Silly Predictions – Page 15 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

America: Walking The Razor’s Edge

“The pathway to salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor’s edge.” – The Razor’s Edge (1984)

What did the hobbits say as they rode the Ents into battle? “Run, forest, run!”

It was on July 4. I had convinced two of my friends to follow me on a bizarre quest – we were going to climb one of the tallest mountains in North America. By one of them, it’s in the top 50. So, in my book that counts.

The trip started using gasoline – we had a borrowed Jeep® that we took as far up the hill as we could, since it was a borrowed Jeep™. My friend who had borrowed the Jeep© didn’t want to wreck it, since it was before YouTube® and we wouldn’t even get likes from a cool video if we wrecked it on the amazingly rough road.

We decided to make this hike a three-day event. On the first day, we’d do nearly a mile gain in elevation while we camped out 1000’ below the summit of the mountain. Then, we’d summit the mountain and spend the next night at our basecamp. Then we’d hike out the next morning.

Of course, it rained.

At the elevation of our basecamp, trees can’t grow, so we boiled filtered water in the rain. It worked, sort of. At that elevation, water boils at less than 190°F. It was enough to reheat a fifteen-year-old dehydrated Mountain House® Chili Mac, even though the beans couldn’t get hot enough to not be crunchy.

After climbing up a mountain, crunchy beans and all, it was the best dinner I’d had in years. I think I ate two.

The chili mac wasn’t red hot, but there was no way I was going to give it away, give it away, give it away now.

The next day morning we were sore – but we could leave our packs at the camp so we’d just be carrying ourselves and our water. It was nearly half of a mile to get to the summit – a half of a mile straight up.

The trip up was a true scramble – a broken field of boulders that we sometimes had to ascend on all fours. It was steep – very steep. As we intersected the ridge that led to the summit of the mountain, I looked forward to seeing what was on the other side of the ridge. I was certain that it must be flatter than the steep boulder field we’d just climbed – there was no way it could be as steep.

I got to the edge of the ridge, and looked down.

Until that moment in time, I had never been afraid of heights. But I was not expecting to see what I saw.

It was a cliff. A sheer drop off – I was looking at a certified Wile E. Coyote precipice.

When I was stuck on that cliff, they told me not to “look down.” So, I smiled.

I don’t know if you’ve ever looked straight down and seen a cliff that went nearly three-quarters of a mile straight down when you weren’t expecting it. For the first time in my life I was experiencing vertigo – it felt like the mountain under me was going to slide off down that cliff.

I moved back down the ridge. But I still had to climb a few hundred feet upward to reach the summit. Up the side of the ridge I went. I assure you, I stayed back from that knife-edge as we crawled up that hill.

Then, finally, tantalizingly close, there was the summit. I was nearly to the top of one of the highest mountains in North America.

There was one little problem.

Between the ridge I was on, and the top of the mountain there was a path. It was about six or eight feet long, and probably a foot wide, and it was flat, like it had been machined.

What’s the difference between Humpty Dumpty and 2020? One of them had a great fall.

On one side of it was, you guessed it, a sheer cliff that bottomed out 3,000 feet or so below me. On the other side of the path it was a lot better. There was only about a 1,000 foot drop.

Wait, was 1,000 feet better? I’d get more time to live if I fell down the 3,000 foot side.

Choices.

But when facing that last few steps, shaky with the first vertigo in my life, I’ll admit those were some of the toughest steps of my life. But, hey, what was I going to tell the folks back home? That I climbed to a spot nearly three miles into the air to stop two feet before I reached the top?

Nope.

But that ridge (to me) was a razor’s edge. On either side was disaster. I took a deep breath. I put one foot in front of the other. And I walked – one step, two steps, three steps – to the top, where my friends were waiting.

What brought this to mind was an email forwarded by frequent commenter, 173dVietVet, where he said (in part) this on discussing where our country is:

“(I’ve) Done a bit of mountain climbing in my Ranger days and I know full well the meaning of knife’s edge, where any wrong step throws you headlong forever into the abyss of death that lies on BOTH sides . . . .”

We are in that zone. In climbing mountains, the knife edge is more than a metaphor – it’s real. On either side is death, and it’s not metaphorical death, it’s mangled into a wadded pile of Wilder by the combined forces of gravity and the sudden stop on the rocky outcropping at the bottom. Sure, Wile E. Coyote could survive, but not me.

Everything went downhill after gravity was invented.

But in life, the knife-edge is a metaphor. We’ve created a financial situation where the economy is horribly broken, and for the last year we’ve survived mainly by printing money and not allowing people to be evicted from houses, despite the questionable legality of that.

A bigger component to our knife edge is that the rule of law has been progressively ignored in the country. Where is the right of the Federal Government to stop evictions of tenants?

Oh, there isn’t one. They just made it up.

That would be (at best) an action by a State, though even then it’s of questionable legality. But then the Patriot Act made spying on American citizens “legal” so who cares about legal, anyway? Then every agency with three letters of an alphabet decided to swallow up all of that online data, and all of the phone calls, despite laws to the contrary.

Of course, Federal employees were put in prison.

Hahahaha!

No.

The NSA: a government agency that actually listens to you!

Despite obviously illegal orders, no one was put in prison, and the only one likely to be put into prison is the whistleblower (Edward Snowden) if he ever shows back up in the United States. It used to be the Constitution that was ignored, but that’s so 1940s.

Now, the government can ignore any inconvenient law it wants to ignore. Of course, the people that can ignore the law are those that are either leaders, government employees, or those favored (think Antifa™) by the government.

Destroy evidence? A felony for most. But when the government does it? It’s “a regrettable incident.”

What people misunderstand is that Trump isn’t at all the cause of our problems today. Trump is a symptom. Without Trump, the answer would have been (yet another) Bush, this time Jeb, versus (yet another) Clinton, this time Hillary. Oh, the excitement for electing ¡Jeb!

The difference between another Clinton and another Bush? Nothing, really. And America didn’t want that – so America elected Trump. If anything, Trump cleared the fog, and made the knife edge we were walking clearer.

Jeb has a perfect place in government, as the Secretary of Low Energy.

And now, we are walking, and the knife-edge is sharper and narrower than the one that I walked to get to the top of that mountain on July 4^th a couple of decades ago.

We have left the bounds of Constitutional governance some time ago – people think it’s quaint when I bring the entire idea of the Constitution up. Is there a path back to an actual Constitutional government?

Sure. It’s narrow – a knife-edge. But so was getting that Constitutional government in the first place. But getting that original Constitution depended upon men climbing a mighty steep mountain several hundred years ago. Were they afraid when they saw the cliff’s edge, the price of failure?

I’m sure they were. But yet they continued. And when it was time to thread that final few steps to the summit?

They did, and damn the dangers on either side.

We face the same knife-edge. Where are we going?

Money In 2021: What’s Next?

“I picked a hell of a day to quit drinking.” – (Randy Quaid) Independence Day

When the aliens finally decided to invade Earth, they started with Poland – didn’t want to ignore local customs.

2020 has been . . . unexpected.

If anyone would have submitted it as a draft for a screenplay, Hollywood would have rejected it since it was too farfetched. Unless Randy Quaid was in it, flying a biplane to attack aliens. Then it would have made perfect sense. Oh, wait, a high ranking Israeli says we’re already in negotiations with the aliens?

Never mind.

That being said, 2020 is (thankfully) nearly over. That gives us a chance to look forward to 2021. Keep in mind that no one said that 2021 would be better . . . we just seem to hope it will be better. It certainly is time, however, to look forward.

I know that whatever things we think 2021 will bring, the actual events of 2021 will be crazier than that. Regardless of who is inaugurated on January 20, 2021, what are some of the things that we can look forward to?

Here are some of my guesses:

Congress and whatever President we have will keep spending as fast as they can. Taxes may or may not be raised, but they certainly won’t match the increased spending. Obama nearly doubled the national debt – he took the United States from $11 trillion in hock to $20 trillion. Right now, after four years of Trump, we’re at $27 trillion or so in money owed. This is completely on track to take the national debt to at least $36 trillion in the next four years, which is a little more than I have the last time I checked around the couch cushions. But I did find out where all the spoons were going.

