Silly Predictions – Page 6 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Great News: Everything’s Going Wrong!

“If we can stop him, we shall prevent the collapse of Western civilization. No pressure.” – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

How many contractors does it take to screw in a light bulb? I’ll let you know when I get one to call me back.

Many times we look at a mess, and think, “Well, that’s just so broken that nothing, nothing will ever be okay again.” That would describe my first marriage. I don’t write more about that bad marriages because bad marriages aren’t all that interesting unless it’s in Florida and involves an alligator, meth, and a Clinton. Besides, it’s over.

So, did it really matter?

In my case, yes.

When I sat back after it was all concluded, one of the things that I did was really think about it, and try to figure out what (if anything) that I had done wrong in the marriage. On hindsight, there was plenty that I did wrong. Though I’d love to blame it all on her since , I certainly played my part. In the end, I knew I’d never find anyone like my ex-wife again. Of course, that was my goal.

There I was, recently divorced, in debt, underwater on my house, and with a stack of bills that were immediately due. It was the worst place I’d ever been in my life, with the exception of being married to my ex. Why are divorces expensive? They’re worth it.

Do divorcing stoners get joint custody?

I realize now that this wasn’t as bad as I thought it was then, but back then it looked like a jet had crashed into my life.

What did I do?

I put one foot in front of the other, met The Mrs., paid off my bills (that took four years), had first one kid and then another, and sold the house right as the housing boom was taking off. None of this was predictable to me at the time of the divorce.

But this isn’t about me.

What kind of eel hits your eye like a big pizza pie? That’s a moray.

When you look at, say, Japan in 1945, it was almost worse than my divorce. Almost. The land had been nuked, bombed, and about 4%, nearly one out of twenty, of the Japanese population had been killed in the war. Their industry had been devastated; their army dismantled, their anime undrawn.

So, they gave up.

No, just kidding. They didn’t give up. They buckled down and became the economic growth story, leading the world in the production of quality cars and electronics by the early 1970s, just a little over a generation after the end of the war and the devastation.

You could not have predicted that Japan would have been so successful that by the late 1980s people were expecting it to have an economy that many felt would soon be larger than the economy of the United States. Luckily, the Japanese discovered mascot suits, and have settled back into being one of the largest, most functional, highest standard of living places in the world who is also a bit crazy.

Why did U-Boats in World War II have dogs as mascots? So they could have a sub woofer.

The point remains – you cannot guess the end by the beginning.

As I look around the world now, I see a world that is filled with conflict, some of which is horrifying. Some of the conflict threatens to change the entire world balance of power. Some of the cataclysmic changes we’ve seen in society have ripped apart the basis for stability of the atom of society – the family and have created new structures that are actively against every virtue and celebrate their opposites.

All of that is true. And yet, I still am optimistic. Why? Because, when I look back through history, we’ve driven to the cliff, again and again and even tried to jump off. When the Roman Empire fell because of many of the same things ailing Western Civilization today, the game wasn’t over. Europe rebounded and eventually (after a lot of struggle) reached heights that had never been seen before in the history of mankind. The setback of the fall of the Roman Empire had been the catalyst for the rebirth of Europe.

Was everything the same?

No. But the foundations for a stable society that can create wealth, freedom, and exemplify virtue haven’t changed since civilization itself was formed. These things are necessary. Humans have changed since civilization started, but the basic things that motivate us and keep us going when it’s cold and dark out haven’t: the things that give us hope are family, religion, and the will to create – something far more than just the will to survive – amoeba and Leftists can do that.

These things don’t include so much of what we see being indoctrinated into the culture today, things that are anti-child, anti-family, and anti-life. These are now being celebrated as virtues, and it’s devastating and causes civilization to unravel.

Surely that burning oil could have created a full tank?

This unravelling, however, will end up being the basis of something new and wonderful: although all great civilizations rhyme, they don’t have to look exactly the same. I really believe that, perhaps, the greatest and most golden age of humanity may be before us, rather than behind us.

You really can’t see it now in a world that’s falling apart because of the absolute inversion of values, but I assure you, it’s there. We will win. Deep down, Kipling knew it over 100 years ago when he penned The Gods of the Copybook Headings (which I’ll trot out once more, full poem below).

We cannot lose because those values that make civilization worth living have nothing to do with the cultural change being forced down our throats. The irony is that, by weakening our culture they bring their defeat closer to them, faster. Hormone treatment of children has not, is not, and will never be a way to create a stable society. It is, in fact, a way to create a crushed number of people that are so broken and confused inside that there is no way that they can create any sort of civilization.

No, everything is breaking apart, and it will lead, inevitably, to the next stage, which is going to be wonderful, though the route won’t be easy. Be of good cheer. I’ll put it in better hands than mine to point out what’s coming:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings, by Rudyard Kipling

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Bikinis, Garbage Loans, And Fishy Finance

“A 30-year mortgage at Michael’s age essentially means that he’s buying a coffin. Now, if I were buying my coffin, I would get one with thicker walls.” – The Office

Most garbage workers don’t get official training. They pick it up as they go along.

The Big Solution to the Great Recession was printing lots of money. I would have (back then) thought that it would have hit the economy all at once. In reality, what the Federal Reserve® and the Treasury did was send all that money they printed off to the banks.

The banks didn’t lend it. They kept it on the books, and in fact many of them redeposited their free money with the Fed™. In reality, the Fed© was scared about was the entire system locking up. It was pretty bad in 2009 – basic chemicals that were necessary (say, sulfuric acid) for a basic, functioning economy just stopped production.

No one knew who had money, or who would have money. As one friend of mine noted at the time, “When the tide goes out, you finally see who isn’t wearing swimming trunks.”

My office above a bank, my assets over tens of millions of dollars.

The inflation stayed “within target” for the Fed™, flipping up and down around 2% during the decade following. Again, with all of the money printed, I expected it to be more, and I still don’t trust the official government figures on inflation since that would be like trusting a used-car salesman on that gently used 1995 Ford Taurus© with only 350,000 miles on it.

COVID was the final straw, though. People produced less stuff, so there was a lower supply. The government printed a lot more money and then gave it to everyone, who most definitely didn’t save it, and in fact bid prices up on everything. Making nothing and buying everything?

