You Want Dark Ages? Well, That’s How You Get Dark Ages.

“In the world I see, you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.” – Fight Club

I had to stop working in the granite industry:  it was counter productive.

Grug want break rock.  Grug grab other rock, smash rock.  Rock eventually breaks.  Grug happy.

Another example:  Grug want break rock.  Grug create iron ore mine.  Grug create coal mine.  Grug find tree.  Grug mix use coal and iron to make steel hammer.  Grug smash rock.  Grug happy, much faster.

Yet another example:  Grug want to break rock.  Grug create iron ore mine, coal mine, chemical factory. Grug find trees, sulfur.  Grug make hammer, drill, and dynamite.  Grug break rock real fast.  Grug very happy because Grug like blow stuff up.

I stole this example from Grugwig von Mises, the Austrian economist who thought about these things a lot.  The indirect way to do something is generally more efficient.  It’s most direct to break a rock with a rock, but it’s much, much faster to blow the rock into gravel and you can do a lot at one time.  And it’s really cool.

What sound does a piano make when it falls down an ore well?  A-flat miner.

The catch, of course, is that to do things indirectly, there have to be multiple industries and infrastructure supporting the indirect method.  And, if any of them fail, the method becomes more difficult, if not impossible.

One big example of indirect work in our economy is the impact of the computer and the Internet.  Paul Krugman, (who is always wrong) said that the Internet would have no more economic impact than the fax machine.  Of course, since Krugman is always wrong, he was wrong this time, too.

The Internet is a vast communication web, moving data about everything, everywhere, all at once.  It is now pervasive, and has been for decades.

Decades?

Krugman?  More like Grugman.

Yes.  Back when I lived in Alaska, one of the two fiberoptic cables to Fairbanks was cut by a backhoe operator, thankfully mostly cutting Fairbanks off from Paul Krugman’s stupid ideas.  What was the backhoe guy digging for?

I have no idea.  Everyone in Alaska has a backhoe, a skidsteer, and a dump truck.  And they were always digging.  I think they might be part mole.  Maybe they were digging for this:

Meme as-found.

The result of this one fiber being cut, though, was apparent very quickly:  couldn’t buy gas.  At all.  Even with cash.  Credit card usage?  Nope.  And I think prescriptions were similarly impacted.

Now, at work and home, I still had Internet – it was like nothing had happened since my employer must have gotten Internet from the other fiber.  But it was unusual to see so much dependency – I hadn’t realized how much infrastructure was hooked up and required the Internet.  In Alaska.  In 2005.

The reason is that the Internet allows information to move freely.  Information used to be hard to move.  Now, information moves at near lightspeed in many places.  It used to be the way to get information from one place to another was the most direct – mouth to ear.  Then writing, probably to let someone know the sad facts about very fat their mother was, was invented, and is probably carved under half the pyramid blocks.

When I got arrested for graffiti, I tried to deny it, but the writing was on the wall.

Then, books preserved information about many fat mothers through centuries and made it much easier to share from Rome to ancient China.  Finally, we have Internet pages and ebooks that share stories about maternal adiposity around the globe in an instant.

But, one funny thing – the more direct methods such as carving in stone and the ancient legends of huge hulking mothers whose buttocks block out the sky remain.  But books burn.  The ephemeral website?  It may reach 90% of the planet yet be gone in an afternoon.  Think of the deprivation of the future world of all those unsung stories of mothers whose gravitational pull could disrupt the very alignment of the planets.

What brought this to mind was that a big chunk of the Internet disappeared today.  I think it’s back, but I don’t go on FaceGram™ or InstaTok©, but I think those are both back.

To be clear, those cannibal tribes in the Amazon (the river basin, not the company) didn’t even notice.  Why would they?  Their methods, their lives are the most direct.  They don’t depend on getting ammunition for their bow from Cabela’s®, rather if they need a new arrow, they make one out of the stuff that’s lying around.

I hear Dwayne Johnson is going to star as a time traveler who has to go back to ancient Rome to steal a document from Augustus.  It’s called Rock, Paper, Caesar.

The upside of this communication is that I can see first person video of drone attacks in the Ukraine within hours of a strike.  The downside is that by knowing, people feel a philosophical burden – they have information about something yet are (mostly) powerless to do anything about it.  Think about Michael Collins, orbiting above the Moon.  He had a contingency plan if the landing had failed and Armstrong and Aldrin were lost.

“I’d go home.”

Why?  There would have been nothing at all that Collins could have done.  He knew that, and so did Neil and Buzz.  Many things are like that, best not to obsess about them.

Our modern economy has created a great deal of leverage using cheap information combined with cheap information processing – efficient supply chains and people working in far-flung areas.

These systems, just like the chemical factories that Grug made to make his Grug dynamite to break his rock are inherently more fragile than the direct.  How fragile?  Back in 2017 or so, a congressional report came out that predicted that up to 90% of Americans would die in the event of an EMP taking out the power grid.

I have to remember that the rhythm is to “Staying Alive” when I do CPR, and not “For Whom The Bell Tolls”.

Knowing congress, they’ve done nothing to make the systems better, with the potential exception of trying to make EMP proof margarita machines.

I’m in hopes that the looming competency crisis, where complex systems become unreliable due to being put in the hands of the unqualified while the competent people are shuffled aside, won’t bring the take down those same systems, and with it, our society.

We’ll leave that to your mom.  I hear that, though, she’s old enough that when she was a kid with Grug, there was no history class.

(Irony – I lost all Internet at my house while writing this one.)

Kardashians And The Cult Of Growth

“A future of economic growth, freedom, and happiness.” – Robocop

I had a hen who wanted to study economics.  She was something of a mathemachicken.

“The economy grew at an annualized rate of 4.9% in the third quarter of 2023.”

And my response:  so what?

There is a Cult of Growth in the world.  In the United States, at least, that growth was literally in the DNA of the young country – there was lots of space and it was only filled with some pesky Indians who didn’t have a lot of resistance to smallpox or lead, some buffalo, no zoning, and lots of empty land to build Blockbuster Video® stores.

So, off my ancestors went.  The idea was simple – fill the country from sea to sea with farms and businesses, eventually mines and mills and railroads and factories and highways.  No one really planned it, and there weren’t economists reporting on unemployment figures to Rutherford B. Hayes.

What does the “B” stand for?  Babebandit.

The growth that the United States experienced was amazing, and it was real.  People built those farms and businesses and mines and railroads and factories and highways.  That sort of growth allowed the creation of amazing wealth and prosperity because it was enduring and built upon itself.  In those decades of growth, the United States experienced not diminishing returns but increasing returns as the steel mills fed the oil boom which fed the creation of the automotive industry and interstates.

Add in a few thousand nuclear weapons, and this growth of actual productivity and wealth production allowed the country to achieve tremendous national prosperity during a time of relative safety.  Some would maintain that this prosperity peaked in 1973, but when you look at the relative availability of exceedingly cheap “stuff” – it was probably later than that.  Perhaps a good case could be made for the 1980s when Blockbuster Videos™ roamed the land like a great majestic beast, spewing properly rewound videotapes and Raisinets® to all.

Regardless of when that exact date is, it is likely past.

Your momma is so old she rewinds Netflix® videos before logging off.

What was once achievable on a single income now requires (in many cases) two incomes.  People of the past always thought that new labor-saving devices would accrue benefits to the worker, and we’d see a two- or three-day work week.  Instead, we see people working more hours for less (relative) pay.

Why is that?  I mean, the economy grew, right?

Yes, it did.  But the way the economy grew, fueled by illegal aliens contributed to lower wages.  The argument could be made that that the economic activity, the growth from these added workers helped everyone.  Well, no.  Illegals are certainly a net negative when everything is accounted for – welfare, roads, schools, medical care, voting GloboLeft, and Kardashian body hair.

I think she’s got so much plastic in her that if she swims it’s technically littering.

And the “growth” that we saw in many cases was the productive bit of the economy being hollowed out and shipped off overseas.  Why?  Because regulation increased in the United States (it never goes down) and it was easier to start and run a factory in Malasia than it is in Maine.  And if iMegaCorp® can ship the factory over and increase corporate profits by 2%, they’ll do it.

Why?  They’re owned by the people who make bad growth.

What’s bad growth?  Well, the financial sector.  It should be set up not as a casino or a place where the businesses make money selling money.

Growth is not always good.  And it’s not always desirable.  Let’s take an example:  if I decided I wanted to gain a pound of weight next week, the healthy way to do it would be to put on a pound of muscle through exercise.  But the easy way to put on a pound would be to pound some beers and milk shakes.

I believe her pronouns are HerShey.

The United States could do the same – we could increase the size of the economy by producing more and better cars or computers or flat panel displays, or bulldozers.  Or, we could increase the size of the economy by ChaseCitiFargo™ charging extra fees on overdrafts and GoldmanBlackRock© buying a company, loading it up with debt that it can’t pay, and then selling it piecemeal for a 15% profit.

One of these makes a more productive society.  The other is the equivalent of two people selling a house back and forth for 10% more each time and talking about all the wealth that they created.

So, not all growth is good, and not all increased profit is increased wealth.  One economy can make stuff, the other just makes magical made-up profits.  I’ve made the argument for some time that China’s economy is fine.  It is.  They know how to make stuff, so they are fundamentally more stable than the United States because the growth in China wasn’t in financial shenanigans, it was in productive stuff.

Did you know it’s illegal to water your plants in China?  It causes the microphones to rust.

Does China have all sorts of debt?  Yes, yes they do.  Have they produced a lot of suspect crap in the past, especially for internal consumption?  Yes, yes they have, and probably still do.  Doesn’t matter.

Their economy isn’t based on “growth” that occurs only on paper, and only due to paper even though people smoke in China to get fresh air.

They don’t worship the Cult of Growth.

Do I want to live there?  Nope.

Again, there’s good news – this system can’t last, so it won’t.

The ride, however may be bumpy . . . as we get to rebuild it – on healthy growth this time.

The Funniest Post You’ll Ever Read About Bank Failures And Yachts

“A major one.” – Fight Club

What did Kim call his yacht? His dictator ship.

Last March, Silicon Valley Bank® failed. In a big way. Because the people who deposited money in the bank own things like yachts and senators, well, they escaped with hardly a haircut. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation® (FDIC™) normally ensures deposits for $250,000 per account holder. In this case, they decided, nah, what the heck, we’ll make sure that Roku® and Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry don’t lose a dime.

Ironically, today the Internal Revenue Service sued the FDIC© for $1.45 billion in back taxes they say that Silicon Valley Bank™ owed when the FDIC© took it over. Sure, it sounds like on part of the government is suing another part of the government for play money made up by the (non-federal) Fed™ but the FDIC™ is supposedly independent and gets its money from the member banks.

Which are members of the Fed™. Which prints the cash.

If this sounds as incestuous as a Hapsburg family stump, well, it is. And of course I’m going to go with a fresh meme about the Hapsburgs, because that’s what all of the cool kids are doing today.

A Hapsburg walks into a bar, the bartender says, “Why the long face?” The prince says, “Generations of inbreeding.”

The root cause of the Silicon Valley Bank™ failure is that they lent money for long periods at low interest rates. When interest rates go up, those loans aren’t worth a lot, at least to the bank. Right now, my mortgage has a lower interest rate than I’m getting in checking.

Silicon Valley Bank™ looked at all the crappy loans they had, and did the math, and found out that they were worth less than zero. Even worse, their bigger depositors heard (because depositors who own senators seem to get advance notice) and started to pull their money out.

Since those folks had friends, they told them. Soon enough, everyone wanted one thing – they wanted their money out of Silicon Valley Bank™. Rational people realized that if this was a problem at Silicon Valley Bank©, it was a problem everywhere.

Silicone and silicon – electrical engineers know the difference – no one trusts them around silicone.

In a thought that gives central bankers and senators cold sweats (after the previous night’s booze wears off) is the idea that people lose faith in the banking system. Oddly, this wouldn’t be a problem if we used money made out of gold and silver, but since ours is just as much a fantasy as thinking that diversity enriches us all.

So, there’s a problem that’s impacting literally every bank. Some big ones have failed, but thankfully Duchess Markle still has her cash so she can get enough publicity to hide from commoners like me. What’s the solution?

First, pay off everyone so no one is scared and Oprah doesn’t have to fly commercial with mere mortals. Second, flood the system with money. If a bank needs cash? Wheelbarrows of it?

Give it to them.

Thankfully Congress took a break from sending your tax dollars to Ukraine to bail out Oprah.

Last year, banks were paying 0.10% or so for crappy checking accounts. This summer, rates started shooting up, so I snuggled into some CDs that paid a lot more than my mortgage cost. Then, last month, I got a call from my bank where I set up the CDs.

“Mr. Wilder? You have money in other banks, right? If you deposit (a few thousand) dollars from accounts outside of your accounts with us into savings, I can give you a 4.5% rate on checking and savings.”

What????

If there’s one thing I know about banking, is that bankers are not generous except to themselves, senators, and Oprah.

I check with him, drove to the nearest branch of Major Bank™ in Mt. Pilot, and tossed a few thousand in. Could I take it out later?

Sure!

I am informed this is funny because horses often live in stables, so this would be a violation of California’s work safety laws.

I started wondering about this, but soon enough came up with the answer: when I make a deposit in the bank, I’m making a loan to the bank. And if they’re offering me nearly 5% for just parking cash at their place, that means . . .

I’m their best alternative for a loan. Me. John Wilder. Enough so they paid a dude to call me and ask.

Yup, it’s just that simple. And they called me to ask me to make a loan, and offered to pay me over four times what I was making on my cash to make that loan. Reading a bit further, it turns out the way that the Fed™ shoved money down the collective throats of the banks was through the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP).

BTFP loaned money to the banks, and the banks deposited the money at the Fed© to make a profit on the difference.

Yes, the Fed© created the BTFP, loaned the money to the banks who then deposited the money . . . at the Fed™. I’m not making this up. As of March 11, 2024, the Fed© will no longer be making more BTFP loans at those sweetheart rates. All new loans would be made at the same rate the bank gets paid by the Fed©. The gravy train, or at least this gravy train, is over.

That’s what the Fed© said in January, 2024.

When did I get the phone call wanting to borrow a few bucks from Major Bank?

January, 2024.

Since when do I believe in coincidences? And it was weird, it wasn’t a lot of money that I needed to deposit, but I think they were looking to get bigger players than tiny John Wilder.

But at least they’re not insufferable idiots . . . oh, too soon.

And that’s the rub. If banks are looking to borrow cash from me, how bad are their balance sheets?

Dang, I’m worried! Will Prince Harry have enough money to travel the world for 45-minute meetings with his father? Will Oprah be able to afford more caviar?

And, maybe I should take up loan sharking. Maybe I can buy my own yacht, bigger than Prince Harry’s and I’ll sail past him, and look down on him, and try to give Harry that condescending look that appears to be his Resting Prince Face.

And I’ll write a rock song about it.

I’ll call it Smirk on the Water.

What Signs Would We See If The Economy Was Going To Be Okay?

“Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic.” – Fight Club

When I met The Mrs. I said, “Titanic.”  She said that was a terrible icebreaker.

I worry that sometimes I talk too much about the downsides of workings of the economy and was asked, “What does it look like when things start to look better?  What does it look like if it’s all going to be fine?”  I know this might seem like rearranging the deck chairs to keep the Titanic from sinking, but, hey, let’s go with it?

These are great questions.  Not as good as, “Would you like another beer?” but still very good.

These are also questions that could be political in nature (I might write more about that for Monday) but in this case I’m going to focus on the economy as much as I can, though it’s certain that political will slip in here and there – it can’t be avoided because we’ve got Joe all over the economy.

What will make things “fine” and how will we know when we get there?

If someone steals your booze, does that mean they’ve lifted your spirits?

First:  Stop the infinite debt spending.

Several years ago I wrote about Modern Monetary Theory.  In a nutshell, Modern Monetary Theory says that if you have a bill, pay it.  If you don’t have the money, make it.  The theory goes that there aren’t a set number of points in a game of football, so why should there be a set number of dollars in the economy.  So, if you have a bill, pay for it.

This is an awesome theory only for a person that has the I.Q. of a Kamala/AOC lovechild.  The worst thing about it is that it actually worked in the short term, which is the worst when it comes to an economic policy, because it gives lots of time for Bad Things to pile up.

What made it work is because the United States can pawn the piles and piles of dollars off to the world since everyone takes them because we have nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers and everyone knows what happened to Saddam and Qaddafi when they decided they’d start taking gold instead.

I asked a friend if he wanted to hear about the Russian victory parade.  He said, “No tanks.”

Eventually either the desire or ability to soak up the dollars goes away.  When that happens, even for a short time, the inflation inherent in the system feeds back.

Can this go on forever?  No.  Should we, you know, maybe consider stopping it before we totally wreck the economy?  If we do that, there will be a hangover and a tough political bill to be paid.

Will we?  Yes.  As Ben Stein’s dad said, “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.”  That will be a very, very bad day if it’s not one of our choosing.

Also?  Fiat economies have a worse track record than Fiat™ cars for reliability.

Second:  Stop the Wealth Pump®.

I really enjoyed Peter Turchin’s book, End Times.  In it, he convinced me (he also has data to support this) that one of the biggest failures of my lifetime is the priming of what he calls the Wealth Pump™.  The really short version of this is that policies that would support concentration of capital in the billionaire class are enacted (for example:  open borders) while policies that benefit the average worker (for example:  strictly controlled borders) are ignored.

I dropped a piece of ice in the kitchen.  I was upset, but then it melted.  I guess it’s water under the fridge.

Turchin’s models have shown that the Wealth Pump™ everywhere and always leads to tremendous social turmoil.  Even without the economic misery for the common man that the Wealth Pump© implies, the turmoil from the hordes of teeming illegals will create turmoil that will last lifetimes.  But stopping the Wealth Pump™ is imperative.

Will Bezos and Soros owned Senators suddenly ignore the billionaire class they serve?  At this point, not voluntarily.  The bacon-wrapped shrimp and cool stock tips are pretty powerful to keep them in line.

Third:  De-financialize the economy by putting out the FIRE.

Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate is called the FIRE sector of the economy.  In theory, FIRE exists to serve the actual productive sectors of the economy that make actual things that people need like potatoes, beer, steak, PEZ™, shoes, rifles, books, and toilet plungers.

That’s the way it should work.

Instead, it’s a gambling economy filled with people who try to manipulate and tweak and profit without producing anything.  The big oil squeeze of 2008?  Rumor was that was a big investment bank trying to make a bet profitable on a short against a particular company.  The investment bank didn’t produce anything useful except for profits.  By manipulation.

I think FIRE might be more dangerous than fire.

Again, ask the Nancy Pelosi why her stock portfolio is so profitable, and ask why first term Senators do so well in the stock market.  Or don’t.  But it’s FIRE that’s the primary machine in the Wealth Pump™ and these create increasingly horrific schemes.

Examples?  Everything is a subscription because it increases revenue and profits.  Now it’s moving into video games:  design a game once, sell a subscription to it so that people can’t play it again for free, but instead have to pay a monthly fee.  It’s already moving that way for software.

And look into who is buying all the housing.  It’s on FIRE.

Fourth:  Rational housing valuations.

People need a place to live, and a pod won’t cut it, but houses are now big investments.  Why?  Because they need more profits to feed the Wealth Pump®.  Housing prices returning to something a guy with a high school degree working a manufacturing job can afford is crucial, since that’s where families come from.  Is it possible in San Jose?  No.  It’s possible in Modern Mayberry, but that’s because BlackRock© hasn’t started buying here.

Fifth:  Space for humans and A.I.

I know that some are skeptical, but A.I. is already making hundreds of thousands of jobs obsolete.  Running a backhoe?  No.  Writing articles?  Yes.  Things that are easy for humans, are hard for A.I.  Things that are hard for humans (and thus draw a higher salary), are often easy for A.I.

Are expert-level programmers still required?  Absolutely.  But not as many, since an expert-level programmer acting in tandem with A.I. will have a tenfold increase in productivity.

Who loses?  The “not as good” programmers who are now not required.

This has happened before in all sorts of industries.  DJs on the radio began voice tracking decades ago.  The average DJ makes minimum wage (average, some are highly compensated, most are not) but still the radio stations paid $20,000 to eliminate them because making the product cheaper is what they know.

ChatKGB:  it asks the questions.

Automation increases profits, but it doesn’t lead to some sort of techno-utopia where we have three hour work days.  People just lose their jobs.  As profits have gone up, pay has gone down (relative to inflation) and work hours have gone up for salaried folks.

A.I. hasn’t hit in a big way, yet.  It will.  Making space for people is unlikely, but necessary.

That’s a summary of how we can tell if we’re going to pull out from the looming economic catastrophe, what it looks like if things are going to get better.  I’ve started sketching out a few political things to show that things are going to be okay, and (like I wrote above) will likely show up on Monday.

So, like the Titanic, it looks like we might have a change in destination.  But we’re making good time!

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Two Minutes To Midnight

“Two minutes, tops.  But it’s a tough two minutes.” – Reservoir Dogs

Finland has no border problems – no one can cross the Finnish line.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  6. Open War.

Volume V, Issue 9

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly.  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 – Governing War Structures – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Kabuki Border Theater? – 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 810 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Governing War Structures

In the aftermath of the Virgina Second Amendment rally a few years ago I had a realization about path to Civil War 2.0:  organization will be very, very fast.  I think I even wrote those words in the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, but I’m too lazy to look it up.  Regardless, I’m going with a full “I told you so” about this one.

What’s gray, has spikes, and runs around a field?  Barbed wire.

First:  Texas wasn’t ordered by the Supreme Court to do anything.  The Supreme Court’s decision was removing an injunction against the more or less worthless Customs and Border Protection (CBP) being able to remove razor wire that Texas put up, so the ruling doesn’t require Texas to do anything.

Second:  If CBP is as bad at customs as they are at immigration, I’d expect that you could export nuclear bombs to Bulgaria.

Aside from that, the amazing thing was about how quickly a coalition of the Several States backed Texas.  I was doing a podcast with The Mrs. and Mark and even as we were talking, more and more governors were saying that they stood with Texas in real time – state after state.

This was a big deal.

If at first you don’t secede, try, try again.

And it happened very, very quickly.  This is the trigger to number 9 on the Civil War 2.0 countdown list, and it happened in less than 24 hours.  The list is incomplete, since I’m certain more of the Several States would side with Texas if things went sideways, and places like Colorado and Illinois would mostly secede, leaving small islands of blue in seas of red.  Kentucky?  Yeah, they’d be in as well because of their pioneering spirit.  In Kentucky, when your car breaks down?  You build a house next to it.

Now there’s a slogan I can get behind.

The oppositional structure for Civil War 2.0 developed out of thin air on a single evening in January.  There’s more to the story down below, but the lines developed amazingly quickly.  I thought the real issue would be the Second Amendment, but illegal immigration managed to do what no other issue that the TradRight had could do:  make everyone notice.  The unending flood of illegal aliens (an absolute record this month, ever, as shown in the Civil War Index graph below) has been the catalyst.

Note to the FedGov folks, if you enforced the actual Constitution and kicked out the illegals, you could probably stop Texas from straying.

I do expect that (for reasons as noted in our second story) that the tension from this may fade, but the governing structures are in place, which places us firmly at two minutes until midnight.

Yes, we are very close, but Biden backed down because he realizes that on the FAFO graph, he’s pretty close to the FO section.

Does this make him scared enough to pee his pants?  Depends.

The federal government has to push so hard because it feels that its power is becoming more tenuous.  Yes, this tension may fade and after two more months I’ll back down the clock of doom, but this is an amazingly large step.

There have been others.

Missouri would be in trouble except for:

Violence and Censorship Update

I’ll (mostly) let the memes speak for themselves.

As God is my witness, I never knew convicts could fly.

And people say there isn’t a perfect woman.

Looks like Canada is behind enemy lines now.

If I X’d® this, I’d be in jail now.  So why isn’t Soros?  Oh, yeah, he’s a billionaire who hates America.

Think he wants to put up the Statue of Oppression?

What’s a sensitive event?  Whatever Google® says it is.

I wonder if Australia realizes this will just make all the edgy kids get swastika tats?

Canada, are you doing okay?  Looks like you haven’t figured out the whole “laws” thing.

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again, but only slightly.  Does it matter after the damage has been done?

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence is flat.  Winter is in, and riots aren’t as fun in galoshes.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly down.

Economic:

Economic numbers did a slight dive.  I wonder if it’s because they caught this guy?

Illegal Aliens:

The most, ever, in the history of the country.  For all time.

Kabuki Border Theater?

PIERRE

The Texas border confrontation has been in the news bigly.  Is it real?  Follow this (LINK) from a Texan (courtesy Aesop) who says that just a mile from the confrontation spot that the border is wide open.  Wide open, but perhaps slightly inconvenient.

Does this matter?

Yes, it matters.

Absolutely.  The border simply does not exist in 2024.  Anyone can walk across at any time, any place, and be rewarded with cash, prizes, airfare to anyplace in the nation, and free room and board.  It’s in New York.  It’s in Boston.  It’s everywhere.

What’s a radical Leftist’s favorite font?  Sans sheriff.

The GloboElite get cheap labor.  The GloboLeftists s get free votes and power.  Oddly, they even share that.

Remember to call a doctor if your election vote counting lasts more than four hours.

But, hey, I hear that they’re close to an illegal immigration vote in Congress!

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1751673864524894408

https://twitter.com/i/status/1744577621319667964

https://twitter.com/i/status/1747837919312687268

https://twitter.com/i/status/1744180313876574264

https://twitter.com/tecas2000/status/1752757658161926364

https://twitter.com/TheWatcherDaily/status/1727684087245132251

https://twitter.com/tecas2000/status/1754194250638508470

https://twitter.com/i/status/1753461857124323462

https://twitter.com/i/status/1752897020560379985

https://twitter.com/i/status/1740256698781360200

https://twitter.com/i/status/1741324539265532308

https://twitter.com/i/status/1741890761845608774

https://twitter.com/i/status/1741106761984057418

https://twitter.com/ShootInUSA/status/1747178759730671934

 

Good Guys

https://news.yahoo.com/shootout-jewelry-store-oaklands-fruitvale-030731425.html

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1748054072215703703

 

One Guy

https://wcyb.com/news/local/kyle-rittenhouse-event-at-etsu-moving-to-larger-venue-because-of-high-demand-for-tickets

https://www.wjhl.com/news/local/controversy-at-etsu-over-kyle-rittenhouse-as-guest-speaker/

https://www.timesnews.net/opinion/columns/bob-arrington-kyle-rittenhouse-etsu-and-free-speech/article_8dc3908e-c06b-11ee-819d-7f6c131835ee.html#google_vignette

https://www.newsweek.com/kyle-rittenhouse-republican-gun-control-ar15-1866056

 

Body Count

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/soldiers-killed-jordan-names/

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/01/10/army-sees-sharp-decline-white-recruits.html

https://dailycaller.com/2024/01/24/us-military-stretched-too-thin-to-deal-with-threats-report-says/

https://www.heritage.org/military

https://www.yahoo.com/news/no-longer-top-level-fighting-070000553.html

https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1747835202985185509

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/blood-clots-embalmers-report-mid-2021-covid-vaccines/

https://studyfinds.org/childless-millennials-parents/

https://www.prri.org/research/generation-zs-views-on-generational-change-and-the-challenges-and-opportunities-ahead-a-political-and-cultural-glimpse-into-americas-future/

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1750650452105179630

 

Vote Count 

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1691812817798566281

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fjustthenews.com%2Fpolitics-policy%2Felections%2Fdhs-agency-warned-about-integrity-mail-voting-2020-election-while

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2024%2F01%2F16%2Flawsuit-uncovers-how-raffensperger-tried-to-memory-hole-the-election-law-trumps-georgia-call-was-about%2F

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/government-suppressed-censored-concerns-over-mail-in-voting-in-2020-report-5573274?utm_source=epochHG&utm_campaign=CFP&src_src=epochHG&src_cmp=CFP

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ajc.com%2Fpolitics%2Fwitness-shows-how-to-tamper-with-georgia-elections-in-security-trial%2FWUVKCYNV3ZGOVNB6X6TDX2GEFQ%2F

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/13/trump-loyalists-2024-presidential-election

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/01/25/afl-lawsuit-cisa-withheld-critical-election-administration-information-to-further-its-own-agenda

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/01/26/exclusive-defeat-maga-meet-the-radical-left-network-that-hijacked-democrats-in-effort-to-stop-trump-at-all-costs/

https://indivisible.org/groups

 

Civil War

https://tomluongo.me/2024/01/25/soft-secession-insurrection-or-the-real-return-of-federalism-in-texas/

https://donaldjeffries.substack.com/p/greg-abbott-and-the-invasion-of-the

https://ijr.com/gen-flynn-constitution-literally-allows-texas-engage-war-southern-border/

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/clay-higgins-calls-on-texas-to-ignore-supreme-court-ruling-because-biden-is-staging-a-civil-war/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12954689/Texas-independence-vote-court-ballot.html

https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Them-vs-Us_CTUP-Rasmussen-Study-FINAL.pdf

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/default/files/2023-12/dec-2023-cgvs-defending-democracy.pdf

https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/americans-are-fighting-for-control

https://news.yahoo.com/endless-civil-war-americas-160-013209995.html

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Famgreatness.com%2F2024%2F01%2F08%2Fa-culture-in-collapse%2F

https://indi.ca/why-civil-war-is-too-good-for-america/

https://off-guardian.org/2024/01/31/discuss-is-world-war-3-really-on-the-horizon/

A Tale Of Two Economies?

“Strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.  Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I guess, for her, these are dark times.

I saw a graph last week from the New York Times®.  The graph showed the views of the economy based on political party – people of the GloboLeft thought that the economy during Trump’s years in office wasn’t great and got worse every year until it fell off the COVID cliff.  Their view of the economy changed as soon as Mumbly Joe got into office.  Things were aLL bEtTeR NoW!  Oh, sure, not as good as they were when Obama was in office, but better than the average of the Trump years.

When looking at the Trump supporter numbers, it was the exact opposite, the economy had gotten better during Trump’s time in the chair, until the COVID cliff, but bounced back but had dropped off of that same COVID cliff.

When Biden got into office, if not a little earlier, the economy cratered for people on the TradRight, and has been in the gutter since then.

The takeaway from the Times™ is:  “Republicans react much more strongly to a president from the opposite party than Democrats do. That disproportionately affects the national mood during this Democratic administration.”

Probably the most important part of this graph is the why axis.

I’ll admit there is certainly bound to be component of that, but by any reasonable stretch of the imagination, the economy was much better under Trump than under Brandon.  I think the analysis by the Times© is myopic and doo-doo headed (that’s a technical term).

The Times© is missing the point that Biden voters are not at all the same as Trump voters.  Biden voters (the actual living ones), by far, make more use of public assistance than Trump voters.  Any move or perception of a move that the gravy train of cash and prizes for just breathing and eating Hot Pockets™ is going away is going to cause unease.

Since they are the consumers of things that illegals create more than Trump voters, any tightening of the border lowers the number of people to be Squatamalan nannies or gardeners and makes the “raise the minimum wage” crowd have to pay more.

The horror!

You might not think it’s a lie that there is worse than Biden.  The Canadians know it’s True-deau.

Lastly, a Trump administration will slow the growth of federal and state local jobs, as the gravy train is slowed, and as the regulations that spawn new regulatory jobs are strangled.

But what bout the Trump voters, are they delusional?

No, they own small businesses, and when profits are up, they’re happy.  And they don’t have bright green hair.  They’re homeowners instead of renters, so when interest rates are low, they can afford more house.  They don’t live in the urban hellholes so gasoline prices are much more important to them than they would be to the average Biden voter who lives in the core urban Bluetopia of some place like Detroit or Atlanta or Baltimore.

Things were better in the burbs, and better for families, and better for people who had to get up in the morning to make the doughnuts and keep civilization moving.  Oh, and the shutdown of the illegal pipeline raised their wages – lower labor availability raises wages.

Give a man a pizza and he will eat for a day.  Teach a man to make a pizza and he will work for minimum wage.

Who doesn’t like increasing wages?  The GloboLeftElite, that’s who.  They don’t like higher wages because higher wages mean decreased profit.  It’s odd that they end up having more money that they could ever spend, so it’s not the cash.  Again, it’s the concentrated power that money brings.

And concentrated power is equivalent to the ability to reward.  Or punish.

So, no, New York Times, Republicans are actually hurt by the economy.  And it’s likely on purpose.

And, since actual intact nuclear families are overwhelmingly for Trump, this leads to the next problem – if the conditions are bad for a family, imagine the problems that causes for the most important segment of our population:

Young men who want nothing more than a traditional, Norman Rockwell marriage with a wife, a car, 2 or 3 kids, and a home that they own.  That’s the desire.

The Hapsburgs had faces only a cousin could love.

The reality is that this dream is slipping away.  I think kids are losing ground every year.  Houses are more expensive, cars are more expensive to own and insure, and marriage costs more.  The situation is horrible compared to the early 1970s, when a manufacturing job could support a Norman Rockwell family.  Pay has stayed down due to the massive influx of cheap immigrant labor, whether that immigrant labor is here or in Vietnam.

Free trade means that we can be miserable on a race to the bottom for labor costs.  And mom and pop stores, as inefficient as they may have been, mainly kept the profits of their stores in town.  As the Walmartization™ of the rural economy continues, the guy who used to own the butcher store is now the guy at the meat counter, and the real butcher is hundreds of miles away in a meatpacking house, and is probably an illegal alien.

What was once a great middle-class life is now replaced as the GloboLeftElite search for yet more power.

The kicker is that the big key to a young man having a family, women, are more elusive every year having been propagandized into a dozen or more years of increasingly desperate and meaningless sex followed by desperation to find a “worthy” man as they enter their 30s and decide they want a kid.

Is that meme thot provoking?

So, guys check out.  They’ve got weed, booze, and video games.  When there aren’t women worth having, there won’t be men working to make themselves worthwhile.  Why are there no good young men?  There aren’t any good women worth chasing.

This leads to unrest in young men, and a misery in the population of people that are the real spark plugs of an economy, destruction of the middle class?

As usual, the New York Times® misses the big picture – the misery is real.  And they don’t care.

Why Do They Want You To Eat The Bugs And Not Garden? Profit And Control.

“I thought the garden was the right place for her.” – Alien:  Covenant

We could get rid of all of the carbon in the atmosphere by making the oceans carbonated.  This would work, because right now, the Earth is flat. (memes mostly as found)

Last week I wrote about the ridiculous idea that electric cars (absent a big technical breakthrough) are the solution to anything other than a rich person trying to smugly signal their virtue like a really, really expensive Bernie Sanders campaign sign.  Continuing on the “carbon is bad” mantra of the GloboLeftElite®, the next obvious thing to deal with?

Food.

For some time, the mantra from GloboLeftElite© is that it’s time for you to stop eating the food you’re eaten your entire life, and eat bugs.  Why eat steak when you could eat crickets and worms instead?  Oh, and have you heard about all of the huge environmental problems that Big Agriculture™ causes?  Why, there are huge tractors guzzling diesel fuel as they lumber about the farms!  And farmers just love to burn vast ponds of diesel into great geysers of black smoke because they’re so rich and hate the environment.

Farmers I like, but I’ll not get up to defend the current average diet in America – there’s too much corn syrup and too many gallons of seed oils and it apparently makes Amber Heard poop the bed.  All American food isn’t bad, but some of the current commercial implementations are.  But there’s an alternative for lots of people.

Gardens.

Gardens are one reason a lot more folks didn’t starve back during the Great Depression – people were able to make a lot of their own food (a lot, not all of it) mostly for free.  Yup, stick a seed in the ground, fertilize it, water it, keep the weeds and bugs out of the garden, and you get food.  During both World Wars kitchen gardens helped people deal with food scarcity.

I mean, that’s the theory.  GloboLeftElite™ would prefer you just eat the bugs.  A recent article in The Telegraph notes that “the carbon footprint of homegrown food is five times greater than those grown conventionally.”

I thought this meme was a joke.  Nope.  Real. 

Yes, you read that correctly.  Gardens, in this case urban gardens, are the next thing that has to go.  Why?  Well, it’s not the growing of the food that creates the carbon, you see, it’s all the infrastructure.

They count sheds (which, if made of wood, would sequester carbon, but, hey) and sidewalks and things like raised beds, which apparently are single use, since lower carbon can be achieved by “using urban agriculture sites for many years.”

Who knew you could plant crops the next year, too?  And who knew that growing things that eat CO2 without using CO2, lead to more CO2?

I’m not kidding.

Yes, they (in this case, idiots with degrees at the University of Michigan) count the sidewalk that is probably already there to get to this ridiculous answer.  There were a few foods they were okay with:  tomatoes and asparagus, because those used greenhouses to grow and air freight to move them to supermarkets.

I heard OSHA started making porn.  They’re experts in NSFW content.

Again, silly answer, but what do you expect from the people who brought you this sad little garden in the CHAZ during the “George had too much fentanyl and died” riots of 2020.  Yes, the people at CHAZ were serious.

This is why GloboLeftElites™ want to ban gardens – revenge!

But the GloboLeftElite© wants you to lower your carbon footprint.  Oddly, the dinner menu at the World Economic Forum didn’t include a diet of corn syrup, slugs, and microplastics.  And none of them arrived by bus.

The propaganda from GloboLeftElite™ has, however, been excellent.  People have been brainwashed into believing that vats of gooey insect parts are where healthy food comes from, and tasty cows are the force of pure evil in the world.  Soylent Green™ is now no longer dystopian – the rank-and-file GloboLeft® (notice we’re missing the “Elite” part) think that Impossible Meat™ is better.

History has shown the GloboLeftElite® is never, ever right.  In fact, I’ll go one better:

  • If we don’t do the things that the GloboLeftElite® want us to do, they claim it will destroy us through a magical demon called carbon that has been higher than it is today for most of Earth’s history (after life, that is).
  • The truth is that we do the things that the GloboLeftElite© want us to do, it will certainly destroy us.

I know that there’s been a long-time war against meat, at least since the 1960s.  Vegetarians, are almost always Lefties, but it’s okay, because they’re weak.  Why do they not want us to have meat?  Because it makes us strong?

I think vegetarians always lose because they’re too weak for leg day.

The biggest problem for GloboLeftElite© is that food from your garden gives them no profits and gives them no control over you.  We have the technology to turn bugs into a tasty protein source:  it’s called a chicken egg.  But they want you to eat the bugs, because if they humiliate you enough to eat the bugs, they know that they can make you do anything.  Anything.

Want proof?  Why, when COVIDmania® was ongoing did Michigan ban stores selling anything but essentials, and those essentials didn’t include seeds for food?  Why did a group of Amish get raided and arrested for selling food?  Control.  And GloboLeftElite™ loves that.

Yes, that’s what they think.

Controlling the food as a route to controlling the people has been a strategy employed since the days of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt.  It’s very easy to control a person if they starve when they misbehave based on social credit scores.

Remember that the real source of carbon they want to stop is you, and that if they were serious, they’d ban big yachts and private jets and look outside of the Western world for sources of carbon to cut.  No, it’s you, and it’s personal.  They want you to eat bugs to help the climate.  What did they eat at the Climate Conference in Dubai back in November?

“Traditionally Cooked Smoked Briskets, Smoked Ribs and our Smoked Wagyu Burgers. Our Style of Cooking gives unique taste and technique in Authentic Gourmet Foods.” Think I’m kidding?  Here’s the LINK.

Yes, they could cut back.

But they won’t.  GloboLeftElite© would never fly commercial.  That’s for bug-eating peasants.

Hey, do you have a license for that garden?

Electric Vehicles: The Big Con

“You mean, drive in hybrids, but not act like we’re better than everyone else because of it?” – South Park

If you buy an EV from Dodge®, you also get a Dodge Charger™. (Memes mostly as found)

Based on the evidence I’ve seen so far in news stories, I’ve come to a conclusion about electric vehicles (EVs).  It’s this:  If you keep your EV parked in the garage at all times and never, ever drive in the winter, it works perfectly.

And, no, I don’t have one – I don’t need to have one to view the evidence that’s piling up.  I would believe that even the manufacturers would tell you that it’s pretty hard to charge an EV when it’s zero outside, unless you warm up the battery first.

They also have lower winter range for two reasons:  they have to electrically heat up the interior, which directly robs range, and in cold weather the battery cannot discharge as deeply – the rate of chemical reaction that the battery requires slows in cold conditions.

I wonder if all those people waiting to charge their cars are listening to AC/DC?

The range of most electric vehicles is incompatible with a Real American Road Trip.  Modern Mayberry has one big advantage over most places – it’s 100 miles from anywhere.  The downside for that on an electric car is obvious – a round trip to Mt. Pilot is simply not possible during the winter, unless I find and use a charging station.  The one in Mt. Pilot (there is only one) is not exactly in the best part of town, and it’s dozens of miles out of the way on any trip – a 100 mile trip now has another half an hour of driving added, plus the time required for charging.

Or, I could just bring a gasoline powered generator . . .

You can tell it’s not an Apple® car – it has Windows®.

Yes, I suppose that it’s true that an EV could replace most of my car usage.  Most days I drive less than 40 miles.  But in order for the EV to work, I’d have to own a second car just for the (not at all rare) trips where I have to go over 100 miles from home.  The range of an EV is simply incompatible with the size of the United States.

I suppose that would make sense if owning an EV provided cheaper transportation.

It doesn’t.  Insurance is much more expensive for an EV than an internal combustion engine car of the same value because they’re much more expensive to work on, even when they don’t catch fire.  Hertz™ Rent-A-Car© found this out – they’re now ditching the majority of the EVs that they bought.  Too expensive to run, too expensive to fix, too expensive to insure.

What happens when a Tesla® hits someone at a given frequency?  It Hertz®.

A dirty secret that’s causing the value of EVs to drop on the secondhand market is that the batteries will die.  If you use an EV a lot, the batteries will cycle and die.  If you don’t use it, the batteries will age and die.  If I had twenty-year old vehicle (and I do) I know that the hoses will break, I’ll eventually need to replace the clutch pad and brake pads.  Stuff will eventually need to be replaced.

But every time Pugsley turns the key, it cranks over and he drives it to school.  If it depended on twenty-year-old batteries?

Not thinking it would be a pretty sight if he had to depend on batteries old enough to vote.  On a zero degree day.

If a crackhead stole the copper lead, would he be guilty of mis-conduct?

The biggest drawback to EV adoption is battery tech.  It sucks.  But let’s pretend that we could store five times the energy in a typical EV battery pack – move from a 200 mile range to 1000 miles.  That would be awesome!  Let’s forget that’s nearly an order of magnitude increase in capacity for a second.

Now, instead of 200 miles worth of electricity stored in a battery that you’re sitting on, it’s 1000 miles worth of electricity – five times the density.  Did I mention that when an EV battery fails, it fails spectacularly?  Like in a crash?

Yeah, my car has a lot of stored energy in the gas tank, but we’ve figured out how to (mostly) keep it from blowing up all the time after over 100 years of experience, and most car explosions are in movies where the hero tosses a cigar to blow up the villain.  Of course, he does this and doesn’t look back, because it’s way cooler that way.

My dog exploded – he was half Irish setter, and half meth lab.

I’ve come to the conclusion that EVs are nothing more than a niche car for people who live in nice climates that never get really cold and are rich enough to have a car for each day of the week.

The gamechanger, for EVs is, of course, battery technology.  Triple the energy storage and halve the charging time at a lower cost with more safety?  Excellent.  Atomic powered batteries that are crash resistant that only need charging every fifty years?  Winner.

But I won’t hold my breath waiting for that.  There don’t appear to be any breakthroughs on the horizon that will make this work. And if there were, there are other problems.

Where does all that electricity come from?  Right now, the Texas grid is shedding load.  And California, who can’t seem to generate electricity without creating wildfires would need to consume at least 50% more electricity to electrify all their transport.  Since California has gone from NIMBY (not in my backyard) to BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) it’s obvious that electric capacity would have to be built in Arizona or Nevada or in the orbiting Unicorn Fart Farm.

How do you get Canada to support their electric grid?  Say it’s transgender.

No.  California won’t be going electric anytime soon.  Sensible places like Alberta and Switzerland discourage or prohibit EV charging in cold winter months, and they aren’t governed by Grabbin Nuisance.

It’s weird when a society makes detailed maps about how it’s going to destroy itself.  Well, at least people will soon be able to walk like an Egyptian.

The irony is this:  if the Left was really serious about reducing greenhouse gases by using less gasoline, the answer is really simple.  35 to 45 mile per gallon cars were made in the early 1980s, and had sufficient power to be useful on the highway.

What happened?  Additional environmental controls that addressed problems than 90% of the country doesn’t have.  Nitrogen oxides?  Bad in places that have smog.  Out in the rest of the Midwest?  Zero issues.  Yet, every car is designed based on the problems of Los Angeles.  In Fairbanks, they had a pretty simple emissions test, and wouldn’t let you drive a car in winter (when Fairbanks has smog) if it didn’t pass.

That’s too simple.  Let’s make every car suitable for L.A.

Then there are the CAFE standards – the Corporate Average Fuel Economy imposed on the automakers.  But CAFE excludes trucks and SUVs, so now everyone makes trucks and SUVs.  What about the mighty Toyota® Hilux, the car voted most likely to be driven by a Middle Eastern Faction?  Can’t sell it here, because of California and CAFE – small trucks have to meet silly standards.

We could save millions of gallons of gasoline tomorrow if we allowed sensible cars to be sold.

But no.  That would lower the cost of a reasonable car with great fuel economy to about $15,000, and nobody wants that.  I mean, Big Auto and Big Environment are in bed and agree, so who cares about the people?

Who cares?  Toyota, apparently.

I think EVs combined with silly-expensive cars is a meme trap for the mass demobilization of the American people.  And why not?  They can go to 15 minute cities, as the World Economic Forum keeps preaching.  And since almost half the world’s electric cars are being produced in China, is this a plan to offshore what remains of automobile manufacturing in America?  I imagine a rhyme of the phrase utterd by Barack Obama, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” which will become “If you like your car, you can keep your car.”

If it was a good deal, and EVs were the solution, we’d see technological and price advances and not have to depend on silly government handouts to make them a reasonable purchase.  EVs will stick around longer than they should, but, just like Joe Biden, they will never be the solution, no matter how the Left tries to force it.

But, hey, I hear that EVs work great in the garage!

The Wilder Cure For Illegal Aliens

“Prime Minister Tojo, Senator Edwards, my fellow Americans and our millions of illegal aliens.  It seems like only yesterday l was strafing your homes.  Here l am today, begging you not to make such good cars.” – Hot Shots!  Part Deux

What’s the difference between an illegal alien and E.T.?  E.T. learned English and went home.

I remember in high school thinking about the Roman Empire.  I chuckled to myself that the United States (clearly an empire even then) might fail but wouldn’t face the same challenges as the Roman Empire.  Where, I wondered, would the barbarians even come from?

James O’Keefe is a national treasure.  He’s amazing at pushing buttons on the Left to get them to react.  His latest piece of journalism is below.  WTWT.  In this, Mr. O’Keefe begins to pull the curtain back on a huge infection and begins to make public things that were thought to be “fringe” conspiracies.  Again.

In this particular case, Mr. O’Keefe went down to Arizona and followed illegal aliens (they’re not immigrants, they’re invaders) as they are housed at a shut-down school.  The school, Ann Ott Elementary School, 1211 E. Apache St, Phoenix, is surrounded by chain link.  From the looks of Mr. O’Keefe’s video, hundreds of illegal invaders are bussed every hour.

Where?

To the airport, so that the illegals can be forcibly injected into our society.

From the Google® Streetview™ capture in December, 2020, you can see the secrecy is already in place.  Fabric covers the gates so passersby (you and I!) can’t see in to see what’s going on.

2020.  This facility was in place during Trump’s administration. 

If I leased a building to help people do illegal things, how long before I was in jail?

The rot is very, very deep.

Who is a part of this corruption and ongoing subversion of our country and its laws?

The International Rescue Committee©.  Yeah, a shadowy NGO formerly linked with the CIA and headed by a member of England’s elite, and, oddly, has mostly been headed second generation immigrants throughout its existence in the United States.  For many decades, the IRC™ was mostly fixated on people of Eastern European extraction.  And that’s from their Wikipedia™ entry and their own page.

Why I don’t trust the second generation.

The IRC® gets (according to O’Keefe’s latest numbers) over $1.4 billion a year.  That’s enough to provide $600 to every illegal caught and released in the United States in the last year.  O’Keefe even found the receipts:

Wow, sooner or later that will start to add up! (from O’Keefe’s video)

This money, mainly, came from you.  Places like the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services pour hundreds of millions of freshly printed dollars into IRC© so they can do exactly what they’re doing.  None of this is a mistake.

The IRC™ is just one group.  There are others.

Follow the money.

But the funding isn’t just a secretive organization being run in the background by foreigners – nope.  The American Red Cross™ had a project manager there, too, and the place was filthy with Red Cross™ blankets.  The American Red Cross® normally does a lot of stuff with blood, which is the main income.  Over the years, it has also trotted to Congress to request funds to pay for disaster aid after events like Katrina.

Fair enough.

Silly to put your name on something proving you’re involved in human trafficking.

Want to bet that every bit of their aid in helping illegals break the law and transporting them across the country to transform us into a country that doesn’t resemble in the slightest the country we were born into?  I’ve not done the research, but I’m betting the Red Cross© is neck deep in this, too.

Both of these organizations are working as fast as they can to inject as many illegal invaders into the United States as quickly as possible to the tune of tens of millions.  AOC even said in her “big brain way” that the problem with undocumented illegal aliens is that they’re undocumented.  It’s the same sort of 12 year old girl logic that led her to previously respond to a question on how the United States could pay for a neverending stream of socialist benefits:  “You just pay for it.”

Real genius.

What AOC imagines when she things about illegal aliens.  How did Elvis® get in there?

Why are there housing shortages?  Illegals.  Why are we printing billions and billions of dollars so that these people can live free while you and I work and scrimp to get along?  And while we’re peppered first with advice to not have children, and then propaganda that we need hordes of illiterate people who don’t speak our language so that we can survive economically.

Because people like AOC and Black Rock® (Larry Fink is on the IRC© advisor list) like uneducated, often illiterate and criminal illegal aliens better than they like you and me.  They like them better than they like homegrown Leftists, too, since the illegals are a group of compliant second-tier serfs that feed their businesses with cheap labor and, soon enough, will vote reliably for the Democratic Leftist Global Elite candidates.  To top it off, these invaders are a net economic negative, costing far more than they produce in revenue.

Trying to import low-skilled, low-education labor to improve the economy is like trying to lose weight on an ice cream and beer diet.  But, hey, it helps people like Larry Fink buy your house and make you homeless, plus they get the fun of watching you get evicted.

Okay, this isn’t what Larry looks like, but I think they caught his smile watching you suffer.

From today on, I will do the best in my power to boycott every company and charity that I can that supports this invasion.  The Red Cross®?  I’m done bleeding for them, even though I’ve given plenty of gallons of red stuff over time.  As we find more of the groups that are doing that, well, I’m done with them, too.  And if there’s a business that employs illegal aliens?  Nope.  Not doing business with them.

Oh, Red Cross®, you don’t deserve to be immortalized in a PEZ® dispenser.

I’ve written before that the solutions to nearly every problem are simple, we just have to get to the point that we are prepared to do them.  They have to go home to their countries.  Again, self-deportation is preferable, and can be accomplished with sensible regulations in about a month.  Under the Wilder Plan© the main limitation on getting them out will be transport capacity, because, I assure you, they’ll want to leave, having no jobs, no benefits, no housing, the inability to buy at any store, and the threat of losing their children to orphanages if they don’t leave will provide quite a bit of incentive.

We’ll even offer free Pfizer™ vaxx on the way out, if they want it.

Hey, at least at that point they’ll really be refugees, rather than refugees that GO HOME FOR CHRISTMAS AND THEN FLY BACK HERE.

The result of the “everyone is an American” policy is a wrecked economy, political instability, and destruction of a country that formerly was one of the greatest the world had ever seen.  Even people in Leftist strongholds are now aware of this problem, so I expect they’ll start to try to stash them in places like Modern Mayberry.

The barbarians are now here.

The solution is simple.  While we’re at it?  Arrest and jail every single person involved in this pipeline of misery for treason.  After a fair trial.  Then deport them to the country of their choice with the illegal aliens they so love.

We do this, or we Balkanize.

And I’ve heard the advice, “Never go full Balkans.”

The Jenga Economy

“Out of these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history.  One step closer to economic equilibrium.” – Fight Club

What do you call a man in debt?  Owen.

After 9-11, sales of the Jenga® game really dropped.

I’m not sure why, but in 2002 people had to play Jenga® the old-fashioned way – by stacking dishes in the sink.

But the game of Jenga™ is a pretty good analogy for our economy right now.  Jenga© is based on taking one piece from the lower part of the structure and putting it on top.  As the game progresses, everyone can see that the structure becomes weaker and more unstable.  The game always (at our house) ends the same way:  the tower, which now seems ridiculously tall, sways a little bit, becomes unbalanced, and topples.

The pieces then go everywhere, and we leave them on the floor for the herds of stray free-range toddlers in our neighborhood to eat.  We’re givers that way.

The economy (to me) looks exactly like a game of Jenga™, seemingly impossibly stretched out and tall.

Pro-tip on how to pick-up women:  lift with your legs, not your back.

Examples?

Well, let’s talk about when we turned money into cash.  The dollar used to be bound to actual, physical commodities – gold and silver.  I guess you could call it an either-ore situation.  Gold was always the preferred, but people who wanted looser money (i.e., inflation) fought to get silver in there, too.  In fact, silver was actually part of the money supply, making up a portion of many coins up until the 1960s when one Jenga© block was pulled and set on top.

Nixon pulled another when he ended the ability of foreign nations to bring piles of dollars and walk away with piles of gold.  He made the tower even shakier as he threw gold out, entirely as a standard.  The good news was that Americans could once again own gold.  The bad news was that dollars were no longer money – they were cash – not backed by anything.

And could be printed at will.  Another Jenga™ piece on top.  The tower becomes a bit wobblier.  And wobblier still as Nixon and Ford and Carter start printing.  I mainly blame Nixon, since he got the ball going, and it took the hand of Reagan reaching out to steady the tower, though that created the very deep 1982 recession.

What was Bob the Builder© called during a recession?  Bob.

Reagan, though, added his bit as well.  Sure, it made sense to try to spend the Russians into the ground – after the 1982 recession the economy came roaring back as The Wealth Pump started in earnest and the stock market soared.  But during this time, the market cheered as jobs left the United States.  In many cases, the jobs were subsidized by the country taking them.  They wanted to build up the industrial expertise so that they could make world-class products and were willing to pay for their economy and workers to learn how to do it.

Remember George H. W. Bush’s advisors saying they didn’t care if the economy made computer chips or potato chips?

Pepperidge Farms© remembers™.

Because it does matter.  Potato chips or computer chips don’t matter if you’re a banker making a loan, but if you’re trying to create the greatest value with the economy?  It sure as hell does matter.

One step closer to living in the Prime® Pod™.

On the government side, fiscal responsibility seemed to come back for a bit with Bill Clinton.  Now, don’t thank Bill – it was entirely based on Newt Gingrich stopping all the nonsense for a few years that primed the pump of the economy.  While Hillary is an ideologue, Bill was always in it for the hot chicks.  Sure, there were shenanigans, but the Jenga™ players were mostly playing it safe during that time period.

But when the recession hit in 2000?  George W. Bush really wanted to open the floodgates, so he started stacking as high and as fast as he could.  War helped him move a few Jenga™ pieces, and low interest rates in his “everyone who breathes should own a McMansion” policy fueled an amazing set of bubbles that ended up including housing, natural gas, crude oil, and what was left of my hair.

The path out of the Great Recession was a simple one.  Print more money.  People aren’t buying United States Bonds?  Heck, the Fed® can buy them now.  We can also pay Wall Street to launder all the bad debt and make sure that irresponsible bank vaults get filled to the top with cash.

Is it just me, or does Janet Yellin look exactly like Benny Hill?

Because, why not?

Obama took some Jenga™ pieces from the very bottom and put them up top because he wanted to get health care into the system.

Trump didn’t add too many blocks to the top of the board, at first.  Trump was mainly because he was focused on deals – immigration, trade, covfefe.  But he couldn’t make a deal with COVID.  His instincts were bad and his solution was just to stack more blocks up top by printing money and cramming it down people’s throats as fast as he could.

Biden doubled down on that strategy:  importing illegals by the truckload to paper over the economy that no longer serves its citizens, spending billions to “reduce inflation” and now nobody wants to buy the bonds.  Thankfully, the banks are scrambling to create weird new structures so they can pretend that the loan that they made at 4% isn’t costing them when they’re giving 5.5% on CDs.

Anyone else feel comforted that the banks have a really complicated strategy to avoid reality?

The tower is now, really, really tall.  And really, really shaky.

And these things never end slowly – they end either with mass social unrest, a big war, or both when the tower finally collapses.  And others have just given up.

When 4Chan is smarter than the Fed®.

For clarity’s sake, Hasbro™ (the owner of the Jenga® trademark) had nothing to do with this post.  I’m sure they’d rather people look at Jenga® and think about the 9-11 than have them look at Jenga® and think about our economy.