And to think I’d blamed Pugsley.

The Presidents of the United States must all be Irish – during their terms the debts are Dublin.

But $36 trillion in debt? That’s certainly gonna leave a mark. Like Oprah’s dressmaker learned after Oprah demanded Spandex®, you can only distort an economy so far and so long before there are consequences, and I expect that this is near the breaking point for ours. Thankfully, when Oprah’s dress finally went, the injuries to her crew were covered by worker’s comp.

Of course, I’ve been wrong before. I would have thought this level of debt was poisonous. If it was, it’s at least been a slow poison. The system is so broken that interest rates are low, in some places less than zero. For now.

Is that enough of a bright side?

The biggest consequences of the money printing will first show up in third world nations with relatively weak economies. The big consequences of COVID-19 have shown up here already in the damage to the economy of the United States.

In a globally connected world, however, the consequences of United States monetary policy don’t show up in the United States first – they show up first in economies where people don’t make much money. The “Arab Spring” that led to revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East were a direct consequence of the United States spending money like . . . well . . . Democrats in charge of the presidency and the legislature. The Syrian Civil War is a direct consequence of the Federal Reserve’s® response to the Housing Bubble.

If you watch an Apple® store get robbed, does that make you an iWitness®?

Don’t tell me that bad lending habits don’t have consequences. When you see riots in the streets of Cairo or Mumbai or Carcosa, you know that the big consequences from the money printing have hit the world.

Once that happens, be prepared for inflation showing up at home.

Poverty rates will greatly increase in the United States, at least in the first half of 2021. Sure, there have been billions spent on COVID-19 relief. Almost all of it has gone into the pockets of big business. People on the streets? Not so much. In some places, businesses are locked down. In others? Businesses are going, but limping along due to the consequences of previous lockdowns.

I heard Bernie likes to fight poverty – every weekend he goes out and slugs homeless people.

When businesses can’t afford to pay people, poverty is the result. The average American had only small amounts of savings – by one measure I found, nearly 70% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, which is only enough for a minor emergency. After that, who can say?

The economy is in the process of fundamental change, and the middle class will significantly decrease in the next year. What has been conserved after the Coronavirus Collapse®? Big business has done great. Mom and Pop restaurants? Horrible. Modern Mayberry’s main business district got hollowed out long ago by Wal-Mart® – as did most business districts across the Midwest.

All of the small businesses are struggling – imagine owning a theater that hasn’t shown a movie in nine months. The local theater was even broken into during lockdown – thieves stole $7,000 in merchandise – two small sodas, some Mike and Ikes® and a medium popcorn.

The transfer of economic power from small business to large has been going on for years. The space for a small business to compete is getting smaller and smaller. One local shop did 90%+ of its business in online sales. Amazon® made one small change to the way that affiliates were paid and deleted the business in three months.

That business is now gone, but Jeff Bezos now has a net worth of over $200 billion – which we can all agree is an expensive net.

I got my degree in kids’ medicine online, too. You can call me a Wikipediatrician.

And the people going into poverty? They won’t exactly be customers of restaurants – eating out will become (if it hasn’t already for them) an easily avoided expense. People will actually learn to cook again. Which doesn’t help Mom and Pop.

China will be very close to surpassing the United States as the largest economy in the world in actual GDP. China’s economy grew last year, while the United States contracted. Even though China has a lot more people, this still translates into political power on the world stage. Everyone has been predicting that China will collapse for, oh, 25 years. Instead? China has grown relentlessly. Sure, there are structural weaknesses, but it’s hard to bet against that kind of economic inertia.

Why didn’t Chinese factories close during the pandemic? Kids don’t catch COVID-19.

How does this impact the average person who isn’t Chinese?

Well the good news is that if you like dollars, they’ll still be useful. But as other countries, like China, grow relatively stronger, the dollar grows relatively less powerful. Especially if the United States mains determined to keep printing them as fast as it can.

I’ll toss it over to you, now. Outside of Randy Quaid in destroying the alien mothership, what do you expect to see in 2021?

The Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth

“You kids change partners more than square dancers.” – That 70’s Show

Marie Antoinette should have known the time was right for a revolution in France – she had a Coup Coup clock.

Okay, the title is clickbait. We all know the Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth are Rock, Paper, and Scissors. Oops. I think the real answer is Rock, Rock, and Rock. I mean, who is going to make the paper and the scissors?

Oh, wait, I said four.

Add Google®, I guess.

One constant theme of this blog since I started writing it is that I want to convince everyone I can that tomorrow may not look like today. I think this is important, because too often we start to think that our lives of today are the lives that people will live forever.

Why?

That’s the way we’re wired, to think that tomorrow will look like today. It’s complacency.

Dozens of my ancestors lived as kings, having all the food they wanted and the choice of the peasant maidens in the dozen miles (metric conversion of one deciliter) around the mud hovel they lived in. It may sound dreary, but it’s still better than Netflix®.

Genghis Khan is far better known than his brother, Gingivitis Khan.

My ancestors lived every day of their life just like that, until they died at age 32 after they got a nasty infection because they were sharpening their bronze and flint nosehair trimmer, and accidentally conquered China. That seems to keep happening. I blame . . . well, all the people that conquered China.

For 100,000 years our brains, as wrinkly and wonderful as they are, grew up in a world where yesterday was mostly like today, and today is mostly like tomorrow. Except for you people who have wonderful smooth brains. I think I have some Bernie Sanders™ coloring books for you.

There’s a danger to thinking that tomorrow will be just like today.

Let’s pretend you’re a turkey on a farm. There’s a nice farmer that feeds you every day. What a nice guy! You keep gaining weight, and getting bigger.

What a nice farmer! Farmers must love turkeys.

Then, one November near Thanksgiving the impossible happens: the farmer fires the turkey due to the COVID-19 outbreak and his turkey 401k drops 90% and his turkey wife tells him that . . . all those eggs? Not his.

That turkey has found a fate worse than being roasted at 350°F for three hours (6.02×10²³ Watts for six fortnights). Turkey alimony.

The point remains: life changes in an instant, never to return to the way things were.

I shot my first turkey this year. Scared everyone in the meat aisle, and now I’m banned from Wal-Mart.

Here’s another one (I’ve used this example before): I’m quite sure that there was a British guy at the dock watching as the last Roman Legion left Britain in 407 A.D. What was he thinking?

“The Romans have been in Britain since 43 A.D. They’ll be back. Why wouldn’t they?”

It’s nearly a 100% chance that was exactly what he was thinking. Our hypothetical British dude had never lived a single day when Roman troops weren’t controlling Britain. They have to come back, right?

Well, not really.

There are reasons that hordes of Roman coins are found buried in Britain.

When Rome was strong, a Denarius (Roman coin) contained about $4.00 worth of silver at today’s prices. As Rome continued, successive Caesars trading in Rome’s military might, reduced the amount of precious metals in the Denarius until it hardly contained a whiff of silver.

I hear there are extraterrestrials living in Rome – someone said that there were Italiens there.

Then one November near Thanksgiving, the impossible happens: the guy in Britain gets fired and the Roman 401k drops 90% and his British wife tells him that Joe Biden (who was only 35 in 407 A.D.) was elected. The worst part?

Joe Biden is carrying the British woman’s baby.

Our Roman’s world collapses. Everything that he knew changes overnight.

When archeologists go digging in old British trash piles, they find something interesting. The trash at the bottom of the pile (when Rome left) contains really cool broken plates. Archeologists love plates.

Why?

Because angry wives break them all the time, so they make it easy to date a culture by the number of wives that go crazy and start throwing plates. Apparently, the number of mad wives that throw plates is a scientific constant like the speed of light, so trash pickers archeologists can date the change in a culture based on broken plates.

The archeologists determined this: the broken dishes at the time the last Roman Legions pulled out of Britain were awesome. They were great dishes. And everyone had them. It turns out that dishes in the Roman Empire were mass-produced in southern France and shipped everywhere in the Roman Empire. Southern France was the Wal-Mart® of quality dishware.