Inflation. Or my ex-wife.

Inflation finally triggered interest rates to go up. That posed a problem for the banks. Let’s take me: I have a small mortgage left on Stately Wilder Manor. I’m in no hurry to pay it off because I can get a CD for 5.5%, but my mortgage is only 4%.

How did Metallica stop people from pirating their music? They started releasing garbage.

My mortgage is worth less to the banks now than I owe on it – if I were another bank, they’d sell it to me for less than I owe. That’s a problem for banks that have exposure to mortgages and didn’t sell them off or hedge them.

It’s not just mortgages – Silicon Valley Bank® decided to invest in lots of long-term bonds and such because inflation had been so low. Buy a corporate bond yielding 4%, pay depositors 1%, and profit!

But when interest rates started heading upward, the same sort of math as with the bank that owns my mortgage applies – what used to be worth $100 is now only worth, say, $80. Oops. When the people who put hundreds of millions of dollars into the bank, money that wasn’t insured, find out?

Bank funs. Er, bank runs.

And it’s gone . . .

How bad was it? Of the $172 billion deposited at the bank, only 11% was covered by deposit insurance. I imagine that there were quite a few tense billionaires like Oprah worried that she’d have to get a job at the McDonald’s® drive through, and how could she resist those perfectly salty fries?

Since billionaires were in danger, the FDIC immediately said, “Rules? Who needs those. All money is safe in Bartertown!”

My initial expectation is that we’d see more bank failures right around now as interest rates increased and the piles of garbage on the balance sheets of the banks started to rot. Instead? Banks are still (I believe) happily lending money borrowed by the Fed™.

How do they do it? They manage to do it by having the Fed© allow them to mark their assets to what they paid for them, not what they’re worth. So, they’re lying. I’m fairly certain the Fed™ is buying this stuff to get it off the balance sheets of the banks and lending them more money whenever they don’t have enough caviar.

Does the Sturgeon General recommend caviar?

The rot, though, is still there – it’s only a matter of who pays for the rot. Debt always gets paid, the old saying goes, either by the borrower or by the lender. I do know of two local businesses that are going bankrupt. Their debt is what drove the bankruptcy. My guess is that, combined, they have a debt of a million and a half dollars (or so). Who will pay it? In the end, the lender will.

I think that might be at least part of the big jump in debt that the United States owes. As interest rates go up, Uncle Sam is acting like a raccoon and jumping straight into the trash can to eat the garbage loans and bonds that the banks had to throw out because they were stinking up the fridge. Here’s proof:

England doesn’t have a kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool.

Eventually, printing lots and lots of money is like a magic trick the magician does one too many times and everyone sees how it works. Will it work this time?

Unrelated, frequent commenter Ray notes this Give Send Go. I’ll let him explain more. GiveSendGo – Loco Needs Divorce from Prostate: The Leader in Freedom Fundraising.

Globalism, Computer Chips, And Breast Implants

“Bart, the Internet is more than a global pornography network.” – The Simpsons

Biden shooting the Chinese Spy Balloon® is the only thing he’s done to fight inflation so far.

It’s all about the chain.

A global supply chain has some attributes. Just like money is freely (in most cases) able to cross borders, in a global system labor can cross borders as well, without ever having to leave home. People in (spins wheel) Bangladesh work for $0.0010 an hour sewing soccer balls? If they’re as productive (per dollar) as having a machine and skilled operator in the United States do it, the work went to Bangladesh.

This is (if you’re in Bangladesh) probably a good thing since your alternative was farming spider webs or whatever it is that people in Bangladesh eat. In theory, it’s good for the company that sells soccer balls, since they can (not saying they will, but they can) price them lower, and still produce a profit. It also would appeal to the women who play soccer while their husbands are in the kitchen doing the dishes in Europe.

Why did the Italian join Tinder®? He was provalonely.

But what it doesn’t do is help the highly-skilled guy who used to make them in a non-spider web eating country. In fact, over time the knowledge of all the little tricks that are necessary to make soccer balls cheaply and effectively are lost as they’re transported to Bangladesh.

This might not be such a big deal when it comes to soccer balls, because you can (in a pinch) use the heads of your enemies for one, which would make soccer my favorite sport, ever. But when it comes to things like computer chips, well, that’s a different story. I believe it was the head of the Economic Advisors of George H.W. Bush’s White House who made the comment that he didn’t care if Americans were making potato chips or computer chips as long as they had a job. Oddly, G.H.W. Bush hadn’t had had a job for decades, so, why not?

The question even I don’t know the answer to: is this my last inflation joke?

Bush’s advisor was wrong. While Americans were making potato chips, places like Taiwan Semiconductor were making computer chips. Likewise, they were learning how to make them. Knowing what’s on a computer chip is nice, but it doesn’t tell me about all the of the steps required to make structures that are so very small that we’re near the limit of shrinking chips because the of the size of the silicon atom itself. Yeah. It’s that complicated. But, hey, we have Ruffles® instead of knowing how to do that.

Making chips of such precision took literally decades of investment, billions of dollars in research, and replicating it is very, very hard, unless you’re China and steal the secrets while putting “your people” in sensitive positions in corporations that do the work. Oh, did I just describe every industry?

No, there’s an absolute advantage to making computer chips over potato chips. Building computer chips takes knowledge but it also builds knowledge, some of which can result in additional, new businesses that make use of the technologies developed in building computer chips. Imagine, a PEZ® dispenser a billionth of an inch (40 Newtons) tall! This was what the Soviets dreamed of!

Speaking of names, because of inflation, Dollar Tree® will soon be calling itself Tree Dollar®.

It’s not just the high technology parts that go into nearly every appliance, car, and weapons system that is used in the United States, it also applies to commodities like sweet, sweet oil. It also applies to rare-earth minerals, which China (currently) leads the world in production.

But rare-earth minerals aren’t all that rare – we have them in the United States, but don’t have active mines and refining processes. Why? It’s expensive to mine here (labor costs) and it’s expensive to mine here (environmental compliance costs). So, it’s cheaper to ship the mining off to China and just let them do the dirty work since they (at least in the past) don’t seem to care about losing a few million people to escalators, building collapse, explosions, or whatever other dystopian nightmare you can imagine.

