Category: Uncategorized

“Your company cannot be worth that much.” – The Office

I hear Joe Biden has an I.Q. of 150 – he took the test three times and added up all the scores.

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

I’ve kept Clock O’Doom at the same location. For now. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – The Michael Scott Presidency – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Guns – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 700 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

https://wilderwealthywise.com/civil-war-weather-report-previous-posts/

The Michael Scott Presidency

The Michael Scott in the title refers to the fictional Regional Manager of Dunder-Mifflin on the NBC® sitcom, The Office. Michael Scott was a bumbling character, a bit self-important and self-absorbed, and an HR nightmare. Even with all of that Scott was generally successful, often in spite of himself.

I would hate for anyone to think I was comparing *resident Joe Biden to Michael Scott. I don’t think that Biden could last for a month as a regional manager of an office supply company. But what I do refer to is one particular episode, where Michael had quit, started his own paper company, and was negotiating its sale to his old employer. Why?

It was a sitcom.

Michael Scott’s old boss had a simple response when Scott wants his old job back, which his boss, rightly, notes is a multimillion-dollar buyout. “Your company cannot be worth that much.”

Scott responds: “Our company is worth nothing. Business isn’t about money to me, David. If tomorrow my company goes under, I will just start another paper company. And then another. And another. And another.”

What sounds good on paper? Communism. Unless you’re reading a history book.

And that’s where Brandon Biden is. He has failed so spectacularly in every category imaginable:

• Economic Policy making Jimmy Carter look like a genius,
• Remembering the names of the days of the week,
• Foreign Relations, except the Afghans would sure like to do business again,
• Raising children that even a drug lord would disown,
• Trade, where his idea of sanctions on enemies are actually things that hurt Americans more, and
• Energy, where he started with an energy-independent nation and made it more dependent than a welfare mother of six.

Biden’s presidency isn’t worthless, it has a negative value. He has nothing. At all. So he has nothing to lose, which is the scary part.

When Bill Clinton was in the same place, however, he did something incredibly astute: he decided to work with the Republicans, and crafted a legislative package that led to drastic reduction of deficit spending while creating a booming economy. Just like sleeping with Hillary, it wasn’t what Bill wanted to do, but it was what he had to do to keep power.

That’s not where Biden has gone. At every chance, he has upped the stakes on partisanship. This is straight out of Obama’s playbook – whenever there is a chance to unite? Divide. I’d say that Joe learned that lesson there, but I’m pretty sure that his cognitive abilities are somewhere below the low battery limit.

No, whoever is calling the shots is upping the ante. And, losing this badly and refusing to admit that there are no fewer than 100 million citizens that think he is insane, he’s attempting to swing for the fences. That means that, as long as Joe is in office, there’s no limit to the number of things he’ll try. There’s also no limit to the level of Leftist insanity that will be in those plans.

Sadly, this isn’t a sitcom episode. I mean, except for the whole Hunter thing.

Hunter spilled beer on his laptop so he took it to the repair shop since he thought it had Corona virus.

Violence And Censorship Update

May started off with a victory, of sorts. The shrieking harpy that had been selected to head the Department of Justice’s Ministry of Truth quit. At least temporarily. I’m not sure that I completely believe that they’ve given up the plan, but I think that they’ve given up on the cartoon-tier villain that they had chosen to run it.

In other news, the dream of the dystopians isn’t dead: vax trackers and now, a “carbon-footprint” tracker has been created. All of them use that oh-so-wholesome invention, the cell phone. We see how that will be implemented – in Australia, for instance, “citizens” had to take pictures and prove location using cell phones at random intervals to prove they were following the COVID laws.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence ticked up. Perhaps turning back up in June or July – Antifa® seems primed?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it went up more in May. With abortion and gun control, even more in June?

Economic:

Instability increases . . . .

Illegal Aliens:

It set a new record. Again. An all-time record. The border is, for all intents and purposes, wide open.

Guns

Gun control is probably the third rail for ten or twenty million Americans. And, well, those are Americans with guns. It would probably be easier to disarm the “pillow lovers club” but it has always been guns.

Why?

It is certainly for one reason, and one reason only. It’s not about hunting. It’s about a challenge to tyranny. As attributed to Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”

So, when the Left asks, “How many more kids have to die?” it’s not a political position or tear jerker line. It’s a threat – they will do anything, anything at all to take your guns from you.

Regardless, the gun debate is over. Period. If armed police will stand outside of a school while children inside are slaughtered, they will stand outside of anyone’s home while the same happens there. The reason that we haven’t had another hijacking after 9-11 isn’t because of sky marshals. It isn’t because of enhanced security or the FBI suddenly becoming competent.