You can plainly see that Indiana Jones’ least favorite band is the Rolling Stones.

Then archeologists looked at dishes that were 100 years later in the trash pile. They knew this particular trash pile was a king’s trash. The dishes in the king’s trash were something that a kind parent would have congratulated a mildly retarded child for because the mildly retarded child tried really hard.

But these Roman plates weren’t widely available – only a king could afford them.

History happens one day at a time. People lived it, the hard way. Let me give you some examples that might add some perspective:

A French girl born at the start of the French Revolution would have been 26 and had multiple children when Napoleon finally lost at Waterloo.
A German girl born at the end of World War I would have been 27 and had multiple children before the end of World War II.
An American girl born at the end of the Clinton administration already has 43 earrings, sixteen tattoos, and herpes.

What I’m trying to explain that there are two types of changes the first one is fast, really fast, like the turkey’s bad November day. The second type seems fast only when viewed from 200 years in the future. Remember, love can last for a lifetime, but herpes is forever.

In my estimation (for what it’s worth) we are in an atmosphere where both types of change will happen. We will have sudden changes, like the turkey, or like Marie Antoinette. These will be changes we cannot go back from. If you burn a receipt from Arby’s©, there’s no going back to get those curly fries if they shorted you.

We all burn our receipts from Arby’s™ as soon as we get home, right? Otherwise The Man would know how much we like Horsey Sauce®, and you where that leads:

Tyranny.

I digress.

But I will* note that I had a conversation with a friend over a year ago. He and I were talking about investing and other things. During this conversation, I had an epiphany. Where was my money? Mainly in a single bank (this has now changed).

Where does the Federal Reserve hide its economic failures? In debasement.

My question to my friend then was this: “How much of your money is diversified?”

His response was, “Well, it’s in mutual funds, and in a wide variety of stocks and bonds. So it’s diversified.”

I followed up: “No, I mean how much of all of that is in dollars?”

There was a long pause. “All of it.”

I guess this post is mainly to point out that just like we don’t buy things in 2020 with a pocketful Roman coins, and we don’t buy things with French Francs from before their Revolution, and we can’t buy things with Soviet Rubles, how long will we be able to buy things with Dollars?

Just asking.

I’m not even suggesting any particular path, though I will disclose that if everything goes well, my kids might inherit some silver and gold when The Mrs. and I pass on. Like any turkey, I know one thing: tomorrow generally looks like today.

Until it doesn’t.

*Standard I’m Not A Financial Wizard Blah Blah Blah And If You Listen To Me For Financial Advice You’re Insane Differently Mental Disclaimer.

The 2020 Election: Don’t Let It Make You Crazy

“We’re here to preserve democracy, not practice it.” – Crimson Tide

The Times Square New Year’s Eve Committee asked Hillary to join the committee. Turns out that sometimes dropping the ball at the last minute is a resume builder!

We are currently in the “crazy season.” As years of elections go by, people on every side of the political question have become better at influence and persuasion. Why? The prize is huge. Political power provides billions of dollars, if not trillions, for favored industries. In the 2020’s – it also means immunity from prosecution for supporters of the winners.

Like Hunter Biden, the stakes are high.

Political campaigns, unlike the NBA®, learn over time. What worked last election? What didn’t work? What does the focus group say?

After the primaries, the campaign isn’t focused on getting the votes of die-hard supporters. All seven of the people in the United States who are “really excited” to vote for JoePedo will vote for JoePedo. Who is JoePedo?

JoePedo was an early slogan of the Left that sorta backfired on them. They were going for Joe as a torpedo, not as, well, a Pedo. It’s important to understand how people might make fun of your name.

Thankfully, in 2020, ISIS is WASWAS.

About 99% of Biden voters are only voting for Biden because he’s Not Trump. They will continue to vote for Biden as long as he doesn’t turn into Trump. Biden could kill and eat live kittens on during the debate, naked, while taking billions of dollars in checks from Satan for “services rendered”, and Never Trumpers would still vote for him. Heck, let’s be really honest: they don’t even require a pulse. Given Biden’s mental, umm, “difficulties” it’s obvious that even dementia isn’t a disqualifier.

Trump voters are (mostly) voting for Trump because he’s Trump – a finger in the eye of the establishment. Trump voters are unhappy with a country that they see is no longer a country. In the view of Leftists, the United States is nothing more than an economic entity, one which every person on the globe has a right to move to. Trump voters reject that.

Never-Trumpers are gonna vote Biden, and Trump doesn’t care about them. Trump voters are gonna vote Trump. Biden doesn’t care about them.

Neither campaign is attempting to get the votes of the diehard supporters of the other candidate. Instead, this last campaign stretch is only to convince the people who follow politics so little that they haven’t figured out who they’re voting for. But right now? Both sides are pulling out all of the stops.

I can hear the campaign staffer defending his meme: “At least it’s better than Turboanalisis.”

JoePedo will tell you that he’s running for the Senate if his handlers aren’t able to shut him up in time. But the staffers in the know managed to get Trump’s tax records to the New York Times®. The fact that this is a felony, well, who cares, right? If Biden wins, a felony is just a wink and a nod. But the taxes seem to be a poor weapon: there’s nothing of interest, outside of the fact that Trump has way better tax advisors than I do.

But Team Biden isn’t done. They have at least three “gotcha” attacks planned for Trump in the next 20 days. And those attacks will escalate. They’re saving their best attacks for last.

But Trump will fight back. Trump has an arsenal of information on the JoePedo. He’s going to unleash it, bit by bit, like a Chinese water torture. And he’ll Tweet® and laugh the whole time.

My prediction that we hadn’t yet seen the craziest part of 2020 is proving to be stunningly accurate. Honestly, it was really an easy prediction – the only prediction that is easier is that the Sun will rise tomorrow, or that Ruth Bader Ginsburg won’t.

What do you call a Supreme Court Justice that was so cheap she would eat the scraps on other people’s plates at the diner? Booth Raider Ginsburg.

The goal of these next twenty days is manipulation.

Now, when The Mrs. was just The Miss and we first started dating, one particular date we had was one we called the Forever Date. It started on a Friday night, when we went to play mini-golf. Mini-golf is a great date idea. Everyone sucks at mini-golf, and seeing how a potential spouse deals with being awful is a great insight on their personality. Sadly the courses are packed now, since the economy is so bad that CEOs are now forced to play miniature golf.

But after mini-golf? Dinner. Then we walked down and got an expensive coffee at a hippy coffee bar. Then we went back to my place and watched Babylon 5. The next day, we had a bunch of other things on our schedule – a renaissance fair, a play, out to another dinner, and a movie. In all, we had spent 24 hours together in two days.

In that time, we had done a lot of things. The sheer number of things that we did made that 24 hours seem like weeks – it compressed and amplified our relationship. It didn’t hurt that most of the activities, outside of the play and the movie, involved a lot of conversation.

In a weird way, this Forever Date was manipulative. Unintentionally so – but when you put a compatible unmarried man and woman together?

And put them through activity after activity?
Fun things, unique things, unusual things?
That involve conversation?

After learning about how couples interact as I got older, the only answer is if you put people into the circumstances that The Miss and I were in? Those people are going to become close. And if even remotely compatible? Married.

Jesus turned water into wine, most men drink to make a six look like a nine.

That same time compression is exactly what the manipulators want from voters right now. They want to hit the voter with crisis after crisis until the voter’s mind is available for persuasion. Like the Three Stooges, the candidates want Moe-mentum.

The persuasion we’re seeing now is aimed squarely at the undecided voters. It’s ironic that the people who care the least and know the least about politics decide the election every four years. It’s like having the Senator without thumbs winning every election, but that’s not surprising since he’s unopposed.

Remember, Kamala placed lower than all of the above candidates. It’s okay, she’s used to being on the bottom.

So, the next twenty days will be filled with more information than in any election in the history of the United States. It worked really well when there was a last minute announcement that George W. Bush had been arrested for Driving Under the Influence. That cost him a lot of votes.

