Silly Predictions – Page 12 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Predictions On The Supreme Court COVID Decision

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does Clarence Thomas wear to work? A lawsuit.

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

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

But now he needs it to lose.

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

Losing on the mandate gives Biden the ultimate out.

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

What happens if the mandate is upheld?

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

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

Joe was in two states today – confusion and disorientation.

But what happens if the mandate is overturned?

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

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

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

Gold, Silver, And The End Of The World

“What do you know about gold, Moneypenny?” – Goldfinger

Why don’t pirates travel on mountain roads? S’curvy.

A reader writes: “. . . if you could explain to me the rationale behind buying gold or silver as a hedge against economic collapse, I would appreciate it.” I answered by sending him bikini graph after bikini graph, but yet he persisted in wanting to know an actual answer.

I don’t think anyone will complain that this one is a repeat . . . .

He had me cornered. I wrote to him (embellished for this post and clarified for readability):

Thank you for the question. I promise to answer, just as long as you give my dog bag safely. He may be old and one-eyed and have diabetes and alopecia . . . we call him, “Lucky.”

It’s good that he’s not a dinosaur – he’d probably be called an eyesaur.

I thought that I had already answered this question and looked for the post.

As I’ve got over 1,000 up, I couldn’t find it after I looked for about 22 seconds. Maybe I developed notes on it and never posted? Maybe I’m just lazy at searching. In the worst-case scenario, a previous version exists, and everyone just has to deal with this new, superior post.

The question is a subtle one. The first part of the answer is the degree of collapse. I’ll start out with this idea: how bad does it get?

Another Boring Wednesday: Would I rather have a ton of gold on a Wednesday morning than not? Of course. But I’d probably worry about George Clooney and his wisecracking band of thieves breaking into Stately Wilder Mansion.
Personal Economic Problems: Again, in a sequel, having that ton of gold is still great, but I still have that pesky George Clooney problem. In reality, gold is somewhat less liquid than cash, but having a bunch of it is still nice. Also, if you bought gold in 1990, you would have had zero profit on it until 2006. This was mainly due to sane economic policy and high-interest rates that tamed inflation.

Or is this why they were always after his Lucky Charms®?

Recession: What’s going on in the economy? If you look closely, silver and gold actually dropped in value at the start of the Great Recession in the 2000s. As people liquidated their “stuff” so they could still buy the G.I. Joe® with the Kung Fu™ grip for their kid at Christmas, the price actually dropped. For a while. Then the price jumped up when it became clear that the Fed® would print as much money as required to choke every person on the planet. In the fiat world, gold and silver are something I’d look to have.
Depression – 1930s Style: This is a hard analogy – back in the 1930s, the dollar was backed in gold, until FDR (press S to spit) stole the gold from the American people. Now? The dollar is nothing more than, to quote Aerosmith, “a lick and a promise.” (See below)
Weimar-Style Hyperinflation: I don’t think we’ll get here, until there’s a lack of faith in the dollar. Brandon is doing his best to make Jimmy Carter look like a master of economics, so, if hyperinflation hits? Gold is awesome, and you might be able to repay your mortgage with five or six pre-1965 silver quarters. So, yes, gold and silver make sense. A lot of sense.

In a Leftist world, everyone is a Billionaire. And also starving.

Country Collapse: What happens if the country ceases to be? It has happened again and again through history, especially with large “empire-like” countries that don’t have any sort of ethnic commonality. Japan will always be Japan because there are Japanese and it’s a nation, not a country. China, likewise. Without a functioning country, there is no nation to fall back on. This is where we add another precious metal: So, yes, gold and silver, but understand that it might be some time before it’s useful again.
International Collapse: Rome provides a powerful example here. In Great Britain, they’re constantly finding hordes of money – including silver money, and gold. Why? Because people stopped using it, and you can’t eat it. Did that last forever? Of course not, but 100 years is nearly long enough. Lead is nice here, too.

Who sang “Can’t Touch This” for Caesar? 1100 Hammer.

Civilizational Collapse: What happens if there’s no oil for the cars – anywhere? What happens if we don’t have phosphorus for fertilizer? Bad things. Gold and silver might be helpful, but lead is much better here. If the warlord wants your stuff and you can’t keep it from him, welcome to no longer having that stuff.
A Kamala Harris presidency: Looks pretty much like number 8, but with more makeup.
A Neutron Star Eating The Earth: I suggest investing in SpaceX®.

I think that we underestimate the likelihood of things getting really, really bad. To give an example, I once worked at the headquarters of a big company. They asked me to look at disaster recovery. I looked at all of the natural hazards that might hit the company. The most likely disaster would hit the headquarters once every three hundred years.

“Huh,” I said to my boss, foreshadowing future writing endeavors, “a new civil war is far more likely than that . . . I mean if the company lasts that long. Companies go out of business all the time.”

He was not amused. Corporations tend to not like actual reality to interfere in their projections. But, I maintain I was right. How many companies have ceased to exist – big companies – since 2000? I’ll leave that work to the reader. Enron®, anyone?

Country music and calculators are both produced by Texas instruments.

Listen, I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but banks are giving mortgages out at 3.3% and inflation is at 6%, which means that banks will lose money every year as long as inflation is a thing. How can they do this? Volume!

No, I’m kidding. The Fed® is giving them tons of money to lend cheaply to keep housing prices up. When mortgage rates go up? Then the housing bubble bursts. So, we could end up in Scenario 3., 5., or 6. very, very quickly.

Gold and silver (in my NON FINANCIAL ADVISOR) opinion are awesome in most scenarios. If it devolves past the point where order matters at all, then it comes down to weapons, political connections, preps, and sheer dumb luck. If nothing happens, then my kids will get to enjoy some shiny metals after I pass away.

What’s the best way to tune a bagpipe? A pitchfork.

I would, however, not want to put all of my eggs in any one basket. I will personally limit the amount of gold and silver I own to about 10% of my net worth. Why? Random number – not bad if things go well in the rest of the world and gold and silver don’t go up in value. If things go really south, it’s a decent enough hedge to act as a parachute as the plane goes down in flames.

So, that’s my answer: it depends. What do you think? What Scenario above is the most likely? What’s missing?

Ohhh, Lucky, come here, boy . . . oh, wait, he’s deaf, too . . . .

(Appended Graph)

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: January 6 Anniversary

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

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

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.

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

In this issue: Front Matter – January 6, The Anniversary – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Cracks Widen – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 640 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

January 6, The Anniversary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Violence And Censorship Update

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

Ghislaine Maxwell Trial

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

Not an original, but very funny.

The ‘Rona

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

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

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

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

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

Political Instability:

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

Economic:

The drop in economic confidence continued this month.

Illegal Aliens:

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

The Cracks Widen

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. It is not.

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

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

So, what does that leave us?

LINKS

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

Bad Guys!

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

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

LA: https://youtu.be/p1ESzuENYdc

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

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

Chicago: https://youtu.be/9xJdJMrhgz8

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

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

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

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

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

Good Guy!!!

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

One Guy…

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

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

Body Counts…

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

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

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

Confused?

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

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

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

Polarize!

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

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

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

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

Vote For Change?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revolt??

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

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

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

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

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

Civil War???

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hitmen sometimes make people tense. Past tense.

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

January

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

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

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

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

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

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

February

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

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

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

March

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

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

Reprinted with permission.

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

April

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

May

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

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

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

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

June

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

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

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

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

July

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

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

August

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

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

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

September

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

October

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

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

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

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

November

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

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

December

December is filled with surprises:

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

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

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

A Day Trip To Another America

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We don’t care anymore.

Or, at least I thought.

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

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

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

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

Huh, that’s a specific list . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hey, that’s Internet me!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, wait. They’re not done yet?

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

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

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

What If The Mess . . . Is All Planned?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What happens when your government is making war on you?

Seriously – if a foreign government would try to:

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least he’s not French Vanilla Ice.

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

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

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

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

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

Fun fact: he never ran for office.

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

After the elite have bought all the stuff they want?

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

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

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

The Winds Of War?

“I admire your ethics. But right now, a little violence might help.” – Star Trek: Enterprise

Is an inconsistency in a Cheech and Chong movie a pothole?

War in 2021 has much the same objective as war throughout human history – make the enemy do something that they otherwise wouldn’t do. It’s never been pretty. In the end, though, the old adage that violence doesn’t solve anything is wrong – ultimately violence solves quite a few things, as Heinlein notes in Starship Troopers:

“. . . I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea — a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that `violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms. . . .”

Our current military is ready to fight a war. It’s just that the war in question is World War II. Our armed forces absorbed the lessons of the Wehrmacht and now could totally defeat the Germans and the Japanese much more quickly than the first time. Even I got caught into that mindset when I displayed dismay that the bomber fleet of the United States was down to just over 100 bombers.

Okay, not that kind of bomber . . .

My mind was locked into old paradigms: 1,000 bomber raids. Those days are gone. There is no real reason to send slow, crewed planes on missions where a much faster missile can do the job. Big bomber raids are a thing that you only do against people who can’t shoot the bombers down which every significant near-peer enemy of the United States can.

And if you want to destroy a city? You use a nuke – if I had a nuke, I’d call it Dr. W. You know, W, M.D.?

Likewise, our aircraft carrier fleet is great when used against an enemy that can’t really fight back. Use them against Iraq? Sure. Use aircraft carriers against China?

Ummm, that’s probably silly, since if a carrier is within fighter range of China, it’s probably in Chinese missile range, too. American aircraft carriers are just targets preloaded with casualties.

Why am I writing about this today?

There are rumblings of war. Putin looking to take over part of Ukraine? China looking to take over Taiwan? An American senator talking about a first strike against Russia?

I know when I yawned in physics class it set off a chain reaction.

To the extent the United States isn’t involved in either of these conflicts, things probably remain nice and boring. If Putin wants the Donbas, I’m not sure that I care. I have no idea why he might want it, but it seems like a lot of Russians live there. I can certainly understand why he wants to keep the Crimean Peninsula, since that’s where he keeps his ships.

Again, I’m not sure that I care. At all.

Taiwan is a different situation. Its shore is as close as 81 miles to the Chinese mainland. For the people in Taiwan, this is unfortunate. From the standpoint of the United States – what, exactly would we do to help Taiwan if the Chinese invaded?

I don’t know.

I’m not sure that the United States could do anything. In report after report, the United States loses, and loses quickly when China attempts to take Taiwan every time we wargame the situation. Taiwan is 81 miles from China. Taiwan is 5,000 miles from Hawaii. To the extent that Taiwan isn’t prepared to defend itself, I’m pretty sure the United States has limited options in responding quickly.

I heard the Dalai Lama has a gambling problem. He loves Tibet.

Which brings us to the face of war in 2021. The Chinese have been thinking for a very long time about war with the United States. To be sure, I’m willing to bet some very, very smart people in the United States have been thinking about just the same thing, when they weren’t distracted by Afghanistan or Iraq.

This following is from the 1999 treatise “Unrestricted Warfare” by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. (LINK):

. . . if the attacking side secretly musters large amounts of capital without the enemy nation being aware of this at all and launches a sneak attack against its financial markets, then after causing a financial crisis, buries a computer virus and hacker detachment in the opponent’s computer system in 146 advance, while at the same time carrying out a network attack against the enemy so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network, and mass media network are completely paralyzed, this will cause the enemy nation to fall into social panic, street riots, and a political crisis. There is finally the forceful bearing down by the army, and military means are utilized in gradual stages until the enemy is forced to sign a dishonorable peace treaty. This admittedly does not attain to the domain spoken of by Sun Zi, wherein “the other army is subdued without fighting.”

The hippies tried to get to Afghanistan – they heard that smoking weed there got you stoned to death.

None of this is really new – destruction of civilian cohesion is a tactic that’s been used again and again. At the end of World War I, the Allies kept a food blockade on Germany from 1914 until months after the November 1918 Armistice – the blockade lasted until July of 1919 to force Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Over 100,000 German civilians died during the famine after the Armistice was signed.

The war envisioned by the Chinese (if it happens) won’t be the antiseptic thing that most civilians in the United States have dealt with since 9/11/2001. It will involve the systems around us failing. Imagine the utter loss of every modern convenience, including food being available and plentiful. Then imagine there is no information on when (or even if) the help is coming. Alone. No food. No power. In the dark.

That’s what unrestricted warfare looks like.

After going through Hurricane Ike (a small one, by destructiveness standards) it was enlightening to watch the systems go down. After four days, Home Despot® opened up, and was selling limited amounts. How limited? As I recall only 8 customers were allowed in the store at a time. Purchases were done, as I recall, with cash only. I went by to purchase a battery-operated fan, and was actually in and out fairly quickly – the Hurricane might have been a small one, virtually all services stopped.

Recovery was fairly quick because the damage was regional. All of the surrounding areas pitched in and within a week, most power was back on in the city. We had radio, so we were listening to the city come back to life in real-time.

I think when the astronauts saw this storm they said, “Houston, you have a problem.”

The interconnected, wired, and powered world has created an unparalleled ability to create wealth, to create comfort, and create convenience. But it has added a great degree of fragility. In 1919, if you had taken out the electricity to the United States, the result would have been inconvenient, but not fatal. Some water systems might have failed, and people would have had to switch back to candles. Abandoning the top floors of buildings that were inconvenient to reach except via elevator would be bad, but there would be no fundamental reason we couldn’t fix the systems: this failure would hurt, but not paralyze us.

Today, it creates a system where unrestricted warfare could result in a conflict that would be over in minutes, and end with a country so devastated that it might never be rebuilt.

So, have a happy Monday!

This post was inspired in part by email with a reader – I’ll let them bring it up if they so choose.

Energy in 2022? I Hope So . . .

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

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

Energy is freedom.

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

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

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

But energy is freedom.

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

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

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

I’ll start with “what’s up?”

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

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

I hear their swimmers are always in the lead.

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

It worked.

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

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

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

Also? When exposed to pollen, bees develop hives.

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

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

There are three problems with fracking:

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

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

Why fracking? Because I hear drilling is rigged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The last question was “what happens next?”

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

Double today’s prices. Yikes!

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

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

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

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

My prediction?

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

Crappy prediction, right?

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

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

Prepare accordingly.

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

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

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

The endgame of the ‘Rona may be near.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I mean, it’s voluntary, right?

I guess that just makes one thing perfectly clear:

Demoralization? No. Remoralization.

“Hold them back! Do not give in to fear! Stand to your posts! Fight!” – LOTR, Return of the King

Chuck Norris threw a boomerang. It’s afraid to come back.

It’s Friday. Thankfully.

On Monday and Wednesday, we have heavy topics. On Friday? It used to be health focused. But then after a year or so I had most of my health topics (things I wanted to say) completed. Sure, more will show up over time, but most of health is either really, really simple or so blisteringly complex that it’s not solvable.

That’s why on Friday (in most recent posts) I have had the ability to focus on: remoralization.

Life has a known beginning. It has a known ending. For religious folks there is a promise of a lot more.

Demoralization is simple: the idea is to make you feel that you’ve lost. Put into context, demoralization is fear. The idea is to make you afraid. And what does fear do? Fear sells products. Fear sells politicians. Fear sells. Heck, even suicide bombers have a fear: dying alone.

When I look at a scene like this, I expect that a coyote and a roadrunner were involved.

Fear is also the basis of almost every negative action. The proof of this is left to the reader, as many of my textbooks in college said. My proof is this: whenever I’ve acted in a manner that was in some way against my values, I can look back and see those actions were based in fear.

Sure, I’d like to place myself in the category of fearless, but I’m human. Or at least I can pass for human in dim light, according to The Mrs. But as I looked back and realized that nearly every action I had ever taken that I regretted was due to fear, I decided to get rid of fear. Thankfully overcoming my fear of escalators was a one-step program.

Does just deciding to not be afraid anymore work?

Well, mostly. Fear is (amazingly) just another choice. I discovered I don’t have to feel fear at all. The decision was simple – I stopped focusing on outcomes. If I worked every minute at my best, and worked according to my values, well, if it turned out wrong? It turned out wrong. Heck, I’m even slowly getting over my fear of speedbumps.

What do you call a chicken crossing the road with no legs? A speedbump.

I discovered something weird. People hate it when you’re not afraid. People want you to focus on fear, especially bosses. I had one conversation where my boss said, “John, do you realize that (my great, great, great grandboss) would be upset about that?”

My response was simple, “Well, I’d love to tell them my story. Have them call me.”

His response was, “Whoa! Why did you bring them (great, great, great grandboss) into it?”

Me: “I didn’t. You did.”

Strangely, that implied threat . . . disappeared. And was never used again.

As I said, people hate that. Especially bosses.

My boss asked me to make fewer mistakes at work. That means I get to come in later!

Another example was when I was working at a company that was experiencing significant financial difficulty. My boss came up to me, and said, “John, do you know what kind of difficulty this company is facing? How can you walk around so happy all the time?”

Weirdly, I have never understood how being unhappy and worrying about impending doom has helped, well, anyone. I explained that to my boss. I told him I would try to appear less happy around the office. And, while I make a lot of jokes in my posts, this isn’t one. This really happened.

I really had a boss upset with me for having too good of an attitude. Go figure.

Being happy is a weird superpower.

It makes people uncomfortable. A salesman makes a joke that, “Hey, I bet you’re overworked and underpaid,” and when I respond, “No, the work is fairly interesting and I’m satisfied with my compensation,” the look I get is priceless.

I love my couch, it makes me feel regal. I am “Sofa King” happy!

I also look at most of my choices like I look at a menu. It’s a choice of something good or something better. “Do I want the ribeye or do I want the . . . of course I want the ribeye.” Seriously, if there’s steak on the menu, all of the other pages are wasted.

To be honest, this superpower wasn’t because I was born on a far-distant planet named Krypton® that orbited a red star. Even though that’s true (I told you I was adopted but wasn’t too specific for, well, reasons) the reason I came to this Truth was the way that I think nearly everyone comes to Truth: the long, dark night of the soul.

As I have found it, this is the Truth. There is no aspect of character that comes without scars. This may be personal, but in my life I recall a very simple pattern:

Something awful happens. It may or may not be related to my actions. Often it is not.
There is a decision for me to make. It is a moral decision.
I think about it. Often (if time allows) I consult people I trust – people of moral character.
I take action.

The important bullet point is the last one. And when I decided to do whatever was right, regardless of the consequences?

Freedom ensued. When I stopped focusing on the outcome, and started focusing on what is good, True, and beautiful? I stopped caring about the outcome. When I became the embodiment of those things?

I ceased being myself. I was working for a higher purpose. The phrase, “let the chips fall where they may” comes to mind. Oddly, the more I act in accordance with my principles, the better the (average) outcome is. Not that I care.

I’m disappointed. I went into the restaurant restroom and waited for hours. Despite the sign, no employees came to wash my hands.

This is freedom, acting upon principles, regardless of outcome. The secret is a simple one: each of us is capable of doing this. It’s a choice.

Freedom isn’t a document. Freedom isn’t what someone gives us. Freedom is what we take. Freedom is a choice. And the most good and True freedom is acting upon moral principles.

And then? Not caring what happens.

There is a word for that. Courage.

So, there’s a choice, and it’s a choice we face every day. Courage or fear.

When you give in to fear, you have that stain for life. Courage? It outlives us all.

The better news? We all have the seeds of courage inside of us.

The very best news?

We can all let those seeds grow.