Creating havoc since 2006. Fair use is claimed for images on this site, but they will be removed (if owned) on request out of politeness. movingnorth@gmail.com
Phase 2 of my plan to dominate all media has commenced.
The Mrs. (yes, she’s real and not some sort of alternate personality) and I got together with Mark (Practical Escatology – LINK) and created a podcast – it should be up every Tuesday, barring holidays and life getting in the way.
Here it is:
You can bookmark the channel – feel free to like/comment/and subscribe.
Thanks!
“Karma is a word, like love. A way of saying ‘what I am here to do.’ I do not resent my karma – I’m grateful for it.” – The Matrix: Revolutions
If Columbus had stopped to ask for directions, they might celebrate Thanksgiving in India, too.
2020 has been a very difficult year. It’s not over, in fact just like a horror movie, you think it’s over, and then you look at your watch and realize there’s still 20 minutes left. 2020 might still have surprises left for us, and there are plenty of reasons to think that 2021 might be worse than 2020.
But the beauty of life is that life isn’t about avoiding difficult things. Comfort is not really our friend.
Why?
The warm comfort of a bed is nice. No sane person would disagree. But the comfort of the warm bed is a trap. Very few things in life are accomplished from the comfort of a warm bed. Not to say zero things, but this is a family friendly blog.
What does create accomplishment is risk, change, and discomfort. 2020 has so far been the poster child for each of these things. But now it’s time to take a pause and reflect.
And, yes, be grateful.
Lighthouse? Have you ever tried to lift one?
Gratitude is the basis for a fulfilled life. Practicing gratitude provides lower stress, better sleep, and generally better health. It makes people around you happier, too, because who likes living around a tool? Gratitude might seem like something that you’d do for other people, but it turns out the biggest beneficiary is . . . you.
So, in that spirit, following are some things I’m thankful for. The order is sort of random. In the comments, let me know what I missed.
I’m thankful for the country of my birth. I was born in the United States when a vast majority of the world was under horrible oppression. I remember hearing the stories on the news and asking Grandma McWilder why I was so lucky to be born in the United States when I was five or so.
I don’t recall being satisfied with her answer. Regardless, I am still very thankful for the chicken and noodles that she made me – noodles made from scratch in the way only a Southern-born Grandma can. You might like your grandma, but I assure you mine was the best one ever.
Oh, wait, that’s Queen Elizabeth II going to go see Princess Diana . . .
That easily brings me to my next gratitude. I’m thankful for my family, past and present. As long-time readers know, I’m adopted from within my family. But what I haven’t mentioned before is that I was adopted by my family at the very last second possible. I had just been placed with a new family, but my parents reeled me back in through a court battle to overturn the Electoral College pending adoption.
I’m thankful for that, too.
I even wrestled the kid who was adopted in my place when I was in high school (this is true) and beat him. It was on points – he wasn’t bad, but I knew was going to win from the second we shook hands. I didn’t find out that he was the replacement kid for me until later that year, after we had wrestled.
I always carried a piece of paper when wrestling, if my opponent turned out to be The Rock.
Obviously, his parents got the inferior model. But don’t feel bad for him – his parents were millionaires several times over. And, honestly, unless my parents were related to me by blood they would have put me (rightfully!) in a burlap bag weighted with several heavy lead weights and dropped me in a lake.
I was that bad. Really, I was an awful child until about age 9.
My family has rough spots on it like every family. Real families hardly ever resemble a 1950’s sitcom family. But I have had The Boy come home after hearing some drama his friends were tied up in and say to me, “Pop, you have no idea how lucky I am.”
Yeah, The Boy, I really do understand. I’m just as lucky as you.
I’m thankful for every gift I was given at birth by God. Or, you might think genetics, but who brought those people together on that cold winter night in February, or that hot summer day in August, hmmm? Oh, wait, we’re back to the “warm bed” argument.
One thing I really have learned in life is that the gifts you were born with aren’t gifts you can be proud of. Should you be proud of your hair color? Your height? Of course not. Those are things that you are born with. Similarly, I’m not ashamed that my shiny head is used as a beacon by the ISS when they overfly my house. I can’t control whether or not I have hair, so why be upset about it?
Okay, not at all true. I can type well.
But you can feel some pride (remember, it’s rightfully a sin) at what you do with those gifts. Be (a little) proud of that. But if you were born smart, strong, and incredibly handsome like me? Don’t be proud of that.
Be proud of what you can do with that. Remember, potential without action is . . . failure.
I’m thankful for every experience I had in 2020 that made me stronger. By definition, the parts to be thankful for are the tough parts, since eating Ding Dongs®, PEZ™, and Coors Light© on the couch isn’t a great path to achievement or enlightenment.
Even though it really, really sucks, the tough parts of life are what make us better – Nietzsche had that one figured out when he said that what doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger. Exercising every day is hard. Even the act of exercising is hard – people get big muscles by constantly tearing (at a small level) the muscle fiber so it grows back stronger and better.
My feet and hands have callouses. How do you get them? Hard work.
Hard work leaves its mark on your body. If it doesn’t break you? It makes you stronger. Ding Dongs™ never make you stronger.
What steps should you take before an explosion? Large, quick ones.
COVID-19 gave me (and certainly some of you) plenty of times to get stronger.
I’m thankful for the work I have had during my career. During my career, I’ve had the ability to help individuals grow and serve entire communities. That’s kind of cool. Who knows what will happen next? I don’t. One of the biggest gifts a person can be given is the opportunity to help others on a big scale. I’ve done that.
What’s next? Who knows?
I don’t. That’s because:
I’m thankful for the nearly limitless number of opportunities that exist in this world, even after COVID-19 if we are smart enough and quick enough and virtuous enough to grab them. Ideas aren’t the currency of life – executing an idea is. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people have the same great idea at the same time. After that? You have to turn that idea into reality.
And most people don’t or can’t. So, is opportunity out there? Certainly, even if you’re 18 or 80, though your time horizons and the types of opportunities you can pursue differ.
Seriously, thank you.
I’m thankful for you. Seriously. I’m glad you keep coming back. 2021 will, in my estimation, give us more surprises than 2020 did. I hope it gives you every experience that could help you be stronger, better, and more fit for the next world.
“Call it fate, call it luck, call it karma. I believe everything happens for a reason. I believe we were destined to get thrown out of this dump.” – Ghostbusters
If your wife insists you treat her like a queen, remember that allows you to behead her if the Pope doesn’t authorize an annulment.
Just a little bit before my time, a popular way to buy music was on a 45rpm record. It was a little, circular YouTube® that you could put on a record player, for all you Zoomers out there. These were small records that just contained a single song. Generally, the best song was the “A” side. On the back? The record company generally put a song that they felt was inferior. This was the “B” side.
The record company was generally right, but sometimes spectacularly wrong. Queen’s “We Will Rock You” was the B-side to “We Are The Champions.” But most of the time, the B-side really was an inferior song. As time was precious and you can never tell when another one is going to bite the dust, why would you take time to listen to a song that wasn’t the best?
You wouldn’t. Unless . . .
In the song, “Burning for You” by Blue Öyster Cult, one particular lyric is:
Time everlasting,
Time to play B-sides
Even though I owned a total of two 45’s in my life, I understood this when I first listened to the lyric on a dodgy cassette player that ate batteries like they were candy outside while stacking firewood. Ben Franklin said it very well when he said:
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”
Time is our most precious commodity. But what if you had time to play the B-sides?
You’d have all the time in the world.
Our lives are built entirely built in how we spend our time. It’s like the Native American story of the two wolves inside of each of us – one good and one evil. Which one grows? The one we feed.
And we feed our life through the choices we make which choices we feed with our time.
And both of the wolves are named Toby.
One of my choices on how to spend my time has been writing this blog. It has been one of the most fulfilling things in my life in the three and a half years since I started it. So, by feeding it, I change my future. To some very small extent, I might even change the lives of the people who read it.
Doing this blog is an A-side. And it’s one I plan on continuing, if not expanding.
But we all need time for B-sides. Why? Because exploring the undiscovered can only take place when we move off of the path that everyone else takes. I like to think that this blog is somewhat unique – it’s not to everyone’s taste, certainly.
Nah, you can see that Racine eats a lot of carbs.
“Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel,” is a quote from dead French writing dude Jean Racine. And he’s right. I think that life is mostly amusing.
One of the biggest sources of amusement to me is the idea that we can plan our lives. Of course, to a certain extent, we can. But everywhere we see that there are unexpected things that show up. That is, perhaps, one of the best things in life. The Chinese farmer story (which I’ve used before) tells the tale.
I first heard this from a friend in 2002 or so . . . there were several of us that would get together to talk about ideas and concepts, and one of the participants told this story:
There is an old Chinese story about a farmer. One night, there was a terrible storm. The wind blew so hard, it opened up his corral, and his horses got out.
“Bad luck!” said his friends.
“Good luck, bad luck. Who can say?” replied the farmer.
The next week, his horses, lonely for home, came back. But while they were loose, they got in with a group of wild horses. The wild horses came home with them. The farmer now had twice as many horses.
A centaur got a cough and worried he had COVID-19, but the doctor told him only his legs were horse.
“Good luck!” said his friends.
“Good luck, bad luck. Who can say?” replied the farmer.
A wild horse is good to no one, so the farmer’s son began to work on breaking the horses. Most of them were no problem, but one particularly fierce horse bucked the farmer’s son off. The farmer’s son broke his leg.
“Bad luck!” said his friends.
“Good luck, bad luck. Who can say?” replied the farmer.
The next week, the Emperor, having decided to go off to war due to a very dangerous threat against the empire, marched with his troops through the farmer’s town. They called up in a draft all of the able-bodied young men to accompany them to war. The farmer’s son could not go – his leg was broken.
Good luck, bad luck? Who can say? Hopefully
Where do Vikings keep their children? In the norse-ry.
One thing I do suggest is that, at least occasionally, you take the time to play at least some of the B-sides of your life. You never know when life will throw a change at you, and your B-side becomes an A-side.
“Prentiss got caught stuffing the ballot boxes, so I won.  I am the sheriff!†– Soap
I was physically restrained and denied the right to vote once – and Pugsley would have made such a great 6th grade treasurer.
Western Civilization is a work of genius. Yes, there are flaws, and some of them may be fatal, but it has produced the greatest amount of achievement in human history. Western Civilization has done things that no culture has in history. It has gone from the farthest reaches of the Arctic, to the Antarctic, to the tallest mountain in the world and the lowest trench in the sea. And don’t forget the Sports Illustrated® Swimsuit Edition™.
While other nations starved their own citizens on purpose, we gladly fed the world.
Were we perfect? Certainly not. I, for one, want to apologize to the world for The Brady Bunch, which I believe was in violation of the Geneva Convention. But in most cases, we brought far more than we took. When Western Civilization retreats, freedom dies and chaos reigns.
There are Four Boxes that keep Western Civilization safe – really four systems. Remove them? Freedom dies and chaos reigns. I’ll note that Western Civilization is built on more than this – but these are four stabilizing features that help protect it.
The first box is the Soap Box.
Freedom of speech is stabilizing, within certain parameters. If an insane person is allowed to speak, that’s a safety valve. Bad ideas won’t gather much purchase: they are drowned out by good ones. Heck, even North Korea has freedom of speech. They just won’t guarantee your safety after you speak, however.
Communists allow free speech – no one says otherwise, right?
But as I’ve documented at length in the Civil War 2.0 Weather Reports (LINK) censorship is a primary tool of the Left. I’ve documented time after time how the Left is censoring ideas across the primary means of communication today – the Internet.
I know that many people have said (especially libertarians) that Twitter®, for instance, is owned by a private company so censorship is fine. It’s not merit-based like it used to be. Heck, at one point even Jesus only had 12 followers.
I can understand that, because once upon a time, I was a libertarian, too. Heck, I’ve been registered as an independent until the last primary election. Why did I change?
First, I’m older than 35. Second? So I could vote for myself. Take that, Mrs. Svenson (my kindergarten teacher).
Twitter® used to advertise itself as the “Free speech wing of the Free Speech Party.â€Â Now, a better line would be the “Allowed speech wing of the Leftist Revolution.â€Â It’s true. Place any idea on Twitterâ„¢ that’s out of the mainstream, even if backed up by data?
It will be suppressed. And sure, you say, there are alternatives. You could go on Gab©.
You may not know this, but Gab™ was cut off from its payment processors. If you wanted to give money to Gab® via Visa©? You can’t. You can pay for porn with a Visa®. But you can’t pay for Gab©.
See the problem?
Used with permission.Â
When Alex Jones was banned from Twitter®, in rapid succession he was banned across nearly all social media in the same day. He wasn’t a killer – killers can have Twitter™. He wasn’t a foreign government who calls the USA “Great Satan†– they have an official account.
Nope, he was just a Texan who said things that scared people.
The ideas of the Left don’t hold up to history. Their compassion is, mainly, a lie. Should Twitter® be a public utility? Maybe. I hate to suggest that step, but perhaps the time has come.
Regardless – removing the Soap Box is dangerous. Suppression of ideas will lead to suppression of people. And suppression gives a validity to ideas that they might not have otherwise.
The Soap Box is the first safety valve. If people cannot vent? If they cannot share their opinions? The system begins to fail. The system is based on the idea that Truth can be debated, but Truth cannot be suppressed. Heck, I’ve even seen politicians speaking the Truth – they were calling each other liars.
Our system now is dangerously pushing censorship. And Leftists cheer it, as Leftists always do.
The second box is the Jury Box.
As members of Western Civilization, we give up some rights to play the game. One of the most important rights we give up is personal vengeance. In areas where personal vengeance is still the normal mode of operation, one killing follows another which follows another. It’s like Chicago, but without the charm.
I guess I don’t understand court. After they found me not guilty of bank robbery, my lawyer told me I shouldn’t have asked, “Does that mean I can keep the money?â€
An article that opened my eyes to the importance of the justice system to Western Civilization is at this (LINK). It’s by Jared Diamond, who is often wrong on things, but this is perhaps his strongest work. It shows clearly what happens to a society that has no law. But Diamond was talking about New Guinea, not San Francisco.
In the United States, we make fun of lawyers, because many of them are worthy of being made fun of. They charge thousands to write out your last wishes. Did they never hear of free will? But the justice system is crucially important: first, it allows a push back against government. Second, it provides a way that the guilty can be punished, so you and I don’t have to do the dirty work ourselves and create feuds that last generations.
So, yes. The Jury Box is that important.
It has been subverted, however. Prosecutors always charge people with amazing levels of crimes in order to achieve a plea bargain and have the ability to throw nearly infinite resources at prosecuting a man because they don’t like him.
“Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.â€Â This is a quote by one of the most evil men to have ever had power in the world – Lavrentiy Beria, who was head of Stalin’s secret police. It could almost be the motto of the Department of Justice in 2020. The DOJ seems fixated on finding an unpopular person and then finding crimes. Hillary Clinton admittedly committed multiple felonies with her email server even though she never confessed to the fashion police. Green pantsuits?
No charges will ever be filed against Hillary, or almost any powerful person. Governor Cuomo abused his power to force Coronavirus patients into nursing homes where they infected and killed thousands. But heaven forbid that a businessman make a mistake in filing foreign taxes.
That’s one way to lose faith in the justice system.
George Soros hates Flat-Earthers. They’re not globalists.
Another? Buy your justice system. George Soros has been spending tens of millions of dollars getting District Attorneys that he likes elected. Nope, this isn’t a conspiracy theory – it is well documented by mainstream sources (LINK).
What happens when you own the District Attorneys in dozens of Leftist-controlled areas? They decide who gets charged, and with what. So, a Leftist college professor swings a bike lock which would be an assault with a deadly weapon for you and I?
Probation for three years. If that had been someone from the Right? Prison. Certainly.
But who do you think funded the D.A. that let the bike lock professor off with probation? Soros. Here’s the link to the San Francisco Chronicle (LINK). I don’t make this stuff up.
I’ll skip the activist judges that want to legislate and make new law from the bench – you can look them up. They’re out there and ubiquitous enough that they’re a stereotype.
A justice system that doesn’t have the faith of the people undermines all of Western Civilization.
The third box is the Ballot Box.
At least 60,000,000 American citizens think the 2020 presidential election was stolen (so far – the results aren’t done yet). Let that sink in.
And these 60,000,000 Americans aren’t foolish, stupid, or acting in bad faith. They’re actually quite rational. On the face of it, electoral fraud is nearly certain.
How can I make such a statement?
As I said, election fraud is certain, the only question is the extent. Was this election stolen? Means, Motive, Opportunity plus cover-up?  Why wouldn’t it happen? How many ballots could you fill out in four hours?
No, this doesn’t look unusual, or at least it wouldn’t look unusual in the Soviet Union.Â
Were I Joe Biden, and there was a chance I was going to become president under a cloud, I would work with Trump to clear my name. Fraud in Philadelphia? Let’s find it. Fraud in Milwaukee? “I’m sure it’s malarkey, but let’s investigate it.â€Â If he wants to fix the country, he should jump in and fix this.
But it’s not happening.
And people who are certain that $200,000 in Facebook® ads in 2016 from Russia changed the election are certain that the election is clean this time.
Shocking.
A failed voting system is a cancer on the Republic. The voting system is exactly the last system that can relieve pressure in politics.
That leaves only one box:
The Ammo Box.
The Founders wisely put free speech in the First Amendment. They put in an above-average justice system. They put in a voting system that minimized the spread of fraud – the Electoral College.
But they also put in place the Second Amendment, which had the purpose of being both a safety measure and a curb on government. The safety measure is that a populace who is armed feels safer – they will be measured in a response. The curb on government is the flip side of that coin: if you were going to do something that would put a substantial portion of your population to think that armed insurrection was a better idea than doing what the government said?
The government loses.
And there are at least 300,000,000 firearms owned by American citizens. My bet is closer to 500,000,000. Want to talk about a successful government policy?
In this nation, the bulk of the American population is well-armed. A portion of it, veterans, are very well trained, perhaps better trained than the current members of the military. I know several people that compete regularly shooting things so far away that I can’t see them even if I’m wearing my glasses.
Understand that ending up at this stage is something that almost no one wants. We want freedom, peace, sound money, strong justice systems, and voting systems with unquestionable integrity.
But there’s always another alternative:  the last of the Four Boxes.
Let’s hope we don’t have to go there.
“Let’s see, warrants outstanding . . . New Mexico: Mail Fraud. Colorado: Wire Fraud. And coming soon to Ohio, Computer Fraud.” – Tommy Boy
If 2020 was a horse? It would be a night-mare.
We remain in the gray zone between step 9. and step 10. I will maintain the clock at 2 minutes to midnight. Violence continues to be commonly justified by local and state authorities, but there are now premeditated, fatal attacks by the Left. As noted in a previous update, the only thing keeping the clock ticking to full midnight is the number of deaths. I put the total at (this is my best approximation since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) 500 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.
We’re close. Avoid crowds.
In this issue: Front Matter – Voter Fraud – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Choices – Links
Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern. Still free.
Voter Fraud
I hate to say I told you it would get weirder than you would imagine, and I was right. Here we are. The design, intentional or not, of elections in the United States was to relieve tension. Voting makes us feel better. 1860, 1968, 2016, and 2020 seem to be exceptions.
Lincoln walked into a bar. He wanted a table, not a booth.
The Electoral College generally limits fraud and adds legitimacy to the election. Add a million votes in Chicago? It won’t change anything but the results in Illinois. The Electoral College, among other things, is a firewall that allows us to feel better. You’d generally have to commit fraud in more than one state to win an election.
As I write this, Joe Biden has been “proclaimed” by the Mainstream Media© to have won the election. Thankfully, legitimacy doesn’t come from the Mainstream Media™. Sadly, neither does news anymore, so I guess they have to pretend to have some sort of job.
It doesn’t look like (so far) the final choice has been left to the voters in the various states, either. We all know that Chicago politics has been rotten since Al Capone was diagnosed with OCD after getting into Organized Crime. The same can be said for certain cities that have long been under control of the Democrats. Let the people vote all that want, and as hard as they want.
In cities like Philadelphia, we know that they really say, “We’ll count ‘em like we want to count ‘em.” Stalin, of course, would nod approvingly. It’s not the voting that matters, it’s the counting.
My dad left me a Yahtzee® game once owned by Al Capone. Sadly, some parts are missing – I’m stuck with only a gangster’s pair of dice.
Yes. It looks like there is much more than circumstantial evidence that vote fraud took place. The Mainstream® Media™ used to say, “There is no direct evidence of voter fraud.” Well, if you didn’t look up during the day, there’s no direct evidence of the Sun, either. The system in those Democratic stronghold areas seems to be designed to prevent review. And why not? Is it really a crime if there’s no evidence? It’s like Schrodinger’s election.
But, importantly, now the Mainstream™ Media© is saying, “There is no direct evidence of widespread voter fraud.”
Well, to swing an election, you don’t need widespread fraud. You need fraud in the right place at the right time. Fraud in California? Who cares? Fraud in Philadelphia? In Milwaukee? In Atlanta? In Detroit? That’s not widespread – it’s just four places. And it’s enough.
Spoiler: he’s dead.
I mean, it’s enough if you stop counting in the middle of night, exclude poll watchers, and then board up the windows so no one can see what you’re doing. Yes, all of those things happened.
I joked with The Mrs. that I was going to tell you to Google® information on voter fraud, but then we both laughed. If there is any information related to actual, verifiable voter fraud, Google© will ban it (see below in the Violence And Censorship Update), hide it, and put a disclaimer on it.
Mail-in ballots? Google® and Twitter™ Trust and Safety Commissars say there’s no chance of fraud, even though fraud on a massive scale with mail-in ballots becomes trivial. As in the BBC® wrote an article for use in Africa so people in Africa could recognize voter fraud (LINK).
We check all of the boxes, folks.
Do transvestite voters commit male fraud?
Let me know if you’d like me to do a post on voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. I’m not sure I have anything special to add, but since you won’t find it on Google©, if you want me to do a post summarizing some of it, let me know. There’s a lot out there. Yes, it’s an extraordinary claim. From what I’ve seen so far?
There’s extraordinary evidence.
Voter fraud, on a scale of hundreds of thousands of ballots has, in my opinion, occurred. That is destabilizing enough. The irony is that if the Left had waited to 2024, they could have had it all with a young, charismatic candidate winning it all and pulling all of the levers (new Left-leaning states, expanding the Supreme Court, etc.) to make the future Leftist forever.
But by not waiting? Either intentionally or not, the Left created a mess. With a clear election win in 2024, they get it all.
With a win (maybe, see the last segment before the Links, Choices) largely seen as fraudulent? The Left brings us that much closer to Civil War.
Violence And Censorship Update
My last sentence from last month’s Violence And Censorship Update was:
“They have to have a line somewhere.”
I was making fun of Gofundme®, which would support nearly anything but Kyle Rittenhouse. But this month? Gofundme© killed a fundraiser for a guy to pull together data to find fraud in the election.
Yup, they have a line.
Disclaimers – they’re showing up everywhere. I watched a Scott Adams video today – it had disclaimers galore. How mail voting was safe. How the video might have opinions on the election that weren’t approved.
Retweet this? Get a 12 hour ban.
And Twitter®? It’s on a complete information lockdown. Gateway Pundit® Tweeted© about fraud. As of yesterday, retweeting Gateway Pundit™ will get you an automatic 12 hour ban. The original Tweet™ is still up. But how dare you try to share it.
Twitter™ has also had enough of President Trump. They’ve taken to censoring him. In one sense, this is his own fault – as his supporters were kicked off the platform, one by one, he did nothing. Now?
I said, “Doc, I’ve got a Twitter® addiction.” He said, “I don’t follow you.”
If Trump shares an opinion that there might have been voter fraud? Censored. If Iranian leaders share opinions?
Come right on through.
Updated Civil War II Index
The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real-time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that lead to the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.
Violence:
Up is more violent. The public “perception” of violence jumped during October. What will November bring?
Political Instability:
Up is more unstable. Instability was up, a lot, in October. The only place where instability is good is if it’s not your turn in Jenga®. November won’t be better.
Economic:
The economic measures are slightly down this month. I had expected it to be more, but the money pumping keeps things floating along. The Fed® can stay irrational longer than most investors can stay solvent.
Illegal Aliens:
Down is good, in theory. This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol. Numbers of illegals being caught is rising again. Will it increase further?
Choices
The election is a mess. A bad mess, and the events surrounding it could lead to the ultimate unwinding of the United States. Scott Adams says there won’t be Civil War. Why? In his words: “We (the United States) don’t want one.” I wish I could share his optimism.
Redo
Probably one of the best things we could do is something horribly simple. There are several contested states, and there are several real problems we’ve seen. The answer? Just re-vote. Where? Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.
In other news, looks like Biden won a key demographic: every voter born in the 1800’s.
Simple. If we addressed the problems we’ve documented in the systems and processes in November, we could have elections that were universally agreed to be free and fair. Heck, we could even have the Army run it and put purple ink on the fingers of people who showed up in person to vote so they can’t cheat.
If it’s good enough for Iraq, why can’t we do it?
Result if this happens: An election we can agree is fair.
Chances of this happening: Zero.
Biden Wins
This has a subset of Biden Wins with Senate Control or Biden Wins with a GOP Senate.
If Biden wins with control of the Senate? All bets are off. This is a huge negative, since that ends the game. The Left has already indicated they want to bring in Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico as states with two (Leftist) senators each. The result of that is, more or less, permanent Leftist control of the Senate. Additionally, the Left would likely increase the number of Supreme Court Justices to whatever number that would give them a majority.
If Biden wins without controlling the Senate? This is a far better scenario. Divided government will prevent unilateral action, which will be good for all of us.
I hear that Kamala is now Biden’ her time.
Result if this happens: Either a fundamental transformation of the American political power structure or a boring two years where important stuff gets done until Joe Biden is gently relieved of command after the dementia is too obvious even for Leftist shills to cover up. If Biden wins the Senate? Odds of a shooting war in the United States go up significantly in the next six months – the Leftists have already announced an online database of people who supported Trump. Wonder why they just don’t issue them little gold stars?
Chances of this happening: 30%-50% that Biden wins. 10%-20% that he wins and gets the Senate, which is too close for comfort.
Trump Wins
This might seem crazy at first thought, but I assure you it’s not. Pennsylvania law is clear that ballots that arrive after 8pm are trash. A court ruling changed that – except that legislative decisions on national elections are not reviewable by any court. Go read the Constitution. If rule of law still exists, Pennsylvania will go for Trump. Period.
That leaves Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona. Trump just needs two. If he’s competently represented? He’ll get two. Then it’s President Trump until 2024.
Result if this happens: If you thought the collective Leftist salt mine after the 2016 election was big, compared to this scenario it will be nothing. Emotions and the love-fest for President Biden have led to the Left being on a high. If Trump pulls victory from nearly certain defeat? Riots. Burning down Leftist cities. Probably National Guard suppression. Washington, D.C. would be a war zone. Where’s my popcorn?
Chances of this happening: 50%-60%. Yup. The fraud is so blatant that any decent audited recount should catch it in multiple states.
Two Presidents
What if we all agree we’re done playing house? The Left can have the East and West Coasts. The Right gets the core. We declare some neutral cities, and divvy up the military stuff.
Result if this happens: An initially peaceful Balkanization of America. Eventually? We’d go to war over who got to keep the Tom Petty albums.
Chances of this happening: <1%. The Left would never, ever, let a single person escape its grasp – that’s why East Germany built walls – to keep people in.
Why did Angela Merkel cross the road? Because the pedestrian crossing light indicated it was the correct time to do so.
Invalid Election
What if the election was ruled so messed up that it couldn’t be undone. In Pennsylvania the ballots may have been mixed up so that the broken law couldn’t be undone. Likewise, if voter fraud is so pronounced in other states, those electoral votes are just thrown out.
Result if this happens: They’d hash it out in Congress. Maybe President Pence and Vice President Justin Bieber. Who can say? No one would be happy with the result and net tensions increase every minute until 2024. And you thought 2020 was bad.
Chances of this happening: 10%-20%.
LINKS
The links are, once again, mostly all from Ricky, as are the headers. You have no idea how much I appreciate that on nights when I post these. I’ll start off with the non-Ricky links . . . feel free to identify yourself in the comments if you want!
Even reserved Forbes is pricing major violence over the election.
And another that likely you see.
https://www.theorganicprepper.com/election-war-games-pre-planned-chaos/
Interesting that this area is concerned since the vote is heavily Republican. Gun stores have some time and ammo, although there limits on ammo and the price is doubled to tripled from 6 months ago.
This one says that the Uber rich Rodeo Dr in Hollywood will be closed to vehicle and people on election day. Another author questions, why election day and not the night-of or the next day? Are they working with real intel or just guessing?
https://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/video/4817061-beverly-hills-to-shut-down-rodeo-drive-on-election-day/
And
https://news.yahoo.com/beverly-hills-shut-down-rodeo-051253368.html
And an independent one from the Jewish community.
And from Ricky, who gave us great themes this month:
American Graffiti
https://www.vice.com/en/article/akddz5/talking-culture-warlords-and-the-second-civil-war
https://www.vice.com/en/article/ep4yak/the-casual-brutality-of-protesting-in-portland
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjp48x/is-the-us-already-in-a-new-civil-war
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7gwm3/we-tracked-the-shocking-amount-of-gun-violence-at-us-protests
Apocalypse Now
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-week-with-the-baying-antifa-mob
https://www.valleynewslive.com/2020/10/20/is-antifa-planning-a-civil-war/
https://www.newsweek.com/antifa-plans-wave-demonstrations-streets-election-polls-close-1544038
https://www.newsweek.com/antifa-march-through-washington-dc-1544676
https://newsone.com/4043905/candace-owens-mob-rule-antifa-video/
https://www.rutgers.edu/news/rutgers-expert-explains-antifa
Minority Report
https://www.bet.com/news/national/2020/10/12/proud-boys-civil-war-donald-trump-election.html
Casablanca / Play It Again, Sam?
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/22/opinions/liberias-civil-wars-advice-to-american-voters/index.html
Vertigo / High Anxiety
https://azbigmedia.com/lifestyle/another-civil-war-poll-shows-majority-of-americans-worry-about-it/
https://www.newsweek.com/proud-boys-trump-civil-war-qanon-1538208
https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-whether-your-vote-can-prevent-a-civil-war/
Ice Station Zebra / Cold War
https://twitter.com/SohrabAhmari/status/1316446749729398790
https://nypost.com/2020/10/31/bill-maher-lets-not-have-a-civil-war-with-the-trumpers/
https://www.suntelegraph.com/story/2020/10/07/opinion/civil-war/15049.html
Some Like It Hot
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/right-wing-militias-civil-war/616473/
War Of The Roses / Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
https://counter-currents.com/2020/10/yes-we-are-headed-for-violent-civil-war/#_ednref1
https://mises.org/wire/media-now-openly-pushing-secession-election-nears
https://www.thejustice.org/article/2020/09/lets-consciously-uncouple-the-united-states
https://internationalman.com/articles/the-american-revolution-the-sequel/
The Neverending Story
“Maybe we got ’em demoralized.” – Aliens
I was reminded that, even though I bragged I was the Inventor of the Bikini Graph®, I had produced no bikini graph in a recent post. My apologies. Here is the most recent GDP of the United States. With bikini. How can you be sad after seeing these results???
I was on the football team at my high school. I know the football teams on television are all above average, but they had to play someone. And we were the ones they got to play so they could be above average.
Going from memory, I’m certain we never had a winning season in high school. My senior year, we won a single varsity game, and that was by a margin of two points – we won 8-6. A record of 1-8 might sound like it only took nine weeks to make, but it seems a lot longer while you’re making it.
One particular game we went into the locker room at halftime, down by some amazing deficit that rhymes with 38-6. It was winter. The rain that was coming down on the field was freezing creating a wet yet frozen field. It was a miserable day, but still better than watching a Disney® movie made in the last 20 years.
Our head coach then said to the team, “Listen, guys, go on out there and play like it’s zero-zero.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever gone into a locker room, realizing you were going to have to go back out onto the field and spend the next hour of your life going toe-to-toe against another team that was, statistically speaking, certain to win. It’s as unpleasant as spending time in an elevator with Bill Clinton and his old-man onion breath.
Bill Clinton thought that the only thing that could make him cry was an onion. Then Hillary started throwing ashtrays at him.
Now, I may not be a math major, but our team was down by 32 points. Playing like we were zero-zero was like assuming that we were not already getting hammered like Hunter Biden on a Tuesday morning. To me, this didn’t make sense, I even thought it was borderline delusional. It wasn’t zero-zero. It was at least 32 points below zero-zero.
As I got older, I began to figure it out. What the coaches were trying to help us overcome was simple. Demoralization. We weren’t winning. We weren’t going to win, since our quarterback couldn’t throw farther than about forty feet, and couldn’t count higher than 12 without taking off his shoes. Of course, having six fingers on each hand did improve his grip, so he rarely fumbled . . .
But there is a choice in life. You can live, knowing that you are going to fail, and acting like you’re going to fail. Or you can live, and just do your best in every moment, knowing that you’ve left it all out there, like a monkey in a minefield, when everything goes ba-BOON.
It’s a fact: humans eat more bananas than monkeys. Personally? I find that monkeys are more filling.
Living life as a failure is demoralization.
But what is demoralization? Demoralization is depriving people of spirit, of morale, of courage.
I don’t know about you, but I was proud to go back on the field when we were losing. Not proud that we were losing. But proud that we had the guts to go back out there, again and again, and give it everything we had on each play.
I’m not telling any secrets when I say that it’s the goal of some groups to demoralize the people of the United States. The news in 2020 has been a constant drumbeat to demoralize anyone who would oppose the Leftist, globalist agenda.
If you were to take them at face value, there’s no way that Americans could ever be sovereign in their own nation again. And certainly, we should live in fear of disease for the rest of our lives and put everything on hold because of it. Masks? Why not make them mandatory forever. To me? That sounds like giving up. And also, Wal-Mart® may not enforce the mask policy, but they still get pretty upset when I show up without pants.
Uncle Hunter always said, “Do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Uncle Hunter did crack.
That demoralization is not where it ends. Looking at the news, we have seen our cities burn for months. Sure, I don’t live in Minneapolis, and I’ve only been there a few times. But Minneapolis is an American city. To watch it burn is demoralizing – I don’t live in Minnesota, but if I’m an American it does hurt to watch an American city burn. How bad is it? BLM® and Antifa© have made cops look good.
It also shows us how far we’ve fallen. Just like when we see people beaten on the streets for the crime of wearing a red hat that shows support for the president they voted for is a defeat for law and order. I even heard where a protest started because an amputee’s limb got stolen – that was completely out of hand.
How do I know this? Despite being the very example of an iron-willed observer of American politics, I occasionally admit to being human, too. I don’t want Seattle to burn. Or Minneapolis. Or Portland. These are American cities, built with American hands and American material and American labor. We should be proud of them – we should want them to thrive. Watching evil people destroy them?
It’s demoralizing.
Man, I hope I can get the two gyros for $6 deal there.
Me? I’ve done several things to stop being personally demoralized:
I hear Best Korea is great at geometry. They have a supreme ruler.
A Canticle for Gibson? At least one reader will get this.
There are some other things that can help, too:
A friend in college grew up next door to her. She would come over and have coffee with his mom. He had, um, conflicts about this.
We all own what goes into our minds, at least at this point in 2020. We cannot be forced to consume media. We choose what we watch, what we hear, what we read. We don’t owe it to anyone, anyone at all to consume lies in the news that have more holes in them than Batman’s parents.
To be clear: this isn’t an attempt to avoid reality. We must face truth unafraid. Each of us must be ready to go back onto that field in the freezing rain after halftime, down by 32 points. And I’ll agree with you if you said we lost the game – the scoreboard would agree. But we didn’t fail. We played every down as hard as we could.
I’m not saying we should be deluded into thinking we’ll win every game we play, but giving in to fear about possible futures is demoralization itself.
The truth is that we cannot be demoralized without our own consent.
The easiest path? Don’t consent. Understand that, in the end?
We win.
“Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I were a millionaire I could hook that up, too. ‘Cause chicks dig dudes with money.” – Office Space
How many economists does it take to change a light bulb? No idea. They’re all still arguing over why the last one broke.
Why do I write about economics? When people talk about economics, they have been trained to be bored. Just talk about supply and demand curves and you’ll see eyes glaze over. That’s why I, John Wilder, invented Sexy Economics®, because curves in bikinis rarely cause eyes to glaze over. See, genius!
Economics is real, and it’s important. And if you want to understand economics you’re probably more likely to learn it from a supermodel than from a Ph.D. in economics.
Catastrophes happen – heck, they happen all the time. My first marriage was a catastrophe, and it only caused the First Gulf War and the eradication of several Bolivian villages. That’s one of the reasons I got divorced – I didn’t want to be responsible for the thermonuclear destruction of mankind.
Some relationships are just that bad.
I just ended a long-term relationship. Good thing it wasn’t mine!
As I look towards the 2020’s, I originally was going to write a year-by-year commentary on the coming decade, at least as it pertains to economics and the potential difficulties we face. In one sense, it doesn’t matter who is going to be elected next Tuesday (or, a month from Tuesday if the courts get involved). Part of the fate of the United States, and world economy in general, is already baked in the cake.
At this late stage in the American Experiment, both Republican and Democratic parties agree on one thing – spending money is exactly what each side wants. In many cases, the spending that both sides want is identical, but differs only in very small ways: ‘Rona stimulus bux? Both sides agree. Both sides (roughly) even agree on amounts: “all of it.” It’s easy that way – it’s not their money.
The only real difference (from what I’ve seen) is that the Democrats want to add in lots of payoffs to their favored groups and make it hard for Republicans to pay of their favored groups. And vice versa. Both want to open the money spigots.
Where does the money come from?
Printing it, silly. Depending on tax revenue is for amateurs.
Printing money does, however, have consequences. One consequence we’ve seen so far is that the previous WuFlu stimulus bills have been a money conveyor back to the richest people on Earth. Can’t go shopping at the mall? Your local store has been shut down by a totalitarian governor?
Bezos® can bring it!
I ordered hay for my horse from Amazon. It upset me that two days later they wanted my feed back.
Need entertainment and can’t go out? Netflix® can bring the latest repulsive Leftist propaganda! Facebook®? Twitter™? All available. And all ready for your stimulus bux, and all brought straight to Americans on Coronavirus-free, totalitarian-approved broadband.
How is it paid for? Those same Stimulus bux. The stimulus to the economy has been a conveyor of money straight to the wealthiest people on Earth. The economy? Well, it, at least temporarily dropped to 2008 levels. And I shouldn’t have to remind you that 2008 wasn’t exactly a great year, unless you were John McCain’s brain tumor.
But what do the 2020s have to offer? What trends will end up influencing our lives if we don’t end up as victims of John Wilder, Civil War Surgeon in Civil War 2.0?
To be fair, I’ve been expecting this one since the late oughts. It really took years and years and years of utter mismanagement to get us to where we are today, and we really shouldn’t waste them. I mean, we should take the example of the Australians. They stocked up on toilet paper during the COVID-19 crisis, and were okay down under.
The signs of this particular currency collapse crisis will be unique, and an early warning will be a general increase in prices, like going to Wendy’s® and having to pay $5 for a burger.
Oops.
Government services will actually decrease. Taxes may or may not go up, since no one really cares how much money the government has anymore. As of 2020, the only thing holding the value of money up in the United States is inertia. We can spend dollars internationally because everyone on Earth . . . will let us.
Why would they do that?
Unrelated news: Chuck Norris burped today – Dallas gone.
The United States has thousands of nuclear weapons. Who said that was a wasted investment, eh? The Golden Rule isn’t really, “he who has the gold makes the rules,” it’s really, “he who has a nuclear arsenal and an advanced military and navy makes the rules.”
The biggest threat to the dollar isn’t the Federal Reserve™ printing it right and left. Nope. The biggest threat to the dollar are the Russians, Chinese, and Europeans saying that they’re not afraid anymore. After that? It’s autarky, where we have to depend on our own production. That’s been the standard throughout much of history – countries have been, through the tyranny of distance, forced to be self-sufficient for all but the most luxurious of goods – if you’re in 1500’s Europe, you won’t be importing firewood to France over the Silk Road.
It won’t be so bad – the United States is still wealthy in energy, minerals, and agricultural products, and if we’re not? We can push Canada over in an afternoon. Trudeau would probably surrender if we sent him a nasty email. (I love Canada, but, really, Trudeau???)
When does it hit? Like I said, I’ve been expecting this one for quite a while. I’m not sure the United States makes it to 2030. Our primary saving grace? The rest of the world’s economists ate glue in kindergarten and rode the short bus, just the same as the economists in the United States.
Consequence? 7/10. Life goes on. Except shabbier. In some cases, especially older folks, life is far worse. Most currency collapses take place in a span of a year or two, and people rapidly adjust. Of course, those that only had the local money are now poor. Precious metals are still the best investment: gold, silver, and lead.
The secret to American energy independence is fracking, and I don’t mean all the fracking that Hunter Biden has been doing in all of those pictures on the Internet. But a little secret of fracking: the fracked oil wells deplete very quickly – in some cases producing 90% of all of the oil they will ever produce in the first year.
Right now, the United States is not drilling so much. Last year at this time, over 700 oil rigs were poking holes in the ground looking for sweet, sweet oil. Last week there were 189. Sure, that’s more than zero, but it’s not a lot. Oil production is down. That makes sense, since gasoline prices are so low you could use it instead of water for bathing in Texas. Oil demand is down, by 15-20%. You Texans? Take more showers.
Hunter Biden has religion. I heard he was a Crystal Methodist.
A nation doesn’t go from 700 active oil drilling rigs to less than 200 without sending a lot of people home. And putting rigs in garages. Or, more likely, losing those rigs to bankruptcy attorneys. Heck, even my attorney was so hurt by the oil collapse he had to take a job cooking. He’s now a sue chef.
So, if the economy ever gets going again it will hit a hard limit: energy. In the last few years people have forgotten that high energy cost is a tax that impacts almost every bit of physical production. If it gets to your house, it shows up on a truck. And you can’t cheat the system. A currency collapse is like a hurricane or an ex-wife – it starts out crazy and wild, but in the end, it will take your house.
Imagine that, everything is starting to look good, and then?
Wham. $6 a gallon gasoline.
That’s a great way to turn an economic recovery into an economic failure. Regardless of Biden or Trump this will happen. Biden will just make the response worse, because he’s like my browser: 17 tabs open, and he has no idea where the music is coming from.
When does it hit? My bet is 2023 or 2024.
Consequences? 4/10 if Republican leadership, 8/10 if Democratic, since Leftists will use this as an excuse to put in Green Energy®, which has is not an energy program, it’s a program of social control.
Ironically, healthcare is probably the biggest sickness in our economy. Even before COVID-∞ showed up, our healthcare system was set up to fail. The reason for failure is simple: as a compassionate nation, we don’t really refuse service to anyone. So, if an illegal immigrant mother from Mongolia and show up in an emergency room because one of your four hundred and fifty-one goat-children has the sniffles, they have to treat it.
And they can’t charge her if she can’t pay.
That explains why Pugsley went to the emergency room and got three stitches because whittling your left hand is easier than whittling a stick, it cost me $2400. And, yes, I have insurance. My insurance paid zero, though it did make me wish I’d have pulled out the needle and thread.
A native Alaskan tried to convince me to become an eye doctor when we lived in Alaska. Sadly I was suffering from an Optical Aleutian.
This isn’t just an individual problem – it’s a system problem. The first rule of real economics is: incentives matter. Thomas Sowell once said that if decent economists were in charge of bringing down automobile accidents, they wouldn’t put an airbag in the steering wheel – they’d put a Bowie knife pointed straight at the driver. Then? The driver would have the proper incentive to not cause an accident.
Our health care system has nearly zero good incentives. Because of that, the system is broken – it’s a hidden tax on tens of millions of people who take responsibility versus a nation of tens of millions of freeloaders.
And it will, over time, bankrupt us.
When does it hit? For the last 20 years, but it will become unsustainable (if trends continue) by 2028.
Consequences? 5/10, but 8/10 if you’re really sick or old. Collapse of the healthcare system as it is. Destruction of the insurance industry (which may be a good thing). Eventual rationing of healthcare based on either cash, government mandate, or both. Even for seniors.
There they are: three potential fates for the 2020’s. And you thought things would get better after 2020.
Ha!
“To cover some hot news?  Like the Lincoln-Douglas debates?†– Kolchak, the Night Stalker
I have a lot of experience with debate – I use debate to catch defish.
This is the post where we’ll do the liveblogging in the comments tomorrow. I know there are probably some technically better ways to do it, but I’m going this way because everyone already knows how to get here and how to hit the refresh button on your browser. Clumsy as a pit bull doing brain surgery? Sure. But that’s politics.
This will be the last debate for both Joe Biden and Donald Trump. That’s not as bold a prediction as it might sound at first.
Donald will either retire after his next term (most likely), declare himself emperor (second most likely) so he’s done. But if he declares himself emperor, imagine the reign of Trump Barron the First, as he annexes first Canada in Operation Leafblower, then Mexico in Operation Tequila Shooter, and finally Europe. There won’t need to be an actual military action to take over Europe, they’ll just send over six Texans with varmint rifles to handle the light work. As long as the Texans speak the national language of Europe, Arabic, it’ll be easy.
I’m sure this was what the Resistance was fighting for, n’est-ce pas? (used with permission)
In this timeline, we all rise and salute the birth of the American Empire where there is a burger in every mouth, and riding mowers for every butt. But there is another timeline.
Joe Biden is obviously still good at reading things if he’s had his Ovaltine® and seven straight days in a hyperbaric Tupperware™ container. Since there won’t be a teleprompter at this debate, he’ll have to make due with radio signals. If Joe wins, however, there is zero, and I mean zero probability that he will be able to finish a term as president without being removed from office because he lost every memory that occurred after that time his grandpa made him a scooter by nailing rollerskates to planks during the War of 1812.
Biden is gone, mentally. If Biden is elected, I’m expecting that President Harris will take over by, oh, February. She and Vice President Amy Schumer will then begin the exhausting task of attempting to subvert everything that produced prosperity in America. I predict they’ll start by introducing a strict set of regulations governing how food in breakroom refrigerators is treated, even though Antifa® will by this time have conquered Sesame Street® and have declared it a sovereign nation, with focus on the letter ‘C’, the number ‘1917’ and the month of ‘October’.
Joe Biden finished a Sesame Street puzzle in only six hours. He was proud.  On the box it said three to five years!
In a rare scoop for this website, I have obtained internal Biden-Harris campaign emails discussing the response to the ongoing Chinese Water Torture® release of ever more damning information about the Biden family.
From:Â Joe Biden
Date:Â October 16, 2020
To:Â Jennifer Dillon (Campaign Manager for Joe Biden – J.W.)
Subject: Hunter’s Sex Drive
Melanie. I mean Susan. How do I switch this thing over to Showtime®?
Can I get some of those hard candies? The yellow ones. The peppermint ones make my eyes ache, which makes it hard to read the helicopter. Butterstache are my favorite.
Did I hear someone say that Hunter’s sex drives have been found? There were people yelling that as I was, well, I’m not sure what I was doing. But why is everyone worried about Hunter’s sex drives? Wasn’t him knocking up a stripper proof enough, you dog faced pony soldier? The man’s got plenty of sex drives.
Â
From:Â Jennifer Dillon
Date:Â October 16, 2020
To:Â Joe Biden
Subject: Re: Hunter’s Sex Drives
Boss,
No, what they found were hard drives from Hunter’s old computers. It seems that he took laptops from the Beau Biden Foundation (the place where we launder get money from Soros and the Clintons) and then used them for Facebook® and porn surfing. I think he liked Netflix™, too, but it seems that he’s using your login information. At least I hope that’s the case, and that it wasn’t you watching Cuties every night since it came out.
All we can piece together is that, incredibly high on crack, Hunter couldn’t figure out why the computers weren’t working. The fact that he hadn’t charged them in a month was a mystery to his drug-addled brain – he kept getting new computers and using them and then, assuming they were broken, took them all in to get repaired.
He had no idea, zero, of where he took them. Did you know he was sniffing model airplane glue again?
Looks like he did give the repair place his password, “BIDEnROX69DUDE.â€
Â
From:Â Joe Biden
Date:Â October 17, 2020
To:Â Jennifer Dillon
Subject: Re: Re: Hunter’s Sex Drives
Oh. The n doesn’t look right. Is that how they spell now?
I’m glad he’s making models again. Spent enough money on that kid’s model making hobby when he was a kid to buy a Syrian child. Funny, Hunter said he just needed the glue – he said he could make his own kit. He was dedicated – making models until he was thirty-five!
Where are my pants? Has anyone seen that Filipino kid? The one who smells like jasmine in the jungle? I need someone to rub my feet.
From:Â Jennifer Dillon
Date:Â October 17, 2020
To:Â Joe Biden
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Hunter’s Sex Drives
Boss,
Great news! I called up our contacts at Twitter®, Google™, and Facebook© and they’ve all agreed to make sure NO ONE sees this story. It turns out that these emails suggest you took millions of dollars of money from Hunter and then used the power of the United States Government to cover it up!
Our team did a great job on the cover up. And I think that we can count on places like Snopes®, the New York Times©, and the Washington Post™ to bury this until after Kamala takes over you’re elected president!
We’ll just hide you until the debate. We’ll practice on Wednesday. And no walking outside in your bathrobe like last week.
From:Â Joe Biden
Date:Â October 20, 2020
To:Â Jennifer Dillon
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Hunter’s Sex Drives
Just got up. Man, I feel better. What was in that blue pill?
The Facebook® is that button on my Blackberry™, right? I just press it. Then my snap chats, right?
How did you fix the button on my thingamabob so that it doesn’t talk to me about Hunter’s sex drives? Did you have to change the floppy drive?
Oh, and if we want to practice debating, we should get Jeffery Toobin in here. I hear he’s a master debater.
I hear Jeffrey Toobin wrote a romance novel – it was a real tearjerker.
Okay, these aren’t really their emails. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to see the real emails. They’re probably higher in actual humor value than these.
See you tonight. I’ll even drag The Mrs. downstairs for the final debate.
“First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?” – Silence of the Lambs
The local bank in Modern Mayberry was robbed by a ghost – it was a polterheist.
Blog note: I will be live blogging the debate on Thursday night along with The Mrs. but I cannot promise to drink as much as last time. I’ll be here 15 minutes beforehand. I’ll put up a post tomorrow for the liveblog.
As careful regular readers have probably noticed, I’m generally a strong advocate of living within your means. That means not blowing all of your money on PEZ®, fast women (or slow men), and anything related to the movie Highlander II when your paycheck hits the bank.
If you look at life as a road, debt is a great valley. Once you drop in, it’s very hard to get out, because the deeper you get in the steeper the valley walls are. I mean, yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death Debt, at least it’s nice to get some time outside.
Even though I’m against debt, there are exceptions, unlike my “no exception policy” about dating married women. The Mrs. gets a little irritated about that one.
Never date a girl with a lazy eye. They’re always seeing someone else.
Houses don’t count, as long as you live in them and don’t consider them an investment. I understand that few people have the cash to buy a house, so everyone gets a pass there. Heck, I’ve paid off most of my mortgage, so now it’s officially lessage.
The other debt that is (again, generally) acceptable is a marketable education. Does this include a degree in Grievance Studies, X-Box Couch Engineering or Snack Maintenance?
Of course not. No business wants to hire those people, unless their HR department needs drones to be sacrificed to feed the Queen HR Bee her nectar.
The biggest killer to a happy life is debt. It hangs over you. When I was in debt, I thought about it several times a day, wondering how I could ever get out of debt. Thankfully, no one really needs both kidneys.
Even worse than debt is the interest you have to pay on debt. Not only do you have to pay back money you didn’t have in the first place, you have to pay more back. Probably the only weapons greater in destructiveness in international relations than nuclear bombs are interest rates. Oddly, it isn’t listed as an act of war to send in the International Monetary Fund to make loans to nations who can’t afford toilets.
My mother-in-law said her dogs liked to drink out of the toilet because the water was cool and fresher than the water in their bowls. Then I began to wonder – how did she know that?
As an aside, I indicated once that I thought that a moratorium on all interest payments was worthy of consideration. There was a huge pushback from readers indicating I didn’t understand how the modern economy worked. In the meantime, European Central Banks have issued debt with a negative interest rate. For those not paying attention, that means if you deposit money, you have to pay the bank for the privilege of depositing it. It just shows the old story is true, give a man a gun and he’ll rob a bank. Give a man a bank? He’ll rob everyone.
Hmmm. And I was told that I don’t understand how the modern economy works. I think I’ll win this one in the long run.
Debt is a killer. Many Americans borrow money for a cool pickup truck to drive to work to have enough money to pay for a cool pickup that they can drive to work so they have enough money to pay for a cool pickup so they can drive to work so that they have enough money to pay for a cool pickup . . . . (Lather, rinse, repeat.)
Hmmm.
What do you call a fight between loan sharks? A conflict of interest.
I did tell an employee that was reporting to me that I suggest that people never buy a new car unless they had a cool million, cash. I stand by that. There are reasons for that:
Following this rule has saved me tens of thousands of dollars in car payments. It has saved me tens of thousands of dollars in car insurance payments, tens of thousands of alimony payments to disgruntled starlets, and thousands in car taxes. But it’s also a lifestyle – you have to be comfortable not having your ego wrapped up in cars.
That’s just one facet of turning down luxury.
My friends say I have a big ego, but enough about them.
Your income will fluctuate throughout your career. It’s really okay to indulge from time to time, based on that income. For me, that indulgence has been reflected in:
But built into this is that purely fun purchases happen only if you’re debt-free with a good income stream coming in. If not? It’s a joint decision. With projections. And charts. It takes a good marriage to deal with that.
The most important part of luxury is making sure that you can walk away from it.
Is my pride in my car?
Well, no. Obviously. My newest car is five years old and that’s The Mrs.’ daily driver. The one I drive regularly was built just after they found Saddam Hussein hiding in a hole in the desert. My ego isn’t wrapped up in my car.
I bought a cheese grater that was owned by both Josef Stalin and Saddam Hussein. It was the grater of two evils.
One of my favorite stories revolves around a group of Dallas housewives who were at a kid soccer game. All of the mothers are there with the latest models of cars from Lexus® and Mercedes™ and Audi©. But one mother drives up in a ten-year-old Buick™ and drops off her kid.
“I wish I was like her,” one mother said to another, “so rich that she can drive an older car.”
I read a statistic a few years ago – I’ve never been able to find it again. But it said that something like 70% of people driving around in a Mercedes™ had a loan on it. Think about that – me in my old car with one light-second of miles on it, owned free and clear, has more money than the average Dallas housewife.
Pursuit of life for the pursuit of pleasure is, in the end, a meaningless pursuit. The idea isn’t that the road is easy, the idea is that you have the strength for the road. Pleasure isn’t a goal, it’s a side trip that should last a few days.
Then, back to the road.
“Tomorrow the world will watch in horror as its greatest city destroys itself. The movement back to harmony will be unstoppable this time.” – Batman Begins
H.P. Lovecraft walks into a bar, and the result was such that any man would be driven mad by the events that followed. Oh, and there was a rabbi and a horse.
When I was a kid, as I’ve established before, I read. A lot. At least an hour a day on the school bus. I’d read at home, too, since the nearest kid lived miles and miles away from Wilder Mountain, and occasionally Ma Wilder ran out of pork chops to tie around my neck so the dog would play with me.
Reading, though, held a very special place around our house, and was something that was revered by both Ma and Pa. One example? While I technically had a bedtime, Ma Wilder actively encouraged me to stay up as late as I wanted to if I was reading.
Game on.
What did I like reading? Science fiction was number one on the list, and horror was number two. (I also read a few fantasy novels, mainly Tolkien and Robert E. Howard, but that’s a can of worms I don’t want to open when I say most fantasy outside of Tolkien and Howard is just junk. Oops, I just did.)
Stephen King named his son Joe. No, I’m not joking.
The problem with writing horror is that it’s even harder to find good horror authors than it is to find good fantasy authors. Stephen King was just about the best – it’s important to remember that at one point the guy really could write a good story that was scary. I lost more sleep to ‘Salem’s Lot than any book, ever. Even though there were approximately twenty people in a ten-mile radius of where we lived, I was pretty sure that at least five were vampires when I was twelve. And most of the people were old – can you imagine the sound when the dentures with fangs sloshed around on their gums? And then they’d offer me hard candy after they exsanguinated me. I still shiver when I think about it.
I found Edgar Allen Poe disappointing. Not scary. I think it was his enormous head, which was counted as the ninth planet until astronomers had a vote.
Perhaps the greatest disappointment to me?
H.P. Lovecraft.
Lovecraft had such a reputation for being scary. Sadly, the man just couldn’t write.
H.P. Lovecraft’s cookbook was called the Necro-nom-nom-icon.
I bought several Lovecraft books while I was growing up, and perhaps because of the prose in the format of “great creeping masses of undulating nouns that, if stared at, would drive a man to madness,” the stories just never caught my imagination. They weren’t scary to twelve-year-old me. I never felt that I’d die because of a “color out of space” or that creatures from the “mountains of madness” would ever threaten me, except for boredom.
As I got older, I discovered that there was one thing that Lovecraft was good at: amazing ideas. And when good writers finally took his work, they produced some amazing fiction and movies. I rented the VHS tape of Reanimator without knowing that it was a reworking of an old Lovecraft tale. It was amazing, though I don’t recommend it AT ALL if you’re a horror lightweight. Of people who figured out how to really bring Lovecraft to life, Brian Yuzna is the winner.
But Lovecraft’s ideas remain. Those are actually interesting to read about, even though he didn’t do a great job executing on them. Perhaps Lovecraft’s most famous idea is that of Cthulhu. What’s Cthulhu, besides the sound my toilet made after Pugsley flushed 142 novelty-size bars of soap (this really happened) when he was three?
I read a horror book in braille once. I could always feel when something bad was about to happen.
For those of you that aren’t familiar, Cthulhu is an Elder God – one of the creatures of the distant past. I’ll let Lovecraft himself describe Cthulhu
There had been aeons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless [Chinese guy] had told him, were still to be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before men came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them.
The really scary idea, to me, is that these Elder Gods are amoral. They couldn’t care less about men. We are, for the most part, as insignificant as the wrapper on a Whopper® to Oprah when she’s in an Oprah Whopper™ Frenzy© – trust me – keep your arms and feet away from the Whoppers™ when this happens.
Face it, we all knew that the Zuck wasn’t really from this time and dimension, right?
And, these Elder Gods couldn’t even live in our time, because the “stars weren’t right” and had to wait until the stars were right again. That was an especially creepy thought, because who knew when that was going to be? Was it next week? Next year? It was certainly going to happen, but when?
Lovecraft may be long dead, but our current economic situation makes me think that we’re living in what I’m calling the Cthulhu Collapse. It’s a collapse that’s out there, frozen as the guy who went to absolute zero – but don’t worry about him, he’s 0 k. Just because the Cthulhu Collapse isn’t living and breathing right now doesn’t mean it’s not real.
It’s just waiting for the stars to align. Here are some of the stars moving into position:
The shortest horror story so far? 2020.
Do I think the economy is in serious trouble? I do. I’ve said that for years, and this is nothing but an acceleration of trends that were already in place. The general consensus is that the printing presses should go into overdrive to print more money to give to people: this is nearly the only thing that nearly every politician agrees on in 2020.
The Mrs. wants me to make more money. Turns out you need a special paper for that.
Part of the problem is that so much of the money is sloshed into the stock markets in ways that aren’t at all clear. This is on purpose. How many dollars have been pumped into the market to keep it stratospheric? It’s not a coincidence that this is the year that the billionaire class has seen the biggest gains ever in their wealth. Elon Musk alone gained enough money this year to buy Albania. I’m hoping he reforms the Albanian Navy – their submarines have to resurface every two minutes so the rowers can breathe.
So, even though Lovecraft’s ideas are great, his stories aren’t scary. But when the Cthulhu Collapse hits, after the stars align?
Lovecraft put it this way:
When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, but Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals.
Horror movies don’t scare me. What scares me? Looking down at my phone and seeing five missed calls from The Mrs.
See? Not scary.
But the Cthulhu Collapse? That’s something that’s scary. Have fun getting some sleep tonight – I hear the stars are simply lovely!