When John McCain was told by the news media that the problem was all in his head, he took the news media seriously. Those videos of Sarah Palin painting seals and birds with oil? Yeah, those hurt.

Okay, the fact that McCain’s personality had all the warmth of a Soviet Gulag and all the compassion of an African tribal war is what really cost him the election. Sarah Palin? I could have been Michael Palin and they still would have lost the election.

Michael is still a funnier Palin than Sarah.

But, like I said, campaigns are a learning organization, and they have learned that October is the best time to spring a surprise. So the result is that every four years, October will get progressively crazier until each political party hires individual mimes to stalk and convince undecided voters. There are dangers to hiring mimes: one of my relatives became a mime – I haven’t heard from him since.

Here in 2020, however, knowing what they’re doing is enough. It’s certain that voters are fine in convincing themselves, but when it comes to propaganda? They resist. The only solution is to confuse them with so much information that they become susceptible to changing their mind. And thinking that they changed it themselves.

This particular election will be the most expensive in history. Yet, the election will likely come down to relative handfuls of voters in a few key states. California? Not an issue. But Pennsylvania? Wisconsin?

But you’re not likely the target. And here’s the key – if all of the nonsense you’ll hear in the next few days annoys you? All of the radio ads? The campaign mailers?

Ignore it.

My kids voted for pizza for dinner the other night. They got tacos. We don’t live in a swing state.

The real key to life has nothing to do with the daily news cycle. The real key to life has to do with keeping your values in sight.

And that’s good news. If you want to ignore the political nonsense going on right now, you can.

If, like me, you want to enjoy the nonsense with a bag of hot popcorn?

You can do that, too. It may be the crazy season, but it doesn’t have to drive you crazy.

If you feel yourself getting crazy from this political season, don’t worry. If you get lost, you can always take the psychopath.

Three Wednesday Thoughts, But They’re Hilarious. Like Your Mom (No Your Mom Jokes Included).

“There have been many theories which say that life has been deliberately sent to Earth from another planet. Some experts ridicule these ideas. And such theories might have remained unbelievable, except for disclosures such as these, which continue to be found year after year.” – In Search Of . . .

Did you know all of the web addresses are piled up in Russia? It’s called the URL Mountains. (Not my meme.)

I’ll start with the apology.

I had not one, but three topics for tonight. None of them (for various reasons) are cooked enough for my usual post. I blame, (spins excuse wheel) hamsters in the wiring of my secret volcano lair. Sure. That works. I mean, my secret volcano lair would work.

Except for the stupid hamsters.

So, instead of being focused, this one will start off with some bloggy news, have some actual real news in the middle, and end up with some silly commentary. In a just and verdant world, filled with love and free Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup®, Sprite™, and Trump Antibody Blood© for battling the ‘Rona, well, this would be a unified post.

Not tonight. Unless you can get me some Trump Antibody Blood©. No, I don’t have the ‘Rona. But, could Trump Antibody Blood™ hurt?

Trump just banned shredded cheese – he wants to Make America Grate Again. (Not my meme.)

But the good news? You’ll find we’re extra funny tonight.

First – bloggy news.

I try not to write too much about writing. I don’t want to feel like Stephen King, especially since The Mrs. has officially ruled him as “a hack.” That happened about 1991, so according to The Mrs., old Steve has been a hack longer than Russia has been Russia. See, kids? If you’re a writer, never quit cocaine*.

*Assuming you’ve started. I never did. I get by based on my disagreeable personality, questionable personal hygiene and those U.N. war crime charges I keep dodging. Who knew there was an international law governing nuns, orphans and free-range poodles?

Here’s the actual news:

I had so much fun liveblogging the first Presidential Debate©, that I’m planning on doing the second and third ones as well. I’ll put up a post the night before, and use the comments of that post for the liveblogging. I intend to start the show about fifteen minutes before the debate starts. I fully expect Trump will transform on television into a trans-dimensional entity clothed entirely in sold gold and wielding the power of a thousand Suns during the third debate. If he doesn’t, I expect that Trump will at least unleash a hammer wielding midget from the meth cage and sic the midget on Joe Biden. The Mrs. originally thought the midget would be in a penalty box, but we both agreed a meth cage was better.

Further “behind the scenes” commentary: The Mrs. and I started this joke even before we were married. When New York outlawed dwarf tossing, The Mrs. (then The Miss) suggested that we just let them fight. I suggested it would be more humane if we restricted it to midgets, but allowed them to have normal claw hammers. You know, for the sake of the children. Or something.

Midget machete fighting? That’s for tourists.

Regardless, if there’s a midget in a meth cage, you’re already on his bad side. (This had The Mrs. in stitches at Pugsley’s latest football game. If you’re wondering, Pugsley tackled the quarterback and the ball popped up and one of his much faster teammates ran it in for six. Since our team was 43 points up, that allowed them to add a 12^th player. You guessed it: I suggested the hammer wielding midget from the meth cage. So, now you know.)

I do not intend to liveblog the Vice Presidential Debate®. Pence will do his job of being calm and collected and aware. He’s like a potted plant: he’s alive, there, quiet, and will live forever if you keep him watered and in the appropriate amount of sunlight. That’s okay – it’s his job to be exactly those things. The only real potential for amusement is if Kamala goes shrill and nutsy or tries to have sex with the moderator to get bonus debate points. Regardless of whatever Kamala does, as long as Pence appears more like a fern or one of those hanging spider plants Ma Wilder fancied, he wins.

Second – real news.

Whoa.

The last time a Clinton clinched this hard involved an intern and . . . well, I’ll stop there.

This might be the first time you read this, which would give me a scoop. I’ve had several other scoops, but most of them showed up when I was 75% complete with a post. That means I got the news at 2:30AM. I said, no, no scoop. I may be a comedic genius who has nightmares about little people with claw hammers, but I have to get some sleep sometime.

This news should surprise no one, but yet it does.

Trump specifically told us back at some time I’m not going to look up because you have DuckDuckGo®, too that he’s saving the real fireworks for October, 2020.

The first of those firework shots is declassification of all documents, without redaction, related to the Russia Hoax. I expect this to not be the biggest revelation from Trump before the election, only the first. I expect the biggest one the week before the election.

National security and the Department of Justice. Hmm. Stay tuned.

My bet? That revelation the week before the election will be film of Joe Biden personally sabotaging the space shuttle Challenger or John Podesta caught on a double date with Osama Bin Laden. Their double date partners? George Soros and Whoopi Goldberg.

Oh, wait. Maybe the final revelation of 2020 is . . .

Bin Laden.

Biden.

Bin Biden?

Bin Laden and Bin Biden, brothers separated at birth?

Now that would be an October Surprise.

This is cruel. They should at least offer him some spirit cooking for his last meal. Also, (not my meme.)

Third – some commentary.

I don’t really expect that anyone of real power will ever be indicted on charges. Why? That would upset the system. Obama is safe to go from corporation to corporation looting tens of millions in delayed payoffs. The Real Rulers™ can do whatever they want and never face justice. Why?

They hired the people that prosecute the cases that they’re involved in. They know secrets that even more powerful people don’t want told, like who really killed JFK and where my remote control is.

I’ll take things that will never happen for $1000, Alex. Also? (Not my meme.)

Regardless of that, there is no way that you’ve heard the weirdest thing yet from 2020. I stand by that. Trump, in the hospital for the ‘Rona? Not even close. We have 86 days left in 2020. That’s nearly 25% of the year.

My bet? We get 80% of the drama of 2020 in the last 25% of 2020.

What does that leave on the table?

Aliens buying San Francisco and replacing it with decent parking.
Dogs and cats, living together.
Elon Musk disclosing his wife is really a robot cat girl, and thus she is not eligible for alimony.
Places like Europe, Australia and New Zealand finally adopting reasonable, common-sense recreational nuclear device policies of no more than ten megatons per recreational nuke.
Justin Trudeau vows to one day learn the alphabet.
Kim Kardashian discovers that she is pregnant, and wonders if it is her baby.
Joe Biden admits he can’t dial 911 on the telephone because he doesn’t have an eleven key.