Nope. It’s because the American people on those airplanes finally recognized something that nearly every reader here has always known: the defense of your family and your own life is your responsibility, always has been, and always will be. The defense of our nations and schools belongs to us, not some outside entity.

Anything else is fiction.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://youtu.be/MTzbYB0SE

https://youtu.be/FEnPmPGF4aY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqSqsT0SJmU

https://twitter.com/i/status/1527067336334639104

https://twitter.com/DMVFollowers/status/1523469299230253056

https://twitter.com/i/status/1523437362197323777

https://twitter.com/i/status/1523532070412120064

https://twitter.com/i/status/1523165355828461571

https://twitter.com/WCBD/status/1531652018900713472

https://youtu.be/WQ5gbRqss-M

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10861417/Woman-pleads-fellow-NYC-subway-users-intervene-thug-assaults-none-do.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10812643/Moment-pair-gunmen-assault-rifles-kill-man-gas-station-brazen-broad-daylight-attack.html

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/RockholdJones/status/1527711404786073602

https://twitter.com/i/status/1523792561936408576

https://twitter.com/ArtValley818_/status/1524983401706496000

https://twitter.com/NFL_Memes/status/1524427784776466432

https://twitter.com/i/status/1522560391590653952

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqRXYevJbiw&t=17s

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10820965/Hero-pastor-hit-Orange-County-gunman-chair-churchgoers-hogtied-seized-weapons.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10820413/JK-Rowling-praises-feminist-never-dropped-flag-stood-masked-trans-activists.html

https://nypost.com/2022/05/19/topless-mom-in-her-undies-rescues-pet-goose-from-bald-eagle/

One Gal

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10865783/West-Virginia-woman-praised-using-pistol-shoot-dead-gunman-AR-15.html

Body Count

https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/106/428/960/original/0b6680c0c946e893.jpeg

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/massive-fire-strikes-huge-poultry-farm-supplies-eggs-major-supermarkets

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/fbi-warns-imminent-cyber-attacks-food-plants-after-mysterious-rash-fires

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/05/16/when_misinformation_drives_bad_policy_147601.html

https://summit.news/2022/05/09/fda-chief-claims-misinformation-is-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-united-states/

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/mortality-among-white-collar-workers-jumped-24-percent-between-2020-and-2021-life-insurance

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2022/05/us-road-deaths-increased-by-more-than-10-in-2021/

https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/this-never-happens?s=r

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10846893/The-birth-rate-increased-time-seven-years-2021-teen-pregnancy-fell.html

https://www.kff.org/womens-health-policy/state-indicator/number-of-abortions/?

https://abort73.com/abortion_facts/us_abortion_statistics/

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/ss/ss7009a1.htm

https://www.statista.com/topics/3218/abortion-in-the-us/#topicHeader__wrapper

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/06/1096676197/7-persistent-claims-about-abortion-fact-checked

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/swedens-death-rate-among-lowest-europe-despite-avoiding-strict/

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/uk-government-data-shows-nobody-should?s=r

https://www.statista.com/chart/26397/cumulative-covid-19-deaths-in-the-us/

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_dailydeaths

https://twitter.com/gyan_chakshu/status/1522359806606159873/photo/1

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/breakthrough-deaths-comprise-increasing-proportion-died-covid-19/story?id=84627182

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/05/11/health/unvaccinated-covid-deaths-growing/index.html

https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/research-suggests-covid-jabs-are-actually-killing-more-people-than-they-save/

https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/dear-friends-sorry-to-announce-a?s=w

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/328529

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/3484416-us-drug-overdose-deaths-hit-another-record-high/

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220521-kill-japan-s-elderly-cannes-film-probes-chilling-idea

Vote Count

https://twitter.com/MeetMalcom/status/1523642964152504328

https://twitter.com/realLizUSA/status/1522408945880555521

https://twitter.com/Stevenjsargent1/status/1527791870981640192

https://twitter.com/AKA_RealDirty/status/1525246274626371586

AZ: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/new-long-withheld-records-reveal-20000-mail-ballots-received-legal-deadline-maricopa-county/

GA: https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/something-stinks-in-georgia?s=r

GA: https://uncoverdc.com/2022/05/24/breaking-new-ballot-data-in-fulton-co-reaffirms-2020-election-issues/

GA: https://uncoverdc.com/2022/05/03/true-the-vote-unusual-surge-of-absentee-ballots-in-gwinnett-county-ga/

GA: https://www.ajc.com/politics/what-2000-mules-leaves-out-from-ballot-harvesting-claims/FFMNUU56RVBRNOLZKWHUREQPEU/

MI: https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/tales-from-the-swamp-how-a-republican-senators-son-partnered-with-a-liberal-dark-money-group-to-sink-voter-id-expansion/

MN: https://www.kpvi.com/news/national_news/lawsuit-minnesota-voter-roll-has-586-duplicates/article_7a454991-675c-5a6e-be92-7857bc083fb9.html

PA: https://www.mcall.com/news/elections/mc-nws-state-martin-request-20220506-rfiavrwadvc3jnqmyugnm6fq5e-story.html

VA: https://wcyb.com/news/local/grand-jury-report-accuses-adkins-of-forging-voters-signatures

USA: https://rumble.com/v16w7mz-true-the-vote-destroys-journalist-terrorists-for-fake-news-over-geospacial-.html

USA: https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/05/2000-mules-documentary-provides-compelling-evidence-that-2020-election-was-stolen/

USA: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/05/03/exclusive-true-the-votes-catherine-engelbrecht-america-needs-to-wake-up-or-election-malfeasance-could-occur-again/

USA: https://otter.ai/u/qtUQSw4cQupaguY3OkmodyLtbzY

USA: https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/19/does-thou-shalt-not-steal-apply-to-elections/

USA: https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/09/no-more-ballots-in-the-wild-america-needs-to-ban-mail-in-voting/

USA: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/2000-mules-investigator-gregg-phillips-drops-bomb-investigators-discovered-multinational-player-federal-agencies-involved-operation-multinational-deal-involving-billions-dollars/

USA: https://verityvote.us/

Civil War

https://www.wired.com/2022/05/geeks-guide-stephen-marche/

https://www.ft.com/content/9c237473-603d-4196-8a32-0f135c900612

https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/syndicated/assault-voting-rights-midterms-may-mark-beginning-end-multiracial-democracy/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/05/roe-abortion-supreme-court-republican-divide/629768/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/us-democrat-republican-partisan-polarization/629925/

https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/05/18/ncreased-testosterone-levels-turns-voters-more-conservative/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/10/roe-civil-conflict-military-democracy-gender/

https://baptistnews.com/article/the-religion-of-the-lost-cause-is-back-and-it-may-be-winning/#.YoA99-jMJoM

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/actual-insurrection-chicago-mayor-urges-call-arms-over-supreme-court

https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2022/05/civil-war-lets-make-a-civil-pact-instead/

https://summit.news/2022/05/10/swedish-fashion-designer-embrace-multiculturalism-or-face-civil-war/

https://www.thegazette.com/guest-columnists/we-are-fighting-a-third-civil-war/

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/11/1071082955/imagine-another-american-civil-war-but-this-time-in-every-state

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/11/second-american-civil-war-robert-reich

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/5/31/the-civil-war-that-is-here-and-the-one-that-may-yet-come

https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/columnists/kress-the-gop-arms-up-in-preparation-for-civil-war-ii/article_26ae7e92-14d5-5d20-80ce-193865627d03.html

https://www.laprogressive.com/progressive-issues/second-revolutionary-war

https://time.com/6174297/america-divided-civil-war/

https://www.historynet.com/are-we-on-the-eve-of-another-civil-war/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/10/roe-civil-conflict-military-democracy-gender/

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/19/the-new-civil-war-00033782

https://www.newsweek.com/tucker-carlson-civil-war-gun-control-mass-shooting-school-robb-elementary-texas-1710356

https://unherd.com/2022/05/do-we-need-a-capitalist-civil-war/

https://breakingdefense.com/2022/05/ending-the-civil-war-over-the-future-of-the-us-marine-corps/

https://medium.com/politically-speaking/will-war-break-out-between-red-and-blue-states-93cac4d8c219

https://andrewmtanner.medium.com/2025-the-year-america-tears-itself-apart-e175f30f9f1f

The Real Replacement

https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-real-replacement.html

“I am not aware of that tradition, Mac. In fact, I think that you and your parents were just stealing from that home.” – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

I had Mennonite Flu last week, first a little horse, then a little buggy.

As I ended Friday’s post (LINK), I tossed out the idea – what if traditions were essentially just solutions to problems we forgot we even had?

They are.  But modern life has eroded those traditions in many ways.

If I asked the question, “What is American culture?” how many people would answer with questions that described companies and brands?  McDonalds™.  The NFL©.  Nike®.  I could keep going on, but these aspects of American culture are all new – McDonalds® is everywhere now, but it wasn’t until the 1960s that it started expanding everywhere . . . like your mom.

Along with something else . . . what ever could that be?

In fact, the idea that most people are employees of someone else is fairly new, too.  In 1880, almost 70% of Americans were in agriculture.  Sure some didn’t own the farms and worked on farms for a wage, but farming has generally been an occupation run by families, owning and working the land.

Farmers, especially back then, were not a group of people who were dependent, it was a group of people who lived based on their own work.  The “employment” model was used, certainly.  Sailing ships and railroads and industry required it.  But it was not the predominant model.

Neither was rent.  Neither was the subscription model – about the only subscription many folks would have would be the newspaper and maybe a magazine or two.  Neither was contact with the Federal government.  In 1880, more than likely the only contact a citizen had with the Federal government was when the mail showed up.  If you asked what the culture of America was then, the answers would have been fairly easy to guess:  Freedom.  Independence.  The Constitution.  Open skies, far horizons, amber waves of grain, and cooperation.

Cooperation?  Certainly.  The cities and towns that grew every ten miles or so were founded on people wanting to get together to create places of gathering.  Places for churches.  Places for schools.  And, places for commerce and the optimistic growth of a nation.

Funny, the 2020 Chinese plans look like the 1880 American plans . . . .

Was there corruption?  Yes, there were people and money, so certainly there was corruption.

But then, largely driven by technology (but also driven by changes from incorporating the large numbers of people emigrating from Europe) that culture changed.  Farmers no longer had to feed the horses that moved so much of American commodities – now those were moved by a rail network and internal combustion engines.  Also, those same engines allowed farmers to farm much more with lower input from individuals.  Sons left farms for jobs at factories, or to go to universities to learn skills to get jobs.

Renting and mortgage became the norm.  Companies (because of a Supreme Court decision) became forever, and became larger.  Entire new industries were born that required employees.

The culture of America changed, too.  Immediately after World War II, the culture moved to one of suburban living matched with jobs working for big corporations, sometimes in places far from family.  In general, an attractive package was set up.  Work 9 to 5, come home to a freshly made meal by the wife and have a round of catch in the front yard with the boy.  Church on Sunday.  Then repeat.

The Vatican won’t accept Visa® or Mastercard™.  It’s a Paypal© State.

For some reason, this was sold as soulless, and resisted by the “spirituality” of the Lefties in the 1960s.  Most of the rebellion was about weed, LSD, and sex, but at least part of it was about something where they actually had a point:  the core of the nation was moving from businesses supporting people, to people supporting business.

How so?

Monthly phone bills, power bills, subscriptions to TV Guide®, rent or mortgage, insurance, and car payments became the norm.  What was happening was that people were being incorporated as economic farms for banks and companies to harvest every month.  Go, work, and be harvested.  When you’re used up, you can rest until discarded as the world moved around you.

This was bad enough, because it took people out of the reason for the system, and made people into components of the system.  But even more changes were soon to show up which would add to this and create our world today.

First, the birth control pill.  The relationships between men and women had always been governed by one basic concept – one man can make many babies at a time, but one woman can only make one at a time.  As such, even though men might have been the keymasters, women had to be the gatekeepers to sex.  Women had to be choosey.

See, choosey.

Society had solved that problem through a pretty strict system of monogamy tied through both religious and social rules.  If a girl got pregnant, there was an expectation that the boy would marry her, even if a shotgun was necessary to induce him to do the honorable thing.

Once married, the couple were strongly encouraged everywhere to keep the marriage going.  There were real difficulties in breaking up a marriage – for instance, unless someone was at fault and the other party could prove it in court, a divorce could be contested and not granted.  And what would the woman do, anyway?  Who would want a woman with kids as a wife?  And how would that woman support the kids if the man chose to not give them resources?

Those are powerful inducements to working out a fight rather than calling it all off, if you’re the woman.  And women today file 80% of the divorces.  Why?  Fun and prizes!

And some say we should ignore the old values . . . .

Fault is no longer a requirement.  So, for any or no reason a woman can opt out.  Johnny, show her what she’s won!  Child support, alimony, and, welfare!

Heck, with welfare, there’s no real reason to get married anymore.  One of my high school teachers noted that she had a 16 year old student who wanted to get pregnant as soon as she could so she could, “get her own welfare check every month.”

This has led to significant consequences in the dating market in 2022.  Many women spend their 20s having relatively anonymous sex with large numbers of men.  Tinder® has been devastating for the dating market – see the graph below based on OK Cupid™ data – the “average” man rates the “average” woman as a 3 out of 5 stars.

Perfect!  Good job, guys!  You did it!

The way the “average” woman rates that “average” guy, however, means that only one guy out of six is rated as “above average”.

Houston, we have a problem.  And it’s a doozy.  Monogamy works when people sort each other out and your 4 marries a 4.  Et cetera.  What’s set up here, is that all the 5 star guys have it easy.  Will a 5 star guy sleep with an average 2.5 star girl?  Sure.  Once, probably.  When (if!) he gets married he’ll pick a 4 or higher, though.

Ohhh, my precious!

Thus, the average 2.5 star girl in her 20s has the experience of being acceptable to Chad 5 star.  So, she expects to marry Chad 5 star, when in reality Chad 5 star has no intention of even remembering the average girl.  So, until she’s 30, she holds out, and then reality catches up to her and she’s ready to settle for the 2.5 star guy, Settle Stan.

Wow – inspiring if you’re the 2.5 star guy.  And, she’ll be much more likely to divorce Settle Stan, too.  She’s really a widow to the fun times with Chad, and Stan will never, ever be good enough.  Hopefully Stan makes money?

Well, you can see that James dodged a bullet . . . 

But what about all of the Stans who never have a chance even at an awful relationship?  The modern world has created a series of drugs to lull them gently onto that goodnight.

It takes a thick umbrella to keep out the light . . . 

This is just one aspect of the sexual marketplace that has been devastating for the country.  I’ll leave the rest consequences of the sexual revolution as a class exercise.

There are, of course, other consequences of the modern world and the ignoring of tradition on life, but I think this is certainly the most profound.  Thankfully there won’t be any more consequences of a sexual revolution gone amok.

“Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say Ni at will to old ladies.  There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred.  Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress in this period in history.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

You can get Batman® shampoo, but not conditioner Gordon®.

I recall sitting in economics class in college.  The professor was from some Eastern European (I don’t remember which one) country.  I really enjoyed his class.  Instead of the traditional “Guns Versus Butter” economic trade off, he discussed “Pizza Versus Beer”.  It wasn’t Bikininomics, but it was still my kind of thinking.

Pizza and beer kept my attention, so one day he made the comment, “If there is perfect competition, there is how much profit?”  He paused.  I blurted out, showing my greatest economic strength even at a young age, “Bikini?”

He responded, “No, John Wilder, it is zero profit!”

I liked my answer better.  But his provoked me to think.  Perfect competition meant that companies could enter and exit easily.  There were no barriers to entry.

Guns and Butter?  Yes.  Cocoa Butter.

What, outside of a single piece bathing suit is a barrier to entry?  Well, it means that if a company wanted to start a business, it could do it without having to spend lots of money on building a factory, or through developing difficult intellectual property or expertise.  In fact, you’ll see today that the companies that have huge barriers to entry are often the most profitable.

It’s not surprising, then, that large companies are hugely in favor of building barriers to entry for themselves.  Disney® is attempting to extend copyright until Armageddon plus twenty years.  Pfizer™ wants to patent your DNA if you can properly spell their name (read the terms and conditions!).  Chase© wants to be the exclusive place where Fed™ trucks drop off all the Biden Bux.

But these companies are no longer American companies.  Once upon a time Boeing© built bombers for the Army Air Force to beat the Axis.  By the 1990s, they settled with the DOJ on a $32,000,000 penalty for giving missile secrets to China.  Boeing™ has ceased to be an American company.  Heck, they even outsourced production of commercial airline parts to China when demanded.  So they could sell jets in China, regardless of the technical expertise that China might gain.

I try to avoid Boeing® jokes.  They rarely land well.

Why?  Boeing™ is not American anymore.  They’re Globalist.  Like many Congresscritters, Boeing has no particular loyalty to America.  They just want a profit, preferably next quarter.

Globalists love barriers to entry.  For themselves.

They hate barriers to entry for . . . you.

Again, perfect competition means zero profit.  The idea is that if they can turn labor into a replaceable component, their business gets easier and cheaper.  If there is a never ending supply of cheap labor, wages don’t go to zero.  Heck, if they can automate what an employee does for less than five times the annual cost of the employee – it’s a done deal.

Globalists attempt to drive labor costs as close to zero as competition and automation can make it.

I hear that Elon Musk will be making robots in his Austin factory.  He’s calling them Tex Mechs.

Certainly, there are benefits, in that “stuff” costs less.  Or does it?  In the most recent run up on food prices, the word on the street is that while beef prices are up, while bread prices are up, producer income has not increased.  Farmers aren’t making more money.

Fertilizer prices are up.  Seed prices are up.  Pesticide prices are up.

Farmers have choices – produce at a loss, or produce cheaper crops that require less fertilizer and pesticide.  Or, heck, give the year a rest.  Since farmers can’t make up a loss in volume, I’d expect prices to go up again this year.

The other thing Globalists don’t like is paying people for stuff.  That’s for tourists.

I bought a cheap thesaurus once.  Not only is it terrible, it’s terrible.

Globalism isn’t correlated well with freedom.  Globalists aren’t really into that.  They like captive markets, and a captive labor.  Regulations are great with them:  it’s just another barrier for entry.  So, one of the first things the Globalists do is lobby for the creation of regulation.

How do you do that?  Well, owning a few Senators often helps . . . and owning a President is even better.

Freedom, like I said, isn’t something Globalists do very well.  Freedom means innovation, and innovation means that barriers could fall.  The only reason Silicon Valley is allowed to innovate in 2022 is because it’s owned and funded lock, stock, and barrel by Globalists.  Who do you think funds the startups?  I assure you, it’s not Santa.

No, nations that are concerned with their people are concerned with freedom.  Me?  I’m not sold all that much on democracy.  I like the idea of a constitutional republic better, but, then again that finally led to a place where “shall not be infringed” has been defined to mean “if government says it’s okay and doesn’t change it’s mind”.

I will note there’s pretty good trigger discipline.  Is that an AR-362436?

Oh, and Soros, Schwab, and Gates aren’t all that keen on democracy, either.  If voting mattered, do you think they’d let us do it?

Heck, we might vote for pizza and beer . . . or to be free.

“Do I look like the kind of clown that can start a movement?” – Joker

Mainly memes today to go with the Monday post.  I’ll respond to comments on both of them before my Wednesday post . . . all memes are “as found” on the ‘net – veracity not assured.

 

Shot:

 

Chaser:

“Can’t stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.” – Serenity

I wonder if Putin got his doctorate in Russian political leaders?  If so, does that make him a Stalin grad?

As technology has changed, so has the information that is available to us.  Starting with radio, the ability of that technology to influence public opinion increased.  Radio was a voice in the night that broadcast the opinion of one to many.  Then, after the invention of FM radio, radio became stereo-typical.

Film increased the ability to spread messages, and in a much deeper way.  There is something about moving images coupled with sound that draws human attention and consciousness.  Measurements of human brain activity while watching television showed that the brain “shut off” while watching television, entering an alpha wave state – a state normally associated with resting.

It isn’t that way when talking, or reading.  Beta waves, associated with active thought processing jump back into play when we read.  In a very weird way, television puts us into a trance, where we receive and don’t think about the message.  If ever there was a way to put propaganda into the heads of everyone watching, television is your answer.  It also caused the problem of losing the controller.  I always found mine in some remote area.

Also, congratulations to drugs for winning the war on drugs.

In many cases, the idea wasn’t only to put propaganda into heads, it was also to entertain.  Why would I watch a television show that I didn’t like?  No, shows competed for market share, too.  If the propaganda was too strong, the show would fail.  But many of the messages of globalist, Leftist thought were still put into skulls relentlessly, slipped in as special episodes, or by painting ideas that violated The Narrative in the most negative light possible.

Even the news, though, was part of the same message, which we now call The Narrative.  The Narrative is strong.  Honestly, I am still finding elements of The Narrative that I believed to be true.  It’s more or less like The Matrix, but Elon Musk doesn’t keep forgetting that Keanu Reeves is the good guy.

Now here’s a narrative I could get behind. (meme not an original)

One example was that The Narrative that drove the United States both getting into and getting out of the Vietnam War.  It was the first war that was televised on a daily basis.  And, regardless of our recent fiascos, presidents dream of being a “War President” which gives them nearly unrivaled political power.

A case in point was the attack on the Twin Towers.  Whoever did it, the beneficiaries were George W., Lockheed-Martin®, and everyone who didn’t like the United States.  It’s unlikely that George W. would have been re-elected because of messy economy.  W. drove the “Left” every bit as insane as Trump did, and would have (no doubt) driven them to the same level of coordination to bring him down in 2004 as they spent on Trump in 2020.  Except?  9/11.

I think Sleepy Joe would love nothing more than the power and prestige that comes with a War footing in the country.  Or at least someone would.  Hence, Ukraine.

They asked Joe what he thought of this meme, but he’d forgotten Biden.

I don’t know exactly what the game is.  It appears that the Ukrainians are a lot less concerned about the Russians than we are, and that Joe is far more concerned about Russians crossing the Ukrainian border than the millions that he’s inviting to cross our border.

Why not?  If get gets the Russian Bear just grumpy enough, I think the calculus is, he can turn Putin into a figure to unite the country.  If Corona-chan couldn’t do it, well, trot out the (spins wheel) Russians.  And we’ll have a united country, and the whole economic mess will get solved when spending even more billions with weapons manufacturers!

First, we’re no longer a serious nation when it comes to anything military.  Yes, I know that we have a long, proud tradition.  But have you seen the military in 2022?

I had a friend that joined the Army and killed a lot of people.  He’s a horrible doctor.

Second, although the people of the United States were in favor of going to get Osama Bin Laden, the wars overseas soon became background noise.  Without a significant loss of Americans, say, a carrier battle group, there is little chance of getting the rank and file American citizens would support a war in Ukraine.  Outside of, say, loss of a carrier battle group.

And, finally:  What, exactly, is this about?  Ukraine and Russia are similar in the national corruption index scores – it’s not like Ukraine is remotely on par with Denmark or even Albania.  Yes, Albania is less corrupt than Ukraine.

A Russian wedding used to be called a Soviet Union.

Even the Ukrainian president, Zelinsky, told Biden to chill out on fanning the flames of war.  Russia has a long sense of paranoia, and isn’t interested in having NATO camp out right next door.  Honestly, I have no idea why we have troops in Europe in 2022, let alone trying to pull Ukraine into NATO just to irritate the Russians.

Oh, yeah, because international tension takes away from the intractable problems Joe has at home.

The problem that Joe faces is a simple one:  the old model of a single source delivering a single Narrative is gone.  Places exist all over the Internet the question The Narrative.  That’s crucial.  Heck, they’re even questioning The Narrative in Canada.

Politely, but they are.

From Trudeau:  “They only hate me because I’m black.”

And the Signal is getting out.  I have only listened to a few minutes of Joe Rogan.  It was okay, but not enough to keep me coming back.  But he’s irritated the gatekeepers of The Narrative.

Or at least Neil Young.  Neil Young, who hasn’t had a headline since Nixon was in office, decided that he was so in favor of free speech that he’d pull his music from Spotify®, who sponsors Joe Rogan’s podcast.

It’s unlikely that Spotify™ will cave to Mr. Young, even though he’s now been joined by Joni Mitchell, Liza Minnelli, and maybe Wolfgang Mozart.  Of course, The Mrs. and I made fun of Mr. Young on our podcast.  When I checked on it the next day, I found that our podcast was gone.

There are fates worse than death.  (not my original meme)

The Mrs. had used a music bed for a parody commercial.  The music bed was one of Mr. Young’s songs.  The next day, we were pulled down for copyright infringement (no strike).  The Mrs. is getting ready to re-upload an edited version.  I really don’t think Mr. Young had anything to do with it personally.  So, our podcast hits dozens of visitors sometimes.  Joe Rogan hits millions.

They try to censor the small when we deviate, but the large they must take down, in public.  If the Canadian trucker protest were not so large, there would be a complete lack of news coverage.  As it is, the coverage will be small as they can make it, except to cover whatever trivial outrage can be manufactured.

I hear some of the protesters are semi-retired.

The important thing is, large or small, there is an alternative to The Narrative.  I try to be as honest as I can be in every single post.  In many cases what I say is slightly different from The Narrative.  Sometimes it’s a lot different.

And there are thousands of other voices out there, too, willing to defy The Narrative, in ways both big and small.  This is new.  Television and radio gave us the grand wave of propaganda that led to The Narrative being so powerful.  They’ll stop at almost nothing to stop us from seeing that the emperor has no clothes.

But it’s too late.  The signal is out.  It’s even covered in maple syrup sometimes.

Question:  how many trees did mankind have to suck before they found maple syrup?

Tomorrow, there will be a rare Tuesday version of Wilder Wealthy and Wise, just memes and examples of The Narrative being exposed.

“The Mandela Effect has been an Internet meme for almost a decade. It’s always been called that.” – The X-Files

According to National Geographic™, 80% of Americans can’t find Ukraine on a map.  They’re really ahead of the news!

Got in fairly late tonight, so it’s memes for dinner for everyone.  Back to original content on Monday – these memes are “as caught” in the wild.  I’ll note that on the podcast side, apparently, Neil Young didn’t like us making fun of him, so we had our first podcast pulled down.  I hope Neil Young will remember, this blogger don’t need him around, anyhow.  Since they pulled him from Spotify®, I hope he does okay.  I hear that he’s going to concentrate on MySpace™.

 

“Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines.” – Airplane

Jill caught Joe chewing on electrical wires, so she had to ground him.

Joe Biden is having his worst week in office.  In fact, so far his time in office has been an utter string of failure that makes the whole farce looks like it’s on purpose.  Let’s just look at the catalog of mess (not in order) that he’s created/made worse since last January.

I thought that Biden was in denial, but from the picture, looks like he was in the Suez.

• In March, that cargo ship blocked the Suez Canal. Not Biden’s fault (probably) but I think Kamala might have been driving.
• Increased inflation so it is now at multi-generation highs. Biden has successfully turned the economy into the number one fear of Americans.  I guess that’s one way to solve the COVID crisis.
• International embarrassment about fleeing Afghanistan in the middle of the night. Certainly, we should have left, but we left like a fat man sneaking away from the dessert bar with a full plate.
• Announced a mandate for workers at companies with over 100 employees to force-vax as a last-ditch effort to get support, only to have the Supreme Court deny it. This actually was to his benefit, except that it makes him look weak politically.  Or like an old man with dementia.
• Actually got in place a requirement for health care workers paid by Uncle Sugar to be force-vaxxed. While it might seem like a political win, the fallout from the health care systems will be very dark indeed – expect emergency levels of personnel shortages coming soon.

How does a pirate set up his Bluetooth speaker?  Parrot with his phone.

As I’ve mentioned before, Biden has made himself as popular as morning-after-tequila breath.  People actually would rather have that volcano that just exploded near Tonga as president, since it would certainly do less damage to the country.  A tornado?  That would be a huge improvement on Biden – at least the tornado stops destroying after a while.

In previous years, I would have asked the question, how could it get worse?  But since I asked that question about 2020 “How could 2021 be worse?” I’ve learned to stop tempting fate since I don’t want a plague of Leftist vampires with electric cars to appear suddenly as the Sun goes nova.  So, I don’t want to push my luck.

With good measure.  Biden’s problem is that . . . he has nothing but problems.  I had a boss once who said, “Nothing succeeds like success.”  What he meant by that was that when things were going well, if you could keep them going you could end up in a virtuous circle.  Things just got better and better, and the momentum led from one victory to the next.

Little known fact:  you don’t need a parachute to skydive.  You need a parachute to skydive twice.

Success leads to success.  Does failure lead to failure?  Absolutely.  Joe Biden’s life is a patchwork of failure that somehow has led to him to the most epic failure of all politicians since Louis XVI said, “Nah, you can ignore them.  The peasants never do anything.”

But failing politicians are like failing businesses.  They’ll do almost anything to try to turn things around.  Businesses will borrow increasing amounts of money while promising increasingly ludicrous deals.  Politicians will . . . do exactly the same thing.  Except with a politician, they’ll toss in war as a bonus.

That’s just what Joe is doing.  Why would we want to increase the size of NATO by one Ukraine?  I have no idea.  But right now, I have no idea why NATO exists.  The Warsaw Pact and Stalin are both long gone, so who, exactly, are we worried about attacking Europe?

And why would we care about Ukraine enough to do, well, anything?  When Putin took the Crimean peninsula over, I was surprised – surprised he didn’t control it already.  But, again, why would we care?  I personally wouldn’t care if Guatemala took over Nicaragua, but that would be far more relevant to the United States than Ukraine is.  I see no role for the United States in any of these issues, but I’m not a politician looking to score popularity points like Joe.

I’m glad I wasn’t born in Ukraine.  I don’t speak a word of Ukrainian.

Additionally, though, Biden is playing the war card inside the United States, defining over 80,000,000 Americans as “terrorists” that the FBI just hasn’t organized terror plots for.  I do hear that the 2022 New Year’s Resolution of the FBI is to make their plot planning just a little less obvious.  The big advantage here is the government can time their schemes so they get all the Federal holidays off.

In one sense, Trump should be happy he isn’t in office:  the economy is was cooked for 2021 no matter what happened.  The aftermath of the COVID-19 shutdowns combined with the currency faucets spraying cash everywhere was bound to create an additional economic catastrophe.  That was baked into the cake already.

But Biden took that situation and made it worse.  The biggest mistakes were (and are) the Federal stimulus bills that have directly led to the inflation we’re seeing today.  You can only pour so much money into an economy until it shows up everywhere.

And it’s about to get spicy for Biden, the Federal Reserve® has signaled that they’re more than fine with abandoning Biden, too.  The only real cure for an inflating currency is to dry it up through higher interest rates.

If you had a dollar for every time you thought about me . . . you’d think about me more often.

The higher interest rates will (eventually, and if the rates are high enough) reduce inflation.  But the cost includes lowered prices on things people need to borrow money to buy, like houses.  So, while interest rates make borrowing more expensive, housing prices will drop, while rents stay high, and inflation remains.

Joe’s approval rate is 33% now.  What will it be when that perfect economic storm hits?

I bet that week will be even worse.

“This man has no salt in his body at all.” – Star Trek, TOS

I had dinner with Bobby Fischer once.  It took him two hours to pass the salt.

In the wake of the Supreme Court (which we all know is just Regular Court with tomatoes and sour cream), I thought I’d post some Leftist tears with plenty of salt that we could all mine, along with a selection of “as-found” memes.

Were the rulings all we wanted?  No.  Rather than collapse the whole economy, SCROTUS decided to keep the mandate for health care workers.  I can expect that this will result in breathless headlines in about a month when the health care system starts to crater (it’s never really overstaffed at the nurse/doctor level) and the blame will go on (spins Biden’s Wheel of Blame-Shifting) to dart-shooting ninjas.  Aesop, who is in health care, (LINK) has a take on this.  His post is labeled as, BURNING HATRED LIKE A THOUSAND SUNS.  That might actually understate his level of anger.

But, for tonight, let’s enjoy a selection of memes, all are “as-found” on ‘net with zero originals.  Some of them are so full of salt that if you just add water, they make their own sauce.