How does a mollusk hide from predators? Clamoflage.

The downside of this global civilization is that it’s pretty tightly wound. In most cases, companies don’t like to stockpile “stuff” so they have it delivered just when it’s needed and don’t have a big supply sitting in a warehouse. When writing for a post a few years ago, I wanted to know how much grain was sitting in the silos near Modern Mayberry (which is near the silos that produced the grain).

The answer surprised me – the silos were nearly always one-half to two-thirds full. Whoever is making the bread doesn’t want the wheat until they’re ready for it – they certainly don’t store it on site until it’s much closer to becoming a loaf.

COVID exposed the supply chain, and the panic response of the public. Toilet paper was in short supply not because there wasn’t enough toilet paper, but rather because there wasn’t enough toilet paper capacity to produce 1,000 roles for every person today.

If I had a $0.05 for every bread joke I’ve told, I’d have a pun per nickel.

As warfare hits Ukraine and Israel (and maybe the wider Middle East) and as tensions rachet with China over the status of Taiwan, which just happens to lead the world in computer chip manufacturing, we’ll soon see if the globalism that we’ve faced is as fatal to the fate of nations as it was to so many million middle-class jobs in the United States. When we (by default) import Bangladeshi labor along with the millions of illegal aliens that we destroy, we (by default, eventually) import the Bangladeshi lifestyle.

Pardon me, I need to research how to cook spider webs.

The Big Short – The Next Step Down

“Our investment-strategy was simple. People hate to think about bad things happening so they always underestimate their likelihood.” – The Big Short

If you live in a haunted house, you’re not alone.

I watched The Big Short the other night. It’s about the financial system and the shenanigans that led to the near collapse of the Western financial world, but presented with elements of light-hearted comedy, so, of course I enjoyed it. And having Margot Robbie sitting in a bubble bath describing mortgage-backed securities, subprime loans, and credit default swaps while drinking champagne was genius.

The premise of the movie is that several groups of people figured out that the housing market was fraudulent, and that any human with a heartbeat (and, as described in the movie, at least one dog) could borrow enough money to buy a house.

Why not? House prices only go up.

I’m no Margot Robbie, but when I’m naked in the bathroom, at least the shower gets turned on.

There have been many people who have done excellent pieces describing the sheer insanity of the housing market and the incestuous relationships between the lenders and rating agencies that kept the party going with cheap money far too long. You can read them, but they don’t feature a picture of Margot Robbie in a bathtub.

In my personal experience, a bank that rhymes with Hells Rarmo offered me a loan for over six times my annual income with only my stated salary as the basis. My response, “You know, I could never afford to pay that back. Why would you offer a loan that big to me?”

“I know, but I’m required to tell you about it,” was the answer from the uncomfortable voice on the other end. Even I could see the con from there, especially since they offered to lend me my downpayment.

The next home loan I got (after the collapse, in 2009) required enough personal information from me that I had to hire a proctologist to help me fill out the paperwork.

What’s a three-letter word that starts with gas? Car.

The result of the Great Recession that followed was a retooling of the industry, bankers and people from the ratings agencies went to prison for fraud, and the government decided to create a system of sound money so these sorts of manias were tamed. Okay, you can laugh now, because none of that really happened.

The government just shoved so much money down the throats of the banks that they got even richer for manipulating the system in ways that would make Al Capone’s scar twitch.

What I saw during the run up to the disaster is that the economic taint (heh heh, I said taint) from the housing bubble spilled everywhere. The place I noticed it first was that waitresses became worse. Why? During the bubble, everyone upgraded their job, and good, smart waitresses became, (spins wheel) mortgage brokers and realtors. The mark of a really good economy is crappy customer service.

She don’t lie, she don’t lie . . . romaine.

I wrote a couple of weeks back about how I can see this happening in restaurants locally here:

The Invisible Recession

People are hurting, and the first thing to cut are the luxuries. Some people take eating out at McDonald’s© as a luxury versus heating up leftover lasagna, and now they’re bringing the lasagna. Garfield® would be proud, but McDonald’s® rarely makes money from cartoon cats.

Add in gasoline prices that are so high they make prescription drugs look cheap, and the squeeze is here. CarMax© just recently announced that they’ve taken a 10% hit last quarter in number of cars sold. People don’t buy cars when they’re worried about choosing between day-old lasagna and a McChicken™ sandwich.

At least one of you will enjoy this one.

The biggest tension in The Big Short came from the fact that the guys who saw the fraud went all-in. In one case, Micheal Burry put $1.3 billion into “insurance policies” that would pay multiples of the invested amount if the mortgages bonds started collapsing the way that Burry was sure that they would.

Burry made a $1.3 billion bet, and on top of that, he had to pay monthly premiums in the millions to keep the policy in force. Yet, even as the housing market started to fail, the housing bonds weren’t failing. If those bonds didn’t start falling Burry and his fund would be buried. John Maynard Keynes famously said that “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent,” proving that he was at least occasionally right.

Economics jokes are like bank bailouts. Most people don’t get them.

They did fail, and Burry made his investors rich, just in the nick of time before his fund became insolvent. Burry (according to rumors) ended up making over $800 million during the financial crisis.

All this brings us to where we are today. I might be wrong, but what I’m seeing everywhere I look are people that are at the end of their rope. The reason? Because we never took the pain and we didn’t clean up the financial system and make it a servant rather than a master.

But I have a plan. Maybe Margot Robbie could explain our way out of this one?

Après Trump, qui? (Plus? A Picture of a Stripper)

“Hey, is that Donald Trump’s car?” – American Psycho

Biden likes all-mail voting, Trump prefers all-male voting.

The battle of the Left against Trump continues, as it will for every day of his life. There isn’t really an end to how much he’s rustled the collective jimmies of the Left. It’s especially fun to watch it play out in the Twitter™ X® feeds of Leftist celebrities like John Cusack, Ron Perlman, Steven King or Rob Reiner.

It’s actually amazing to watch the chemicals soak their brain as their amygdala gets hijacked by someone not even in the room (great example here: LINK). And I’m glad that I’ve never been in a small room on a hot day with Cusack, Perlman, King and Reiner – imagine the smell.

Why is that? Trump is a focus. If you go back in time, the Left was similarly fixated on Bush I, Bush II, and Reek, er Mittens Romney. As noted by the commentor El B on last Wednesday’s post Leftism Is A Death Cult That May Kill Us All – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise (wilderwealthywise.com),

I imagine the next article will be titled, “There’s no good reason you should have to be alive to vote” so at last Pa Wilder can vote Democrat.

Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a promiscuous habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train.

C.S. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters, where the quote above originates. It was written as if from a demon to his nephew, showing how Evil might best subvert society. In 2023, I think it could simply be a text from Soros to his kid. Lewis absolutely nails this concept, and does it in a simple, cogent, readable paragraph. Sadly for humanity, Leftists live this way, and thrive on it.

All of the hate of the Left has a concrete and local focus, and all of their compassion is spread in such a diffuse manner that it becomes meaningless. This is why these monsters pretend that handouts from the government (from money coerced from actually productive people) to those who meet some nearly arbitrary criteria is the same as actual charity.

I just donated $100 to a charity for blind children, but I doubt they’ll ever see the money.

But back to Trump. After he first said “Build the Wall®” the Left went into overdrive with hate towards Trump, pulling out all of the stops. “Europeans won’t think nice things about us!” they said. My response to that one is actually very, very simple, “So what? My ancestors left there for a reason and we have better steak here and don’t have to share a continent with the French.”

Trump’s presidency wasn’t a failure, but it was close, and it showed off his biggest weaknesses: the chose people based on how much the complimented him, and not based on either actual competence or actual loyalty. His personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was a prime example. He hired a corrupt caricature of a sleezy lawyer to do business for him, and was shocked when the guy actually turned out to be sleezy.

Who knew???

Trump didn’t build the wall, didn’t stand up to Congress, and blinked when he had the chance to cross the Rubicon and stand for actual election integrity since, yeah, we know that the Left stole the election, and the receipts to back that statement up are starting to pile up. He did add some okay Supreme Court justices, but I think he should have added the Zodiac Killer, Ted Cruz.

I’m telling you, it would have sucked to have been killed just because I’m a Sagittarius.

Had Trump said, “I’m staying here, not because I demand the power, but I will stay here until a President can be rightfully elected to replace me. I declare that elections will take place in November 2021. I will not be a candidate, and will in no way serve past January 20, 2022 regardless of the circumstances. This is necessary to ensure that the legitimacy of the Presidency of the United States remains unsullied.” Oh, sure, he’d have said, “I, your greatest President, will stay in office because you deserve a system that is excellent in a way only I can give you.”

Then, he could have done that, and retired a hero to the middle and the Right and it would have been talked about for 500 years. The Left would have grumbled, and might have lost their demon and the coming inevitable crisis might (stress, might) have been pushed down the road a decade or more.

After Caesar crossed the Rubicon, I believe his first words were, “Can someone get me some dry socks?”

One thing Trump did was completely transform the face of politics. Just as the Left didn’t vote for Biden, instead voting against Trump, Trump unmasked the utter weakness and complicity of the Republican politicians (not the Right) in creating the landscape we have today. It was especially instructive watching Trump eviscerate ¡JEB! ¡JEB! had been the consensus candidate for the establishment, but Trump sucked all the air (and ¡JEB!’s soul, it looked like) out the room.

This was also inevitable. The system has stopped serving the interests of the heritage American middle class for decades. Vox Day put it very well the other day when he noted that the Republican debate featured two Indians arguing about who could give more money to Israel.

I think there are a lot of people who would vote GOP for $20. Heck, vote twice and you can afford a Big Mac®

Will Trump survive the trials? I think not. The original charges are (mainly, as far as I can tell – IANAL) to be farcical. Trump’s later attempts at covering crap up? Not so much. There are legitimate charges that could bring him down if Trump did really try to have records or videos erased.

Regardless, the RINOs are doing everything they can to hide the only candidate that they have that has national impact, the only candidate who is leading in the battleground states, the only candidate who stands a chance against the corrupt vote harvesting system set up by the Left.

Then what? Après moi, le deluge (After me, the flood) is attributed to Louis XV, and is said to foreshadow the French Revolution. Since we need more rain here, I’ll adapt the phrase for our current problem:

Après Trump, qui? (After Trump, who?)

The only person on the Right who can even come close to Trump in charisma and poise is Tucker Carlson. Tucker seems to have as much charisma, but can also add in an intelligence and poise lacking in Trump. Could he manage being President? I have no idea, but when compared with the rest of the candidates on the Right, he leaves them all in the dust.

Longer term who will emerge as a leader? Some corporal that fought in Afghanistan and is fed up?

We’ll see. The current crop of mainstream politicians on the Right and Left make ¡JEB!’s charisma vacuum look like Robert Downy, Jr. Most of their policies are, at best, simple replays of politics that are 20 years into the past, with less of a likelihood of solving our problems than using a 4-year-olds fingerpainting to design a passenger jet, though that might be exactly what Boeing® does nowadays.

I’ll vote for Trump in November 2024 if he’s not in the slammer, obviously. It amuses me to watch the Leftists get in a froth-ridden frenzy against Trump. It’s almost like Leftists don’t believe Biden won the election.

Global Warming Is For Losers

“I’m a man, but I can change, if I have to, I guess.” – The Red Green Show

Remember to always ask yourself what you can do to make Leonardo DiCaprio’s life better.

I remember one Twitter® exchange I had way back in the past. It was with a Leftist, and I made the statement, “Don’t you see, the only ethical path is to be against illegal immigration, and immigration of any sort. Since Americans emit nine times the greenhouse gases of countries like Mexico or Guatemala, the only thing we can do to protect the climate is to keep them there or send them back.”

There was a pause on the response. “Not sure if you’re really concerned about the environment or just don’t like illegal immigrants.”

That was one of my favorite trolls, since they had to think about conflicting narratives in their programming. In many cases, the Left ignores this, but my major message is never to the Left, since they are not on a rational mission, but on a religious one since Leftism isn’t a political system at heart, it is a religious one. Look at it when a Leftist talks about Trump – it’s like someone on the Right being forced to think of Satan in the Oval Office – it’s religious, not ideological.

The Sun never went to college because it has thousands of degrees.

One of the sacraments of this religion is abortion. The other? Global Warming, er, Climate Change.

This summer has been hotter than the last few here in Upper Lower Midwestia. I’ve seen stories where it was hot in lots of other places, mostly places that you’d expect, like Phoenix. Some of the hottest places this year are the places where people are only there because there’s oil there, like Saudi Arabia, Iran, or the place they make French fries at McDonald’s®.

But that’s why we always see Global Warming, er, Climate Change stories trotted out in the summer and never when it’s -20°F (-273.16°C in metric units) in winter. How bad is it? The propaganda of the sacrament of Global Warming, er, Climate Change is trotted out on weather forecasts to nail down the idea that things are getting worse when in reality, they’re not a whole lot different. Want an example? Here’s Sweden:

Are illegals in Sweden known as “artificial Swedeners”?

Yup, 36 years later, the biggest change has been that they changed the color of the map to a scary color. Why? To celebrate the sacrament of Global Warming, er, Climate Change.

How bad is it? I’ve pointed out again and again how the people in charge of defending our country are fundamentally not serious people. They want, well, I’ll let them tell you:

If she succeeds, everyone will know how to stop an American tank: shoot the soldiers pushing it.

It has even become a death cult, of sorts. The doom that has hit country after country across the world has been staggering. The big part is propaganda – starting at the schools where teachers, predominantly taught Left-leaning curriculum by Left-leaning professors at Left-leaning colleges are the ones in charge of the indoctrination. What does that lead to? Students that don’t want to have children because they believe that they’re part of some sort of Original Sin just by breathing. Notice that China is utterly ignoring the nonsense.

Looks like the Germans and the French are finally equal at something.

The other part of this equation is that people are ignoring the elephant in the room: a volcano last year put an additional 13% water vapor into the Earth’s atmosphere. 13%. And water is a very, very potent greenhouse gas. That’s huge, but I don’t see Greta wanting to sacrifice virgins to the volcano god to stop those from going off, or Joe Biden wanting to make water illegal.

Soon enough the water will drop out of the atmosphere, but Joe Biden will still have to live with being Hunter Biden’s dad.

And I will say, again and again, that this has nothing to do with Global Warming, er, Climate Change. It has everything to do with Leftist ideology and nothing to do with the temperature or the weather or any sort of solution. Again, listen to them when they talk:

What’s the scariest word in nuclear physics? Oops.

The Left is adamantly against nuclear power, because, properly implemented it solves a whatever Global Warming, er, Climate Change problems there are. To be fair, the plants need to be idiot proof, because idiots have a really great track record of screwing everything up, and hiring anyone but actually competent people to design and run the things is an absolute must.

Never let a cat run your nuclear power plant.

Nuclear power is clearly a part of the plan, but keep in mind that the plan is created by people whose idea of nature is a strip of lawn in a park a half a mile from their house. The people crafting the plans to create the “new world” have no more real appreciation of nature than Mark Zuckerbot.

Remember, these are people that get scared when they’re more than 20’ from asphalt.

I think we need to move away from fossil fuels, and quickly. Not at all because I hate them, no, but because we need to save them for the really useful things they do. It will take decades and trillions of dollars of investment to move the world to a new power source. And we only have so much time to do it before that opportunity expires.

Leftists oppose it:

“Environmentalists” don’t understand it:

But true Chads know that’s where we’re going:

And if we ignore it, the actual aliens (not the illegal ones) will never stop giving us crap:

The Great Rollover

“Like I told my last wife, I says, “Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it’s all in the reflexes.” – Big Trouble in Little China

I tried to buy a hamburger with cheese, but they wanted cash instead.

Yellow Freight® shut down. They had been around for 99 years, starting business way back in time when Bernie Sanders was trying to ruin Austro-Hungarian Empire or Bulgaria or wherever he came from.

Yellow Freight© was an old company and 30,000 people lost their jobs. What went on? Well, Yellow© borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars emergency ‘rona bucks. When they went bankrupt, they had an outstanding loan balance (backstopped by you and I) of $729.2 million. During the two and a half years that they’d had the loan, they’d paid down $54.8 million in interest. They’d also paid down $230 in principle.

Not $230 million. Not $230 thousand. $230, so I’m guessing their strategy was to pay it off at $10 a month, which would ensure that they’d pay off the loan in roughly the year 6,079,523.

Oddly, no one would take a risk on refinancing a company that had such powerhouse earnings, and so all of the people who used to have pensions with Yellow™ found out that their pension value would be paid out at the same rate as the loan was being paid out, and it’s pretty hard to split $10 among 30,000 people each month.

I hate to point fingers, but whatever executive thought orange was yellow just might be at fault.

Most of the 30,000 folks from Yellow Freight© will find another job – truckers are still in demand, and other companies have picked up the slack so far.

This isn’t the first. Just like the banks who had money in Treasury paper took a hit (Silicon Valley Bank®, I’d be looking at you if you were still here) because the “super-safe” bonds making 1% were worth a lot less when interest rates went up to 4%. The FDIC™ requires the banks that they insure to report data. It’s kinda scary when the FDIC© uses the X® (the social media company formerly known as Prince) to notify banks (and the American public) that banks might be in trouble again.

I guess no one is making them account for their problems?

The same thing is, perhaps, happening to the dollar itself – today lost its AAA bond rating from Fitch™ and is now producing AA bonds. Still a good rating, but it’s a big hit from “nearly perfect plus has nuclear missiles” and the first step to becoming a “drunk wine aunt country that can’t afford to take vacations”, like Uzbekistan.

As I’ve written before, it’s awesome to have “the reserve currency”, since that means you can print all the cash you want and spend it on things like iPods™ from China, Hello Kitty™ slippers from Bangladesh, and tequila from Mexico (what’s known as a “Hunter Biden Saturday Morning Special”). Losing it means a loss of that ability, and all of a sudden you have to work for all of that stuff rather than just printing cash.

Hunter Biden’s credit card company called him about suspicious activity. Seems that someone made a payment.

That’s difficult, because there’s always competition in having the reserve currency. One competitor, of course, is precious metals. Another is land. My father-in-law liked to say, “if it blows up, at least you still have the hole.” After the debt ceiling deal (translation: spend as much as you want until after the general election), the debt shot up, climbing $1.8 trillion in just two months. I mean, that’s a crazy number, we don’t even give that much to Zelenskyy in a year!

I know mortgage payments are going up, but just try telling a homeless person how lucky they are.

Eventually that has an effect on all assets. Although Darth Powell doesn’t exactly have the understanding of how home prices work, it is closer to say that at the same payment at a 7% mortgage rate, you can afford a heck of a lot less home than you can afford at 2.7%. Unless wages go up or BlackRock© decides to buy houses because they ran out of illegal aliens to import this month.

Or, if the bankers get absolute control over who uses what cash and when. That’s the goal. Will that happen if things are going well, and we’re surrounded by prosperity?

Of course not. In order to get control, the idea is chaos, uncertainty, war, and mayhem. If you’re old enough, how do the 2020s compare to the 1980s? The 1990s? The 2000s? In nearly every way that doesn’t involve ludicrously cheap televisions, each of those decades was objectively better. I’ve noted before that Peak USA probably hit somewhere before I was born to when I was a little kid.

Why do central bankers never travel together? They’re a bunch of loan wolves.

I’m normally a fan of the idea of ineptitude being responsible for at least being some contributing factor to the problems that we have, but when I look at the gross mismanagement of the economy for decades it almost seems like it’s planned.

But I’m sure I’ll hear Bernie lecturing us all that socialism and more government is the way out from the balcony of one of his three houses soon enough. After all, it’s worked out pretty well for him, what with him never having had an actual job and all.

You know, this costs money, but I’m just thinking of the joy of all of those people in India when they get unexpected packages.

Making Leftists Radical: Compassion, Internet Cats, and Feminists With No Sense of Humor

“It’s mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality.” – Kill Bill, Volume 1

That’s awake, not “woke.”

Repost from 2019 . . .

Here’s a fable:

There was a little girl going to school in Japan. Near her place in the classroom there was a cocoon that the teacher had brought in to illustrate the life cycle of the butterfly, and it was hanging right next to her every day. For a whole week, nothing had happened, but then she noticed the cocoon shaking. She could see that the caterpillar had completed its transformation.

What bothered the girl so very much was that the butterfly was struggling to get out of the cocoon. Finally, exhausting all of the patience that a seven year old has, she helped the butterfly by ever so gently tearing open the cocoon so it could get free.

To her surprise, rather than flying, the butterfly fell out of the cocoon and onto the floor of the school room. She gasped.

The teacher walked over and looked at the butterfly helplessly writhing on the floor. It was clear the butterfly would never be able to fly.

“Did you help the butterfly out of the cocoon?”

The little girl, through eyes that were filling with tears, nodded.

The teacher explained, “It is only through struggling to get out of the cocoon that the butterfly gets enough strength to fly.”

This is one of my favorite stories. I can’t recall where I originally heard or read it.

I’d often tell that story to people that reported to me when they were facing a particularly difficult time at work. I’m sure it just made some of them mad – they wanted me to solve their problems. I refused, perhaps giving them hints on places they should look to find the answer.

One of my goals was to get the work done for the company, sure. But I also wanted to take the time to get the person developed – for me that was a moral imperative. My biggest goal was that everyone who reported to me became a more capable person – and I knew that didn’t happen without the struggle. Oh sure, I could have told Ted where the fire extinguisher was, but that would have deprived him of the struggle to find it. And one of his eyebrows finally did grow back.

That’s how I mostly have used the story, to show the importance of struggle. But there’s another and perhaps more central moral to this story:

misplaced compassion kills.

The Mrs. recently found an article that really, for me, answered the question about why the Left is turning so radical, so quickly. The article is by Zach Goldberg, and you can find it here (LINK), although he takes the data in a different direction than I do for his article. Goldberg has an interesting Twitter® feed (LINK) as well. The graphs in this post are mostly from either the article or his Twitter© feed.

It’s always nice when ¡Science!® is able to provide an insight on the problems of the world. I started with the story about compassion. When psychologists do studies of Leftists, they find that Leftists score higher in compassion than the norm – a lot higher. Well, some Leftists.

Karl Marx had only a very short career as a clown at children’s parties. After he was fired, he insisted that true children’s parties had never been tried.

Does that mean that people on the Right don’t care? Not at all. The data shows that people on the Right give more to charity and also volunteer more hours, so it’s clear that people on the Right care. But they don’t get all mushy and aren’t dominated by their feelings.

It turns out there are differences as well among Leftists based on race. One major bias that almost all people from all time have had is in-group preference. You like your family more than your brother’s family. You like your cousin better than you like your neighbor. You like people in your town more than people who live in the next town over – that’s why Friday night high school football games are so big in small towns.

This makes sense at almost every point in history – it’s rare for you to be living in France and think “Wow, that German flag flying the Eiffel Tower is such a neat thing to see.” In-group bias is normal. It’s why Americans rooted for team U.S.A. in the Women’s World Cup® even though soccer is a vastly inferior game to tic-tac-toe.

Thankfully I’ve reached the “Dad’s asleep in the recliner” stage when the Monopoly® board comes out.

White leftists, however, have somehow become biased against . . . white people. It’s like being born a guy and not liking that you were born a guy . . . oh. Nevermind.

As you can see, there is exactly one group that detests itself and prefers other groups.

But this isn’t the norm. And this isn’t how the Left has been for years. Data shows quite nicely that they didn’t used to be this way – as late as 2010, 20% of white Leftists thought that increasing border security was a good idea. 2018? Less than 5%.

It’s clear the Left has become more radical and the Right has (more or less) remained the same.

Republicans have stayed pretty steady on the border. Not so with white liberals.

What happened in 2010?

Who would have thought that Leftist extremism starts with Grandma posting cat memes on Facebook®?

The user bases of these social networks took off in 2010. There is one thing that social networks want – your attention. They best way to get that attention? Show you content that creates an emotional response. Cats and babies are great – they make people laugh and go “aww.” But to a Leftist, to keep their attention – show them things that create outrage by violating their sense of compassion.

I hear her next initiative will be to forgive all the Electoral College student loan debt.

The Twitter®, Facebook©, and YouTube™ video suggestion algorithms have become the Democrat® brand. Social media is a particularly useful programming device. These algorithms are used every day to pull the Left farther Left. Why does this impact white Leftists in particular? They spend more time on social media than the rest of the Left. But they’re enough – white leftists are about 25% of the electorate. And they do have money. And they hate the Right.

Through this lens, the reasons for the bans become clear – even though the algorithm mutes voices on the Right, the most effective voices must be silenced. Arguments counter to the narrative have to be stopped. As has recently become quite clear – the Left owns social media and will clear out clear, articulate voices on the Right given any excuse. The chance is too great that these voices will interfere with the programming. An example:

Portlandia is funny, and there are more bookstore clips that are even funnier – this was just the most “safe for work” one I could find.

Portlandia was a series on IFC® for 8 seasons. It mocked (fairly gently) the Leftist culture of Portland. It’s certain that the stars and most of the writers of the show are of the Left. But the things that the show made fun of can no longer be made fun of. Feminism was often the butt of good-natured jokes, but the feminist bookstore that several skits were shot in broke ties with the show after they decided they didn’t want to be made fun of – at all. What had been funny even to the Left in 2010 was by 2016 unacceptable. Feminism could no longer be a laughing matter, nor could any other Leftist narrative.

In 2019, Portland has lost its sense of humor and replaced it with outrage. Antifa regularly assembles a mob of hundreds to shut down any speech it disagrees with through violence. Their compassion drives them to shed blood, but it doesn’t stop there. This same compassion compels the Left to want to give every illegal alien free health care, and a quick pathway to citizenship. In turn, that drives the 144,000 illegals to want to come here – and that was just in June of 2019. That’s a 10,000 person Caravan every other day.

All of this is caused by misplaced compassion, programmed by social media via algorithms. Certainly it’s all a coincidence, right? It’s not like large corporations owned and run by Leftists would have a political motive, right?

Don’t Ask Why People Are Poor. Ask Why They’re Wealthy.

“Some actually value wealth of knowledge over material wealth, Harper.” – Andromeda

My butler just quit his job here at my stately home. He said he refused to be ordered around in that manor.

I find it sort of hilarious that economists spend a lot of time fretting about what causes poverty. I love economics, but often think that they create pocket universes to study that have no real connection to the here and now. I think that’s called sniffing their own . . . uh . . . emissions.

But sometimes it’s not just economists who ask the wrong question. As bad as they are, the worst offenders are politicians. Let’s start with the dumbest question that has been asked in my lifetime (at least in the United States):

“What causes poverty?”

That’s letting Whoopi Goldberg loose in a chocolate factory stupid. It doesn’t help the chocolate and leaves Whoopi sticky and needing an insulin shot.

But why is that a stupid question?

Because poverty is the dominant condition of humanity everywhere since we didn’t have two rocks to fight over. People throughout history have been devastatingly, living in mud hut, sleeping in straw beds filled with more bedbugs than straw. Mary and Joseph had to walk uphill, both ways, to get to the manger.

That’s a joke that keeps you coming back for myrrh.

Only in rare times, and only for a small percentage of the population of the world have some humans felt prosperity. Fewer still have felt prosperity for most of their lives. Fewer still experienced enough wealth in their society for them to think that wealth was normal, and poverty was the exception. We call them Pampered Coastal Elite Leftists.

Why? Because every farmer in the Midwest, every rancher in the High Plains, and every shrimper in the Gulf (among many, many others) knows how close they are to failure, and how close poverty is, especially if a free-range Whoopi Goldberg is free to eat and trample their crops.

Ma Wilder was impacted by the Depression (she was a lot older than my biological Mom, I was adopted) to the point that, living up on Wilder Mountain she’d save aluminum foil and old pickle jars and have enough food for six months because, “You just never know when you’ll need it.” It was kinda cute until she made us re-use Q-Tips®.

The Wolf is always at the door.

I couldn’t find the wolf, which I guess makes it a where-wolf.

So, the question to ask isn’t “what makes people poor”. We can see that as all the systems around us break down like they are now when morons are at the helm.

We should ask the important question: “What makes us wealthy?”

That’s a much better question to ask, since LBJ’s War on Poverty has just subsidized being poor and created a permanent underclass of voters for Leftists to farm, dependent on the Left for a constant stream of handouts. If you were late to Leftist language class, that’s their word for “compassion”.

So, what makes us wealthy? I can only go from history in those places where the world has deviated from the “nasty, brutish, and short” version of life to that “shining city on the hill”. What matters?

The first thing that comes to mind is Liberty, tempered with Virtue.

When a kangaroo gets hurt, it requires a hop-eration.

Liberty is important, but Virtue tempers Liberty and creates a boundary, otherwise Opium and Fentanyl Den™ would be the new Waffle House®. Or is that the existing Waffle House© after 2am?

What Liberty does is provides options, for millions of people to make individual decisions on how to better serve fellow citizens. Virtue means that they shouldn’t destroy their fellow citizens in the process, since that’s generally bad for business. I guess that cigarette companies have found that it’s okay if you kill them slowly after decades.

Not only that, it’s regulation. Who loves regulation? Big companies. Regulations make it hard for small companies to start, make it hard for them to compete, but increases their profit margin. I mean, I would have loved to compete with Pfizer® with my “Super Saline Covid Injection” that didn’t cause myocarditis, but they would probably want to make sure mine was entirely WD-40® free.

Which would still likely have been better for people than the mRNA Vaxx. But who is counting? Not the CDC®.

What else?

I hear Senator Mitch McConnell stole my rabbit. Mitch better have my bunny.

Intelligence. If you ask ChatGPT® about the correlation between intelligence and national prosperity it blows a fuse. Bing™ chimes right in: “There is a correlation between IQ and economic prosperity. A one point increase in IQ is associate with a 4% increase in welfare for the average country. High IQ is associated with high per-capita GDP and fast economic growth, as well as more equal income distribution.”

Ouch! That’ a truth bomb that most folks don’t want to hear. IQ is not really something that anyone can change for the better. Sure, I can drink a few shots of Jim Beam® and take mine down, but what I’ve got, is what I’ve got, from birth.

But smart people in an economy can keep a more stable economy, and can better grow a complex economy than a group of people who don’t know what vowels are. Sure, I’d like to think that groups of dumb people could get together and solve the nuclear fusion problem, but I’ve met dumb people – they can’t figure out how to split a restaurant tab without a knife fight then a follow-up sacrifice of a live chicken to Gorto the Destructor god.

Or I could have just said, “Imagine Haiti” and everyone would know what I meant.

Why is Haiti spelled without an “e”? Simple. They hate e.

Again, I’m not blaming Haitians for making Haiti, well, Haiti, but if you want to cry, go look over the difference in income between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I’ll save you the time – the Dominican Republic has nine times the per capita income, despite being on the same exact island. The data I found (on the ‘net, mind you) has the Dominican Republic has an average IQ of 80. Haiti has an average IQ of 67.

Haiti has an average intellectual capacity (if this data is correct) at the level where Social Security would consider them disabled (on average).

Having great resources? That doesn’t appear to help. It’s the System. It’s the People. If Hong Kong and Singapore can create wealth out of zero resources in a location that almost anyone in the United States would consider so crowded they’d have to make an appointment to change their mind, it’s not space, it’s not stuff.

We can change our laws to allow more Liberty and increase Virtue and reverse the trends away from the nonsense of the last fifty years that encourage large corporate growth at the expense of the People.

But if we change out our People?

Who are we? Will we see the continuation of turning our cities into Haiti on the half shell?

Studies of the genetics of dead Romans (LINK) showed that “intelligence increased from the Neolithic Era (Z= -0.77) to the Iron Age (Z= 0.86), declines after the Republic Period and during the Imperial Period (Z= -0.27).”

Why did Rome fall? Many reasons. It lost Liberty, it lost Virtue, and it replaced Romans with people who weren’t Romans.

Wonder if we’ll learn this time around?

Steps Forward, Steps Backward, and The Long Road

“Not according to the recent Supreme Court case of bite versus me.” – House, M.D.

No one complained when I got into Buddhism and became a Buddhist. No one complained when I got into Affirmative Action and became an activist. But get into fashion?

Today the Supreme Court (it’s like regular court, but with sour cream and tomatoes) said that, under the Equal Protection clause, that discriminating against people (or even for people) based on race is against the Constitution. I guess you could say that the Supreme Court has changed since Ginsberg passed away: it’s now Ruth-less.

For the longest time, the courts were sort of ignored by the Right. The judges appointed by the Right (when they were in power) were often horribly Leftist advocates of state power. At some point, the Right started picking justices based on choosing people who actually weren’t horrible Leftists in disguise (looking at you, David Souter). The Federalist Society® was the catalyst for this. Of the current Supreme Court, six of the nine justices are current or former Federalist Society™ members.

Yes, this is a real Tweet® and not a parody account.

The vote to kill affirmative action on campuses was six to three.

That’s an important number because it shows that the Federalist Society©, founded 41 years ago, has now defined the Supreme Court and the judges that have been nominated.

This is a victory.

But it wasn’t easy, and the span of effort to get that victory took decades of effort. When the Federalist Society™ was founded, the court system of the United States was an absolute shambles. When the Leftists couldn’t pass legislation that let them do things they like to do, like killing moar babiez, the courts could be counted on to find a new right that was somehow stuck in the “penumbras and emanations” of previous rulings to let them do whatever was popular with the cool kids that week.

Think that’s what happened to the Titan?

What always bothered me was that they could take a simple phrase like, “shall not be infringed” and twist it through precedents and rulings and interpret it to mean, “shall be infringed whenever we feel like it, you stooge”. The “you stooge” part wasn’t actually in the ruling, but it can be inferred through the “emanations and penumbras”.

Why did Roe v. Wade get struck down to allow states to make laws against baby killing? Because of the Federalist Society™. If you’re ever able to go buy a .50 caliber Ma Deuce at your local convenience store in full auto as God intended? Thank the Federalist Society©.

I don’t remember Linda leading the Leftist Karen Brigade in the Amy Coney Barrett Insurrection . . . do you?

Another place where the Left has lost is on carry of weapons. In 27 states you can take your favorite hand cannon and pop it right under your vest without a permit, and without asking anyone for permission. It’s what’s called “Constitutional Carry”. This didn’t happen by accident. It took dedicated groups working locally through decades to get these laws passed.

That’s the key. Victory isn’t won in an afternoon after a training montage where Luke© spends 22 minutes with Obi Wan® and learns the Force™. Nope. Victory is won by grinding it out, day after day, putting people in place. Having conversations. Convincing people that the idea of freedom is better than the idea of government control takes time.

Remember, it only works if you have goals.

One view is that, from the viewpoint of the Right, that there has been nothing but a long string of loss, and there is no way that we can every come back.

Clearly, that is wrong. The grassroots pushback against the insanity of The Narrative can’t be stopped. Why, exactly, do gays and transexuals and drag queens need access to our children? That question is in the minds of enough people that celebration of Pride Month, 2023, was a bit limp.

I guess we’ll have to re-purpose the journalist machine, after a fair trial, of course.

Have we lost most university campuses? Have we lost the military senior officer corps? Have we lost the senior management in most Fortune® 500 companies?

Yup. We’re still down in many places. But Budweiser® is afraid now. And we don’t have to destroy every company that goes woke. There’s an old Chinese saying: “Kill the chicken to scare the monkey.” We don’t have to destroy every company, but I’m certain that the distinct lack of Pride stolen rainbow colors in June on every damn corporate logo was a result of that Budweiser© chicken being plucked.

Where will the next victories come from? They will come from places that passionate people have been working for decades. It doesn’t require money, it requires work. As the other saying goes, “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.”

The seeds of our future victory are being planted right now in the heads of they youth. They see the lies, greed, and envy that are the only things outside of Nancy Pelosi swimsuit pictures that the Left has to sell. Today, removed from their menu, is the idea of Affirmative Action. That idea is dead.

I know nobody wanted to see the swimsuit picture. You’re welcome.

The battle is not over. The Left is always better organized than the Right, but the Right has a wonderful thing on its side: the Truth. As I have always maintained, we will win. And as I have also always maintained, the final victory won’t be tomorrow, or next week, or next year, though some events will certainly happen suddenly.

And the Supreme Court? They can go out to dinner together again since Ginsberg died. She used to steal food from people at diners – they called her Booth Raider Ginsberg.