Well, none of those things are likely.

But was 2020 likely in the first place?

Open Thread For Debate Liveblog, Plus A Prediction Of How It Will Go

“I would not presume to debate you.” – Star Trek II: Wrath of (Prose and) Khan(s)

Clothing optional. No, I really don’t want to know. Really, I don’t.

It’s 2020, and the first debate, so let’s have a little fun with it. Starting tomorrow at the beginning of the debate, you’re invited to a live debate party. If you’re here on Wednesday morning, this counts as the Wednesday morning post.

Where? Here. On this post, right in the comment section. Just be here when the debate starts and refresh the page every so often, and comment away! No ID required and no cover charge, but there is a two-drink minimum.

The Mrs. has tentatively agreed to join in and may even be interested in having some wine during the festivities, so you can expect my stuff to be extra good. The rules are fairly simple. Join in, and comment as we roast marshmallows on the bonfire of Western civilization. The funnier the better, but do please try to keep it PG-13 and don’t make me edit out stuff.

Because I will.

How do I think the debate will go?

Probably something like this:

Chris Wallace: Good evening. Per the rules that both of you approved, Vice President Biden will be allowed to occasionally bellow out the names of people that are dead, but that he thinks are still alive. President Trump will be allowed to yell two words with strange emphasis whenever they pop into his head.

The first question is for you, Vice President Biden. How do you like doing soothing things, like painting? Do you like other art projects?

Vice President Biden: C’mon man! I remember back when I worked in the chimichanga factory back in Delaware while running drugs for the Juarez Cartel. This poor little girl, who was just as smart as a white girl, would want to touch the golden fuzz on my neck, right here . . . .

President Trump: HUN-tEr CrackHEAD.

Vice President Biden: Well, Fat, I was in the Senate back in 1840, and let me tell you that Henry Calhoun wouldn’t have had crack, because Lincoln didn’t invent that thing, you know, the toy . . .

Chris Wallace: Lincoln Logs®?

President Trump: UkraiNIAN corrupTION.

Vice President Biden: C’mon, it was back when I had my first Buick. It was a 1953, I think, bought it from John Travolta back when he was a ghost-man. You know about the ghost-men, right? Only come at night, crawl up your leg, leave a hell of a mess?

Chris Wallace: Thank you Vice President Biden. President Trump, can you explain how the 1963 IRS laws concerning tax treatment of hotel properties in Barbados after an earthquake are impacting Russian-Chinese relations?

President Trump: Yes. You see, HUN-tEr Bi-DEN was very sad in his dealings with his brother’s ex-wife – you know he married her, yes? And then HUN-tEr had some sort of stripper baby. Very sad. Very disrespectful.

Vice President Biden: Marlena Dietrich! Is she here tonight?

President Trump (to Biden): You work for me.

Vice President Biden: What? No, I don’t. I quit that job. C’mon. Want me to bust you in the chops behind the gym? I’ll show you who knows how to do pushups because . . . you know the thing. I’ve gone on too long. God bless Ruth Vader Gilbert and Sullivan. Helluva Broadway show, let tell you that. Full of sparkly toasters and ham.

President Trump: You see? Lock him up.

Or maybe it won’t go like that. It’s 2020. All bets are off. I’d suggest a drinking game based upon Joe Biden saying “C’mon”, losing his place, visibly showing the signs of a meth overdose or brain aneurism or saying two hundred thousand. One drink for each ad hominin attack on Trump.

For Trump, you’d take a drink every time he says two words and pauses, nodding knowingly, uses the word “Hunter”, uses the word Chin-a, or insults Joe directly with a “Sleepy Joe” or “Chinese Joe” type insult.

Finish your glass if Joe Biden suggests pushups. Finish the bottle if Joe does a pushup or tries to physically attack Trump or his adult diaper leaks. Also finish the bottle if anyone from CNN says anything other than, “decisive victory” for Biden.

See you at the debate!

2020: More Strange To Come

“So the other shoe drops, and crushes us all.” – The Boys

Bad news – 2022 is going to be the same as 2020, because it’s 2020, too.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the biggest surprises, the biggest events of 2020 haven’t yet happened. I’m kidding, of course. I love being the bearer of bad news.

I’ll fully admit that 2020 has been the most crisis-filled year of the United States, at least as long as I have been living. Each month a new, explosive event.

And, it’s still 41 shopping days until the election.

In August and September the press has been focused on the presidential race. For the last month, there has been a “major” story every week attacking the President. By my reckoning, at this point Trump hates babies, troops, and burns thousands of gallons of diesel fuel in an open pit behind the White House to increase Global Warming as fast as he can.

You’d think that she’d be in favor of Global Warming, given how much she hates ICE.

On the Biden side, his painfully obvious quickly progressing dementia has been explained as . . . well, it’s just been ignored. Biden’s primary advantage to the Left is that he’s not Trump. His other advantage is, well, you know. You know the thing.

They fail to talk about his biggest positive, his mind. Biden’s mind is as sharp as my computer’s browser when I have 23 tabs open: 21 tabs are frozen, and I have no idea where the music is coming from.

In October I’m expecting some new mainstream news media attack against Trump every day. Here are a few from my top 10 attacks that I expect Trump will see:

Sources say Trump to personally use Social Security checks stolen from elderly widows to buy new golf clubs for smashing bald eagle eggs while humming the Soviet anthem.
Rumors indicate that Trump to give paper cuts to caged illegal immigrant orphans, pour lemon juice in wounds, sell video to YouTube®.
Washington Post® reports that Trump “uses stairs” to taunt disabled veterans.
New York Times™ exclusive that Trump demands his taco salad be made from freshly ground kitten.

I tried to use “snowflake” as a password, but after I typed it a second time, my computer told me, “Sorry, your passwords are not alike.”

Trump criticized for debate performance – “Why should he talk when Joe is interrupting him?”
News that people of Botswana are upset and no longer think the United States is leader of the free world because of Trump’s insistence of turning into a werewolf and killing the cattle during droughts.
California Governor Gavin Newsome accuses President Trump of being able to control the weather and intentionally starting the fires on the West Coast using only his mind, later admits it was really Drew Barrymore.
Exclusive to MSNBC® – “Trump is the reincarnation of that dude who shot that Austrian royal guy with the big mustache, and this started World War I, so all of that is on him.”
Outrage builds as Trump receives three scoops of ice cream at dinner, rather than the two given to other guests. Nancy Pelosi incensed, because Trumps scoops looked bigger, as well.
Russians are interfering in the election, according to CNN©, by blocking the Chinese working to get Biden elected.

In any other year, I’d say that the election would be over by Election Day or the day after, and we could move forward. It won’t be. Why?

It’s 2020.

What’s the difference between the Green New Deal and a dumpster fire? A dumpster fire produces affordable light and heat.

There will be mail in ballots “found” a week or more later in just the right numbers to offset leads in crucial states. A Federal court will rule that, “ballots are valid only if they favor Biden, because his name is first in the alphabet.”

The very best case is that the election nonsense is finished a week later. But has anything about 2020 been best case? The good thing is that it should be cold enough to discourage riots in most places.

I think that people are hoping that once 2020 is over, that 2021 will be a magical year of rebirth. In reality, the tension has been building for four years. In 2020 we built outrageous amounts of debt. We also lost tens of thousands of businesses.

And when the pizza place goes bankrupt, you know they’re out of dough.

In terms of being Antifragile® (Fragility, Resilience, or Antifragility) we are spending all of the cash we can, which makes us vulnerable. This is at the same time that businesses all across the country are finally giving up and closing up for good. This combination of spending all the cash while losing the ability to have a productive economy reinforces into a downward spiral. I’m expecting the President elected in 2028 to use the slogan, “Screw it, we’ll spend all the tax money on lottery tickets.”

Echoes and ripples from 2020 will nearly certainly continue into 2026 – and that’s if things go well.

The consequences of this are more than academic. In my current job, I get a few emails from salesmen a week. I ignore most of them. Today? I got three calls in an hour to ignore.

Businesses are now desperate. You can keep doors open for a while without revenue, but when the business slows down and there is too much capacity, the only solution is that the most vulnerable business collapses. Heck, my gym went bankrupt, which allowed me to walk by and say, “Well, who’s the quitter now?”

Repeat those business losses until you reach stability. The downside of this process is that is a negative spiral. Investing, as I’ve tried to convey, will be chaotic – and whoever wins the presidency may very well regret it. It’s bad enough that even governmental flows of money at the state level aren’t certain.

I hear that the pine tree is the most common California tree, followed by the Ash.

Take California. Please.

California is taking the genius move to tax the rich so that their rate (combined with the Federal rate) might be as high as 54%. California forgets that rich people aren’t potted plants. The result? The rich will move to places that don’t treat them like a rabid poodle treats a pork chop or Rosie O’Donnell treats a chocolate bar.

So, if California owes you money? You might be in trouble.

We’re in strange times. They haven’t peaked yet.

And I enjoyed letting you know.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: 56 Days To The Last Election Ever In The United States

“It appears we will be required to ignite the midnight petroleum, sir.” – ST: TNG

It’s all fun and games until it hits midnight. And we’re getting pretty close.

People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
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.

We are at step 9. Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight on the clock. Violence continues to be commonly justified by local and state authorities.

In this issue: Front Matter – What Is A Civil War? – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – 56 Days Until The Last Election – Links

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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern.

What Is A Civil War?

Multiple comments that I’ve had, both in the comment section at the blog, as well as in email and even text message asked the question – what happens to the index this month. The answer is that we’re still at a 9 out of 10. The only thing remaining to take us to a 10 is a body count. That’s because I’m using this (admittedly academic definition by Doyle and Sambanis in 2000) as my definition for the existence of a civil war:

The war has caused more than 1,000 battle deaths. This war hasn’t yet done so. Is 1,000 an aribitrary number? This is the only criteria not yet met.
The war represents a challenge to the sovereignty of an internationally recognized state. I think it’s clear that Antifa® and BLM™ want nothing less than the dismantling of the existing state and construction of a Marxist Utopia©. The fact that they are aided and abetted by fellow travelers in district attorney offices, mayoral offices, and congressional offices doesn’t mean that they aren’t communist revolutionaries fighting against freedom from the inside.
The war occurs within the recognized boundary of that state. This is an easy one.
The war involves the state as one of the principal combatants. One of. Not the only one. Ask a policeman in Portland if they feel that they’re in control.
The rebels are able to mount an organized military opposition to the state and to inflict significant casualties on the state. It states casualties, not deaths. And that also makes this an easy one to check off. Organization discussion is directly below in the Violence And Censorship Update.

I list all of the five criteria for a simple reason – to show that the only thing between us right now and a full blown, internationally recognized definition of civil war is the number of body bags we have yet to fill. When I started this update last year, I was expecting things to move faster than you expected. I did not expect things to move faster than I expected.

They have.

Violence And Censorship Update

Violence this month is obvious. The killings have started. Outside of the increasing violence tied directly to police standing down because they have no support which I talked about last month, bullets are now flying in the “mostly peaceful” protests.

Outside of the CHAZ murders, where two teenagers were killed, much of the violence has been peripheral. I moved the index up to nine out of ten when killings became commonplace. As near as I can tell, the killings directly associated with the Antifa™ and BLM® action is probably somewhere short of 100.

But two of those deaths are deaths that Antifa© cannot abide. In Kenosha, I wrote about Kyle Rittenhouse’s clear self-defense shooting against both a pedophile and a wife beater, and alleged self-defense shooting against a person who was (by the film I saw) drawing down on him. You can read it here – reviews say it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, but I’d suggest my signature on my divorce papers from my first wife was better (Have The Kenosha Riots Given The Right Our Rosa Parks?).

From my vantage point, Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero. But Antifa™ cannot let that stand. At all. It’s my estimate that out of rage, the killing in Portland as well as the attempted murder by car in Portland were “revenge” hits on people wearing paraphernalia of the Right. If you read reports that break down the killing (HERE) and other experiences (HERE) in Portland, it becomes clear that Antifa® is using military discipline, and is broken up into a military command structure. (H/T to Vox Day (LINK) and Mike at Cold Fury (LINK))

Antifa™ is a dedicated group. They have undergone a brainwashing and are a religious cult – no Jim Jones Kool-Aid® drinking cultist could compete. I wrote about that here (Why Would Anyone Become A Leftist?), and stand by it. Antifa® and BLM© stand against everything that has made America wonderful, rich, and prosperous. And they are fanatics.

I’m not sure if you know what they have in mind for people that don’t agree with them. It isn’t pleasant. The idea is that there is a pure society coming, and the way to get to that new society is to eliminate everything that doesn’t fit. Which almost certainly includes you. But don’t worry – they want to torture people to death to show the remaining people how wonderful the future communist utopia will be. See? You serve a purpose in their minds.

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 lead to the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

July was generally better than June, which is like saying that World War I was “better” than World War II. Let’s go to the graphs. In general, I’ve used bikini graphs in the past. Given where we are, I’m a bit more somber. Here are the graphs, without bikinis.

Violence:

Up is more violent. June pegged the scale of violence. This measure because the way it’s constructed, doesn’t go higher than 300. It’s lower again this month despite clear assassinations by the Left. Does that mean it’s less violent this month? Certainly riots are down, but the measure is a measure of how people feel about the violence. Since it’s so common now, it’s not spiking. That is, in my opinion, very bad – we’re getting used to this nonsense.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable. Instability is down, slightly. I expect September and October to be down more, since voting generally has a calming effect and all emotions are focused there. After that? All bets are off.

Economic:

Down indicates worse economic conditions, are down slightly. Again, we’re nowhere near the bottom. I expect that to drop off in October. Maybe to historic levels. But I could be wrong?

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory. This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol. Oops! This metric is now nearly at the highest it’s been in years. As the Wuflu® hits Mexico, the Mexicans are deciding to head north again.

56 Days Until The Last Election

I firmly believe the United States has had stolen elections in the past. But the nice thing about the Electoral College is? It makes it really, really hard to steal an election. Impossible? No. Hard? Yes.

Every single person in every graveyard in Chicago, California, and Queens can vote for a Democrat, and it doesn’t matter. The Electoral College adds legitimacy to an election by breaking corruption at the state lines. That’s one reason the Left hates it. It makes elections hard to steal. In my state, my vote doesn’t really matter – my state will go for Trump even if every person in every grave, ever, votes Democrat.

Mail-in voting changes all of that.

Yes, this was one of my favorite original memes that I created, but a new version. Still valid.

Stalin has been quoted as saying, “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”

It’s hard to cheat in a Red State. You have to steal zillions of counties. It’s easy to cheat in a Blue State – you just have to cheat in the big cities. If everyone in Chicago voted Trump, Illinois would still go 60% for whatever Democrat was opposing him. But with mail-in voting?

Examples I have seen show the party on the outside of the envelope. How hard would it be to casually “lose” a few thousand votes from envelopes that had a big, fat, R on the outside? Or a few thousand from precincts that consistently vote Right? Not hard at all. This is on top of demonstrated voter fraud in Left cities where poll workers were caught on camera dumping ballot after ballot into the box on election day.

If mail-in voting passes? We’ve had our last election day. From now on? It’s selection day – selection of the candidate that the Left wants.

Thanks to the innovation of mail-in voting, you don’t even have to bring the corpses to the polls! What else will modern technology come up with?

In a further, ominous sign, the Media® has been setting up the idea that Trump will win on election night in a convincing manner, but will lose as the mail-in ballots are counted. This is particularly horrific.

If you knew which six counties you needed in close states, could you game the Electoral College? Absolutely. You could have boxes of ballots pre-staged in Philadelphia, or Milwaukee, or Cleveland to flip the results. Simple. Want Florida to turn blue? Just found a box with 25,475 Biden votes in Miami.

Don’t think the Left wouldn’t try it. They would do anything to win the election, since they’re contemplating electing a person who couldn’t navigate a corn maze with more than two stalks standing.

If mail-in voting is made the law of the land? Expect that this is the final election, ever, that won’t be a simple selection of the candidate that best fits the desire of the Left. Sure, there will be some token people on the Right elected, but they’ll mainly be people who believe in real conservative values, like only allowing 1,000,000 illegals in a year, and only allowing 7,000,000 people a year in on H1B visas, and restricting anything but a muzzle loading black powder rifle, like our founders intended.

Oh, wait, conservatives have conserved nothing! They just pick the values from the Left from ten or twenty years ago, and defend those until the death.

LINKS

That’s a bad ending to a video game . . .

All are from Ricky:

MSM message: alt-Right continues the march to civil war….

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1316052/proud-boys-group-brawl-antifa-protests-kalamazoo-michigan/

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1354432/portland-brawl-breaks-out-proud-boys-antifa-fight/

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/09/03/schmidt-trump-supporters-want-to-see-a-second-civil-war-in-this-country/

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/08/30/white-supremacists-are-invading-american-cities-to-incite-a-civil-war/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sandia-labs-goes-nuclear-employee-who-sparked-internal-revolt-over-critical-race-theory

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/americans-sense-something-is-wrong-gun-sales-up-72_08272020

…a challenge that must be met with force…

https://jonathanturley.org/2020/08/18/berkeley-columnist-calls-for-violent-resistance/

https://www.dailycal.org/2020/08/12/this-war-cant-be-civil/

http://thesaker.is/will-hillary-and-the-dems-get-the-civil-war-they-are-trying-to-provoke/

…for abstract justice…

https://theweek.com/articles/931090/are-bread-riots-coming-america

https://nypost.com/2020/08/11/black-lives-matter-organizer-calls-chicago-looting-reparation/

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178/one-authors-argument-in-defense-of-looting

…and with concrete action…

https://summit.news/2020/08/14/black-lives-matter-mob-demands-white-people-give-up-their-homes/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-blm-protesters-shot-homeowners-while-marching-through-rural-pennsylvania-town

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/battle-zones-america/

This revolution WILL be televised, as documentaries…

https://theduran.com/steven-turley-new-civil-war-being-fought-on-three-fronts-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-american-civil-war-is-here-part-i-the-combatants-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-american-civil-war-part-ii-strategy-of-the-blues-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-civil-war-part-iii-update-dr-steve-turley-largely-confirms-video/

https://theduran.com/the-utopia-of-democrat-activism-video/

…an unending stream of gripping short-attention-span clips from the front lines…

https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1300955946521432064

(Scroll here for more video gems:) https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/

….and an explosion of editorials…

https://www.columbiadailyherald.com/story/opinion/columns/2020/09/02/rowland-civil-war-real-possibility/5690696002/

https://themichiganstar.com/2020/08/28/commentary-in-kenosha-the-seeds-of-civil-war/

https://greensboro.com/rockingham_now/opinion/ending-the-civil-war/article_a2f83f72-eaef-11ea-88b4-e7bcbc8a60ec.html

https://signalscv.com/2020/09/jonathan-kraut-an-undeclared-civil-war-in-america/

https://www.niagara-gazette.com/opinion/singer-promoting-a-new-civil-war-in-america/article_399450b1-7aee-5a47-abd1-8555b616d0cf.html

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/portland-killing-trump-caravan-civil-war-20200830.html

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/kenosha-trump-kyle-rittenhouse-portland-antifa-20200901.html

https://www.newspressnow.com/opinion/editorials/stop-a-civil-war-before-it-starts/article_57576526-e7d3-11ea-a6c0-f31f4893dc90.html

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/08/20/thursdays-headlines-armed-for-the-civil-war-edition/

https://prospect.org/politics/americas-civil-war/

https://www.independent.com/2020/06/14/an-american-civil-war/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/the-thin-veneer-of-american-civilization/

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-kenosha-wisconsin-unrest-violence-shooting-20200826-m3e7zcqg7faxxou2xhqywmsobe-story.html

And as one (now-dead) Antifa guard claims to have fired the latest shot heard ’round the world…

https://www.insider.com/portland-shooting-suspect-said-saw-civil-war-coming-2020-9

…a newspaper founded during the last Civil War won’t be around to cover any new one…

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/04/trump-and-stars-and-stripes-attacking-american-icon-column/5706859002/

Investing? Invest In Yourself.

“If M.A.D starts making gold out of lead, it will undermine the world economy!” – Inspector Gadget

I invested in a series of walking trails for mental patients, but it failed. I guess Psycho-Paths® was a bad name.

By the time the stock market crashed to signal the beginning of the Great Depression, the economy of the United States had already gone through an amazing decade of change. Electrification was moving rapidly across the country, and prisons could finally retire the acoustic chair. Radio was a miracle that was now bringing masses of people together as the radio waves propagated across the country at the speed of light. Natural gas, long a nuisance in the oil patch, was being piped and compressed and shipped across larger areas of the country, bringing instant heat (and some explosions, since they hadn’t added the stuff that makes it smell bad yet) to millions.

Perhaps one of the biggest dislocations was that horses were rapidly being replaced by cars and trucks. The economy was being motorized. Some have even come to the conclusion that part of the dislocation in the economy was that the millions of horses required to plow, move freight, and move people weren’t required anymore, leading to an oversupply of horses. That’s not a situation that lasts long – the oversupply of horses, can, um, be solved. I mean, too many horses for the barns? That’s un-stable.

But if once the oversupply of horses is solved what about the oversupply of food for the horses?

Well, what are they going to do with all of that farmland, now suddenly made even more productive through the addition of tractors and cheaply made nitrogen fertilizer?

Produce more. Which drives prices down. Which leads to . . .

Deflationary depression.

It’s hard for the Amish to travel – their system is a little buggy.

I would say that “for the want of a horse, and economy was lost,” but in hindsight the real problem was the bankers. The bankers during the 1920’s and 1930’s even developed the first birth control – their personality. The Federal Reserve Bank® (which is neither part of the government nor really a bank) managed to destroy the economy through poor currency manipulation choices.

Part of the secret of the efficiency of market economies is that there is no controller telling people to start restaurants or PEZ® vineyards or bikini ranches. The feedback from the economy is measured in customers buying the product, and if the product is good enough, profit encourages people to make it.

The flip side of that is business failure. I originally wrote that was the down side. It’s not. Businesses, in a normal economy, that can’t produce a viable product should fail. Note that I’m forced to write in a normal economy. 2020 has created the situation where tens of thousands (I’m not exaggerating) of businesses have failed due to the restrictions from the reactions to COVID-19. It’s even been an international problem – Finland closed their border. No one will cross the Finnish line.

The riots in Detroit don’t get many news stories, but I heard the rioters there have caused $20 million in improvements.

That’s not normal, of course. Hair styling places are failing in the more restrictive states. In Modern Mayberry? Not so much. But in San Francisco? You can’t get your hair styled, unless you’re Nancy Pelosi. I guess that the rules prohibiting business operation are only for common people. St. Nancy can go in and get a cut and a blow dry when no one else can. Sadly, Nancy wasn’t wearing a mask, which was the only positive thing about CoronaChan since the whole thing started.

In normal times, business thrive or fail, and both of those things lead to a stronger overall economy. The services and goods that aren’t wanted anymore go away, like Beanie Babies®. Thank Heavens. But in these times of artificial economic crisis? Good, strong businesses fail.

Regardless of the type of crisis we have now, it is upon us. Whether or not the business would have failed is irrelevant. The only real question is what happens next.

One thing that is sure, the economy after this crisis passes won’t look like it used to.

I’ve posted about possible good investments in the past – if I were betting, I’d bet that gold in ten years would be a better bet than Netflix® or Tesla™, even if Tesla© starts its own religion, and builds Elon Mosques. But who knows what the economy will even look like after this crisis? I can’t guarantee any of it.

I hear that Space-X has designed electric grass for Mars. They call it E-lawn.

So what to invest in?

Yourself.

Time is potentially quite short. How should you invest your time? In yourself.

There are so many skills that are required of a human. PowerPoint® is probably not really high on them, so I wouldn’t spend much time there.

The first place I’d begin to prepare is mental. In the United States, we have become very used to the most modern conveniences. Air conditioning when it’s hot. Central heat when it’s cold. Even in Modern Mayberry, day or night I can go and get gasoline, a gallon of milk, and some beef jerky. Fast Internet that allows me to stream a television show that’s been off the air for nearly 20 years.

What happens when you don’t have those things for a day? A week? A month? When you’re used to being able to see what the temperature is in Moscow, Manila, Manhattan or Manchester, what happens when the weather becomes a mystery?

At least Biden can hide his own Easter eggs.

When you’re used to seeing real-time riots in Kenosha or Portland, what happens when you don’t know what’s happening in your own city?

I’m not saying that’s going to happen – the Internet is robust, and the systems we have built for delivering milk, gas, electricity and natural gas have redundancy.

But still, these things are possible.

Have you put your mind in a place where they have happened? What would you do? I mean, if your spouse convinces you to go to a psychiatrist, will your couch talk you out of it again?

After the mind, invest in your body. If you’re out of shape, get in better shape. Anything will help. Get out and run. If you can’t run, walk. Being able to count on your body is always good – and if you’ve been neglecting it because of work, it’s time to pay back that debt, with interest. I am fortunate enough to already have the body of an athlete already – a sumo wrestler.

Hmmm. Maybe I need some work, too.

I got a sumo wrestler for Christmas one year. I had asked for a heavy sweater.

What other ways can you invest in yourself? There are thousands of skills that are valuable, no matter what the future brings. Can you do basic medical care? I’m not asking if you can sew up a lung, but can you clean a flesh wound? Do you have Band-Aids® and Neosporin™ for a year or two? Iodine? All of that is cheap and available now. Will it be in six months?

The Mrs. bought a book on medicinal plants that showed up the other day. I was surprised that it didn’t list thyme as a remedy – I heard that thyme cures all wounds. What kind of books do you keep?

Can you garden? Annually, The Mrs. spends about $117.53 to grow about seven tomatoes. I would make fun of that, but I would also say that The Mrs. has learned lots of ways to not grow tomatoes, too. Her gardening knowledge is better than mine. It’s a little late to invest in gardening this year, but it wouldn’t hurt to start to understand what it takes. There’s a whole Internet. Heck, you could practice by killing some houseplants, like I used to do.

This isn’t a bad time for a hobby. What kind of hobby?

Lots of farms have auctions and I’ve seen farmer forges there.
Carpentry, with and without electricity.
Small engine repair. Small engines can do a great deal beyond weed eating.
Always easier when ammo isn’t so dear, but we are where we are.
Making wine or whiskey – both are great for barter, and legal to make in most places.
Fixing things around the house. When’s the last time you patched a leaky roof?

I could probably come up with a dozen more in ten more minutes, and I imagine the comments will fill up with them. Again, in some circumstances, these are nothing more than hobbies, and if you pursue them with a local club or group, you’ll build more community in addition to building yourself.

Regardless of the future we will see, investing in yourself pays dividends. Plus? It’s always better to try to grow tomatoes and fail when failure is just results in a humorous story.

Yuri Bezmenov’s 1980’s Prediction of 2020

“Mommy, why are you making civilization collapse?” – Futurama

Video games never made me want to hurt people. Working with people did that.

Yuri Bezmenov was a KGB agent who defected to the West in the 1970’s. Bezmenov told everything he knew to the CIA, and was set up in Canada. He did several interviews which are available on YouTube®, which I’ll link to in a bit. Most recently, Call of Duty®: Black Ops Cold War™ brought Bezmenov back into the public consciousness by cutting in clips of his interviews in.

You can watch it below. It’s only a minute or so.

During interviews, Bezmenov made the quote that only 15% of the KGB’s activity was tied to James Bond® stuff. Their primary goal wasn’t to find out which parts of an F-15E jet fighter were made out of titanium and which parts were made out of paper-mâché.

Matching the United States in weapons systems was important, but it wasn’t number one. Besides, the KGB generally had a spy class of ideological communists built into numerous classified projects. Bezmenov said that 85% of the KGB’s efforts were spent in destroying culture in the West.

Why fight an actual war, if you can get your enemy to become you?

Bezmenov even set out the mechanisms that they were in the process of using. It wasn’t a complicated process, and it was just four steps. They called this process, “active measures” and it was nothing less than subverting the ideology that made America great.

The first step was Demoralization.

Demoralization is based around removing the moral framework of the country you’re attacking. The easiest way to do this is to co-opt the education system. Bezmenov said that this took 15-20 years, but his number was low. First, the educational institutions needed to be captured. The people who train the teachers, the people who are the “guiding lights” in educational theory must buy into Marxism.

I don’t have a direct measure of the ratio of Leftist to Rightist in those that teach education, but I’d imagine it’s no less than journalism, which is at 20:1. It may exceed history, which is 33.5:1. Regardless, the educational academy is now firmly in the hands of the Left. This leads to the production of teachers in a Leftist pedagogy (fancy word for teaching), with bad Leftist theory sometimes even enshrined into law. No Child Left Behind? Yes, that was bad. Common Core appears to be worse. Here’s one example:

Yes, this is really what they tried to teach little kids. From the Heartland Institute.

I have to wonder if the idea is that such simple things like addition and subtraction can be made so complicated that parents won’t be able to teach them to their children. In essence, it’s a way to further sever the ties between parent and child, while strengthening the ties between child and state educator.

Certainly, not all educators are Leftists. Here in Modern Mayberry, there are a few, but I think we likely have a more healthy balance. But there are those who look at the remote classes from COVID-19® as a potential threat to their attempts to indoctrinate children:

Is Demoralization 100% complete? Not as long as we have those pesky parents standing up for the customs, culture, ideas, and values of the West. Is it complete enough to take over society?

Maybe.

The goal of Demoralization is a lot of what we see now on the streets of Portland or Seattle or any other major Leftist city. Bezmenov described the end product of Demoralization as:

“They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.”

In other words? Leftist robots.

Destabilization is the next step. This is the destruction of the systems that define the country. The economy. Social relations. Defensive systems.

In the last few months, the economy has been put into the most precarious state within living memory. The United States is more divided politically, ideologically, linguistically and ethnically than at any time in history. Naval vessels ram freighters. Senior officers are fired due to ideology. Women are brought into combat operations despite proof that their inclusion lowers fitness for mission.

Bezmenov said that Destabilization took two to five years.

Destabilization leads to Crisis. Crisis in this system is necessary to get people to accept a new government, new systems, and to give up the old system. There’s been a great deal of experience in creating Crisis by the Left. Think the Color Revolutions that have taken place all over the world, from Georgia to Ukraine to Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.

What does Crisis look like in the United States? How about open violence encouraged by receptive District Attorneys that refuse to prosecute? Does it look like the dollar losing 7% of its value in three months?

Crisis leads to promises by the Left. High minimum wages. Free healthcare. Guaranteed basic income from the government. “Equality” in housing, in education, in policing.

Are the promises real? Of course not. The promises are whatever it takes to get enough support for the Left so they can take control.

If we are not in the Crisis, you can certainly see it from here. Ideally, for the Left, Crisis leads to control, or Normalization.

Normalization is the end game. It’s consolidating the country under the Leftists. It’s the creation of new institutions. In the Soviet Union and in China, it consisted of killing farmers and replacing them with people from the cities and expecting these collective farms will feed the nation.

Of course, all of the Leftists burning Kenosha and Portland think that they’ll be the ones in charge. In the new Socialist Utopian States they’ll be the ones who will write poetry and conduct gender reeducation camps, right?

This poetry comes from Seattle, I believe. Plans are now in full view.

No. The reality is that they’ll be most likely to be put up against the wall and shot or sent to the convenient leisure gulags. Why? They will be disillusioned when the actual power structure emerges. The reality of every communist paradise in history is that the intellectuals are shot first, especially the intellectuals that are communist. Why?

Dissent is a thing of the past.

Here are Yuri Bezmenov’s ideas, in his own words: