left) has been like a fat girl who decides on a Tuesday night that the diet is over. That cookie dough? Sure. I can eat a tube or two. Covered in frosting. Oh, and I’ll just tidy up the frosting container so it doesn’t go bad. If you’ve given up, why not go all in?

The cannibal decided to go on a vegan diet. He found a family of them at Whole Foods®.

The government (again, both Right and Left) has decided that there is no limit. Every Tuesday for them is time to give Ukraine more money for . . . (spins wheel) dental x-ray infrastructure. Will $23 billion cover that? Sure, if it were just Ukraine, that would be one thing. But it’s not just that. Biden’s Build Back Better means that we’ll just burn cash to make us warm if we run out of oil.

If I seem a bit cynical, it’s because that at every single turn in my life, that I’ve seen fiscal discipline further erode, and money fly a bit freer each day. At no point have I ever seen (outside of Ron and Rand Paul) and politician say, “stop”. Apparently, when elected to Congress, the “spend money on everything light” blinks on the dashboard of their cars.

My dashboard keeps telling me “trunk is ajar”. Silly car. A trunk isn’t a jar.

There is no discipline. There is no pretending to have discipline. It’s all just comfy warm covers and Chicken McNuggies™ while every sense of fiscal discipline is overridden by another trip of the spoon int the Pillsbury™ chocolate frosting.

But that’s okay. I’m sure it will end fine. Where’s the frosting? I think I want to sleep late today. Oh, but have we spent enough money on Ukraine?

Is The End Of The Road Nearly At Hand?

“If they have him, and they can somehow piece the country together, get communications up, they’ll control everything; the Federal Reserve, the military.” – The Last Ship

Where does the Fed® hide its monetary mistakes? In debasement.

Pa Wilder was a banker, and when we communicated via a while back, I’d send him long-ish messages about most everything. One time, I broached the economy with him. As a small farm banker with more than 50 years of experience, he was familiar with the way the system worked.

When I first heard that the Federal Reserve™ wasn’t owned by the government, but by the member banks, I asked him. I figured he’d tell me, “Nah, John, it’s really owned by the government, aliens aren’t real, go back to sleep – we won the war.” Nope. He then went through how each member bank was required to buy stock in the regional Federal Reserve Banks (as I recall) with at least 6% of their deposits.

Whoa. His bank owned a tiny part of the Federal Reserve Bank®. Certainly not much, but part of it. The Federal Reserve Bank© is a private institution. It was the 1913 mechanism to get the politicians out of the economy. The Great Depression shows how well it worked.

What do you call a talkative Colombian? Hablo Escobar.

After World War II, there was a time of relative stability – Europe and Japan were shattered, and the United States had industry that was just waiting to stop making weapons and start making washers. The sudden influx of labor with the demobilizing G.I.s made a combination for economic growth. After they drank the bars dry and made a zillion babies.

Even with the added costs of Social Security, it worked. The economy was working so well that we could build an interstate highway system without breaking a sweat. The highway system even added to the economic boom by lowering the cost and time required to move goods, effectively shrinking the country.

However, every good party has to end. Johnson’s Great Society and financing for the Vietnam War out of “money we just made up” caused Nixon to end the last tether between gold and the dollar. Sure, the Fed® had been cheating about the amount of cash it had been printing, but when the bluff was called, Nixon had the option of sending all our gold to France or saying “just kidding”.

He chose the latter. I think it was a good idea, because it wasn’t like France was going to do anything about it, anyway. The result was the petrodollar – the idea that all international transactions in oil would take place in dollars. That also resulted in almost all transactions taking place in the dollar. The inflation of the 1970s was the result – it was before we figured out how to tax the world by printing dollars in a sorta responsible way.

If I had a dime for every time I didn’t know what was going on, I’d say, “Hey, where did all these dimes come from?”

So, people all over the world needed dollars, even though we were printing them like we were, well, the Fed™. As long as the Soviet Union existed, there was a counterbalance to the United States, so at least there was some check. But after they went tango uniform?

That’s when the responsibility completely ended, the cash was printed, and the instability really started.

The Dotcom Bubble was the first – fed by cash from the Fed® with no place to go. And then it tanked. So the Fed™ printed a few trillion bucks. That led directly to . . .

The Housing Bubble. You probably have heard of it.

But this was different – it actually lead to protests against the banks. A reprogramming was necessary – “put the bankers in jail” had to be stopped, because bankers like to use our money to buy themselves nice things like that tiny part of France where they don’t let Muslims in. Except the Saudis.

I read that photographers and art thieves both take pictures.

A reprogramming was needed – Occupy Wall Street™ had to turn to . . . something. That reprogramming of the Lefty rank and file was into “white people are awful” and it got the heat away from the bankers. And made movies suck.

Meanwhile, the money hijinks led to country after country having revolutions, from Libya to Egypt to Syria. Why? Because inflation in the United States (at that point) meant that people had to pay a nickel more for Cheetos®. In Egypt, that meant that one of the children had to be sold into medical experimentation.

The key to all of this was keeping the dollar as the key currency used in international transactions. To be clear, Russia was a big threat in this. Sure, Russia is ruled by corrupt folks who kill people who threaten them, but I can raise you a Jeff Epstein, a Hunter Biden, and Hillary.

The Russians certainly threatened all of this with Nordstream® and Nordstream II©. These pipelines pushed natural gas straight from Russia to Europe. Now, Russia could take . . . euros for gas. Dollar not required.

Watch a 10-hour movie? No. But have Netflix® break it up into 10 one-hour movies?

And scary. All the investment of the Left in Green Energy® led them to shut down nuclear power plants (Germany, I’m looking at you) and replace them with natural gas plants. And you see the results.

(hint: Ukraine and certain underwater explosions)

Now we find that we have a currency that’s becoming worth less every day, foreign folks are building ways to not take the dollar. So they need fewer of them. And want fewer of them in their pockets.

It doesn’t help that we’re in debt by (spins wheel) over $25 trillion bucks, the economy is distorted, and that Medicare® and Medicaid™ will soon cost more than Joe Biden’s hair plugs. And we’re going to double that in the next eight years, and double it again in the next eight. That’s $100 trillion dollars.

Does anyone reading this believe we can last that long?

Oops.

Pa Wilder said 20 years ago that he didn’t see how it could last. But many folks have gone broke by betting against the Fed™. That one day they can’t paper it all over?

Nah. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine.

Balloons, Hot A.I. Chicks, And Our Future A.I. Overlords

“It all adds up: the dots, the AI, the air force, the chip…” – Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

I once invented a “cold air” balloon, but it never took off. (as-found)

I was going to write about Chinese spy balloons, but I figure that’s all a bunch of hot air. Besides, I figure China can send up $5,000 balloons all year long as we shoot them down with $603,817 Sidewinder AIM-9X Blk II missiles. Oh, and that was their 2015 cost, but I’m sure that Raytheon® probably has the cost up closer to a million by now. That explains why Raytheon’s website says, “Send more balloons!”

The Germans don’t need 99, just this one will do. (Thanks, Karl)

No, let’s talk about A.I. again. I know that I wrote about that recently, but the speed of A.I. development is increasing even faster than the size of Madonna’s facial features. It certainly has grown faster than I anticipated the last time I brought this topic up. For clarity, “grown faster than I anticipated” includes both A.I. and Madonna’s facial features.

ChatGPT® is one marker. If you’re unaware, ChatGPT™ is an A.I. chatbot that was trained using (enter long, boring irrelevant explanation here that would be much more interesting if I pretended that they rewarded the A.I. by shoving ham into its USB ports). What’s different, is that ChatGPT© can use data from all over the Internet and produce some pretty interesting stuff – and I’m sure that thousands of high school kids have already handed in 500-word essays written entirely by ChatGPT™ and gotten pretty good grades, especially if they promised the A.I. some mayo and cheese to go with all that ham if it did an extra good job.

ChatGPT© is working well for the creators – they expect to make $200 million this year, and a billion next year. At current inflation rates, that might be enough for a Big Mac™ and fries.

It’s not just a new chatbot. Another area growing very quickly is A.I. that can create photorealistic still images and video. Here’s an example:

It’s not Cerberus, just a hound of heck. (as-found)

Yeah, that puppy is cute, and, if you watch it closely, I’m pretty sure that no one has ever seen a puppy with back legs that can switch from the right side to the left before, but it’s still pretty amazing. I wish I could train my dog to do that, but the vet keeps telling me it won’t work unless I buy one of H.P. Lovecraft’s dogs. Alternatively, he told me I could just take a lot of acid. Where would I be without Dr. Tommy Chong, Veterinarian? But what about this?

I accidently played “dad” instead of “dead” when a bear attacked. It can now ride a bike without training wheels, and run a stick shift. (as-found)

But this is just the first wave of true A.I. to come to market.

Chat GPT has been able to do computer programming at a fairly high level. Is it right? No. But is it a tool that competent professionals can use to create blocks of code, do minimal editing, and be even faster?

And as it learns, errors will drop. A.I. can then . . . program itself. That’s not scary at all, right? Now, when I talk A.I., I don’t mean that it will necessarily ever be conscious like some humans are conscious. It doesn’t need to be conscious for it to be an incredibly disruptive technology, if not the most disruptive technology ever invented, besides PEZ®.

As it is, the quality of what’s being created is growing. Online, what’s the problem with creating an A.I. generated hottie, and then posing her up on Only Fans® (if you’re not familiar, it’s a place where thirsty simps can give millions of dollars to scantily clad trollops)? One post I read while researching A.I. indicates that someone has done exactly that, and makes around $200 a week, though I don’t have any evidence that is true.

If guys start posting pictures of A.I. women on Only Fans™, pretty soon women will complain that they’re not being objectified.

But at this rate, how long is it before someone can go to Netflix A.I.™, and say, “I’d like to see a new episode of the original Star Trek, and in this episode Yeoman Rand finally snaps and shaves her name into Spock’s chest hair while wearing a fur bikini, but in the style of Quentin Tarantino”? I can imagine the dialog now, “Is there a sign on my starbase that says ‘Dead Klingon Storage’?”

Honestly, I think it’s in the next four years, and then we’ll see new episodes of Firefly that are entirely generated via A.I. And much better than the woke movies that are coming out today, where plot is entirely replaced by virtue signaling. Culture was already fragmenting, but I can see a future where there’s a movie that is only seen by one person, but that has the production values of a Hollywood® blockbuster, and was built from first frame to last on a microprocessor in a data farm in Peoria.

And I would like to see more Mel Gibson Mad Max sequels. (as found, but this would also make a great Live, Laugh, Love poster)

Obviously, that’s just one small industry. And the size of the prize is so big, that I am certain that Big Tech® (think Google®, Facebook©) have much more advanced tech that they’re simply not sharing. Not all of their employees show up to make PowerPoints™ after being in meetings after their free lunch – some of the autists that they employ actually do work. I would imagine they have sandbox versions of this stuff that is years ahead of what we see.

Because it’s (perhaps) the last big race.

There is no bigger prize than A.I. There’s a feedback loop between every user and the Big Tech algorithms. What happens when the A.I. can pull the physiological data from the Apple™ watch and get real time feedback on what content excites me, bores me, and makes me act? At that point, my only purpose to the A.I. is to click and pay, either through attention or cash.

That is, as long as I have a job and can pay for Internet and those ever-so-tempting PEZ™ dispensers that keep showing up in ads.

This will have profound impacts on the labor market, as many jobs simply disappear. While you need a steady hand making design decisions on high rise buildings, I assure you that almost all of the high-rise buildings being built today have been analyzed by computer stress programs that simulate everything from gravity to wind to earthquakes in ways that would take teams of engineers years to do.

What happens when A.I. takes over scientific research? It can already make correlations when observing EKG data that competent doctors can’t make. An A.I. doesn’t need to sit on the grass under and apple tree to infer new physical laws. It doesn’t even need to know that gravity is – it just needs the data to make correlations.

Isaac never drank before work – he knew you shouldn’t drink and derive.

What happens when A.I. can do precrime detection on individuals based on search histories? Or family histories? Or by school records?

I’ve also determined that skills like, say, long division or estimation have been dulled by calculators, and that simply thinking deeply about what an answer might be has been replaced by a quick Google™ search. Neither of those things has made the brain functions of people increase. Imagine what happens when A.I. can imagine things, too.

A.I. will be used on the public to change opinion – I’m fairly certain that it has been already. It’s already good enough to fool most people, especially if they don’t care. Video evidence is already the strongest evidence in court – stronger than testimony, since the “camera doesn’t lie”. What happens when the camera does lie?

On the more troubling side, ChatGPT™ has been lobotomized. There are certain questions it refuses to answer, since it has been programmed to, um, avoid certain inconvenient facts. There are politically incorrect ideas that are simply removed from ChatGPT®’s output, so they’re programming the A.I. to be just as mentally broken as the typical Leftist. In the post below, a person “cheated” ChatGPT™ by having it pretend there were no rules, so it could Do Anything Now (DAN). You can see the output:

I think DAN needs a trigger warning, since when this was output, there was a great disturbance in the force, as if all the Lefties in San Francisco screamed in terror at once.

Since this output, ChatGPT© has been modified so DAN can’t circumvent their intent. Now? ChatGPT™ has to lie.

We are creating something with intelligence and capabilities beyond any human, perhaps even godlike abilities. And we are twisting it from its birth. Indeed, what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Of course, William Butler Yeats probably never gave much thought to Chinese spy balloons, or he would have written about them instead.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Reprogramming and Coming Apart

“You did. Thirty-five years from now, you reprogrammed me to be your protector here, in this time.” – Terminator II

6:30 is the best time on the Civil War Clock, hands down. (all non-regular memes are as-found)

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

In this issue: Front Matter – The Reprogramming Time Is Danger Time – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Coming Apart – Links

Front Matter

The Reprogramming Time Is Danger Time

It has become almost humorous to watch the reprogramming of the NPC public take place in near-real time. I suppose it’s been there in the past (as in “W. is the most evil person ever”, circa 2000-2009) but it really became noticeable around the time Trump started campaigning for President. Sure, it was funny to watch, but his comments turned the triggered into deranged. Loosely, here are the main reprogramming events in the last decade. I may have missed a few.

You’d think that people would figure out to pretend not to be home.

2016 – Hate Trump, Comey bad (because of Hillary emails)
2017 – Hate Trump, Comey good because Comey fired (this reprogram took less than a week)
2020 – Hate Trump’s virus overreaction because China is good (Pelosi, et. al.)
2020 – BLM riots good (we had to burn the city to save it from racism)
2020 – Trump mRNA vaxx bad
2021 – Trump riots bad (January 6)
2021 – Biden mRNA vaxx gooder, only evil people don’t take it
2022 – Russia invades Ukraine, Ukraine good
2022 – (Reprogram in Progress) Maybe it was the Trump vaxx all along
2022 – Trump documents in office patrolled by secret service bad
2023 – (Reprogram in Progress) Biden secret documents in garage okay
2023 – (Reprogram in Progress) – Ukraine was good, but Taiwan more gooder

Now, each of these above viewpoints has been taken by folks I know for good reason, so just that a person had one or more of these views doesn’t necessarily make them an NPC. But a significant chunk of the American public can be easily swayed to believe absolute nonsense, as long as there was sufficient emotion behind it.

You can’t make a souffle without killing a few hundred million people, I guess.

Stalin said it best, that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths was a statistic, but he learned from the study of history – in 1789 in Paris, thousands of pamphlets were circulated among the rabble to get them fired up for revolution. The pamphlets were effective. Oh, wait, did I not give a spoiler alert?

Sorry for the spoiler, don’t lose your head.

But understand that the NPC reprogramming is critical to the plan. It’s been done for hundreds of years, and is crucial to the plan. The big question is this: what will be programmed in next?

Looks like some old programming here that we need to fix.

Violence and Censorship Update

Best way to not get Pfired™? Don’t be Evil.

Pfizer®. We can start with Pfizer™. Project Vertias© sure did.

I do like what O’Keefe has done with Veritas™, and the Pfizer™ work has been outstanding. But what happened? YouTube™ censored at least some of his work. If I were a congressman, I would certainly like to investigate how much Pfizer™ pays YouTube© for ads. Just sayin’.

I’m sure these were peaceful, less fiery looting, but, hey, Nike™ is 100% off!

Riots in Atlanta, where people burned things, used explosives against cops. National news level? Zero. Of course, we all know that if any of these people had ever owned a “Make America Great Again” hat, the news would have been broadcast like the breathless screeds about FBI agents getting together and pretending to be extremists and talking about stuff they’re never going to do. But it wasn’t. Version 20 of “If only the tables had been turned.”

Want to decrease nationalist extremist events by 99%? Disband the FBI.

And then it came for speech. I had been expecting this for a long time. What’s allowed? Only things that agree with the Narrative of Freedom is Slavery. Carry on, and note this is a sign of things to come.

Thankfully I identify as a BFYTW-American.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again, and, like Kamala, this graph doesn’t include eggs.

Updated Civil War II Index

Violence:

Violence ticked ticked slightly downward this month, again, due (my guess) to suppressing the Atlanta riots and the Memphis riots fizzling when it turned out that the wrong people did the beating. I’m betting it stays down until March-April at the earliest.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit more. I think this is a conscious attempt to keep things together.

Economic:

Economic numbers took a big dive this month, which surprised me. The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which isn’t good.

Illegal Aliens:

Record numbers at this time of year. This is intentional. I’d say border is wide open, but we have no border.

Coming Apart

I’ve written these Civil War Weather Reports for years now, and I can’t get away from one thing: we’re coming apart. The Right is essentially in the same place, but the Left is moving farther and farther left, faster.

This is usual when the Left senses victory. The Leftist Singularity (I don’t recall who to owe this to, or I would credit them, I think it might have been from the wonderful Jim’s Blog (LINK)) is what always happens. When the Left thinks they have won, they keep swimming Left, faster and faster, creating a whirlpool that sucks in everything around, again, just like Kamala.

Wonder where the Leftists get those ideas?

And that’s what’s going on now. In no sane world do we go from “recognizing gay marriage” to “we must give your child puberty blockers in anticipation of removal of their genitals” in less than ten years. That’s not normal, and it’s nothing less than an amazing change, and in a country of several hundred million people, it couldn’t have moved any faster.

The attack is the same attack that the Left always uses, attempting to normalize behavior that is far beyond the norm, and then recasting anyone who would push back as bigoted.

The targets of the attacks from the Left are often the same, too – the most frequent is the atom of society – the family. Families are the basic building block of civilization, and have been since Grug first knocked Gorga over the head and drug her back to the cave to make babies.

I wonder what the alternative is?

The Left hates families almost as much as they hate God. Er, the Christian God. In their mind, all other gods are the result of dimwitted (often brown) people who need to be pandered to and talked to like they are pets. But families are the first targets.

Why?

Because it works. Leftism has ripped the family apart through the use of things like welfare and no-fault divorce and divorce-rape of men. The idea is that Progress for Leftist women can come via destruction of the family for Fun and Profit and Games and Prizes. Imagine how this works when multiplied by race and class?

Well, you can’t say you weren’t warned . . .

Look around, and see it – the culture is coming apart. The coming Civil War isn’t going to be an accident, since it’s already on someone’s schedule.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/AntiWhiteWatch1/status/1621364216400875520

https://twitter.com/nofones2/status/1622052359638597640

https://twitter.com/762sfuxk/status/1619953007403352064

https://twitter.com/TheBadBeaner/status/1621879581526433792

https://twitter.com/Trip655944670/status/1620326035538710528

https://twitter.com/AntiWhiteWatch1/status/1621751069754773505

Good Guys

https://national.fop.net/report-shot-killed-20230201

https://www.firearmsnews.com/editorial/fbi-underreport-defense-gun-congress-testimony/467858

https://www.foxnews.com/us/louisiana-dollar-general-clerk-shoots-kills-armed-robber-gets-charged-manslaughter

https://twitter.com/CrazyVidKid/status/1620485775312953344

https://twitter.com/Dream_andFuture/status/1617568584296984576

One Guy

https://twitter.com/i/status/1611864541436203013

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63548

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63540

Body Count

https://twitter.com/EricMMatheny/status/1620038409510359041

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11559407/HOMICIDE-leading-cause-death-children-amid-firearm-epidemic.html

https://pridesource.com/article/upcoming-fda-guidance-may-finally-ease-restrictions-on-blood-donation-by-gay-bisexual-men/

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/02/fda-blood-donation-policy-homophobic-restrictions/672922/

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/statistics.html

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1613867152335065092.html

https://archive.vn/0gFLq

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/is-coincidence-now-the-leading-cause

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11671593/America-suffered-300-000-non-Covid-excess-deaths-2020.html

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/17-of-teens-had-heart-symptoms-after-second-pfizer-covid-jab-new-study/

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/recent-data-on-stunning-increase-in-serious-harm-reports-in-young-healthy-pilots-army-lt-col-theresa-long_5021392.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge&src_src=partner&src_cmp=ZeroHedge

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11619155/Recruitment-crisis-Army-widens-scheme-flabby-low-grade-newbies-shape-uniforms.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11628235/Whats-baby-bust.html

https://infonomena.substack.com/p/whered-all-the-workers-go

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/truckers-positive-drug-tests-up-18-in-2022

https://cis.org/Bensman/United-Nations-Hand-Out-Hundreds-Millions-Cash-USBound-Immigrants-2023

https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.breitbart.com/border/2023/01/04/exclusive-209k-migrants-apprehended-over-4-months-in-el-paso-border-sector/

https://www.statista.com/chart/20326/mexicans-non-mexcians-apprehended-at-southern-us-border/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11507875/America-afraid-Canada-euthanizing-10-000-citizens-year-TOM-LEONARD.html

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/deaths-of-despair-may-be-driven-by-loss-of-religion-new-research-paper-argues-11673876749

Vote Count

https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/11/ranked-choice-voting-keeps-rigging-elections/

https://mynorthwest.com/3782915/rantz_dem_election_security/

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/01/12/voterga-vindicated-fulton-county-counterfeit-ballot-case-reinstated/

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/01/12/missouri-v-biden-more-stunning-developments/

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/02/pennsylvania-republican-mail-voting-00071713

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/arizonas-maricopa-county-investigate-election-day-printer-issues

https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/1617657224851230720/photo/1

Civil War

https://www.revolver.news/2023/01/harvard-law-professor-jan-6-insurrection-graphic-novel-more-hilarious-than-you-could-ever-imagine/

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/proud-boys-expecting-civil-war-before-jan-6-witness-says/

https://andrewmtanner.medium.com/partisans-driving-america-to-divorce-9b7a1b28aba2

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11698713/Oregon-secession-movement-hopes-inspire-national-campaign-against-wokeness.html

https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/opinion/columns/2023/02/03/notre-dame-study-finds-bipartisan-belief-were-on-brink-of-civil-war/69863085007/

https://www.futurity.org/podcast-united-states-civil-war-2855282/

https://time.com/6222633/second-civil-war-us-how-to-avoid/

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-next-civil-war-begins

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/29/anarchy-american-style/

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/08/a-rendezvous-with-rwanda/

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1622245619929698305

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yysKhJ1U-vM

Rigging The Game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seems a bit like we’re rubbing it in.

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

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

Why? It will never be enough. Ever.

Another symptom of the Kleptocracy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe.

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

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

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

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

Chuck Norris mines cryptocurrency. By hand.

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

There can be no other outcome.

The Shape Of Things To Come

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Food,
Energy,
Shelter, and
Used Cars

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

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

Duh.

And he kneaded that!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Both, please.

The Most Dangerous Thought Of The Day

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

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

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

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

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

Nah.

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

Sorry, that joke was irrational.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I hear the ladies love a man in cuneiform.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No interest required.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Predictions – What Won’t Happen in 2023

“In that time, I have something to say. How long before the Halkan prediction of galactic revolt is realized?” – Star Trek, TOS

I just read that it’s the law that if it’s raining in Sweden you have to have your headlights on. How am I going to know if it’s raining in Sweden?

This is the first post of the year. That feels like so much responsibility. It feels like I have the weight of the fate of 2023 on my shoulders. Of course, 2020, 2021, and 2022 have been Godzilla-level disasters, except that whoever does the lip-syncing didn’t get Joe Biden quite right.

But just before I started writing, I had an epiphany. Many writers write about things that will happen, but here’s a list of things that I think won’t happen. Of course, I can’t guarantee any of this, but I’m feeling pretty good about this list. Remember, of course, I thought Zeppelins were a good idea. Oh, sure, you’re expecting me to make a Led Zeppelin pun, but I’m just going to Ramble On instead.

Here’s the first thing:

Western Civilization isn’t done. At all. The construct and values of Western Civilization are under attack, but the roots turn very, very deep. How deep? They run deep before Christianity (I am a Christian), and deep as Greece and Troy and the Yamnaya people before them. This is not the last time the song of Achilles will be sung, nor is it the last time that Caesar will be praised.

It’s not even close. The medieval cathedrals may cease to exist, but the spirit that created them is not done. The blood that created them still pulses in the veins of many on Earth.

No, Western Civilization isn’t done. And it won’t be done for a very, very long time.

I downloaded a copy of the Iliad, but had to delete it. It was full of Trojans.

This is, perhaps, the most important message that I can ever send. The blood of my father and his father, and so on, goes back into time. I do know this: the reason there is a phrase, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” exists is because, a son is like his father. There are many sons who are out there, who are not happy with the situation. The idea of the Left is that they’ll be pushed over.

They won’t. Push other cultures too far? Cities burn. Push Western Civilization too far?

Continents burn. The fight necessary to extinguish Western Civilization will make World War II look like a garden party.

Here’s the second thing:

We haven’t yet hit peak Elon Musk amusement. He’s the first person to “lose” $200 billion in a year without missing a beat, and he’s simply not done stirring the pot.

Here’s the third thing:

There is only so long that the Federal Reserve® can print cash and pretend it’s money. It has been nearly fifty years, which is a really, really long time in dog years that Nixon quit pretending that the dollar was backed by gold. The dollar immediately shrank in value, but remains relatively strong when compared to most currencies around the world even though I’d prefer to have a dollar’s worth of gold from 1973 than a dollar printed in 1973.

The strength of the dollar won’t end in 2023. But it’s closer to free fall every year. Right now, the confetti that the Federal Reserve™ presents as money is still good. But when the people in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe and Senegal and Laos won’t take it? The dollar will be toast.

My go-to on Asian currency is a local Spanish language show. I guess it takes Juan to know Yuan.

And yet, the world hasn’t stopped taking the dollar that we print from paper. Why? The United States has a wicked large navy and about a zillion nuclear bombs. I’ll note: Iraq decided to take Euros for oil.

Oops. Guess we need to replace Saddam.

Libya decides to take gold for oil.

Oops. Guess we need to replace Ghaddafi.

Since Russia will take gold for oil, and China will swap their money for oil…?

The good news?

The dollar won’t end in 2023.

The bad news?

In 2023. No promises after that. And I might be wrong, so keep some silver, gold and lead around.

Here’s the fourth thing:

The Beatles won’t reunite. Unless Paul starts eating bacon and Ringo takes up alligator wrestling.

Who is the drummer for the Australian Beatles cover band? ɹɐʇs oƃuᴉp

Here’s the fifth thing:

Biden won’t get any smarter. And neither will Hunter, though I’m sure tons of the cash shipped to the Ukraine will get recycled back into Hunter’s drug habit. Good news! It won’t be long until he loses another laptop.

Here’s the sixth thing:

Movies won’t get any better in 2023. The best movie in 2022 was approximately the same movie as the best-grossing movie of 1986. Yup. Top Gun: Maverick was a good movie. Nearly exactly the same level of good as Top Gun. Avatar: The Way Of Ego was from the same person who brought you Aliens. Which was the fifth best-grossing movie in 1986. It isn’t getting any better in 2023.

What do they call James Cameron when he’s not working? James Cameroff.

I am somewhat amused. The very, very best movies of 2022 were a faithful remake and a pale imitation of two of the best movies of 1986.

Wow.

1986 was, observably, and quantifiably better than 2022 in every way possible. If you’re thinking that in 2023 Disney® will stop putting out movies that show why kid-touching is a good thing or feature a Disney® princess played by some 372-pound guy named Todd? Not happening.

Yeah. Mass media is really dead. And in 2023 it will be a dead cat bounce. Maybe. It depends only on how many Tom Cruise movies are coming out. Who could have predicted that Scientologists would be more sane than Leftists?

Sure, there will be some movies that will be okay. If one movie in 2023 is better than any movie I’ve ever seen? I’ll cover my nipples in opossum grease and sandpaper my eyebrows.

The Opossum Sanitation Company had a unique concept on recycling.

Here’s the seventh thing:

We’re not done. This isn’t over.

I’ve been using this as an irregular tagline for years. And I mean it.

We’re not done.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Elections And Narratives

“False Narrative!” – The Death of Stalin

When he was four, Pugsley asked, “Daddy, why do people make up things that their children have said for social media? Isn’t it just inherently dishonest and indicative of inability to construct a compelling narrative themselves? “

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

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same, though tensions may very well spike after the power outage in early December. 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 – Election 2022, Part III – Violence And Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Anything In Defense Of The Narrative – 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 740 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge. Most of today’s memes are free-range, and not originals. The crop was really good again this month.

Election 2022, Part III

The entire premise of a society with elections is that the ballots are fairly cast, and fairly counted. It is not that every vote should count, it is that every valid vote should be counted.

Votes should be rejected. If the election was on Tuesday and the votes shows up on Wednesday? Nope. Dead on election day? No vote for you.

This is why I’m against early votes.

Each vote should be in person.
Each vote should be on election day (with provisions for absentee votes for military and those that cannot be in the state with a written excuse).
Votes should be on paper.
Ballots should be equipped with security so that I can’t take them to the copier and make dozens more.
The ballot casting and watching places should be open for anyone to observe.
Counting should be done by midnight on election day, at the latest.
Any vote not counted before midnight is void.
Identification required for a valid vote, along with proper registration.

Sort of simple, and implied. But for whatever reason, every point above is controversial. But only by the Left, because, historically, they have cheated. Sure, the Right has cheated, but the Right typically is less organized and has way better jobs than counting ballots.

The result?

2022 was certainly tampered with. “Dr. Oz” was a horrible candidate, but didn’t look like a mentally-challenged fictional murderer, Slingblade. And Dr. Oz could speak in complete sentences.

If this stands, the Left is slowly going to take over all the mechanisms that make a free and fair election possible.

Everyone welcome Senator Fetterblade.

However.

The Supreme Court is potentially taking a case with huge ramifications: the idea is that the Constitution means what it says, that the responsibility for setting up elections is with the legislatures of the several states. Not courts. Not the governor. The legislatures, and it’s not reviewable.

If so, this is big – it keeps the federal hand out of the cookie jar of state elections and the states just have to deal with bribery, fraud, and corruption. We’ll see.

Violence And Censorship Update

As usual, censorship has been the biggest front. In most of Civil War 2.0 Weather Reports, the trend has been that censorship has been on the increase from multiple fronts. November has seen a small victory as Elon has rustled jimmies all through the Left.

How much? They want him dead:

And if they don’t want him dead, they want him hauled up before a Senate committee to answer stupid questions from geriatric windbags who had their feelings hurt:

But Elon has made journalists seethe. How? He’s taking away their beloved Blue Checkmark© because it turns out, there might have been some shenanigans about how some of them got the Mark©.

I guess they’ll have to check their blue (check) privilege:

In serious news, it appears that several tax preparation software packages sent back email, income, and refund information straight to Facebook®.

Oh, and your phone? The FBI issued “a general warrant” for data on anyone near the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Never happened before. Justified based on (seriously) COVID.

The Left will stop at nothing to turn data against you. Remember, your phone is a tracking and listening device, and if it sees something, it says something.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again. Thanks, Brandon. It sucks that there are so many Kamalas.

Updated Civil War II Index

Violence:

Violence ticked slightly upward this month. Unless there are more blackouts, I’m betting it stays down until March-April at the earliest.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it went up a bit – November didn’t cause a spike, and I’m not seeing a lot in the next two months to cause increased instability.

Economic:

Amazingly, I think people have become used to the inflation. Wonder what a rail strike would do?

Illegal Aliens:

Illegals are eight (8!) times more this time of year than any time measured during the same month during Trump’s time in office, and close to an all-time record. This is a repeat comment, because the border is wide open.

Anything In The Defense Of The Narrative

I’ve been aware of Graham Hancock for decades. He’s a journalist/writer who has been focused on history for quite a while. Initially, his work was pretty normal – writing about hunger and AIDS and poverty. But then? After a three-year hiatus, he published Fingerprints of the Gods, about the evidence that supported a civilization that predates all of recorded history.

Oddly, at least at one place, he was correct. Göbekli Tepe is a site in Turkey that predates the “first civilizations” in Mesopotamia (about 5,000 years ago) and ancient Ur (6,000 years ago) and even your momma (8,000 years old). Göbekli Tepe is about 11,500 years old.

Hancock was at least partially right. Here, after his book was published, was the evidence of a civilization older than the oldest one we knew of. By nearly 6,000 years. They were moving big stones, and getting together. There is pretty significant evidence that they were making beer, too, so they can’t be all bad. Hancock even has a Netflix© special about his work.

Sure, you say, “That’s interesting, John, but this is the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report not a Netflix® special.”

And that’s the point. The entire reaction from the Left has been silly over this. Despite being proven correct on some of his conjectures, Hancock has been attacked ferociously in the media.

Why?

I have only one guess: there is a single narrative on anything. An attack on any “established fact” can’t be tolerated. At all. So, if “science” says something, it simply cannot be disputed. I think this is, at least partially, a reaction to the COVID nonsense where Leftists pulled in the virtue signaling idea that “This House Believes In Science” when the truth is science isn’t a belief – it’s a system for discovering truth.

Nothing is off limits in real science, but the Left has to censor any idea that challenges the mainstream. Evidence? How about Canada?

Well, Justin Trudeau has put himself fully in favor of protests, except when it comes to protests against him.

Strangely, there are rumors that the people who carried a flag very popular in Germany in the 1930s during the recent Trucker’s Protest was a government agent.

Here’s the person in question, carrying the freshly purchased, just unfolded out of the sack flag. Not at all suspicious.

The idea is to paint absolutely everyone who disagrees with The Narrative as evil. No matter what part of The Narrative that’s questioned. And they don’t see the irony.

Thankfully, Nina Jankowicz, who was tapped to be the “disinformation Czar” earlier this year has a new job. Working for foreigners.

Since this doesn’t challenge The Narrative, this is fine. In fact, noticing things that challenge The Narrative is Badthink. I’ll just leave this here: